In case you haven’t heard the news, Framework went and publicly sponsored Hyprland (the most toxic part of Wayland by a country mile) and openly shilled Omarchy multiple times (the pet project of fascist shithead David Heinemeier Hansson) recently.

In response to well-justified backlash against this, founder Nirav Patel responded with FOSSbro platitudes about “[creating] a big tent" for open source”.

If you’ve got any more updates on this self-inflicted shitshow, put them here so they can be collected in one place.

(In retrospect, that AI-pilled Framework Desktop should’ve been a major red flag they were gonna pull this shit.)

EDIT: Found a solid summary of the situation in the wild - recommend checking it out.

  • treeofnik@discuss.online
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    1 day ago

    I had a pre-order of the next gen framework 16, but have since cancelled… Came back to see if there had been any updates since the first day for forum discussion, disappointing that they are doubling down.

  • Galactose@sopuli.xyz
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    1 day ago

    Big tent ?? At this point even neutral are better. Oh wait, Lunduke is so… gonna react to this

  • cornflake@awful.systems
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    2 days ago

    This reply is worth quoting at length:

    With all due respect, I think you profoundly misunderstand the nature of my concern here.

    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.

    I have no problem with Fedora, Bluefin, Bazzite, Arch Linux, Linux Mint, Linux Foundation, LVFS, Debian, KDE… What I have a problem is with Framework consistently, repeatedly encouraging and now sponsoring individuals that have shown to be absolutely destructive to the open source community.

    Claiming that this “increasing the adoption of open source software” really misses the core part of the narrative here, which is that those people have been excluded from open source communities because they were so hateful, so destructive, that their mere presence was more harmful than beneficial.

    DHH is a threat to the free software community as a whole at this point. The damage he ended up doing to the Ruby community might end up outweighing entirely his contributions to Rails, which is no small feat.

    Vaxry (from hyprland) was banned from freedesktop.org, wrecking havoc in standardizing Wayland protocols that the whole community could have benefited from.

    If you believe helping and sponsoring those people helps the open source community, we have quite divergent views on the best way forward and, perhaps, it is best if you concentrate on making hardware and leave the open source community alone.

    In any case, thanks for your quick response, @nrp, and thanks for building those awesome products.

    • Mii@awful.systems
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      2 days ago

      “[I]ncreasing the adoption of open source software” is such a bullshit argument here anyway, holy shit lol.

      They’re not sponsoring Asahi Linux or FOSS Nvidia drivers but DHH’s fucking Arch setup and Ratpoison but worse and with rounded corners.

      • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsOP
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        2 days ago

        “[I]ncreasing the adoption of open source software” is such a bullshit argument here anyway, holy shit lol.

        Not to mention, actively welcoming Nazis into the open source bar is gonna achieve the exact goddamn opposite of increasing adoption, by driving away marginalised users, introducing unnecessary security risks, actively rotting communities from the inside, and God-only-knows-what-else.

      • Charlie@social.bitsnbytes.dev
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        2 days ago

        @mii @cornflake

        “We did not realize the ethics of the individuals that were behind these organizations; we’re sorry we should have investigated organizations better prior to donating to them. We will better research organizations in the future and we have stopped funding for these two groups”.

        That. Is that so fucking difficult for them to say?

        I’ve been checking the thread over the last couple days expecting something like that from them, but nope. Nothing yet.

        • MrSmith@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          I don’t think it’s an “oopsie”. Their main channels are still on Twitter, and the CEO is now farming compassion from the Twitter fash.

        • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsOP
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          2 days ago

          At this point, I’m gonna stop extending benefit of the doubt - Framework’s choice to actively advance fascist interests, and double down when called out, is proof enough for me that they’re fascists themselves.

  • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago

    The absolute shitshow that’s been some of the most visible open source projects recently just reinforces my thoughts that one cannot establish trust (and therefore support) with any project leads unless they show their political affiliations upfront. The same way we demand to see a Foss license, we should expect to see what kind of person someone is before we use our community support to elevate them in any position of technical authority.

    • vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 days ago

      Yes this completely sucks. I assume most open source projects are run by leftists of some kind and hate finding out I’m wrong.

