Why wasn’t the fact that @tomberek works for Anduril since August 2025 officially announced anywhere at all? Especially considering recent developments with Anduril and the USA government and the USA government becoming more and more fascist/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-bereknyei-4888432a5/ - proof
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(Not an official statement.)
- Tom’s term is going to expire in two months.
- Even if it didn’t, I don’t think this needs a statement, as we recuse ourselves from voting on anything that involves our employers, so it doesn’t matter. (If it makes you feel better, he told us basically as soon as he joined, so it wasn’t like it was being hidden.)
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Didn’t you get voted on for the fact that you were anti-MIC?
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Also not an official statement, but my personal viewpoint is:
Tom joining Anduril actually weakens Anduril’s position within the Steering Committee as he must now recuse himself from all votes involving Anduril. As Winter mentioned, all Steering Committee members have consistently recused themselves from matters where there was a conflict of interest and I wouldn’t expect that to change.
The current system already has a check in place if the Steering Committee believes that a member is abusing their position in any way: the Steering Committee can remove any member by a supermajority vote. I can say pretty confidently that not a single one of us would vote in favor of removing Tom. While I may disagree with some of his views, I do not believe him joining Anduril delegitimizes his position.
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Conflict of Interest needs to be stated not only before assuming the role, but also updated while in the role. The failure to do so casts a shadow of the doubt on SC - and “his term is going to expire in two months” is not helping it.
SC is supposed to be a governance body that restores trust in NixOS Community. This trust can not be restored, if you choose to sweep unpleasant facts under the rug, for whichever reason. I am disappointed - and especially so by the fact that one of the representatives of the community now works for Anduril. You know, the MIC that caused massive outrage and an open letter, demanding to NOT accept sponsorships from such questionable entities. If there was an open letter because sponsorship for community events is unacceptable, how do you think it is acceptable for that MIC to have a representative in governance board?
Thank you, nyan, for blowing the whistle on this. I wish we didn’t need whistleblowing to receive important information, like Conflict of Interest updates, but it seems we still do.
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I am comfortable with @winter’s and @Gabriella439’s comments on the matter. I think the SC is constructed in such a way that it can absorb this change with zero adverse effects in this particular case. That said, I am left with some policy questions.
Is the declaration of conflicts of interest primarily intended for the internal affairs of the SC? Or is it intended to be meaningful information to the community at large? Given that SC candidates were required to publicly disclose their conflicts of interest for the election, I had been led to believe the latter. If that’s the case, it seems necessary to publicly announce changes in members’ conflicts of interest. If it’s a matter of community interest to the point that it’s part of the election, then it remains so throughout the term.
So as a matter of policy it seems one of these two mutually exclusive things should be true:
- Declaration of conflicts of interest should not be a part of elections.
- Changes to conflicts of interest should be announced throughout one’s term.
I’m of the mind to prefer option 2, but in either case, I think this has made it clear that one of these two changes needs to be made. I am personally not at all worried about the present situation; I have decent faith in the current SC. But I do hope the questions of how and why we declare conflicts of interest are considered carefully and a policy is chosen to make the rules of governance consistent with those answers.
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I agree that 2 should be the option and honestly what I was under the impression it was too.
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Don’t forget that the next SC election is coming up. If you don’t want an Anduril employee on the steering committee next term, make your voice heard.
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Voters didn’t want an Anduril employee in SC last time, and it didn’t help, as it seems.
As pointed out above, it’s an important policy question to resolve before the next election. Conflict of Interest is a standard practice in governance positions - so I’d prefer it to stay, and for it to be up-to-date.
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I believe we can refrain from labeling every single employee of every single mil company as fascist. I seem to recall that military companies, such as they became at the time, including Ford and General Motors, played an important role in defeating a rather well-known group of fascists.
What rather is happening is that groups who would like to exclude all mil contractor associated people are speaking as if a consensus was reached to close Nix and NixOS to participation by military company associated users. It is rather as if they would like an inter-subjective truth to be created where it is appropriate to exclude and suppress anyone who disagrees with that argument. Intersubjective truth is a fancy way I’ve come to say “socially manufactured facts” ie things that are not true but may as well be true in a rigid society that imposes the choices of a political majority onto all others.
