I’m profoundly uncomfortable with the MIC, but I don’t see what negatives taking funding from it bring.
The beauty of open source is harnessing the efforts of everyone, including possibly your worst enemies.
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I don’t plan on quitting the nix community. But I am grateful to @marsam for the work and contributions. I wish that we would have collectively succeeded in figuring out how to be a community together in a way that made you feel welcome and appreciated, instead of compelled to leave. Same for others who have left or are planning to leave. These are heavy times in the world for everyone. Let’s try to keep an open heart, treat each other with dignity and respect. It’s not too late even now to do this.
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It’s incredible that Nixpkgs even has contributors like marsam. We just lost a contributor like many projects never get.
This fracture hurts.
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Yeah, the so-called “neutral position” on MIC sponsorship and lack of elaboration on Eelco’s potential conflict of interests between Nix foundation/DetSys/Likely DetSys and*ril contract has me looking for a way out of depending on Nix and NixOS.
I assume many others are still here and looking for a way out or near their breaking point.
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At this point, I don’t think it matters that some people don’t see a problem with accepting money from a MIC.
At this point, it’s just a fact that some people do see a problem.
I don’t think anything good can come from arguing on this, no one will change opinion here, and the debate won’t go away.
The level at which the discussion should happen now, is whether it is worth it.
Is this money good enough to break the community so much that some top contributors are leaving and others are getting banned?
I think that’s the real and only question now.
And I think the obvious answer is no, by a long shot.
I hope it’s clear to Anduril themselves and that they will drop the sponsorship as it is a net negative now.
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This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.
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It seems to me that the community has some major problems regardless of how this particular issue is resolved.
The question is, what does Nixos stand for, politically?
There is no way to unask that question now, and no way to answer it without splitting the community.
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The monorepo discussion was off-topic, and I’ve split it off into its own topic.
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Well obviously we would not make them leave, and we not disagree with them, they believe they disagree with the remaining people it seems, and even if we did disagree that is no reason to believe that their work is bad and make them leave, but if they do want to go because of a value system disagreement, they serve to increase the ecosystem.
The wonderful thing is that they can fork off and we are the better for it - more distro choice.
Ah, sorry, this sounded a bit like “if they don’t like it, nobody is forcing them to stay” instead of trying to talk about our problems.
I’m not against a fork, but I think it should be in last resort, since if we fork every single time there is the slightest disagreement, we would end up all alone in our own corner and never get anywhere.
And I’m not sure “more distro choice” is always better when each one has a lot of work to do, like managing a lot of pull requests like we do. I kinda like the guix vs nixos since both approach are pretty different and the best features could cross-pollinate. 2 almost identical nixos distro sounds a bit like a waste of resource, but maybe there is no other choice.
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The fact that people on the other side of the issue aren’t making dramatic pull requests to announce that they are leaving, or flagging every comment that is not 100% consistent with their own political perspective does not mean that they don’t care about nix, what is happening now, or exist in smaller numbers.
One literally must make a pull request to leave, e.g., the maintainers list of nixpkgs. Decades of work and tens of thousands of commits are walking with those people out the door and you dismiss their departure as “dramatic”. Your sweeping remark about their “political perspective” is transparently a reflection of your own. I have seen hundreds of people sign open letters against, e.g., Andruil sponsorship, and one person sign an open letter in favor. Your reply deals in false equivalence and empty “both sides” rhetoric.
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I have seen hundreds of people sign open letters against, e.g., Andruil sponsorship, and one person sign an open letter in favor. Your reply deals in false equivalence and empty “both sides” rhetoric.
Wait, do you actually not see the obvious confounding factors in the comparison that you are making? One side is mostly happy with the status quo and the foundation and just wants the community to stay together, put aside any political differences that may exist, and focus on making nixpkgs great. The other side is really unhappy about the Anduril sponsorship, and wants to align the community around a narrower set of values (anti-MIC, aggressively DEI to the point of allocating foundation seats to minorities, want the original author to step down from having any influence anywhere).
The opposing contingent is not really organized around any particular set of ideological principles, other than they generally do not like the direction of the current moderation team. There are even people like me in this contingent (squarely left of center, not necessarily a fan of all aspects of the MIC, and even willing to acknowledge that there may be some real problems with eelco’s conduct).
How can you possible think that the lack of an open letter expressing opposition is good evidence that there is not a significant contingent which opposes the sentiments expressed in the one that does exist?
You’re also conveniently ignoring the other pieces of evidence that do not suit your narrative (e.g. reddit, countless posts here on discord etc.)
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Am I correctly understanding that you are assuming that the silent majority is in opposition to the open letters?
That’s… quite creative.
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Do you? You seem to be painting the people in favor of the status quo as people that just want the community to get along, while everyone that complains is the real problem.
Also, what exactly is “aggressively DEI” supposed to mean? People that are aggressively vocal proponents of diversity, equity, and inclusion? I feel like I am missing something, but why would someone be in opposition to this?
While I certainly don’t claim the “opposing contingent” is necessarily organized around anything but shared opinions, considering that they are more or less by definition on the same side of the politically charged issues in question like the Anduril sponsorship and the efforts to encourage diversity (the latter of which I do not necessarily believe is political, but those opposed appear to), they seem to at least somewhat align politically. Not that the side raising the complaints isn’t, of course, but you can’t really claim political neutrality when taking a stance on a political issue.
Well, I would expect such a contingent to be similarly vocal about their side rather than remaining silent save for a handful.
Fair point. Could you provide some examples of this evidence?
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How can you possible think that the lack of an open letter expressing opposition is good evidence that there is not a significant contingent which opposes the sentiments expressed in the one that does exist?
You were apparently too busy elaborating your personal political / culture war preoccupations to bother reading my post, which directly linked to an open letter that does in fact exist.
You’re also conveniently ignoring the other pieces of evidence that do not suit your narrative (e.g. reddit, countless posts here on discord etc.)
Since you presume to speak about my “narrative”, let me spell it out for you myself: I couldn’t care less what random, unknown users on Reddit and Discord think—I care that major contributors to Nix are leaving, and I am considering making that same “dramatic” pull request and walking away myself.
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Can you point out where it is exactly that I said something like this? I don’t think I ever used the word majority.
My claim is that there are significant contingents on both sides of the issue, and I think there is ample evidence that this is the case.
Also, what exactly is “aggressively DEI” supposed to mean?
Mainly just the affirmative action for a board seat. Not really a hill I’m interested in dying on, just something that seems to unite this faction. There have also been vague claims about the lack of inclusiveness of the community.
but you can’t really claim political neutrality when taking a stance on a political issue.
What political issue am I taking a stance on? I think you’re making assumptions about me that are probably not accurate. My only position is that I just don’t
You were apparently too busy elaborating your personal political / culture war preoccupations to bother reading my post, which directly linked to an open letter that does in fact exist.
I think you’re misunderstanding my point. I was talking about the fact that the absence of a on open letter that opposes the current open letter being used as evidence that there is not a significant contingent of people that don’t necessarily agree with what is written in said open letter.
I linked a reddit thread in my original post.
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Please stop. The point has been made, but this is not productive. The thing we need in this moment is not more open letters. Reach out to me if you’d like to discuss. My ask is that you reconsider if this will help or hurt.
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In the naive hope that a fact check might cool things down a bit, this seems to have been distorted somewhere in the game of social media telephone that led you here.
The idea proposed was for a gender minority to be represented in the selection committee for event sponsorships, not on the Foundation board.
(Not that it’s unreasonable to want to see more diversity on the board though!)
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