A critical component of our approach here is that Determinate Nix is a downstream distribution, with a focus on improving and validating the patches we’re wanting to get accepted upstream.
It seems weird, then, that some of the harshest critics of our strategy to improve Nix in this thread appear to be users of and contributors to Lix, which is explicitly a fork without a stated goal of their improvements being accepted upstream.
Many people here have said they believe we are acting and communicating in bad faith. Unfortunately, there is not much we can do there. I am deliberately and sometimes painfully straightforward and honest. If people don’t believe me, I can’t really fix that without demonstrating it through our actions.
Our actions have consistently shown collaboration and a willingness to support and improve our projects and work to deliberately support our work going upstream. Despite that, when work does go upstream it is turned into a “they’re infecting our stuff” conspiracy – like the above comment I already replied to.
I am rather famously easy to talk to, and am really quite happy to engage with hard conversations directly, with honesty and curiosity. People in these threads wonder why I don’t engage with the mud slinging here, and I’d like you to ask yourself if you would?
It is not fun to post about our hard work, only for it to be responded to with made up accusations of ill intent, sometimes literal deliberate lies I’d hope would blow over, accusations I’ve somehow tricked Eelco into what we’re doing, etc. Frankly, it is incredibly rude and unpleasant, and I hate it.
People on my team wonder why I continue to insist we publish here or engage at all. It’s because we are part of the Nix community, and we are contributing to the project, and I love Nix so deeply that I want it to succeed. The division and stagnation and anger and inability to choose are so incredibly disappointing to witness that we were forced to change our strategy about how to vet and deliver these improvements.
Some people appear to be afraid of Determinate Nix “taking over.” That is literally not the goal. It is a vehicle for us to improve and deliver on work we’ve had in flight for years, where there is no clear decision about it from upstream. I’m not satisfied being stuck in indecision, so we’re moving forward delivering what our users and customers need and are asking for. My greatest hope is the Nix project finds its way through this. There are many hard choices to be made, and I hope a process for choosing is identified and implemented. I think a lot of the fears would simply go away if the overall project was more able to make hard decisions and execute on a plan.
Anyway, here’s some thoughts. It’s not edited or workshopped or anything, and on that note: one side effect of communicating clearly, honestly, and directly is it can come off disingenuous because people aren’t used to it. It also means it is easy to say things people don’t like. It is okay for people to not like what I have to say. I’m open to and am very happy to engage in conversation to understand, share perspectives, and learn. I don’t mind having my mind changed! But the above thread is not really a conversation.