My dad said that to me too 15 years ago, and then married a woman who’s constantly belittling me and my spouse.
Point being, it’s not what people say that matters, it’s what they do. Time will tell if this is really solved. Right now, it’s clearly way too soon for comfort for what appears to be a very large part of fw’s community.
Appreciating that the community is still debating nicely. Any message from Framework team here or otherwise that people have read?
There have been no further communications from framework on this forum. There is a tweet from Nirav, the CEO, if you wish to look it up
I’ve long expected that when it was time to replace my 8y old Dell Latitude 5280 (really a nice machine, I got it because it ran Ubuntu really well, and it has done so). But, I have a really hard time giving money to a company that’s okay with ethnic cleansing. Just like I wouldn’t use or support a Linux distro that used Brave as the default browser. I’m a old white Silicon Valley native who doesn’t care that he’s not in the majority or plurality any more (keep California weird though), and I’m disturbed by the people who are bothered by it, history says they will not be satisfied, they will never have purified enough.
You want my money? Be better, there are plenty of other soulless evil corporations, don’t be one.
What Vaxry did in the moderation changes absolutely show that the leadership of hyprland is committed to fighting transphobia in their community space.
I saw that one, thanks for the update, how you holding up around here?
Just in general, though, this same pattern has played out with other companies too, the best example being Tesla. The reason there has been so much backlash is that the main target consumer of electric vehicles does tend to be liberal. Hence, when Musk came out (or rather reaffirmed) as a fascist, Tesla took a huge hit.
As I said, are there exceptions to every rule? Of course. And there are non-CC-related arguments for sustainability and repairability - it’s just that most people don’t make them! Add to this the fact that these products aren’t really geared towards people with very little money (this is the boots paradox: you can either spend $10 on boots and replace them after a year or spend $50 and replace it basically never - it’s a privilege to be able to spend $50 on a pair of boots, meaning that poor people end up spending more overall even if each individual purchase is less money).
@nrp I’m very disappointing with your response here, and that you are doubling-down on X:
Actions speak louder than words, so you need to go one step further an end your support for Omarchy and Hyperland.
I bought a FW13 and have evangelized about it since I bought it despite it being, frankly, inferior to my work laptop, which is a Thinkpad X1 Carbon. I bought it because I believed that Frame.work had a set of values and ethics that were aligned with my own: protecting the environment, sustainability, right-to-repair, and fairness/equity/equality for all. I now realize that I probably conflated the humanitarian values with the rest as you (and Frame.work) haven’t explicitly espoused those values.
But apparently you do seem to (tacitly) support far right extremists who call for ethnic cleansing of my own country, and you do, when called out on, seem to refuse to condemn it. “Lie with dogs, get up with flees”, as the saying goes.
Other posters have described the Paradox of Tolerance and the Nazi bar issue, so I won’t go over those again, as the other posters did such a good job of it.
The problem for Frame.work, now, is that the community is now split between irreconcilable views: one group believes in equality for all, and one group wants to eliminate the other group. I wonder what the overlap is between the “far-right” and “people who have values around the environment, re-use, re-cycle, and avoiding e-waste”? It’s not a true dichotomy, as there will be a sizeable group of “don’t know/don’t care”.
This problem leads to another, which is that Framework will very soon be known amongst those that care as “that company that supports fascists”, keeping the same company as Tesla, and that will hurt sales. And I, for one, will make sure that I tell as many people as possible.
In closing, the initial situation could be just an oversight, although it shows a lack of due diligence. The responses really don’t look good and are tending towards actual support. If no statement is made regarding distancing FW from the aforementioned projects then it basically amounts to a statement that FW does align with ultra-nationalist/fascist positions, which puts the company on boycott lists.
It’s sad that it has come to this.
What? Seriously? You think anyone who doesn’t agree that Framework is supporting fascists is most likely far-right? This is honestly disgusting how if you don’t 100% agree with the now mob mentality you must be a fascist and nazi.
