The topic started with a bunch of smear tactics directed at other FLOSS projects using terms like “far-right”, “racist”, “toxic and hateful”, “conspiracy nut”, “enabling toxic communities” and so forth (while simultaneously mass-reporting anyone who uses similar language to characterize the accusers). I don’t feel there’s anything off-topic about pointing out that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. When some of the projects making similar accusations are explicitly aligned with designated domestic terrorists, they’re really skating on thin ice. It also seriously detracts from the credibility of the arguments directed towards framework and suggests that the same criteria should (for obvious legal reasons) be directed also at some of the groups making those accusations.
The neat thing about words is that they mean things. That meaning does change with time and context, but not very fast. Therefore, some sentences are more true than others, and some are just nonsense.
For example, calling antifa a “terrorist organization” is false at best, nonsensical at worst, regardless of who said it or how many official-looking proclamations they put out.
Relatedly, when two people accuse each other, it’s often the case that one is correct and the other is just making stuff up (not always, but often). Figuring out which is which might require you to use your brain.
some sentences are more true than others, and some are just nonsense.
Kinda like when George Orwell said in 1944 that “It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless.” concluding with “All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword.” The same can be said of all the other slander being leveled in the genesis of this discussion.
Figuring out which is which might require you to use your brain.
Such as recognizing that no amount of prevarication will negate the force of the law when it notices you continue to unrepentantly claim allegiance with what the government considers a designated domestic terrorist organization. But by all means if you doubt that, I’m sure all the FLOSS communities concerned can feel free to regale them with the same sophistry when the time comes and see how well it turns out. Good luck with that.
That wasn’t really the slam dunk you thought it was when you first posted it. It’s a piece of Orwell’s journalistic marginalia, 800 words written to meet a newsletter deadline that basically makes one point only about people calling each other fascists without defining it. It’s only gained popularity as an argument from authority from people who don’t like it when the term is used.
Since 1944 we have had plenty of robust definitions of fascism, including from the people that proudly called themselves fascists. Here is wikipedia (you can refer to Britannia too if you don’t respect wikipedia as a source):
By these terms I wouldn’t call DHH a fascist, but I would say that Tommy Robinson, the person he was defending, is definitely a fascist and so are his followers.
I wouldn’t call DHH a Nazi either, because that is also a very specific thing, but I would call his arguments about the ethnic demographics of London racist on account of the statistic he cites for Native Brits correlating with White British in the census and his allusions to how things can be deduced from walking down the street and looking.
Hope that clears things up and brings it all neatly back on topic. You also seem more preoccupied with how bad left wing people within the open source community. Maybe start your own “Framework supporting far-left communists?” thread instead, eh?
It’s absurdly silly to take the US governments determination (since 2025 when it has been run by far right ideologues that just happen to agree with you) about whatever new group they define as a terrorist group; especially considering literally the rest of the world doesn’t agree with them. But I think you’re derailing the forum topic for fun. All conservatives in this thread are really mad that some people are unhappy with some of the decisions framework have made → so the right wing users are going around calling everyone far left (then are upset) for simplying disagreeing.
If you want Framework to support a different set of projects, why not bump their threads with a suggestion that Framework support them? Better still, give them a go on your own computer, them bump the thread to say how cool they are and deserving of Framework attention.
Some non-Linux. non Windows OS related threads that could do with some love:
Haiku: An OS for Framework? My beloved BeOS, reborn.
Genode (really neat advanced OS) There is a project called Haiku-on-Genode, the author of which is very anti-fash (check his “licence” on project homepage)
Plan9 / 9Front on Framework. If you want an OS with an explicitly radical left vibe, check out their home page. Bell Labs UNIX successor.
I feel we will have better results if we stop complaining about the last batch of projects Framework are supporting and start advocating for some support towards lefty operating systems.
This was quite refreshing to read, personally. It’s a leveled take, especially after a lot of the thread had been saying “Framework is aligning with people that want me dead”.
