Explain your usage of Nix 3.0 then.
Quoting from your announcement:
The Nix project has long intended to release version 3.0 when flakes are stable. With Determinate Nix 3.0, we’ve fulfilled that promise by offering a formal stability guarantee for flakes, making them production-ready today.
(Emphasis my own.)
You are sending mixed signals by stating you “will not describe [Determinate Nix 3.0] as something [upstream Nix] isn’t”. In practice, by using the 3.0 version number, you have done just the contrary. You have declared that Nix 3.0 is ready, that the roadmap has been fulfilled, and it is available in the fork from Determinate Systems.
Even though I do read your words stating that Determinate Systems is just some services around a totally still Open Source, and Free Software component (Nix), and on a pure technicality still is, it is not what matters here.
And this comes back to an answer I did not have the energy or time to write to @rhendric, too: the issue is not that Determinate Systems has Embraced Nix. The issue not even that anyone Extends Nix. If we’re thinking about the infamous three Es, the insidiousness of them is that the first two are good, and without the third E, there is nothing wrong.
The issue is that when the third E comes, it’s not necessarily making itself obvious with a bang, it is a component of a long-term strategy, and is insidious. This is why people can become hyper-aware and defensive around situations that could result in an EEE situation. Like a VC-funded company doing bold moves Embracing and Extending an Open Source or Free Software project.
Though here, Graham, your move might have been too on-the-nose. Building alternative facts that Determinate Nix 3.0[sic] is not a fork, and not an attempt to describe Nix 3.0 as something it isn’t, is, like the kids say, a mood. It feels like you are testing the grounds. Seeing how far you can push your narrative before it is too much.
This is what I was writing about in my previous messages. Having extensions around Nix is not an issue per se. What is, is the hostile move taking away the self-determination of the Nix project, by taking the roadmap toward Nix 3.0 from the team’s hands, and scream loudly: I DECLARE WE ARE NOW HERE, wherever y’all really are.
The issue is 100% about messaging.
You could have made the exact same thing you were already doing, and continued doing it, and just pushed an update stating that Determinate Nix [1.0] continues to be the place where you can find the already existing guarantee of stability around Flakes-as-they-are, there wouldn’t have been much notice around this. Even with mentioning the plan that you were going to extend this work toward for other experiments around Nix, wouldn’t have made this much of a splash.
Except that the messaging, even if it was apparently not the intent, makes it sound like you are deciding that Nix 3.0 is ready, and forcing the hand of the upstream project through declaring loudly it is.
If, like you said, you are “deliberately and sometimes painfully straightforward and honest”, and that this really is a genuinely honest attempt, from an over-enthusiastic team. Then it is misguided. You have been running with blinders on, not realizing the privileged place Determinate Systems has and the power it holds over the project, and not realizing how small moves that are targeting the upstream project like this one needs to be done really carefully.
And now to discredit all of my points, a personal attack: Considering you said after that you are “rather famously easy to talk to, and [are] really quite happy to engage with hard conversations directly, with honesty and curiosity”, I’m not sure how straightforward and honest you are. Before I became an overt opponent to Determinate System’s moves against the ecosystem, you had spent a long time ghosting me. I’m talking about discussions pretty much like here, where reaching out to you to get more information about those moves was met by silence. So I’ll continue having my doubts about the veracity of your communications.