You might’ve noticed Framework, the laptop manufacturer, embroiled in a controversy as of now. The Discord server is on lockdown because the volunteer moderation team has gone on hiatus, and the Framework forum post about the controversy has been gaining unsightly amounts of steam from people disappointed at actions taken by Framework.
Fair Warning: Long rant ahead.
Great article, and it gets to the heart of something I’ve felt is becoming more and more prominent in the Linux and Open Source Community, and really any community. And it’s something we simply can’t ignore.
That is that you can’t separate politics from life. It’s everywhere. The author points out that Framework’s mission is to encourage right to repair and responsible consumption by discouraging planned obsolescence.
While right to repair might be popular in both left and right wing circles, that is only because both sides want control over their devices and to distance themselves from Big Tech. But their views on regulation with regards to the environment and social equity/inclusion are as far apart as the general right left paradigm is as a whole.
To be blunt, you simply cannot have normal people work under the same tent as crypto fascists, transphobes, and general right wing grifters, no matter how significant their individual contributions might be.
I personally am tired of these sorts of controversies being brushed under the rug by tech influencers like BashBunni and Brodie Robertson who in their coverage of Omarchy did not broach this topic even just to say that there is a controversy at all. It’s cowardice at best, and right wing apologism at worst.
Yes, there are particularly brilliant software engineers that are also assholes. And yeah, without those assholes, we wouldn’t have the technologies we have today. The mistake is thinking that they are brilliant because they are assholes. Another mistake is thinking that holding onto one productive asshole is better than hanging onto the good will and contributions of many normal people that still provide worthwhile contributions.
To be very frank, fuck that. I refuse to believe in the false dichotomy that in order to create good software we have to put up with bigots. If anything, their attitudes end up holding themselves and their colleagues back. We shouldn’t be asking ourselves, “How much less productive would that person have been if they had wasted time/energy on being socially conscious and empathetic.” And instead have asked “How much more productive and better off we all would have been had they been a more empathetic and compassionate person.” Because we’re all worse off when a colleague is being a bigot, and it’s in all of our interests to call it out when we see it.
Vaxry is still pretty ableist, I think he’s just better at hiding it now. https://mastodon.social/@acidiclight/115348200226656321
I genuenly dont understand why a glorified set of dotfiles have recived such an enormous amount of donations and publicity. Not a good set of dotfiles mind you, in fact it looks like subpar compared to the many superior Hyprland dotfiles. Whats even more absurd is that people are saying “this will get people to use Linux”, yeah im sure this is what Linux needs another distro thats slightly different.
Those are the anti-woke crusaders, who think being decent to people gets in the way of literally everything. The creator, DHH, has many blog articles about great replacement theory and how Britain isn’t white enough anymore for his tastes.
Was sad to see Primagen put out a video praising Omarchy this week, but maybe he doesn’t know yet? Or maybe he does, I have no idea.
Primeagen has interviewed DHH at least twice over the past 2 years, in hour+ videos posted to his YouTube channel. Including one where DHH goes unprompted into a pro-natalism rant.
Primeagen also just spent a week with some other creators working on a video game, sponsored by Cursor and on Framework desktops running Omarchy.
He is either sympathetic or apathetic to these issues - certainly doesn’t seem to care about being decent to those not of his tribe.
For fucks sake. A big tent is nice and all, but I am not entering any tent that has fucking fascists in it.
Very happy with my Framework 13. I hope I can keep recommending it to people without feeling it’s at odds with my values.
It’s not like other producers are realistically better, but I kinda expect Framework to be good.
the problem with framework is that their products are quite a bit worse than their competitors (outside of repairability, ofc)
you buy their stuff because you want to support them and their values
…so what happens when their values aren’t worth supporting anymore?
there are other repairable laptop manufacturers out there, not as hype-y as framework for sure but still repairable, like System76, Tuxedo, Slimbook, etc.
Pretty good post about the situation. I would just add a few thing :
The harasement from the hyperland project got so bad they are banned from FreeDesktop.org and I’ve seen how many talented people gave up on working on the Linux ecosystem because of that.
Right to repair does not match well with right wing politics (TL;DR AuthRight need control and in lib-right absolute capitalism having reparable stuff is a surefire to kill your company ) but it’s a murky and difficult subject so I understand why it’s not mentioned.
Also of note, framework didn’t advertise thoose project on fedi/mastodon so this seems like they had known from the start a backlash would occur.
The harasement from the hyperland project got so bad they are banned from FreeDesktop.org and I’ve seen how many talented people gave up on working on the Linux ecosystem because of that.
Just to clarify, you mean the harassment alienated contributions, not the freedesktop ban, right?
DHH is a massive piece of shit. I keep seeing his stupid name popping back up recently and I wish he would go the fuck away. No community needs his toxic views.
it’s because of his Arch .dotfiles believe it or not. People are hailing it as the “second coming” of linux.
It’s not even good. It’s just scripts for some starter Arch rice, not a serious distro.
good thing is most of the rails community think the same thing and actively distance themselves from him
