Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a political statement disguised as a FOSS project (which itself is fine, all software is political). The funders are not funding the development of a Linux distro, they are co-signing the political statement.
> which itself is fine, all software is political I don't mean to get distracted from the topic at hand, but is that really true? If I create my own software stack for the TRMNL display I received as a gift because I think it's fun and interesting, is that a political statement? What politics does that involve? If someone makes a small Rust library that implements some days structure and a few hundred people find it…
In essence the human right and ability to learn and change and wield computers at an unlocked and low level is a policy decision.
What if governments said programs must be from companies and users should not be allowed to write their own programs, operating systems must be locked down to keep users safe or some bs 'think of the children' excuse.
Especially Linux and OSS is a political manifesto design specifically to stop this kind of government overreach from taking root. It would certainly benefit shareholders of large computer companies to the detriment of the individual user's freedoms.
It's easy to see a perspective like that where software is political. Politics is not a battlefield, that's an American two party system trick.
Seeing the word politics doesn't immediately mean bad or divisive.