I don’t think that was OP of this thread but the user that posted this comment
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How would you actually do that, thought? I really don’t see a way, short of requiring that the SC have a majority of unemployed people, which I don’t think is fair or practical.
My experience is that inter-employer collaboration for benevolent purposes (e.g. purposes that everyone would feel comfortable talking about in public) is hard enough! I’m not worried about the likelyhood of such collusion. (Though if it did happen I agree it would be bad.)
My support for allowing Anduril to sponsor and post job postings is entirely predicted on beliefs that:
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Anduril sponsorship and posting jobs don’t actually pose a threat to the Nix community, because the safeguards, and because they (like all companies) get so much from Nixpkgs that scaring off contributors (as much as the Palmers might personally like too) isn’t worth it.
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Allowing these limited interactions (that we would allow other companies to do) doesn’t increase the risk of harm (it doesn’t make inter-employer collusion more likely, for example)
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The current actions against Anduril are actually counterproductive to their own practitioners’ stated goals, because they harm the Nix community much more than they hurt Anduril, and if anything they help Anduril.
It is definitely not supposed to be a boiling-the-frog step to getting us towards DHH-style community management or anything like that.
If ya’ll there in SC really aim to do that, then it makes me feel slightly better if no full re-election happens
I’m not sure what “that” is referring to exactly, but I’m glad to hear that there are ways the current SC can regain your trust short of interrupting the planned staggering.
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And so are yours. You claim to know better how to oppose Anduril, yet it is your support for allowing Anduril to sponsor and post job postings that harms the Nix community much more than it hurts Anduril, because people don’t want that, and they are willing to leave over it, and they have.
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Giving people who are willing to leave the exclusion of others that they demand, in order for them to stay, is a tough sell though.
We also have community members who call for banning other companies. Every single thing that we don’t decide based on a general principal, but on a case-by-case basis, puts a whole class of these issues up for discussion, where again lots of people will not get what they want, no matter what the decision is.
(I’m not talking about sponsorship here.)
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Yeah the harm to the Nix community I am talking about is systemic. The harm caused by a handful of boycotters quitting, who could simply choose to continue contributing, is not systemic.
It’s especially silly to worry about such boycotts because the people in fact got what they want: The SC did vote to ban Anduril sponsorships and job postings. And whatever my own personal views are (which I disclose for everyone’s benefit), as an SC member, respecting and abiding by the majority decision of the SC is the most important thing. You won’t find me trying to smuggle in job postings to evade the ban or anything like that.
People that quit even when they get what they want have shown themselves to be impossible to negotiate with.
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Yep, let people quit. Who cares if they have spent years contributing to Nixpkgs and ecosystem. They are unreasonable and silly for quitting, and you know better what’s the right long-term direction for the project. The only issue is all the other people, having voted for SC members who voted counterproductively and to the detriment of the community. Better let them quit too.
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Quitting over Anduril when Anduril is, in fact, not allowed to to post jobs or sponsor, is, yes, in my view, unreasonable and silly. I am not afraid to “call a spade a spade”.
(Quitting if Anduril was allowed to post and sponsor again is different, much more reasonable because there is a clear relationship between action and reaction, and not what I was talking about in the previous post.)
SC members should do what they think is right, first and foremost. Trying to put aside ones own principles and instead slavishly follow public opinion is how we get (in my opinion) Bill Clintons and Keir Starmers who transparently stand for nothing. I hope you are not advocating for me to act like that.
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Honestly, I’m more saddened if people that want to stay and contribute are permanently banned, without any chance of future recourse, not because they were bad actors (code-wise), but because they held some strong believes (just like you are) that contradicted the direction Nix wanted to go.
In my opinion, the community should empower these talented individuals and allow them to participate through code (if their speaking skills are not up to part). A great software engineer is not always a good speaker or a good moderator. They might have conflicting views, but they should still be allowed to participate. In my opinion it’s up to the SC (the only elected body) to try to resolve this issue while trying to keep good relations for all parties.
