2mo ago

Framework flame war erupts over support of politically polarizing Linux projects

www.theregister.com Framework flame war erupts over Linux controversy

: Laptop maker's apolitical endorsement of politically contentious projects meets resistance

Six days ago, upgradeable laptop maker Framework tried to convince its fractious user community to live in a "big tent" after a Debian developer objected to the company's sponsorship of Hyprland and its social media promotion of Omarchy, with both projects associated with politically polarizing viewpoints.
Antoine Beaupré, aka anarcat, demanded that Framework clarify its political position with regard to these two projects.
Hyprland, a Wayland compositor, is led by a "toxic and hateful community," Beaupré observed, and Omarchy, a Linux distribution, comes from David Heinemeier Hansson (aka DHH), a controversial figure in the Ruby and Linux communities.

187 comments

This definitely had a negative impact on my view of framework, can't say I'd buy from them again.
- Same. Considering sending an email to tell them this.
  
  Already have, along with my concerns about the outsized money going to essentially DHH events.
  Might even sell my FW, I don't think I want to be associated with the brand at all.

I’m amazed that they haven’t backtracked this yet. They’re just cool losing all those customers.
- idk, looking at twitter, there seems to be a pretty good number of fascist techbros who are congratulating framework on this
  i guess framework doesn’t mind the change in audience…
  
  I mean, its twitter. Its almost entirely fascist tech bros there.
- Theyre not gonna, look at all the comments itt that are ok with giving money to transphobes
  
  It irks me to no end that both here and in the framework community forum people will try to downplay just how awful DHH and their ilk are.
  They'll never say that they don't mind supporting someone who's transphobic, or a nationalist, or a racist. Instead they'll just say that you need to separate the art from the artist, or that you're just engaging in "purity tests" or whatever other bullshit reason they can throw to absolve themselves from supporting objectively shitty people.
  
  In the current political environment, it's profitable to have right-wing extremists alignments and they're aren't sigh, or even happy to be part of it.
  If the sales fall, there would have been or will be a "southpark-sorry.gif"

TL;DR for just updates since the initial story: Basically say that they believe Hyprland cleaned up after having an initial problem and totally ignores all the stuff about DHH, despite that seeming to be the biggest problem people had with what they've been doing.

being antifascist could only ever be "polarizing" if the person getting offended is an anti-antifascist aka a Nazi
- I think it depends very much on what you think is fascism.
  Lemmy users sometimes think using harch language is "fascism" because they are young and dont know what real fascism was like.
  That being said, I havent read about what the Hyprland devs have been saying or doing, so sure, maybe they are bad people. I will go read about it now.
  Edit: I looked into it and its not fascism, as usual. It seems to be the usual stuff that is being called fascism when its not. Its all about how they moderate their forum and how they talk to people there. This is not fascism. Treating people rudely is not fascism. Making bad jokes is not fascism either.
  They may be dousches but we wont have another Stalin on our hands from this direction, dont worry. :)
  
  FW is giving an openly racist and fascist person money for a project
  That's what people care about. Not the moderation behavior of the project
  
  Hitler.
  Stalin, for what he was, wasn't fascist.

Tech companies and preventable controversies: name a more iconic duo.

The weird thing for me is the financial support coming from Framework to Hyprland. It would be one thing if Framework was working with Hyprland to test compatibility and functionality on their machines and do specialized bug testing. They could kind of justify that from a purely technical stance.
But the fact that they picked a very niche project for no apparent reason to support with a significant monthly financial contribution is so strange. There are numerous other niche distros/projects that aren't mired in controversy that Framework could have worked with, (Alpine, Void, ElementaryOS, etc.) so why Hyprland/Omarchy?
Very disappointed. I've been pushing Framework computers very strongly for friends and family over the last year, plus I've been planning on getting one to replace my aging Thinkpad. Now I am going to hold off until the dust settles on this.
- Omarchy uses Hyprland, so I guess they started by promoting Omarchy and maybe DHH asked them to sponsor Hyprland
- Supporting Hyprland definitely looks like a mistake, they weren't aware of what went on around there.
  They probably should have gone with supporting Niri and maybe Cosmic instead.
  
