The public announcement, signed by every then-member of the Foundation and by many prominent community members, says, in h2, quote:
Eelco steps down from the board
Evidently, this isn’t what happened. I don’t care if it’s okay, actually - explain to me why the board statement contradicts the reality, and who takes the responsibility for it.
Was this assembly not selected by the board? If so, was the chair of the board not involved in that?
It is currently being decided by the Nix community what will happen to the board. There isn’t yet a decision-making framework in place to determinate that. This is the “orderly transition of responsibilities” referred to further down. These things don’t happen overnight in a large OSS community, especially one that is also in the midst of deciding how it wants to govern itself.
Yes, the chair was indeed involved in the decision to hand over control to other bodies—by definition. But Eelco has had no involvement in the upcoming elections or in the constitutional assembly. And neither has anyone else at DetSys.
Okay. So why did the NixOS Foundation make a statement? If you don’t trust NixOS Foundation to make decisions about who they’ll exclude from the team - what was the point of making a statement, and why did Eelco sign it? What authority does NixOS Foundation have to select Constitutional Assembly members to develop governance, if it can’t even kick someone out from its own team?
The statement was about a general transfer of power and a general vision for the future. You seem determined to see malice and malevolence at work here so I will no longer stand in your way 
My bad, I thought that an h2 header of “Eelco steps down from the board” means that Eelco will in fact step down from the board. Maybe I missed the part where it says that it isn’t meant to be taken literally, and is instead just a statement on general vision for the future.
And yes, I do in fact see malice in Eelco’s actions, when he has had years to clarify his good intentions, and chose to break trust, have undisclosed conflicts of interest, stick his head in the sand, and try to use the rifts in the community for his company’s PR. NixOS Community has a lot of commercial actors, and none of them have done half of what Eelco has done to look as hostile as possible.
Btw, you don’t actually have to defend your coworker for their misdeeds. Eelco’s many misbehaviors don’t make you a bad person by association, so feel free to speak out. I’ll only judge you for your own faults - such as sabotaging documentation efforts, which you haven’t addressed at all as far as I can see, and another coworker tried to do it in your stead.
I explained myself in other venues (namely the documentation room in Matrix) and made amends with all parties. Everyone directly involved has moved on from this episode.
I decided to check - and indeed, you did explain yourself in the docs room in Matrix (link (can be viewed publicly). I also saw Domen highlighting that you didn’t manage the conflict of interest correctly link. You handled the conflict gracefully and stepped down, and Domen offered apologies for being too harsh in places.
So yes - you explained yourself, and I think amends were made. If you feel like I missed something or left something crucial out for your defense - feel free to speak up. I publicly accused you, so you do have the right to have your name be cleared of doubts. Also, I feel like I owe you an apology - directing an accusation was a dirty move from my part. I have my reservations about how the situation was handled from what I’ve seen. I won’t assume your intentions - but your explanations are enough for me to think that they could be pure and in good faith, so I’ll assume that unless I’m confronted with evidence of the opposite.
However, I disagree that everyone has moved on. As Domen highlighted - the issue still circles back to Eelco, because he held the largest conflict of interest there, being your boss, project BDFL and also a member of Foundation, which was the closest thing to an authority figure back then. I mentioned that you handled the conflict gracefully. You accepted the criticism, made a statement, and resigned. Eelco did not handle the conflict gracefully - he made a statement that claims he resigns, and just continued doing more of the exact same thing.
I don’t know you as a person or what happens in DetSys internally, but I want to say this. Reading back your statement from documentation incident, you apologize for any potential harm caused by your mistakes - and that’s valid. But you also apologize for any potential harm caused by DetSys the company - and I do not accept that. You are not DetSys. You are not the company. You are not an official representative of the company. You are also not your own boss. You are also not the single largest authority figure in the NixOS community. There’s a person who’s all of that at the same time, and he has a name, and his name is Eelco Dolstra, and he is the one who owes the apology for HIS actions and for actions of the company that HE is taking charge of. This is not your apology to give, not your responsibility to take, and not your conflict to manage.
And this is precisely the problem. You might have the best of intentions - but you dance around Eelco as if he’s an infant, unable to defend himself, unable to take criticism and responsibility for his actions. I don’t blame you for it - you are giving him a good faith reading. A lot of people have done that. I’ve done that. I went ahead and tried to make Eelco a defense case that he himself absolutely refuses to give or acknowledge, because I tried to put my good faith into him. That happened time and time again, with many very different people, to the point that most people stopped trying, and the community is fractured into pieces.
So I’m sorry to say, but the best reading I can give is that your coworker is clueless and irresponsible to an astronomic degree. But I find it unlikely, so the conclusion I come to is that your coworker is malicious. So please, don’t defend a malicious person - this isn’t something noble, this is just affirming their damaging ways. If Eelco still has it in him to care, he’ll do fine defending himself.
I’m going to opt not to engage further on this, but I did want to express that I appreciate your apology and you seeking out further information with an open mind.
