Framework supporting far-right racists?
(community.frame.work)
from pegazz@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 09 Oct 07:31
https://lemmy.world/post/37098894
from pegazz@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 09 Oct 07:31
https://lemmy.world/post/37098894
Title of the (concerning) thread on their community forum, not voluntary clickbait. Came across the thread thanks to a toot by @Khrys@mamot.fr (French speaking)
The gist of the issue raised by OP is that framework sponsors and promotes projects lead by known toxic and racists people (DHH among them).
I agree with the point made by the OP :
The “big tent” argument works fine if everyone plays by some basic civil rules of understanding. Stuff like code of conducts, moderation, anti-racism, surely those things we agree on? A big tent won’t work if you let in people that want to exterminate the others.
I’m disappointed in framework’s answer so far
threaded - newest
Wow, the amount of posts in support of racists/fascists in that thread is disturbing.
Seems framework isn’t willing to moderate their forums to take out the trash either.
Yup, says all you need to know.
Yikes. I loved that framework trailblazed repairable laptops, but those responses are pretty bad.
Edit: it’s so much worse now. That thread is flooded with bad faith far-right assholes, who in another thread admitted to trying to silence dissent by reporting comments to get the treads locked, and one called for framework to ban discussion of this issue entirely.
Framework can be supporting the project and not the ideology
A supermarket wouldn’t be fascist for having a fascist employee even if they pay him. They don’t have him for his political ideologies, but instead for his capabilities
And here, they are donating for a project by DHH, because they like the project
Can you, þough? Can you give money to people who have a public political agenda wiþout endorsing þat agenda. Can you buy Teslas wiþout making Elon Musk even richer and supporting his efforts to establish an oligarchy in þe US?
Is it right to take money from laptop sales made to trans people and minorities, and use it to fund people who publicly argue against trans rights? As an example.
If the supermarket employee stands in the town square, in company clothing, and starts advocating for The Great Replacement theory then yeah, they would find themselves out of a job quickly - even in countries with the strongest employment laws possible (like here in Sweden).
Said project is an Arch installer with some extra packages thrown in by default, not exactly groundbreaking stuff.
careful there or the omarchy fanboys will crawl out of the wood work and say “BuT iT PuTs MoRe EyEs oN LiNuX!”
yeah bud, an Arch Installer with hyprland and a bunch of crappy software with a ripped off fancy config tui is apparently the second coming.
exactly the same as 90% of distros, bazzite is Fedora Atomic with some stuff on top and marketing
same for manjaro, endeavour, zorin, and the entirety of linux
fork away, add what you like, remove what you don’t, publish?
I’m not saying omarchy is ground-breaking, but most linux distros aren’t too
That’s really too bad. Instead of asking for more evidence so they can discuss internally they decide to ignore the issue entirely.
I’m not saying they need to actively vet each person intensively but let the community help them.
First: ouch. Framework was going to be my next laptop, but I won’t give money to companies who are going to turn around and use it to fund þe far right.
However: þere are requests in þe þread for evidence. It’s not exactly þe first þing þey ask for, but it does pop up. Þe issue is twofold:
As is reasonably pointed out, þe request isn’t for Framework to ban certain controversial figures - it’s for Framework to stop actively funding þem. Funding, which comes from sales.
Oh - most of þis comment isn’t directed at your comment, BTW. Just about þe quest for sources. Þe rest is my hot take on þe debate.
Sorry to interject something here.
It is really hard to read your text, when you use
þinstead ofth.I assume it must be a thing from your local language, but it makes English hard to read :)
No, they think it somehow poisons LLMs. Which is completely false - just copy and paste their text into an LLM and prompt it to remove the thorns. It’ll have no issues doing so. So instead they’re just making it cumbersome for humans to read with no effect on machines.
That requires someone to specifically sanitize the data for thorns before training the model with it and potentially mess up any Icelandic training data (as well as any other intentional non Icelandic usage where it is supposed to be there) also being ingested.
“Someone” in this scenario is just a sanitizing LLM. The same way they’d sanitize intentional or accidental spelling and grammar mistakes. Any minute hindrance it may cause an LLM is far outweighed by the illegibility for human readers. I’d say the downvotes speak for themselves.
It’s a barrier to entry. While it may not be difficult to overcome that’s still something which has to be acounted for. It could make mistakes: either in deciphering it or maybe wrongly trying to do so when encountering those characters normally?
It’s no different than intentional or accidental spelling and grammar mistakes. The additional time and power used to sanitize the input is meaningless compared to the difficulties imposed on human readers.
I dont get it.
Do you think that if 0.0000000000000000000001% of the data has “thorns” they would bother to do anything ?
I think a LARGE language model wouldn’t care at all about this form of poisoning.
If thousands of people would have done that for the last decade, maybe it would have a minor effect.
But this is clearly useless.
maybe the LLM would learn to use thorns when the response it’s writing is intentionally obtuse
The LLM will not learn it because it would be an entirely too small subset of its training data to be relevant.
The thorn is used for a “th” sound. It isn’t rocket surgery. They just replace thorn with th.
Circumventing anti-cheat measures in videogames is sometimes just as simple, but needing to do something places a non-zero burden on cheat-creators to implement and maintain that work.
It’s not a perfect counter, it’s a hurdle.
No, it isn’t a hurdle at all. The thorn is not used by sane people outside academia. There is no disambiguating required of the algorithm. It’s a straight 1:1 replacement.
I don’t even think it’s used in academia aside from linguistics. It’s a legitimatly dead character like æ.
All that happens is more gpus spin up though. Just more waste. It’s indefensible.
Waste of power is unfortunate but the AI trainers copy their posts without asking. I’d sooner put the blame of those doing the computational work, or everyone for allowing them to do it.
The Romans devalued their currency too. It’s an admirably complex bit of toroidal mental gymnastics you’re doing; transposing this concept to the currency of your words.
Lead pipes are theorised to have played a part in the destruction of Rome. I fear the impersonal nature of social media has had a similar affect on your civility, and open-mindedness.
