Framework supporting far-right racists?

[gvisoc]

Thanks for coming back on this.

In terms of transparency everything is welcome, but I think you could also publish the criteria you will be following to allocate support for organisations. Thay way we can keep our expectations managed and you can establish a transparency and mission baseline that we can use to make our own decisions as well. When you make the submission form public for the community to nominate projects, or for the project to nominate themselves, you’re operating some sort of a de-facto grant program. In grants, the rules and process of adjudication needs to be clarified from start to avoid falling into or be suspect of nepotism.

While I think that the Hyprland matter may be addressed by your commend and while I may chose to trust the background check (plus redention and blahblahblah), the concerns expressed above by others and me about Omarchy are still not fully addressed.

EDIT: I added Coreboot through the form.

[lbkNhubert]

No one is likely to get a response that wholly satisfies them. My suggestion, which each of you should choose to accept or not, is to take what has been stated and move on. That may mean remaining here, or it may mean moving on. What it hopefully accomplishes is the death of this miserable, endless back and forth.

[not_winston_smith]

@TheEvilSkeleton

I’m willing to put my opportunities of being hired by the Foundation on the line, if it means not listing Framework on the site as it stands, until addressed properly. What y’all did was not okay, to put it bluntly

Will it ever be enough?

No matter the arguments, no matter the facts.

Omarchy’s been firing up the afterburner for 2+ months, 14100 GitHub stars now. It also has a massive Social Media presence. And you know what? It’s well worth it, absolutely deserved, based on MERIT.

Framework went along. What’s the problem there? The total views of all their Tweets on X that mention Omarchy is less that what the Primeagen got on YouTube for a single video where Omarchy came on top compared to macOS and Windows.

[lukee]

@acuteaura

people are being demonized with little factual backing and a zero-qualification militia has started to round up “the common enemy“.

@not_winston_smith

Concrete examples of this in action:

• DHH
• Andreas Kling
• Elon Musk

Let’s be clear here. Innocent American citizens are being arrested without warrants in broad daylight by masked men, then deported to brutal prisons in random foreign countries, and given no trial or legal recourse. For many, it’s unclear whether they’re even still alive.

DHH, on the other hand, had some people get angry at him on internet forums. Basically the same thing with Vaxry, Kling, even Musk.

Do you really, actually think that these situations are comparable? Seriously?

If so, why would anyone trust a word you say?

[gvisoc]

To begin with, it’s not a distribution. It hasn’t got its own package repositories. The distribution is Arch. Arch should be getting sponsorship; it’s not my cup of tea but what is worth someone should put that into the form if that hasn’t been done. I will do it myself if necessary.

What came on top of Windows and macOS was Arch. If that Primeagen guy doesn’t know that or if he does but he chooses to ride this wave explicitly doesn’t change any facts. There’s some 14,000+ people that starred the repository? Good for them. 14k stars are not that many, given that Mastodon’s repo is targeted to an absolute minority (admins, fediverse developers and instance owners) and has 49.1k.

Omarchy is a repackaging at best, and to be honest it is just a glorified ricing exercise without the fun, as the only way to test it is to nuke your hard drive from orbit because it’s the only way to be sure. Is it cool? Not for me. Is it merit? Not at all; the fact that one can’t pull some scripts to slap that on top of their existing Arch installation is lazy and not even mediocre. I’ve seen ricing exercises on YouTube way better than that, and that you can apply without doing said Ripley’s.

And on top of that DHH is toxic, a white supremacist, etc., etc., etc., but I think we all know that at this point.

[not_winston_smith]

@gvisoc

To begin with, it’s not a distribution. It hasn’t got its own package repositories.

Irrelevant technical detail you come up with to detract from its value.

Quote from Distrowatch: “Omarchy is an Arch-based Linux distribution featuring the Hyprland tiling window manager.”

@gvisoc

What came on top of Windows and macOS was Arch. If that Primeagen guy doesn’t know that or if he does but he chooses to ride this wave explicitly doesn’t change any facts.

Incorrect. Please go watch the video. “And that’s why Omarchy is soooo good” to quote from the video.

@gvisoc

There’s some 14,000+ people that starred the repository? Good for them. 14k stars are not that many, given that Mastodon’s repo is targeted to an absolute minority (admins, fediverse developers and instance owners) and has 49.1k.

Omarchy was released end of June this year. Below you can see how the number stars evolved for Mastodon. No match, also not a fair comparison, pick another Linux distribution.

@gvisoc

Omarchy is a repackaging at best, and to be honest it is just a glorified ricing exercise without the fun, as the only way to test it is to nuke your hard drive from orbit because it’s the only way to be sure. Is it cool? Not for me. Is it merit? Not at all; the fact that one can’t pull some scripts to slap that on top of their existing

Everybody is entitled to their own opinions, not to their own facts.

