Framework supporting far-right racists?

General Topics
1970

While the Hyprland discussion seems to be more complicated, with the majority of harm being done in the past by a handful of people in a much larger community project, I cannot for the life of me understand Framework’s position on Omarchy and DHH. It looks to me like just jumping on a recent bandwagon, promoting a popular “distro” (it’s not, it doesn’t distribute anything, it’s just bunch of dotfiles).

Combine this with DHH’s racism and transphobia which @nrp refuses to address, and I cannot in clear conscience continue advocating for the Framework project. Much here has been said about Big Tents becoming Nazi Bars, but as a queer person who has seen people show indifference towards human rights their entire life, let me just add: I envy you the privilege of being able to “not be interested in politics”.

25 Likes
1971

It’s fairly predictable, unfortunately. There’s a few things:

  • DHH has been a fairly influential guy for a long while. Also controversial, but until a certain point much less of a clear-cut case. Until a certain point I wouldn’t be surprised if someone thought he was even progressive - his early controversies were more edgy than anything, and unlike some of the bigger tech CEOs, he thinks (or at least thought) that sleep is good for you. Yes, I know, low bar.
  • Framework is a company that’s ultimately in a somewhat similar space to 37 Signals (DHH’s company) on the aesthetic level. Lots of chat about privacy, pragmatism and sustainability. 37 Signals is quite famous for being critical of cloud service economy and promoting work from home (or at least used to be, I haven’t checked in a long while).
  • As someone who worked for startups way more than xie’d frankly like, I have met multiple CEOs deeply enamored with DHH - this was before the weird lay-offs case and then the London article.
  • Many folks “don’t pay attention to politics” - they probably didn’t even know that DHH started going the JKR route (it’s always that thing - a popular person does something bad, gets called out, and instead of saying ‘fuck, yeah, sorry’ they just lean in - and soon the only people who can still stand them are even worse).
  • Omarchy is a new Linux distribution and at the first glance it looks cool and is backed by famous open source stuff guy. If you “don’t pay attention to politics” you probably will just go for it and like… be surprised.

I do think it’s an example of why I actually expect people to pay at least some attention to “politics.” On the other hand DHHs slide into terrible stuff is much less famous than, say, JKR’s - I knew of the London article, for example, so more recent things and transphobia aren’t a surprise - but I didn’t know about them before.

So to me it’s less “why did you support that stuff” - okay, fine, disappointing and lack of due diligence, but whatever - and more lack of a strong, clear reaction when it came up, including to the fact there’s plenty of defenders here. Everyone does foolish things, even bad things - but leaning in into it is how you end up surrounded by terrible people, and becoming truly terrible yourself.

For DHH or even JKR, there was a time where it could have ended up with “oh, I think that was pretty bad, sorry.” Some folks would probably latch onto it, but it would have been fine. Framework still has time, IMO - but I’d be really surprised if they did something. They have investors, after all - and in the current political climate, especially in the US, that’s probably scarier than alienating a couple of trans girls like me.

24 Likes
1972

What a lot of words to say that you’re not going to say anything. You’re welcome to just not say anything instead of going round and round about not saying anything. :roll_eyes:

You should evaluate whether you know much about DHH and fascism. “Deporting” (note: fascists always say “deporting” ahead of time but that’s never where they end up) 2/3 of Londoners because they’re not white cannot be accomplished without a genocidal fascist state.

My line of questioning is about Framework. You can tell because I’m talking about Framework and Framework policies the whole time. Framework either has to allow links to sites that promote fascism, or Framework has to ban links to sites associated with a Framework-supported project. That’s absurd. I am pointing out how Framework has backed itself into this corner in their attempts to “not be political” and “have a big tent”, because really what they’ve done is made a political decision to economically support a fascist and now they’re trying to cover their asses because fascism is famously unpopular and DHH is rapidly becoming a pariah even in communities he helped start.

Unfortunately for Framework, there’s literally no logically consistent way to say, “We are opposed to fascism” and also “We economically supported a prominent fascist and that’s not bad” at the same time. It’s a real shame they didn’t do the actually responsible thing and say, “We’re sorry, we didn’t know about DHH’s fascism. In the future we’ll vet our grants better. We’ve revoked the grant to Omarchy / We unfortunately are unable to revoke the grant to Omarchy at this time. We’ll do better in the future.”

