Doing this, to some kind of anti-Anduril-license, or anti-weapons license or anything of that kind would turn the project from open source to something else. It would no longer meet the OSI definition of open source (violating criteria 6 " No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor").
Which perhaps some would think be alright. But for companies sponsoring open source projects, it would matter. Are you sure you can secure sponsoring of for example the cache if going in this new direction?
Yes, I believe you can do that (in terms of law). You confused me with the word “relicense” which tends to mean something else, especially when giving Redis as an example.
What is Anduril’s agenda? What would it look like if Anduril was to capture the project for their own purposes?
Seems he next step is.
The core of the slippery slope argument is that a specific decision under debate is likely to result in unintended consequences. The strength of such an argument depends on whether the small step really is likely to lead to the effect.
Leading to
- … and thus I am willing to undermine the institutions of the Board, NCA, and SC
- … and thus one may justify illegal activity
- … and thus violence is justified to avert catastrophe
Which is a total conflation of the notion that undermining the board, nca, and sc is an illegal violent action.
And it rings hollow coming from someone working for the company in question as a principal software engineer.
So to summarize:
I’ll ask that anyone else not responding to my question about this to refrain from adding more noise until an answer is provided.
You’re literally saying that you’re gonna ask a deeply loaded and rethorical question against a straw man you constructed and you expect no one to call you out on it because that would be bad form.
at this point the author realized that the danger of a black hole isn’t just the infinite unstoppable consumption of energy, but that the mere proximity to it seems to make the speed of light look faster in comparison to the local area.
I for one would like to speak out against a potential license change. It’s clear from the open source definition, any project that discriminates against potential fields of endevour does not meet the definition of an open source project.
Changing the license is a non starter. This requires consent from every individual who contributes to the nix project, or removing their contributions.
Changing the license for future contributions, and packaging them together with old licensed code would be the only plausible method.
NixOS and many distributions contain software like:
Not to mention, Microsoft, which owns github and hosts much of the nixpkgs development, is one of the DoD’s largest contract holders, with several multi billion dollar contracts providing cloud services, office suites, and much more.
So this change would not ideologically “purify” nixOS in any way from what this license alterations would aim to do.
NixOS requiring future contributions to not be FOSS, is a massive mistake. It achieves basically nothing (these companies/government organizations will continue to use the software, forking, using alternatives, etc. They have resources far greater than this entire project)
To me, this proposed change causes similar problems to the json license, The JSON License, which contains the clause “The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.” Believe it or not, this simple clause, albeit comical, was enough to inhibit it’s adoption and use.
A license change for future contributions alienates a whole class of wonderful hardworking and smart contributors. Im many cases not even by ideological differences, but by legal issues. Many organizations have a set list of allowable OSD approved licenses that can be used internally.
Organizations that are dedicated to funding open source projects will be hesistant to fund a non open source project. This would close off nixos from future funding from the likes of the CNCF, linux foundation, grants etc. This would make funding nixOS difficult, and lead to more fragmentation within the community.
If you have a problem with a company contributing, fine. Don’t let them on your board or keep then out of governance.
** I am talking here only about the license. **
I ask politely request organizational leaders of nixOS consider keeping personal politics, religion, and feelings towards certain organizations out of the license to this amazing linux project and that nixOS maintain it’s open source principles.
Thank you all and have a nice day.
I’m new to this whole discussion, but it seems to me that focusing on the license and who is using Nix downstream is a distraction from the core issue—if the creation and distribution of open-source software is thought of in terms of systems theory, then the issue regarding Anduril is clearly one of feedback.
Positive feedback loops, or in other words self-reinforcing feedback loops, are the fastest way to effect dramatic change in any system. Taking for granted that the downstream usage of the Nix project can’t be strictly controlled, nor would that necessarily be a good thing, it’s a separate issue altogether compared to limiting the input of bad actors back into the Nix project.
The potential for harmful circular dependencies to form should be self-evident. In case it’s not, the actual current situation is nearly a minified reproducible case. A single influential Nix contributor can take money from, or run an organization or project or business which depends on money from, a bad actor. The Nix project now has a dependency on that bad actor, and most frameworks for reasoning will lead us to conclude that they will now have established a self-reinforcing feedback loop and the commensurate level of influence on the project.
There is a much higher degree of rigor and accountability associated with what one accepts from others (inputs to the project) compared to how others conduct themselves (downstream actors). Therefore this seems like the most direct and sensible arena for taking action.
I know where you are coming from, but I’d like to make a clarification here: One salient argument for changing the license — whether or not I think it’s currently the best option — would be that it would prevent e.g. an actor such as Determinate Systems from using the Nix source code without making their changes available in return.
