Determinate Nix 3.0

[drakon]

@kampka

One great promise of reproducible Nix is not just that whatever you build will build the same way today, it will also build the same way tomorrow, next week and next month. You can put your project on a shelf for 10 years and when you dust if of again, it will still just build, as long as you have nix as your trusted cornerstone. If that promise gets broken, the nix community will break along side it.

If something breaks because it was dependent on a feature that was clearly marked as experimental, and that experimental feature makes a breaking change, responsibility lies with whoever expected stability from an experimental feature.

[cafkafk]

@grahamc

Some people appear to be afraid of Determinate Nix “taking over.” That is literally not the goal.

Opensource flakehub then, no CLA. Same for all other Determinate System products.

(please don’t reply, I don’t actually care how you spin an answer)

[jotix]

you people have no idea how bad looks this civil war that you have going on here from outside, this turn off users in a big way…

[kampka]

@drakon

If something breaks because it was dependent on a feature that was clearly marked as experimental, and that experimental feature makes a breaking change, responsibility lies with whoever expected stability from an experimental feature.

While that may be technically correct, people who rely on flakes will just ditch the version of nix which breaks flakes for a version which doesn’t. If being technically correct is the hill you wish to die on, I won’t stand in your way, but don’t expect people to join you.

Lix already has extended their compatibility guarantee for flakes, DetNix has officially declared flakes stable. If CppNix now wants to break flakes on a technicality, people will not move on from flakes, they’ll move on from CppNix.

[drakon]

I personally feel like the ‘ideal’ solution would be:

• Separate Flakes from Nix itself (although this is more philosophical than technical) similar to niv and npins
• Stabilise Flakes as-is and call it Flakes v1
• Any breaking changes can that be made against “Flakes v2”

The biggest issue I can see is telling Nix which version of Flakes its dealing with.

[chrism]

I cosign this.

The only actual way to betray what passes as a community here would be for a bad actor to register and enforce a trademark on the Nix brand. If it’s even possible to trademark the name “Nix.”

But it’s also an abdication of the community if the Nix Foundation doesn’t do this, and it’s on them.

Everything else is just normal machinations of large, popular projects.

[elikoga]

I’m just going to call a spade a spade and say both lix and detnix are hostile forks of github:nixos/nix by commonly acceptable definition

Which is not a morally bad thing per se.

Report abusing to hide this post is a morally bad thing though imo

[drakon]

Yes, because a fork that spawned from a lack of leadership and a commercial fork mired in conflicts of interest (including the aforementioned lack of leadership) are totally comparable.

It’s not even relevant to the issue at hand, it’s redirection.

[amardeep]

Hi @grahamc

I started using nix not too long ago, after hearing about it on hacker news and getting curious about this fancy new thing. I wanted to install in on my macbook, but looked at the installation instructions on mac - and they looked a little bit complex. Even more daunting were the uninstallation instructions - and I wanted to make sure that I am able to uninstall it completely if I wasn’t happy with it. So thank you for creating the determinate nix installer which made this whole process much simpler. It is just simply a much better end user experience - where i feel comfortable recommending others to try nix.

Also, I wouldn’t have started with nix if flakes weren’t there. They just made much more sense to me than the non-flakes way of doing things. I know I am not in a small minority as a lot of beginners find it more comfortable to use flakes than non-flakes. With its widespread usage, I am not able to comprehend how nix leadership still keeps it in limbo - but I appreciate and thankful to the support determinate nix provides behind flakes - be it zero-to-nix documentation or other ways.

As an outsider, it is clear to see how much abusive a lot of posters are towards eelco. For whatever reason, I have no respect for people who bully and abuse others - be it online or offline - and unfortunately, in any detsys post, it is clear to see these same posters come out in droves and use abusive language. I know for sure how traumatic such behaviour can be for the people on receiving end - and wanted to post thanking eelco for all the work he has done. And I am sure there are so many more like me, who don’t speak up, but thankful to eelco and all others who actually work hard to make nix a success.

I had hoped that the moderation team would have been more heavy handed with people with abusive / bullying behaviour, but personally I don’t see that happening.

It doesn’t mean that I agree with everything detsys does. For eg. calling this new version as Determinate Nix 3.0 and in the blog mentioning that this fulfills the promise of Nix 3.0 seems unnecessary. It would have been simpler to call it Determinate Nix 1.0 or Determinate Nix 10.0 and not adding the line about detnix fulfilling nix promise (which seems to read slightly passive aggressive if you know a bit of history).

But instead of a civil discussion, we have so many posters being abusive, asking nix creator and large contributor eelco to be cancelled from nix community, or entitled posters asking detsys to opensource flakehub etc. This is unfortunate.

But again, I would like to thank eelco and all others who work and have worked hard to make nix a success.

[SergeK]

In addition to the discourse about names and licenses… @grahamc have you considered if inviting a Foundation or SC member to Determinate Systems’ board observers might in any way help the situation?

[cafkafk]

@amardeep

or entitled posters asking detsys to opensource flakehub etc

How dare we… because god forbid an open source project stays open source???

[drakon]

@amardeep

But instead of a civil discussion, we have so many posters being abusive, asking nix creator and large contributor eelco to be cancelled from nix community, or entitled posters asking detsys to opensource flakehub etc. This is unfortunate.