  I agree, but then why would they not retracted their support? If it really was an honest mistake and they weren't aware of the situation, I would think they would apologize, explain that they didn't know, pull their support, and issue a statement about the kinds of values they want to promote in the FOSS world.
  But instead, they have doubled down, the CEO himself. It's very strange and concerning.

I love how they always portray projects like this as "politically polarizing". You look inside and it's always just plain old not-polarizing misogyny. Really shows where this "news" outlets stand.
- The media has been complicit in all of this by sanewashing all of the insane shit that's constantly happening.

It was a yellow flag when Framework invested heavily into an affordable non-repairable, non-upgradable desktop designed for AI developers. "Let them make money," they said, as Framework positioned itself as a Trojan Horse to the ubiquitization of harmful AI.
This was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I was saving up for a Framework 16, but I'll just stick with my Thinkpad and get the next Steam Deck for gaming. It's really a shame that such an important company would support transphobia and white supremacy, not just rhetorically but financially, as Hyperland gets ₤600 a month from them and DHH gets ₤24,000 via Rails.
I know this will be a controversial take since Framework is so beloved, but that is just how I personally will choose to spend my money.
- I agree with your conclusion and I abhor Framework promoting either of these two projects.
  But the APU in the desktop has, I suspect, a real reason for having nonreplaceable RAM. If I understand correctly, they can't achieve 8000 mt/s memory speed or the wider memory bus with replaceable RAM. And since that memory is shared with the GPU, that speed becomes important for gaming or other GPU tasks. Hence why 6400 mt/s seems to be the max memory speed for a lot of the zen5 desktop chips, at least in prebuilts
  I have that chip in my laptop (the "AI" Max Pro 395+) and I don't ever use it for LLM shit. It's a very performant and efficient CPU, and shockingly good for gaming too.
  So even tho I hate the "ai" branding it's actually a very very good CPU and GPU
  
  Framework tried to design a version that worked with SODIMM with AMD but the performance was seriously hampered, and the plan was dropped.
  
  What I'm hearing is that Framework chose power over user-replaceability, and that really seems to go against their mission. The specs sheet on the Framework Desktop is something par for the course with another company.
  I don't doubt that the Desktop is good for LLMs and gaming, but that's beside the point for me personally.
- I have a similar experience. I was saving up for a framework 13 for a general more ethical option, but that AI mini PC was extremely disappointing and got me more radicalized into free (libre) software as a consequence. Could you clarify the white supremacy and transphobia? I usually concern myself with strictly free software, so I'm unaware of such controversies.
  
  Hyprland is the project associated with Transphobia. To put it delicately, the original developer was so cringe to the point that others didn't want to work on the project.
  DHH is the developer who is associated with White Supremacy, as he started making overtly white suprematist comments on social media.

I'll admit I'm not up to date on the hyprland/vaxry lore -- but I don't understand the level of outrage based on this article...
I'm also not sure why the sponsorship of a software project is necessarily being treated as a 100% endorsement of both the maintainers and their alleged views.
I'm also not sure if infighting and purity testing will help the movement(s) right now. Once it's the norm, sure, but it's still a relatively fringe movement within the industry.
Edit (2025-10-15@20:14): At the time of writing my comment, I was both unaware (and uninformed) on the DHH side of this topic. While I still think the level of outrage is maybe a melodramatic, the push back seems more warranted than it initially seemed to me. I still don't know much about DHH beyond Rails (and even then, not much); but from what I've seen since my comment, the response is more understandable.
- Most of the discourse was about Omarchy/DHH, not just Hyprland, though that was a part of it. It is not purity testing to block people who don't work well with others or are hateful like DHH from a community. If you want to bring people who want us dead into a community then everyone else is going to leave
  The main problem is
  Np contributed to and glazes Omarchy
  People wonder why DHH was sponsored with hardware
  Generic response about "big tent" ideology to include everyone - including racists and transphobes like DHH
  People are upset because they don't want to be in a Nazi Bar
  NP makes twitter post about how people want to ascribe values to him he doesn't hold, that he's pro immigrant and pro lgbt
  Np responds in forum thread that they reviewed hyprland and determined that theyd improved their moderation and were ok to sponsor (monetarily)
  Framework responds they'll make a blog post clarifying their sponsorships
  Blog post coincidentally excludes omarchy
  People question it and basically just get a "we will get that updated" response
  I still dont see it there
  You cant claim to be pro immigrant and pro lgbt when you actively invite white supremacists and transphobes into the community and then try to avoid responsibility for that by not commenting or not retracting support or not clarifying how you'd avoid it going forward
  The project may not be political (it is) but the people who use and support the project definitely are. If you want to kick out the community by inviting Nazis, then all that will be left once those people leave will be nazis. And if you knowingly collaborate with Nazis, you are a nazi.
  