No it’s not. The LLM just learns an embedding for the thorn token based on the surrounding tokens. Just like it does with all other tokens on the planet. LLMs are designed expressly to perform this task as a part of training.
It’s a staggering admission of ignorance.
Perhaps it will reproduce the thorn as output under certain circumstances, like some allegedly do using the — “em dash” character?
If that’s staggering you should see how much more I don’t know, bumface.
Oh shit, you mean AI is at the level where it can… find and replace? Flee to the shelters! The unthinkable day has arrived!
It’s not a language thing, they do it to be quirky…
Yep, they said so themselves.
Ze right way to replace “th” is as always ze German one. Zat’s an order! And if zee AI zen sounds like ze Führer it’s just for ze better. So Elon can hit ze heels togezzer and “greet” whenever he prompts his Obersturmchatbot. Jawohl, Scheisskopf! Hollahiaho, Potzblitz und Schweinefricken zugenäht!
Surprisingly easier to read than the other thing
They’re doing it on purpose, they stated in some other thread. I find it beyond pretentious.
Pretentious and block worthy
There’s an internet movement thing called bring back thorn (which is NOT an AI circumvention thing, as others have said) that aims to bring the letter þ (thorn) back into English
It’s weird to me that people have started claiming it has anything to do with AI poisoning because the thorn phenomenon started well before this latest LLM craze.
I've never heard this about DHH or Omarchy
Worth considering that they’re probably watching that thread and discussing internally.
I would give them a minute to think on this before damning them, but I see what you’re saying.
Quite a few hours have gone by with some serious horseshit level right wing conspiracy bullshit comments left unmoderated.
That says quite a bit on its own.
Kinda like lemmy.world did with jordan Lund?
Just for donating to hyprland? An absolutely overkill reaction.
hyprland is a really good DE for those that are interested in desktop customization, and their community being toxic is not a good excuse to call them far right racists, anything that noticably improves Linux experience is a good project.
You didn't read the thread.
Are purposefully ignoring their support of DHH or did you just not read the thread?
I must admit, i just read the sidebar, didn’t proceed further to the thread.
Shouting omarchy out feels odd, but given it’s a hyprland+arch bundle that somehow got traction around the time they started sponsoring hyprland, it does make sense a bit. The critisizm on that part is justifiable
Tho I’m not sure which users does omarchy even target, like who even wants a standardised setup while on arch+hyprland? Everyone I know using it have drastically different desktop setups, who uses it actually?
Don’t cherrypick a single issue raised by the OP to pretend the whole discussion is about that, please
Disappointed in framework but trying not to be a purist when it comes to human rights. Right to repair is a human right too and framework is doing good work on that front. I think they’ll realize their mistakes as the figures they let into their “big tent” keep showing their true colors.
Þose true colors are already on display. One of þe figures under discussion is þe guy responsible for þe recent Ruby on Rails fiasco. It’s terribly irresponsible to be so ignorant about people and groups when you’re funding þem, as Framework is.
Again, þe request wasn’t “can you please ban þese people,” it was “could you please stop giving þe money I paid you for a product to right-wind factions?”
I’ve read the article about DHH and was horrified by it. I agree with you. Don’t know what to feel anymore. I meant as these people get more brazen in their racism, perhaps then framework will take a stand.
The DHH fellow almost seems like an elaborate parody. Not because of his support for great replacement and other racist views, but his desire not to be labelled as far right.
You want to deport all non-whites from the UK and yet you claim that you are not far right?
Seems surreal, it’s like a parody of a far right extremist.
Isn’t this a long running trick? Label far right as centrism and a new far right breeds. That’s how we got here in the last ~20 years, no?
Sure, but it’s typically done in a more subtle and PR friendly manner.
For some reason DHH’s tone and wording makes it seem surreal (might be just my own interpretation).
The richest man on earth did a nazi salute, lets not forget. Far right shifted closer to center already…
Two Nazi salutes.
What was the recent ruby on rails fiasco?
A bit surprised there was no discussion about this on any Fediverse instances.
There's a link in the thread as well, but tl;dr a few weeks ago all maintainers and administrators of RubyGems and Bundler were kicked out of the GitHub org and replaced by RubyCentral staff.
Here's another article better explaining the situation https://thenewstack.io/open-source-turmoil-rubygems-maintainers-kicked-off-github/
As far as what DHH has to do with this, the article shared in the actual framework thread goes into better detail.
https://joel.drapper.me/p/rubygems-takeover/
https://archive.ph/2025.09.29-131013/https://www.404media.co/how-ruby-went-off-the-rails/
It’s a rabbit hole.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but shouldn’t you use ð for ðe voiced version of th and þ for ðe unvoiced?
(Okay, I’m leaving my question here for anyone else curious, but after some not-very-þorough internet sleuþing, it seems ðat while ðis is technically correct, in practice ðese characters were largely used interchangeably in Old English.)
Eth had been completely replaced by thorn by þe Middle English period. Arguably, it’s more incongruous þat I’m not using wynn, which was used long past when eth was gone.
Þank you for þe info!
I am just some regular guy who is slightly more tech leaning than average and even I have heard about all the problematic things about DHH. Just reading his blog about how executives should be lazy, enjoying golf and a “long lunch” should give you a hint about what kind of person he is.
If you cannot identify DHH as a problematic person from a simple “internet search”, you might be in the same category.
Those things are a far cry from being a nazi. Just because you see a problem with DHH doesn’t mean the majority do.
Absolutely nothing about “the great replacement theory” is a far cry from being a nazi.
They didn’t list that. They said “Just reading his blog about how executives should be lazy, enjoying golf and a “long lunch” should give you a hint about what kind of person he is.”
They said a hint of the kind of person, you took that to nazi. There is a lot more up on DHH’s blog… including complaining about being called a nazi, btw.
Because, you know…. he’s a nazi. Even that “wahhhh” post is just full of nazi talking points.
