The CoI not including internal teams in the Nix org was a mistake.
6 Likes
The CoI not including membership and participation in competing implementations, or country and nationality, or employment status, etc. was a mistake (depending on your viewpoint).
We went through a long process to get the rules we have, and we should play by them instead of rejecting them.
2 Likes
Those sure are claims. What kind of bias?
No need to name the people youâre thinking about though, that wouldnât do any good to single anyone out.
But if there is bias, and substance to the claims, it may need to be addressed. Rather than being done in secret, by ousting the people involved.
12 Likes
I was also given access to the undisclosed information prior to this post. I canât entirely agree with the conclusions that @pbsds draws here, but I will say the following in support of it.
I agree that the four bullet points are an accurate, factual summary of the evidence I saw.
The surrounding text summarizes these bullets as John âprepar[ing] to lie to the communityâ, and I donât think thatâs the only valid interpretation. Another is that John and/or the SC at large made a decision by intuition and then wanted to communicate that decision using reasoning instead. They wanted to be able to explain their decision in a way that would not seem self-contradictory or unprincipled. In short, they were taking the community reaction into account in their communication.
I think reasonable people can disagree on whether âtaking the community reaction into accountâ is necessarily dishonest. I donât think it always is (though it can be!). A true theorem can have several valid proofs, and presenting only the most accessible of them is not a deception, but rather good math communication. The analogy isnât perfect, but I feel similarly about a deliberative body choosing how to present their decisions publicly. But I also think that @pbsds, and a few other people with whom Iâve discussed this, are sincere in their belief that justifying a decision after the fact with newly-compiled evidence and parallel constructions is not presenting an honest picture of what the deliberative body actually spent their time deliberating, and that therefore the whole exercise is âlyingâ.
I think @pbsdsâs facts are well-written in the following way: if you look at just the four bullet points (not the surrounding text) and think to yourself, wow, John/the SC are really being dishonest here, I believe youâd have drawn the same conclusion if you reviewed the evidence I did. Similarly, if you look at just those bullet points and think to yourself, thereâs a reasonable justification for this actually, maybe it isnât actually a big deal, I believe youâd have drawn that conclusion from the raw evidence.
I donât ask John to resign from the SC for the specific reason of conspiracy to commit dishonesty.
(I am, however, profoundly concerned by the decisions of the SC with respect to the moderation team, as touched on here, but this is not the thread for that conversation. I expect Iâll be writing more about that soon.)
35 Likes
Itâs common and reasonable for the SC team to think carefully about the rationale and wording of the decisions and announcements.
Some of the quotes are potentially worrying, but theyâre not clear to me without context.
What matters to me more is the SC has multiple members to limit the influence of any one SC member.
There are existing mechanisms for influencing the membership of the SC:
⢠SC members can vote out another out. They have more context on this than me.
⢠Contributors have yearly SC elections.
I would like all SC members to stay for their term, to minimise disruption, and to provide continuity for the next election.
13 Likes
setting slow mode, since I expect most messages are single messages either supporting or opposing the topic. For deep back and forth discussions be probably donât have the bandwidth right now. Sorry
With the wind changing I think a full SC reelection would be a good idea.
41 Likes
I just want to say thank you to K900, who has gladly answered questions about nix and helped me fix problems on multiple occasions. 
15 Likes
So much for no conspiracies, eh? I guess this one wasnât due for outing because it wasnât fascist? : V
More seriously, though, while lying is lĂŠ bad in general, I think that an explicit intent to deceive is qualitatively different from damage control gone wrong and I donât feel like I can judge which it was with only the context as presented. As such, I cannot in good conscience call on John Ericsson to resign specifically.
What I however can judge this as, is a systemic failure of the SC not only in letting the situation deteriorate to this point and âimplementingâ ad-hoc measures instead of building stable processes, but also enabling their own member to employ post-hoc rationalisation like that, instead of living up to objectivity and transparency they said moderation could use more of.
As such, Iâm going to take a page from lassulusâ suggestion and instead say:
I ask for a full re-election of the SC to take place.
19 Likes
I deeply respect the technical acumen of John Ericson. Dynamic derivations are an extremely exciting features in the Nix feature set. Reshaping the way we bootstrap Nixpkgs with GCC has enormous benefits. And splicing, ugly as it is, powers successful cross-compilation of most everything in Nixpkgs.
John, I respect you a lot. I want to work with you, and hope to do so in the future. And the behavior described above doesnât represent the ideals you so often fight for in technical settings. Itâs human, but not in way that represents the better angels of our nature.
So I join Peder in saying:
I ask John Ericson to resign from the SC.
17 Likes
Thank you for sharing this information with the community. People deserve to know what the people they voted for are doing. And my immense respect for going through with it, it takes a lot of effort and bravery.
As others mentioned - as unacceptable as John Ericsonâs behavior is, he was enabled to do it by the system that propped him up. This includes the other SC members, the SC modulo operandi, the constitution that makes SC so opaque, and even the voting system, which gives overwhelming advantage to highly extreme subgroups and makes SC more polarized on purpose.
For this reason, I ask the entire SC to resign after one year of functioning. I also ask the SC members to become non-eligible for assuming governance positions in the future. Additionally, I ask the SC to publish all of their communications publicly, and pass the reforms to ensure the next SC is properly accountable and transparent, such as requiring publishing votes, signatories, making participation in other teams a conflict of interest, ensuring the community can pass a vote of no confidence on particular members of SC, and there being SC observers.
12 Likes
Iâm not concerned about any spin the SC wanted to try to put on exercising power, because exercising power is the only way out of this misery. No member of the SC should be ashamed to do so, nor ashamed of trying to keep the ensuing temperature low.
