001 — Why We're Dropping Basecamp

0:00Hey, and welcome to observations. Today, I would like to talk. I would like to read and then maybe talk a little bit about an article published. In 2023, November 30th. On the Duke University libraries blog. By a person named Will Sexton. And the name is why we are dropping Basecamp. So it leads with a screenshot of some Microsoft application that says important.

0:37Let Basecamp subscription lapse. And the article starts like this.

We at Duke University libraries have decided to stop using the project management platform Basecamp. To which we have subscribed for almost a decade. We came to this decision after weighing the level of its use in our organization, which is considerable against the harms that we see perpetuated by the leadership of Basecamp's parent company 37signals.

— Why We're Dropping Basecamp, Will Sexton

1:14I'm not yet done with the intro, but as some background in for 37signals is. A very old internet company, like very old, from my perspective.

1:29I guess the main claim to fame is Ruby on Rails in like 2005, so when the. Python Ruby Dynamic language hype was going on. They use this. So, there's a guy called dhh David Heinemeier Hansson, who was in favor of and I started this company. And in the meantime, they published a bunch of.

1:59Bunch of projects, as in products that you can subscribe to like. And well they do Ruby on Rails and then with Ruby on Rails they did this thing called Basecamp, which this article talks about, which is like a team management software that is very straightforward web servery. No complicated JavaScript framework.

2:22Like most, not modern web apps. And they also did hay later in like 2015. Which is an email client. And, yeah, and they also published like a bunch of books and. DHH was already always very. Public about his opinions in the code space and in. How to program what good ideas are for Team Management.

2:51And apparently recently, also on. Yeah, we'll get to that. So, let's continue this.

As a result of our discussions, we will not renew our current subscription when it ends in December. In the meantime, a small group of our staff have committed to help colleagues export their Basecamp content Basecamp content, so it can be archived and we will move to using other productivity platforms.

In July of this year in a team chat, one of our colleagues shared a link to a blog post authored by one of the founders and owners of 37signals. And commented. We really might want to rethink our

3:36user usage of Basecamp. So, I guess you can already.

3:44Who this person is that is the founder and owner of 37signals that wrote a blog post, and you might have already read the blog post, but I think I'm gonna get to that as well.

It jogged our memories of events some 26 months earlier when another colleague shared an article published on the verge breaking camp.

As reported, internal conflict regarding a culturally-insensitive list of funny.

4:14In scare quotes, customer names, lead

Basecamp's leadership to ban employees from holding societal and political discussion. Like societal, and political discussions. Ignoring that the conflict focused on workplace dynamics. Mass resignations resulted, and the experiences of the employees interviewed paints a picture of company leaders who initially supported diversity, equity, and inclusion.

4:48D, e, y, d, e, i activities, but

eventually placed severe restrictions on how those activities could play out at work. In a playbook for the ages, those in power failed to acknowledge the complicated interconnectedness and nuance of the issues under discussion. And set policies that shut down discussions challenging the company culture.

5:12So.

5:15First off. I think. Is really important. It's really interesting that, like we're talking about. University Library here, right? And they manage probably like a bunch couple of million a year, so those are like U.S University libraries that are pretty big on cash because they also have to pay all of the extractive fees of all the paper journals.

5:40And, all of that crap, so they are pretty used to. Thinking about how to spend money and what they're giving money to, right? So, they are very aware of. Where money goes that they have. They they know how much money they have, and probably everybody there has like a base understanding of.

6:07Of these things, but also they usually like somebody who works at these libraries. They probably don't work there because they want to earn a lot of cash, but they work there because they're interested in spreading knowledge and supporting people who want to do research. So those are very thoughtful people.

6:25That probably have, like, a higher degree of. I'm thinking about societal issues. And I think. A company that has internal discussions of this kind. Or like another company, but like a team inside of some bigger institution. And like having people that are. Actively. That actively think about this stuff is very important on on healthy teams.

7:00And also principles the principal discussions, right? So, like, coming from what are what. What are our values? Like, first of all, having shared values, right? And. In this, you can also see a big difference. Between 37signals, culture and. Two Library culture, as in the 37signals culture is.

7:33Or somebody shared some. Probably racist. Like, I don't think it has been. Officially said. What the thing is, but. Clicking through the verge article from 2021.

7:55Which I'm not going to read right now. It looks like.

8:06It looks like, that probably had some racist stuff internally and instead of. Well, I mean, that probably. Cause a lot of discussions, and instead of having discussions. Dhh and his co-founders, and like. People who own this company basically, you just said, oh, okay, there's not gonna be any discussions on this kind of crap.

