I just saw the news of the soft fork announcement over on the IceShrimp instance and thought I should share here
Background Context for Anyone Out of the Loop
(newest to oldest news - top to bottom):
- NixOS Fork Announced by Jake Hamilton -
- Reddit post - 15 contributors left Nixpkgs maintenance
- Programming.dev post - Jon Ringer’s suspension
As mentioned (by u/steventrouble in the previous post here):
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As an outsider looking in, it looks like it’s a bit of a wipe the slate clean governance and moderation wise as voted on by the community.
So, now over the coming days the community will in essence vote on whether they will allow sponsorships from the military industrial complex.
I’m still not entirely sure what’s happening. I get the one guy who works for Anduril was suspended a few days ago for being toxic, but did the community side with him or not? The subreddit sure seems to be siding with him, but something tells me that may not something to be proud of.
Was this split about trying to get away from Anduril or because they didn’t care for the moderation that suspended the guy from Anduril?
Seems like political tensions stemming from developments with situations Israel/Gaza/Iran and Ukraine have piqued the discontentment over accepting donations from organizations that profit from contracts with the US DoD.
The lead developer/organizer of the NixOS project seems to be pro authoritarian in their political values and this has also lead to an uneasiness amongst a number of contributors although things seem to be civil overall.
It seems that the “toxic” behavior from Hamilton was derailing technical discussions over concerns about the funding from military contractors.
I may have got some of this wrong, but it seems that everyone involved is trying not to draw attention to the broader political aspect of the schism in the community. So people out of the loop are having trouble figuring out what is going on.
Somebody explain to me what’s happenning with nixos?
TL;DR the nix community forums are toxic from all sides
There’s been a spout between core contributors + the foundation vs a loud portion of the community. Some related to code, but from what I’ve seen, the loudest have been about social issues and values.
It all boiled over when a military contractor wanted to join the list of sponsors for one of the conferences (upcoming on in USA?). That caused a lot of tension, the foundation came to a decision
notto accept sponsorship and tried to put sponsorship rules in place for future sponsors. These were however perceived as too blurry by some parts of the community as they wouldn’t prevent such a situation from happening again.In the aftermath, a frequent contributor (John something?) was suspended and we’re now here.
On top of everything an open letter was released targeting the creator of nix (Eelco Dolstra). They claim his benevolent dictatorship is not so benevolent and accuse him of multiple things.
There are people who just get on with writing code and are very helpful in the forums and other community channels, but the, let’s call it “management style”, of some people on the project is not beyond reproach. Big egos and a mix of bringing in issues external to the project has made the forums become a very unfun place to be.
Edited to clarify that they actually did accept sponsorship from the defense contractor.
That caused a lot of tension, the foundation came to a decision not to accept sponsorship
This part is actually not true, they are still a sponsor of NixCon NA 2024.
https://2024-na.nixcon.org/#sponsorsThey proposed a policy to handle deciding sponsorships in the future, but it’s pretty lackluster. It basically just says the people in power promise to do a good job, pinky swear.
https://github.com/NixOS/foundation/blob/bb7af14ae242ab87c8312bb4122b2a3cd184462d/policies/sponsorship_policy.mdAh, thanks for the correction. I didn’t follow it closely.
IDK about the issue itself but I must say the discourse post does a mighty good job at explaining the reasons the guy was NOT suspended for and a really terrible one at explaining what they actually did suspend him for, except pissing off “the moderation team, in consultation with members of the Foundation board”.
Not to mention every auxiliary anything. Another completely idiotic and unsearchable “name”.
I hope it brings something worthwhile for the effort.
I do not like distributed, community-driven leadership. The more leadership is shared, the more arguments there are, and the less gets done.
I would rather have a strong dictatorship focused on technical merit, to be deposed in the future for another dictator, again, based on technical merit.
Is it too early to make an aux.computer community on programming.dev?
Seems like an opportunity!
@[email protected] why “aux”? Will that name be put up to a vote?
@onlinepersona @recursive_recursion I don’t think we need to spend time bikeshedding the name. As for the reasons I chose it:
- it is short
- similar to nix
- is short for “auxiliary” which can be used to mean “another”, “additional”, “secondary”, “separate”; so it being a separate nix ecosystem lines up@jakehamilton @onlinepersona @recursive_recursion By contrast, I’m a big fan of the name, it seems very fitting.
Doesn’t have to be bikeshedding. It’s 2 steps:
- collect proposals
- vote on proposals
But it’s your baby, do what you like.
The SEO on this name is going to be a major irritation for adoption.
But that aside, doesn’t it strike you as a concerning that this project is born at least in part from the complaints about a “benevolent dictator”, and the very first time—at least that I’ve seen—someone asks you to put something up for community consensus you say no?
@natecox for much the same reasoning
https://forum.aux.computer/t/forge-software-host/160/51?u=jakehamilton
@natecox @jakehamilton *sealion noises*
Naux
There, fits all your criteria, is even closer to Nix and appears to have fewer SEO issues as far as I can tell.
And as a cherry on top: “Naux is a medication that combines diphenhydramine and 8-chlorotheophylline to prevent and treat nausea, vomiting, vertigo, and motion sickness.“ 😄
I’m not sold on the name, but I’m definitely interested in the fork. I think there is an irreconcilable schism in the NixOS community that cannot be fixed unless the Benevolent Dictator steps down as leader, and it sure seems like he’s not gonna do that, as he’s built his entire company on top of NixOS.
It happened: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nixos-foundation-board-giving-power-to-the-community/44552 Lemmy post
We’ll see exactly what this means. But I would love if it means that the project manages to continue without the huge amount of confusion and disruption that would come from forks fighting for becoming the canonical source.
Unlikely. I expect it will mean that the infighting that led to this point will continue as the core compass of the project has been exorcised.
As an outsider it appears that nix is killing itself over nothing.
and the drama continues…
So that’s how it ends
You see if it was closed sourced it would be the end, but because its open and is actually really useful, it’ll be picked up by a new team
Oh, haskell is still open
What closed source projects were ruined by politics like this?
This was 4 days ago, I didn’t have to look very far:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/27/google-project-nimbus-israel
Firing talent is a great way to bork a project.
