You might’ve noticed Framework, the laptop manufacturer, embroiled in a controversy as of now. The Discord server is on lockdown because the volunteer moderation team has gone on hiatus, and the Framework forum post about the controversy has been gaining unsightly amounts of steam from people disappointed at actions taken by Framework.
Fair Warning: Long rant ahead.
Great article, and it gets to the heart of something I’ve felt is becoming more and more prominent in the Linux and Open Source Community, and really any community. And it’s something we simply can’t ignore.
That is that you can’t separate politics from life. It’s everywhere. The author points out that Framework’s mission is to encourage right to repair and responsible consumption by discouraging planned obsolescence.
While right to repair might be popular in both left and right wing circles, that is only because both sides want control over their devices and to distance themselves from Big Tech. But their views on regulation with regards to the environment and social equity/inclusion are as far apart as the general right left paradigm is as a whole.
To be blunt, you simply cannot have normal people work under the same tent as crypto fascists, transphobes, and general right wing grifters, no matter how significant their individual contributions might be.
I personally am tired of these sorts of controversies being brushed under the rug by tech influencers like BashBunni and Brodie Robertson who in their coverage of Omarchy did not broach this topic even just to say that there is a controversy at all. It’s cowardice at best, and right wing apologism at worst.
Yes, there are particularly brilliant software engineers that are also assholes. And yeah, without those assholes, we wouldn’t have the technologies we have today. The mistake is thinking that they are brilliant because they are assholes. Another mistake is thinking that holding onto one productive asshole is better than hanging onto the good will and contributions of many normal people that still provide worthwhile contributions.
To be very frank, fuck that. I refuse to believe in the false dichotomy that in order to create good software we have to put up with bigots. If anything, their attitudes end up holding themselves and their colleagues back. We shouldn’t be asking ourselves, “How much less productive would that person have been if they had wasted time/energy on being socially conscious and empathetic.” And instead have asked “How much more productive and better off we all would have been had they been a more empathetic and compassionate person.” Because we’re all worse off when a colleague is being a bigot, and it’s in all of our interests to call it out when we see it.
Preach. thank you for this ❤️
They’ve already abandoned this with the Framework desktop.
How did they do that?
It’s not repairable or upgradable, save for the SSD and power supply.
They didn’t. Homie is just mad they expanded into an area that didn’t actually need to revolutionized with repairability in mind. That’s not abandoning repairability in the slightest. Mayyyyybe they’re mad they’re selling a CPU with soldered RAM, but they tried to make it with swappable RAM and it turned out to be impossible from a physics perspective. Something about the timing, if I remember correctly. They’re really just selling that desktop because they were hyped on the CPU and thought it would make for a great enterprise workhorse. They threw it together crazy fast, too. It’s not like it took meaningful time away from their other projects. I would imagine a good chunk of their business customers have been asking for a desktop so they can source everything from them, but that’s pure speculation on my part.
Not true. They could make it but with reduced memory bandwidth. They chose not to do it anyway.
I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying.
I just want people to ponder this: What happens when we ostracize people with bigoted beliefs from our communities? Does that mean we have given up on the idea that communities can change people? Does that mean our community is not responsible for helping people realize their bigotry?
The purpose of these communities isn’t to help people learn to not be assholes. A Framework community, for example, is a community centered around Framework’s products and ecosystems.
As far as responsibility, a community is built by its people, and it is not my responsibility to change someone’s views. I have no sympathy towards people who would harm or advocate/celebrate the harm of myself or anyone close to me. They can fuck off.
These views are harmful to communities because when acted on, they exclude entire groups from the community. They tear apart communities, turning it into a political “us vs them” rather than discussions about the original topic.
Nobody is saying people with these views can’t be members of the community, but that they are required to accept the presence of those they are prejudiced against in order to contrbute to it. But if they make the rules, they will forbid those they are prejudiced against from being members at all.
If someone’s actively interested in a discussion and wants to learn, then that’s one thing. But it’s still off topic for most communities.
Note that none of what I just said is specific to far-right views. It’s just most common with them.