I don’t understand why the conversation moved to talking about the license of the project, why it may or may not be hypocritical, etc etc. All this stuff is really tired, can we just move on from it?
In my mind, at this point, it’s not about points of view or aligned opinions at all.
Palmer Luckey/Andruil essentially have a spot on the SC, and are making vague threats about using it.
A serious and well meaning company would not respond to posts asking they “kick us out”. What power should a random military company have over who gets to be in the community and who does not? A well meaning company would not respond to that post at all.
At this point, I don’t know what else Andruil could possibly say or do to convince you all having them involved in the SC is bad.
Most of the SC members current and stepped down are nice people and I don’t want to believe they would try to cover something up like this. But all these recent events shows something is seriously wrong in the SC. I wish the rest of them all the best.
In my opinion, Robert Hensing, Thomas Bereknyei, and John Ericson should step down, or there should be a vote of no-confidence within the SC to allow for the re-election of new members. This would give everyone a fresh slate, and if desired, Thomas Bereknyei, John Ericson, and Robert Hensing could run again, and from my understanding Thomas is running again. While I respect their technical contributions to the Nix project, this situation has demonstrated that technical expertise does not always translate into effective leadership. The lack of transparency, especially regarding the misuse of the Nix Foundation’s infrastructure for commercial purposes by Determinate System, and the mishandling of the Equinix sponsorship, raises serious concerns about the SC’s ability to govern the project impartially. The recent retrospective by Gabriella Gonzalez has highlighted the need for reform within the SC to ensure it is serving the community’s best interests, and it is essential that the Steering Committee implement and vote on those reforms.
I also agree with @KFearsoff that it’s troubling that three of the current SC members, Robert Hensing, Thomas Bereknyei, and John Ericson, are part of the Nix team, which creates a conflict of interest. The SC should not be dominated by individuals directly involved in the core development of Nix. A Steering Committee meant to provide oversight should be independent and diverse, not made up primarily of team members with vested interests. The deeper issue with John Ericson is not only his vote against banning Anduril from job postings, which effectively aligned him with pro-MIC positions, but also the fact that he omitted this stance from his candidacy forms. Those forms were the main way voters could make their decision, and the community had no way of knowing that he would later vote this way. The failure to disclose this, combined with the SC not recording or publishing the vote itself, represents a serious breach of trust. Along with John’s habit of filibustering and concern-trolling even widely supported measures, this has further eroded confidence in the SC’s leadership.
To restore trust in the project’s governance, there must be greater transparency, accountability, and structural reform of the SC. The community needs to know how and why decisions are made, and misuse of resources must be investigated openly.
I joined the community 3 or 4 years ago, hoping to also contribute. But I mostly saw forum dramas and with hunts, while serious technical problems were left to go stale.
Why don’t we get a reputation based system? The ones that contribute most to the project (e.g., commits, PRs, PR reviews – excluding trivial typo changes, reformats, etc.) are the ones that are elligible to be elected to the various committees and those with contributions past a (reasonable) threshold in the past period of time (year, etc.) are the ones that can vote.
This will eliminate accounts that only create or stoke the flames of dramas. From both sides.
(Most likely this will get hidden after many flags, but whatever. This time I’ll press the reply button rathen than just close the tab after writing my thoughts – in a real safe community one would not need to think so many times about whether to post a message or not).
How Anduril products get used and whether they are bought to begin with, whether migrant workers are able to get into the US in an efficient and legal manner, these are all political questions for the state, not something NixOS can do real things about.
Ejecting Anduril and then transitively ejecting anyone who doesn’t reject their PRs is not really the kind of solution anyone is thinking about when they bring up how ICE agents are dangerously close to becoming the US Rosgvardiya under a complicit SCOTUS. I am rather against this outcome. Yet it is entirely consistent for me to reject your argument because doing things within NixOS will not do anything to decisively avert that outcome. You want to do something, but you are not pursuing success by looking for such token gestures within the NixOS community.
Barack Obama didn’t say “get your own rally” because he wanted people to be politically inactive. He said it because you have to find a way to do that or else you won’t be effective. You just won’t accomplish anything. It’s a cynic’s trap to decide to care so intensely, to the point of uncompromising devotion, yet choose to act in a relatively small community that has zero credibility regarding the issue you want to affect. It is a cynic’s trap, and you just have to recognize it and get yourself out of it. You can’t accomplish the token gesture you have fixated yourself upon. Hiding from yourself the fact that it is just a token gesture is a way to stay fixated indefinitely because you can’t accomplish it to see how little effect it would even have. It is a way to avoid the problem, to avoid difficult tasks that are necessary outside of the NixOS community. It’s a kind of procrastination, and you need to learn to direct your emotional energy at things that are not immovable objects and instead toward things that will accomplish things when moved.