My personal opinion is that an engineer that has dedicated a big amount of time threatens to ‘quit’ the project, because this demands (political in nature) are not fulfilled, is not engaging the discussion in good faith.
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It seems fairly arrogant to me to assume that people could simply just chose to not quit, and instead continue working. Maybe I misunderstood?
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I have been reading many of the long discussions here, and I can’t help but notice how much energy is being spent on endless arguments, once again. For what, in the end? For nothing that truly helps the project move forward. We’ve reached a point where this constant arguing simply has to stop if we want to move forward.
Let’s be honest: reconciling everyone’s views is an illusion. We must learn to accept that others may think differently, and instead of trying to convince one another endlessly, we should take the best from each perspective and find common ground. Only then can we continue to make this project grow.
And if no one is willing to take that step, then no amount of mediation or discussion will ever bring true reconciliation.
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Let’s not forget that many people left while the answer to that question was still up in the air and had been for months until it had been pushed into the spotlight again. Let’s make sure you actually get your timeline right, and don’t paint everyone who left due to the sponsorship question as unreasonable and silly.
It is unfair and uncharitable in my opinion to call that “scar[ing] off contributors”. What this is about is participants in this community, those who have built up the NixOS project, who have strong convictions against their collaborative effort acting as a vessel for advertising (via very public sponsorship) for companies that go against their core fundamental values.
That’s it. That’s the thing. You have a group of diverse people who built a thing together. Then some of those participants have an objection seeing their community being used as an advertising vehicle for what they strongly believe is objectionable. I’m not sure that having principles, integrity, ethics or morality, and standing up for those is unreasonable and silly.
And before people jump in with the fallacious argument: this is squarely about their community being used to effectively advertise for such entities and, while some people may have had the desire to, was not supposed to be about forbidding participation of peers coming from such entities, neither was it about forbidding their use of the project.
What had been “scar[ing] off contributors” (read: pushing out participants) was the steadfast inaction of the people seen as being in charge at the time. And that was unreasonable and silly, to let a bit of the brain drain happen for so long, over such a tiny meaningless molehill.
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I have not followed the full discussion, but was surprised that one resulted out of the original post.
The relevant context here is that falaichte, the user behind this post, has been banned from the community in April 2024. He followed up with multiple attempts at ban evasion since, ultimately landing here.
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Who’s done this? What people? Name them.
As far as I’m aware, that’s exactly no one. People quit way before SC was even formed, and so way before the ban. Are you strawmanning this argument? Why would you do that?
What? So do you think reconciling views is impossible, or do you think we need to “find common ground”? At least pick your stance before barging in and demanding everyone to “stop arguing”, you are not making sense.
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I understand why that might sound contradictory at first glance, but I don’t think it is.
What I meant is that we’ll never reconcile every viewpoint. A complete consensus is an illusion in any large community like ours. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek common ground where it exists, so we can keep moving forward together. I certainly wouldn’t want to live in a world where everyone agrees with me! Disagreement is part of what makes us human, and we should treat that “feature” as a strength rather than turning it into a “weapon” (no pun intended!).
When I kinda said we should “stop arguing”, I didn’t mean stop talking altogether, on the contrary. I meant that once discussions start looping endlessly, maybe it’s time to accept our differences and focus on what still unites us: the project itself.
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Cliff’s note version, because I actually have to work sometime xD
I don’t see any off-hand, but not seeing any off-hand does not mean one can’t advertise „moving forward towards strengthening anti-collusion and self-sovereignty guardrails of the project” as their campaign goal, instead of thinking we’re already at the pinnacle of security. IFF nothing better can be done after SC had worked towards that for a year of two, then so be it.
Actually, I do have a few off-hand ideas — say, recall elections or making votes of no-confidence easier. Of course particulars would have to be worked out, but I ultimately think there should be a codified mechanism to use when trust in the direction the SC is moving in (or filibustering moving in, alternatively) is lost, instead of the ad-hoc mechanism of people having to shout on Discourse xD I imagine it wouldn’t have grown into such a brouhaha if we had such a mechanism.