  I still dont see it there
  Because the "update" to the blog post was:
  Note that this list does not include products sent for marketing use or R&D use
  As a way to not talk about DHH/Omarchy directly, or the promotion they were doing (which was many times more than anything else they were talking about).
  
  The main problem is ...
  I'll admit, I only vaguely know of DHH by name and Rails, vaguely remember the Omarchy announcement, and that's about it. I seem to recall Prime referencing DHH's controversial opinions, but I can't say I've gone any deeper than that.
  If the discourse really is primarily focused on DHH/Omarchy, then I guess I just misunderstood this post/title & the article...or just don't have the full context regardless.
- if I dip a pH strip in my drinking water and it indicates my water is acidic, am I not entitled to stop drinking from that source because it failed my purity test?
  
  Let's not confuse "entitled" with "justified". Of course you are legally entitled to boycott whatever you want, nobody seems to question that. The issue is whether or not you can be legitimately criticism for it.
  Suppose that you had 20 glasses, you tested 4 of them and found that 2 were "too acidic". Are you then justified in drinking the other 18 glasses?
  The reality is that you have probably personally supported people who are far more egregious than the subjects here. Abusers, murderers, rapists, etc... Is your support of them an endorsement of their actions? Is your/societies providing medical care to these people an endorsement of their actions?
  No. We can parse between what actions we endorse and what actions we don't, because we are rational beings. Or rather some of us are.
- You're right, we should let it build up fascist momentum and then change it from within later
- Þe comments devolved into flamewars, but it boils down to: if you take money I spend wiþ you and give it to people who want to oppress me, I'm going to stop buying your product.
  Þe issue isn't Framework using Hyprland or Omarchy; it's þat þey're giving computers and money - material support - and moral support by talking þose projects up in social media (especially Omarchy).
  Þere's a big difference between using FOSS led by a politically controversial figure, and sending the figure money. Especially when þat money derives from customers said figure openly claims to want to oppress.
  
  Yeah, sometimes its not practical avoiding certain projects (see fucking JavaScript), but promoting and funding is a major barrier and red flag...
  Offtopic, but whats up with the cyrilic looking character you are using? Is it to fuck with bots or something else entirely?
  
  Using thorn in English is a pathetic bid to appear smart.
- If we deleted everything written by insufficiently pure developers, we wouldn't have a Linux desktop. Especially if we count the ones that were smart enough to not bring up anything political in public.
  Not a fan of DHH, but then you delete Rails then there's no GitHub, GitLab, Mastodon, and many many other things given how popular Rails is, and that's just that one guy.
  If you include all the sketchy stuff that happens in the supply chain mining the minerals, processing, assembly all the way up to the final computer product, you just can't morally justify supporting any manufacturer either.
  This really doesn't do anything useful other than feeling good to not support one of those guys. If anything it just adds extra political drama that feeds into a much bigger worldwide division problem.
  
  @MaxP @stewie410 This is just wrong. Taking a stand against things like this causes change for the better in the long run. Rails will survive without DHH, like Linux survived without Reiserfs and MySQL survived after Larry Ellison. There may be some pain involved, but we owe it to ourselves to tread the better path, and make bad people just socially unacceptable.
  