It is not just a valid open-source and free software option to use a less permissive license to ensure the people that fork the Nix project contribute back and respect the 4 essential freedoms, it would also be directly in the spirit of free software.
A further clarification is needed here: while I do see the CNCF sometimes being a bit more on the open-source, corporate friendly side, they’re quite obviously very open to taking an aggressive posture when actors equivalent to Determinate Systems, such as e.g. Hashi Corp or Redis take an aggressive source-available stance.
I think there is a bit of a tendency in your post — and in general — to make it seem as if a license change would only be done because people were “upset politically”, and not a more honest representation that this would also likely be a strategic move to ensure that the primary and most powerful distribution of Nix remains completely open source and free as in both freedom and beer.
And that to many of us, this battle is not one of a left/right political polarization, but one of protecting the absurd amount of collective effort that a vast global group of highly motivate volunteers have put into Nix, Nixpkgs, and the wider ecosystem from hostile actors that wish to use this excess energy in a parasitic and controlling manner for their own benefit.
I think in short, your entire argument is completely correct, but it rests fundamentally on the premise that those that say they are merely “downstream distributions” are using a loaded, distracting rhetorical term from the actual reality of what they are — they’re a parasitic, hostile force, seeking to harm the free and open source ecosystem by capturing features such as semantic versioning, caching, installation, and ultimately the entire Nix evaluation, deployment, and distribution systems to gate it behind paid platforms.
Further, their activities goes beyond just functional capture — they’re looking to capture the very spirit and name of the project, making it seem as if their documentation, software, and people are representative of the actual project, and they have in the past performed sabotage on official resources while working on their own alternatives to achieve this aim.
In that sense, their decision to call themselves just a downstream distribution is the perfect rhetorical trick, because it hides the fact that they’re a negative feedback loop of value capture, a direst and constant assault on the entire project, under the guise of a good faith improvement by benevolent but jaded former contributors, that found the project unreasonable, and came to the conclusion that only the free market could solve the problems they were facing.
It’s a completely and totally pernicious fabrication that exists solely to turn this open source project into a value stream to be tapped and controlled.
To get back to systems theory: despite what certain actors say, despite how they call themselves just “downstream distributions”… As the father of systems theory himself said, “The purpose of a system is what it does. There is after all, no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.”
And just to be clear, what you said below is completely correct.
So to say to both @DuncanHills and @RazeLighter777, a license change is an obvious, system intervention that exists to mitigate the feedback of the exact nature Duncan notes, and while there is a clear attempt by these bad actors to distract and use political polarization and rhetorically shrewd communication as a way to divide and conquer the community, from a high-levels system view, these aren’t politically charged decisions, they’re just an method of correction that is on the table of potential tools to achieve the goal of making the best version of the project that can exist.
That said, of all the tools available to us right now, it’s one of the more aggressive ones, and while we’d be mistaken to neglect it, I don’t think the time is here to activate it yet.
But alone the threat of its existence should hopefully start to serve as a reminder to certain corporate actors that the community isn’t just gonna let them get away with a capture of the project, and that we should be ready to activate more aggressive interventions to ensure that corporate participation in the project stays symbiotic and not parasitic.
But it’s already under LGPL and they make their fork’s source code publicly available
Determinate Systems tries to contribute, but not every feature is accepted into upstream Nix. That’s just how it goes
You are giving Determinate Systems too much credit. They haven’t even sold majority of people on flakes. Nobody really buys into their non-Nix-improvement related stuff, mostly it gets used for enterprise support
from hostile actors that wish to use this excess energy in a parasitic and controlling manner for their own benefit.
This is not a helpful way of talking about members of the community–corporate or otherwise–who regularly contribute or attempt to contribute. As you are now somebody on the SC, it would be reassuring to see you act with more grace and kindness–some of the existing SC members may have experience you can draw on there.
the community isn’t just gonna let them get away with a capture of the project,
There is no genuinely compelling argument or evidence that this has ever been the case, despite the many posts by the same noisy factions claiming as much. I am personally deeply unconvinced by what amount to elaborate conspiracy theories–might as well go with Lunduke or srid or jringer at that point.
Or maybe the community voted for exactly this kind of speech towards Anduril. You were not voted in, so clearly you should not be defining how members of the SC should behave. Actually, it stands to reason that if the community agreed with you, you would have been voted in.
They are legally required to make to make those sources publicly available. But they did add a non-optional, closed source component called nixd to their fork. Their phrasing around this is anything but straight forward, to the point where one could think it might be intentionally misleading.
