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A leadership crisis in the Nix community

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Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#131

Post by Pannoniae »

ParetoOptimal wrote: post #108
Pannoniae wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

First, I'm not from that "side" which you think I am. Second, I do assume intent and here it's beyond reasonable doubt that this is about pushing your agenda. I do not dispute that some of these people genuinely believe that they are doing good - either they got brainwashed by others, or they've successfully brainwashed themselves. (In fact, many of us, including me, brainwashed ourself with various things on occasions. It's fairly common)

I won't go over the entire document, but it's pretty telling how they've refused to commit to "no politics" as a rule - because they want to promote theirs! The problem wasn't that sidr linked to politics, but that he linked to the wrong type. (I checked it out and I definitely don't agree with most of it. But that doesn't mean I can't defend his right to speak)

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#132

Post by fireflash38 »

ParetoOptimal wrote: post #28
suddenclarity wrote: post #19

Skimming the letter makes it look like another attempt at pushing through their Code of Conduct (RFC98) targeting "ideas rooted in fascism or bigotry", whatever that means. Now going a step further by erasing the people in charge.

> targeting "ideas rooted in fascism or bigotry" Is targeting "ideas rooted in fascism or bigotry" a bad thing?

What do you do when people who claim to be targeting fascist ideals also use the same tactics as those they're targeting?

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#133

Post by saulrh »

eduction wrote: post #111

> In short, Dolstra is acting as "the effective Benevolent Dictator for Life (BDFL)" of the project, even though the NixOS Foundation's charter doesn't grant anyone that authority. This is silly - authority in a software community doesn’t come from a nonprofit charter. Being founder is also no guarantee of authority, but it is more relevant because it’s rooted in actions and outcomes. The more I observe from the side…

The letter's entire criticism is that Dolstra is clinging to that position through an extended, conflict-of-interest-ridden campaign of toxic behavior and that this toxic behavior is preventing Nix from "delivering useful software and updates quickly to end users."

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#134

Post by docandrew »

Cyph0n wrote: post #99
jsyang00 wrote: post #12

The Anduril issue seems to have been the main catalyst for the drama. Seems like Anduril probably did more harm then good - who at Anduril couldn't have predicted that the Nix folks would start to have a major freakout the minute they attempted to sponsor?

Because defense contractors typically think what they are doing is purely good and could in no way be thought of as being bad. A form of “reality-distortion field”.

You could make the reverse argument - that the conference organizers think what defense contractors are doing is purely bad and could in no way be thought of as being good. Ultimately it’s up to _us_ (proxied through our elected officials) to use software tools for good or bad purposes, the creation of a tool in itself isn’t the problem. I think most defense contractors are keenly aware of the implications of their work.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#135

Post by brabel »

ddellacosta wrote: post #6
slekker wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does guix have to do with Nix (genuine question, not snarky)?

It's a bit hidden in their about page: GNU Guix provides state-of-the-art package management features such as transactional upgrades and roll-backs, reproducible build environments, unprivileged package management, and per-user profiles. It uses low-level mechanisms from the Nix package manager, but packages are defined as native Guile modules, using extensions to the Scheme language—which makes it nicely hackable. h…

If I understand correctly, they're saying that the low level stuff works the way it works in Nix, not that they use Nix for that.

I am aware Guix did fork Nix but from what I've read, there's almost nothing left in Guix that still uses the initial Nix code?

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#136

Post by Shrezzing »

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…

There are a lot of people who will find their workplace being singularly "mission focused" a good thing, but 5% of Coinbase's staff announced that they'd be leaving within one working week of that post[1], and others followed shortly after. I think that shows that in a corporate environment, it's not possible to retain all of the best staff if you're very publicly burying your head in the sand with regards to social issues - particularly in the immediate aftermath of the George Floyd protests.

The author talks about the productivity losses rising from social-issue disagreement in the workplace, but it's rare that you can point to a press release from a C-suite employee and say "this specific document caused one in twenty staff members to leave immediately". The productivity destruction at Coinbase from that press release was enormous.

https://www.coinbase.com/en-gb/blog/a-follow-up-to-coinbase-...

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#137

Post by fabrice_d »

pantsforbirds wrote: post #121
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…

It's wild to see how much hate Anduril gets from the same people who have statements supporting Ukraine in their READMEs or have licenses preventing Russians from using their software. How can you demand support for Ukraine, but then get upset by the people who are meeting actual needs for the war effort?

Anduril started by building tech to hunt poor people crossing the southern border of the US. Their CEO is a right wing extremist. How you can say this is the same as supporting Ukraine against Russia aggression is obviously telling more about you than about anyone else.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#138

Post by elktown »

rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote: post #62
ParetoOptimal wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> targeting "ideas rooted in fascism or bigotry" Is targeting "ideas rooted in fascism or bigotry" a bad thing?

When, for people pushing this targeting, fascism/bigotry means having a branch in your repo names master I absolutely believe targeting ideas rooted in fascism/bigotry is a bad thing.

[flagged]

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#139

Post by fireflash38 »

ParetoOptimal wrote: post #58
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #30

> ...are going to be interpreted as a bunch of left-wing people taking over the project Yeah, it's a bunch of left-wing malcontents trying to take over a project. Anyways, Nix is very much decentralized as far as open-source projects go.

> Yeah, it's a bunch of left-wing malcontents trying to take over a project. Or a bunch of people who were told they have a voice, put in time/work under that assumption, then when it came time for their voice to count were just ignored. But I bet life sure is easy when you can just label people something nasty and dismiss their worthless opinions outright.

Is it a technical thing they are being ignored about or are they trying to exclude people?

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#140

Post by myaccountonhn »

steve1977 wrote: post #113

People seem to forget that a lot if not most of IT has some form of military background/funding behind it. Be it the first computers, the Internet, RISC CPUs, BSD UNIX and much much more. You’re free not to like this fact of course, but then using the technologies anyway is a bit of a double standard.

I think it’s different to actively endorse something vs having it be used for something. If you’re working in a community producing axes and you’re later seeing the organization advertising them for murder instead of cutting down trees, you might understandably not wanna be part of it anymore or try to change the organization.
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