Personally, it’s dangerous for me to support anyone that can’t say, “We are opposed to fascism,” with their full throat and mean it, because as previously mentioned the fascists want to kill me. If Framework is not going to shut down fascism on their forums and is going to provide support to fascists, that means Framework is okay with my murder.

14 Likes
1973

As it was mentioned above - read the community guidelines, and if you see i.e hate speech in this forum, just flag this and moderators will take care of it. I am quite sure they will remove any hateful propaganda, and ban the respective users. That is the policy here, as it is in many similar forums. And that is working well here in my opinion.

And nobody here wants any harm to you.

And yes, it will be good for the community, if someone from Framework would explain the relationship with Omarchy in more detail. But meanwhile, its not also nice to use accusations like:

without any given context, where this fascism actually exists in this forum here and so on.

3 Likes
1974

I know this has been going on for a long time now, but I wanted to add one more voice—as a vote, if nothing else. I’ll be as brief as I can.

I bought my Framework instead of a ThinkPad or other option largely because I supported Framework’s values. Candidly, I could have gotten a better machine for my needs for the money. I gave my money to Framework anyway.

I regret that decision. I am no longer considering a Framework Desktop, and I am no longer recommending Framework to friends.

@nrp, this is simple: You cannot have a big tent if you let in people who publicly wish certain groups weren’t in the tent. You cannot tolerate intolerance. DHH is, at best, an apologist for transphobes like Graham Linehan and literal fascists like Tommy Robinson—and that’s just what he admits on his own blog. No one can dispute that. It’s fact, absent any embellishment.

Short of an apology being issued, I will not be giving Framework any more of my money. To think, in this political climate, that publicly promoting someone like DHH could be apolitical is ignorant at best. @nrp, please do the respectable thing: apologize, make it clear that Framework will not associate with fascist sympathizers, and move on.

25 Likes
1975

Wow. Are people even reading my comments? I don’t think I’m saying anything confusing. I literally go step-by-step through my questions and concerns, and once again someone’s arguing at me about things I didn’t say.

I’ve been explicit in everything I’ve written that I’m talking about the hypothetical of DHH joining the forums and linking to his own fascist blog or Omarchy’s website that promotes his fascist blog.

The community guidelines would indicate to me that DHH could not link to his own blog or Omarchy’s website, given the fascism, and I’m pointing out that that is bananas. Framework economically supporting a person and project that cannot be linked to in Framework’s own forums because of associated fascism is absurd.

Or, that’s not the case. If DHH can link to his blog or the Omarchy website, then, yes, that means Framework is okay with my murder. And, to explain like you’re 5, this is not an accusation, because of the “If”. See, it’s conditional. I’m basically saying, “If Framework is okay with their forums promoting writings that advocate my murder, then Framework is okay with my murder.” That’s practically a tautology.

On the other hand, this is an accusation: Because Framework economically supported a prominent fascist, and Framework has defended that support, and that fascist will inevitably use some of that support as a means of advocating for my murder, I must conclude that Framework is okay with my murder.

As mentioned above, there’s literally no logically consistent way to say, “We are opposed to fascism” and also “We economically supported a prominent fascist and that’s not bad” at the same time. Framework could have plead ignorance, apologized, and denounced DHH and fascism. They chose not to. This results in obvious conclusions being drawn.

10 Likes
1976

I’m not, this whole thread is a non-read for me. I only look in on it to stop it showing up as an unread thread.

No good talking about hypothetical events. What will happen will only be known when it is an actual event. There is no use banging on about it while it may never happen.

Well, you are not dead yet, so don’t worry …

3 Likes
1977

Fine.

I do not see those “ promoted writings that advocate murder” here. But if these ever appear here, I am sure mods will delete these.

The rest of your argumentation, that leads to a (hypothetical) claim of Framework supporting any harm to you - I am not even getting into this. All this is just - as mentioned here already - hypothetical, and draws in my opinion quite wild and extreme conclusions. I simply disagree and leave it there. Your opinion is - of course - your opinion.

2 Likes
1979

Nahhh man. You made a kitschy laptop with a broken BIOS that I cared about purely for political reasons. It has historically been aligned with a “respect for the planet, respect for people, and respect for each other” ethos that I am using my dollars to advocate for, and I’ve spent hours of my time advertising to friends, family, and strangers purely for these political reasons. You don’t then get to act like you aren’t making a political product???

Hire a PR person to read the BS you’re shoveling and have them get you back on track. These responses do not inspire confidence.

