Oct 9
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Oct 9
9m ago
anarcat
2d

Hi,

I am not exactly sure how best to frame this, but recent events have got me wondering where exactly Framework, as a company, stands with regards to human rights and equality.

If I understand correctly (and please do correct me if I am wrong), it seems like Framework has started sponsoring Hyprland:

So I presume this is fact: Framework, as a company, has decided to sponsor a Wayland compositor who is well known to be led as a rather “toxic and hateful community”.

Separately, but on the same day, Framework seems to be promoting, in this tweet, another rather questionable project:

Omarchy is authored by David Heinemeier Hansson, also known as DHH, probably best known as the author of Ruby on Rails but also a racecar driver, apparently.

DHH is also a right-wing conspiracy nut, who seem to believe in the great displacement theory, according to this:

DHH was also involved in the recent upheaval in the Ruby community, where Rubygems, a core component of the Ruby ecosystem, was the victim of a hostile takeover, which DHH supported.

Even if you would decide (questionably) to ignore the man and take only his technical merit, the recent Rubygems drama should give anyone pause.

So my question is: where does Framework stand around this?

Ever since I got my first Framework laptop I’ve been excited by this company and its product. I bought a Framework 13 12th gen when it came out, and now i am typing this on a Framework 12. I’ve been recommending Framework for years at this point.

But if Framework keeps not only proposing and enabling toxic communities to its users but even sponsoring them, I’m afraid that not only will I have to stop buying and recommending Framework but that perhaps a more widespread boycott would be in order.

Surely this is just a mistake and a misunderstanding that could be promptly corrected.

read 156 min
nrp Framework Team
2d

We support open source software (and hardware), and partner with developers and maintainers across the ecosystem. We deliberately create a big tent, because we want open source software to win. We don’t partner based on individuals’ or organizations’ beliefs, values, or political stances outside of their alignment with us on increasing the adoption of open source software. We’ve sent out large quantities of hardware to folks at Fedora, Bluefin, Bazzite, NixOS, Arch Linux, Linux Mint, Omarchy, and many other distros, and have sponsored either the organizations directly or events with Linux Foundation, LVFS, NixOS, Debian, KDE, Hyprland, and others. Within the team itself, personal distro and OS preferences span basically every Linux distro you can imagine along with FreeBSD. I personally am running machines with Fedora (for machine learning), Bazzite (for gaming), Omarchy (general productivity), and Windows 11 (when I have to).

I definitely understand that not everyone will agree with taking a big tent approach, but we want to be transparent that bringing in and enabling every organization and community that we can across the Linux ecosystem is a deliberate choice.

anarcat
nrp
2d

With all due respect, I think you profoundly misunderstand the nature of my concern here.

This is not a “I do not like this distribution” kind of argument.

This is a “the people you are sending my money to want me and my friends dead or deported” kind of argument.

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 have no problem with Fedora, Bluefin, Bazzite, Arch Linux, Linux Mint, Linux Foundation, LVFS, Debian, KDE… What I have a problem is with Framework consistently, repeatedly encouraging and now sponsoring individuals that have shown to be absolutely destructive to the open source community.

Claiming that this “increasing the adoption of open source software” really misses the core part of the narrative here, which is that those people have been excluded from open source communities because they were so hateful, so destructive, that their mere presence was more harmful than beneficial.

DHH is a threat to the free software community as a whole at this point. The damage he ended up doing to the Ruby community might end up outweighing entirely his contributions to Rails, which is no small feat.

Vaxry (from hyprland) was banned from freedesktop.org, wrecking havoc in standardizing Wayland protocols that the whole community could have benefited from.

If you believe helping and sponsoring those people helps the open source community, we have quite divergent views on the best way forward and, perhaps, it is best if you concentrate on making hardware and leave the open source community alone.

In any case, thanks for your quick response, @nrp, and thanks for building those awesome products.

nrp Framework Team
anarcat
2d

Thanks, I appreciate you also replying in good faith. I don’t think this is likely to be a topic we’ll be able to come to alignment on within a community thread. We’re unfortunately in a world where it’s hard to have nuanced discussion, even if we preemptively agree on 95% of topics and want to discuss the remaining 5%, in a public forum.

anarcat
nrp
2d

perhaps it is indeed best to let it rest for now. i’ll certainly sleep on it now! :slight_smile:

Kazriko
2d

Thanks a lot for your continued support of open source, I use projects daily that you donate money to, which makes me happy that I purchased my Framework Desktop rather than some offbrand Strix Halo mini-pc for a few bucks less.

In particular, I think that Hyprland is quite nice and I’ve been using it for about a year now. I haven’t touched other Hyprland distros, but I like that some people have found ways of making the normally very steep learning curve of Hyprland a little bit shallower for people to get used to it.

Foxboron
nrp
2d

But Nirav,

Why is the Social Media account gushing over omarchy?

Out of all those listed projects you sponsor, the twitter account has mentioned omarchy ~22 times since just August. The other projects you mention has barely gotten any attention. Even to the point of miss attributing omarchy to be Arch Linux, which you do support.

Why are you pandering towards dhh and the omarchy project? What is the goal here?

2disbetter
2d

I know in today’s hyper politicized day to day this might be hard to see, but it is because Omarchy is awesome. That isn’t a political statement in anyway. Just a nerdy, this software rocks my socks kind of thing.

I’m not saying anything beyond that above. Full stop.

I personally appreciate Framework’s efforts to create a big tent. We need that. Division in the computing world is massively overblown and is purely manufactured in many cases.

Ryan4
2d

Yeah, if you make claims like that, maybe best if you provide some source or context of when these people have actually said they want anyone dead?

Inderjit_Gill
2d

Thank you Nirav, your big tent approach is especially appreciated in these times of political polarisation.

Fabian_Bornschein
2disbetter
2d

Even if, as a public account of a company that will likely want to stay active in and around the open source community as a whole, you check who you interact with first and better stay away from controversial figures in that space.

I’m German, I just can’t say “whatever” and go on with this, in that time. I’ll send back my Framework 12, a device I truly love. A device I did all my workload for Arch Linux with for a whole month, as well as my day-to-day jobs stuff.

The big tent approach ends, where hate hurts people in the space who just want to contribute and have a fun time around others.

2disbetter
2d

I don’t think that is possible in the open source world. I think the open source world attracts mostly controversial figures.

I also don’t think any one person or organization can speak for open source. That is the whole point. Decentralized. Hundreds of thousands of people with varying ideas and beliefs made all of the software in the open source world.

Sammy
nrp
2d

Those “remaining 5%” are either supporting fascism or not supporting fascism, and thus way more important than the other 95%.

If you keep this up, buying framework laptops means directly contributing money to the pockets of people who want me gone or dead. Doesn’t matter that it’s the best laptop available and I’ve had good experiences with every framework device I’ve bought so far, i will have to settle for worse in the future because i morally can’t justify giving my money to a company that forwards it to fascists.