Omarchy should not matter. But sadly it does. As a power grab.
If you don’t know what Omarchy is here’s the short summary. David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of RubyOnRails, owner of a software business and millionaire, decided a few months ago to go all in on Linux and – because that’s just his MO – thought that turning his setup into a project made sense. Omarchy is just that: A pretty standard Arch Linux distribution with a handful of configuration files, that Heinemeier Hansson (or DHH as he is often called) wrote, or vibed or whatever. There is nothing wrong with this, custom, opinionated special purpose distributions have been part of the Linux culture for a long time and provide a lot of value and experimentation that sometimes even flows back to the original project. In a way Ubuntu Linux is just that to the basis Debian.
There’s also nothing wrong in more opinionated software – quite the opposite. I do think that RubyOnRails and similar frameworks gained traction especially because they do have a clear idea of how they see the respective problem domain. There’s even the statement “There should be one – and preferably only one – obvious way to do it” in the Zen of Python. Having a strong point of view is not a bad thing in software or in general. The problem is the kind of points of view DHH has.
I don’t want to go into all the gritty details here, Brennan Kenneth Brown did a great job with their article “Normalized Fascism in Open Source: $12 Million Given to DHH“, but here’s the short version. DHH is a racist and a fascist. He recently wrote articles on how there are [Content Warning: massive racism] too many brown people in London these days. In July he wrote an [Content Warning: Racism, anti-romanism] article comparing Roma communities (using a slur for them) to “wolves” that should be “shot”. His X account is also know to be “edgy” in a similar way. A few days ago he posted sort of a manifesto for his set of config files:
There’s even a longer version on the website. Even without a strong background in antifascist literature or history this reads like a fascist creed. About unity and identity. About “holding the line” (against codes of conduct and the rights of marginalized people as the website explains). About how there always needs to be a strong leader who makes the decisions. Given DHH’s other writing this is not a misguided joke, this is how he thinks about the world.
I began this text writing “Omarchy should not matter” but I have not explained why it does. It’s surely not about user numbers (it’s a clunky distro aimed at people who love to cosplay hackers). But it is about power.
DHH has used his connection to CEO’s of tech corporations and his position as influencer to collect up to now above 18 million dollars of funding for Omarchy. He uses that money not for himself (he has enough of that) but to fund certain pieces of Software he uses in his distribution. Like for example the window manager hyprland whose main developer the Omarchy money now funds. What is “Vaxry” known for outside of a niche window manager? He runs a community based around LGBTQ discrimination and participates in that (see the short summary on Drew DeVault’s “Weird Little Guys of FOSS” list). His bigotry is so consistent that he was banned from participating in the Freedesktop.org community where all the other developers of window managers and the free software desktop stack collaborate. And it was long before DHH funded him.
One could see a world where a CEO using his connections to drum up some funding for free software projects would be a good thing. But that’s not the world we live in I am afraid. DHH got 3 million USD from Digital Ocean (a cloud provider) for Omarchy. Basically at the same time where Digital Ocean cancelled their support of Flathub and GNOME that amounted to a value of 50 USD per month.
DHH is using his position and his influence to accumulate donations that he then can distribute to projects that align with his fascist worldview and ambitions. And in a time where many important projects and infrastructures are strapped for cash running just on the goodwill of a handful of people that is increasingly dangerous. Not because its corporate money – a lot of funding for open source comes from corporations, they are after all who are sucking up all the surplus from people’s labor. It’s because this amount of money gives him power.
The Omarchy foundation will be where projects in desperate need of funding will be pointed. And will a project focused on human rights and social justice get funding from our fascist overlord? What kind of pressure can that exert on projects who have to decide to either die due to lack of funding or kill their code of conduct?
An open fascist is building one of the bigger sources of funding for open source fully under his individual control and sucks up a lot of money that otherwise might have gone to liberatory projects. Community projects. Antifascist projects.
And that is why Omarchy matters. Sadly. Not because of its technical merit (even though those fascists love to use the “merit” argument to fight human rights) but because of its leader, his connections and his ability to accumulate financial power. Without anyone in that ecosystem saying anything about how that leader operates and talks. And you might know the saying: If there’s a Nazi and 10 folks sitting together at a table and nobody says and does anything? There’s 11 Nazis at that table.
Omarchy got a lot of recognition recently. Not only by corporate donors but by Youtubers and other tech influencers who kept praising it and nudged people (who might not know about DHH’s exploits) towards testing it. To become “a hardcore linux user/dev” or whatever other chauvinist argument they made. This makes it dangerous.
Running Omarchy means contributing to this dynamic. It means willingly integrating oneself into a fascist community. Legitimizing it. Supporting it. Omarchy is a fascist project that normalizes fascist thinking for everyone entering that community (even unknowingly). The baseline has to be not to use that system. And as people who believe in human rights and dignity, in community and a tech world that can be better we need to oppose Omarchy. Need to make sure it gets no seat at any table. Support projects who actively refuse to collaborate. Support projects who care about human rights and flourishing. And do not do business with the companies who willingly support fascists.
Siamo tutti antifascisti!
(Share this message about Omarchy [or some other similar post] around in the tech circles you frequent. Tell people about the background of this hyped Linux distribution and its fascist leader. Quit your 1password or Digital Ocean accounts and mention that it is because the support fascists.)