Stepping down from the Nix team

Announcements
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Dear community,

I joined the Nix team in 2022 because they were looking for volunteers to help out and become maintainers, and I have continued to do so until this day.

We have come a long way, but since last year, the Nix team has been attacked by people loosely(?) affiliated with those who demanded radical change, right at a time when we were starting to get good results from our collaborative process to improve Nix maintainership.

I have stepped into the line of fire, defending the team. I felt this was necessary, in part because I was unaware of prior conflicts I had no part in, but most of all because a lot of things were said about the team that were simply not true.

Later that year I was elected to the Steering Committee with a large number of nominations.

I believed I could make a change, and together with the rest of the SC, we did. We prevented issues from blowing up by deciding them internally, and together with the mod team, we had a fairly quiet time.

We also worked on forward-looking plans, and we were an important part of a successful sponsorship process.

I supported action against Anduril’s campaign to recruit from our community at the cost of our community, and I supported our constitutional duty to oversee the teams as needed.

However, today it feels that none of that mattered. Some SC members have given up on their responsibilities, and now Gabriella has actively turned against us. I trusted her on our decision to intervene in the mod team, that he couldn’t be worked with, and that she was in touch with the part of the community he was part of.

I don’t just give up, but I do have to recognize the harsh reality that, due to the large amount of misinformation and vitriol, my presence in the Nix team puts our new members and contributors in harm’s way.

So while I shouldn’t let myself be bullied away, I am stepping down from the Nix maintainer team.

I am not as of now stepping down from the SC, because that would be irresponsible.

As a practical matter, I have committed myself to make a significant contribution in a paid capacity in the coming months, so I won’t disappear from the project, but I will not have the commit bit, and I will not participate in any project level decision making.

This is entirely my own decision, and I am lucky to be in a position where I can make such a decision without dire consequences to career or livelihood.
I have not observed any ill intent or whatever allegations may be from any Nix team member, so I encourage the other team members to stay on, and keep up the good work.

Gotta say, it’s been fun, and I’d probably keep dropping by as a contributor anyway, regardless of the eval cache project.

All that said though, I want this cycle of abuse to stop, and I urge everyone, including those who think they already do, to start listening to each other instead of jumping to conclusions.

I wish you all health, peace and joy.

Robert

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Thank you for all the things Robert… I guess it was not an easy move.

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Wait, who’s then going to endorse (looks at the infinite backlog) making nix3-command work without flakes?

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When the methods are not precise, it’s hard for the outcomes to be.

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Thank you for your monumental work

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I will just say this, the wrong people are the ones that should be quitting. You broke a man with the patience the greek stoics could only dream of. Thank you for all your work!

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I hope to see you around, I always enjoyed our interactions at ZHF and NixCon.

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You are welcome back to the Nix team any time! You will be missed.

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What this shows me is that we need processes that protect contributors. Maintainers should decide if they mainly want to be developers, or politicians. The political and governance work belongs to elected structures like the Foundation Board or Steering Committee.

I see the Nix team as a technical squad under the SC. To build trust, there should also be exclusivity rules. For example, no one should occupy more than one seat, to prevent self-elections or conflicts of interest.

From my perspective, the better decision would be to step back from the political roles, and remain a technical mentor; because that’s where your impact is most needed.

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I rarely partake in the “drama” part of the discussion but I’d like to make an exception this time just to say that your monumental work on the Nix project is both appreciated, and admired. Should you choose to go forward with this decision (maybe you have, maybe you are having second thoughts— I don’t know) it will be a rare and terrifying burden to the community. That said, I’d like you to know — despite never knowing me — that your ideas, your work and your contributions to the community, direct or otherwise, are greatly appreciated. Hope this is for the best of you. Godspeed!

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Regardless of — despite — my feelings about the recent SC actions, I continue to believe you’re one of the best possible people to be on the Nix team. I hope you regroup and reconsider in the near future.

