I’d really love to be able to say that I don’t care about NixCon NA, that their orga is free to pick their sponsors at will, and that this will not affect me. But the unfortunate truth is that this isn’t the case.
Especially people from outside of this community can’t see the Nix as the heterogeneous mess it is, and will not make the distinction that this was a decision by the local conference orga. Especially in the context of the last NixCon’s sponsorships.
And if you read the NixOS Foundation board meeting minutes – 2024-01-02 — 2024-02-03, you’ll see that the people involved in this decision were clearly aware of this. Last time, the Anduril sponsorship was an honest mistake. This time, it was a deliberate decision. And if I look at this in context and also who was involved in the decision making, it honestly costs me a lot of goodwill to not interpret it as a calculated provocation.
Last time, we had long debates about sponsorship policies and announcing sponsorship candidates beforehand to make sure people can have a look before it’s decided and too late. What has happened of that? How could the foundation ack this, given the obvious and forseeable negative consequences of such a decision?
NixCon NA is now throwing a big shadow onto the entire community.
The meeting notes also say “make it transparent how we made the decision and communicate”. I think that now would be a very good time to catch up on that task.