While I generally donât get much involved in the âpoliticsâ (for the lack of a better word), I will support this because I want us to have a start with a clean state. Please add me too, as thefossguy, some random nixpkgs maintainer.
In light of this petition for a full re-election I called for a second formal vote of no confidence, which went down the same way as the original formal vote:
Thank you for the transparency. As it is clear the Steering Committee remains deadlocked and unable to establish confidence in itself, I continue to reiterate the call for a full re-election for the health of the community and the project governance.
Between this post going up four hours ago and the SC votes being shared, the following signatures were added:
amadaluzia, Nixpkgs maintainer
antonmosich, Nixpkgs maintainer
Enzime, Nixpkgs committer, nix-darwin committer, nixos-anywhere maintainer, disko maintainer
isabelroses, Thank you so much for pointing me to the context which exactly answered my question.
When I first read that post yesterday, I read it too fast and skip too much. English is not my native language, I was only looking for paragraphs first sentence and sentences with bold words and large words and links. I wanted to speed up because there were a lot of replies and I thought it may have more informations in the replies.
I did not know that the evidence was treated as confidential and that was unable for public review.
I saw a lot of people said in their replies about they already read it, so that I was curious and asked Where can I read the evidence about SC prepared to lie to people? above.
I wanted to read it before making any decision like everybody did.
I am so sorry about asking that stupid question because of my misreading of the post. I am not trying to pressure anyone to review any confidential materials by any means.
I just login and find the post was flagged and hidden, and I received an automated message said it flag as inappropriate because the community feels it is offensive, abusive, to be hateful conduct or a violation.
I know it is all my fault in this sensitive moment saying those unsensible things.
I am not meant to offend anybody. It was unintentional and it was totally my mistake. I deeply apologize.
Per Steering Committee | Nix & NixOS , as far as I can tell, 5 of the 7 positions will be decided by the current election. Thus the current election is a larger election than weâd typically have. Am I misunderstanding this?
There are costs to bypassing the existing processes: losing continuty; increase overheads, especially for contributors unable to keep up with exceptions to the current process.
Given the costs, and that 5 of 7 SC members will be voted in soon, what is the motivation for a full re-election?
Is the call for a full-election about symbolism, urgency, or to remove the two members whose term ends in 2026?
A handy litmus test to answer that: would there still be a call for re-election if it were two other people whose term ended in 2026?
Asking this clarifying question arguably still underestimates how activist pressure, seemingly a good thing and more familiar territory to many of us, empowers the reactionary forces that arguably governed us before we gave having elected representatives a try instead.
From a narrative point of view those who try to see things through by serving out their term on the SC are just more likely to end up holding the bag (meaning getting blamed) than those who leave or vote no-confidence. Representatives get to go back to to joining the reactionary forces, reactionaries get to score some points, regardless of intention. Meanwhile the pressure stresses all of us out as well.
So a admittedly more radical question to ask ourselves is:
Do we want to be called into action again ahead of the next election?
In the aggregate, that may be what we get from falling back to activism too early, when we wanted to give elected representatives a try. The part of that statement that really demands a lot of patience from us and is admittedly very subjective is the âtoo earlyâ part.
Continuity and upholding processes is of more importance in a young organisation like ours.
I think a lot of opinions are out there about what happened and why that is bad (or not bad), but that does not mean we should change a vital election process.
Sure, the community can signal to the steering council that it is against a decision, and i believe that signal has already landed.
While it is of vital importance to keep people accountable, we should also empower the SC to steer us.
Just to clarify: Where exactly do you see someone âbypassing the existing processesâ here?
I see a petition for full reelections here, which I interpret as an appeal to the SC and its members themselves, as thatâs afaik the only group with the power to actually implement the desired change. If the SC would decide to do so, thatâs a normal process outlined in the constitution.
So I fail to see how this is, in principle, any different to e.g. public petitions or demonstrations in any other democratic process? Or compared to just contacting SC members individually with your wishes & concerns. I donât really see âexceptions to the current processâ in the call for full-elections above. If you see one, please elaborate!
Regarding continuity & reelections, I just link @rhendrics comment in another thread to avoid repeating the same argument.
(Please note that I did not sign the call for full re-election so far; I am not even particularly fond of public petitions like these, I just think they are a legitimate instrument in democratic campaigns)
This is a very important point. You have received a mandate from those who voted for you. They value and trust you, your judgement and character. We are many who believe you have done a great job, and we hope you stay on.
There seems to be a sort of implicit assumption that none of those that âvoted forâ roberth are among the people asking for a full re-election.
First, everyone voted on (rather than for/against) roberth, one way or another, since we had to rank the candidates. So there is no clear line between those who voted âforâ him or âagainstâ him. For instance, for my part, roberth was the top candidate that I voted for out of those serving on the Nix team, he was the 3rd candidate in my ranking out of those that were elected, and about the 8th candidate on my general ranking (according to my notes and my recollection). Given that there were 23 candidates (if I counted correctly), this means that I voted âforâ rather than âagainstâ roberth. That doesnât prevent me from having signed this resignation petition.
Robert was my top vote overall and I wrote the open âletterâ.
(And to make clear: the one-sentence-letter is about a loss of confidence in the SC as a body - this is not about any individual person. I have always highly valued each individual member of the SC and will continue to do so. Theyâre just⌠not good as SC. We didnât know before, we tried, now we know. Thatâs all.)
You are being given a chance to do this, by accepting the losses the SC has incurred and stepping down.
You have to understand that sometimes, those who have failed donât get a chance to make up for it. It is very disrespectful of those affected by the failure to force-feed them attempts at âfixingâ, and constitutes an abuse cycle. Sometimes, the best you can do is accept responsibility and separate.
Please do not end your term early based on external pressure, stay on for the sake of the SC as an institution.
If we want the SC to have power, we need to give it power and also let it keep that power for the agreed upon time period. Otherwise the SC cannot do its job properly. It cannot make the decisions it would need to make, out of a fear of backlash, not via elections, but via activism and drama.