Title of the (concerning) thread on their community forum, not voluntary clickbait. Came across the thread thanks to a toot by @[email protected] (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
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
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.
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.
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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.
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 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?
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.
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.
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
Lesson learned - companies should never support open source projects because you run the risk of pissing people off.
Just for donating to hyprland? An absolutely overkill reaction.
hyprland is a really good DE for those that are interested in desktop customization, and their community being toxic is not a good excuse to call them far right racists, anything that noticably improves Linux experience is a good project.
Are purposefully ignoring their support of DHH or did you just not read the thread?
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.
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It might be the same situation of me. I’m not a fascist and I use hyprland, I just was unaware until now.
tbh, the hyperland thing is, for me personally, not too dramatic. Like there was a failure in moderation and response, but “a manufacturer that supports an floss project that has a discord channel where a mod changed the pronouns of a user and the admin of said channel didn’t respond harshly enough” sounds “forgiveable”. Not ideal, but also not super dramatic.
DHH on the other hand 😅😂…
The hyprland situation is waaaay more than just that. And it’s not hard to find with a search.
Projects are not their authors. Please give the politics a rest. I’ve had enough of politics lately.
you can give politics a rest, but politics won’t give you a rest. especially if you are gay, trans, black, or in any of those marginalized groups.
Wether you like it or not, some people don’t have the luxury to stop fighting, even more so right now with so-called democratic governments that brutalize, lock up and torture people for their opinions, their sexuality or their skin color.
Ignore these debates if you wish, and disconnect from social networks if you need to rest. But don’t call for people to stop fighting when their very existence is put at risk by people like DHH, that Framework decided to support.
It’s become all about purity testing. From both the right and the left. And since any purity test can be anything that anyone wants it be, everyone is guaranteed to fail it at some point. And because the internet never forgets, something you said 20 years ago now is grounds for being purged. Without any thought to what that person now believes and how they think.
Is this situation relevant to that example? Are the people in question changed since the time in which the accusations were made?
Rebranding personal ethics and morals as “a purity test” is disingenuous at best.
If you’re going to take umbridge with someone’s approach at least do it directly instead of this backhanded high horse bullshit.
i dont think framework is big enough to factcheck every linux maniac
Yeah I don’t think you get how this works. They had time to research the tool they are recommending but literally nothing about the backers or community? Framework will absolutely have a legal team whose job would include vetting these orgs.
But let’s say you’re right and framework is operating a company with no legal counsel (which is also a giant red flag): their response was “we are chill with terrible people in our space, we have a big tent”. Not “you’re right, we didn’t do research on these guys thanks for bringing it to our attention we’ll do some research”. If they said that, this wouldn’t be a thing. Instead, they said affirmatively “we don’t care if they are white nationalists, we want to include white nationalists in our tent”.
…a legal team checking out linux forums and discord servers for anti trans actions…you ok buddy?
Before they invest money? Yes
Lesson learned: don’t support open source projects. One apparently has to get legal, pr, and a whole investigation (on an ongoing basis!) for every project. Better and cheaper to just not.
Have you…never had a job? I’m really really confused by your aggro response. This is standard operating procedure for any company with more than like 15 people (or with any large assets they can be sued over). I regularly get quotes delayed due to companies having to get their own quotes for their own off the shelf hardware through legal approval.
Have you…never had a job?
Yep. And if customers are getting pissed due to charitable donations we are doing…that incurs a significant cost and becomes a massive hurdle for any future charitable donations.
So, as I said, lesson learned: don’t support open source projects.
Edit: Next meeting about supporting open source project: “Hey this author has opinion x, anti-x is going to hate that. Let’s just spend the money elsewhere.”
Following meeting about supporting a different open source project: “Hey, this author has opinion anti-x, x is going to hate that. Let’s just spend the money elsewhere.”
100% this. They support many many different open source project and I read people are bitching when they havent had mich time to even respond?
They immediately responded
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?
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.
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.
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
