Omarchy, the Omacom Foundation, and the Future of Linux
I'm very happy to see the work that Vaxry and Outfoxxed are doing being sponsored and paid for.
I think they are doing excellent work. Vaxry, the developer behind the Hyprland tiling window manager, was somewhat controversial in the past.
At the same time, I think he has significantly improved his behaviour and his handling of the project in recent times. Lately, I find him somewhat awkward, but not particularly objectionable.
The worst thing that's going to happen is that I'm going to get into discussions with him because he thinks that, nowadays, asking a woman out carries the risk of being accused of sexual assault. I disagree; if that happens, you don't know how to ask a woman out. It's an ill-judged take, but one day he's going to get a girlfriend and understand why.
Outfoxxed is developing Quickshell, a QML library for building desktops: panels, widgets and other desktop components—which I find impressive. I heard about it last year, have been following the project, and am pleased to see both him and the project thrive. He's now been hired to head Omarchy Shell.
Firstly, everything is led by DHH
I'm happy that 15 million dollars are now being spent on making the Linux desktop more popular and appealing, and I support that effort. However, everything is led by DHH.
In short, I don't think highly of DHH, whose views strike me as racist. He says that London has too few white people: that you can walk through its streets without seeing enough native British people. In his article, native British means white people, which I find objectionable.
He also seems to support the forcible remigration of immigrants and Romani people, as well as far-right leaders. I strongly oppose this kind of politics and wish nobody supported it, yet apparently AfD is winning elections.
How is that a problem? Some people say that DHH might not be the best person, but having 15 million for Linux desktop development is still good. While this is true, I have some concerns.
It is more about the vibes
My worries go beyond politics; they also concern the project's broader outlook. DHH is kind of racist, but he's also very much in favor of AI. He openly talks about Omarchy being developed with extensive use of AI and is trying to integrate it into Omarchy Quattro, so that you can change your desktop using AI. It's only an installation option, so you can turn it off and it won't bother you. Perhaps surprisingly, I'm comfortable with that. I like the concept of saying, “Switch to a dark theme and a purple accent color,” and having it happen. I find that appealing, though not necessarily something we would ship out of the box.
The oligarchy joke
Omarchy has been accused of being the oligarchy of Linux. It's welcome that you have one million of your own money to spend on this project, but I do not, and neither do most people.
It's also welcome that your wealthy friends can put one million into Omarchy's development. Most people don't have those kinds of friends; you resemble an oligarchy. What surprised me, positively in some sense, was DHH's interview with Brodie Robertson, in which he said: “I think this oligarchy joke that they made was funny.”
He embraced it: much of the artwork now features the word “oligarchy” instead of “Omarchy” in the same style, and donors who gave one million dollars belong to a tier called “the oligarchs.” I find his embrace of that label startling; that is the tone he is setting.
Let's see who donated this money
Let's see who donated this money: Dell, Jack Dorsey, Coinbase through Brian Armstrong, OpenClaw through Peter Steinberger, Dropbox, Cloudflare and 37signals. Where would you place a project with these ideas and this attitude within our larger sociocultural context?
I feel that person would point towards Palantir or Elon Musk; it evokes the same kind of atmosphere.
The mix is far-right political opinions, especially about immigrants, strong support for AI, and an embrace of the oligarchy label. That is the association with Palantir I have in mind. This does not mean Omarchy has any ties to Palantir; that's not what I'm saying. More and more people are recognizing this techno-fascist trend in the community that San Francisco is leaning towards as a whole: the you-can-just-do-things community. That's also what you see in DHH. For him, the year of the Linux desktop is a matter of putting enough money and effort into it; fortunately for him, he has the money.
What's my worry?