Unfortunate, but what else do you expect when legitimate concerns are ignored for years or are ‘resolved’ with token gestures that achieve nothing?

[rhendric]

@cafkafk

because god forbid an open source project stays open source???

1. DetSys releases some closed-source software, some open-source software with a version number PR stunt, and generally acts like they have the high ground when asked to do things differently.
2. ???
3. Nix is no longer open source.

Care to sketch in the ??? part at all? (Not snarky; genuinely want to know, if the apocalypse is coming, how it is going to happen.)

[cafkafk]

I think it’s problematic that We should urgently ban and denounce Determinate Systems - #9 was locked. Like always, any actually productive conversation is instantly shut up on here, while this thread seems to stay up, while seemingly being much worse.

Locking a thread means it will no longer be bumped, and limits its reach. It’s not a neutral act. By locking that thread, and not this one, the moderators are providing exposure to this thread and “determinate nix”, and silencing the proposal that favors action over arguing.

This is not a neutral act. It’s an act that favors determinate systems over the community, despite being “to prevent more burnout for everybody”, it’s just enabling the trolls to stay debating without any action to mitigate the situation.

---

Care to sketch in the ??? part at all? (Not snarky; genuinely want to know, if the apocalypse is coming, how it is going to happen.)

Anyways no, I will not be feeding into obvious Sealioning - Wikipedia, these things have been discussed at length for over a year. Most people here that are in good faith are well aware of the risks. You’re too smart not to be able to figure this out, if you wanted to.

[rhendric]

@cafkafk

Anyways no, I will not be feeding into obvious Sealioning - Wikipedia, these things have been discussed at length for over a year. Most people here that are in good faith are well aware of the risks. You’re too smart not to be able to figure this out, if you wanted to.

Yeah, sealioning is something with which I’m sadly familiar and, during my tenure as a moderator here, asked people not to do elsewhere.

Of course that isn’t proof that I’m not engaging in it here, but I can at least try to flesh out my question in a way that would have satisfied myself if I were still a mod.

Up-thread, I asked Samuel a similar question about the Nix project’s hand being forced. Turns out there was a difference in how we interpreted the idiom ‘force someone’s hand’—Samuel was using it to mean ‘apply pressure’, whereas I thought he meant ‘leave with no other choice’. Before that was cleared up, I wasn’t able to understand how he was making such a leap, because I thought he was saying something stronger than what he actually meant.

I wonder if something similar is happening with us, because I have a similar difficulty understanding how ‘Nix becomes closed source’ is an outcome that follows from DetSys’s actions here. There are things that I could imagine that would threaten Nix’s OSS status:

• Someone or ones with an interest in closing Nix off could have or get control of the Nix team (if I had to guess, this is the one I think you have in mind—maybe you think the DetSys person already on the Nix team has enough power to do this?)
• Some sort of IP threat could force the Nix team to go closed? (I don’t actually know how that would work but I could imagine it as a possibility)
• Some external event could make it necessary for Nix to choose between being closed source or just ceasing to exist, and the Nix team would reluctantly choose the former

If we aren’t in a disagreement over the meaning of language, I just want to know which of these proximate causes you have in mind (or something else if I have missed it). I’m not trying to consume your time with endless questions—these are just all very different scenarios to me, and I think they’re all pretty unlikely. I hope to learn from you what you think is likely, because I respect your perspective, and even if you don’t want to invest more time in explaining why you think that cause is likely, I would like to be able to include it in my executive summary of this thread at a level of detail more than ‘cafkafk thinks that Nix will become closed source for reasons that she says a smart person should be able to figure out.’

(I’m not at all averse to going back and reading a thread, if there’s one you can link that describes what you have in mind and you’d rather do that than engage me more directly.)

And of course, if we are in a disagreement over the meaning of language, I would similarly appreciate having that pointed out. I’m not going to fight you on what words ‘really’ mean, I promise.

[fpletz]

The Steering Committee has made a statement on Flakes and Determinate Nix.

[samueldr]

Introducing FlakeHub

I can easily imagine a future where FlakeHub’s source is public. However, we don’t have any specific plans or timelines there.

[hexa]

And for further context:

Determinate Systems, Inc. (@determinatesystems@hachyderm.io)

[Mapybara]

@cafkafk

Locking a thread means it will no longer be bumped, and limits its reach.

FWIW, people can still upvote your post there though. As I write this, it has 42 hearts:

We should urgently ban and denounce Determinate Systems

I think everyone agrees at this point that determinate systems is a very obvious embrace, extend, extinguish effort, to capture a market on their proprietary flakehub platform, and move control of the project onto determinate nix. Arguing this at length repeatedly will only prolong solving the problem. They can trivially prove this wrong by implementing strong licensing measures that will ensure they can’t capture the project to disprove this. If they don’t, let’s not waste time arguing further. …

(By the way, I trust the mods’ judgement call that that thread wasn’t getting productive replies, unlike this thread, which they’re leaving open.)

[Mapybara]

Continuing the announcement from the Steering Committee at On Flakes and Determinate Nix:

Thank you! That’s wonderful.

Can it please go on the web site somewhere? Or, if you don’t want to make a prominent post about a temporary issue, please post at least this part:

@fpletz

we prioritize the work and contributions of the open source community over proprietary forks