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 work for a fascist. He’s my father. Fox is on his TV in his office beside mine right now. I suppose most would hate me if they knew that without knowing I cancel his vote out every time.
This might be a similar kind of situation.
I think there’s a fundamental asymmetry between receiving resources from persons you disagree with and providing resources to persons you disagree with. As long as your tasks aren’t doing fascism, I think it’s fine to get paid by (i.e. take money away from) fascists. But, no matter what you might get from persons with bad politics, if you transfer resources to them, they are going to use those resources to pursue those bad politics.
(BTW, Fox isn’t right-wing enough for the real fascists; too many facts. OAN is what they watch, I think.)
I get what you’re saying here and mostly agree, but just want to point out that you are transferring a resource - your labour. So it is a bit more nuanced than this.
100% agreed. Just accepting business from an “out and proud” fascist, even if the task you were doing for them was community service, could be normalizing their “brand” enough that it’s not worth doing. Selling ad space/time is also very questionable; tho, you might offset that with bumpers that let people know you what you actually think of the persons that bought the ad. Nuance is the rule, and two people that agree on moral principles might still do the moral calculus for any particular trade differently.
But, I don’t think we need to (e.g.) add field of endeavor restrictions to our software licenses just to deny bad actors the same access we give to all other users/distributors universally. I don’t think morally repugnant persons should be left out of food or housing programs or UBI. The fact that morally disagreeable people can buy a Framework is totally immaterial. The fact that among all the (nigh innumerable) software projects that Framework uses, they choose to directly support one (or more) where the people taking control of those resources are morally disagreable is a concern.
Agreed- you’d have to also know the type of mad sh*t that comes out of his mouth for confirmation. In this case you may have to take my word for it.