Edit: Just to be clear, this is not the only example.
https://world.hey.com/dhh/words-are-not-violence-c751f14f
https://world.hey.com/dhh/national-pride-f7aa1e92
https://world.hey.com/dhh/it-s-beginning-to-feel-like-the-80s-in-america-again-68c2708e
https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-parental-dead-end-of-consent-morality-e4e8a8ee
I really don’t understand how anyone can say he isn’t what he is - a nazi.
Hyperland sounds more like edgelords.
The DHH fellow is a full on Nazi-style racist.
Hyprland*
I am being an edgelord and I am going to call them Hyperland.
I think that’s someone else (if you were unaware).
Nah the hyprland guys are fucking bigots, not just edgy kids.
I might be wrong, I am just going by the sources posting in the Framework forum thread.
There’s a lot more to it. If you’re not using/contributing to hyprland it’s a rabithole I don’t recommend going for time reasons.
That thread was a painful read. Framework laptop is off the wishlist.
They have been off my wishlist purely because of the cost, even DYI with missing pieces is $550. That’s more than my laptop was new so pass.
I don’t know who you’re going to find that’s better, all these big companies are inevitably supporting way more problematic individuals
Exactly. As bad as we might think Framework is because of all this, what’s a more ethical company to buy a laptop from?
Regardless, it’s still important to call out problematic behavior when we see it.
There are no alternatives, literally everything else is worse.
Framework did something bad. I hope the community keeps the pressure and they consider going back on the stupid decision. But it’s still on top of the list as potential choices if I need a new computer, literally nothing else comes close.
I remember the scandal around hyprland and it was pretty bad - much worse than one or two fascists contributing.
Even so I could forgive distros still having hyprland in their repos.
But giving money to the project itself? No.
Where are we with hyprland these days? How has the shitshow continued sice 2023?
Oh and btw, in what capacity is Framework supporting hyprland? Is there a Framework distro?
Tbf I don’t know much about the Hyprland history. The point raised by the OP on the forum links to tweets by both framework and Hyprland accounts saying framework became a “gold tier sponsor” of hyprland. It’s fair to assume that involves a donation.
Yes, that much is clear.
It could just be providing hardware I suppose.
I read the forum thread today and there’s a screenshot of the type of talk the hperlnd people do.
community.frame.work/t/…/32
Is the code racist? If not I don’t care who wrote it.
I wonder how many people in this thread drive a Mercedes or Volkswagen or even a Ford for that matter (Henry Ford was given medals by the Nazis).
Henry Ford died 75+ years ago. Is the current CEO a Nazi sympathizer?
Be careful. Stanning fascists is making a serious comeback among the billionaire set.
Cope however you want but the fact remains driving a Ford means supporting Nazis. His involvement with the Nazis was no small amount, regardless how long ago it was. Slavery was centuries ago, yet white people are still vilified for their ancestors. How is it any different?
I’m not the one coping here dude. My choice of car today doesn’t give any money to a guy who’s been dead for 3/4 of a century.
Also, I don’t drive a Ford anyway so go grasp at straws somewhere else.
The cope isn’t about driving a Ford, it’s about supporting a company that directly profited from actual Nazis. The virtuous thing is to not support a company who progressed through blood money.
Well, as I already said, I don’t own a Ford. So I’m not sure how you think I’m supporting them.
But even then, your point is nonsensical because the Nazi supporters are dead and the current CEO wasn’t even born until long after Henry died and the war ended.
Unless you want to get into North Korea style multi generational punishment. But I think we all agree that’s a bad thing.
So unless you can articulate how Ford Motor Company today is actively supporting Nazis, we’re done.
Spoken like a German industrialist in the 1930s-40s or a buyer of Krugerrands in the 1980s.
Is Hyprland used to oppress people? Are profits from Hyprland used to oppress people? If not your analogy doesn’t make any sense.
This is a tricky one. If a bigot says the sky is blue, they're not wrong about that. Other things, sure, but not that.
Maybe we could take their efforts and use it against them somehow. That is to say, we might deliberately use that code for anti-hate purposes, perhaps, subverting the bigot's preferred goals. Make it so that any gain they might have had is overtaken by their disgust at how it's being used.
On the other hand, taint is by association. There's a really neat and geometrically useful symbol; fourfold symmetry, previously used by Hindus, that picked up an extremely negative association around 90 years ago, for example, and short of humanity forgetting history, we're never getting that one back.
If you were someone helped by that code being used against bigotry and you found out where it came from, you're probably going to have mixed feelings about it when you finally get the time to reflect.
You might understand why people would want to avoid it, even if it is correct.
It really isn’t and is, if anything, a “solved problem” in the scientific/medical community.
The reality is that it is almost never one person saying something. And you can EASILY prioritize the other orgs that came to a similar decision. It is more about marketing and less about ideology, but people generally attribute calculus to Newton over anyone else even though it was largely an evolution and codification of existing concepts.
A more timely example might be Einstein and Relativity. The Theory of Relativity (and all the other fun stuff Al did) very much came out of previous work… much of it by the German physicists who didn’t flee nazi Germany. But (again, in large part because of marketing) that tends to get ignored in favor of the Jew who got the hell out of nazi Germany and put his brain to good use.
And if the reality is that it truly did come out of hatred and evil (e.g. a surprisingly small amount of medical research does indeed come out of the atrocities of WW2). You don’t tell someone “Hey, this medicine came from torturing and murdering Romani twins”. You give it to them, maybe think a bit if you are aware, and move on. And any historical discussion provides all the context and uses that context as a thought discussion.
You don’t instead say “Okay. if we got all this great shit out of torturing people in the past… maybe we should give money to concentration camps?”
This comes up somewhat often. And, in theory, it sounds great. HP Lovecraft was a RIDICULOUSLY bigoted bastard even by the standards of his time (look up what his cat was named…). And yet, his stories have more or less become synonymous with discussions of homosexuality and persecution. And that is awesome. But it also leads to countless people every year deciding to “read the original works” and realizing… lovecraft had a few good ideas (that were mostly REALLY offensive takes on existing religions) but was a HORRIBLE writer. But they took hold.
