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Comment by mort96 | Hacker News Reader

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if you're going to hold Framework to that standard, wouldn't you also agree that buying a Lenovo machine would be indirectly supporting an authoritarian government with a troubling human-rights record?

You're typically not buying a Framework just because you like the hardware. Framework represents a political project, so you typically buy Framework because you support their values and politics. I don't.

You can rationalise your decision however you want, but to me it sounds like you're mad with the little guy for their lack of moral purity, but you're implicitly fine with a larger company doing much worse. That seems inconsistent at best.

You may find it inconsistent, and that's fine. But I do actually find it worse to buy from the explicitly political pro-fascist company than to buy from the "normal company" which just "incidentally" benefit fascist governments through their normal business operations.

I don’t see any mention of their explicit support for fascism on their homepage, can you justify this claim?

They haven't exactly been quiet about it. Here are some links;

* https://x.com/FrameworkPuter/status/1960029405067313546

* https://x.com/FrameworkPuter/status/1975721241345728683

* https://bsky.app/profile/frame.work/post/3lvm6ahbrf22n

* https://community.frame.work/t/framework-supporting-far-righ...

So in other words you've got nothing? There is literally nothing in your links that backs up your claims.

So conferences in every western country should also not invite Chinese or Japanese speakers because they hold similar views to DHH? I'm so over this exhausting need to feel self-righteous.

Hm? My claim is that they back Omarchy and DHH, I think my links back that up?

And that is not a transitive property which then means Framework supports fascism. The US buys from China, does that mean we support communism?

International trade is extremely complex, funding and publicizing a project is not. Framework supports DHH, both financially and in terms of publicity. That's not something I wanna support.

The mental gymnastics and contortions you are putting yourself through are quite stunning. You're finding associations that do not exist. I feel I'm staring at a wall strewn with thumb-tacked red yarn, linking all sorts of nonsense together while the creator steps back and exclaims "see, proof!".

Framework makes hardware and software. If you're going to close yourself off to any product or organization that happens to have some users you disagree with - then you're not going to get very far in this world. This is a wild, and frankly unhealthy perspective to hold.

Please explain which associations I'm finding which do not exist.

> If you're going to close yourself off to any product or organization that happens to have some users you disagree with

I do not see where I mentioned Framework users. I care about the actions of the company. I care that they decide to support DHH, financially and through promoting his projects, and I care that they double down on their support in the face of push-back.

> double down on their support in the face of push-back.

Because the push-back was dumb. This idea what we have to isolate and attack every person that we don't agree with is dumb. That you consider DHH's position on immigration sufficient to label him a fascist is dumb. All of it is moral showboating with no actual substance, otherwise you'd put your money where you mouth is and not purchase from most companies in the world that work with actual fascist regimes.

I respectfully disagree with your opinion on the matter.

Your claim was that they explicitly support fascism. That doesn't seem to be the case at all. What you seem to mean instead is: They financially support a popular open source project called Omarchy, which is built by DHH, and you believe DHH to be a fascist.

You're welcome to your opinion, and I have zero insight into whether DHH is a fascist or not, but by no means is that explicit support for fascism! It's not just exaggeration, it's actually a lie.

If you buy a machine from Framework you might indirectly support a project which is maintained by someone whose opinions you dislike.

If you buy a Lenovo machine you will contribute to the revenue of an authoritarian government that will use some of that money to perpetuate human rights abuses against its own citizens, and maybe the citizens of your own country too one day.

Which is the most moral choice here in your opinion?

I didn't say they explicitly support fascism. I said they are explicitly political, and they are pro-fascism.

Ok, sorry I misread what you wrote. The question stands though

I mean I already answered that, didn't I? I find it worse to buy from the explicitly political pro-fascist company than to buy from the "normal company" which just "incidentally" benefit fascist governments through their normal business operations.

To exaggerate, we could imagine that there was an explicitly nazi computer manufacturer who put swastika stickers on their laptops and everything. When faced with the choice of Lenovo and this explicitly nazi manufacturer, I would probably choose the Lenovo, even though you could probably do the same consequentialist math and conclude that Lenovo does more actual harm through their utility to the CCP than what the tiny nazi computer company can do. I imagine you feel the same way.

What Framework does is obviously way less egregious than my hypothetical example, but I'm still not comfortable associating with a company which so publicly funds DHH, for the same kind of reason that I would not be comfortable associating with the nazi computer company.

Thanks for bearing with me, I am sincerely trying to understand your mindset here.

So this is really a signalling thing? If you bought a Framework laptop you'd be signalling to your peers that you're ambivalent about supporting an ideology that obviously you fundamentally disagree with and is unanimously despised within your groups?