Nevermind that the majority of these comments are coming from people which have read the opening post, saw that Nirav did not immediately concede and accept full responsibility for… not reading through years of a Discord server of an open source project before sponsoring it? Not to mention Framework is NOT sponsoring DHH or Omarchy, yet most have not cared to even double check that, just rush to denounce.
Would be really great if people could take a little time and actually research a bit before joining in on telling Framework how horrible they are
While I agree with you at a high level (that more left leaning types will support Framework vs right) I don’t see Tesla as cut from the same cloth as Framework. Other than some small minority of people on the right who like the cybertruck (for some reason…) Tesla does not at all appeal to them. So yes, Tesla is a perfect example of what you are talking about. However, I would argue that Framework and FLOSS (and by extension the ideas of Right-to-Repair and Sustainability) are not concentrated within the left side, it just seems that way.
I ONLY care that Framework does good repairable laptop, and they do.
I could not care less about some discord drama for some Linux distro… It’s the thing with open source communities, there are all sorts in there, do not interact with them.
@nrp you may find this hard to believe, but some people would actually appreciate being informed that a project their company is providing free hardware to is led by a person who appears to be an actual white nationalist using their platform to spread hateful rhetoric.
This thread is now 772 posts long and still growing. Still, I wanted to add my voice to this whole thing.
Framework was born out of a desire to fix a broken system. A system that encourages consumerism and force people to buy new stuff every time something breaks, instead of encouraging people to make the most of what they have and repair. It’s a great idea, and as we’ve seen, also ties in with Right to Repair policies nicely. Framework laptops aren’t cheaper than the competition. They aren’t better. They have problems. They aren’t that interesting for what most people expect of the market.
The top one reason to buy Framework is because of their repairability. Paying more for something that goes against the market, something that requires policy changes to be truly successful is making a political statement. It’s called voting with your wallet. It’s just what it is. People buy Framework for the message that it sends to the industry. As a result, I think it is safe to say that the average Framework customer will generally be more politically attuned than the general population.
What baffles me about this moves is how much risk Framework was ready to take over this decision. From a purely business perspective, knowing that Framework supports various Linux distros certainly influenced my purchase. I got a Fw13 2025 batch8. At the time, there was a lot of push from Framework for AI. Their new desktop took the spotlight for it and it’s definitely something that turned me off and made me reconsider. There are huge political implications with AI that are still unresolved and seeing Framework push for LLM oriented products gave me the hick. However, I also understand the massive hype around it, and I’m sure that it definitely helped bring a ton or revenue for the company. In the end, a powerful computer is a powerful computer. Even if it’s marketed for LLM use, it’s still a good machine. Framework has very little to loose with this move.
Now, lets compare that to the decision to very loudly support and promote projects like Omarchy and Hyprland to the tune of 600-ish dollars a month. What did they expect to get from this partnership? A boarder ecosystem? At the risk of alienating an enormous portion of their userbase? It feels like a terrible business decision to me. It’s not like DHH’s positions are the latest news. Even if some people have "reformed from their old believes”, which I highly doubt enough time has passed to really judge on that, isn’t that still an insane risk to take?
To cite another post that was done on this thread: “Not endorsing or supporting Hyprland or Omarchy (which the user/customer of your products is still free to do so) is much easier than excluding one of the two biggest and most common CPU brands on the market in your laptop/desktop products.” (Leowo_Last_Name, in reply to DSN) Having AMD or Intel CPUs in your computer if pretty much a requirement, thus most people are ready to accept that some of their money will go down that route. Sponsoring DHH’s projects isn’t, and should’ve never been on the table. The moment you’re ready to give money to people with problematic ideologies, not out of necessity, but out of desire, you’ve shown your true colors. It doesn’t matter how “Pro-LGBT” you say you are. If you don’t stop the moment you are told, everything you’ve done so far, every public statement you made, every contribution you did, it’s all just a crumbling facade. There is no excuse for Framework to use the classic, many times debunked, centrist position of “we can like what you build without liking you” in their PR statements right now. Framework lost the trust of their community. Everyone defending them right now have no respect for the people who’s trust have been broken.
I bought a Fw13 last summer. I’m happy with it. I don’t think I’ll be getting another Framework machine soon. Framework has a lot of time to change by the next time I have to consider a purchase. I hope they’ve turned around by then.