If you don’t like DHH and won’t support Framework anymore, that’s good, stick to your principles. We just don’t need hyperbole to amplify principles.
I totally get where you’re coming from, but I’m not actually sure that’s hyperbole. DHH doesn’t say he wants my friends dead or deported, true. But most people who do want that sound just like DHH - they’re usually not stupid enough to publicly advocate for murder, so instead they indicate their allegiance by e.g. praising Tommy Robinson, a well-known violent racist.
So it makes sense to me to infer the same about DHH. It’s not an accusation I would make in a court of law, since, as you say, his words don’t directly support that conclusion. But this isn’t a court, we can just share what we think. And my experiences make me strongly suspect that what we’ve seen of DHH’s racism is just the tip of the iceberg. I really hope I’m wrong!
These days, when so many politicians and public figures speak in dog whistles, I think it’s really important to try to read between the lines, for your own safety if nothing else.
The comments regarding GNOME were made in bad faith in an attempt to instigate more fighting imo, however it makes me circle back to the initial point I had here and why I remain confused at the cancellation of framework.
GNOME isn’t bad because it is a terrorist organization according to the USA executive branch - I am also in fact a terrorist by that definition. No, GNOME is bad for taking a partnership with AWS, owned by Amazon, a company known for such exploitative labor practices that its workers famously piss in bottles to avoid punishment… or simply die on the job. That on top of the incredible environmental harm they cause, as well as the destabilization of society by owner Bezos using WaPo to promote anti-worker propaganda, or filling the planet with more carbon every day than any combined of us will in a lifetime, make working with AWS simply unforgivable.
DDH is distasteful, and his blog abhorrent. However he’s never killed anyone, as Amazon has, nor turned an entire newspaper into a billionaire simp rag, nor donated untold millions to fascist politicians. And framework is only guilty by the mildest association with the guy: a free laptop, a donation to the only ruby conference that he happens to run, and promotion of a viral hyprland dotfile set that he happened to create and unfortunately has his name on.
I again express confusion at this purity testing foot gunning.
I go to defcon, I hang with other dirty little hacker anarchists. There’s feds there too, cops who are for the most part my genuine enemy. Oh well, fuckm, I’ll stick to my crowd and try to radicalize any noobies I can get my hands on.
A bunch of normies start playing with Linux because they saw The Primeagen interview DHH and talk about Omarchy, or they get into right to repair because they saw an LTT video where Linus interviews Nirav, or they come to the scene because they saw a PewDiePie video. Frankly I don’t care what brought them here into the scene, because once they’re here we can get to work on them and show them how much freedom remains for them to take.
What I fear is that this aesthetic purity testing closes conversion opportunities. An example: there’s a lot of Trump supporters right now who are feeling the burn of their vote. Their healthcare costs just skyrocketed and if they’re on SNAP they may not know for sure if they’re eating next week. Quite literally the perfect time to bring them into the fold, to deradicalize them. Yet I keep seeing ostensible progressives mocking them with “lion eating faces” comments or rejecting people for not immediately going full throated adoption of all progressive values (which aren’t even universally shared - a lot of you progressives are likely quite in opposition to my opinions on civil disobedience and property destruction I would imagine!).
In my experience of deradicalization, organizing protests, and talking to so, so many people, including ones with abhorrent values, this just doesn’t feel like the right path to take. Not only because it’s ineffective, but also because it’s inaccurate and hypocritical - it’s difficult for me to take seriously this criticism of Framework for sending a laptop (~2k value) to DHH, from a forum of people containing engineers I’m sure have run up multiple tens of thousands of AWS bills over the years, or Azure (convicted monopolist Microsoft) or Google (union buster, gleeful censor).
