I think that the correct course of action would be to heavily disrespect military contractors:
Allow them to sponsor events
Do not allow them to advertise, set up booths, give special talks, or distribute swag
Bury the list of sponsors deep in the programme, perhaps only available by request
Set up a special working session, titled something like “How to prevent military contractors from influencing Nix,” which will focus on how to minimize their effects in the ecosystem
Distribute an open letter condemning military contractors and invite folks to sign physical copies at a special session
Expressly make at least one keynote include the topic of how to minimize corporate influence on the Nix community
For bonus points: invite a keynote speaker to give an openly anti-military-industrial talk
In general, the idea is to take their money, refuse their influence, and shame their choice of occupation. If that means that they suddenly don’t want to give money, then let them walk away.
To clarify my personal position. There’s no hard obligation for corporations to contribute back to FOSS. I would rather have them contribute back, than give nothing at all.
This would be a broader scope than just defense, but any entity which has had a [potentially] “dark past or present” ethically. E.g. Nestle, Bayer, Monsanto, facebook, google, etc.
People and corporations should be incentivized to the do the right thing. Pushing them away from contributing seems to hurt both Nix and their desire to do better.
This is a classic case of arguing in bad faith and derailment of the discussion.
gatekeep and dictate who is allowed to contribute to open source communities
Not the topic of discussion. This is about sponsorship, which is not a unilateral action but essentially, at the end of the day, a form of paid advertisement.
Should we ban companies that sell private user data? Should we ban companies that contribute to global warming? Should we ban companies that don’t have high enough diversity metrics? Should we ban companies that have customers or offices in countries we find oppressive?
Ridiculous line of reasoning and barely coherent. What does “ban” mean? Not taking money from these companies? Strange definition. But something tells me you don’t care that much about global warming, diversity or oppressive governments anyway.
Just to get back to what this is actually about: companies making killing machines for killing people. Pretending that opposition to this line of business is stepping over some sort of line does not make sense. I suggest you have a look at the reasons why many academic institutions refuse to take money from defense companies.
TLDR: let them be sponsors, don’t harass/shame them
I personally believe that the time for “shaming” the military and weapons builders is over. They are the only thing keeping Ukraine right now alive. We live in uncertain times and having the capability to defend the nation you live in shouldn’t be shamed but cherished. They are needed right now and that is a fact.
Additionally, I think it is a very cheap argument to say they kill people, or they build tech that kills people a lot of companies destroy the environment or exploit the Third World and the line of good and bad is so blurred into oblivion. I also probably wouldn’t like to see recruiters running around, but I think they should be able to give back to the community without being harassed or shamed.
Okay, hold up right here. Nobody has to dox themselves. Bias can be relevant but any of us could be working for the defense sector and so you have to argue against the argument, not the person.
No personal attacks, or this thread gets locked.
[Edited to add: patka requested that I delete the above comment. The admonition stands.]
Accepting questionable sponsors like Anduril these drives away more ethical sponsors and contributors.
The long term cost is simply too high to accept them.
This is effectively just like E.A. is trying to make money, by just being good enough to not lose customers completely.
We should strive to be better instead of stopping short of a sellout.
I would consider conflicts of interest highly relevant, actually. “Anyone could be working for a defense contractor” is not a good reason to deliberately shroud that fact in darkness.
On a more serious note, I guess it’s been said often enough in this thread that sponsorship with its perks and other ecosystem contributions are different things. So I am fine with this part of your position.
Of course there are specific cases where I’d also hope the community or the respective maintainers are going to reject code contributions if possible. I’m thinking about companies like HackingTeam or NSO group which cannot be deemed to be trustworthy, when they’re mainly working on exploting vulnerabilities for their own good and making the whole software ecosystem a less safe place.
But these are very specific cases and not what we’re discussing here.
And I outlined why this might be problematic and has the potential to disrupt a community conference.
If they care so much about Nix they’ll find other means to contribute if they really want to. But if they’re just doing it for the perk of exposure, then they might not care that much. And we might to make a choice.
We need to be aware that even a welcoming conference always ostracises some people. There are the active decisions like dropping problematic sponsors, those may be the loud ones.
But then there are the silent non-decisions through which we cause people to avoid community spaces. Those might feel like passive ones, but they are not, as we can know what we’re allowing to happen there.
If I need to choose between the marketing effects for a sponsor and the well-being of several community members, I know which choice to make.