My worry is that he succeeds. It would be welcome to reach the year of the Linux desktop: to buy a Linux computer from any hardware maker, or from the store down the street. But if he succeeds, that computer will have Omarchy pre-installed. If Omarchy drives the year of the Linux desktop, most people's idea of Linux will become Omarchy—not for people who already know Linux, but for people like my mother, who doesn't care about it. If she finds Linux with Omarchy in a store, she'll associate Linux with Omarchy. Linux could then acquire the same negative associations as Palantir and Elon Musk. I can see that happening if Omarchy mostly drives Linux forward, and I can see DHH succeeding because he has a lot of money and the drive to make this work.
He already managed to convince Dell and Tuxedo to ship Omarchy, which is a notable achievement for such a new project. Of course, if he is successful, there are benefits for us as well, such as reaching the year of the Linux desktop. It would be encouraging to see many more people use Linux.
What has Omarchy done to deserve this much money?
One more thing annoys me: what has Omarchy done to deserve this much donation money? I think the answer is that DHH had wealthy friends, yet KDE develops a desktop environment and an extensive collection of applications.
We do much more than Omacom is doing, and have historically put much more work into making Linux viable for everyone. What stops us is that we don't have rich friends. Is that going to be the reason we can't succeed?
I find that frustrating, though it is their money to spend as they choose. But I will be slightly annoyed that Mr. Dell has decided that the best use of his money to support Linux is to give it to DHH rather than the people that have been working tirelessly for 20 years to actually bring the Linux project forward as a whole.
One further structural worry
I have one further structural worry: what kinds of projects are going to succeed from now on? I have one uncontroversial opinion and one controversial opinion. First, the projects that can raise more money are going to succeed.
Secondly, the projects that are able to succeed are those that effectively use AI. I'm very well aware of the hostility towards AI.
There are parts of the criticism of AI that I agree with and parts that I strongly disagree with. Whatever you think about AI, the frontier models—which you have to pay for, and I do—are highly capable; if you develop any kind of software project, having AI means being able to accomplish more.
Take Arch packaging as an example
What do these two things mean for the wider Linux ecosystem? Take Arch packaging as an example. One of the first things DHH did was to offer Arch packagers some money for the work they did, and because of DHH's objectionable political opinions, they refused that money.
I understand that decision and would probably do the same. But DHH now wants to create his own packaging and replace Arch Linux's packaging with it. If he keeps putting millions of dollars into it, he might succeed; substantial funding makes that possible.
Money is power, and if he continues to invest on this scale, the kind of projects that don't want to be associated with DHH are going to get less money, and the kind of projects that are fine with it, such as Hyprland and Quickshell, are going to get that money, and they're going to thrive. Ladybird is that kind of project: another promising project that could even get some money from DHH in some way. Again, these are objectionable political opinions in my view. He's not going to have a problem accepting the money, which will make his job easier. Right now DHH is making it easier for projects to succeed as long as they are comfortable with being given money by a racist. This is probably not an incentive we want to create.
At the same time, projects like GNOME, along with everyone else in the open-source space, are strongly rejecting AI tools. My fear is that this is going to slow down the development of those projects compared to projects that do use AI tools effectively. There are downsides to these new AI tools: a lot of people are flooding these open-source projects with low-quality merge requests, which are AI-generated with little effort, little thought, probably using very cheap models that produce poor results. Those things still take time to review even if you just turn them down, and that slows down the pace even more.
That worries me. Projects that are fine with AI tools are likely also fine with DHH's ideas, because AI has a kind of fascist vibe—even though I personally disagree with that characterization. I don't think this is a desirable incentive. The AI-fascist vibe is having an easier time right now: it has more money and, in my opinion, better tools, and I can see these projects succeeding whereas others may not.
People are downplaying these opinions
It does not help that people are downplaying the opinions that these folks have. We've seen the 1Password controversy, but the developer from 1Password said: “DHH's opinions are not that bad. It's stuff we could argue about.” But this is not a minor disagreement when you say that London doesn't have enough white people and we should deport the black people which is essentially what he said. I'm not particularly interpreting his words; it's in the article, and it worries me.
Sources
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