  The people who pretend that they can keep politics out of their life are always the people who are benefiting from the current political system. Nobody else in the world is so ignorant.
  
  The developers of those projects would have just chosen a different language if Rails never existed.

Kindof amusing to see people call "purity testing" on people who object to someone who's quoted as being upset by checks notes a lack racial or ethnic purity.
[Sarcasm] C'mon everyone, can't we just get along and hold hands with racists and other people who consider the rest of us subhuman? As long as what they're doing doesn't bother me personally you're all overreacting and fragmenting this ~~nazi bar~~ community!
Edits: fiddling with phrasing :-\
- It's called the tolerance of intolerance.

The problem here isn't that Framework failed to keep track of the ideology espoused by every major developer on the projects they contributed to or endorsed, which, to be honest, isn't something I'd expect of them. The problem (as usual for a corporation) is how they handled complaints. Trying to sweep stuff under the rug in the Internet age just results in someone setting the rug on fire. If instead, Framework's response had been "We're sorry, we didn't know, we won't give money or free advertising to any projects this guy is involved with from now on," the whole mess would have died down by now except for a few people grumbling about how they should do more research before sending money out.

People here complaining about purity testing even though really it's just poison testing.
The standard isn't even if it's pure in ideology it's to test is not poisonous.

I don't buy from fascist supporters if I can help it. Screw Framework

its because tech companies are generally so out if touch with their userbase

Context for those OOTL
DHH Is Way Worse Than I Thought
DHH: "London is no longer the city I was infatuated with in the late ’90s and early 2000s. Chiefly because it’s no longer full of native Brits. In 2000, more than sixty percent of the city were native Brits. By 2024, that had dropped to about a third. A statistic as evident as day when you walk the streets of London now."
Author: It turns out that when DHH says “native Brits”, he’s specifically referring to white Brits. That’s why it’s “a statistic as clear as day when you walk the streets of London”: it’s his coy way of saying that too many of the 59% of Londoners born and raised in the UK are not white.
So if David means “white Brits”, why doesn’t he just say that? Why bother with the innuendo Because complaining that there aren’t enough white people sounds weird and racist! David bristles at that label, but there’s a reason he’s hiding behind euphemisms rather than just saying what he means. Most people don’t go around thinking “boy, all these Black and Asian people make this city so much worse.”
- Well, u should watch Kurt Caz on youtube. Checkout London, Barcelona, Brussel. Then tell me that there isn't a problem going on. Racism is not to be defended, but you can't just call everything racism when countries are going to shit.
  
  But is the reason these countries are "going to shit" race related? And what exactly does "going to shit" mean?
  Since you referenced Kurt Caz, a notorious racist and xenophobe, I'm guessing your answer is yes and "less white", but us adults in the room wonder about the real issues and their causes.
  
  "You can't call everything racism!"
  looks inside
  Blatant Racism
  mfw europeans are hitlerite
  
  Already DHH take it easy.
  https://youtu.be/6SOXLfbgAZ4
  
  Last I visited, Barcelona was beautiful and the people living there adored it. London isn't terrible either, although housing is extortionate due to 'investors' and landlords

DHH is such a shit heel.

There's a scene in The Good Place where they find nobody goes to heaven anymore because every act they do, no matter how much they're trying to do good, has a lot of negative baggage attached which nobody could track and that counts as a sin of the person anyway.
- That old dude getting bullied by the kid was pretty impactful for me. I felt like going full TJ Miller in silicone valley and slapping the little shit and telling him to get me some Adderall.

Here‘s my take as a relatively tech savvy guy with no introspective into the Linux scene and its political affiliation: I’ll buy framework products because of the repairability and upgradability as long as I can run whatever I want on it.
Most consumers that are sustainability minded (like myself) have no clue what hyprland or omarchy is.
I’m sure it’s a big deal within a small niche but the average consumer won’t know or care.
- literally how fascists make their money
- But now that you are aware but you choose to bury your head in the sand. Okay…
  We already know people like you already made up your mind. What's the point of this comment? Was this post going to stop you?
  