Which brings up folk like jk rowling who are also hateful bigots. But because everybody can’t stop glazing Harry Potter just because they grew up with it, someone who is a fairly mediocre writer who wrote REALLY generic YA continues to get more and more money to support actively hateful things.
Because the core is that this “We’ll use it even though we hate you” is just promoting the idea of a meritocracy. You can be such a good writer/coder/whatever that people will begrudgingly praise you. And, much like “you are a great coder so you don’t need people skills”, it just makes for a REALLY toxic world.
Similarly, bullshit.
Spend ANY time in Asia or any other region with a large concentration of Hindu or Buddhist people. As a Westerner, it is always a bit of a shock to look at a map of Tokyo and see a LOT of swastikas. At which point you immediately realize “Oh, they aren’t Nazis. They are Buddhists. I am an idiot”.
Because context matters. An Indian person who has a big swastika on their wall? First off, it probably is drawn differently. But second? It very much is unlikely to mean they actually want to eradicate anyone who isn’t aryan. Whereas that white guy with a swastika tattooed on his head? Homeboy probably isn’t celebrating the idea of the Buddha stepping on his face.
Which is why fricking Germany has zero problems with swastikas to represent Hindu and Buddhist and Jainist and so forth religion. Walking down the street with one would probably result in a “… Please don’t do that” but the people who have the most reason to feel shame and hatred for that symbol? They understand it has multiple meanings.
Also: I don’t think a bunch of bigoted assholes wanting to be bigots is at all comparable to usurping/repurposing a holy symbol but you do you.
You say it's a solved problem in one area as though it should be a solved problem elsewhere. That puts your comment on unsound footing.
As for the comparison you don't like, there are often only so many ways to write certain things in code. Some of those are invariably going to be very similar to that which was written by a bigot. That might be OK (like continued Hindu and Buddhist use of the swastika). Outright using that which was actually written by the bigot though?
People may say "please don't do that".
And there's the rub.
Yes. That is the point. This problem has already been solved. “Well we don’t do that” is not an explanation of why it is suddenly a problem here: it is an admission of incompetence.
Don’t get me wrong. There are very much reasons to consider whether that solution applies. That is not what you, and the other… moving on, are doing.
You instead continue to insist that we should… give money to known bigoted chuds because we still let the Hindus and the Buddhists use swastikas?
So how is this rub?
I tried to talk around it but I am just going to say it: You are being RIDICULOUSLY offensive by implying that people of (generally) Asian religions need to change their iconography because of a bunch of racist white people. You are being RIDICULOUSLY offensive by comparing that to giving chuds money because they wrote some code you might like.
If you can find a way to restructure your thoughts in ways that don’t imply (generally) people of color need to bend over backwards before you’ll consider anything else? We can have a conversation. Otherwise? Truth Social is that way.
And, because you seem to not understand commonly used rhetorical devices: Yes, that is me saying “please don’t do that”. Just with the words “you fucking” implicitly added on before a few more choice ones.
That is not and was not my intent, and I was less sure of yours until just now. (This may be reading (in)comprehension on my part, to which I'll be happy to admit fault.)
So, let me make sure I'm understanding you. Are you saying that you think that any and all gains from bigoted or unethical sources should be thrown away and that we should have nothing to do with them?
I understand why people would be extremely uncomfortable with some of these and I even think that where we can, we should avoid them, but we can't get rid of everything.
If we must insist on everything then the whole of humanity needs to get in the sea because we're all products of humanity's inhumanity if you go back far enough. In many cases, it's not that far.
If we say "nothing" then we give way to terrible people and let them have free reign.
So tell me. Where is the line? I still think that's a fairly difficult question, even if you don't.
No. As I said in the comment you clearly did not read while deciding to dismiss
As for your other comment
Well, in this case I think the line is pretty clear: Don’t give money to nazis. Which is what Framework Corp is doing. This is not a case of choosing to not remove a package run by known hateful bigots from a package manager. It is a case of actively giving money to said bigots.
It’s instructions running on a CPU. Is the application used to hurt people? If not I don’t care who put the instructions in a specific order.
Yeah, one cannot support open source development and assume everyone has the same political opinions as you.
Framework supports open source development, and for that I’m damn happy.
I don’t think that’s the issue here. You can be conservative and not support the “great replacement theory” or think that all muslims are bad.
Holy shit, this thread makes me throw up.
Guess we will go back to classic used hardware?
And if someone here has a comprehensive guide at hand to completely decouple from big tech to sustainable human tech I would be very pleased (if not no problem I’m still planning to create a good working guide myself).
Used thinkpads are cheaper and reuse is one of the best ways to reduce ewaste by using something that was headed to the landfill. I’ve been happy with my t480s.
Lots of laptops are just as repairable as a framework if you don’t mind using a screwdriver. Just watch a teardown video before you buy. I’ve only ever owned Dells and Thinkpads, but both have been super easy to work on.
Most laptops from the last 10 years have soldered components.
And most old computers don’t run or are useful for many current day needs.
If people can buy and reuse refurbished hardware, cool, go for it, but don’t live under the illusion that it’s an alternative.
Mine’s from 2023, and tbh it’s just as repairable as my old Dell latitude from 2011. Even a lot of the ports come on little boards separate from the motherboard. The only big thing soldered on I see is the cpu. I’m not saying this is universal, we’re certainly trending away from laptops like this, but it’s not like they don’t exist, they’re just not as chic
I have a fw13 and was waiting to get a fw12. I don’t think I can continue to support fw if they’re fine with conducting business with far right extremists.
I don’t use Hyprland (honestly it’s still a buggy mess and the $5 a month for “hyprland premium” is a joke), I won’t ever use Omarchy (I already know how to install Arch), and I guess I just won’t use Framework anymore. That’s it.
If other people want to use that crap and support it? sure, have at it. I won’t lose sleep over it. I would much rather people stop hailing these things as the greatest achievements in FOSS and Linux when they’re clearly not. I mean christ on a cracker people are treating Omarchy like it’s the second coming and it’s just an Arch installer with hyprland, a bunch of cherry picked applications and a fancy TUI styler. that’s it.