That’s good to hear, even if it’s kind of curious we only hear that now. I mean, I will readily admit I don’t read everything, but I haven’t seen anyone link to any previous SC communications to that effect. If it was always the intention to “defang” them in that particular way, then I’d imagine a lot less people would’ve lost trust, had it been clearly communicated like this from the start.
By “that” I’m referring to strengthening the project against hostile takeover. Also, for what it’s worth — at this point I still think that we should have full elections (or that ballot measure thing). How this makes me feel better is that you will support such measures should more people campaigning on that get in.
[citation needed]. While I tend to somewhat agree that just quitting in protest because something is not to your liking is silly — having done such before, the hypocrite that I am — do you actually have any quantifiable data showing that this handful of boycotters quit on a whim squarely as a protest, while they could otherwise continue contributing? Or is it just your bias speaking?
You know, it’s quite hard for me to imagine how it works, but as far as I have learned through my existence, other people are apparently not unfeeling machines. And instead of quitting to make a point, they may quit because all the positive feelings they had toward the project were ground down to dust. And what’s point in staying with something that makes you miserable? Now, correct me if I’m wrong, because I have approximately zero experience in that, but can’t that be likened to human relationships? Sometimes people stay together forever, sometimes enough seemingly trivial papercuts coalesce into enough annoyance that thing just goes in flames? And at least to some, participating in projects like that seems to have a parasocial element. Can you really say in that case they just quit to make a point even though they could continue contributing? Wouldn’t it be more like calling quits on a terrible marriage?
Of course I don’t have data either so who knows how right (or wrong I am), so take it for an alternative possible interpretation offered as food for thought.
Also, I’m not entirely sure you’re right to discard it as “not systemic”, Since I’m usually on the unfeeling side, I won’t offer any appeals to emotion. Instead, consider this — and just as hostile actors can cause systemic harm by subverting the governance, the governance can itself cause systemic harm by engendering negative emotions in their constituents. And while I’m usually of the “your emotions, your problem” disposition, this doesn’t quite work in aggregate — when you govern, you have to take into account how your governance affect the governed, even if that’s not perfectly rational. And if you fail to account for that at scale, then I’d say the scale turns it into systemic issue. Even if it seems an unreasonable reaction from where you sit, it’s also one that your role as an instrument of governance had a hand in. Hence, systemic.
And once again correct me if I’m wrong, but I think part of the issue is the SC not communicating effectively with it’s base, until things happened to boil over due to internal issues. So the problem is also partly of your own making — getting voted in is not a sure thing, you also have to work for your base not to be surprised when the next election comes (like many IRL parties were). If you had not communicated effectively what you’re doing for them — and as far as I know SC communication was sparse — and the next big thing that happens is something that can look kind of suspicious in context (even if it had not been), then you can imagine why the base might be disappointed. And it’s not the base who is in the wrong for having certain aggregate sentiments (even if you might argue on a per-person case they don’t make sense), but it’s the governance who failed in managing the sentiment of their base effectively.
I’m not entirely sure where I was going with it now and I need to get back to doing useful things xD Maybe let’s sum it up with this: you may find some reasons for quitting silly — at least in so far as you think you understand them — but if you say that out loud as an elected official, you alienate that part of your voter base. And ultimately — from “deplorables” through bourgeoisie to Marie Anotinette and beyond — it often didn’t end well for the governance. I don’t think we’re going to get a bloody NixOS rebellion (probably), but I don’t think one should pin this on the base, while it’s a failure of the governance to manage the base. So I’m not sure if there’s anything wrong with people displaying their dissatisfaction with not being represented in that way. It’s way less bloody then the French Revolution, for one xD Ideally — as mentioned above — we should have a governance process to act on that dissatisfaction, but even without it I have a nagging feeling if the SC managed this better, things wouldn’t have deteriorated this far.
Disclaimer: I don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s more of a brain dump — feel free to pick me apart.