But he was voted by a significant amount of the community. Also, if people were to agree with your statement, Tom wouldn’t have been voted into as one of the final 5 candidates (3rd candidate by initial votes and 1 vote away from the 2nd candidate)…
This is not a helpful way of talking about members of the community–corporate or otherwise–who regularly contribute or attempt to contribute.
That aside, @crertel is completely right about this one. Banning companies after you just decided that they don’t align with your views (even if they were contributing to the community in good faith), would only scare other companies that might want to adopt Nix/NixOS. Why would Microsoft/Google or any big firm would try to use Nix in their products/infrastructure and try to contribute back? They actively have military contracts that could overnight render their infrastructure almost useless by virtue of not being able to fix their issues in Nix/nixpkgs… And no, having a separate downstream distribution and maintaining it when upstream wants to see you gone is not going to work (look at your example for DetSys).
Also, that makes me wonder, should we also restrict / not package OSS applications that are created by these blacklisted firms? What if someone from Anduril creates a cool and useful application and someone wants to package it in nixpkgs. Would that be allowed to be packaged?
Banning companies after you just decided that they don’t align with your views (even if they were contributing to the community in good faith), would only scare other companies that might want to adopt Nix/NixOS.
They’re already banned from advertising their job offers here, there is no reason to suspect good faith and nobody “just” decided anything.
This also ignores the potential for repulsing companies that would not want to be associated with a project that embraces companies like Anduril. It also ignores that this project does not, as far as I understand, aim to please companies at the cost of its community.
Why would Microsoft/Google or any big firm would try to use Nix in their products/infrastructure and try to contribute back?
The whole conversation has been specifically about Anduril and more generally about weapons companies. You treat that discussion as a slipperly slope, as many have already done before in this very thread, but I don’t think that’s fair.
There’s a lot of nuance in the arguments presented so far and even reduced to a simplistic one-dimensional level, we’d end up with at the very least a spectrum to grade companies on. There is no reason why one couldn’t reject actors on the extreme end of a such a spectrum without excluding the ones more to the middle.
I personally think that’s a harmfully simplistic way of viewing ethical issues, but it would still be more complex than the simple black-and-white version I’ve seen used so many times.
That’s a very surprising thing to read. Tom was reelected for two additional years. If there isn’t a significant amount of the community that voted for Tom, then it’s very surprising to me that he got reelected for two additional years. I would have expected him to either not get reelected at all or get reelected for one additional year at the absolute most.
If the amount of people who voted for Tom was not significant, then what caused him to get reelected for two additional years?
I don’t think this is referring to Tom
Once again highlighting here that it’s a misfeature of a voting system when you can’t answer basic questions people like “What percentage of the community voted for X candidate?”
Once again highlighting that being able to answer such a question in a simple way means the voting system isn’t complex enough.
Oh, whoops. You’re right. Now that I reread the relevant posts, I’m realizing that this is what Steinhagen meant: “But [crertel] was voted by a significant amount of the community.” Disregard my previous post.
Eh, I don’t really agree that that’s a significant disadvantage to ranked-choice voting. Instead of asking the question “What percentage of the community voted for X candidate?”, you could ask the question “What percentage of the community put X candidate in their top 3?”. I don’t think that ranked-chose voting is the best option (I think that score voting would be better), but I don’t think that this is a good argument against ranked-choice voting.
I didn’t want to expand on that idea to lose track, so the first phrase was a bit short. My mistake.
The sentence purpose was more or less a reminder that crertel was voted by (in my opinion significant) number of contributors that consider him representative. As a result, quotes like 'if the community agreed with you, you *would* have been voted in' sound like you are dismissing their vote just because they haven’t reached a certain threshold.
That being said, in the previous statement I wanted to tackle this statement: Or maybe the community voted for exactly this kind of speech towards Anduril. That statement is incorrect. If the community voted for that kind of speech towards Anduril in particular, it certainly is surprising that Tom was the third voted candidate (1 vote behind the second place) in the initial voting round and succeeded to be one of the 5 elected members.
The whole conversation has been specifically about Anduril and more generally about weapons companies. You treat that discussion as a slipperly slope, as many have already done before in this very thread, but I don’t think that’s fair.
I agree and that’s why my personal take is to completely avoid this slippery slope. In my opinion bad actors should be restricted to contribute to this community, but those actions need to be demonstrated. Just because you might not like a company’s particular policy / domain activity, as long as they partake in the community in good faith, directing vitriol at them will only make others reluctant to work with Nix.
It’s not that surprising, it’s just the way the voting system works (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI).
Besides I think it is important to have the whole picture in mind here:
Overall 35% of all voters put him on the last possible position.