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A leadership crisis in the Nix community

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Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#211

Post by Zetaphor »

zer00eyz wrote: post #182
ParetoOptimal wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On one hand, I struggle to think that people might actually care about switching "master" to "main", as opposed to making wider improvements to inclusivity. I thought it wasn't a big issue until I saw how hard one side fought to keep the name "master". After that I changed my mind and name all of my branches main and give a little push to projects I'm part of to do the same. Plus, words do have power: https://www.y…

> I thought it wasn't a big issue until I saw how hard one side fought to keep the name "master". Master craftsman? Master mold? Master copy? Head Master... Just because this word was used in relation to slavery doesn't curtail its use in language, removing it only serves to focus its "power". Also, thats not how language works. At all. It is never how language worked. An Australian and an American are going to have…

> Master craftsman? Master mold? Master copy? Head Master... Just because this word was used in relation to slavery doesn't curtail its use in language, removing it only serves to focus its "power".

Except none of those examples are relevant comparisons. It's well documented that the reason the default branch name was master traces back to Bitkeeper, which was using the master/slave nomenclature.

> Also, thats not how language works. At all. It is never how language worked. An Australian and an American are going to have a very different reaction to the word cunt.

Master and slave have universal meaning across all English dialects.

If you're going to make an argument against this change on the basis of semantics, at least get your facts right.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#212

Post by srid »

Related submissions:

Open letter to the NixOS foundation (50 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40107370

The dire state of NixOS's moderation culture (76 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40166912

---

Additionally, these r/NixOS submissions may be of interest:

Jon Ringer: "In case I'm unable to return, wish you all the best" (348 comments) https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1cd5fod/in_case_im_u...

Transparency about jonringer’s suspension (153 comments) https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1ceeg8h/transparency...

Thoughts on Jon Ringer's temporary suspension (71 comments) https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1ceiz36/thoughts_on_...

Moderation no-go zones (55 comments; ongoing) https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1cfv8vo/moderation_n...

---

Finally, the RFC to improve the situation:

https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/175

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#213

Post by jijijijij »

jonringer117 wrote: post #184
ParetoOptimal wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse because after the first time much of the community was trying to write it off as a simple mistake or miscommunication. It became evident after the second time though that this was very on purpose and it was known there would be an issue.

Well, the activity around changing the status quo was done in a github issue [1]. Which sat around for many months after proposing the Apache Software Foundation's sponsorship policy of "state of nexus". Which didn't give a basis in which to exclude Anduril from sponsoring again. Obviously there's the "people were angry last time, they will likely be angry this time". But that's projecting personal/political views in…

Well, you should know, since you have been involved with both Nix and Anduril, right?!

No MIC sponsoring would have been the right course of action. No matter your sympathies, or alliances in your case.

To even think of the sponsorship as a valid idea is US centric ignorance. Outside the US people don't get the "Thank you for your service" indoctrination and are way, way more reluctant to work with the MIC.

If you knew anything about Germany, the issue with the university host should not have surprised you at all. It's not some modern outrage of wokeism, it's a decades old academic foundation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_clause

It's hard to find a German university without: http://www.zivilklausel.de/index.php/bestehende-zivilklausel...

Losing VOC support, eh?! Have you been to a CCC event? MIC sponsorship of Nix would lose you more or less the entire German hacker scene, at the very least.

A national defense company sponsoring an international software project, not expecting uproar... I don't know what to say. It's beyond plausibly idiotic. Objectively, completely out of touch.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#214

Post by throwawa14223 »

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?

It's scope creep for reproducible package build system, so yes in this case it is.

edit: replaced 'feature' with 'scope' realized I typed an unclear word.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#215

Post by jijijijij »

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.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#216

Post by jijijijij »

stonewall wrote: post #103

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.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/1338390/darpa-pulls-fu...

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#217

Post by skissane »

Zetaphor wrote: post #211
zer00eyz wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought it wasn't a big issue until I saw how hard one side fought to keep the name "master". Master craftsman? Master mold? Master copy? Head Master... Just because this word was used in relation to slavery doesn't curtail its use in language, removing it only serves to focus its "power". Also, thats not how language works. At all. It is never how language worked. An Australian and an American are going to have…

> Master craftsman? Master mold? Master copy? Head Master... Just because this word was used in relation to slavery doesn't curtail its use in language, removing it only serves to focus its "power". Except none of those examples are relevant comparisons. It's well documented that the reason the default branch name was master traces back to Bitkeeper, which was using the master/slave nomenclature. > Also, thats not ho…

> It's well documented that the reason the default branch name was master traces back to Bitkeeper, which was using the master/slave nomenclature.

Git never had "slaves". And while no doubt that BitKeeper was a significant influence on Git's adoption of the term "master", can you say it was the only one? Are you arguing that Torvalds had never heard of the term "master copy", and that term didn't influence him at all (not even unconsciously)?

> Master and slave have universal meaning across all English dialects.

Even when a word has the same denotation across dialects, its connotations and associations can differ significantly.

Also, certainly for the word "master", there are senses of that word, and derived words, which are more associated with some English dialects than others. In the UK, it is common to call a school principal a "headmaster"; it is very rare in the US; in Australia, it is more common than in the US but less so than in the UK (and mainly associated with private schools). Similarly, "Master" as a title for the head of a university college is traditional in the UK (especially at its most prestigious institutions such as Oxford and Cambridge), I don't think any US universities use it any more.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#218

Post by skissane »

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?

Yes, because "ideas rooted in fascism or bigotry" is a vague phrase lacking any clear definition, and risks becoming a cudgel for cliques to use to shut down anyone who disagrees with them.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#219

Post by busterarm »

fabrice_d wrote: post #204
busterarm wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hundreds of people die preventable deaths every year trying to cross that border. Exposure, dehydration, drowning, etc. If you don't know anything about where these people are you can't do anything to help them. Even if you support open borders, this technology is essential.

How many of them were helped thanks to Anduril products?

Nobody publishes statistics on this directly but we know that in recent years that the number of border crossers that have to be rescued from dehydration and heat exhaustion is in the hundreds per week.

Given that AST's towers/software identify objects of interest to CBP, it's probably safe to assume that number is high.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#220

Post by michtzik »

colinsane wrote: post #208
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'm fascinated by this because a lot of my involvement in open source is a pretty direct reaction against state actors like NSA who undermine my privacy. and if i wanted to i could point out that the military took other things away from our field too, like Alan Turing. but ultimately, i think the argument is just that any institution which dumps a lot of money into a space deserves loyalty for that alone, but where's…

How did the military take Alan Turing away from our field?
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