By buying a Framework laptop I'm signaling to Framework that I don't care about their support of the ideology. My ideal outcome here would be that Framework's support of DHH would directly and unambiguously result in a dramatic loss of sales, which would signal to the world that supporting such ideologies is toxic to your brand.

And, sure, my peers play a role too. What message do I send, for example, to my transgender friends when I demonstrate that I don't mind Framework's public support of DHH's public transphobic rhetoric? What message do I send to my non-white friends when I demonstrate that I don't mind Framework's public support of DHH's public "the UK was better when it was all white" rhetoric? Et cetera.

I don't know... As someone who many people would characterize as "way too woke", this doesn't really quite ruin Framework for me (though I don't own any of their products).

DHH is certainly an ass, and this is my first time reading about the racist stuff (before this I just found him generally extremely unlikable), but just general association with someone with shitty opinions doesn't fully ruin a project for me. I guess Omarchy is popular nowadays (I'm really not sure why, if someone really knows, please explain), people are going to want to use it on their Framework computers, ergo: Framework has a reason to cooperate with Omarchy developers so their devices work like the customers want them to, and I guess I'm fine with it even if DHH leaves a bad taste in my mouth...

I guess I sort of feel similar in regards to suckless, I don't really like most of their projects, from what I've heard there are some abhorrent people involved, but I wouldn't really put blame on the distro maintainer that packages their projects for their users to use, I guess?

Though, I definitely get why people might feel differently.

> bsky.app

That explains everything, no need to dig deeper.

I don't use Bluesky, I prefer Mastodon and frankly quite dislike Bluesky's faux-decentralization. But Framework uses Bluesky, so that's what I'm gonna link to when I wanna link to their posts.

Fascism is when Arch BTW

I bought my Framework 12 just because I like the hardware. It's so cute! And purple! The repairability is bonus.

Sure for similar reasons (+ few other) I'm moving away from Apple. Framework is no longer on my list.

I didn't hear about that and a simple search isn't surfacing that. Can you expand?

He's probably referencing Framework's involvement with Omarchy, which certain people had problems with.

I have a hard imagining a far right software project, can you explain this to me?

You should look into the political views of Omarchy's creator and sole developer, DHH

I tried, and all I found was some hearsay. Ethical concerns were raised by many publications without any specifics. Some mention the issue is building on top of hyprland, which (oh god, no) has some ethical issues.

I couldn't find anything specific.

Would appreciate a link to any based explanation

DHH made a blog post in which he implied (but did not state) that the UK isnt white enough anymore. Its gross and racist, but as far as I know this is all there is to the current controversy around him.

If you want to read the post, its here: https://web.archive.org/web/20250925050154/https://world.hey...

Thanks for sharing.

IMO, the implication is quite weak. The only place I found where the author mentions ethnicity, is when he refers to Pakistani rape gangs, and I assume, the choice if words is influenced by the article he links (can't verify, as the link to the article is broken).

Otherwise, this seems to me like an antiimmigration position, but I couldn't spot any racial or ethnical prejudice.

That's the dev not the project. Quickly looking over Omarchy I see nothing aligned with the political right. Could you link it to me?

The developer is the project.

Of course not, a project is removed from the person. Especially in open source.

I respect your opinion, but I disagree. It's not like DHH is just some contributor, he's the public face of the project and the person who stands to benefit from its success.

Can you elaborate on 1) What makes dhh far right? And 2) How that makes the omarchy or framework projects problematic?

1) he literally wrote a blog post complaining that London sucks because there are too many non-white people there. We're not talking about someone who is a bit conservative; we're talking about an explicitly racist person.

hyprland? That's ridiculous.

I would understand if it was Lunduke or XLibre folk, but that's a complete non-issue.

Omarchy. DHH is absolutely on the level of Lunduke.

I don't know, I dislike DHH and actively debated with him on many occasions, but I wouldn't put him on the same level as Lunduke.

I don't have time to go over everything. But here are some things:

* Here's his screed about how London was better before all the brown people moved in: https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64

* Here's your typical right-wing anti-DEI rant: https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-waning-days-of-dei-s-dominance...

I'm sure there's more stuff I could link, but I don't have the time right now to go looking for more. I think this should get the point across.

You don't seem to understand what fascism actually is. None of these things are that.

Even though I disagree with DHH on all of these topics I don't see how it's relevant to Free Software at all unless the distro were using the webcam and IP geolocation and refusing to work for brown people in England.

It's okay for you to disagree with me, I have explained my views.

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