Good they don't deserve it, they will just use it to spout their politics and ban individuals for their political views from the repos and wikis. Just look at their petty little meltdown over X-Libre
1Password can't even include ARM builds of their app in their existing packages [1]. I am highly skeptical of anything DHH (David Heinemeier Hansson) is the benevolent dictator of, and for good reason [2]. Perhaps that money would be spent better elsewhere in the ecosystem.
There is this movie "Mickey Blue Eyes" where Hugh Grant play an auctioneer whose girlfriend is the daughter of a mafia member.
The boss of the mafia org then forces the auctioneer to offer worthless paintings and forces various people to bid high. The paintings are just required so that something exchanges hands.
This is much of the software industry in a nutshell, except that no coercion is required. Just something needs to exchange hands.
The mafia needs money to change hands to launder it. What money is being laundered in software? Do you think anyone in the ecosystem is sitting on piles of dirty money?
Good for the Linux ecosystem. People forget they are not bound to install it, if you are so sore from a blog post just use any of the other hundreds of distros out there.
I can't quite put my finger on it but this rush to astroturf Omarchy just has bad vibes all around. DHH has been on a politician-level campaign to fund/promote what seems like a fun nerd project. Call me paranoid but it all just comes across as dubious.
It’s definitely noticeable and he has ties to politically-aligned tech billionaires - for example, when about a third of Basecamp employees resigned, Marc Andressen kept them solvent:
it feels super weird, suddenly everyone on x uses omarchy and talks about how it "revolutionized personal computing". guess 37signals started losing money after dhh's white nationalist tirades.
I don't find it too surprising. There's some overlap between the stridently anti-white-supremacist crowd is the guillotines-for-billionaires crowd. It's one part distraction, one part PR stunt (look at us, we fund open source).
If they actually cared about investing in the ecosystem (and not creating a distraction), they'd be investing in something besides a ricer project. No shade against ricers, but it's not exactly QubesOS or NixOS or Silveblue or Talos, not exactly pushing the envelope in any direction besides "pretty". DHH may have great opinions about Linux for all I know, but I just don't see how you justify millions of dollars for really good opinions.
Yes is the only valid answer. The reason is that there's nothing remarkable about Omarchy for it to deserve a fraction of the hype it gets.
Even calling Omarchy a distro seems to be a stretch. The best description I're read is that it is a Hyprland setup for Arch. As far as what a Linux distro can be, this is pretty mediocre. The sort of thing that would get an HN thread, see minor traction, and take the backseat.
But, quite a lot of people seem interested in hyping it. I suspect the reason is just because the dude behind it is not shy about being an ethnonationalist, "great replacement theory" asshole, etc.
Quite a few people here are very fond of those talking points. Thinking about brown people being ethnically cleansed makes them all tingly inside. So, they really want to talk about Omarchy as a proxy.
They ship a custom kernel, have their own packaging servers, ship their own installer, an installable ISO, and ship a bunch of custom UI. That's a distro, all right. Not a foundational one a la Debian or Arch, but that's never been a requirement seeing how things like Ubuntu, Cachy etc. exist and are called distros without issue.
Omarchy started as a pile of dotfiles a year ago. It isn't that anymore, and DHH's intended direction is towards a fully independent foundation distro.
This is the only thing I've read about DHH's controversial opinions, so take this with a huge grain of salt. Maybe I'll change my mind tomorrow:
Those DHH quotes do not seem nearly as bad as I thought they were going to. In fact, they don't seem bad at all. You may vigorously disagree with them, I just mean that they are not clearly immoral. Of course, that's only if you take them at face value. There could be darker or more crack-pot opinions behind them, but that specter is hard to avoid with this topic.
The author's arguments are weak or tangential, and their conclusion seems overly dramatic. As a first impression, this puts me in the mindset of, "people are overreacting to DHH's opinions because it's related to immigration/race/culture." Again, maybe I'll change my mind, but as a first impression, that's what this article tells me.
He explicitly says that nonwhite people feel alien and like they don't belong. He "heartwarming"ly embraces Tommy Robinson's white replacement marches advocating for forced "remigration" as a breath of fresh air against what he calls suicidal empathy. Must I show my work when adding 2 plus 2 or can we agree that the answer is 4?
