: Right to repair is right-wing coded now?
Articles you can read instead of my lame post:
- Framework flame war erupts over support of politically polarizing Linux projects (The Register)
- The Omarchy/Framework Thing (Gardiner Bryant)
You know about the right-to-repair movement, yeah? It’s a response to how personal electronics (cell phones, laptops) have become more and more difficult to repair over time, and the expectation that consumers will just buy a new iPhone instead of fixing a broken USB port. To some extent, modern electronics have gotten harder to repair because they are compact, waterproof, and tightly integrated—i.e. there is a tradeoff between repairability and certain features that people like. But there are other instances where it sure looks like the manufacturer is intentionally making things hard to repair, just to be a pain in the ass and squeeze out some extra profit.
I learned about right to repair from Louis Rossman, a YouTuber who used to run an Apple repair shop and made videos about all the crazy shit he had to do to repair laptops with a single bad part. Rossman has a fairly abrasive personality, his videos are full of non-sequitiurs about politics, and he is an outspoken libertarian. I always thought that was kind of weird, because repairability is actually a pretty good example a problem that the free market has failed to fix, but whatever. The information on the channel is good, and Rossman is not an actual Nazi (as far as I know), so it never bugged me too much.
The other big name in right to repair is Framework laptops. They make these frankly COOL laptops that are super modular, support Linux out of the box, and that you can build, repair, and upgrade yourself. They make a big deal about being an ethical company and sell all the parts themselves. I have been one impulse away from buying a Framework for like, the past 2 years straight.
Anyway, the current drama is that Framework are Nazis now? Specifically: The Framework CEO made an approving tweet about a Linux distro called Omarchy, which was created by DHH, the disgraced creator of Ruby on Rails, who has a generally combative personality and also wrote a racist blog post a few months ago because he felt like sharing that with the world. Also, Framework sponsored the Hyprland project, which is a Linux tiling window manager (desktop environment for sadists) that is notorious for having a fairly juvenile community, which makes sense when you consider that the developer is like, only 17 or 21 or something.
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I think Drew Devault’s original post on the Hyprland community is underrated. It is often cited as proof that Hyprland is toxic and shouldn’t be touched with a 10-foot pole, but Devault actually takes a somewhat more compassionate approach, allowing for the possibility that the community could reform. He makes a risky, and I think brave, admission: “I empathise with Vaxry. I remember being young, smart, productive… and mean.”
Need more of this energy: Understanding that the evil in others exists within all of us. But back to complaining.
Idk guys, all of this is super exhausting. There is this weird thing that happens when you look at people who are extremely into tech principles that I happen to care about, like privacy, free software, and right to repair: A bunch of them are on the alt-right spectrum, ranging from fairly harmless libertarians like Louis Rossman and the NearlyFreeSpeech.net crew to like, yeah, actual racists.
I’ve said this before, but the most frustrating thing the situation (besides the basic existence of racists) is how politically marked so many basic preferences re: media, tech, and consumptions have become. Now I can’t just go shopping for a laptop that has the features I care about; I also have to “vet” the company and make sure the CEO isn’t, like, a sex criminal or something, or else I might become guilty by association.
Some people find it easy to turn away from companies like Framework with platitudes like “I don’t support fascists, period.” But I don’t find it that simple. There is a spectrum of “how fascist is this company” that ranges from “no fascists to be seen” to “CEO is DHH.” Somewhere along this spectrum you find cases in the middle, such as “CEO provides free laptops to twerp developer, and also tweeted in endorsement of Linux distro that was created by a racist and, when confronted about it, said he has a ‘big tent’ approach and tries to stay out of politics.” I think that for me that’s over the line. There’s just a little too much there for me to conclude that the Framework CEO is a nonracist guy who made an honest mistake.
But I can’t guarantee that I will agree with the hive mind in the next instance of this—if the connection between the product I’m being asked to boycott and the racism is a more tenuous. I still reserve the right to read the articles and draw my own conclusions.