Oh wait, sorry, Omarchy also has a hyrpland keybind set to open X/Twitter for you….groundbreaking.
Just saw this on Mastodon. They locked the thread in question… that’s very disheartening. Terrible really. These people are either ignorant or complicit. Perhaps both. In any case, let’s spread the word and drive them out of business.
I believe the thread was automatically locked due to community reports and then a mod manually unlocked it?
As a former long-time Ruby developer who also used Rails (Ruby since 2006, Rails came along for me later), I’ve always known DHH was a total douchebag.
It’s nice to know he’s being super obvious about it now. He’s always been awful. He’s just been slightly quieter about it, other than buying million-dollar cars and pretending he’s still relevant.
How is this different from the Lemmy devs, who are known to be pretty political? I was under the impression we were mostly fine seperating the program from the programmer, or is this situation different?
Welcome to the reality that there is No Ethical Consumption Under Capitalism.
Some people choose to use that as an excuse to live a hedonistic lifestyle and do whatever they want. Others use that as a reason to sit and think.
Personally? I don’t like that lemmy is created/maintained by REALLY aggressive tankies or that so many of us have the “official” instance blocked for that reason. It is a big reason why when I decide to make a new account (because this one is getting old) I am probably going to use an instance running a fork.
But one way I reconcile that is by not actually giving money to lemmy development. I chip a few bucks in with certain instances to support the people running those, but not the software itself. And while I don’t like that this encourages people to use lemmy and potentially give money to the tankies behind it… I also acknowledge that most people are too stupid to even understand the concept of “it is like email. It mostly doesn’t matter which instance you sign up at” so… yeah.
At the end of the day, everyone needs to consider their own ethics and decide what they will and won’t give money to. But the key is to actually think about it and sometimes re-think past decisions.
Let me walk you through some of my thoughts on the BDS boycotts. Microsoft I fully support the boycotting of because they have a LONG list of actions that actively support the IDF and enable genocide. Odds are I am still going to pick up the new DOOM at some point on a heavy discount and I will feel bad about it but otherwise? Any situation where I have a choice, I don’t use MS products and won’t until they, bare minimum, treat the israeli government like a normal customer rather than giving white glove service every chance they get. It is an unlikely end state but it IS an end state for a political boycott.
But Disney is a bit different. I personally don’t actually like Disney and got a real chuckle out of Mandalore Gaming’s recent, kind of shitty and ableist, joke about “disney adults”. I ALSO don’t think the BDS boycott has any actionable end state and is… quite honestly, motivated by a very poor selection of rationales that mostly can’t be detected. So I had zero issue paying for Disney Plus to watch Andor and will buy the season 2 UHDs the second they are available, but the rest of me not spending on Disney products has a lot less to do with politics and more me just not liking them.
But I’ll probably also give this another think on my next long car drive. I’ll compare my personal ethics to those of the orgs calling for these boycotts and I will think through both what difference my actions are making (almost zero!) and how my actions impact my own personal opinion of myself.
Because, at the end of the day, boycotts are less about breaking the cogs of capitalism and more about being able to look at yourself in the mirror.
I agree with what NuXCOM said, but to add a little more detail in this situation…
For me, it’s a little different because of perceived influence.
DHH has always been the software equivalent of an Instagram influencer. He’s been selling himself as the mythical 10x programmer and wrote a corny business book with his co-founder.
Meanwhile, he was mainly working on Basecamp and racing million-dollar cars. A lot of his personal cars have been sold to YouTube influencers.
He has had a cult of personality built around him for years, and stupid people in some small software circles love him (clearly, by the rubygems takeover).
The Lemmy devs have no influence at all over software development. Just Lemmy.
.
This is the problem with the “we’re not talking about politics in here” approach. A lot of smaller companies, entities, “influencers”… will attempt to become apolitical, a ploy to market to as many people as possible, but it’s ill advised. You have to make your beliefs actually clear from the start. And after a certain size, you must avoid becoming too personal about things. Get a PR specialist if you can, even. It’ll save a lot of headache to kearn you can’t please everybody, and there’ll always be someone dissatisfied with you, so you better choose early who they’ll be.
Vulnerable minorities are always “political.”
There is a great book by a journalist who was fired by WashPo to being “political” about their identity.
The View from Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity by Lewis Raven Wallace.
It is excellent and details why having a view from no perspective is damaging to minorities and others with disabilities, etc. We must have principles and speak about those in journalism. If we stand for nothing, we default to the status quo.
If DHH’s wet dream comes true Nirav would be back in India no matter how much money he gives him.
Wait frameworl k aka the laptop ppl?
Why can’t we have nice things…
Framework is supporting open source development. That has somehow been twisted into the thread title.
That’s really disappointing, I’m glad I didn’t get a new laptop from them recently.
.
I spent a lot of time recommending Framework, I got family to buy a laptop. Their hardware is fundamentally a political statement that I respuct. Seeing them use a “no politics” fallacy hurts
:/
Ugh I hate reading threads like that, the amount of delusion, stupidity and ignorance really gives me no hope for humanity.
Just vile people, fuck off fascists.
First, Omarchy doesn’t need funding or partners. It’s backed by a Nazi multimillionaire.
Second, the whole apolitical argument is bullshit. Everything is political. Support for a distro that doesn’t really need support by nature of being a child of a Nazi multimillionaire is a support for that Nazi multimillionaire.
“We didn’t support them because of that” means nothing. The support still sends a message. Just like artist loses control over interpretation of their art the moment they release it, people lose control over interpretation of their actions the moment they act. Does it sound fair? Maybe not, but it’s how reality works.
So should we all stop using Lemmy because it was made by a Tankie?
Certainly a tough question. Use Lemmy, okay, but would you send financial contributions to said Tankie? I wouldn’t, and I would judge someone that did. I don’t think anyone can be expected to evaluate the moral virtues of the developer for every technology they use. That’s a supply chain nightmare. But, given the small number of people we directly sponsor, maybe then it’s appropriate to have some standards?