8:31Anymore, and if you don't like this, then you can leave. And so a lot of people left.

8:38Convert this to the library that said. That is like a. Bottom up thing where somebody's like, hey. Is this a good thing to do, and then they have a discussion, and then they make a decision. In which they publish here. So, this is like top down versus bottom up.

9:00And I think this is also gonna. Come through later in.

9:07In the Articles. So. Continues, like Will Sexton continues on, and I think this article is probably not written by one person just published by one person, but after a lot of internal discussions, so this is probably more of a. Multiple people consensus thing, then rather than a one-person opinion.

9:34Continues to write

the discussions we had in 2021, identified concerns about both the culture at Basecamp and the impact a decision to leave it would have on our daily work.

9:45So remember, this article is from 2023, so this was two years earlier. Staff reflected on the ease of using

the platform.

The large number of projects that rely on it. And the complication of a decision that would impact groups across the

10:00in the Libraries in such a

a direct way. While we talked about how we might respond to the values of third-party companies. We eventually decided not to pursue a cancellation.

10:12So, to have this discussion two years earlier. They looked at the.

10:20There was clearly a project that they depended on, right, very heavily. And they saw that the company was kind of breaking at the seams, and they were like, should we maybe leave this? But they were probably too dependent on this and. Decided that it would be safer to keep using it, and it's probably.

10:42Like the project product itself wouldn't be. Going down the drain anytime soon, so they probably said, okay, let's, let's keep this for now. When we, when we

revisited the discussion this summer, it took a decidedly different direction. The blog post that our colleague shared in July, titled the law of the land by 36, 37signals, co-founder co-owner and CTO David Heinemeier Hansson,

11:09that is.

11:09Dhh celebrates the U.S Supreme

Court's ruling, ending considerations of race in admission to colleges and universities. In that post. Hansson links to another that drew our attention. The waning days of DEI's dominance. We also read a third post of his Meta goes no politics at work, and nobody cares.

We found there a thread of ugly thought couched in an overriding intellectual dishonesty that re-escalated our discussion about continued use of

11:43big band Basecamp. Sorry, I said bandcamp, which is a completely different thing.

11:55So. Essentially, what dhh

12:03Rights in these articles is a pretty obvious, white supremacist's view of things. Well, I mean, on the first in the first few articles, he's still kind of. Dog whistling a bunch, by saying, oh, but DEI and stuff. It's like it destroys a union. It destroys the US, and I think he's not even a US citizen.

12:27I think he's Danish. So, he's talking about. Well, not his own country there.

12:39Which is interesting because, I'm talking about this in 2026. It was just 3 years later and. The most recent article of his is basically just. Straight up Mein Kampf. A white supremacist, bullshit. About shooting Roma, like their wolves. So this has been very prescient. And the one thing to.

13:12One interesting thing about the status is his blog, right? But I'll also hosted at world.hey.com/dhh. So, this is an official company domain of their hey.com company. Which basically makes this. Somewhat officially company policy. Which is an interesting choice because he's still like his opinions are still his own right, but he's obviously posting them from his.

13:50Company. Context. Which means that basically what he posts there is official company policy. Yeah, if I was so, so this is a privately owned company, right? They don't have any investors, and like, part of their shtick is that you can build a company that doesn't have any investing in any VC money.

14:16That means that they are completely independent and say whatever they want, and he's really saying whatever he wants, which is. Yeah, turning out to be. Quite racist.

14:33Let's continue this.

We're not going to address each of

14:40the many falsehood and distortions in the blog post

by David Heinemeier Hansson. Instead, we will focus on a few emblematic statements that stand in for a pattern of rhetoric that runs counter to our own values. And

14:53so this is a very important point is that they are not.

14:57Just arguing against this or not, just saying, oh, we did this because we didn't like one of his posts. They're saying, oh, we have values here, and there's these inform what we do, right? So, based on these values, we analyzed what this person this company that we depend upon is saying.

15:17And then we draw conclusions from that. So the first thing that they have is values. Which is probably easier if you are part of University, because that's kind of. Your mission statement in a way, but I feel like every good company every good team starts by having values that are clearly communicated and shared.

15:40Because without them, you get stuff like, no politics here, please. We are just technical people and then. Person Hitler-ing out. A few years later.

Now, in the waning days piece, Hansson depicts diversity, equity, and inclusion as a movement that became entrenched in 2020, a process he characterizes being accelerated by a number of factors, including quote the riots in the wake of George Floyd.