Omarchy is the distro for those who don’t want to tinker. For it being just 3.5 months old, Omarchy is seeing a huge amount of popularity and has created a lot of buzz. The end result is something greater than the sum of its parts. Could truly be that Omarchy is the Linux Desktop distribution many were holding out for.

[Foxboron]

@not_winston_smith

Omarchy is the distro for those who don’t want to tinker. For it being just 3.5 months old, Omarchy is seeing a huge amount of popularity and has created a lot of buzz. The end result is something greater than the sum of its parts. Could truly be that Omarchy is the Linux Desktop distribution many were holding out for.

Does that speak to the technical merits of Omarchy, or the popularity of DHH as a pervasive figure in the Silicon Valley tech scene?

[not_winston_smith]

@Foxboron

@not_winston_smith

Omarchy is the distro for those who don’t want to tinker. For it being just 3.5 months old, Omarchy is seeing a huge amount of popularity and has created a lot of buzz. The end result is something greater than the sum of its parts. Could truly be that Omarchy is the Linux Desktop distribution many were holding out for.

Does that speak to the technical merits of Omarchy, or the popularity of DHH as a pervasive figure in the Silicon Valley tech scene?

Please read again what I wrote. Would welcome a clarification as to where “technical” comes from.

With that cleared, let me rephrase your question: “Does that speak to the merits of Omarchy, or…”Definitely to its overall MERITS. Absolutely.

It’s simple, it’s extremely fast and uncomplicated to install, it looks absolutely fantastic, it’s fast to run and it just works out of the box. That is MERIT. And art.

[Giovanni_Civardi]

Thanks for the update, appreciated. Still missing the point tho: what about DHH/Omarchy? Why all the posting and visibility?

[gvisoc]

Look, I’m happy for you to have such high opinion of it. The same goes for Distrowatch, Primeagen, DHH, an all folks we want to put in.

I happen to have been using Linux since 1998 and I won’t call it distribution unless it is up to the mark established so far. Even Manjaro, with all its flaws, is a distribution.

Putting the result of a ricing in an ISO is not a distribution. As simple as that.

[Caleb_Maclennan]

@lukee

Let’s be clear here. Innocent American citizens are being arrested without warrants in broad daylight by masked men, then deported to brutal prisons in random foreign countries, and given no trial or legal recourse.

This is a boldfaced lie by partisan media and activists, not based in fact. A couple American citizens have been temporarily wrongfully detained, but last I checked not a single wrongful deportation of a citizen or even unreasonably long detention has occurred. The deportations are not of citizens and that’s a huge difference. One wrongful deportation was to the wrong country, but also got corrected.

If falsehood like this are what you are basing your argument on then your argument falls apart. In my reading of DHH’s posts I don’t see anywhere he suggested deporting citizens. He has alluded to not granting citizenship to such a broad swath of immigrants, but that’s a totally different class of problem than your accusations. Folks that want to boycott or glom on to an outrage machine would do well to get their facts straight first. Having your facts wrong shows you position to be indefensible.

[Matthias_Drakos]

I want to be absolutely clear: fascism, racism, and exclusionary ideology have no place in open communities, especially those that pride themselves on openness, cooperation, and shared progress.

When someone promotes far-right views, when they target people based on race, gender, or identity, that is not “just an opinion.” It is an attempt to make other people unsafe and unwelcome. Supporting, sponsoring, or normalizing those individuals is not neutrality. It is complicity.

Open source, by definition, depends on trust, collaboration, and equality of access. Fascism thrives on hierarchy, purity, and control, the exact opposite values. We cannot build truly open systems with people who believe some of us do not belong.

We need to stop pretending that “inclusion” means letting hate sit at the same table as everyone else. Inclusion means protecting people from harm, not tolerating those who would harm them. It means drawing the line clearly, publicly, and consistently when someone crosses into promoting racist, nationalist, or extremist rhetoric.

To Framework, and to any organization that finds itself at this crossroads:
You do not fight intolerance by staying neutral. You fight it by standing with those targeted, by making your values explicit, and by refusing to give platforms or funds to people who dehumanize others.

Silence is not balance. It is surrender.

[Tamara_Winkelspecht]

I am increasingly concerned by this.

The ethical argument of creating a “big tent for open source” is disingenuous if that tent shelters people who actively harm or demean others.

But beyond the ethics, there is a more practical grievance that hits users like me: why should we, the customers, be forced to subsidize projects with questionable values?

Every sponsorship, contribution, or deal a company makes is ultimately built into costs or margins somewhere, if Framework is funneling money or visibility into projects (especially those whose behavior are unquestionably abhorrent), that’s a cost we (directly or indirectly) pay.

By doing this, framework (and by extent every customer who keeps paying framework) are aligning themselves, willingly or not, with the ideologies those projects are in support of.

This creates a immense credibility and trust problem.