The point seems to prefer aesthetics above all else and it’s a criticism from the left I’ve often levied against neoliberals: so long as someone passes an aesthetic test, any crime can safely be ignored. Hang a pride flag and it doesn’t matter that you buy a new iphone every year from the company that has workers flinging themselves off roofs, slap a fuck trump sticker on your car and it excuses you taking a 2 mile drive (rather than biking) to the Walmart that uses your tax dollars to subsidize the non living wage it pays (when you could pay a bit more at the farmer’s market and buy local). Attend a no kings protest, then come home and open Amazon packages, same day delivery!
I say this out of frustration at the purity testing. You want to come say Framework is supporting far right fascists? Fine, let’s take a look at this month’s credit card bill from you, we won’t find any companies on there owned by a CEO that’s donated to trump’s ballroom, right? Or a BDS company? You aren’t funding genocide in Palestine, surely?
This is why I oppose this granular purity testing. This is what “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” means. Certainly do what you can, when you can, but let’s stop acting like we’re addressing climate change through our laptop purchases. You address climate change by calling in a fake gas leak at a refinery plant, forcing it to temporarily shut down, thus directly reducing carbon emissions and also harming oil and gas profits margins - that’s what actual activism looks like.
I’m not saying you have to do that, or stop buying treats from Amazon, or stop taking Ubers, or stop drinking coke, I’m just saying, maybe don’t make things worse for everyone else by running around pointing fingers saying “actually Framework is bad because they sent a laptop to a racist.” Because if that’s the lens we start pointing at everything, I don’t think the results will be so great when we turn it back on you.
If you disagree, I want to know why! Help me understand why it’s ok for GNOME to partner with union busting, Trump donating, harmful law writing Amazon, but not ok for Framework to promote a viral set of dotfiles that happen to originate from a racist.
I did not make claims about GNOME in bad faith. I pointed out that this is not a complaint that grew organically from the Framework community but an orchestrated attack by affiliated groups who are very vocal and vehement about their political stance and their requirement that all follow that same opinion or else. This invalidates the entire discussion in my opinion.
Your claims about what conservative or right wing oriented peoples may be feeling in my opinion are so far removed from reality that it demonstrates that we are in schism, unable to even understand one another anymore and no society can operate with moral, ethical, and legal principle in such opposition in shared space.
We don’t even agree on definitions of words. We will never agree on truth again in our lifetimes.
The man who tried to bridge that divide was executed.
My man, you need to chill a bit
Your points are reasonable. I think what you are missing though is that, for many people, this feels personal.
The online tech community is home for many of us, and many of us are not the sort of people DHH likes. There is a relatively new confidence amongst far-right nuts in the online tech community, and patience for it has already been exhausted.
Amazon is bad, yes, but Amazon is also not actively promoting one of the most prominent racists and fascist sympathizers in the tech community for no obvious reason. Amazon gave money for Trump’s inauguration, I know, but they also gave money for Biden’s inauguration: Their awfulness is the predictable awfulness of a large corporation, not a personal one.
Many of us supported Framework for what we wanted it to be and for what it represented to us, not because they offered us a great deal as Prime members. Our computers are the centers of our lives. I look at this thing all day long. It’s not toilet paper or toothpaste from Amazon. I want to like it.
Framework has pointlessly scuttled the good will it had over, apparently, the unwillingness of @nrp to simply say that promoting DHH was probably a bad idea. Predictably, the sane people are leaving, and this thread is now filled with people who sound like Stephen Miller. It’s just so frustrating to see! If Amazon went out of business tomorrow, no one would shed a tear—but people cared about Framework. It was nice to have something that didn’t suck for a change, and now that’s over.
Come on, for as much as DHH sucks, he’s not a “prominent racist and fascist sympathizer”. Like seriously. He’s a rich guy with some bad takes like the Andrew Tate article. But one recent post about London not having enough white people doesn’t catapult you to “prominent racist”
Yeah, there’s been some obvious Trump supporters posting in the last few days, but that barely compares to the last month of non right wing people posting. At this point I agree it doesn’t seem like Nariv is going to make further comments, everyone can take that as they will.
