Actually, it’s the smartest legal way to not answer.
Yes, the issue is not so straightforward – upon further reading, this individual likely needed some moderation, looks like it was not so much about the link, yet at the same time he had shown some good signs of civility, such as agreeing on stopping to foster off-topic and unhealthy discussions; even further, he was anxious about the moderation action not getting closure, so he took action, in the way, worsening the situation and heating up the problem with a poll. One of the sources is this person’s actual post, srid at ca slash nixos-mod slash accountability.
In other forums where I participated, this would not have scalated this much:
taking out a link from a github profile is a little far-fetched
asking the user to behave better is ok,
but moderators shouldn’t have left the issue to hang
offending person could use a little more patience
Thank you for taking the time to further comment on the topic and your insights. I appreciate it a lot.
I share much of the opinion of KFearsof on this point, I agree that if they want to give money without strings attached that should be fine, but sponsorships are a different beast. Quote:
[… A] sponsorship isn’t the same as just donating money. The sponsors of the main community event are understood to be very close to values of the project. Anduril, a military tech company, does not represent the values of the project.
[…]
This is not simply “donating money”, nor is it “contributing” - this is being direct associates and partners.
I believe people can change, and part of moderating is educating, so I think a beautiful outcome would have been this person improving and not getting banned.
Sorry for continuing this off-topic, I didn’t made it clear, but I agree with the moderation action, I was trying to be as neutral as possible.
I believe people can change, and part of moderating is educating, so I think a beautiful outcome would have been this person improving and not getting banned.
I agree with this. We should actively exercise warnings and limited bans instead of simply kicking people out of the community. If we get better at permanent bans, we will create more hostility.
I am keen to wind up in the place that this form of education will happen least. I am reading these threads only to figure out if that will be here or somewhere else.
He used his “power” on Friday to tell people to move from nix-community space to DetSys space. That alone is clearly too much power from my point of view, at least enough to tear down nix-community.
He had the power to force us to adopt flakes in full violation of the RFC process. He had the power to push the Andursil sponsorship despite the community’s revolt.
Let’s not understate Eelco’s many failings. Besides as an actual leader authority both formal and informal must be held to a higher standard than some random blogger, no matter how popular said blogger is.
And his article is indeed misleading, but it does not mean that these remarks are really true. If you were in the audience for his business, you might think “that’s true!” and continue to give DetSys your faith, but you’re not, so why take this article seriously?
We are not the target audience for this article. The target audience for this article is the DetSys “community” (they still have a community roughly), and DetSys business partners. The main purpose of this article is to make these people feel that the situation is not so bad for DetSys. It’s just that we saw and spread this article within the NixOS community.
I’m not defending Eelco Dolstra, I’m just talking about something that people usually ignore.
Eelco has the dual role of DetSys manager and de facto top manager of the NixOS community, but he did not grasp the responsibilities of both roles.
Eelco Dolstra’s purpose in posting this article is not to provoke or threaten other members of the community. Understanding this is very important for our current relationship with existing members. I don’t think it’s helpful to exaggerate contradictions too much, rather, we should keep things as-is.
Thanks. You may be right. I might give him benefice of doubt, and will wait for the board statement.
I’m a bit pessimistic, because other members of the community already explained they could not longer give him that benefice, after too many betrayals felt. But I’ll certainly prefer to do this from my own reasons, rather than following others.
Sorry I did not mean to imply that you were or are.
If there are two houses, and one is on fire, and you, holding the hose, first walk to the house that isn’t on fire and assure the owners of the house that you won’t let it burn down… in effect you’ve also spoken to the owners of the house that is burning down.
This topic’s purpose is a call to action to prevent fear from sending the wrong message to outsiders. NixOS is not dying. This Eeco person can’t kill the project, not even with a thousand blogposts to the wrong audience, it’s your and my responsibility to do that through constructive actions.
I’m sure you can see that this metaphor is inappropriate. If there was no crisis, then of course there would be no reason for him to do this. I should also point out that DetSys is a commercial company. DetSys is not primarily an open source community. Just because you can consider the two side by side doesn’t mean Eelco Dolstra can too.
I’m not saying that what Eelco Dolstra did was not inappropriate, he certainly (again, true to his style) failed to clarify the stakes and once again put the NixOS community in an uncomfortable position. From the perspective of the NixOS community, he is indeed unqualified in handling these issues, so it is necessary to elect a new leader or team of leaders.
At the time of you writing that, it was not prohibited. Just look at the timestamps, the post by rhendric is from 2024-04-28 16:57, while your claim is from 2024-04-29 2:09, hence the statement you made was incorrect.
And about the current state, the question whether infinitely re-iterating the same points over and over again or sealioning ever deeper into each fractal detail are actual discussions, is a different aspect in itself.
I believe this was not a very strong demonstration of “power”, rather the opposite.