Referring to the protests

16:13that followed the murder of

George Floyd as riots is an offhand gesture as Hansson uses it. But it gets our attention because we know how false ideological and ugly it is. Research and the documentary record show that the protests of 2020 were overwhelmingly peaceful, that incidents of violence were limited and often instigated by counter protestors or provocateurs, and that, in many cases, the responses of the police and federal authorities provoked and exacerbated the violence.

The characterization of these events as riots followed as part of a deliberate disinformation campaign by right-wing groups media's distorting focus on isolated incidents and biased framing by political campaigns. It plays on a long-standing and

17:04shameful tendency in the U.S of

depicting any protest or demands for justice. For black members of our society.

As innately violent and threatening.

17:14Sorry, I said four. I meant from black members, so basically. The people in the U.S, especially the right wing. They will see somebody from that is black. Say, hey, you're doing us wrong here. And then they will Point towards something that happens that somebody got shot or something.

17:35And they will spin it in a way that it looks. Like the black people are just. Fundamentally violent, and like anything. Gets done to protect the country or like, protect the state is basically to avoid this this violence and to work around it, right?

18:02Which is the remnant of of the slave, the slave trade, and I mean, the South is. Ruled by people who had slaves just like a couple of decades ago. Some of which, which are probably still alive, right? This was. It's not that long ago.

18:27So, these are real problems that are still there. And depicting something as a riot that is mainly a peaceful process process. Part of that storytelling

18:48Let's go on

in the same post. Hansson takes glee in the mass layoffs of tech workers in late 2022. He imagines that they were the group from which

18:56Oh, were the group quote

from which the DEI movement drew its most active and engaged disciples.

19:04End quote, and seems to be delighted that quote

hundreds of thousands

19:10end quote, of tech workers will be

19:11out of work. Quote,

perhaps for quite a while.

19:14End quote, and therefore quote

the most fervent ideologues among them

19:18end quote will be unable to find work.

The implication is unavoidable that he and perhaps other tech bosses might blacklist workers who have records of advocating for more diverse and inclusive workplaces.

Hansson certainly is entitled to his opinion and to publish his own blog.

19:38Pay attention again. This is like, not just his own block, but his company's blog, right? So company domain, which tries to be like an email provider, which also has the. Interesting. Decision that your email will always be using their domain.

19:57You can't use your own domain. So, like, if you are customer come, you will always have a hey.com domain, which means that if their Founders spouting racist bullshit on hey.com, that means that you are now part of something of a domain that is also associated with white racism, like with white supremacism.

20:20Fun times for people who thought that was a good investment to put their email account there.

20:30Okay, I'm going. I'm continuing. We

are not in the habit of running ideological enforcement to ensure quick compliance from beleaguered corporate executives or whatever it is that he's talking about in his posts.

20:43There's so many quotes here. I'm not sure how to say, like, read this in a way that.

20:49Easier to understand what. Which part is the quote? So, I'm not trying this again. We are not in the habit of running quote ideological enforcement end quote to ensure quote quick compliance end quote from beleaguered corporate Executives or whatever it is that he's talking about in his posts. We

simply have our own opinions and our own blogs.

In some cases, we have good choices available to us regarding the companies to which we give our business. After all, we're the libraries we have plenty of experience with corporate entities that don't reflect our values. We deal with the journal publishers who practice a business model that hoards the world's knowledge and maximizes profit from the research that our university's scholars conduct.

When it comes to the academic publishing system, institutions of higher learning have made a deal with the devil, and we, the libraries, are the campus units who pay the bill. We do it every year, often facing steep

21:45price increases, which flat with flat budgets. So, yeah, I mean, they they know about this stuff, right?

21:52They know how to budget stuff and have a bunch of pretty toxic customer relationships already with other places. Continuing.

We also know all too well the very worst of what humanity can create because we collect it.

22:07I think this paragraph is going to be the import like, this is gonna be the the crux, right?

Our shelves hold some of the most god-awful, hateful stuff you can imagine in the form of explicit hate literature and the much larger bulk of mainstream materials we hold are pervaded by casual racism and assumptions of white supremacy. Our job is to maintain it all for research and to provide the context required for responsible inquiry.

We know that our collections as a whole are themselves the legacies of systems of oppression in what they do and do not contain the entire foundation of our organization was developed on assumptions in the early days of Duke University that excluded groups would not use the materials we collect or the services we provide.

We know about these legacies, and we reckon with them by considering the harm they've caused, and asking what we can do to

23:03make and end, asking what we can do to mitigate it.

We also know the harms that our own workplace practices and culture have caused over the years.