I…. strongly disagree. America and many other countries are all about convenience. Amazon and such companies going out of business would cause many people to shed tears. Same day shipping is what many people live for
Are you familiar with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle?
I think this is what Nirav meant by the Big Tent approach - the population of users and consumers just includes more people now. (Disclaimer:, I can’t read minds so I may be wrong)
Maybe Framework is just going mainstream. Besides, everyone deserves a repairable laptop, so it is unfair for some users to try and monopolise that right.
Why are you drawing a false equivalency between a nonprofit accepting a sponsorship from a company that can help them with infrastructure needs they’ve been struggling to maintain and a venture capitalist company donating money and hardware to a racist who made a collection of dotfiles that does not help Framework or its mission?
This is honestly an absurd take. Yes, activism matters but some individual decisions can actually make a significant impact on the climate. Using ground travel over air travel, using sustainable ground travel, rooftop solar, reducing meat consumption, and notably in this context, keeping things you own longer. The climate problem is large enough that just one approach is simply not enough. Repairable laptops do help with the climate issue.
Again with the false equivalencies comparing a completely unnecessary donation to a racist with purchases people need to make to exist.
I don’t think most are trying to “cancel framework.” They’re justifiably upset at something Framework did and justifiably trying to make their voices heard.
I really can’t tell if you’re intentionally straw manning or not.
Also you still haven’t answered my question regarding hibernate earlier…
I’ve read this entire thread. I originally wanted to create an account to add my voice to the choir of people who are disappointed in Framework. But after a month of no response, I figured I’d be wasting my breath. But you raise some good points, and I figured I could contribute a little. So… I want to break it up into two broad topics:
“Purity testing” and strategic implications on broader change.
You are hyperfocusing on recruitment and the importance of getting people into the big tent. And while I agree that is an important metric, the thing you are glossing over is the effect these people have on the existing community. These are community-driven projects. And communities inherently cannot include everyone, some people force other people out.
There are multiple commenters in this thread that are engaging in laughably obvious bad-faith arguments in defence of heinous people. These are people who have to be removed from communities, or they will destroy them from the inside. If this is the kind of communtiy Framework wants to foster, many of us simply cannot participate fully. It becomes deeply unpleasant if not outright unsafe.
So… Congratulations. One has recruited a handful of trolls. Good luck in one’s efforts to deradicalise them while they deliberately waste one’s time. In the meanwhile women, people of colour, queer people, and other minoritised groups have been alienated from the community by letting these bad-actors run riot.
Ultimately, you have placed all of your weighting on the strategic value of reaching people, and no weighting on the wellbeing of the core members of the community. Ironically you try to spin that as a leftist critique of neoliberalism. Meanwhile you are arguing that the discomfort of minoritised groups is merely the cost of doing business.
“Hypocrisy” because of criticism of Framework and not other partnerships.
Firstly, people have already addressed this point all up and down this thread. Many of them responded to you directly. Simply restating your original opinion again as if half-a-dozen people haven’t already answered you is odd.
Secondly, this is just “Yet you participate in society. Curious.”
Thirdly, you may well be tilting at windmills. I’ve read this entire thread and nobody has said that GNOME partnering with Amazon is a good thing. But why would they, this is the Framework forum, not the GNOME forum. I imagine there is probably a decent number of people who are not please with GNOME’s partnership, but that discussion isn’t going to be HERE. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. For all you know the same people who are upset at this are also upset at that, and are voicing their opinions on the respective forums.
I think you are ignoring every metric other than an abstract “purity” and oversimplifying people’s motivations. I think there are quite a few differences that inform how people react towards Framework, than towards a corporation like Amazon.
Others have already mentioned, but Framework is a luxury product. Most of us need ‘a’ computer, but that need could be met much cheaper by other manufacturers. People opt for a Framework because there is some other value present. Right-to-repair is an obvious answer here. But others include wanting a device that one has greater ownership of and that supports good ethics in consumer electronics. The hackability of the platform has also made Framework the go-to device for people who like modifying their hardware.