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Well, as someone that almost got individually shouted out for flimsy reasons (that have nothing to do with Anduril), I hope you understand why I am not too excited for that. I think votes of no confidence are already being “overused”. Insofar that there is a 4-2 consensus against Anduril sponsorship and job postings, I think the system is working as designed, and making kicking out the SC even easier will results in tons of collateral damage that has nothing to do with conflict-of-interest concerns.
I know this is not your intent, but it would be really bad to weaponize every “vote I don’t like” as a fake “conflict of interest problem”, and this is unfortunately the outcome I see happening if dissolving SCs becomes easier.
I am not sure who has noticed this, but the SC has not actually, as a unit, or even as a unit of the the 4 voting members, responded to why we did the moderation changes we did at all.
We were caught totally off-guard and flat footed by the moderation resignation, and rather than defend our decision (the merits we still believe in!) we got a bunch of intra-SC squabbles and infighting. Embarrassing stuff, quite frankly!
In the parallel universe where there was no mass resignation thread and the SC lost its resolve, please believe me that we would have put out an announcement (probably after the off-boarding and on-boarding we complete) explaining the changes and their rationale, and explicitly disavowing that we wanted moderation to be more lenient towards any particular group or political ideology.
As I think you know by now, I am against that we should break with our brand new constitution and do that. We have to disentangle real conflict-of-interest issues from fear-mongering, or the very notion of “conflict-of-interest” problems becomes corrupted as just another political cudgel.
There is no hostile takeover going on.
My memory of what happened in 2023 and 2024 is not complete. What I know is that a bunch of people quit, Anduril was never allowed to sponsor anything, and if there were any Anduril job posts then, that was not a new thing (there would have been before too).
I understand quitting in protest of something happening, but this was quitting in advance of something that might happen, and didn’t end up happening. So it doesn’t make sense as a calculating boycott.
I think you are right then that since it wasn’t a carefully planned “since you do this, I quit!” it was more an emotional response. That’s fine. If people are feeling burnt out and need to leave, they can leave. But then let nobody point to it as “see what could have been avoided!” If it really was a longstanding crescendo of emotions, dating back years, there probably wasn’t much that could be done by that point.
Setting up new governance was going to take a long time regardless, and I think the Nix Constitutional Assembly did a really good job.
(And to be clear, while I wouldn’t mind if people liked the current SC more, of course, haha, what I really want is people to appreciate the very good job that the Nix Constitutional Assembly did under stressful circumstances.)
If we had had years and years of an Ancien Régime set up by the constitutional assembly, I would accept your analogy. But we haven’t. We just set this up. We’re trying a thing new thing, and people already want to throw it away on flimsy grounds. (Yes, getting rid of the staggering cause people are mad is throwing it away, the staggering is very important.)
If we’re going to go with a French Revolution analogies, I think the better one would be the post-revolution see-sawing between the Jacobins, the Thermidorian reaction, the Directory, etc. until Napoleon. We’ve already had our “open letter” revolution, and the next step is to show that we can agree on a constitution and stick with that.
If we don’t do that, if we prove ourselves ungovernable because some faction constantly wants to dissolve each SC, we’re going to just end up with splintering the project into many pieces. Or maybe we’ll get a Napoleon (new BDFL). I can think of some people that want that job. I don’t want a new Napoleon or a new BDFL, though. I want to see democracy work.
I have probably said enough in this thread now — the length of this reply is an indication, and so I will hereafter take a break and stop responding.
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Fair’s fair, I appreciate the responses so far anyway. I think I want to address a point or two for clarity, but don’t feel obliged to respond to that.
