The issue isn’t zero-sum thinking, the issue is a company that has already demonstrated to be willing to use deception, sabotage, and predatory tactics like creating proprietary products like FlakeHub and Determinate Nix to lock in potential users to ensure profits. It’s not an “efflorescence in a part of the garden,” it’s kudzu crowding out everything else in the garden. Regardless if it’s zero-sum, there’s still plenty to lose.
Speaking of ways of thinking we need to get beyond, I really do not like when the focus of something is on how “disruptive” it is. To my understanding, that’s focusing purely on the potential for profit rather than actual usefulness or helpfulness. “Disruptive” seems to essentially be a marketing buzzword that boils down to “this is dramatically different from anything else out there and whoever is selling it is in the perfect opportunity to extract maximum profit from it and shape the market in their favor going forward.” That is the kind of thinking that drives companies like DetSys to come in and crowd out everything else in the garden, so to speak.
Edit: I should not have said the immediate above things. Whether I was aware at the time or not, I was taking my frustrations out on a stranger on a public forum. I have marked it as a spoiler to mark that I sincerely wish to retract what I have said.
FWIW, I do not think you are being rude.
I agree that the future of Linux distros is declarative configuration, but I think what you are referring to as “fragmentation” is a good thing. I think the proliferation of open-source forks and alternative implementations like Lix, Tvix, and the Aux community’s efforts to make an alternative to nixpkgs allows people outside of Nix’s dev team and DetSys to experiment with new ideas. If nothing else, it adds a potential check to prevent a single entity, non-profit or otherwise, from having complete dominance over the Nix ecosystem and the potential for stagnation that comes with it.