  To be honest i just read some abbreviations and terms i dont understand and I really do not have the time to go down the rabbit hole.
  I just wanted to add a viewpoint to the discussion that the potential commercial target group larger is than the bubble in which some of the people here seem to be. I find this legitimate.
- I would agree if they weren't FUNDING Nazis. That's coming out of the cost of your laptop buddy
  
  Wait is Vaxry really a fascist? I always got weird vibes over on discord server( I was one of the earliest adapters to Hyprland). I did hear some transphobic allegations, but I thought that was it and Vaxry went on to implement stricter moderation?
  If so, that really sucks. Hyprland is probably the best Wayland Window manager.

Does anybody have a source of the direct sponsorship to Obarchy. All I found was a couple of Twitter posts.
- I detailed it out in comments elsewhere, but Omarchy was not directly financially supported. It did receive outsized promotion (not just a few twitter posts), but the real telling part is in events.
  Rails World (where DHH was the keynote speaker) received more than DebConf, KDE Akademy, Open Source Hardware Summit, the Linux Foundation, and the Linux Vendor Firmware Service combined.
  For a hardware company, thats kinda weird. Hackaday Supercon and Hack Club were the only ones to receive more than RailsWorld. Hackaday makes clear sense, and I would say Hack Club does as well. Rails World though? How?
  And one more bit to note - nrp has acknowledged that FW provided DHH with equipment, but oddly, that was left off the list, despite listing others such as 1 unit to Nixcon, 3 units to LabsCon, and 2 to RISC-V International.
- Looks like they didn't sponsor Omarchy, but they did promote it on their twitter a couple of times: https://x.com/FrameworkPuter/status/1960029405067313546
  
  Mostly right, it was also far more than anything else brought up by FW twitter, but there was financial support in hardware as well (mentioned by nrp, and oddly enough, not detailed in the blog post).
  As well as one other item (quoting myself here):
  Rails World (where DHH was the keynote speaker) received more than DebConf, KDE Akademy, Open Source Hardware Summit, the Linux Foundation, and the Linux Vendor Firmware Service combined.

I don't support the views of the endorsed projects, but surely a better reaction would be to suggest alternatives instead of just screaming for outright dismissal? I keep reading that "omarchy is just a bunch of scripts" and "hyperland is just one tiling window manager". If that's the case, there probably are better alternatives no? Or if it's as easy as described why not fork it?
Complaining without an alternative or a solution is not productive, IMO
- Complaining without an alternative or a solution is ~~not productive~~ how internet outrage operates, IMO
  FTFY
  And yeah, Framework is one of the few manufacturers designing specifically for Linux compatibility and repairability, and omarchy/hyprland Devs are apparently shitty people. If you think they shouldn't be associated, suggest a different project not run by (possibly) literal Nazis instead of foaming at the mouth and screaming incoherently... doesn't seem that difficult.
  
  This is the biggest issue with niche communities: purity tests. They can't unite under one goal and have productive discussions. They are more focused on being correct (their interpretation of correct) and shutting out the incorrect than getting closer to a goal. Sometimes incorrect can be as little as choosing the wrong utility and other times it can be much bigger but they all spark the same amount of ire.

I don't even understand what the article said! Bro we are cooked so bad with politics.
- Yeah, cause people like you want to pretend that everything isn't political.
  Enjoy your modular laptop with the Nazi takeover. So glad you're above it all. Tell us the aromatic profile of your flatulence again.
  
  Relax men! I put limit on politics and where I use it, because on the end I will have no life.

Politics in my [insert literally fuckin anything]? It's more likely than you think!
- everything is political. anyone who says different is shitting themselves or selling you something.
  
  That was literally the point lol
- being kind is actually not political. By definition if someone hates people for anything other than what they do or say.. then its the person who creates the political cloud.

People have opinions. More news at 11
- The opinion being debated: "is transphobia bad?"
  
