Leaving the Nix/NixOS community

[Slopsec]

@rich

You can just… not visit Discourse and nix will be politically neutral enough. I personally wasn’t aware of any politics before joining Discourse and when I was just using NixOS blissfully unaware

I’ve observed the same when hanging out on the unofficial Discord community. The problem with that is people are incentivized to avoid the main community and resources therein as they don’t feel comfortable or welcome in the official spaces as a result of indirect enforcement of ideological conformity. That in my opinion is a reflection on how toxic the community is and how dire the need is for reform.

@vcunat

For example, you can’t simply leave and stop using nixpkgs for another hobby, if you depend on it significantly – or if you like it too much

For me at least, the line was drawn when the ideological strife within the Nix community began negatively impacting the development and release of Nix. I personally feel that the project is no longer stable or safe enough to continue running in a production environment. There are alternatives such as Ansible and they may not be as extensible or elegant in their implementation as Nix is. But ultimately, confidentiality, integrity and availability matter for the people that use it.

@cafkafk

To expand on this, I’ve yet to find even a vaguely equivalent alternative - although a lot of people will tell you they have it. But there is none with the same capabilities, breadth of packages and hardware, and sheer amount of daily contributions.

I’m of the same opinion. Returning back to Arch Linux after years of using NixOS feels like going back to using something from the palaeolithic era. Sadly, I prioritise stability and secure above functionality and have done so as a consequence

@cafkafk

Then you’re way better of actually spending the time and efforts to reform the project if you’re the type of person like me that simply thinks there aren’t any alternatives yet.

I’m currently banned from the Matrix space and I can’t imagine that it will be lifted anytime soon after my participation in RFC 175. Even now, those within the community that don’t like what I have communicated in this thread have flagged it enough times that it has been hidden by default for those not logged in and has reduced visibility on the forum in general.

If I tried to my best to engage in good faith under the pretence returning the community back to the founding ethos of the free and open source software movement of anonymous meritocracy. I’ll likely end up facing character assassination, badjacketing, exclusion or outright banned from all Nix related platforms by those who stand to benefit from the state that the community is currently in.

I’m also not very well known nor a prolific contributor to NixOS and as such my opinion won’t likely hold as much weight with the people that matter. All I can really do at this point is highlight the negative patterns within the community and make myself clear that I have no intention of participating further unless they are addressed by those who can impart change in the community.