      I have a framework 13 that I planned to use for years to come.

      Really wish they would have at least corrected this shit when it was pointed out to them.

      Guess I’m just going to run this thing until it breaks but they won’t be getting any more of my money.

    • rook@awful.systems
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      3 days ago

      Shoutout to gleam.run whose web page has always (AFAIK) said

      Black lives matter. Trans rights are human rights. No nazi bullsh*t.

  • net00@lemmy.today
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    3 days ago

    So they need my money to make their tent bigger, and inside that tent they let racists and toxic fuckers in?

    Very fortunate that I have not given them a cent.

    • mybuttnolie@sopuli.xyz
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      3 days ago

      I was so close to ordering a framework 16 the other day, but got a strange feeling in my gut and backed off just before paying. maybe I’ll just settle for a used lenovo. it was food poisoning btw.

  • Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    3 days ago

    Is this the same Framework that develops very promising modular and repairable laptops, one of three companies to do so? If so… Fuck.

        • Bilb!@lemmy.ml
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          21 hours ago

          These are expensive and not especially performant, though. Cool, but not the most practical choice on any kind of budget.

          • istewart@awful.systems
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            18 hours ago

            Agreed on pricing, but something this low-volume is always unfortunately going to struggle. The RockChip stuff is a current darling in the FOSS-compatible hardware scene, but I’m not super enthusiastic about it yet. If there isn’t an OS image you like, you’ve got to cobble one together with U-Boot and the DDR support blobs, which is a circa-1999 level of “fun”

            • SatyrSack@quokk.au
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              1 day ago

              I think the transparent keycaps around the trackball are also contributing to the revulsion. Not sure why that does not seem to be a configurable option at the time of purchase, but there are probably aftermarket keycaps you could get if needed.

          • HyperlinkYourHeart@lemmy.ml
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            1 day ago

            Yeah it wouldn’t be for me tbh. It looks like a luggable from the 90s. Their new one looks somewhat better but I think it is only available for preorder at the moment.

      • Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 days ago
        1. Shift, an ecoconscious, as-yet untainted tech brand from Germany
        2. I thought Lenovo, but I seem to be wrong - they were playing with concepts, nothing on the market yet.
        • If you wish to buy from Shift you might need to enable a translator, as I believe their store is only in German.
        • The only by me some people have picked at in terms of Shift’s ethical values is that they manufacture in China, but they maintain that their labour standards within the factory are kept high
      • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 days ago

        HP launched modular laptop, and Dell did a concept.

        Of course, this is largely in response to Framework. Not like they’d do it on their own.

  • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    Well, I guess I’m at “we’ll see where this goes” stage, unfortunately, being the owner of a framework laptop that I absolutely love and have no intentions to get rid of and even if I wanted to I’m way too poor for that shit (buy nice not twice I understand F.Ws are expensive up front, still poor) that I bought as an upgradable laptop I can get (with my use case, longevity) prob like 15-20yr (no shit I can likely make it work as long as F.W exists, it replaced a 2014 toshiba and I got the 16 at launch [batch 15]), out of with upgrades to RAM/SSD, meaning I will continue to need some parts like bezels and expansion ports for a long time to come.

    If there were like, any other companies making upgradable and modular laptops, and I had bought them instead, great, but that isn’t reality and so I’m kinda locked in here.

    If a 3rd party started making shit (legally or not idgaf) like that and I can cut out the manufacturer, great. Also not current reality (beyond some actually pretty sweet .stl files.).

  • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    What’s it with fascists and unintuitive, keyboard-based user interaction? Is this a weird “gatekeeping” thing? Because I remember that in the late 2000’s, a lot of Linux forums had “let me google it for you” and pirated copies of Windows XP linked instead of getting an answer to your problem.