We know about it because we listen to each other both informally and formally via climate surveys, workshops, and other practices.

23:21So, this is where the bottom-up approach comes in again, right? So they. They are super reflective and they try. To have bottom-up discussions about this shit. They try to.

23:37Reflect. They try to find. Their own biases. They're trying to find the biases in the materials they provide, and they try to countersteer. With practices like the EI or with practices like. Like reflecting on who, what kind of software they use.

The point is not that we're perfect or a model to emulate.

The point is that we are not naive. We have seen and done some stuff. So, when we encounter tech company

24:11boss, who takes a nationwide movement of organized protests against police, police brutalization, and system

systemic racism led by black activists and amplifies the rare incidents of violence, much of it instigated by the police or right-wing counter protestors using the mendacious language of extremists to refer to it as riots.

We have a good idea

24:34of what we're looking at.

24:41So. This is. This is a very like. They did phrase this very like, not very strongly. They phrase this in a way that is calmly describing what they think they're looking at what they're seeing. And I think. The only approach to. Basically keep the. The moral/ethical upper hand is not.

25:16Like, most people on social media, they they immediately start calling people fascists whenever, like, I'm I'm not. Like, I'm not. Immune to that, right? They try to escalate things they try to to. Pattern match on things they read, or maybe thought they have read. And. But they're not calmly describing what is happening, right?

25:48And I think that's something that is direly missing in today's discussion. Is these people who calmly describe what they're seeing and like. Draw their own conclusions from it. Which is also what I'm trying to do here. With this series that has. Exactly. Zero entries so far, but this might be the first.

26:14And. Yeah, this is. Observations. This is like, make observations. Check your knowledge. Check the the world knowledge on this look in the look into the past. Ask people who you know, have good. Think of think a lot of these about these things and ask them of their opinions.

26:42And then draw your conclusions.

26:49This is the point is not that we're perfect or model to emulate. The point is that we are not naive and like, be, don't be naive, right? This is the most important thing. And.

27:02And the thing is that people who are sensitive to this, like these people, and they do this in 2023. And then, 3 years later, you get. Blog post by the same guy called Wolves, sheep, and gypsies. Where he starts out by saying, oh, the first wolf in. In Denmark.

27:28Was, was spotted then and then, but then they multiplied and multiplied. And then the Danish said, oh, we can't shoot them anymore. And now, suddenly there's lots of sheep were dying, so we should actually shoot off the wolves. And then he directly continues with, like, oh, and then there's Roma sleeping in the parks in in Copenhagen.

27:48And so they're also multiplying. And what should we do with them? Probably Deport them, right? Or maybe something even worse, which is not not talking about, but like Like, these people have noticed this, like three years ago, that this is where this is going, and so this is where this went.

28:08And was probably just gonna go worse. Get worse from here, right? So an important. Lesson from this that I I can draw is listen to the people who are sensitive to this stuff. I mean, the old. Yeah, I mean, everybody knows the first they came for, because, and then I didn't look, and I didn't.

28:34Listen, and then they came for this and this, and then I didn't. It wasn't me, and then in the end they came from me, and there was nobody left. Who could protect me from this? And these kinds of people are the people who. are the first to notice this stuff.

28:58So, where were we assess nearly over here?

When we enter into business with a company whose boss takes delight in mass layoffs of tech workers because it disempowers those who might speak out against their company, keeping a list of non-Anglophone names that some members of the team find hilarious.

We have a decent sense of who we're dealing with.

29:20Know the signs. We're here in the libraries we here,

and the libraries are world-weary and sophisticated.

29:28Okay, that's a little bit of a, yeah.

We recognize that it's the nature of our world, so interconnected now. We think that all that interconnection makes us stronger, more vibrant.

It's wondrous, but it also means that as we encounter difference, we need to do the work as Hansson mocks. Be aware and be open. Not every situation is going to be easy, but bringing our whole selves. Another phrase that he mocks to it has an impact, makes it more real more human.

There are always going to be the free riders tech companies, perhaps, who benefit from the interconnectedness of the world while refusing to do the

30:05work. They may even taunt from their blogs, those those who try.

30:13Oh, they made. It

may even taunt from their blogs. Those who try their paths are going to intersect with ours. That's just the way it works often. We're not in a position to choose not to deal with them, but occasionally we are. Not because we want to eliminate anyone's livelihood or harry executives.

Or because we imagine our subscription fee makes much of a difference. But just because we can. In this case, there are other productivity tools that can fill the space. In this case, we have options, and we've chosen to end a

30:45subscription with Basecamp. Thank you for listening.