>Must I show my work when adding 2 plus 2 or can we agree that the answer is 4?
This is arrogant in a damaging way. You should prefer to answer the asked question, since that would be an effective piece of information in this case (i.e. it's not a bait question, so it's not harmful to engage with).
The answers are present in the post we're discussing quite plainly without any reading between the lines necessary. I think the simplicity of the analogy is fitting. If not bait, there are few charitable explanations.
Commenter is, like me, mystified that reading comprehension can be that poor. Even without the linked post’s commentary, a plain reading of DHH’s original post should be enough to see exactly where he is politically. So to have to spell it out for you and others feels like we’re being taken for a ride.
No, I am sympathetic to his critics if that's what he is saying. I just don't see that in the article. But on the other hand, since this is an example of cultural replacement where the new folks happen to be disproportionately brown, this may just be a case of those who are passionate about the idea of racial equality getting a little incensed, which is understandable (laudable, even), but cultural replacement is a real and valid source of cultural, national, and generational misery.
Since you’re happytoexplain, please explain to me what cultural replacement/disruption looks like in western countries. I can see it happening in countries like China with the Uighurs, in Bangladesh with the Rohingya, but I can’t see any actual “culture” erasure happening in Britain or Australia or the United States. I see plenty of cultural enrichment, but no erasure.
No need to be sarcastic and mock my username or my culture. I'm not asserting that you're an asshole or something because you don't agree that there is cultural disruption and/or replacement in London or the US. The entire concept is subjective and highly experiential, despite the drama and trauma it causes. I will say though that elevating the definition to essentially require genocide isn't useful.
Your username is self chosen. If you elect to be offended by people using it that’s on you. And like you, I’m not “asserting that you’re an asshole”. I’m also not “elevating the definition”. True cultural erasure involves the active banning and repression of cultural symbols (be they of language, dress, beliefs). If you have a different definition let’s hear it. Otherwise don’t put words in my mouth or project the chip on your own shoulder.
Your reading comprehension and political awareness needs a lot of work.
> cultural replacement/disruption is a real and valid source of misery/desperation
Not like this it isn’t. To the extent that there’s a valid complaint, it’s the fault of those who’ve been in power over the last few decades. To turn the blame on minorities is a classic rightist move, and it’s always cowardly, nasty, and wrong.
But this isn't happening. To cite someone with closer experience (who also does admit that the "migration issue in Britain is complicated and multi-layered") [0]:
> To all of that he adds a dash of Islamophobia, citing “Pakistani rape gangs” as one of the reasons for the unrest, repeating a weaponised trope borne from a long since discredited report from the Quilliam Foundation, an organisation with ties to both the the US Tea Party, and Tommy Robinson himself. A trope that exists despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of convicted child sex offenders are white men, with Asian men in fact under-represented.
People who want to be racist will find or invent any evidence necessary to dig themselves in deeper. There is no basis or validity to it. If there were, there would be no need to be so coy and indirect about it.
So you think it's entirely moral to label only white British people as "native Brits"? To speak warmly of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon's ("Tommy Robinson") marches? Unless you are also comfortably on the far right, I'm at a loss.
> When wolves get out of control, you shoot them. When gypsies take over public spaces, you deport them. This isn't hard, it isn't cruel. It's the basic logic of self-preservation.
Dehumanization of an entire ethnic group by comparing them to animals. Use of violent rhetoric to forcibly ethnically cleanse a region.
There's a word for people who employ this rhetoric. Nazi.
Since then, he also called for a pogrom against Romani people, in language that explicitly mirrored that which the Nazis used when calling for ethnic cleansing against the same group of people.
It is a valid question, and the many, many answers to it are worth reading.
In short: he's made it very clear that he's a racist who doesn't like that there are non-white people living in London, doesn't like Roma, and seems to have a problem with non-white people in general.
Disliking most of the world is a good way to get most of the world to dislike you.
Hey, 1Password product lead here who worked on this. I thought I'd share some thoughts.
