Title of the (concerning) thread on their community forum, not voluntary clickbait. Came across the thread thanks to a toot by @Khrys@mamot.fr (French speaking)
The gist of the issue raised by OP is that framework sponsors and promotes projects lead by known toxic and racists people (DHH among them).
I agree with the point made by the OP :
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’m disappointed in framework’s answer so far
i dont think framework is big enough to factcheck every linux maniac
Yeah I don’t think you get how this works. They had time to research the tool they are recommending but literally nothing about the backers or community? Framework will absolutely have a legal team whose job would include vetting these orgs.
But let’s say you’re right and framework is operating a company with no legal counsel (which is also a giant red flag): their response was “we are chill with terrible people in our space, we have a big tent”. Not “you’re right, we didn’t do research on these guys thanks for bringing it to our attention we’ll do some research”. If they said that, this wouldn’t be a thing. Instead, they said affirmatively “we don’t care if they are white nationalists, we want to include white nationalists in our tent”.
…a legal team checking out linux forums and discord servers for anti trans actions…you ok buddy?
Before they invest money? Yes
Lesson learned: don’t support open source projects. One apparently has to get legal, pr, and a whole investigation (on an ongoing basis!) for every project. Better and cheaper to just not.
Have you…never had a job? I’m really really confused by your aggro response. This is standard operating procedure for any company with more than like 15 people (or with any large assets they can be sued over). I regularly get quotes delayed due to companies having to get their own quotes for their own off the shelf hardware through legal approval.
Yep. And if customers are getting pissed due to charitable donations we are doing…that incurs a significant cost and becomes a massive hurdle for any future charitable donations.
So, as I said, lesson learned: don’t support open source projects.
Edit: Next meeting about supporting open source project: “Hey this author has opinion x, anti-x is going to hate that. Let’s just spend the money elsewhere.”
Following meeting about supporting a different open source project: “Hey, this author has opinion anti-x, x is going to hate that. Let’s just spend the money elsewhere.”
If that’s the takeaway you want rather than “standard business practice is to vet organizations you support to make sure your goals are aligned”…uh…good for you?
100% this. They support many many different open source project and I read people are bitching when they havent had mich time to even respond?
They immediately responded
I hope they at least cut their funding now that they know about DHH’s behaviour