As a non-US citizen, I actually consider /any/ American company that has not moved to be complicit in fascism. At the same time, I havn’t completely stopped patronizing American companies, so I’m not living up to my own standard. I suspect everyone is a little hypocritical.
It’s certainly not feasible for every company to leave America, but I wouldn’t argue with a boycott of American goods and services on general - and I’m saying this as an American citizen who’s not exactly thrilled about this mess, either.
It’s literally impossible to use the internet (or even computers?) without patronizing American companies, at least indirectly.
No we use Lemmy and make fun of the Tankies as revenge
It’s a significant factor for sure. However, this year Reddit has accelerated its enshittification since the API schism and is far too risky to continue use anyway. The only viable alternative to Lemmy that I see is Mastodon and I never really got into the Twitter format.
Using Lemmy isn’t giving that tankie money.
It is is you support lemmy’s development which for a foss platform its expected users do
But not required. If I do not morally support the developer I can instead choose to financially support individual instances, or other projects like Piefed or mbin.
My point here is that comparing this situation to using Lemmy is a bad comparison. Supporting Framework is pretty much exclusively via financial support, the same is not true for Lemmy.
So someone post a tech load out of wholly good hardware and software. I’ll fucking wait…
I am appreciating many of the replies pillorying the “big tent” response, but what an obvious non-answer to a very real problem. It all smacks of Framework being cool with giving money to far-right provocateurs, and a well off shitheel at that.
Well, I was considering some Framework hardware, but holy shit they are off the list now.
Not just due to their lackluster response, but that thread is just….. infested with hard far right and no real moderation in sight. What the absolute fuck.
How disappointing.
Damn, I didn’t even know about Framework. Wish they weren’t supportin fascists, cause I’d totally get a laptop from them.
They are supporting open source development. Unfortunately, not all open source developers share one’s opinions.
I’ll take it over alternatives any day.
Nah, if my support of them results in that money going to fascists, I don’t care how much good they do. I am not going to support them. Expecting the people you work with and support to uphold certain basic values is not a huge expectation. The people they are supporting actively advocate and support racist and fascistic conspiracies. It is not that much to ask that Framework avoid them and support other open source developers. Its insane to not even have that level of standards. There are loads of open source developers, and people are just asking them to avoid the ones openly being racist.
If you don’t think boycotting them till they renounce that support is reasonable, then I don’t think we have any common ground to work with.
If Framework would drop support, I’ll gladly get onw of their computers and support them. Till then, I ain’t touching them and will stick with my current computer
See…when it comes to open source, it’s a little different for me:
I don’t support or condone any of these pricks, but I can mentally divorce, somewhat, the open source code contributions from the person, because their contributions are useful. If this was a closed source solution, it’d be different, because the code wouldn’t be released into the community. There are a lot of weird, closet-dwelling shut ins that fall into the extremist margins.
A lot of early medical knowledge, for example, was acquired from…less than morally clear ways. So do you just take that information and throw it away on principal? Does that make the death and pain of those people for nothing? Or do you use it and don’t condone the person or their actions? This is a difficult moral choice to make that is heavily debated by philosophy, media, etc. There are entire SciFi TV episodes, movies, and books written about just such a debate.
That said, I don’t know the usefulness of Hyprland. I’ve never used it and I feel like it’s pretty niche, so I’m surprised Framework aren’t telling this person to fuck off.
I would recommend actually talking with (I forget the fancy term) medical philosophers.
Yes, a LOT of modern medicine was created on the backs of torture and vile human experimentation. But a shockingly small amount of the data collected by Nazis et al were actually useful because so much of it was compromised by virtue of the “control” in those experiments generally being a torture victim who was in five other experiments in the past month. And a lot of said innovations boil down to “We all kind of suspected it but couldn’t think of an ethical way to confirm it”
But the key thing to understand: There is a big difference between “Okay… that was REALLY fucking evil but Unit 731 created a lot of data we can sift through and it already exists…” and “Okay, hear me out. We COULD send in Seal Team Eight… or we could wait a few weeks to see if they make a better smallpox first”
And that is the thing here. I am 100% for taking advantage of what has already been done in the world of software development… although rewrites are a thing for a reason. But I am firmly opposed to funding or supporting ongoing work by those chuds. They should be ostracized and vilified at every turn.
“Ethicist” maybe?
It’d be one thing if the projects being supported were good and lead by devs with questionable ideals but I’m more upset that Framework decided to support a couple of really shitty projects lead by shitty people. I mean one dudes dotfiles and anothers very buggy WM that you can pay $5 to get “premium” for it? Cool Framework, that doesn’t give me a whole lot of confidence in what YOU produce now.
I mean hell I got some killer dotfiles for Arch using River and Sway, where’s my money?
That’s fair and I knew someone would make this argument. My example was a bit of an extreme, though. These people are assholes spreading asshole-ry. Not murderers.
The thread being centered around this would be 100% more productive than what it has devolved into. Instead people are swearing off the most notable computer company that is fervently pushing for Right to Repair and supporting open source projects. Meanwhile most every other computer company is pushing in the opposite direction…
To put it in terms of your analogy, it’s one thing to use Mengele’s research after he’s been stopped. It’s another entirely to give his research funding when he’s actively running the program.
One is making use of knowledge that comes out of terrible things, the other is complicity that borders on collaboration.
That is fair. My example was extreme, though. These people are just assholes. Do you throw away the code of an asshole because they’re an asshole?
I dunno…I struggle with this internally. Maybe I’m wrong. It’s a hard thing to rectify and I just wish people would stop being assholes to others.
I think you need to factor in how prominent that person is on the project.
If an asshole contributes some code to a project, ok. If an asshole is the public face of the project, well, there are plenty of alternatives to use/fund instead.
You don’t fund them, that’s for sure
To use another example, a musician might be known to be an asshole during their lifetime. Then they die. Is it harmful to listen to their music if you’re not contributing anything to their estate or their estate isn’t run by similar assholes? It’s debatable and a gray area, but I’d probably say no in most circumstances.
