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
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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?
No we use Lemmy and make fun of the Tankies as revenge
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.
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.
Doesn’t seem clear cut at all after reading the whole thread. You support one thing who’s creator has questionable views but not the other. The main difference seems to be that you like one and not the other.
The main difference is that fascism and racism are fundamentally destructive ideologies/traits, while tankie is just a derogatory term for folks on the far left used by people that think extreme left and extreme right are the same kind if evil. It’s a display of arrogant ignorance, congratulations.
Many would argue tankies live by an ideology with a comparable body count to fascism.
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I would say most of the customers of Framework are the kinds of people who espouse the kind of antifascist ideology that that guy that started the thread does.
I don’t think that the fascist sympathizer circle and the “willing to pay more money for an ethical laptop that isn’t beholden to a big corporation for repair” circles have much overlap.
This is easy, “Framework doesn’t support fascism or racism in any form. We support open source software and right to repair. Due to concerns with ideology in some of the projects we sponsor we are reviewing the projects we sponsor to make sure that they align with our values as a company.”
The fact that they aren’t willing to say so says plenty.
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.
The elephant in the room more people need to pay attention to that many of us who work in IT are painfully intimate with.
Many IT people are hardcore libertarians who believe in some warped idea that they are where they are through their intelligence and hardwork while completely ignoring many of them come from backgrounds that afforded them the opportunities they are taking advantage of.
100% many of them are sexist, racist and bigoted pieces of shit that hide it at work because they’re adept at masking the fact that a lot of them are borderline autistic at worst and neurodivergent at best.
This is also why you see such a deep investment in idiocy like AI, Bitcoin and other paradigm shifts. They all have their heads up their asses and feel they’re better than everyone else.
Couple all this with the demographic being primarily white males.
Fuck talk to any woman who works in IT. It’s changing yes, but Jesus Christ it’s a cesspool in many ways.
Source: 25+ years in IT
At my company, most of the IT team are hardcore Trump supporters who do not see a problem with working with LGBTQIA people and being polite to their face, while also wanting them to have less rights.
Yes, they are all white men. And yes, all of them will tell you how hard they worked to get there, completely oblivious of how much an advantage they got to get there.
Many IT people are hardcore libertarians who believe in some warped idea that they are where they are through their intelligence and hardwork while completely ignoring many of them come from backgrounds that afforded them the opportunities they are taking advantage of.
I was this person. It is possible to reform, but it takes genuine curiosity and willingness to be wrong. Neither of those is rewarded by the IT environment of the last 30 years.
White dude in software here to echo the same sentiment. So many of my colleagues have never experienced any hardship of their own or viewpoints of people with different experiences. They don’t think about how their privilege has helped them get where they are, and how their company culture often subtly (at best!) reinforces their worldview and massages their egos. They’ve never tried to think critically about their “meritocracy” or “libertarian” beliefs and how many people are unjustly excluded from the lifestyle they enjoy.
20 years in software development for me.
By now, I’m feeling extremely fortunate.
I’ve been career software engineering since 1995; I gave in and went management in 2014.
I’ve maybe not known þe politics of most people I’ve worked wiþ, but þe ones I have have been quite decent people. I’m wondering if location is a factor - I got stuck on þe East Coast (USA) for most of my career. I hated it - it was so opressingly corporate - but it was also rigorously egalitarian.
Where have you been located?
This has been my experience in San Francisco over the past 15 years. The techbro types, who see technology as a way to get rich, often share the same worldview that life is about “winning” and in this business you “win” if you are smarter than others, so therefore since they are “winning”, they are smart and deserve everything they get (or… take). But, that mentality and their behavior and the culture it creates can often influence humble, empathetic people into that toxic self-hype cycle.
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 bought one because I’m tired of having to scour ebay or AliExpress for replacement parts for my laptops.
I think people too often try to spend the minimum possible amount of money for a certain set of specs and then forget about build quality, support and so on.
I mean price is a very fair criticism though, especially with the current state of the economy. If you can afford the higher cost for worse specs but better repairability then great. If you can’t then you kinda have to go with a non-reparable option, but at least those guarantee a charger in the box.
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.
System76?
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
Wow framework sells a lot of computers to real fascist psychos. That thread is rough. Comment about ICE only arresting criminals would be hilarious if it weren’t so pathetic. “I have immigrant friends” lol.
Wow framework sells a lot of computers to real fascist psychos
A computer company doesn’t do a political evaluation of each of their customers. When was the last time you had to submit your political beliefs in order to buy a computer from…anywhere?
What a bizarre take on my message. Re-read what I wrote, and then read what you wrote, and maybe revise some of your assumptions about what I wrote.
What? I am relatively new to knowing and talking with DHH, but I have not seen anything he has said that would lend credence to what you are saying here. Furthermore these are heavy accusations. I see zero shred of evidence on the internet or revolving around Omarchy. I haven’t see a single negative thing coming out of my discourse around Omarchy. The focus is software excellence, and it is awesome.
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.
Lesson learned - companies should never support open source projects because you run the risk of pissing people off.
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:
- When provided evidence, it’s written off and ignored. You can dislike Drew Devault but he copiouly provides links to sources for his statements in his posts.
- Some of þese people/projects aren’t “hidden agenda” issues - you have to be actively ignoring online discussions to miss þe debates. Or, Occam’s Razor, you don’t care or - worse - agree wiþ far right. All þree are really concerning for a company.
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 useþinstead 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.
Oh shit, you mean AI is at the level where it can… find and replace? Flee to the shelters! The unthinkable day has arrived!
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.
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.