30 Likes
1982

i thought it was pretty silly framework stopped posting on their bluesky account right after this controversy

5 Likes
1983

I searched the internet and haven’t found anything posted by DHH that would make him a fascist or racist. I have seen loads of accusations; can someone give a quote/reference to an actual statement. I know he has lamented against woke culture and DEI but that in itself racist, or fascist.

3 Likes
1984

Except, you know, if it’s a bad project technically (apparently it gives 2000 era Slackware a run for it’s money, which is pretty damned bad ) , the only reason left to support it is ideological. You know, the sort of thing you have spent so very much time endlessly sealioning about.

4 Likes
1985

His comments on his personal blog do not portray him in a good light and he hasn’t walked them back. You could charitably read it as being merely intolerant of others and uncharitably straight up racist/xenophobic

4 Likes
1986

@James_H_Whitcomb Specifically, this essay (at minimum).

5 Likes
1987

Nothing racist in there at all, he isn’t promoting one race over another but is more morning the loss of cultural and national identity. I believe people who follow a new world order or national identity will have a different opinion, but that is more politically driven.

4 Likes
1989

Nothing overtly racist, sure. I would say the biggest red flag is his description of Tommy Robinson’s march as “charming”, without any qualification or criticism (if you think Tommy Robinson isn’t racist or fascist, I don’t know what to tell you; he built his entire reputation on hating Muslims). But, as I’ve mentioned previously in this thread, DHH is generally very careful with how he discusses these things so that each sentence, taken individually, looks quite innocent. It requires some experience dealing with far-right rhetoric to identify the dog whistles he’s employing and the agenda he’s pushing. So, I don’t expect to convince anyone here that he’s racist/fascist/whatever, but I know it when I see it, and that’s why I returned my Framework laptop.

Honestly, this kinda captures this whole thread in a nutshell: I, like many others, came here to tell Framework that they’d lost my business, and why. Then, others demanded evidence and wanted to debate me about whether DHH is a fascist or what fascism even means. But this isn’t a court of law! I don’t have to prove my opinions with forensic evidence. I don’t even really want to argue about whether DHH is fascist, I just wanted to tell Framework they lost a customer. And now I’m stuck replying because it just feels wrong to ignore comments like this :slight_smile:

16 Likes
1990

Does he hate Muslims or Islamicist and what he sees as a preferred treatment Islamicist get in Britain and in Europe in general.

2 Likes
1992

For those who are upset with Nirav here, which I agree with because he doesn’t seem to realize that two virtues can conflict with one another, I can offer two possibilities that could improve things.

  1. Break this to a major newspaper. Be sure to include links to Nirav’s tweet, DHH’s post on Londoners, and the new moderation policies. The sheer PR damage done might force Framework’s hand.
  2. Come up with something superior to Omarchy. This would not be as hard as you think. IMHO, Hyprland’s default approach to window management feels outdated in a world where common applications expect to use up a good portion of the screen. Niri’s scrolling window management is far better suited to our current software ecosystem, and it can be made to look almost as good as Hyprland. If you then make the OS as easy to install as Omarchy, maybe integrate Niri with Framework 12’s touchscreen, make the system easy to use and look good by default, and you would have something that would beat the socks off of both iPadOS and Omarchy.

All of these would probably be more productive than continuing to post in this thread, and would probably tip the scales in the direction you want.

And to Nirav, if you happen to read this: Sell the company. No, really, not just for ethical reasons. Economists have found that founders that stay with the company too long end up dragging it down, and it’s clear that that is starting to apply to you. Find someone who can succeed you and actually knows how to handle PR. That’s the only way you’re going to attract new customers if this gets into the mainstream news.

To anybody else from Framework, take a good Information Science class. Very eye-opening.

I personally will still be buying parts to upgrade my Framework 16, as the Framework 16’s repairability has already saved my butt, but I will not recommend it to others nor personally buy other Frameworks until these PR gaffes stop happening. Which is a shame, as I was planning to buy the Framework 12 at some point. Maybe I should take a look at the StarLite…

Also, I will not be responding to any of the posts made in response to this, and my final stance towards Framework is the same as Orwell’s towards P.G. Wodehouse.

7 Likes
1993

Just found this. Lol. Lmao, even.

2 Likes
1994

Alright, here’s a non-broken link.

https://マリウス.com/a-word-on-omarchy/#summary

8 Likes