Just like Barack, I’m not telling you this because I don’t want you to be active but because I want you to be effective. I’m saying this because I want NixOS to be good at what it can be good at and because I really do hope that you are able to take actions that decisively prevent the creation of a Rosgvardiya within the US. The places where we can take those actions are most assuredly not on this Discourse and most assuredly don’t have anything to do with Anduril’s pull requests. Good luck.
No, this is not a “democracy” LARP. It’s an actual democracy. No, members of the Steering Committee are not “elected”. They are elected. You should not have used any scare quotes here.
You are partially right and partially wrong here. You are wrong about branches of government. Not all democracies have branches of government that are independent and have leverage over each other because not all democracies have branches. You are right about the general public though. I’m glad that the Nix community can and will protest unfavorable changes. I hope that the Nix community will go above and beyond protesting unfavorable changes, though. I hope that many members of the Nix community will vote in the upcoming election so that less unfavorable changes will be made in the future.
This is not accurate. There is no dictatorship. There is no democratic front. There is just an actual democracy.
By voting.
He never said that 5/7 members resigning was good news. He used the phrase “good news” to point out a silver lining for an otherwise bad situation.
As someone who doesn’t know much about other language/distro communities, why is Rust’s current rules brought up as an example for following often in this thread? Is it because they are similar to Nix in organization structure? Or is it because they are very drama/argument free?
Would the rules of other communities be a better fit?
I do agree that as a community it makes sense to understand and consider the rationale when an idea is not capable of achieving broad support within important sub-populations (which I hope we can agree includes women and LGBTQ, since we are already discussing gender, but obviously extends to other axes). Inclusiveness is important, good ideas can come from anywhere, and I desire neither the tyranny of the majority nor the minority. People come first.
I do want to caution: I don’t think this has to be us-vs-them, and I think that mindset is long-term not conducive to finding common ground. Based on the 2024 Nix Community Survey the user base is around 80% men. By definition, any idea that finds broad support in this community will be “discourse liked” by a mostly male cohort.
Automod closed the topic just before I could have posted it — which I guess could’ve given me time to re-think posting this, but I think I’m going to go ahead and do it anyway. Because all else in this topic is secondary to making a strong call to action with regard to what was said in that twitter thread.
For the record, I was not suggesting there’s some grand fascist conspiracy SC as a whole is in some way in on, specifically. Nor that even any one member of SC is in on it. But those tweets are incontrovertible proof that fascists-adjacent people want to make NixOS and it’s community more pliable towards their stated goals of… uhh… building ever more powerful weapons of *merican dominance. I’m not sure if you can even call it a conspiracy, if they’re not hiding any and are just talking about it plainly in the open.
Like I said, I was mostly sympathetic to wanting more objective (such as it can be for us meatbags) and less opaque moderation. I didn’t really think it’s a technical project’s place to preach about causes of diversity any further than “just be respectful to everyone you interact with, regardless of who they are”. Heck, I would’ve probably voted to let Jon Ringer be at the time of his ban, had this been a community vote, as I don’t really believe in sealioning being a crime and I haven’t noticed him do much more than re-litigating topics (he turned out to be a much more noticeable shit-stirrer later on r/NixOS, but that’s well… later). And didn’t think much about Tomberek working for Anduril (apart from the failure of disclosure, which wasn’t specifically on him as far as I understand). I just really don’t think that ideological consonance is a prerequisite to working together on a tech project, as long as things are kept reasonably impersonal and respectful (which had not been the Zeitgest for a while already, but what can you do).
So I should’ve just said “yeah, good riddance mods” and carry on, shouldn’t I? But this is an autist’s operating system and true to it’s spirit, I’m rather particular about building systems and processes that facilitate good outcomes and discourage bad ones, so you have really go out of your way not to fall into the pit of success. Which is why I’m in agreement with ElvishJerrico re: this being an overreach by the SC, which was supposed to bootstrap systems for NixOS governance, not be governance itself. If the moderation was not working like it should’ve been, then SC should have evolved the processes in a direction that facilitated moderation working well. Not… whatever it seems like it had happened. Which is why I also agree with KFearsoff that it’s somewhat ironic that the side that had issues with objectivity and transparency and moderation doesn’t really bring that much clarity into the situation themselves.