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
This is unfortunate for sure. I want to give them a few days to respond for real, it’s always possible they just didn’t know about the issues here, but even in that thread they’re brushing it off as though it doesn’t matter. I’m not really sure what they get out of donating to these projects other than potential PR, anyway.
On a personal level I’ve recommended their laptops to people who have later bought them, and I was even looking at buying one myself to replace my aging macbook, but I don’t think I can do that anymore while this is unaddressed.
I wonder a bit about how this leaves framework as a company, too. They were always the brand people went to because of their stance on the politics of repairability and environmentalism. If they don’t have the politics on their side anymore, their laptops aren’t a great value proposition compared to other laptops. Sure, you can upgrade a framework, but if it costs twice as much as a similar laptop you’d have to upgrade the internals twice before you’ve saved any money.
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.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.
Vote right? Transphobic.
That is correct.
Yes agreed but if you read the whole thing…
There are people in online spaces that just slap the term on ANY opinion.
Want to form a coalition with moderates? Must be transphobic. Refuse to vote Dem because they’re not progressive enough? Must be transphobic.
Bluesky is overrun with them. I’d hoped to find a place here where simply existing wasn’t stigmatized, but these downvotes are telling me maybe Lemmy is overrun too…
“where simply existing wasn’t stigmatized”… Yeah I think that’s what most people want including immigrants and trans people. You might need to take a good hard look at yourself for seemingly arguing that a project making it’s own community an unsafe space for people is fine but you’re the victim because people on blue sky called one too many things transphobic.
Other than that your sob story makes it sound like you’re a problematic person and I doubt I’m alone in thinking that. I don’t ever remember seeing an excessive amount of accusations of transphobia on bluesky, let alone reddit since it’s 80% Russian bots. So maybe, just maybe, the problem is you. Do you maybe have opinions that regularly get you called a transphobe? At least, that’s how I read your victim story.
I don’t think you can advocate for anything even remotely on the “right” in political discussions anymore unless you mean MAGA. That well is so poisoned at this point that everyone is going to assume you’re a MAGA troll wearing a mask the second you voice any right-leaning opinion.
It’s pretty unfortunate. There are plenty of “live and let live” types in the US that identify informally as libertarians and would make great allies.
I get your point with the rest but…
Vote right? Transphobic.
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
What rights don’t trans people have? What rights is anyone trying to take away from trans people? I still haven’t seen an actual answer to this since the “trans rights are human rights” slogan became a thing.
It has to do with a phenomenon that is censored in most online spaces, so I’ll spell it out in capitals, aSjUrIbCoIgDaEl, basically if a person being denied care would cause them to off themselves, then denying care is tantamount to manslaughter.
Post-transition people are reportedly much happier than they were pre-transition, but right-wingers find that icky, so they’d rather commit war crimes than allow medicine to go to those who need it.
If you’re going to write a word with so many Is like suicide you really shouldn’t also throw in a lower case l. It took me forever to figure out what sucde meant because I was excluding the Is due to the trailing l. (Would’ve made more sense also if you just used the phrase offing ones self which you seemed fine with.)
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%.
You’re right, they are just performing hateful acts towards trans people, they may be doing it out of laziness or ignorance rather than actually hating trans people. As we all know, materially helping an anti trans cause doesn’t mean you hate trans people in the same way materially helping terrorists doesn’t make you a terrorist. Ex: our friends and allies in Saudi Arabia.
Voting isn’t a hateful act. Any insinuation of that needs to stop.
Voting can absolutely be a hateful act, I literally can’t imagine what happens in your brain that makes you think otherwise. The entire US 2024 election was hate vs not-the-hate-guy. A vengeance fantasy for middle aged white men.
No, if you think that, your brain is twisted by whatever spin your preferred media choice puts on.
The 2024 election was more about people wanting to see change, and one candidate clearly offering it and the other clearly not. Look at Harris’ polling timeline, she was doing well up until the beginning of October, so what happened? For example, she wouldn’t change anything from Biden’s first term, except having a Republican in the cabinet. Trump took that and ran with that, and I think that describes her support dropping around that time. People were unhappy with Biden’s first term, and she wouldn’t say anything bad about it. I didn’t watch the 60 minutes interview, but I’m guessing that went similarly.
I think most thought Trump was mostly rhetoric except the couple things they cared about. I think most thought he was bluffing about tariffs (or thought they’d work differently), thought he’d actually bring prices down, etc, which explains his cratering support so far. The average voter is kinda dumb/naive, but I don’t think they were largely voting on hate against immigrants, trans people, etc.
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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.
Edit to add that here’s a presentation talking about “The DHH problem” in 2014. The updates are darkly humorous.
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.
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 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
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.
You don’t fund them, that’s for sure
Yeah sure so you’ve destroyed your car, stopped buying fuel, gave up sigarettes, stopped buying stuff from Amazon, gave up the supermarket, single use plastics, gave up Windows and let’s be honest, any other computer manufacturer aside from super niche ones? Because I guarantee you that the money you spend in that stuff is magnitudes more damaging than whatever tiny bit of a framework computer’s value is going towards these two developers, let alone the fraction that they may actually invest in nefarious deeds.
People need to learn to pick their battles.
A key difference here is that Framework is trying to build a “community”. At least some of their value depends upon community if you think about it for a bit (e.g., if nobody uses the marketplaces, they’d be empty of goods and a lot of the point is lost).
If they center assholes as being representative of what the community is about, they naturally exclude others by doing so.
It’s easy to take the “can’t we all just get along?” stance with this, but some things require a little more reasoning and philosophy than platitudes.
What good is a big tent if most normal people left the tent because you platformed assholes at its center?
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.
