Oh man... Technology has always been a refuge from politics for me. I know this is a childish view of the world, but still... Today the nerdiest of things are still filled with politics. Rust, nix, open source hardware... there is nowhere to "hide".
Politics is just the term to design how groups of people function, so as long as you will interact with other people in any way, you will do politics.
Everything is political. The way you dress, where you work, who are your friends, what you buy. Especially what you buy, maybe most of all in this society.
It’s time we start ignoring the lunacy from the fringes of society. Nothing good comes from indulging the psychopathic lust for control on display from these types of people.
Today Nazi == "Someone I don't like." It's overused so much it literally has no meaning.
DHH's only sin was creating Ruby on Rails, not his politics (same with Brendan Eich who I hope one day apologies to the world for inventing JavaScript).
Most reasonable people left Hackernews a long time ago when they banned the balance. Almost all that's left on here is echo-chamber.
One shouldn't sponsor because of how they see the world today. They should sponsor because of how they want the world to be tomorrow.
edit: And I'm pretty sure a minutely modified distro doesn't need this amount of donations at this point. It is not having a positive effect on the ecosystem to have so many donations to the most downstream project. All I can feel about this is, at its best, its buying attention through DHH's pre-existing influence. This does not seem to be a great thing to buy at this point.
When you run a business, you can’t realistically perform background checks on every partner or contributor. Many people will have said or believed evil things. If a company starts politically vetting everyone it interacts with, it risks alienating large parts of society and undermining its mission. The best thing you can do is have dialogue with those people; not cancel them.
It also seems like some of the criticism here reflects a very local Canadian political outlook being applied globally. That rarely works because the world’s values and politics differ widely, and enforcing one region’s standards everywhere just drives division and more polarization.
For instance, even within Canada, provinces have very different approaches to religion and immigration, and not all of them align neatly with international norms. These are complex issues, not simple moral tests. Quebec has restrictions on religious symbols in the public sector targetting muslims, prayer in public targeting muslims, and limits on legal immigration(you guessed it, targetting muslims). So it’s hard to take moral absolutism seriously when local politics themselves are complicated.
DHH's public views do overlap with Reform UK’s platform, which (if you believe polls) has substantial voter support right now. Whether one agrees or not, that makes them part of mainstream democratic debate, not fringe extremism. With the recent exodus of MPs from Conservatives to Reform, I would be shocked if they dont win.
I think Framework’s response handled this great. Focusing on open collaboration rather than ideological purity tests.
> When you run a business, you can’t realistically perform background checks on every partner or contributor
You can, and that depends on whether you want to or not. No one forces you to run a business. You're not absolved of the chore of having a look at your supply chain just because you're disinterested in it
The answer is no. Framework is not putting money into far right causes. They are paying for open source software.
The politics of some of the contributors is questionable. But it's not illegal to have bad opinions and exercise free speech. And it's certainly not Frameworks job to morally vet every person they interact with.
I do not need to know about the political opinions of the people who grow my food, or change my tires, or build my tools. And I am getting growing tired of intersectional witch hunts, especially when we're getting to so many layers of abstraction.
Agreed. "Vetting" is real, painstaking work and online mobs are atrocious at it. They project, fabulate, distort and lie to stir up a moment's self-righteous anger, regardless of actual, grounded truth.
This is obviously true on the Right, but I've learned it's also true on the Left. People scream "1 nazi in your bar means you're a nazi" and yet Drew Devault remains an influential progressive, despite a history of lolicon/CP.
While it can certainly be difficult for anyone to be aware of intra-community drama (especially if it's in semi-transient media like Discord), the moment someone makes you aware of deeply problematic issues is the moment when you have to make a choice how to respond.
The fact that framework leadership responded to this by effectively downplaying the issues raised in the OP shows me that they are deeply misguided. Very disappointing.
A tolerant society cannot tolerate intolerance, lest it gets destroyed by it.
In other words: the far right and fascists are an existential threath to our current society and cannot be tolerated, no matter what.