  Can you link me to the transphobia? Is it this? https://world.hey.com/dhh/bad-therapy-08849dc9

Imagine the downfall of framework being the donations made to some obscure (tankie?) dev that a part of the community does not agree with. This toxic "holier than thou" attitude of the linux community leads to fragmentation and will be the doom of the linux phone project too, I swear. Someone will find an obscure package developed by an asshole/tankie/nazi/whatever and will rage about how the project is now immoral because the project devs support it and insist on a public boycott. Why do some people seem to be unable to separate the software from the developer? Framework or the software dev is not your friend. Is their hardware/software decent and open? Cool, then keep using it, tankie devs be damned, or at least fork it and make your own morally pure version. But this endless bickering over what devs support will lead to nothing good.
- completely ignores that its about the donations and not "just" using their software.
- Letting shit slide will lead to nothing good.
- Nah

Yeah good luck with that. The righteous left doesn't want empathetic coexistence with alternative views any more than the immoral right does.
DHH has fairly normal right wing views. Nobody has been able to point me to anything so objectionable that should mean he is excluded from the community. The worst I could find is that he thinks it would be better if London was predominantly native British, which I don't think is an out-there idea.
These inclusive communities have to learn to be more actually inclusive. It's ok to ban him if he's harassing people due to their political views in the Ruby community, but it looks like all he did was post some moderately right-wing views on his blog.
Not going to hold my breath though.
I don't know anything about the Hyprland guy but I wouldn't be surprised if it's a similar story.
- https://jakelazaroff.com/words/dhh-is-way-worse-than-i-thought/
  If ethnic cleansing constitutes "fairly normal right-wing views," then right wingers have no place in polite, civil society because they support a violent, genocidal ideology bent on destroying Western Civilization. How can we have empathetic coexistence, for example, in a government that forcably disappears legal non-white immigrants and sends them to labor camps via federally funded masked thugs operating in unmarked vans? How can anyone peacefully coexist with a group that only wants to make space in society for white Americans and is willing to achieve those ends violently and extralegally?
  It didn't used to be this way. Right-wingers can go back to peaceful coexistence when they put aside the supremacist and nationalist viewpoints and return to advocating for low taxes and small government without excluding entire groups of people. But make no mistake, the Right -- the intolerant ones -- have to change first. The fact that you think that this is "normal" is a chilling indictment of modern society. At this rate, in 10 years you'll think unelected leaders, concentration camps and death by firing squad is "normal" too.
  
  Thanks for posting the blogpost -- when I checked this thread originally (and the article), I seemed to have missed the focus on DHH. Admittedly, I just don't know much about him -- though, I'm starting to get an idea why this blew up so much.
  
  Damn I had no idea it was the Ruby-on-Rails creator everyone was talking about. I just finished making my portfolio in Ruby-on-Rails wth...
- I don't coexist with people who literally want my friends and loved ones (and people I don't even know, because it doesn't really matter) dead.
  
  Good policy, but where did he ever say that?
- The worst I could find is that he thinks it would be better if London was predominantly native British, which I don't think is an out-there idea.
  If that doesn't sound racist to you, I have bad news for you.
  
  No I don't think it's racist to want to live in a city that is predominantly occupied by similar people to you. I think his stats are wrong - London is still mostly British people (at least it was when I last went). But imagine if it was like 95% Indian people. That would a huge change and a big cultural shift and yes I think it's ok to object to that with instantly becoming racist.
- I merely want to hang black people from trees while wearing a white robe! Why does THE LEFT have to be so intolerant?!
  
  Yeah that would be reasonable if he actually did want to hang black people from trees.
- Given that I've never seen you in the Ruby, Rails, or Sinatra communities, I'm going to guess that you aren't actually part of this conversation. Also, you've been fairly obvious in your cryptofascism since this Lemmy instance was set up; you're one of several users that have ensured that programming.dev has a fairly bad federated reputation, and I'm not sure that anybody really cares whether you're included given that you don't appear to publish Free Software or anything else useful.
  
  you’ve been fairly obvious in your cryptofascism
  Wow first time I've been accused of fascism! Quite riduclous.
- he thinks it would be better if London was predominantly native British
  Interesting choice of words.

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