I am still receiving and adding signatures to the list above. We now have 78 signatures, of which 43 are Nixpkgs committers, 34 with at least one merge in September (“active”). That’s 16% of all “active” committers. These committers merged 29% of all PRs in that month.
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Can someone help me as a new member understand the urgency of this. I just checked the official election thread and voting begins in a few days and ends basically end of this month. And after this there will be a new SC (mostly). So what does the SC have to decide on currently that cannot wait until the new one is elected, i.e., can’t we just wait for half a month and then the SC can try and resolve all ongoing issues (if there are any, sorry I am lost on what’s going on now and what the SC is actually deadlocked on and why it’s important)?
Wouldn’t it make sense to again, wait these “few days”. Then have regularly elected SC. Start discussing what changes need to be made to the constitution (e.g., auto-re-election on SC deadlock that last for X weeks?) or any other document to avoid this unhappy situation and we can be less anxious about this next year?
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Wouldn’t it make sense to again, wait these “few days”. Then have regularly elected SC.
I think that’s what most of us are doing. 
The issue at hand ist just whether 5 or - in the event of resignations - 7 seats would be up for (re-)election.
Additionally, it’s important to at least try to build as much common understanding as possible of past events and current views in order to be able to make an informed decision as a voter.
Edit: I just asked @wolfgangwalther to add me to the list earlier today. It’s still the decision of sc members whether there will be a full reelection - I just wanted to make a clear statement that it would be a good idea at this point, as we can only win in terms of representation.
It would still be a fully regular process according to the constitution, nothing extraordinary really. At least from my perspective. But it’s hard to find consensus even on that, as you can see 
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Prelude: I think your argument makes sense, there are just some things that I’m not clear about.
Is there agreement on this? From the constitution, the SC was tasked with “Management of Official Resources”, part of which is to “Create and enforce appropriate rules for Nix project spaces, including issuing Nix-wide bans, which will affect voter eligibility.”. It is also tasked to “Establish and manage teams to delegate authority on specific areas”, but doesn’t specifically enumerate tasks which should or must be delegated.
Furthermore, the constitution explicitly creates mechanism to revoke delegation:
The SC has the authority to make decisions within the scope of its responsibilities; the restrictions on this authority are all explicitly listed in this constitution. The SC may make a decision to revoke delegation of a specific part of authority, if necessary — even if the authority in question has been with a certain team since before the current constitution.
On decision-making: “the SC remains responsible if the delegated team fails to reach a decision.”
Taken together, these seem at odds with the notion that the main purpose of the SC was to create new systems of governance. Taking only the document as written, the stated purpose of the SC seems to be to fulfill specific organization objectives, as empowered by electoral mandate, and delegation is a means through which it can adhere to the community value to “distribute decisionmaking widely”.
Lest people read too much into this: there is a difference between procedurally-enabled and conducive-to-community-trust. In particular, it sounds like the SC came to a decision for a relatively hands-off approach to the moderation team early in their term. Though they left the door open for SC intervention “in cases of significant malfeasance, misconduct, or dereliction of duty”, it seems that there was failure to establish processes that would allow them to demonstrate that such had happened.
I don’t think there necessarily has to be consensus regarding reason before a body can act on consensus regarding outcome. In the same way, I don’t think it’s easy to express a single cohesive reason for the results of any election, but still generally believe in elections.
Again, there are gradations to this - I think it’s entirely reasonable to conclude that given their stated policy towards the moderation team, the SC should have convened on such a decision with a process that was aimed at explicit enumeration of reasons before proceeding on a decision through vote.
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The SC had another meeting, see: SC meeting 2025-10-08 17:00 UTC
There was no progress made.
Since my last full update in Call for full re-election of the Steering Committee - #24 by wolfgangwalther, the following signatures were added:
- adamcstephens, LXC and BEAM teams, Nixpkgs committer
- Notarin, Nixpkgs maintainer
- nrdsp, Nixpkgs contributor
- olafklingt, ex-documentation team
- Pamplemousse, Nixpkgs contributor
- phaer, Nixpkgs committer
- uninsane, Nixpkgs committer
We are now at 79.
As said earlier, I am still accepting signatures - just send me a DM here or on Matrix.
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You are free to start an RFC to propose changes to the current governance model if you’re serious about it.
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