We should call them out and fight them all the time, everywhere, for our childrens future, to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
A tolerant society cannot tolerate intolerance, lest it gets destroyed by it. In other words: the far left and maoists are an existential threath to our current society and cannot be tolerated, no matter what. We should call them out and fight them all the time, everywhere, for our childrens future, to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
I’ve been eying for the bubblegum framework 12 for a bit now and almost pulled the trigger. Frameworks political stance of “hardware should be maintainable and replaceable” really resonated with me and I was excited to support them with my money.
This is not it though - “Big Tent” means nothing when you’re supporting people who directly call for “Britain to be white again” and use slurs against minorities. It creates a gross space where people (like someone earlier in that thread) feel empowered to outright call for my existence to be invalidated.
This literally happened a few days ago on RetroAcheivements & they handled it well. I really hope framework come out with a response to all this.
What timing I was going to install Omarchy this weekend. I know very little about DHH so will have to do more research. My main concern is that if DHH is some kind of far right psycho how much of his beliefs will make it into the software he's building? Sure I can comb through the repo before installing but will I do that on every update? That's my main concern. However, I encourage everyone to DYOR before automatically jumping to conclusions.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 50.6 ms ] threadEverything is political. The way you dress, where you work, who are your friends, what you buy. Especially what you buy, maybe most of all in this society.
Just make sure your favorite employer's IT department is aware of this before they make a purchase order.
Today Nazi == "Someone I don't like." It's overused so much it literally has no meaning.
DHH's only sin was creating Ruby on Rails, not his politics (same with Brendan Eich who I hope one day apologies to the world for inventing JavaScript).
Most reasonable people left Hackernews a long time ago when they banned the balance. Almost all that's left on here is echo-chamber.
edit: And I'm pretty sure a minutely modified distro doesn't need this amount of donations at this point. It is not having a positive effect on the ecosystem to have so many donations to the most downstream project. All I can feel about this is, at its best, its buying attention through DHH's pre-existing influence. This does not seem to be a great thing to buy at this point.
It also seems like some of the criticism here reflects a very local Canadian political outlook being applied globally. That rarely works because the world’s values and politics differ widely, and enforcing one region’s standards everywhere just drives division and more polarization.
For instance, even within Canada, provinces have very different approaches to religion and immigration, and not all of them align neatly with international norms. These are complex issues, not simple moral tests. Quebec has restrictions on religious symbols in the public sector targetting muslims, prayer in public targeting muslims, and limits on legal immigration(you guessed it, targetting muslims). So it’s hard to take moral absolutism seriously when local politics themselves are complicated.
DHH's public views do overlap with Reform UK’s platform, which (if you believe polls) has substantial voter support right now. Whether one agrees or not, that makes them part of mainstream democratic debate, not fringe extremism. With the recent exodus of MPs from Conservatives to Reform, I would be shocked if they dont win.
I think Framework’s response handled this great. Focusing on open collaboration rather than ideological purity tests.
You can, and that depends on whether you want to or not. No one forces you to run a business. You're not absolved of the chore of having a look at your supply chain just because you're disinterested in it
The politics of some of the contributors is questionable. But it's not illegal to have bad opinions and exercise free speech. And it's certainly not Frameworks job to morally vet every person they interact with.
I do not need to know about the political opinions of the people who grow my food, or change my tires, or build my tools. And I am getting growing tired of intersectional witch hunts, especially when we're getting to so many layers of abstraction.
This is obviously true on the Right, but I've learned it's also true on the Left. People scream "1 nazi in your bar means you're a nazi" and yet Drew Devault remains an influential progressive, despite a history of lolicon/CP.
I really don't think it's possible to entirely cleanly separate the art from the artist.
The fact that framework leadership responded to this by effectively downplaying the issues raised in the OP shows me that they are deeply misguided. Very disappointing.
This is not it though - “Big Tent” means nothing when you’re supporting people who directly call for “Britain to be white again” and use slurs against minorities. It creates a gross space where people (like someone earlier in that thread) feel empowered to outright call for my existence to be invalidated.
This literally happened a few days ago on RetroAcheivements & they handled it well. I really hope framework come out with a response to all this.