On Mon, Sep 29, 2025 at 9:48 PM Karen Lewellen via Talk < talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
Hi to you both, Not placing this in context..I do not want to break up the flow of your points here.
I'm not sure there's much "flow" going on. I said my piece. I'm not going to pollute this list with my own politics and a thread undeserving of a technical group. Happy to take things offline but I will not be the source of an extended debate here on the larger issues. Being Jewish in Toronto I do not feel AT ALL safe based on real experience -- for numerous reasons I won't detail here -- I have a personal stake in the politics writ-large because they show up at my doorstep. As someone who had friends and relatives with numbers tattooed on their inner arm and been to KZ-Dachau, I recoil at the casual use of the terms Nazi or genocide by people witout any effing clue of what they're talking about. At very least, anyone who uses these terms in modern contexts deserves an instant credibility downgrade. Yet I will still engage, just not here.
Evan, if dhh did not want to sway others to his thinking, why do you feel he placed a blog, that folks were going to find, as they seek information about Omarcy?
I'm not sure I understand the question, since there is nothing I can find at omarchy.org about politics. Nothing. All of the interviews I've seen of dhh talking about Omarchy have never ventured into anything beyond the software itself. Indeed, if there is any politics found on the omarchy.org website I would genuinely like to know, because I can't find any. The blogs being discussed are on the website hey.com, far from Omarcy. Indeed, even if you want to look at the HEY software itself, you can't find a link to the blog from the software site. The blog subsite https://world.hey.com/dhh/ looks more like a Substack feed than anything else, sharing nothing with the software websites except a domain name. To get to the blog in question one has to actively seek it out through links from social media. So please rephrase your question, indicating how the blog is placed such that it asserts politics on people simply looking at Omarchy.
As his community of contributors goes, is he going to honor his personal definition of the world, and exclude community members who do not look like him?
That isn't a hypothetical question, it's one that can be legitimately asked and researched. The Github entry for Omarchy <https://github.com/basecamp/omarchy> lists 172 contributors as of right now. The photos of many of them look nothing like him. I would imagine that if anyone had attempted to contribute code but was rejected for any reason except the code we'd know about it. Loudly. As for the non-coder user community, he has less control over that. Yet the Omarchy Discord server <https://discord.gg/rnxCFxEx> has 1,665 participants and zero political talk. The off-topic channel is all tech stuff. Let's say you have built a business using this open source software.
Actually I have built three. All still going. One of them is an international organization that I travelled the world to help grow. My personal politics -- in some cases massively opposed to those of the countries I visited -- did not impede my work and my ability to build relationships. YOu need those stances known so that you as an individual can choose if, with
a clear conscience, you can stand by the product.
I am truly puzzled by the link implied between one's politics and the ability to "stand by" their product. Since I *have* built businesses based on FOSS, when I think of "stand by" in this context I think of organizational stability, technical support, bug fixes and updates based on user feedback. Exactly how does any of that correlate to political views? I don't expect end-users to "stand by" products. We want happy users, who we have helped in some way to make their life better. Enthusiasm is nice but doesn't require emotional attachment. How would you defend your choice to ignore his views on people, if some of those
people who are customers discover his beliefs.
Because software doesn't have beliefs. It makes your life better or it doesn't. Clause 6 of the Open Source Definition <https://opensource.org/osd> and Freedom Zero of the FSF four freedoms <https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms> preclude any limits on who can use the software or how they use it. As I said in my piece I am staying away from Omarchy, but for reasons that have nothing to do with politics. It's just not for me. Speaking personally, it is not about community members being painted with the
same brush.
It sure is. When you boycott the project you boycott the work of everyone who contributes to it.
Is he doing this here? Does a clear line exist between the blog he posted, and his approach to open source community building?
I think I've offered some evidence of the separation. Draw your own conclusions if you consider it sufficient. From what I can see, one has to make a deliberate effort to find his political views, they aren't attached to the software projects and certainly are not inflicted on the curious. I would even challenge people to find mention of dhh's politics on his WIkipedia page <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Heinemeier_Hansson>. He's broadly known for his software development and car racing, not his politics. he wanted the world to know where he stands..or he would not have used this
blog to introduce himself to the world.
In 2005 Google awarded him "Hacker of the Year" <https://developers.google.com/open-source/osa/?csw=1> for Ruby on Rails. In 2012 he started professional car racing. His first blog post came in 2021. Suggesting that the blog is what introduced him to the world is a bit of a stretch, no? Cheers, Evan