    • self@awful.systems
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      for them it’s absolutely about gatekeeping and control. keyboard interfaces can be cozy, easy to learn, and accessible — that’s what I aim for on my own computer, but I’ve never released the config because I know I’ve got a long way to go for all 3 (and I need to find a better base distro than NixOS).

      hyprland is a fucking terrible keyboard interface. here’s the example config file you’re meant to edit before first launch (good luck if you can’t use a non-graphical editor for accessibility reasons I guess). it’s an awful little inflexible domain-specific language (oh joy, back to the pre-xmonad days where everything complex is a shitty hack), most of the file is dedicated to defining a bunch of shitty animations and graphics, and the keybinding system — the point of a keyboard interface — is threadbare. this is designed by someone who cares very much about how their interface looks in a screenshot and not at all about how it feels to use.

      and all of the above is on purpose; if you can’t handle the intentionally regressive shittiness of hyprland, they want you to think it’s a skill issue. we know from the receipts that if you ask any of their core community for help, they’ll call you a slur. but even prospective hyprland lovers can’t stand this early-2000s compiz-brained shit, and that’s why they’re all very excited for omarchy, which is just arch linux bundled with DHH’s hyprland config that you can’t change.

      the developers of interfaces like hyprland claim to give you more control over your own computer, but hyprland does that very poorly compared with almost any other modern keyboard interface. the actual control they care about is over the ecosystem. hyprland is one of your only choices for a keyboard interface on Wayland; otherwise, you’re stuck with gnome or KDE or something unmaintained (e: I guess there’s sway? none of these options entice me to be honest) that doesn’t work with any applications cause Wayland is a goddamn mess. that’s a position of power in an isolated subculture, and fascists fucking love that.

      the hyprland developers were notoriously kicked out of contributing to FreeDesktop for being too toxic and disrupting the Wayland protocol design process (and I can’t imagine how toxic and disruptive you’d have to be to get kicked out of FreeDesktop of all orgs), and their push for popularity and the appearance of having distro support might be an effort to regain control there. Wayland protocols are an almost ideal way to create intentional incompatibilities and network effects. see also xlibre, which is building a weird fucked up ecosystem around itself even though it’s broken and pointless.

      • Seminar2250@awful.systems
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        1 day ago

        I guess there’s sway? none of these options entice me to be honest

        I used to use Sway. I found it tedious to configure several different things via config files. Kanshi in case you plug in a monitor, Waybar, Swaylock[1], etc. And, I may be misremembering, but you had to edit the Sway config to launch these programs at startup. There was just friction everywhere.

        I have been daily-driving COSMIC for about six months and it works pretty well, although there are infrequent crashes (less so since the beta release, I think). I like it as my tiling WM, but also occasional crashes don’t affect my workflow too badly.

        Wayland protocols are an almost ideal way to create intentional incompatibilities and network effects.

        Would you be willing to elaborate or follow up on this? I checked out the core protocol but think I’m way too out of my depth to relate it to what you wrote.


        1. Also there was a bug that allowed people to bypass your lockscreen by mashing keys. Sort of made me hesitant to try anything Sway again, although I believe the problem has been fixed. ↩︎

        • self@awful.systems
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          17 hours ago

          for Wayland, the issue is unfortunately outside of the core protocol. the core protocol doesn’t implement everything you need for a functional desktop, and some of the omissions are utterly obvious things. the ecosystem makes up for that with protocol extensions, but some (all?) of the important ones are proprietary to a particular compositor and considered part of its internal API. also, because Wayland has a frankly pretty broken security model (everything is utterly locked down and as far as I can tell no exceptions are possible via permission modals or any other mechanism), some types of applications are only possible via fragile hacks. gnome has many of these proprietary protocols because Wayland is essentially under the same umbrella and so it has a privileged position; KDE is in a close second. every other compositor has severely reduced functionality.

          for more details, see jwz’s recent blog posts where he failed to port xscreensaver to Wayland because some of the utterly basic functionality he needed was compositor-specific. the hyprland wiki’s compatibility page is also relevant because all of those problems tend to be rooted in this too, though I of course don’t recommend trusting them as a source. Asahi Linux also has a ton of issues on their github around hyprland that I believe boil down to protocol issues. unfortunately these issues tend to be hidden from public view because they’re spread out across a hundred rants and a hundred discussions in FreeDesktop’s Wayland protocol committee; a properly formatted Mastodon search might also be informative.