But all this probably wouldn’t be enough for me to voice my opinion — I’ve been using NixOS for good 6+ years, but my contributions are fairly minor so as long as things mostly work, I mostly keep to myself. But with people openly speaking they want to mold NixOS and it’s community according to their wishes of wanting to see *merican boot stomping the face of the world forever? I think that’s the point even an “enlightened centrist” like me has to decide the Overton window had slid far too right for their liking and speak up.
So no, I’m not saying SC is in on some conspiracy. I’m not even saying Tomberek necessarily is. Or whoever the person of disagreement was. All this might’ve just been disagreements stemming from respective persons’ natures. But if reaction to people stating they want to rule us (the community) so they can rule us (the world) is not “we need to give those shitheels no quarter”, but that vague dancing around the topic and dismissing this all as ridiculous conspiracies — then that is not the right reaction. This is like Chamberlain or Merkel all over again and we all had seen how that ended up.
I think the least that should be done in the face of hostile actors wanting to rule is:
give as much transparency into the whole kerfuffle that resulted in the resignation tender as feasible, so we can decide for ourselves who was in the right and who was in the wrong given the facts and that there really was not “ridiculous conspiracy” afoot. Vague reassurances will do us no good at this point, when a clear statement of hostility towards the community was made, only hard proof that everything was aboveboard.
ensure that Anduril has no leverage over the community. Whatever they could leverage to mold us in what they want to see should be cauterised and rules instituted no rot can get in again. Sorry, Tomberek — as much as it’s not something I would’ve ever said before seeing the Anduril tweets, that includes your SC position. Even if it would be mostly symbolic in the face of upcoming elections. Really, I’m not saying you are or were nefarious — just that in the context of those tweets I can’t say I feel the same about your employer and at this point I wouldn’t put it past them to force you to act against the best interest of the community, even if that’s not what you want to do. I’m not saying associations with Anduril should preclude anyone from participating in community, but it certainly should restrict people from being able to exercise any power over its workings.
I think that’s the minimum that has to be done so we can trust that powers that be in the community are against fascist-adjacent people having a say in how the project is run. And if not then well, at least I suppose I can have solace in the fact that trumpbomber that nukes me because my country didn’t pay enough tribute to the Emperor of Mankind was build reproducibly.
To reiterate — I have nothing in particular against anyone in the mod team or the SC. But this really looks like the last inflection point where we can stop insane gileadans from fucking up our OS. And I sincerely hope we can do that, instead of waffling which assumed insinuation is ridiculous or not and which sleight of wit can deflect and assuage the best.
INB4 “yawn, yet another TDS’d europoor triggered at us winning so much” — sure, tell that to yourself, and yet I didn’t use to be like that and all that was needed to get me here was the last few years of overt idiocy ruining everything for everyone
I think K900’s response (61th reply) already explain it way better than I did. I recommend you to read his reply instead.
Again this is essential for the safety of moderation team. Thanks again for the moderation team to fight against bigotry and fight for community safety.
Also thanks for the temporarily closed for 4 hours to let people rethink what to post.
Because we are already in a nazi bar situation and this is the easiest and the most sane way toward justice by dismantling the toxic culture.
WHat shit are you talking about?
Actually your arguments (fork it or not) were already well addressed in the open letter to the NixOS foundation last year.
Are you saying that letter was actually a mistake in the first place?
I thought it was clear consensus that cultural problem exist in nix project and people were trying to fix that.
After the incident last year, Anduril is still around and even more deep tied with the project.
But Other than authority people changed, it seems nothing has change in this sense since then. Is this the outcome people were looking for in the first place?
It means we are not able to get rid of Andruil anymore, even worse if they infiltrate moderation team and we cannot speak against them anymore. Nix become Andruil. All the work maybe prioritize in favour of making their equipments designed for surveillence of even killing lifes. It will be just dystopia. Is that what you are looking for?
I am really tired for this. I didn’t expect people just be ignorant like this.
There are two parties at odds, one has a direct line of accountability a community of voters; the other has no effective accountability, when challenged to reform resigned in protest and asked the other to do the same.
While a self-selecting group may produce a higher level of consistency/efficiency in approach to decisions, it also will inevitably lead to a mono-culture of opinion, which may not be confined solely to the benefit of advancing Nix’s technical excellence (the motivation for the 98% of us who don’t care about politics).
