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A leadership crisis in the Nix community

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Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#51

Post by ParetoOptimal »

zer00eyz wrote: post #26

NO one wants to admit that the tyranny of leadership is probably a good thing for a projects success. DDH, Linus, Poettering, Im sure someone is offended by hearing one of these names, but look at the status and reputation of their projects. Now go look at Wayland, or Rust who lack these guiding voices... Note that if you did in deep on these projects your likely going to need some popcorn to go with the soap opera l…

> NO one wants to admit that the tyranny of leadership is probably a good thing for a projects success.

I don't disagree, but it needs to be communicated upfront and transparent without some guise of it being anything else so that potential contributors can decide if it's right for them from the outset.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#52

Post by joepie91_ »

neuronexmachina wrote: post #46
ParetoOptimal wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Contributors to Nix have a problem with contributing to Nix and then seeing sponsors like Anduril advertised. I might be misunderstanding, but I thought Anduril was repeatedly rejected as a NixCon sponsor?

It's a bit more complex than that. They applied to be a sponsor twice; the community objected twice; the Foundation approved both. In one of those cases, the sponsorship was eventually rejected because the venue where the conference was held did not allow it.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#53

Post by moody__ »

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.

Exactly. Source with caveats has long been a celebrated part of open source. I find it entirely understandable that some people are not happy with contributing to the project if their contributions go towards producing weapons. Anduril could have made an anonymous donation, but they specifically wanted the publicity. They have had employees asking to hire people to "fill the gap" left behind by people who have decided to move on due to the lack of stance in disapproving of Anduril's sponsorship. This has always been more than "I don't want them to use it" and quickly has become a takeover of the community due to how their employees and others have been pushing the policy decisions.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#54

Post by ohwellhere »

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.

This is a great point, and perhaps we do need a new popular license or set of variants that exclude certain industries. "MIT-Peaceful" perhaps.

I know very many people who would refuse to work for certain companies and in certain industries — and have rejected certain projects — but would happily contribute to something MIT licensed that would end up in those systems anyway!

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#55

Post by Pannoniae »

ParetoOptimal wrote: post #27
busterarm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/nrdxp/rfc-evidence/blob/dfe80298dddf9858a...

Quotes from the article linked: > the community is heavily leaning into what might be termed the myth of marginalization > this group, still upset about the failure of RFC 98, is using the myth of fascism How can one take this document seriously after reading these sentences?

The document uses support for its claims. Yup, the language is obviously quite emotional and biased, but the facts are correct nonetheless. Do you have any particular/specific issues with the issues raised in this RFC?^^

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#56

Post by dzogchen »

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.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#57

Post by freedomben »

This is a meta comment, but the (apparent) style of using a different color (red) to indicate direct quotes is interesting. At first I found it confusing and a little distracting, but on the second pass where my goal was to cleanly separate the author's opinion from the sources, it was extremely helpful.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#58

Post by ParetoOptimal »

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.

Re: A leadership crisis in the Nix community

#60

Post by duxup »

zer00eyz wrote: post #26

NO one wants to admit that the tyranny of leadership is probably a good thing for a projects success. DDH, Linus, Poettering, Im sure someone is offended by hearing one of these names, but look at the status and reputation of their projects. Now go look at Wayland, or Rust who lack these guiding voices... Note that if you did in deep on these projects your likely going to need some popcorn to go with the soap opera l…

>NO one wants to admit that the tyranny of leadership is probably a good thing for a projects success.

I see that expressed all the time ...

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