I cannot, in good conscience, continue with my order. I am cancelling my current purchase, and i will refrain from buying any further products from Framework unless there is a clear and verifiable change in policy.

A transparent public criteria for sponsorship (including ethical and community conduct considerations), a review of existing sponsorships, and ongoing accountability and openness around how sponsorship decisions are made.

I think i am not only speaking for myself, when i say that democratizing this process to some extent would rebuild trust.

It’s not too late for that yet, but it starts with acknowledging mistakes and making changes, not by hiding behind vague claims about openness.

[celorn]

Hi, I made an account to write this message. For context, I am a (not-so proud anymore) fw12 owner and I’ve been somewhat following the brand from the beginning.

I’ve read all ~1600 messages and don’t really know what to think anymore. Don’t get mistaken by the wording, that doesn’t mean there’s any chance I will have a neutral/positive outlook towards the situation; whatever my mind eventually makes of this will be negative.

Simply, I am confused. These are dotfiles, this is all happening over a few scripts and config files. You have repeatedly ignored criticism when it was just on the company Twitter account and discord, and we’ve now reached a point where the discord has shut down because of how much you were tweeting about it, and where the most popular post of all times on the whole forum is about this.

In spite of that, it seems you’ve still not even addressed the elephant in the room. Is it even an elephant at this point? It’ seems you’re not even addressing that the room in itself even exists. Over dotfiles.

Up to the point where your whole discord server shut down because of how much you were tweeting about those dotfiles, there were probably more (re)posts of yours about either Omarchy or DHH than there were about your new products, you even had display FW Desktops with custom Omarchy tiles at your event.

The tent comment was insensitive but it made sense in that you were going to be talking on behalf of the whole company and didn’t want to alienate the part of your fanbase that agrees with DHH, as disgusting as his opinions are. But right now? After five days of silence from Framework while people were talking about DHH/Omarchy, you decided to write a message that discusses everything BUT that.

Again, I don’t know what to think; this is a masterclass in how to alienate literally everyone. You don’t have a discord anymore. The most popular forum post for your entire brand is 4h worth of this.

Please, please just acknowledge that DHH is not a good person and stop posting about it for free on your brand’s official twitter account. Donate some money to a queer/refugee charity if you want, but just acknowledge literally anything about this situation please.

[not_winston_smith]

@Foxboron

the popularity of DHH as a pervasive figure in the Silicon Valley tech scene

Thought about this for quite a while. And I have to thank you for bringing this fact into the conversation.

You see, what puzzles me now to the point of being perplexed: how is this fact compatible with him being a proper [fn].* ?

It’s clear how: DHH is neither a nazi nor a fascist, nor is he anti-trans or anything to that effect. Combine this with the popularity of Omarchy, Rails and other wonderful creations from DHH, and you just about have the answer why Framework didn’t think twice about interacting with Omarchy on Twitter. Q.E.D.

[OliviaStarlust]

@not_winston_smith

DHH is neither a nazi nor a fascist, nor is he anti-trans or anything to that effect.

Bad Therapy

[nrp]

@anarcat

I will end this update by sharing publicly an apology I sent to @nrp now five days ago:

Thank you again for engaging with me on this, and I appreciate the openness.

[y_nn]

Putting DHH aside for a moment, as many (most maybe) posts here are well beyond that scope…

Its fine to vehemently disagree with someones politics, and great to vote with your wallet. But I think many people here, such as myself, are a bit tired of being told once again that the mere fact that we value OSS (or some laptop that gives us more agency over our own device) means that we now only have one logically consistent opinion that we could hold on something like immigration policy.

You can say over and over that “OSS IS political” but we all know what you really mean is: “OSS conveniently fits my poltics”, and quite frankly nobody else is obligated to agree with you.

You can scroll through this thread and see example after example of any right-leaning viewpoint being immediately labeled as problematic and harmful. I can quote numerous posts in this thread that are to the effect of “anyone right-leaning wants me/my friends/my family dead”.

Roughly half of the US and Canada, for example, voted right most recently, just for some perspective. Theres lots of people who like OSS because of some (sensible!) left-leaning principles, but theres also a large number of people who like OSS because they’re tired of being told what to think/do*, just my 2c.

*(and please, don’t think that I’m saying the right doesn’t tell people what to think as well…)

[TheEvilSkeleton]

Imagine relying on GitHub stars as an authoritative source of popularity. I suppose I’m more popular than Jesus because my GitHub profile repository has more stars than Jesus himself

[cgar]

It’s nice to see Framework restoring comments that were unfairly hidden. Such as mine. They have handled this whole ridiculous and unnecessary situation with perfect professionalism.

It’s funny how the people that say they preach tolerance are some of the most intolerant. They should learn from Framework’s balanced and logical politics free approach.

I wish them all the best and will absolutely make sure to buy from them again in the future to show support for this very refreshing attitude in a world that so lacks it.