Re doxing/ conflict of interests:
As a privacy advocate I share the concerns and agree that you cannot force people to dox themselfs.
But when it comes to conflicts of interests, it is the individual responsibility of everyone to declare their own (potential) conflicts of interests if there are any – or not take part in the discussions. Otherwise it is hard to have an honest debate.
If someone fails to do so and such conflicts are later revealed, that’s not doxing IMO.
Opinion noted. Don’t do it anyway. Message me if this is a problem for you.
I agree with this. If someone with hard power here—like a mod—is in your opinion using their power in a way that is influenced by where they get their money, that is an issue. The recourse available to you is to bring it up with a (probably different) mod, not to dox or ask others to disclose details they aren’t comfortable volunteering.
My DMs are open if you want to discuss this without the 1-hour waiting period.
Strong +1, and I will add that the foundation’s complete lack of care about ethics is making me reconsider how much I want to be involved with the project right now. This NixCon NA incident is ridiculous due to being an almost complete re-occurrence of the NixCon EU incident last year. The fact that the foundation decided it would be OK to approve this without having figured out where the community stands on this ethical subject makes me wonder whether they really have the health of the NixOS community as a top priority.
This is essentially asking to dox myself to clear my name in Nix the community.
I was hoping to keep my personal (Nix life) separate, as I consider being a Nix contributor very close to my identity (or at least had prior to Nov 2021, RFC 98). Actually fell into a deep depression while sorting myself out after having the perceived “loss” of the community. (Then again people are looking into my personal life for malicious intent).
My employment was not an influencing factor in any of this. I’m a recent hire, had no connection to Anduril during the 2023 NixCon “situation” (as labeled from the other thread). Took no part in securing the sponsorship, and the NixOS Foundation was not aware of my employment (this would have likely had no effect anyway, but felt like being transparent).
I’ve been a Nix member first for the past 5 years, in which I worked at 6 different institutions. I’ve been a Nix community member long before this job and will likely be a Nix member long after this job. Adopting policies like sponsorship criteria extends much further than the average stint in a particular position.
However, I don’t appreciate people looking into my personal life. You would have had to gone outside of any Nix platform to find the information. (I’m not trying to hide it, just stopped updating it outside LinkedIn).
To reiterate from the CoC:
Examples of behavior that contributes to creating a positive environment include:
Focusing on what is best for the community
Examples of unacceptable behavior by participants include:
Trolling, insulting/derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks
Public or private harassment
Publishing others’ private information, such as a physical or electronic address, without explicit permission
Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting
If the NixOS Foundation decides to filter their sponsors, then I will respect it and move on with my life. Whether they do or don’t get financial kickback is not relevant to me submitting or reviewing PRs to improve NixOS.
@no_name please change your communication style if you want to take part in this discussion. I see you concern trolling, derailing into tangential topics and generally your arguments feel like made in bad faith. Your tirade of rhetorical questions feels overly aggressive. This is not constructive.
@johnny your point would be no weaker if you removed the ad hominem attack from it.
I personally don’t think any defense contractor should be able to use our platform and events for advertisement, if they wanna give us money, they can use the open collective and I have no problem with that. But if they expect us to give them publicity in return, then absolutely not.
Totally onboard with this. And there are enough baddies in the world. I am a bit surprised that not more got a proper wake-up call on the 24 February 2022. That militaries and the military industrial complex are needed and serve a purpose in such times.
I personally think that the argument, some people might feel intimidated by military sponsors shouldn’t be our problem. You could be intimidated by a lot of things. I could hold a crutch against e.g. determinant systems and maybe don’t come to nixcon because of that. Does that make determinant systems a bad sponsor? - no. The same goes for Anduril in my mind - people maybe don’t like them: (okay - their opinion) - but that doesn’t make them a bad sponsor.
considering that Anundril advertises its products with phrases such as “accelerates complex kill chains”, I have no doubt their business is killing people. I refuse to link their site in order to promote their SEO, but you can find it readily on one of their products’ pages.
I am also against sponsorships of this kind. I think this would not be much of a discussion if it was a Russian defense contractor we were talking about and I don’t think it matters a lot which imperialist government a company is selling arms to (at least regarding our community).
We cannot realistically prohibit them from using the software, this is just how FOSS works. But it has to be clear that those companies are not doing sponsorships for their deep love of the community, but to sell more weapons to kill more people. And I don’t think this is something we should support.
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