I’m sorry, but I’ve been to enough public events to call administrators setting policies and CoCs for the event and then promptly ignoring them for themselves standard practice. Let’s give it a few years to see if those policies are meaningful, used appropriately, and not ignored for the benefit of their friends or profit, before calling it “committed to fighting transphobia”. It’s fine saying they’re trying to be better, but in the meantime, I’d be very careful bending over to defend these people.
Great, from associating themselves with LTT, to the dumb push for AI, and now THIS?
I’ve been saving for a Framework laptop for over a year now, and now idk if I even want to support you guys after seeing this nonsense.
I will make a statement here as a long time framework user. I have the 13, the 16, and the framework desktop.
I am personally, tired of the cancel culture. Terms like “racist”, “far right” and “fascist” are more often than not, not descriptive terms that describe people’s actual policy positions. They are immature insults and mud slinging.
The exertion of pressure in methods other than the ballot box has a long history, otherwise we wouldn’t have wars. However, I believe that it’s not healthy for the Open Source movement to begin excluding persons based upon their political beliefs outside the open source vs proprietary divide.
These individuals posting are not concerned about the health of Open Source, they are concerned about left vs right politics. We can see this via everything from the demonization of the “unacceptable” Richard Stallman, Brendan Eich, and the Inochi2d project as a few examples that come to mind. Broadly speaking, for these people, Left-Right politics is their number 1 priority, and Open Source is only a secondary priority for them. I have seen them demonize open source projects because of the so called “far right” leaders even when no other open source alternatives exists. These political activists would rather have us use proprietary software if it’s made by leftists than adopt open source software made by their “far right” adversaries.
My personal opinion is that this philosophy is not a pro-open source one, but an attempt to co-opt the open source movement to do the progressive bidding and agenda. I would strongly reject these ideas in pursuit of the open source vision. If that means we lose a chunk of the community, that is fine, because they were never truly on the side of open source to begin with.
As a second point, the idea that people should be “cancelled” based upon their political statements is unworkable. If Framework was to capitulate and ban all right wing persons from sponsorship, it would simply lose the “right wing” half of its customer base. Framework has made a decision not to wade into the fight that has nothing to do with open source, and rightfully so. It seems the leftists are intent on forcing framework to “pick sides”, and I would be very hesitant of doing so. If the anti-open source leftists want to self eliminate themselves from the community, more power to them.
On the other hand, those of us who support open source, regardless of our right vs left opinions, should continue to support companies and projects that push the world in the right direction.
Personally, I will not be supporting a company that caves to the progatzi mob (progressive nazis). That doesn’t mean that I have political beliefs that align with the so called “far right”, merely that I, a so-called centrist, recognize that most of the concern put forth by the progressive mob is hysterical, hyperbolic, and exaggerated.
I am not personally of the belief that a corporation should be choosing sides with whom to do business with based upon the politics of the corporation, unless those involve computer politics around open source, right to repair, etc.. Our movement is too small to chop off large portions based on immigration politics when we hardly have enough people to get action on right to repair.
There are perhaps those who view immigration politics as their primary priority, but I don’t, and I don’t appreciate those who would try to disrupt and dismantle our open source community over it. If you want to support proprietary software when it’s convenient for anti-fascism, my only answer to you is good riddance!
I think, broadly speaking, you can summarize people like Nirav as people who, first and foremost, support Open Source. Even if you are pro-immigration, if Nirav believes that the health of the open source community is more important than pushing politics around immigration, then I understand why he’d support these projects.
I wasn’t going to post again but it appears even the discord mods have decided this is unacceptable and left?
Basically, if you don’t fully support the mob mentality, you must be against them. Exactly.
Not to mention that 90% of the people coming in here making comments have the incorrect assumption that Framework is sponsoring Omarchy and DHH when that is not the case. But it’s hard to stop a mob.
I fear that if “95%” of people were in agreeing, then this topic would not even cause this much of a stir, or heck, end up in the tech news now.
Truly disappointed of you and in your way of handling this.