          (counting down the seconds until some Wayland dev wanders in and tells me I’m completely wrong about everything because an uncharitable reading of one of the paragraphs above reveals I’m wrong about some minor point and besides what am I saying, everyone should be on xlibre? toxic little fucks)

          • self@awful.systems
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            17 hours ago

            I collected some mastodon links so you know roughly what to look for:

            • here’s a game developer unable to do window positioning, multi-monitor, display type detection, hi-DPI… in portable ways on Wayland. window positioning in particular bites game developers hard, and is still unfixed for, gonna be honest, horseshit security reasons.
            • this entire thread is kind of an excellent summary
            • screen recording on Wayland sucks, and what’s interesting about that thread is the smug person replying gets it (to my memory) wrong, portals for screen recording are a hack
            • in fact here’s the post where Ariadne told me I was wrong about portals; it’s also a good starting point if you want to see what protocol discussions look like
            • here’s one of the jwz threads out of many

            in conclusion: how dare I. don’t I know these are just poor, mostly corporate-backed volunteers

      • istewart@awful.systems
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        Wayland protocols are an almost ideal way to create intentional incompatibilities and network effects. see also xlibre, which is building a weird fucked up ecosystem around itself even though it’s broken and pointless.

        So in other words, they’re just cargo-culting “network effects” that they heard about in second-hand YCombinator propaganda and Zuckerberg biographies, and assuming that’s both a road to riches and a necessary part of a technical culture

        • self@awful.systems
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          2 days ago

          yep! unfortunately we’re fucked if they succeed, and the fascists and those funding them don’t particularly care if the resulting ecosystem is broken nonsense.

    • Seminar2250@awful.systems
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      What’s unintuitive about creating text files config.yaml and input.toml in $DESKTOP_STANDARD_INCONSISTENTLY_FOLLOWED which hopefully resolves to /home/username/.config/ but probably resolves to /usr/bin/go_fuck_yourself_with_1s_and_0s and then editing the text files according to confusingly documented syntax?

  • RiceBowl@discuss.tchncs.de
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    3 days ago

    Man fuck that. I dont expect a tech company to be great. But I have a 13” and was excited to see these keep getting better. But that response is just bullshit. There are legitimate business reasons aside from all of the many moral ones not to support bullshit reprehensible creators and by doing so publicly connect your company to them. If they can’t even see the dollar signs there… well… fuck em.

    Maybe I’ll start quoting the Hyprland fucks in the framework forums and see if that language flies or gets taken down.

  • AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space
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    3 days ago

    MNT are still good, right? IIRC, all firmware is open-source with no binary blobs, and they’re a small group of queers in Berlin. (Please tell me they’re not antideutsche tankies or something.)

  • SatyrSack@quokk.au
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    3 days ago

    (In retrospect, that AI-pilled Framework Desktop should’ve been a major red flag they were gonna pull this shit.)

    I am still not completely sure why this product should exist in their lineup. Their laptops have always focused on being more repairable/upgradeable than most competing laptops, but the Framework Desktop is actually less repairable/upgradeable than a standard desktop that you can build yourself however you please. Though if you instead compare it to a mini PC form factor like an Intel NUC, it is actually a very attractive alternative. Either way, at the end of the day, no one asked for this device. People enjoy Framework for the things that they are doing to make the laptop industry more consumer-friendly. But apparently the reason that the Framework Desktop was developed is just because the CEO saw AMD’s new CPU platform and thought “I want to put that into a Framework product.” And after they tried working with AMD to get standard memory modules to work with it, instead of saying, “Oh, there’s no way to make it repairable/upgradeable? Never mind, we just won’t make a Framework product out of it,” they went ahead and did it anyway.

    • Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 days ago

      Maybe they’re competing with the old Mac desktops, the cheesegraters before they were made completely proprietary. Now, I’ve always dissed Apple consumers for buying a phone that’s 50% more expensive and 20% less powerful or feature-filled than the competition, but once I learned the going price of Mac desktops are 300% more expensive than the most capable custom, my mind was blown.

      And yet Apple’s success and following is proof that Framework’s desktop might follow suit.