How about if they’re known to be an asshole and you buy their albums anyway, you go to their concerts, and you loudly pronounce on social media how you support them and that their work is great? That’s a much easier case to make to say, yes, you’re being harmful.
You’re supporting someone who is an asshole, and you’re doing–at least–two types of harm:
(1) you’re demonstrating tolerance for shitty behavior which does not provide a good negative reinforcement to correct the shitty behavior, and
(2) you’re positively reinforcing the shitty behavior through your support
It might be more nuanced if there were higher stakes involved, such as if the good belying this debate was of crucial need to help along a much larger good cause. But that’s where particulars matter. The contributions these assholes are making are not solving world hunger. They’re nerdy little Linux bits.
Use the bullshit all you want, but for fuck’s sake stop materially supporting and going on a promotional tour with the assholes that made it.
The issue with that is the toxic/racist/homophobic/transphobic people will by their behavior push out people who would otherwise contribute to development of projects. To have a big tent you can’t tacitly accept bigotry.
I agree. Just as a little reminder. Methadone was initially invented by literal Nazis. It was designed to Combat Opium shortage in field hospitals.
Nobody would say: hey, let us not use this extremely helpful drug because Nazis contributed a lot to it.
On the other side: I would never give a Nazi company money to produce it. Two different scenarios
Anyone who read the thread will see that the OP pretty much dropped it after Nirav’s response. Framework is a tiny company without a PR machine for these occasions, and I doubt they knowingly sponsored a project based on the developers’ political ideologies. Let’s all take some deep breaths.
That’s a really piss poor excuse though. It’d be one thing if it was “I like Hyprland, I’ll support that” but then it’s also “I also like Omarchy” annnnd now you’re starting a trend that isn’t a great on to start. THEN you have people in the know who see this trend and being to put two and two together.
Saying that Framework is tiny with no PR is no excuse. It takes all of a few minutes to discover what kind of piece of shit DHH is and what kind of bullshit the devs/mods over on Hyprland spew out. I mean I’ve been a developer for 20+ years now and I knew DHH was a piece of shit years ago. Hell anyone that’s spent any time with Ruby knew he was a piece of shit years ago.
honestly if you had a bit of extra money on you that you wanted to donate to a charity you would utilize your common sense and research said charity before donating money right? I would hope so. I hope a lot of people would. That’s what I do. I’m not going to throw money at some random charity then I later find out uses kittens as toilet paper.
So Framework coming out and saying “yeah we like to support open source projects, sure the ones we support are lead by racist homo/transphobes and a guy that thought Hitler had some neat ideas, no we’re not going to discuss it” is not a great look.
But I already have my pitchfork at the ready!
The thing to realize is that the reason EVERYONE knows about Framework Corp is that one of their larger investors is Linus Sebastien of Linus Media Group (most known for “Linus Tech Tips”). He/LMG have a long, well documented, history of conflicts of interest and even a few scandals (both in terms of manipulative data AND sex pestery) and have increasingly been revealed to be VERY manipulative of other channels they deem “smaller” (Rossman went off on them during one of the annual scandals)
So Framework’s social media game is on lock both between their own in-house staff and whatever they get from “investor calls” as it were.
And you know what goes together like peanut butter and jelly? Youtubers and “accidentally” supporting really shitty chuds.
As for Framework Corp itself?
I dunno. To me it increasingly feels like a company designed to create/trademark IP that would greatly improve assembly line processes that haven’t found an integrator willing to buy them out.
Because stuff like the “open source but we are the only ones that use it” proprietary “not a dongle but is something you plug into a usb c port to use different interfaces” and the pogo plug keyboards and so forth? I think Wendell at Level1Techs put it best where he acknowledged it was REALLY cool and something he would use once when buying the laptop and then as a fidget device during some meetings.
But for a “boutique” laptop integrator? That is something that can be done to really customize each laptop for each customer at minimal cost (by relying on cheap labor in a pre-Liberation Day world).
As for the rest of the laptops? Again, they look really cool. But every time I consider replacing my existing laptop I run the simple numbers. Too lazy to do it right now but basically:
Let
abe the price of the laptop you want from Framework and letbbe the price of just the motherboard+CPU of said laptop in the Framework marketplace. Letcbe the price of a comparable laptop at Best Buy or whatever.Framework only ever makes sense if
a+bis significantly less thanc*2. And every time I run the numbers? It is a few bucks cheaper, at best, and usually still more expensive. And all of that assumes you keep the same everything and are just “upgrading” the cpu. Which… considering Framework are already doing revisions of their chassis that, bare minimum, would involve heat pipe tweaks when upgrading… yeah.And… in theory having reusable parts means you decrease e-waste. In practice? How many of us still have a box of DDR3 ram that we are totally going to need some day? There is very much an argument for donating your old laptop to an org that will reuse them or just chucking it in an e-waste bin (after wiping and preferably drilling out the drive…).
I DO think this tech would be amazing for the kind of company that provisions laptops for medium sized businesses. But their software/support and pricing keep them out of that too.
But as it stands? It feels a lot like those phones that had swappable camera modules and the like. It SOUNDS amazing until you actually price them out… and then realize the company went out of business so you never even had a chance to upgrade your camera 5 years later.
And just to elaborate a bit on the power of social media. Think about how few reviewers have ANYTHING negative to say about Framework? And then actually watch some of the better reviews. Wendell has a very good professional relationship with LMG but it is telling that even he kind of acknowledges their big “repairability” innovation is… kind of a gimmick.
Contrast that with a Thinkpad where basically every reviewer will spend a good chunk talking about how they don’t like Lenovo and the laptop has all these flaws… before begrudgingly acknowledging it is still a REALLY solid ultrabook and is, hands down, the best price to performance option for people who want to run Linux. Also the nub is love. The nub is life.
And you can see similar with the LTT Screwdriver. It is a licensed knockoff of a megapro (?) so of course it is quality. But look at reviewers like Project Farm. He is VERY good about providing the raw data and encouraging people to make their own choices based on what criteria matter to them. And then look at how he weighted the criteria to be able to say the LTT Screwdriver was, hands down, the best.
