That’s a good question, and though gauche to stump here I can give an answer–even if I don’t run this year, I’d like to model in case it’d help anybody else out.
History:
The nixpkgs team, founded in I think the end of September of 2025, was originally four folks–k900, wolfgang, alyssias, and emilazy. k900 joined the SC and immediately stepped down from nixpkgs core in November 2025, wolfgang stepped down in January 2026. So, alyssias and emilazy have been minding the shop for a bit over half a year (and doing perfectly fine work).
They put out the call for new folks in May here, looking for volunteers from existing committers (I assume this means folks with a commit bit, not contributors more broadly).
Critically, they’ve also been on the forefront of a particularly large policy schism in the community, which is finding the answer to “How should NixOS and its community handle the advent of LLMs?” This is a thorny question with technical and political answers that are very different, and so I have no doubt (though I have no receipts) that they got a lot of heat for their policy statements. This was obviously complicated by the fact that at least one of their former members (wolfgang) has been strongly against the inclusion of LLMs (see his blocking review in the PR for a claude.md). This doubtless was a stress-causing state of affairs.
Finally, we have this stepping-down letter, which directly jumps into blaming things on the SC (third paragraph of the post specifically mentions the timing w.r.t. to the election and then is followed by a lot of thoughts on the SC and governance).
Alternate history SC:
So, there’s basically three points where (if on the SC) I think I’d do something: at the recruitment drive, at the AI stuff, and at the letter.
For the recruitment drive, we see that it’s been a two-person show for four months. Something the SC could offer would be to help with outreach. We could also start a weekly or bi-weekly recurring post for folks to join–basically, “hey, do you want us to also be trying to help remind the community that we need help as part of our weekly roundup?”.
This requires weekly or bi-weekly communication from the SC, which is something I’ve always been a fan of. I’d also ask how long they could hold out to get a sense of how urgent the problem is–if things are bad and if there are projects clearly listed out, the SC may be able to put out some contracts or RFQs to spend money to buy time and move some load off the team during the search.
For the AI stuff, I’d offer that the SC take responsibility for a final AI decision, absolving the nixpkgs team of pressure. This is the benefit you get from having a team over you (of governance more generally!): you can say “hey, we’ve given our recommendations, but if you’re not happy with it talk to the folks up there”. This is useful for tie-breaking in internal team discussions, for providing a meat shield for teams from the community, and for various other things. It’s something I think the SC should do more of…but this requires cooperation from the teams!
For the letter, there’s not a lot I’d do differently (given what external visibility I have into it). At that point, the team has already decided to leave; a thank-you-for-your-service and announcement of a recruiting drive is about right. If the team has mentioned specific issues, I think it’s reasonable to provide primary documents of the discussions so that the community can understand the context and we truth-seek together. I think that a policy of “you can be mad at the the SC, but if you want to take it to the court of public opinion instead of doing a joint statement we will provide exhaustive receipts” is reasonable and fair and democratic and transparent; if people don’t want that, they can coordinate a joint statement like most other healthy organizations.
I hope that answers the question to your satisfaction.
I don’t know if I will be running again this year–my own experience last year was unenjoyable for various reasons, and honestly I’ve got more immediately-rewarding things to work on–but I hope that there will be other candidates who see the utility in orderly, mature, civil behavior and offer to take up the cause.
For the voters–look at the minutes for the SC, look at the attendance, look at the public posts, and draw your own conclusions about who’s showing up to do the work and what work they’re showing up to do. In the spirit of the question Nadir posed, think about how–concretely, specifically!–you would handle the problems before the SC.
And, as always, Vote Boring Nix.