This is an excellent response, thank you for the countless hours and conversations this likely took. As well, for Eelco to step down is a large change for him and I would like to thank him directly for placing his trust in the Nix community that have rallied around his invention.
One concern I have for the coming process is how dealing with bad-faith actors will be managed. The specific events listed here are delicate and if they go the same way as prior Code of Conduct establishment attempts went then the community may not get to the point it needs to in order to remain healthy.
One concern I have for the coming process is how dealing with bad-faith actors will be managed.
I don’t think it possible to know that in advance for something that is as foundational as a constitutional assembly.
The truth is that one can be really sure how the next phase will turn out — getting community governance right will require great patience and optimism, which is rather a shift from the “enough is enough” mentality that was just as necessary to bring our long-boiling community disagreements to a head and force these conversations.
I can only hope that everyone can have a better, more relaxed next few days, and when we convene, we finally get this stuff right :).
@AshleyYakeley The Nix team, not the board, will provide a statement answering such questions soon.
It is my personal view as a Nix Team member that:
@edolstra should remain on the Nix team. There is nothing in my view he has done as a Nix team member to warrant his removal from the Nix team. The above documented pointed out that he is not is not interested in the administrativa that is the board’s job, but that he is interested in the engineering work that is co-maintaining the Nix code base. I would be sad and consider it unfair if he left the Nix team.
The website saying he is the “team lead” is effectively a mistake — the team operates in an egalitarian manner with no one member above the others. I am fine if Eelco remains the “ceremonial” team leader. I am equally fine if the team officially does not have a leader.
In some contexts Eelco may have been treated as the BFDL, against his wishes. In the Nix Team meetings, we have not made that mistake. We treated him as “just” another team member, and he never expressed any dissatisfaction with this agreement.
One concern I have is if any solutions to this issue will be used to shut down disagreement with the new power structure that gets put in place. The concept of bad-faith engagement, while valid, ultimately depends on assessing the internal mental state of the other person, what their intentions are, and disagreements make assuming pure hostility much more likely.
Since the new governance structure will be on top of the teams, they’ll actually be able to make arbitrary team changes, including removing members from it!
“Bad faith” is hard to qualify. But demonstrating that you are trying to be responsible for defusing and avoiding conflict, and trying to offer constructive dialogue is more feasible to qualify.
I did not consider Eelco to have a formally different position within the Nix team, and I believe the “Team lead” label might have been added to conform with the other team pages, and too little thought was put into that.
I’d like him to stay on the team, perhaps relevant here is my post about my perspective as a Nix team member last week.
EDIT: And of course I’ll respect what the community wants through the new governance structure.
Yes, that is true. The Nix team could vote to keep Eelco in all roles, and the new governance structure could vote to overrule the team on this.
As I stated above, I strongly hope this does not happen, but I do feel compelled to go on the record agreeing that is technically possible. Were the new governance structure to not have the capability of booting other teams’ members, it would not be strong body we intend it to be.
My advice for the Nix ecosystem would be to look to Kubernetes for examples in how to manage a project and its community. The operational structures required, the groups responsible for particular domains, and inter-group collaborations are all well defined and organized. Many, if not all, of these concepts map directly to Nix and can be adopted.
I don’t know the answer to the questions, nor would I expect anyone else to know them. The next 14 days exist to figure whatever needs to be figured out to get this process started.
Just a brief note here for context: The foundation board was in a meeting with community members for about 9 straight hours until 2:30 at night (for Europeans) to get to this point. I’d like to applaud such dedication by all involved towards making this important step in the community!
While many of us haven’t had a weekend in a while. I’m personally moved by how much passion has gone into the Nix light shining brighter, there’s many folks around us here that put Nix before many other matters. That shouldn’t be taken for granted.
I just want to say that I personally feel thankful to have that here with us. So just sharing an immense amount of appreciation and virtual hugs to everyone here and for all the care. It shows. <3
I’m incredibly happy to see that the Foundation is committing to spearheading a rework of Nix’s governance structures. It’s been something that’s been long overdue for quite some time in my view, and I’m looking forward to seeing this new direction begin to heal the rifts that have emerged in this community.
I do have a few questions around the constitutional assembly, namely:
How will members of the assembly be chosen?
To what extent will the wider community be able to participate in designing the governance structures?
I certainly don’t expect answers here (as mentioned in the statement, the finer details are still a work in progress and I acknowledge that), but I do still want to call them out as I think they’re important factors to keep in mind when working out those details. These are matters of community governance, after all - it’s important that community members feel able to speak their mind on how we should lead ourselves.
All in all, a huge thank you to everyone on the Foundation board, and to everyone in the community who assisted us in getting to this point. I’m optimistic that we have the will and the backing to build a better Nix community - excited to see where we can go from here!
I have two questions regarding how to define community…
Do the individuals that were banned previously count as part of the community?
How do we decide if someone is in the community?
I am concerned about 2 because I feel that people here often treat people coming from reddit as mobs that are trying to degrade the discussion. Some of them may be, but I think there are also a lot of normal users there.
This is great to hear! Thanks to everyone for coming to a conclusion together. This has indeed been a stressful couple of days, even as a desktop user and aspiring developer just peeping in from the sidelines. I hope we can come together as a community and keep pushing forward for the sake of Nix, its contributors, and its users.