First, I'm pretty excited by Omarchy, and it seems 1Password customers are as well. Omarchy 4 was the first release to identify itself as Omarchy vs. Arch, and in just two short weeks since the launch it's already the #3 most-used Linux distro by active users. Ubuntu is #1 but has a pretty extreme sawtooth pattern where usage collapses on the weekends. This is not true with Omarchy, where we are seeing virtually no drop-off on the weekends yet, and last Saturday it actually surpassed Ubuntu 24.04 as the #1 most-used Linux distro. I suspect it will remain #1 every weekend going forward.
Second, what keeps us up at night is credentials getting into AI inference/context. We are working with everyone we can to stay as close as possible to the tools and OS' that become the canonical ways to use agents, so we can ensure that the humans who pay for 1Password remain in control of their credentials — and ideally, that those credentials never are seen by an AI agent.
What we released about a month ago with Anthropic (security info here: https://support.1password.com/1password-claude-security/) is a glimpse into how we are making that happen architecturally. Being able to work closely with the frontier-model and harness companies and builders is essential to our mission to create a safer, simpler digital future for everyone.
Omarchy and Linux in general are an exciting place for us to dream pretty big about how we solve these problems. This is a very malleable OS, lately it's where the most AI-forward users are, and a place where we can learn together how to create something that's both convenient and safe.
Why is this succeeding while other OSS funding initiatives have failed? These companies were just waiting to be sure their money would go to a confirmed Nazi?
It's vice-signaling. They want to make sure that the industry knows that calling for a pogrom against the Romani people is the kind of malevolence that will be rewarded.
I think Wilhoit’s law[1] is also a major factor: these guys appear to have taken things like codes of conduct as a personal affront because in many cases it was the first time penalties started being applied to people they identified with as fellow in-group members. You can see this in lots of cases - e.g. compare SV elite reactions to the alleged shoplifting epidemic to the way the same people feel about cheating on taxes or misleading investors for orders of magnitude more money.
1. “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition … There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect”
This is a betrayal of trust by 1Password. Their customers didn't choose to pay thinking that their money would go to a tech right grifter's fund that exploits the work of others for marketing.
I know people don't like his politics, but the bigger issue to me is that 37signals removes manager titles from the low level people but not the high level people, yet they get the same work and duties. It's insulting.
62 comments
[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 3.7 ms ] thread"Update: I heard back! The team was not interested in any direct collaboration with Omarchy or the Omacom Foundation. Message received "
1. https://support.1password.com/install-linux/#arm-or-other-di... 2. https://thelibre.news/lets-talk-about-dhh/
The boss of the mafia org then forces the auctioneer to offer worthless paintings and forces various people to bid high. The paintings are just required so that something exchanges hands.
This is much of the software industry in a nutshell, except that no coercion is required. Just something needs to exchange hands.
I'm sure you can come up with scenarios where A wants clean money to go to B but still prefers a pretext.
In this case the now 12M (Brian Armstrong now also "donated") could be for AI and right-wing promotion for example.
Beyond my moral objections and public security concerns, I saw more forethought from ClearLinux by Intel around the same maturity point.
Hype doesn't make an OS appealing to me.
https://x.com/davidsenra/status/2081956616963006913
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/30/22412714/basecamp-employe...
And companies clearly want that as well.
If they actually cared about investing in the ecosystem (and not creating a distraction), they'd be investing in something besides a ricer project. No shade against ricers, but it's not exactly QubesOS or NixOS or Silveblue or Talos, not exactly pushing the envelope in any direction besides "pretty". DHH may have great opinions about Linux for all I know, but I just don't see how you justify millions of dollars for really good opinions.
Even calling Omarchy a distro seems to be a stretch. The best description I're read is that it is a Hyprland setup for Arch. As far as what a Linux distro can be, this is pretty mediocre. The sort of thing that would get an HN thread, see minor traction, and take the backseat.
But, quite a lot of people seem interested in hyping it. I suspect the reason is just because the dude behind it is not shy about being an ethnonationalist, "great replacement theory" asshole, etc.