For clarification — as there is a question of interim handling Foundation paperwork obligations (some of it in Dutch), and there is a question of decision making.
As a member of NCA I can confirm that our references to board opinion are about getting feedback from Ron Efroni, the sole person remaining who has not stepped down from board decisions, and, as far as I could observe, the sole person making any board decisions (in a wide sense of decisions).
Ron will also be the sole remaining board member from the point of view of the SC feedback procedure.
I apologize in advance if this message isn’t crafted well as I’m on the 12th hour of a 16 hour journey to Berlin - spotty internet, “great” food and minimal sleep. My top priorities have been ensuring continuity, and maintaining sustainability within the Foundation. I apologize if I’ve missed anything personally during this time. Also apologies for lack of linking to other docs/posts since the internet is indeed horrible.
Clarifying Recent Items and Board Dynamics
I’m here for anything. Ping me and I’ll do my best to respond/resolve. I’ll be landing in Berlin in about 6 hours so also happy to meet in person!
Very excited for what the team bringing NixCon together has been working on for a long time!
Read: this wasn’t actually compliant to the foundation’s statuses, which require at least 3 board members or an active effort to replace the missing board members “as soon as possible” (“zo spoedig mogelijk” in the original dutch document). So being in a long term (5+ months) situation with less than 3 board members would probably be illegal. From the translation of the statutes:
But who knows, maybe judges would consider that 5 months with no active search is acceptable for a foundation holding hundreds of thousands of euros in assets. I haven’t studied the law.
Not the first time the foundation plays games with board memberships not being properly reflected in the official documents anyway. As far as I know, Jonas was never actually registered as a foundation board member to the KvK, even though he was announced as a board member and listed in NixOS resources as being a board member (presumably also: having decision power as a board member) for a very long time.
Thanks for bringing in the proper clause @delroth! (Wasn’t able to pull in links/pictures during the flight)
To further clarify, there is an ongoing effort with intentionality behind the ordering. It’s the creation of the NCA, the process of defining a new governance structure, now the election of the SC, and following that, the rotation of the board with direct involvement from the voted in community SC.
Personally, I can see how this would feel like it’s going on for a long time, but I do trust the process the NCA has set in motion.
Ah, I see, so is there a bylaws change associated with this? Because it sounds very much like you’re giving control of the board to another non-incorporated entity, and I don’t see how that would ever work legally so I’d love to see what your notary has cooked up.
Does the SC end up being a registered UBO of the foundation?
The bylaws are extremely simple. The old board members choose the new board members. The end.
How they come to that decision is irrelevant. If they got advice from the SC to make that decision that’s okay. I don’t see how that would require changes to the bylaws. We could do that and make the SC an official “Raad van Toezicht” but that’s more restrictrive.
Like. The current bylaws are flexible on purpose. They are permissive. That doesn’t mean that the board can’t voluntarily act more restrictively (by e.g. taking advice from people on who to choose as next board members).
We could make the bylaws more restrictive and make it mandatory to take advice from third party (Raad van Toezicht). But that doesn’t mean we can’t voluntarily take advice from a third party. That’s a really weird train of thought.
I feel like you’re trying to poke for some kind of “catch” or “conspiracy” really hard that simply isn’t there. It’s kind of annoying.
Prior to appointing a new board member, the board shall inform the SC and give the SC the opportunity to object to the appointment by simple majority. In case of objection, the SC shall privately provide the written reasons to the board. The objection of the SC is binding to the board unless recalled by the SC.
(emphasis mine)
Oops?
(This is just the first one I found in there, there are multiple other places that imply that the SC controls board membership, not as an advisory function.)
It doesn’t, the governance constitution is a social contract, not a legal one. In the NCA we didn’t identify a need to make legal changes, because the board is more than willing to delegate relevant community decisions to an appropriate leadership body, otherwise we wouldn’t be at this point.
Which is fine? Again I don’t see the problem? As I wrote, we can decide to act more restrictively when our bylaws are more permissive. It just means that if the board decides to ignore the SC the SC has no legal recourse to challenge that decision. But we’re all human beings here. Not evil movie villains trying to steal money in some grand conspiracy
I think priorities are:
I think you’re really being anti-productive. It doesn’t foster an environment of healing and I personally do not welcome it.
I think to be fair, DetSys behavior has been dishonest to the point that they shouldn’t be given the assumption of good faith.
But that’s not the case for Ron. Seems to me that there has been a communication issue, and that the post on eelcos departure isn’t clear enough at outlining the practicalities of his removal (even if it does mention the issue tracker and such). Likewise, it’s obviously not sufficient to state these things in a Matrix room, which is essentially a backchannel that most users wont see, which may lead to them having the false impression that Eelco is in no way attached to the board, when that is clearly not the case.
Contributors have, in the past, used this kind of concealment to avoid legitimate criticisms in ways that seem malicious and unjust. But so far, I don’t think that’s the case here.
I hope we all give Ron the reasonable assumption of good faith (until reasonably shown we shouldn’t). Being the single person left on the board keeping things running must be a lot of work.
