6 ms·

I've seen a lot of articles about the Nix community lately and every single one is as vague as the next. Can someone summarize, to someone who hasn't partaken

I've seen a lot of articles about the Nix community lately and every single one is as vague as the next. Can someone summarize, to someone who hasn't partaken in any official Nix channels, what the catalyst of this was, if any? Or at least what sorts of actions/events have caused this discontent?

chpatrick 2y ago
Anduril is a big user of Nix and wanted to sponsor a conference, which upset some people because they're a part of the military industrial complex.
- rijoja 2y ago
  > "Much of the frustration has risen from inaction by authoritative figures. Whether inconsiderate sponsorship, conflicts of interest, harmful conduct, or a refusal to collaborate, these actions have repeatedly affirmed such positions of authority as the effective owners of Nix with no consequence." Right so the author of the post in question, is in favour of Nix taking sponsorship from Andruil, or against it?
  - chpatrick 2y ago
    It sounds like the author is annoyed that Anduril didn't get sent away (immediately) yes. As far as I know that was actually up to the conference organisers though, not the Nix project.
    - rijoja 2y ago
      Right thanks for clearing that out!
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    The author of the post is saying that the problem is the sponsorship not considering the community. Their own opinion doesn't necessarily matter if they don't choose to be writing an opinion piece. They are partially writing an opinion piece, but not about their opinion about working with the military. They are writing about Nix leadership vs Nix community.
- weinzierl 2y ago
  Just to add some more context: This is not a flash in the pan, but a drama unfolding for some months. https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/08/nixcon_drops_anduril_industries_as/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/08/nixcon_drops_anduril_... There was also a longer discussion on HN 7 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37418351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37418351
  - nebulous1 2y ago
    That does seem to be a separate instance though, so it was never really properly resolved at that stage. The reason that Anduril was dropped as a sponsor for the 2023 EU conference was that the venue wouldn't allow the association. This time the NA venue did not have that policy, so the sponsorship went through.
- BlueTemplar 2y ago
  And yet, unlike Guix, the Nix community doesn't seem to be bothered by using a part of the military industrial (spying) complex that is the Microsoft-owned Github.
  - chpatrick 2y ago
    I mean GitHub can spy on your... public open source code?
    - dscottboggs 2y ago
      It's not just about privacy, it's about building your project as dependent on an organization that does harm. It aligns you with them and makes you want them to succeed so that you can sustain your project, when without that dependency you may have otherwise wished them ill.
      - bamboozled 2y ago
        How on earth are any of the Nix foundations project "dependent" on GitHub? I mean they even have their own independent build system?
        rijoja 2y ago
        There's this whole concept of "Embrace, Extend Extinguish", that a lot of people in the open source community hasn't forgotten about, and therefore find it hard to trust anything that Microsoft is about.
        chpatrick 2y ago
        What's the most recent thing Microsoft extinguished?
        dscottboggs 2y ago
        Probably Atom
- Cacti 2y ago
  The majority of the tech industry is part of the military industrial complex. It's a shame more don't realize that.
rijoja 2y ago
I haven't really had the time to read up on it, but it has gotten a lot of attention and seems really successful, and seems to have some extremely interesting solutions to some problems that I am interested in, so it seems that the Nix guys have done an amazing job. Recently I heard that there was some drama about politics, and that might serve as an excuse for someone to step in and take over the organization, I don't really feel like giving these people attention however, so I haven't really looked into it all that deeply. The first paragraph in this very post is just pure rhetorics without substance. I suppose the point of the post is that whoever is behind kilo.bytesize.xyz should become the benevolent dictator for life of the project, due to pleasant sounding platitudes, or something?
- depr 2y ago
  People are wondering what is going on and all you're saying is I don't know either, I haven't read anything except the first paragraph of the article, but maybe it's this thing. What purpose does that serve except to further muddy the waters, making the situation even harder to understand?
  - FeepingCreature 2y ago
    It is a fair point that there isn't necessarily actually anything important going on. The onus should be on the article to convince people that something is happening and what it is. Where there's smoke, there may just be someone blowing smoke.
    - depr 2y ago
      I don't think so. The article is probably intended for the Nix community, so the author doesn't need to convince HN that something is going on. If as an outsider you are interested then you need to look into it yourself, the community has no obligation to make their internal conflicts legible to the outside world. As an outsider myself, it certainly looks like something is going on as more than 20 Nixpkg maintainers left in a week: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues?q=label%3A%228.has%3A+maintainer+removal%22+is%3Aclosed https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues?q=label%3A%228.has%3... It's fine to ask if someone can explain what is going on, it's a waste of everyone's time to say you have no clue and you haven't read anything and it's probably nonsense.
mongol 2y ago
It is a mirror of the culture war you see in other parts of the society. One faction wants to apply their values onto the project, some of which are non-universal. Especially, is sponsorship with military ties (i.e. defense sector) welcome. The other faction do not want to see subjective values to be applied like that.
- depr 2y ago
  One faction wants to apply their values onto the project; another faction wants to apply or keep their respective values, which includes making money, and supports these values by claiming they are neutral or universal.
- sloowm 2y ago
  You think taking a military advertisement is value neutral? It's truly a mirror of the culture war you see in other parts of society where people declare things they like value neutral and things they don't like a war on culture.
  - mongol 2y ago
    The value neutral position is Eelco's: To let event organizers choose. It is them that tries to fund the conference, let them make the call.
  - rijoja 2y ago
    Do you think there's any danger in handing over absolute power to whomever just claims to have a superior morality? Has that happened before in history and what has the consequences been? Didn't Andruil get sent of after a while anyway? Why don't the do-gooders just fork Nix and do EthicalNix or whatever, and lead by example instead of trying to take over the existing structure, wouldn't that be more in line with open source ethics, and you know common courtesy? Maybe drop github and Microsoft due to ethical principles while they're at it?
    - sloowm 2y ago