I spent almost 30 years doing IT before I ever touched anything to do with Nix, Nix is an absolutely brilliant framework for building and distributing software, but it is only that, a means of building and distributing software, there is nothing Anduril or any other big-evil-corp cannot accomplish without Nix with a bit more effort. Trying to deny or discourage it’s adoption there or anywhere only hurts Nix by making our community look unreliable/unprofessional.
Anduril doesn’t need to “take-over” Nix, they can do whatever they would ever want to do with it under the MIT license provided they don’t infringe on the Nix trademarks. Using them as an excuse to justifying moderation as it was looks paranoid/a bit unhinged given usage of terms like N*zis and f*cists elsewhere in the thread.
Hypothetically, saying Anduril is removed from the picture, does that mean we can all get along? Or does this “ethical use of Nix” issue bubble up again when people who work for Raytheon, Tesla, Boeing, Exxon, Nike or Chic-a-fila want to contribute/sponsor/participate? Nix is not licensed under an ethical source license, it will never be re-licensed and it would be effectively impossible to enforce even if it were; we need to focus on what we can control, making Nix an amazing tool for the benefit of all.
There are no victims or oppressed tribes in Nix, the goal of the Nix community should be to welcome everyone who is serious about learning or contributing to it’s excellence, not to go out of our way to insure that an equal number of users are this identity group or that identity group - that type of nonsense will drive more people away from Nix than to it. We are united by our purpose, not by our composition.
I do believe everyone participating in the Nix community shares in the good intention to make Nix better and increase it’s adoption, I think it’s important to remember we share good intentions particularly in times of disagreement, so we can maintain a baseline of civility towards each other.
I’d like to thank the moderators for their tireless efforts and contributions and hope they’ll stick around the community in whatever capacity they’re comfortable with (including running for SC, if they’re so inclined).
I seem to have been erroneously given the impression that the sponsorship crisis was not about Anduril.
I can repeatedly detect some framing that is simply not true. For example, a consensus results from a consensus process, a process which reduces a large number of independent decision authorities into one clear decision outcome. No consensus process was ever employed to reduce the input from the NixOS community to a decisive “Anduril is forbidden” decision. Still yet, it’s evident that in some local consensus, people had agreed that Anduril would be forbidden. However, it is incorrect to substitute a sub-group’s local consensus for a legitimate organization consensus in conversation. It frames the conversation in a fundamentally irreconcilable way.
There also seems to be a lot of framing creep. One week, an SC member “should have disclosed their employment change.” The next week, “they intentionally lied about it.” This kind of behavior, rather than establishing a framing that will precipitate the desired conclusion, only undermines trust in the aggrieved. While there seems to be a lot of talking behind the scenes that may smoothly evolve from the perspective of those present, when it comes back to the Discourse, it’s a discontinuous step function that is extremely easy to spot and disappointing to have to dismiss.
The arguments focusing on process are productive. Focus on process, not outcomes. It is a lot easier to work with process design statements such as “the SC was supposed to create the new governance, not govern.” That was all that had to be said in one long post that I read. How the current SC or next SC are comprised, how complex the representation becomes, how relief valves are constructed to support pluralism to alleviate differences in strong local consensus, these are all important problems that can be analyzed and discussed in a quite logical and civil manner without explicit concern for outcomes.
That last bit is really important. The lack of self-control demonstrated by a laser focus on outcomes, not process, makes it very difficult to take arguments about process design or execution seriously. I very much doubt the judgement of a person who is making general design decisions while tunnel-visioned on a specific outcome for a specific problem at the expense of all others.
Focusing on specific outcomes, especially those that have a narrow interest base, is politically unwise even within the natural politics of an open source community. It is much easier to argue in favor of processes, which protect many people’s interests, than it is to argue in favor of outcomes that only a very specific group wants. A process that is able to protect a minority interest in an important situation is likely beneficial to many minorities, alleviating the minority rights versus majority rule problem. However, an outcome, such as excluding Anduril, has at most the support of the population who wants that specific outcome. It might even have less support if the process distortion necessary to achieve the outcome threatens the interests of many who want the outcome. To the extent that the outcome designs the process, the faith in the legitimacy of the process will forever be undermined.
I’m not even going to reply to the haphazard replies I received that lead me here since they are so senseless and obviously aimed at fanning flames.
That does sound really bad. That being said, I don’t really have a way of knowing whether or not Anduril is trying to make those things happen. How could I figure out whether or not Anduril is trying to make those things happen?
For the most part, yes! I was actually looking for a response from @KFearsoff, and I do still want to hear their thoughts on this topic, but you’re response is still very valuable because it’s helping me understand a perspective that’s very different from my own perspective.