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I am really sorry to hear that it has come to this. I hope you know many in the community appreciate your contributions. Thank you for all you have done to improve nix, and I hope you’ll reconsider at some point when this noise blows over.

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Robert, in my eyes, you are very nice and honest person with skills very much needed for this community. Please make no mistake, you work is very visible and very much appreciated !

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Thank you for your service.

For everybody keeping score, this is a perverse incentive maniftest: if you actually build things, the current political situation–I hesitate to say process–have selection pressure against you.

The easy fix is to separate the builders from the politicians, but that guarantees governance will be by people that, by definition, aren’t able to work with others to write code and build things.

Choose carefully come election time.

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This makes me very sad. @roberth has been a fantastic collaborator all our years working on Nix together.

I want to share a bit of a personal anecdote on this: In the earlier days, especially, when Eelco and Théophane were more skeptical about whether my non-new-feature-oriented work was actually bringing value to the project, Robert’s support was not only an integral step in making my work possible, but strong emotional support that I wasn’t crazy for attempting this stuff in the first place. Without Robert, I would have burned out along time ago. Thank you so much Robert, for raising my spirits over engaging with open source at a time I needed it most.

It was also due to Robert’s and Valentin’s efforts that I was able to join the Nix team at all, for which I am eternally very grateful.

(I am not yet going to respond to the other threads. Nobody take my responding here as an invitation to engage me here on those topics instead of the actual topic of this thread.)

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Hi Robert, I’m sad to see your departure. I still firmly believe that there is nothing wrong with what you have personally done. To those who disagree, I would still ask to refrain from assigning blame to anyone.

If anything, the will to work together is one of the greatest strength I’ve seen in the broad Nix community, and I’m sure you will agree that there’s great merit in that.

Thank you for your work in and out of the Nix team.

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SC matters notwithstanding, this is an unfortunate loss for the Nix team. Thank you, Robert, for all your contributions and I hope you can find time to come back soon.

One thing that resonated with me is that perhaps it is too much to ask for someone to be both in an administrational/political/social role and a technical role at once. With the current composition of the SC being roughly ½ core Nix contributors and even more candidates running for this election on a platform mostly based on technical merit, it worries me that this sort of burn out will happen again. Only time will tell.

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I am sad that you had to make this decision. You were contributing quite significantly to parts of nix that I am quite excited for.

I feel that this description is too much formatted in the form of “I did x, y, and z but no one is doing anything for me now.” To me, that’s frustrating to read from someone who’s supposed to be a leader in the community. To me, half the steering council thinks a full reelection is in order, and the other half has not really given any sort of concrete argument as to why we shouldn’t. This is frustrating to read because looks like an emotional response rather than a rational one. I’m hoping you’re trying to view this situation as rationally as possible, but I hope that you can try to steer yourself to be rational when making decisions on the steering council, and to look at the situation with a clean slate of a mind.

To me, this feels like the result of a lot of inexperience in leadership. I don’t know who that lack of experience is assigned to in this case, but I have a hard time imagining anyone is intentionally acting in bad faith here based on the knowledge I am privy to.

To put in my own 2 cents, I think we should just hold a reelection with a clean slate, and specifically focus on implementing more transparency. I personally think SC votes should all be public, for the reasoning that any decisions made should be scrutinized, in the same way as is done in any other actual democracy, and generally because any decision that something as general as a steering council should do should be subject to public criticism. If your claim is that a lot of misinformation is going around about stuff in the steering council, then something like this is, I feel, in your own best interest.

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There’s a really good one mentioned in the OP: By not resigning, representation is being maintained.

I’ll add that rolling the dice on new elections, especially in response to this pattern of extra-democratic pressure campaigns, is likely to result in worse representation and more chaos. By getting back up and making the current SC limp along to the next election, it is breaking the cycle. We have to stop being baited into these ad-hoc pressure campaigns and just let the representative process work. We have to let representatives represent.

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