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A leadership crisis in the Nix community

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Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#161

Post by ndriscoll »

fabrice_d wrote: post #137
pantsforbirds wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of all the things to be upset with a "defense" company over, actual literal defense (as in border monitoring and sensors) is a funny one. That stood out to me in the open letter as well. Why not the weapons systems that are apparently "somewhere between an autonomous drone and a reusable missile"? Would people be as upset at Boeing as a sponsor, or would that just be boring? Would people be as upset if Google or Facebook were sponsors? Google of course runs a global surveillance network, and says they're proud to offer AI services to the DoD:

https://cloud.google.com/gov/federal-defense-and-intel

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#162

Post by Cyph0n »

docandrew wrote: post #134
Cyph0n wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

I suppose one could make any argument. At the end of the day, the onus is on the company making weapons to prove to the community that its weapons are used for “good” - whatever that means to the community in question.

Personally, I think accepting a sponsorship is a step too far: it’s an implicit admission that Nix is associated with the defense industry. Some communities are okay with this, but such a move will definitely alienate a good chunk of people. They and other defense companies should of course be allowed to participate in the community and contribute to Nix.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#163

Post by myaccountonhn »

steve1977 wrote: post #142
myaccountonhn wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But a lot of the technologies were explicitly designed with military use in mind. It’s not like some unintended and unplanned side effect. So a better analogy would be swords that can also be used to cut fruit instead of killing maybe.

But we’re in a thread about leadership crisis of nix here. Was nix designed explicitly for military in mind?

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#164

Post by aredox »

dzogchen wrote: post #56
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…

The main reason for the persistence of C 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 C. [Insert systems programming language du jour] or any other well-developed language makes more sense.

... Yes.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#165

Post by dwb »

steve1977 wrote: post #149
dwb wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really expecting people critical of the US military to not use computers, else be keeping a "double standard"?

I think these people are keeping a double standard, yes.

Are you ideologically aligned with the distant origin of everything you use and consume?

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#166

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

Whatever organization they are trying to sponsor is very obviously a social movement, not a piece of software.

You can only sponsor people, not software.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#167

Post by ParetoOptimal »

takeda wrote: post #158
ParetoOptimal wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it’s important to make clear that the letter is mostly bogus and almost libelous. That's not my reading of it. However my biggest issue is the conflict of interest between Eelco -> DetSys -> Anduril Contract -> Eelco fighting hard for Nix to sponsor Anduril. As foundation chair he should declare that he doesn't have a conflict of interest and DetSys doesn't have a contract with Anduril or have recused himse…

The whole idea behind Open Source is that one does not discriminate. As a Nix user I feel like those people who started this whole drama are actually negative to this project. They are trying to use Nix as a tool for their political goals. I think the best for Nix would be to just move forward and ignore them.

> As a Nix user I feel like those people who started this whole drama are actually negative to this project.

The people who signed Anduril as a sponsor, apologized to the community, and signed Anduril as a sponsor again anyway started this drama and are a negative.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#168

Post by dwb »

Macha wrote: post #156
dwb wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get how this follows; no-one needs to be a secret anything, and the aim isn't even personal. Targeting "ideas rooted in fascism and bigotry" means to oppose the discursive ideas and concepts as they are put forth in the community, and the resulting concrete actions, that come from fascism and bigotry – specifically not the people or private thoughts.

eelco here is not accused of behaving in a facist or bigoted manner though. The accusation is two steps away already, specifically not being sufficiently supportive of the means of a process which has prevention of facist or bigoted behaviour as one of its goals.

Indeed. Is that not a valid complaint?

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#169

Post by zer00eyz »

ParetoOptimal wrote: post #76
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…

> Nix is a software project, not a social movement. Upholding the status quo is a social (and political) movement, it's just the most popular and accepted one.

By that rational:

Do you eat food, drink coffee, chocolate. Do you avail yourself of modern pharmacology. Everything you do upholds a status quo of human suffering. You posting on HN is a political statement, from a place of privilege, by that rational.

It's a software project, dont make it political and it will be successful.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#170

Post by pantsforbirds »

fabrice_d wrote: post #137
pantsforbirds wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Anduril started by building tech to hunt poor people crossing the southern border Seems pretty inaccurate to describe the usage of surveillance drones as "hunting poor people". I believe drones were a mostly bipartisan approach to monitoring the border vs building a border wall / expanding the border barrier or whatever we are calling it now.

> Their CEO is a right wing extremist He's not an extremist? He's just a regular Republican. I'm legitimately curious why you think he's an extremist.

> How you can say this is the same as supporting Ukraine against Russia aggression Anduril has been directly supporting Ukraine with its technology since the very start of the war. You do realize that, right?

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