A leadership crisis in the Nix community • Hacker News Board

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#101

Post by hamandcheese » Mon, Apr 29, 2024, 4:15 PM UTC

danhor wrote: post #29

ordinaryradical wrote: post #23

Dolstra nailed it: > It is my opinion that it is not for us, as open source software developers, to decide whose views are valid and whose are not, and to allow or disallow project or conference participation as a result. You really should not be in open source if you believe it is your purview to ideologically police the usage and contribution to your software. That notion is incompatible with the spirit of the ende…

Isn't that exactly what the free software movement is based upon? You can only use our software if you agree to share your source code modifications with the binary (death to proprietary software, very ideological) and you can only contribute if you agree if that.

There is a very narrow set of restrictions that is generally agreed upon for it to be free software still, and that restriction is generally to the effect of "you can't remove other peoples rights".

That seems extremely different than targeting particular company for idealogical reasons and trying to remove their rights.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#102

Post by weberer » Mon, Apr 29, 2024, 4:15 PM UTC

danhor wrote: post #29

ordinaryradical wrote: post #23

Dolstra nailed it: > It is my opinion that it is not for us, as open source software developers, to decide whose views are valid and whose are not, and to allow or disallow project or conference participation as a result. You really should not be in open source if you believe it is your purview to ideologically police the usage and contribution to your software. That notion is incompatible with the spirit of the ende…

Isn't that exactly what the free software movement is based upon? You can only use our software if you agree to share your source code modifications with the binary (death to proprietary software, very ideological) and you can only contribute if you agree if that.

No, its exactly the opposite actually. You're thinking of copyleft. The Free Software movement was a direct response to corporations attempting to restrict what users could do on their own computer via dumb terms of service agreements. It guarantees 4 fundamental freedoms:

>The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).

>The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

>The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).

>The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#103

Post by stonewall » Mon, Apr 29, 2024, 4:15 PM UTC

Seems like this is becoming the terminal phase of the FOSS lifecycle for many projects.

I wonder what makes some long-lived communities immune to this behavior...OpenBSD comes to mind.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#104

Post by tripdout » Mon, Apr 29, 2024, 4:16 PM UTC

aredox wrote: post #9

The main reason for the persistence of Nix despite its warts and general mess is just "first-mover advantage": it was the first, therefore it has more libraries/packages/development of the ecosystem than the alternatives. Stop being lazy, go back to engineering first principles and it makes little sense to stay with Nix. Guix or any rewrite as a library in a well-developed language* makes more sense. *For example, wh…

I think Nix is much simpler and more suited for software packaging than Scheme.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#105

Post by gizmo » Mon, Apr 29, 2024, 4:16 PM UTC

joepie91_ wrote: post #84

gizmo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The letter is authored by "anonymous contributors", actually. This suggests the authors are minor contributors at the periphery of the project.

It does not. And not only is this particular letter signed by many active contributors, the issues far predate this one letter (with this one demand), and many well-known contributors have been involved in speaking out against the current situation. You're not going to understand complex governance issues and their history from a read of a single article or letter. Consequently, you probably should refrain from drawi…

The letter is an unhinged diatribe written by anonymous authors and should be disregarded on that basis.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#106

Post by Powdering7082 » Mon, Apr 29, 2024, 4:17 PM UTC

cosmic_quanta wrote: post #40

> Anduril, a military contractor that uses NixOS, has repeatedly attempted to become a sponsor of NixCon, which did not go over well with the community Something similar happened in the Haskell community, where some people called for Anduril job postings to be removed. Nix is a software project, not a social movement. The goals of Nix are entirely separate from how the software is used. I really like Coinbase's state…

The issue isn't whether Anduril can use the the software. They can.

This stemmed from whether they can publically attach their name to NixCon, which is fundamentally a social event.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#107

Post by bin_bash » Mon, Apr 29, 2024, 4:17 PM UTC

ParetoOptimal wrote: post #35

ordinaryradical wrote: post #23

Dolstra nailed it: > It is my opinion that it is not for us, as open source software developers, to decide whose views are valid and whose are not, and to allow or disallow project or conference participation as a result. You really should not be in open source if you believe it is your purview to ideologically police the usage and contribution to your software. That notion is incompatible with the spirit of the ende…

> You really should not be in open source if you believe it is your purview to ideologically police the usage and contribution to your software. The issue here is one of sponsorship. Contributors to Nix have a problem with contributing to Nix and then seeing sponsors like Anduril advertised. If Anduril donated but wasn't listed as a sponsor and didn't have a booth, I bet many wouldn't have an issue.

What's the issue people have with Anduril? Is it just that they make defense equipment?

My (possibly wrong) interpretation is that people feel we shouldn't make weapons. That we should just stop fighting entirely. This is clearly an extremist position, I don't think many people in the west think that we should (for example), completely blockade Ukraine from even buying weapons.

Even if you believe we should stop manufacturing weapons, don't you think this isn't likely to be a popular opinion? That it's unreasonable to expect people to share it?

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#108

Post by ParetoOptimal » Mon, Apr 29, 2024, 4:17 PM UTC

Pannoniae wrote: post #67

giraffe_lady wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it slanderous to point out the board composition is not representative of the community. Seriously walk me through this one.

Mostly because they have double standards. If 100% of the board was "diverse" in some way, they would claim that it compensates for historical injustices or something. If they were truly serious about inclusion, it would be completely fine, but this is just authoritarian assholes hiding behind the veneer of "fighting against fascism" (in the document posted by @busterarm, some of these people even openly advocate dox…

> . If they were truly serious about inclusion, it would be completely fine, but this is just authoritarian assholes hiding behind the veneer of "fighting against fascism"

People arguing from the direction you seem to be usually are big about not assuming intent... why assume intent here?

How can you prove they don't both believe they are fighting about fascism and care about that fight?

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#109

Post by cycomanic » Mon, Apr 29, 2024, 4:18 PM UTC

rgrmrts wrote: post #44

giraffe_lady wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very reasonable to not want your work used by arms dealers, and it is in fact your purview to "ideologically police" the uses your work is applied to. "If you don't want to help create war machines you can't contribute" is your solution, not mine. Historically the conventions of open source has been that use is completely without restriction, but there has always been conflict about that. The domain is new enoug…

But the software licensing explicitly allows your work being used by anyone (as long as they adhere to the license). If you don't want your work to be used by entities you disagree with you can not contribute to the project or advocate for use of a different license.

The software licencing is also completely irrelevant here, nobody said that Anduril can't use Nix. The issue was that the community largely did not want them as sponsors. There is a very big difference to allowing someone (or some company) to use your software and wanting to participate in a conference where the same company is a sponsor.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#110

Post by ParetoOptimal » Mon, Apr 29, 2024, 4:18 PM UTC

ipv6ipv4 wrote: post #81

giraffe_lady wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it slanderous to point out the board composition is not representative of the community. Seriously walk me through this one.

What is the composition of the nix community?

It's not hard to argue "the nix community is not 100% white male".