To run an open community, you need to understand and internalize the concept of “pluralism”. No military contractor has ever sought to exclude me. I don’t know why I would support political action within this open organization to exclude a military contractor that wasn’t taking some other action I can identify more clearly as directly damaging to the interests of others. On the surface, it may seem that weapons and sensors can very well be used in such ways, but the responsibility to employ such things is definitively a political question for the state, not within the domain of a simple software community. There is place for such political action. However, in the words of Barack Obama, “Get your own rally.”
edit Good morning! Thanks for the reports and the automatic hiding. The zero-sum politics and hardliner behaviors are readily apparent. These behaviors are principally wrong. Standing up to them is principally right. You will galvanize a tide of less-engaged voices to demand that a reasonable person can make reasonable conversation that reciprocally respects the dignity of differing views without being harassed. That tide is slower moving than activism, but it is resolute in the same way that is it slow and it is more numerous because most people have broad rather than narrow interests.
You don’t need to heed my advice. Simply reason logically about how to achieve the aims that you likely want to achieve and it will become abundantly clear that this community is not the vehicle to do it with. Achieving a totally uniform political message within NixOS will never be viewed as legitimate on any topics except those within its scope. It will never change anything outside of NixOS even after it excludes a lot of people within NixOS. This kind of McCarthyism will stop, and it will stop in the same way, through sincere appeal to a basic sense of decency and deeper awareness.
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Voters or simply most of the voters? It’s not about a single-person position, but a proportional-ish election.
I agree that a sudden change of heart would be jarring — but we are talking about the SC member with the most Anduril-permissive public stance as a candidate.
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The problem is really simple actually, and any normal organisation can handle this.
I think what’s at stake here is mainly that people would like for the Steering Committee members to disclose their workplace and other relevant information for the duration of their tenure. Then that information can be used to get consensus through the election.
This is very reasonable expectation for a group that’s in such a high position of power. It’s just like how politicians have to disclose things like this. I think this would likely have been much less of an issue if there was a constant open communication with the community, instead of what may have come of as an attempt to hide this fact, and now downplaying its relevance.
So what should be done?
Whenever someone on the Steering Committee changes position, that should be communicated in an open and transparent way if legally possible. And yes, that’s not always the case that it can occur. But we should at least agree that this is a very reasonable goal.
…And a tangent about Ford…
This is tangential, but important. I think your view of Ford is perhaps lacking nuance. Not to say that all military contractors are fascists — they aren’t. Ford however had some contributions that are, well… well.
In a letter written in 1924, Heinrich Himmler described Ford as "one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters"1.
Not to say that it means that Ford the company, its employees, line workers, or anyone else was or wasn’t fascist, but let’s not give too much credit here — they simply took a government contract; likely it was quite lucrative.
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And also… this doesn’t have to turn into a flame war. Let’s just talk about the potential for a disclosure policy?
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Formal statement from the Steering Committee here:
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I feel it is worth acknowledging the humans. Nix and open source survive through the sustained effort of volunteers and with the free time available, staying on top of every piece of policy and infrastructure is hard. It’s worth doing, and worth doing well, but “to err is human”.
I’m glad the community spotted something and said something, and glad to see it was addressed. Thank you all for dedicating your time and passion to this project. I’ve found it very interesting and useful.
For those who are new (like me) or who may have struggled to find it, the Nix governance constitution appears to live at NixOs/org repo, currently at commit b480f0407462454068580d339bff2251a02c1406. In all walks of life, get out and vote for the changes you are passionate about.
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To be clear, I agree with policy change - I just wanted to make sure that people with strong opinions don’t ALSO forget to vote. Should’ve made that more clear in my original message, sorry.
Where what happens, exactly? Where people do their best, no actual harm was perpetrated by the governing body (please someone point this out to me if I am wrong, specifically a harm caused by Tom remaining on the SC), and policy is iteratively improved over time? I’m sure this isn’t the only community where that’s true. I also wouldn’t want to try to prevent those outcomes.
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