FYI NixCon NA North America 2024 has Anduril as a “gold sponsor”
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NixOS Foundation was able to get 5 gold and 5 silver sponsors. Great news! 
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I really hope they talk about their Roadrunner-M, a “high-explosive interceptor variant of Roadrunner for ground-based air defense that can rapidly identify, intercept and destroy an array of aerial threats, including large aircraft that are up to 100 times more expensive, or be safely recovered and reused at near-zero cost.”
So cool to see all the interesting applications of NixOS, I love to know my nixpkgs contributions are making a difference 
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Things have changed since I was in the Air Force. Ground-to-Air missile systems are pretty expensive and not-reusable once launched. Interesting to see drone-like platforms arise to potentially fill those defensive measures.
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Please try to keep this on topic about the actual sponsorship for NixCon (I’d argue that 2024 NixCon NA is on-topic for now despite the topic title, but we might move this out into its own thread if deemed appropriate)
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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.
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I have just cancelled my monthly donation to the NixOS Foundation. While I’m a big fan of Nix, I find myself uncomfortable supporting an organization with sponsors associated with the US military. I invite other people doing the same.
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Good for Anduril! I’m glad they’ve come out publicly in strong support of Nix!
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I don’t think this is the correct place to be doing this discussion, I think the scope is going from “I take offense from this particular sponsor at NixCon 2023” to “The NixOS Foundation is obligated to discriminate against potential sponsors on the nature of their business now and in the future”.
I’m prior military, so my perspective on the defense sector is probably very different. Personally I would rather have them sponsor FOSS rather than just unilaterally “use but not give back”.
Either way, this should probably be moved into a different thread.
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If the topic at hand is a NixCon sponsor that the foundation let through and that people find quite troubling, and the current scenario is also a near-perfect repetition of the original inciting incident, how is it “off-topic” to discuss further here? If you s/2023/2024/ on the original thread title that’s probably exactly what I’d call a net-new thread about it.
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It originally started as a After-Action-Report of the NixCon 2023 events. I still think having a separate thread precisely tackling the over-arching issue is warranted.
What if Raytheon or other members of the defense space start also trying to be sponsors?
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Taken to the extreme, it’s quite reasonable that they are, aren’t foundations like this put in place for such decisions. I’m sure, even if anduril isn’t one such organization for you, e.g. taking money from Hamas or the wagner group would be a place where we all would agree that “discrimination” would be fine.
Also, discrimination is defined as follows:
the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of ethnicity, age, sex, or disability.
That is to say, a concept applied to people, not corporations. And people are hardly displeased with the anduril sponsorship because of ethnicity, age, sex, or disability, so let’s not pretend that a large arms manufacturer is the victim of discrimination.
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I do wonder if any European defense contractors use Nix at all? I am glad to see Anduril is sponsoring. I do wonder what cool things they’re doing with Nix. The United States is pretty much on track to become what Kim Stanley Robinson imagined in The Gold Coast (1988). Is that good, bad or meh? I dunno I just like Nix
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Please remain on topic, this is specifically about our sponsorship policies. Discussing Anduril in that context is encouraged, but discussing whether you like or dislike Anduril outside of that context is not.
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I’m sure, even if anduril isn’t one such organization for you, e.g. taking money from Hamas or the wagner group would be a place where we all would agree that “discrimination” would be fine.
Yea, there are sanctions against doing business with organizations listed as “terrorist organizations”, I agree. But even then, different parts of the world will have different lists of “terrorist organizations”. In this case, I believe the foundation had some notes stating to “adhere to local laws” for conventions. Not sure the stance globally.
Also, discrimination is defined as follows: …
There’s many definitions definition:
the act of making or perceiving a difference: the act of discriminating
“discrimination between right and wrong”
Also, in computer science, discrimination is a term which can be applied on determining a total ordering of values, achieving linear sorting behavior.
Sure in most common usage, it means what you described. But not what I intended.
Not the direction I was going in at all.
the NixOS Foundation is obligated to
discriminate againstfilter out undesirable potential sponsors
Is that wording more palatable? Regardless, it’s orthogonal to the point I was trying to make; and not productive in the discussion.
I would like to move the conversation to Should organizations relating to the defense sector being able to sponsor NixOS?
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According to Wiktionary, «discernment, <…>, the act of discerning, <…>, noting or perceiving the differences» is the primary meaning.
those organisations are under EU and US sanctions though, so this would be a legal, not values decision.
Separating out yet another discussion thread, because I think that it deserves attention on its own without getting drowned in the Anduril pro/contra: NixCon NA 2024 is getting sponsored by Anduril, what to do about it
I am pretty disappointed and also a bit disillusioned that the discussions I had with several folks at NixCon23 and also the discourse of the wider community did not bear any fruits. These discussions felt really nuanced. But now this feels like same 
, different continent.
It might be a different continent with slightly related values in the local core organiser team, but it’s still the same NixOS foundation, still the same more-or-less global Nix community that such events are tapering towards.
But I guess we could’ve seen that coming: In this thread, several people tried to frame the NixCon 23 issue about mostly-to-exclusively being caused by the venue policies. No matter whether this was their honest believe or not, it is a very good excuse to act as if nothing happened when you’re in another venue.
But the civil clause of the venue was just one of the contributing factors. Several organisers and volunteers were really concerned about Anduril as a sponsor, both due to them being a manufacturarer of killing devices as well as due to the rightwing ties of the company’s founder. Some marginalised folks I talked to really felt uncomfurtable and threatened by the presence of such a sponsor. I am also aware of some other sponsors that were rather unhappy about being listed next to Anduril.
This is why I hold the strong opinion that throwing out Anduril before NixCon23 was a good and correct decision. Of course that topic was still discussed at the venue, but not as a central issue and only by those who were interested in such discussions. At the same time, it avoided major community tensions at the conference.
To be fair, throwing out Anduril was just the 2nd best course of action – because never accepting them as a sponsor in the first place would’ve been even better.
The thing is, I myself as a part of the community am not that hyped to become a blanket of them buying their way into being normalised by popping up everywhere at a community conference.Because this is part of what they’re spending the money for.
Note: I deliberately posted this into this thread, as this post is mainly about my experience at NixCon 23
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Why does anyone’s political views matter in nix? are you saying we should be anti-rightwing as a community doctrine?
If you want to build a vibrant community that can cooperate on projects with combined efforts, but also profiting from their various experiences and perspectives, then yes, you better position yourself in such a way – which is inherently anti-right-wing.
Regarding the political views:
Over at the other thread I elaborate my point that for some community members, it might indeed just be about a conflict with their personal political stances. But there is a group of people for whom this is not about plain discomfort, but it is about not feeling welcome, safe, or even being threatened and re-traumatised.
We need to be aware that even a welcoming conference always ostracises some people. There are the active decisions like dropping problematic sponsors, those may be the loud ones.
But then there are the silent non-decisions through which we cause people to avoid community spaces. Those might feel like passive ones, but they are not, as we can know what we’re allowing to happen there.
If I need to choose between the marketing effects for a sponsor and the well-being of several community members, I know which choice to make.
Additionally, what we build is political: It is shaped by our perspective on the world, is used by political actors and this usage might influence its further development. The software we build also again shapes the cases where it is used. Code is law.
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