Should organizations relating to the defense sector being able to sponsor NixOS?

[thefossguy]

@Mynacol

I have however also some criticism to the above questions. The first two questions draw a picture of a one-way flow where only money is heading our way. I totally agree with that assessment, but for donations, not sponsorships. If a sponsor were only interested in “giving back,” they are free to donate the respective amount of money. That would be another situation and I believe it would have risen much less attention and controversy.
A sponsorship is a two-way exchange of resources. Money flows one way and recognition, attention, shoutouts, endorsement, advertisement (rough list) are flowing the other way. They are explicitly agreed on by both parties (whereas donations can be received without prior agreement of the recipient). A sponsorship therefore helps such a company. It is no far stretch that a lot of people on NixCon only become aware of such company through the logo, booth, shoutouts on this conference (or through the discussion we’re just having). There might also be a reasonable probability that someone might start working for such company only because of the sponsorship.
Therefore, such sponsorship would directly help such company, and therefore one might argue a sponsorship is supporting this industry and “war” by proxy (stuff gets fuzzy here, but you should be able to see that some people might think this way).

@Mynacol: While I’m just quoting this part, I agree with most of what you said in that post.

Let me start with saying that those are some excellent points! Yes, sponsorships usually mean that the relationship between both entities is a bit more closer than donors. I actually missed that point somehow (shouldn’t have made such a serious post when I’ve had a personally bad day; my bad, apologies!).

If sponsorship is an issue, sure, then we reject the sponsorship and prevent the sponsor advertisement (a type of advertisement and an endorsement on some level, I believe).

Looking at the sponsorship tiers and the current list of sponsors, there are a few points I’d like to make.

1. I see that all tiers of sponsors are allowed to share stickers. Now, is this a type of endorsement? Maybe. I believe that the choice still remains with the attendees and their ethics. I’m sure people attending are usually the curious crowd and will ask the Anduril folks “So, what do you guys do?” and will deny the stickers if their ethics do not line up, hopefully, with a polite response from both sides.
2. Anduril is a Gold sponsor, which does not have the ‘Networking & Hiring Happy Hour sponsorship’ “privilege”. So far so good, I hope.
3. Anduril, being a Gold sponsor, can however show a “promo video”. There should be a clause somewhere, where either the foundation members and/or community members and/or nix/nixpkgs/nix-adjacent-project contributors have the right to review this for obvious problems.

@ron

Gold: High visibility with your logo prominently displayed during key events, recognition in opening announcements, and a promo video.

(actual link to this post in case Discourse can’t quote between topics: NixCon North America - Sponsorship Tracks).

So maybe we can, citing ethical issues with partaking in allowing hiring to such employers, force cap such companies’ highest tier level at the Gold (or better, to the Silver) sponsorship?

Would love to carry forward this conversation in good faith, ending up in some level of concrete guidelines for donations and sponsorships, at the result of alienating one part of the community over the other. Because, let’s face it, there are at least two extremes right now–and some in the between–which is exactly why this topic was created.