Yeah, I do. And like I said — those were just off-hand ideas, surely not fit to be implemented as-is. Right, like you said, there is no hostile takeover going on at this time. What I want is sort of “letter of last resort” that can be used were that ever the case. Discounting that just because it can be abused if not implemented properly is a weak argument for not strengthening safeguards of the project self-sovereignty at all. And similarly, while I think I understand why you feel the way you do — sorry, I’m capable only of running low-fidelity emotional simulations — I think having a pre-existing process for that is qualitatively different from ad-hoc protests and that you feel the way about the latter, does not necessarily mean the former is a bad idea, if implemented properly. Real countries have safeguards and release valves like that, why should we not? Of course, they probably have to implemented differently on the account of scale, but I feel we need something analogous to both. I feel like the correct response here would be to acknowledge one’s reservations, but also — given you want to serve your full term — to commit oneself to working with the newly elected SC members towards strengthening governance safeguards. That there is no takeover in progress currently, does not mean it may never happen and advocating for preparedness is not fear-mongering (I would know, we’ve all been called fear-mongers with regard to russia).
Fair point about the particulars of the analogy, but ultimately I feel my point about revolutions being a form of reaction to failures of governance still has merit. Maybe the original sponsorship drama was inevitable as you said, but — compared to back then — we do have a governance now. For sure, part of the reception this had gotten might be pushing out internal squabbles into the open, but I also feel that part of it is also SC’s failure to communicate effectively with the base prior to that to build trust. At least as far as I could tell, SC was mostly silent throughout it’s tenure thus far. It’s all well and good that you had an idea of how to sell this decision to the base, have you had time for that, but if you had worked beforehand to foster trust in SC and set up expectations about your plans for moderation well in advance, then I can imagine it wouldn’t be as ill received as it was. Yes, it’s an annoying drudgery of good HR, PR and all that soft skill stuff, but unfortunately it’s part and parcel of governance — if you neglect it, it’s probably going back to bite you.
Also FWIW I am also a fan of staggering and I thought that even in the case of full re-election staggering as such will be maintained (that is, elects will still get terms of differing duration)? So it’s less bad than if the elections also threw staggering away — from my PoV staggering is less about continuity of domain expertise and more about gradual change of make up of the governing body to insulate it from a) temporary whims of the base b) need to optimise governance for electability. To which you would probably respond with “Exactly!” in which case, point taken, it would be bad if it would set a precedent — but I don’t think that a full re-election, still with staggered terms is necessarily bad, iff the elected SC would then work to replace need for this precedent with an actual process.
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OK, but then maybe you should have checked before trying to impose changes? Have you asked the moderation team about their opinion regarding replacing K900 with numinit prior to placing it for a secret SC vote? Have you asked them about the expected consequences on moderation policies/actions of putting the specific person you named as a replacement for K900? Did no-one there tell you that this would lead to them resigning? Did you listen to the people in the SC that voted against it and almost certainly warned you about the consequences?
If you didn’t do your homework you can’t really go and claim that the consequences of your actions were a surprise. Everything is a surprise to someone who doesn’t do their homework before taking rash decisions.
IMO the fact that you were caught totally off-guard is at least equally as embarassing as the in-fighting and the fact that you didn’t end up resigning.
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the staggering is very important
would you mind expanding on this? the constitution doesn’t mention its rationale
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My ‘there is no hostile takeover going on’ shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.
It is a common pattern with incapable leaders to blame everything on the system they were elected under rather than their own actions and taking acountability.
From all of this I’ve found that the SC is designed in a way to avoid accountability and to constantly whine and grandstand when put under even the minimal amount of fire.
Stop victim blaming, “speaking up about issues is only giving weight to them” is not helping you beat the “extremely out of touch nerd” allegations.
I have been told personally by @tomberek that he believes he is doing good by helping Anduril build surveillance weapons that will and have already been used for terrorism. Yeah object permanence Palmer Luckey isn’t physically next to him writing his posts, but this fascist ideology is deeply embedded within tomberek that makes him unfit to represent a diverse community.
I literally made my point that Tom’s public self (principal engineer at Anduril) is incompatible with a leadership position by NixOS’s own values. If you need a special clause written down for you to figure that out on your own then you are the problem, not us.
The next SC won’t make these same errors because they know what will happen to them if they do.
To reiterate, the only people who insist on apolitical spaces are people who want to hide and smuggle in their horrible and out-of-touch politics.
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