Update on NixOS Foundation operations support

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@kate @idaBzo @fricklerhandwerk @wamirez and @erethon have been meeting since January 2025 to address long-standing issues with day-to-day operations around funded work for the NixOS Foundation.

We discussed how to grow a culture of “discoverability first” (complementing and supporting the effort started by @infinisil on GitHub - NixOS/org: Organisational documentation) and which processes or tools would facilitate information sharing across teams. This post is a summary of recent progress on that matter, and we’d appreciate any feedback or input.

We established for ourselves that we want to enable more community members to sustain themselves through open source knowledge work, to make the Nix-things we like or need more repeatable and reliable. We want to approach that by introducing more structure to the professionalised aspects of the community, and by securing additional funding to run projects.

In this regard, we proposed a few concrete measures we’re ready to implement with approval of the steering committee or the foundation board:

We’ve already done a few small things, such as:

  • Following @tomberek’s suggestion, @idabzo and @kate started sorting through our partnership situation, with the help of @fricklerhandwerk and @wamirez who were maintaining a list of companies using Nix since 2023
  • @kate updated the Foundation’s fiscal host Open Collective admins: removed @thufschmitt and @domenkozar who haven’t been active in a long time, added @fricklerhandwerk as a backup
  • @idabzo identified key stakeholders for community support operations
    • Steering committee, NixOS Foundation board, community teams, volunteer contributors, organisational partners, end users
      • Steering committee:
        • Should be responsible for the general direction
        • Should at least be informed
        • We need confirmation of availability and commitment
      • Foundation board:
        • Financially/legally accountable, money would flow through the foundation’s accounts
        • We need confirmation of availability and commitment
      • Community teams:
        • Somewhat formally organised
        • There were ideas to give them privileged access to the org’s resources, since this formality is a means of ensuring accountability, and thus a minimum degree of visibility
        • We need to hear them out on their needs
      • Volunteer contributors:
        • Arguably do (or have done) most of the work
        • We owe them to protect their investment of time and energy
        • However much we try to be transparent, some may be lost and need guidance to find what they need or where to get help
      • Partners from industry, public administration, academia, and other communities
        • We need to identify hot leads and how we can serve their needs towards mutual benefit
        • Conversely: need to identify what we actually need that would benefit the community
      • End users:
        • Are interested in outcomes and opportunities, may contribute financially or become contributors
  • @dgrig helped @fricklerhandwerk experiment with different self-hosted project management tools that would allow handling the complexity that has already built up

We are grateful for the valuable time the steering committee and the foundation board are volunteering to serve our community. Our work has been ongoing in the background without much guidance since the decision to restructure community governance mid-2024. For us to help the foundation meet its commitments, and simply to keep up the momentum, we need timely decisions about resource allocation. Therefore we’re looking forward to the next steps in the upcoming weeks:

  • Meet with the SC and the (new) foundation board with the goal to get our proposals approved
  • Make explicit our available means, especially time commitment from the SC and the board we can expect for responding to inquiries or signing off decisions, and divide labor appropriately
  • Set up more concrete goals, build a consistent roadmap and schedule
    • Define requirements and work backwards from there, e.g.:
      • Financial reports are on time and correct
      • Running financial reports takes no more than 5 min
      • We know at any given time how much money is available for what
      • There’s a process for teams to set up their own Open Collective projects
  • Start exploring how to consolidate places where we handle accounting data
    • A natural candidate is cleaning up the various places inside Notion and figuring out how to reliably synchronise that with our current accounting software e-boekhouden
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Awesome, the future of Nix looks bright. I might be able to share something later on, possibly 6 months from now. I’d like to keep it under wraps but people in my close circle definitely know what it is heh. Mostly in regards to getting companies or organizations to support our infra needs.

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@RossComputerGuy In case you aren’t just prototyping an idea and are already reaching out to companies on behalf on the project: With which team are you coordinating your efforts?

For context: The SC has also done work on sponsorships. We have discovered that there is no documentation who has talked to which company for support. IMHO it is unprofessional if multiple people from the community reach out to the same company for sponsorship without talking to the appropriate governance body or team first. While we haven’t enacted a policy for this yet, I want to ensure the involved parties in the project are on the same page.

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@fpletz I’ve mostly been in contact with @tomberek. I’ve had some discussions with @djacu on it. Once we have a more exact plan of action, we’ll figure out what teams to properly coordinate with and how.

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We’ve already set up a bit of an internal tracker for these partnerships in Notion, exactly to solve that problem of losing track or duplicating work. We don’t have a good permission model over there though, and unless one makes it somewhat messy (which would defy the purpose) it’s read-all or nothing for each account. Because partnerships are by nature very much uncooked, it’s also a trust issue with who’s supposed to have access. Ideas welcome how to integrate volunteer efforts without relying on game of telephone.

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I agree we need a more coordinated effort. I think we should have like a “Community Outreach” team responsible for coordinating partnerships & sponsorships. It could be sort of led by the Director of Community Support on the board. They could meet with the marketing team to officially announce things properly as well. And of course, the SC would have a say as well.

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@fricklerhandwerk @RossComputerGuy @fpletz @tomberek We’re still getting set up with the new members, but tracking and maintaining partnerships is very much the responsibility of the board, so please coordinate with the board for such efforts from now on :slight_smile:

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