THAT is the power of social media and a rabid fanbase who are known to attack anyone who goes against their parasocial best friend. And that is what Framework has.
Didn’t Linus say that he is a tiny investor, they only let him in for the press. (Unless he has invested more?)
…
I mean… this IS “the press”.
But even if you want to absolve Framework Corp of any guilt in that regard: it is still one of (if not THE) biggest “tech youtubers” with a known history of manipulating both the audience and his competitive with a financial interest in Framework Corp doing well.
Hence why people who have followed “tech reviews” for years (… decades. God damn it) have very much noticed that Framework Laptops get treated with kid gloves by a LOT of outlets.
Mid tier hardware with gimmicks for an obnoxious price. Who knew the owners were also jerks. I’ll keep using my used Thinkpad and if I ever need a more powerful laptop I’ll get a T480.
Well I’m disappointed but not surprised.
We will need to build our own alternatives, starting with building a community.
I’m not a leader but I’m dying to help the cause.
Let’s not act as if it’s wise to be hopeful that any successful company can have decent politics (maybe if it’s a worker coop). Spineless liberals is the best we can hope for.
It’s just like with Valve and Nintendo: Companies are not your friends!
But let’s also not act as if any political issue can be fought only in the language of consumerism. Stop falling for that “vote with your wallet” BS if you want to stop falling for these liberals.
i dont think framework is big enough to factcheck every linux maniac
100% this. They support many many different open source project and I read people are bitching when they havent had mich time to even respond?
Phew, for a second I thought Framework had actually done something bad. But its just supporting Hyprland which is somehow considered a far right racist project because an unpaid moderator was transphobic in a discord server. People are really trying to squeeze everything they can from this discord drama that happened years ago.
Or, you know, they are sponsoring a) a white supremacists who believes in the white replacement conspiracy theory who’s in charge of omarchy and b) the project lead of (not just a discord mod) of hyperland. Two awful people that Framework absolutely deserve flack for supporting.
It’s only Hyperland, not
the distroOmarchy.They explicitly stated that they provided free hardware to Omarchy
Is that sponsoring though?
Yes? How could it not be?
It’s both projects, lead by two different problematic people that Framework are sponsoring.
There’s this huge movement in online spaces lately to bash any and all positions and opinions by calling them transphobic.
Vote right? Transphobic. Vote left? Transphobic. Abstain from voting? Transphobic. Support a company? Transphobic. Boycott a company? Transphobic. Indifferent about a company? Transphobic.
The simplest explanation is a bunch of right-wingers are trying to make the term meaningless. Anyway, nowadays when I hear someone is transphobic, I make sure to wait for solid evidence before changing my opinions.
I get your point with the rest but…
Yeah, it kinda is? That’s a core plank of the MAGA platform; it’s practically inseparable. Unless you’re talking non-USA parties but then there’s still a better chance than none it’s a yes.
I don’t even think it “kinda is” I think it fully is. Trans rights are currently against tradition and the status quo, this makes trans rights a progressive topic until the day that trans people are so established in the history of a society that it can’t be argued being trans is some new disorder or something.
I hope that one day Trans rights will have been so established globally that to challenge them is anti tradition and uncouth
People who vote for a particular party generally don’t agree with 100% of that party’s platform. Just because someone voted for a party that has transphobia-motivated policies doesn’t mean they are transphobic. The correlation may be high, but it’s far from 100%.
If you read the rest you’ll discover that the reactionaries don’t care how you vote, they’ll call you that regardless.
I’m taking from the downvotes that there are a lot of people here who got caught up on those first few words and didn’t bother reading the rest or engaging their critical thinking skills…
That is correct.
Hyprland and Omarchy seem like alright projects. Someone over at Framework is personally using both so sponsoring them seems pretty natural imo
DHH is clearly a turd, and I want nothing to do with his projects.
I’m not sure I understand the opposition to Hyprland though. I enjoy using Hyprland, so I’ve tried to make an informed opinion on whether the project is harmful. Note that I have only reviewed public information, so I might only be seeing the tip of the iceberg.
According to his blog posts, the creator of Hyprland seems to have received criticism well enough (back in 2023). Are other people in the community the main concern or am I missing something? Forgive my ignorance
There were some controversies due to the toxicity of Hpyrland’s community (namely its discord server). See this post for example
Edit: I should have read OP’s linked post first, which actually also refers to Drew’s post.
Yep that’s I read from 2023.
He responded in a couple of blog posts:
I opened up the discord community just now to see what was there, and I just saw people being goofy and talking shit to each other. In all fairness, I wouldn’t hang out there either, but that doesn’t mean anything.
To summarize, I don’t see the Hyprland devs trying to harm others. Folks like DHH are a different story. Of course this might all change tomorrow - who knows?
Dhh is also a guy who fights apple and google and Microsofts. A guy who says the cloud is stupid, a guy who says American companies will do as instructed by the orange government hence Europe needs to build their own infrastructure and companies.
I am ok with that. Never heard or read about him being a conspiracy nut
I’m ok with those things too. I just recently found out about all the crazy stuff after the rubygems takeover. I’m not really a ruby fan, but that seemed pretty shady.
Lesson learned - companies should never support open source projects because you run the risk of pissing people off.
The community is pushing them to improve their stance. All they have to do is acknowledge the communities problem with this and stop funding and promoting two objectionable projects.
Edit: meant to reply to another comment.
Corrected comment
Hold the phone, since when were Hyprland devs like this?
i do want to point out how hard it is to even find out about the views of these people, if you just look up the names of the projects and aren’t specifically looking for this information there’s no way you’ll find anything about it
even looking up the name of David Heinemeier Hansson, the more vocally bad of these, i had to go to the 5th link to find anything even vaguely mentioning his views
Isn’t that a good thing?
I don’t know about you, but I don’t really care what the views of the owners of a business are. It only becomes a problem if they make those views plain.
Well, I guess he has tried to make his views fairly plain on his blog. it’s just a bit hard to find unless you’re looking for it
That’s disappointing. I guess i’ll be researching alternatives now. I liked my fw laptop.