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Screenshot of a Mastodon toot by @ebassi@mastodon.social:
The whole open source community loves Milkshake Laptops, a lovely laptop company that has ethical values! 5 seconds later We regret to inform you the laptop company stans fascists
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From what I read, it sounds like they were supporting a bunch of different projects based on “oh hey this is kind of neat and could be useful” and didn’t really look in to the background of the relevant devs.
The thread on their forum reads like them wandering in to something, reading the objection as some obscure beef and running the standard PR approach without really realizing what a mess they just stuck their foot into.
Hopefully their cage will be rattled enough to look in to it and pull back.
Yeah the user who responds by saying:
This is not a “I do not like this distribution” kind of argument.
This is a “the people you are sending my money to want me and my friends dead or deported” kind of argument.
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.
Kind of nails it I think. For what it’s worth I don’t think there’s any malicious intent on Framework’s part necessarily, I think maybe they’ve just naively stepped on a bit of a landmine? But still, not ideal.
Someone else struck an important chord:
Additional edit: I think it’s quite telling that a community response of “I’m not happy with this development, please consider changing your mind or I’m going to spend my money elsewhere” is now being met in this thread with responses including inflammatory fascist and racist talking points, transphobia, etc, while Framework says and does nothing about it. It shows exactly the sorts of things Framework is permitting in their “big tent” by rewarding right-wing extremists with money and sponsorship. What a way to tank a community that – a few years ago at least – seemed pretty welcoming and inclusive.
The community defense is riddled with typical far-right talking points. “What do you mean you don’t want to include literal nazis in your community? What ever happened to tolerance?”
This is very in the weeds. They sponsor open source projects as a little side thing. One of the projects they sponsored is very bad, and they were publicly called out about it less than 24 hours ago. Not even enough time to make a proper response. I can’t even find on their website where they list the open source projects they sponsor. Open source sponsorship was never a major part of their business.
This is very new news. Give them time and form your opinion on their response. Its likely that only a small subset of the team works on open source sponsorship, so most of those in charge of the company were likely unaware until now.
edit: fixed several undecillion minor typos
first of all, its two projects. second both got most promotion by them then other projects they sponsered. third their official people (not sure how high up but still) have responded in the thread badly. fourth the thread has no positive affirmation that they care about the fascism support but more “this specific case is probably not that”, its not hard to say u dont support fascists
The assumption is that they believe a not-insignificant portion of their customers are fascist or fascist-adjacent.
If everyone upset about this boycotted and tanked their bottom line, they’d probably shift gears in a heartbeat.
But I suspect that the number of fascist/fascist-adjacent customers is high enough that they need both groups’ money to survive.
Most of the laptops framework sells are sold with a windows license. Only a small subset of their small subset of Linux customers are technical enough to consider which compositor they’re using, and even fewer of them are even aware that hyperland exists and is a fascist project.
This is very in the weeds. Considering this deliberately marketing to fascists, or indicative of the company’s assumptions about their customers broadly is an insane stretch.
Framework sells microsoft products in their store, when microsoft is actively involved in helping the IDF commit genocide in Gaza. Framework bundles microsoft products in the pre-built versions of their computers. That is far more indicative of their attitudes to their customers than their donations to open source.
Keep the pressure on, do what you can to make open source better and uninviting to fascists, but keep perspective of reality while you do it.
Most of the laptops framework sells are sold with a windows license.
Is this true? I thought they were specifically marketed to tech people because of the repairability and modularity. I didn’t even know Windows users were aware that Framework exists.
context: https://lemmy.world/post/37098894
If the community reacts super strongly to this before framework even has the chance to properly investigate, respond, and react to this kind of issue, why would they ever want to risk investing in open source projects in the future? Come on, people. Give them time and if you have to hate on a company hate on the bigger ones that do these sorts of things on purpose and get away with it. I understand informing Framework and putting pressure on them to fix things, but there’s such a thing as going too far.
They already made one (very poor) response and that’s what’s got most people doubling down to keep the pressure on them to change their stance. I really dont see how a bunch of forum posts could possibly be “too far”.
Please don’t keep this title if the post reaches the frontpages
It has only been 12h, and they only put up one (awful) placeholder response. Give them a bit of time to look into things before telling the headline-readers to never buy their stuff
i haven’t told anyone to do anything; but even then, shouldn’t it be goal to put pressure on them so they change course?