      > Do you think there's any danger in handing over absolute power to whomever just claims to have a superior morality? At any point in time there are always multiple entities claiming to have a superior morality. There is also always an entity with absolute power. So both points are moot and this question is moot as well. > Didn't Andruil get sent of after a while anyway? I would assume people like a project that is lead in a way that the community doesn't have to make ad-hoc interventions to undo decisions they think are bad. And this is where the power dynamics come into play. There is leadership that assumes it has the power to take certain sponsorship. So the community does not want that entity to have absolute power, it actually wants that entity not to have power. So now there is a power struggle for absolute power. The community would like to get absolute power so it can just make decisions about military sponsorships beforehand. The current power holders want to keep absolute power and take whatever sponsorships they want. I don't think open source ethics prescribe you have to fork a project instead of taking it over. Common courtesy from the current power holders would be step down, or common courtesy doesn't actually mean anything "you know". It's up to whomever will be in power to decide where the line of ethics is drawn. I certainly hope they would consult a broader audience to see if they line up with the community. If you think github and Microsoft should be dropped as well I would implore to make that case. It's interesting that you think there are other unethical organizations involved with Nix while at the same time arguing that the current leadership should remain. If I think something is unethical I argue against it instead of for it. In case I find myself on the unethical side of an issue I try to see if there is a higher ethical standard that I hold that trumps that one instead of arguing that the unethical thing is good.
ang_cire 2y ago
Seriously. How do you write an entire post and not pin down one single person, place, thing, opinion, etc? The only conclusion I can draw, as to why an author would choose to write only in generalities, is that any concrete facts or statements would be weaker under scrutiny, or less well received, than the uneasy benefit of the doubt that we extend someone making vague, unfalsifiable claims.
- nebulous1 2y ago
  I think this is written for the people in the Nix community. It's not intending to be an explainer for people outside it.
  - ang_cire 2y ago
    That doesn't really change anything, unless they're intentionally trying to be obfuscatory to people outside the community. I don't want news I read about groups I'm a part of to be vague to the point of confusion either.
    - nebulous1 2y ago
      Sure, but is that not on whoever posted it here? I mean, the original author is clearly entitled to make a post for the Nix community, right? It's not like every communication on the matter has to contain a history of events. I should be clear: my original thoughts when reading it were exactly the same as yours.
- KingMob 2y ago
  This goes into more details, with receipts: https://github.com/KFearsoff/nix-drama-explained https://github.com/KFearsoff/nix-drama-explained
  - ang_cire 2y ago
    Thank you, this is much better.
amiga386 2y ago
You may consider this view biased, but we have this: https://srid.ca/nixos-mod https://srid.ca/nixos-mod * September 2023: The "Nix Community Survey 2023" is looking for gender data, and the mods don't like that most contributors are men. * November 2023: The moderation team tries to institute a Code of Conduct https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/114 https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/114 ... and they get their way * November 2023: Some are not happy about it: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/moderation-team-accountability-issues/35482/69 https://discourse.nixos.org/t/moderation-team-accountability... -- the moderators talk about their "authority" and of course lock and hide the thread. It's "disruptive" and "off-topic", you see. * This sort of activity continues -- moderators consolidating and increasing their power, citing how they need the power to control "concern trolls" and such -- and now in April 2024, we get https://save-nix-together.org/ https://save-nix-together.org/ The "anonymous contributors" want to drive out the NixOS founder entirely, so that _they_ are in charge. They want "to hold people accountable for bad behaviour at all levels" and lament having "responsibility without authority" - in other words, they want power, power, power. They want power over everyone. Their justification is that they believe they have the moral high ground, and they deserve to lord it over everyone else. Hold onto that hard power, Eelco, and tell this lot to fork the project. Let's see how they enjoy moderating noxious.org instead of nixos.org
Macha 2y ago
The immediate tension is some people are unhappy for the second time that NixConf has accepted defense contractor Anduril as a sponsor, after a similar blow up last year was resolved due to the venue's rules banning military sponsors. I think the community took away from that the conference had accepted it was a bad idea and wouldn't do it again, but what the conference had taken away from it was "better check the venue's rules closely next time". The longer boiling tensions that have led to this point: - Flakes. They're largely promoted as the solution to composability but don't handle all use cases, and this has caused tensions with those that prefer more flexible but less ergonomic tools - The decision making process that led to flakes being a thing. There was a community process established to replace the previous de-facto BDFL process with a community driven process, and then the previous de-facto BDFL merged flakes in and started promoting them without following said community process. Later attempts to engage with the community process have had the issues where flakes now have a lot of genuine community support, but also some resistance from core contributors due to either the genuine feature gaps, or the fact that they're now presented as a fait accompli. - Moderation. There was a significant contributor who was up to some hateful conduct in (mostly) non-Nix community spaces that was banned across all project venues. There were groups unhappy that they were banned, and groups unhappy that they were not banned quickly enough. The project tried to navigate this with an attempt at middle grounding their moderation policies, which annoyed both groups. - Corporate influence from Determinate Systems: Newer initiatives from the former BDFL have mostly been announced through the company they founded Determinate Systems, and include stuff like a centralised repository in the form of Flake Hub. You can either see that as "proving it in the wild before bringing it to the community process" or "bypassing the community process to make it a fait accompli", but either way the ex-defacto-BDFL seems to see the community process as too slow and is end-running it with his new company. - Corporate influence from other parties: DetSys is getting the most hate right now due to employing the ex-defacto-BDFL and still having enough leadership positions to be seen as responsible, but other groups like Tweag or Cachix have also been seen as attempting to commercialise parts of the ecosystem at time.
KingMob 2y ago
https://github.com/KFearsoff/nix-drama-explained https://github.com/KFearsoff/nix-drama-explained