The moderation team has substantial power, including the power to censure community members. The SC, as a check on that power, exercised its own power to change the membership of the moderation team, for reasons we cannot know, or at least canât be detailed here. I encourage that.
I would rather than elected members have more power than unelected ones. I encourage folks to ignore all this, and if you think a wrong has been done, just make your voice known in the upcoming elections. This is all electioneering anyway.
17 Likes
I can confirm this match with all that we had in SC/Mod private channel.
I think a full SC reelection would be a good idea.
17 Likes
I assume this refers to Monday the 29th? If so, Iâm saddened that the SC convened after everything going on in https://discourse.nixos.org/t/a-statement-from-members-of-the-moderation-team, yet didnât feel like they needed to put out a statement.
Therefore, I think the best point forward for everyone would be a full re-election of the SC.
13 Likes
On the bright side, the fact that we had a leak about this, but no similar leak of Tom failing to recuse himself from decisions related to Anduril, indicates that Tom was telling the truth and all the panic about Anduril influence on the SC was overblown.
2 Likes
Iâm reading thereâs evidence that was passed along and hashed and that various people, including people I trust, are confirming the contents of the associated files.
Still Iâd suggest we take some time in order to try to understand the full picture here. Have people understand the sourcing of the info, to make sure. Give people time to react and have necessary conversations to get a better understanding of whatâs happening here.
There is really no need to jump to conclusions at this hour.
Iâm ending this with a call to action for the EC:
EC, please make sure that those who are actively or passively part of our election process have enough time to react to and process released information at the relevant stages in the process. This is happening really close to the nomination deadline.
7 Likes
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. What a weird fucking statement to make in this context.
14 Likes
Former SC member here. I wanted to leave the SC behind me and not comment any further because it burned me out pretty good. Given all the stuff that happened in the last few days, I feel like I have to contribute my opinion here.
As much as it pains me because I really like and respect @Ericson2314 on a personal basis and in technical settings, I have to concur here that his proposal to hide the facts is not something I wouldâve approved if I would still be on the SC. I cannot confirm the leak as I donât have access to private information since the time of my resignation. What I can confirm, however, is that giving my participation in previous SC discussions, this behavior is not surprising to me.
I would like to add that @tomberek was constantly rambling about his disagreements with moderation practices. His complaints were rooted in a perceived preference for âwokeâ community members regarding moderation actions. When âanti-wokeâ community members were moderated he was calling for free speech. When âwokeâ community members werenât moderated enough in his opinion he forgot about free speech and accused the moderators of favoritism. This is probably what triggered the removal of @K900 and trying to install @numinit in this place.
The issue raised here is not a problem with specific SC members but our (SC including me) collective inability to come up with a proper process to deal with moderation disagreements, amongst other things. Removing moderators in private and reframing the decision is IMHO not the solution - more transparency is.
I ask for a full SC reelection.
59 Likes
I can verify authenticity of the quotes but I think this has been a misunderstanding.
I do not think John was attempting to lie here. I think, lacking an easily articulable reason (other than âinsubordinationâ, which I believe was just Johnâs speculation about part of another memberâs rationale), he was trying to tap into collective sentiment to end up with a concrete statement.
The âlegitimizationâ is yet another formalization of the wanting to retrospectively summarize experiences the vibes were based on. I understood the âparallel constructionâ as an off-color joke acknowledging the retrospective direction but it was still a reconstruction, not a construction.
Likewise, I do not see a conflict between what Robert was saying â their vibes lead them to conclude that K900 was not attempting to reduce their bias in moderation.
The workshopping of statements during synchronous meetings has been a common practice. Since we have not managed to publish a statement yet, planning its preparation was natural.
I disagree with majority of SCâs interpretation of the observations about lack of impartiality of moderation team and consider the moderation team ideas of moderation superior to the SCâs, and voted no confidence based on that.
Here is a breakdown of the relevant votes (publishing approved by SC):
- Remove K900 from moderation team (passed 4/6)
- Ericson2314: +1
- Gabriella439: +1
- jtojnar: -1
- roberth: +1
- tomberek: +1
- winterqt: -1
- Allow K900 to be on the Nixpkgs core team (passed 5/6)
- Ericson2314: +1
- Gabriella439: -1
- jtojnar: +1
- roberth: +1
- tomberek: +1
- winterqt: +1
- Put numinit on Moderation (initially passed 4/6, later retracted)
- Ericson2314: +1
- Gabriella439: initially +1, later changed to -1
- jtojnar: -1
- roberth: +1
- tomberek: +1
- winterqt: Abstain
- Vote of no confidence of the entire SC 2025-09-30 (failed 3/6)
- Ericson2314: -1
- Gabriella439: +1
- jtojnar: +1
- roberth: -1
- tomberek: -1
- winterqt: +1
79 Likes
Thanks for showing people more evidence of how SC is not functioning as expected.
Glad to see SC understand that.
I hope SC and moderation team can work with each other to guarantee moderation teamâs safety and make the community a better place, rather than fighting with each other.
3 Likes
I am disturbed by these revelations. I can understand making decisions based on accumulated feelings or âvibesâ, and I can understand not wanting to come out and say âwe did this because of vibesâ, but I see no other valid interpretation of trying to construct a retroactive justification for this than lying to the community, and thatâs inexcusable.
I ask John Ericson to resign from the SC.
Furthermore, since this behavior required the cooperation of at least half of the SC, and most of the SCâs term is about to be up anyway,
I ask for a full reelection of the SC
18 Likes