And Framework’s actions have reduced the value of the product for many of us. And I mean that quite literally, even beyond the politics of the situation, the product itself is worse now. The likeability has a big dent in it, and the decision-making of the company that we are supposed to trust to create components that make the repair-ability worthwhile is now suspect. And by fracturing the community and squandering goodwill, there will be fewer projects with less momentum around them, which reduces the appeal to others.
And this isn’t a Google-Mozilla deal-with-the-devil situation. Framework did not need to cheer on DHH, they haven’t gained some influx of needed resources from it.
It’s also different kind of evil, which makes people react in different ways. Amazon absolutely is evil, in a cold, uncaring, systemic way. It is evil because of a complete lack of care for human life. On the other hand DHH, and people he speaks highly of such as Tommy Robinson, Graham Linehan, and Abigail Shrier, are evil in a different way. They are not uncaring, rather they are motivated in their hatred and in their desire to eliminate certain demographics. The impact of this hatred is different. It is much more direct, it can become more dangerous for subsets of the community very quickly, and that can happen without the broader community noticing as they remain unaffected.
this is incredibly well worded; thank you
I think those are reasonable suggestions. It’s pretty easy to pile on when maybe others are too without ever doing a positive thing ourselves. I’ll shout out PSGSuite as a small open source project on GitHub that has been very useful to me in the past when needing to automate Google Workspace Administration for a school. Obviously GAM7 is a much larger awesome project based in Python for a similar purpose. I use Ubuntu, on my Framework 13, and Fedora on my Framework Desktop, and both have been great.
For clarification I’d say that I’d prefer Framework not to be specifically right or left. Expecting companies to align with every position I personally hold is not healthy, or certainly not healthy for me. I don’t really think this should be a right or left issue. I think the line for me is when things seem hateful. Framework can do what they choose, but to the degree they start to support things I can’t, maybe I will need to find a nice sticker to cover the gear logo I’ve previously been quite proud of, and maybe I’ll not be watching live at the next event while hovering over the buy button.
As a counter point I think it would be silly for me not to just speak my peace at least once here on this specific issue since I can’t expect Framework to read my mind and I’ve been voting with my wallet for them. I do hope they will evaluate if this was a good one. I think purity tests are pretty universally awful and completely exhausting so while admittedly I did ask them not to sponsor or platform him I’m not looking for anything more.
I will point out that only one side of this discussion is acting to force anyone out.
You will be known by your works.
Nirav. I have been following this thread in disbelief. I wished you would come back at some points, and perhaps take on @Clinko’s suggestion (my emphasis):
I appreciate the response on Hyperland. I genuinely do. I’m stunned however that the very simple addendum that could have been “Though Framework has provided material and some marketing support to DHH/Omarchy we do not condone or support their views or statements and remain committed to our ethics, diversity, and the betterment of our world.”. That’s all it would have taken. Instead we are on a thread that has gone for thousands of responses, a closed discord and the loss of two Linux community ambassadors.
Other community members have abundantly and adroitly argued why no tent can be extended arbitrarily to fit certain forms of speech and behaviour without alienating many of us. Us, its first, enthusiastic, diverse dwellers, who endured immature BIOSses, a flaky embedded controller, wobbly lids, weak hinges, and middling batteries in the name of an ideal.
I am here for something else: to publicly dissasociate myself from Framework - to revert my endorsement of your brand (and not of your mission), which I maintained since 2020 and perhaps made you a modest half-dozen sales
The energy and creativity that you demonstrated in putting together this beautiful project is commendable. But I can no longer pretend that you need time to reflect – you probably rather need courage, and you are not going to find courage in calculation.
Framework appealed to the emotion of risking, even sacrificing, some individual benefit for what is right for us all. Framework did not appeal to a calculation. It can survive landing on a spreadsheet, and being iconized by the neoreactionaries, but it will not be fun.