Quite a few people here are very fond of those talking points. Thinking about brown people being ethnically cleansed makes them all tingly inside. So, they really want to talk about Omarchy as a proxy.
Omarchy started as a pile of dotfiles a year ago. It isn't that anymore, and DHH's intended direction is towards a fully independent foundation distro.
https://jakelazaroff.com/words/dhh-is-way-worse-than-i-thoug...
Those DHH quotes do not seem nearly as bad as I thought they were going to. In fact, they don't seem bad at all. You may vigorously disagree with them, I just mean that they are not clearly immoral. Of course, that's only if you take them at face value. There could be darker or more crack-pot opinions behind them, but that specter is hard to avoid with this topic.
The author's arguments are weak or tangential, and their conclusion seems overly dramatic. As a first impression, this puts me in the mindset of, "people are overreacting to DHH's opinions because it's related to immigration/race/culture." Again, maybe I'll change my mind, but as a first impression, that's what this article tells me.
This is arrogant in a damaging way. You should prefer to answer the asked question, since that would be an effective piece of information in this case (i.e. it's not a bait question, so it's not harmful to engage with).
> cultural replacement/disruption is a real and valid source of misery/desperation
Not like this it isn’t. To the extent that there’s a valid complaint, it’s the fault of those who’ve been in power over the last few decades. To turn the blame on minorities is a classic rightist move, and it’s always cowardly, nasty, and wrong.
> To all of that he adds a dash of Islamophobia, citing “Pakistani rape gangs” as one of the reasons for the unrest, repeating a weaponised trope borne from a long since discredited report from the Quilliam Foundation, an organisation with ties to both the the US Tea Party, and Tommy Robinson himself. A trope that exists despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of convicted child sex offenders are white men, with Asian men in fact under-represented.
People who want to be racist will find or invent any evidence necessary to dig themselves in deeper. There is no basis or validity to it. If there were, there would be no need to be so coy and indirect about it.
[0] https://tekin.co.uk/2025/09/the-ruby-community-has-a-dhh-pro...
> When wolves get out of control, you shoot them. When gypsies take over public spaces, you deport them. This isn't hard, it isn't cruel. It's the basic logic of self-preservation.
Dehumanization of an entire ethnic group by comparing them to animals. Use of violent rhetoric to forcibly ethnically cleanse a region.
There's a word for people who employ this rhetoric. Nazi.
[1] https://world.hey.com/dhh/wolves-sheep-and-gypsies-ba44af6a
In short: he's made it very clear that he's a racist who doesn't like that there are non-white people living in London, doesn't like Roma, and seems to have a problem with non-white people in general.
Disliking most of the world is a good way to get most of the world to dislike you.
First, I'm pretty excited by Omarchy, and it seems 1Password customers are as well. Omarchy 4 was the first release to identify itself as Omarchy vs. Arch, and in just two short weeks since the launch it's already the #3 most-used Linux distro by active users. Ubuntu is #1 but has a pretty extreme sawtooth pattern where usage collapses on the weekends. This is not true with Omarchy, where we are seeing virtually no drop-off on the weekends yet, and last Saturday it actually surpassed Ubuntu 24.04 as the #1 most-used Linux distro. I suspect it will remain #1 every weekend going forward.
Second, what keeps us up at night is credentials getting into AI inference/context. We are working with everyone we can to stay as close as possible to the tools and OS' that become the canonical ways to use agents, so we can ensure that the humans who pay for 1Password remain in control of their credentials — and ideally, that those credentials never are seen by an AI agent.
What we released about a month ago with Anthropic (security info here: https://support.1password.com/1password-claude-security/) is a glimpse into how we are making that happen architecturally. Being able to work closely with the frontier-model and harness companies and builders is essential to our mission to create a safer, simpler digital future for everyone.
Omarchy and Linux in general are an exciting place for us to dream pretty big about how we solve these problems. This is a very malleable OS, lately it's where the most AI-forward users are, and a place where we can learn together how to create something that's both convenient and safe.
1. “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition … There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect”
This actually sounds like the literal definition of quid pro quo.
https://x.com/jmeller/status/1971530423030387081?s=46