Maybe I’m being a bit too nervous, but companies like Fairphone or Framework rely on goodwill from technical people who are ready to pay more for less stuff to encourage their politics. If poeple categorize them as non-rule, they are not going to pay the premium. I think, for a lemmy user, that would set the odds of buying at near-0. again, maybe i’m being too dramatic
I agree that putting pressure this way is a good thing, but the pressure needs to be conditional. If you just mark them as dead before giving them a chance to correct course, they are better off reaching all the way for the customer base of “apolitical” users. The ebassi screen has a parodic tone that reduces the certainty and definitiveness (people will just put FW into question rather than fully discard it. i think), and avoids citing the name directly, limiting the damage to people who already have some understanding of the situation
anyways at this point I think there is enough threat to elicit a reaction on their part, and that we should wait for them before burning everything down. and I hope they can just have a quick fact check and everything will be fine and they will actually have money to donate because they won’t if they keep up the vibe of the first response
I’m being way overinvested ok byeee
companies like Fairphone or Framework rely on goodwill from technical people who are ready to pay more for less stuff to encourage their politics. If poeple categorize them as non-rule, they are not going to pay the premium.
Then they REALLY should have thought of that before they fucked the goat.
God damn it, Framework, cmon
I cannot understand why Nirav, the head of the company, would weigh in here instead of having the PR/Marketing team
ofor someone come up with an answer for this. Made it so much worse and I have such a bad feeling about them now.Maybe some Ben Franklin will help them “It takes many good deeds to build a reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.” “Never ruin an apology with an excuse.”
Here’s hoping for a new official response that takes these concerns much more seriously and commits to a structure that doesnt allow for these types of issues to come up again. I had just finally decided on framework for my next laptop, but I’ll happily spend my money elsewhere if this isnt resolved very differently from how they first hoped to sweep it away.
Sorry to disappoint you, but, well… https://community.frame.work/t/framework-supporting-far-right-racists/75986/28
I wouldn’t call that an official response.
A deeply concerning response from the CEO, but a forum response isn’t the same as an announcement about policy change or something.
Im mad but I’m willing to give them time to grapple with the realities of the box they opened to see how they attempt to close it.
As another example of this sort of thing, shopify, cloudflare, futo, jetbrains are sponsoring ladybird, while Kling apparently shares DHH’s views. It’s definitely generally bad to support a project led by this sort of person, and now that they know about it I think they should stop, but idk if i’d condemn the whole company over it. Especially as it often requires quite a bit of research to find out about that sort of stuff unless you were there when the social media drama happened.
i don’t think unknowingly supporting shitty people is that bad. mistakes happen, after all.
knowingly supporting shitty people, and then saying it’s fine because you’re wanting to create a big tent that includes everyone, even fascists, is bad! very bad!
while Kling apparently shares DHH’s views
Who are those people and why are their views important?
Anyone want to give some context here?
I dunno man, people being furious about a very loose potential fascist association in an open source project while using a platform whose lead developer is a tankie. Kinda wild yelling at framework while supporting people who deny China’s human rights abuses.
Wut
Without arguing politics, the world is sliding very quickly towards facism and being on guard against it is incredibly important. I’m not buying a laptop and putting money in the pockets of someone who may then donate to or fund facism. None of that applies to a developer of a free open source software whose political ideal world is not rapidly approaching.
So tell me: What laptop will you buy? C’mon, drop a brand name, that is not somehow associated to fascists.
Yeah: literally the only thing the developer of Lemmy gains from people using their software is kudos as a techie.
Letting that person feel a bit better because of having another user is a universe away in terms of “supporting” them from actually funding them.
How is using Lemmy supporting the tankie devs? I am not donating money or hardware to them.
Every time someone finds Lemmy for the first time, they have a chance to start with Lemmy.ml . It’s kind of like how reading used Harry Potter books and talking about the stories indirectly keep it relevant and enrich JK through mercy, licenses, etc…
if system76 turns out to be shitheads imma blow up the earth with a illudium q-36 explosive space modulator
I doubt system76 would make the mistake, primarily because they have no reason whatsoever to fund any other distro and DE other than Pop_OS and Cosmic.
they personally fucked me over years ago on a screen replacement i was willing to pay for.
they wanted to charge me 600 usd just for the panel that was available on aliexpress for 80
ended up doing it myself, and then spending 80k usd on a different company’s hardware for the company i worked for that used linux desktops
I have a big tent too but you know who’s not under it? Fascists