chpatrick 2y ago

Anduril is a big user of Nix and wanted to sponsor a conference, which upset some people because they're a part of the military industrial complex.

rijoja 2y ago
> "Much of the frustration has risen from inaction by authoritative figures. Whether inconsiderate sponsorship, conflicts of interest, harmful conduct, or a refusal to collaborate, these actions have repeatedly affirmed such positions of authority as the effective owners of Nix with no consequence." Right so the author of the post in question, is in favour of Nix taking sponsorship from Andruil, or against it?
- chpatrick 2y ago
  It sounds like the author is annoyed that Anduril didn't get sent away (immediately) yes. As far as I know that was actually up to the conference organisers though, not the Nix project.
  - rijoja 2y ago
    Right thanks for clearing that out!
- Brian_K_White 2y ago
  The author of the post is saying that the problem is the sponsorship not considering the community. Their own opinion doesn't necessarily matter if they don't choose to be writing an opinion piece. They are partially writing an opinion piece, but not about their opinion about working with the military. They are writing about Nix leadership vs Nix community.
weinzierl 2y ago
Just to add some more context: This is not a flash in the pan, but a drama unfolding for some months. https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/08/nixcon_drops_anduril_industries_as/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/08/nixcon_drops_anduril_... There was also a longer discussion on HN 7 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37418351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37418351
- nebulous1 2y ago
  That does seem to be a separate instance though, so it was never really properly resolved at that stage. The reason that Anduril was dropped as a sponsor for the 2023 EU conference was that the venue wouldn't allow the association. This time the NA venue did not have that policy, so the sponsorship went through.
BlueTemplar 2y ago
And yet, unlike Guix, the Nix community doesn't seem to be bothered by using a part of the military industrial (spying) complex that is the Microsoft-owned Github.
- chpatrick 2y ago
  I mean GitHub can spy on your... public open source code?
  - dscottboggs 2y ago
    It's not just about privacy, it's about building your project as dependent on an organization that does harm. It aligns you with them and makes you want them to succeed so that you can sustain your project, when without that dependency you may have otherwise wished them ill.
    - bamboozled 2y ago
      How on earth are any of the Nix foundations project "dependent" on GitHub? I mean they even have their own independent build system?
      - rijoja 2y ago
        There's this whole concept of "Embrace, Extend Extinguish", that a lot of people in the open source community hasn't forgotten about, and therefore find it hard to trust anything that Microsoft is about.
        chpatrick 2y ago
        What's the most recent thing Microsoft extinguished?
        dscottboggs 2y ago
        Probably Atom
Cacti 2y ago
The majority of the tech industry is part of the military industrial complex. It's a shame more don't realize that.

rijoja 2y ago

I haven't really had the time to read up on it, but it has gotten a lot of attention and seems really successful, and seems to have some extremely interesting solutions to some problems that I am interested in, so it seems that the Nix guys have done an amazing job. Recently I heard that there was some drama about politics, and that might serve as an excuse for someone to step in and take over the organization, I don't really feel like giving these people attention however, so I haven't really looked into it all that deeply. The first paragraph in this very post is just pure rhetorics without substance. I suppose the point of the post is that whoever is behind kilo.bytesize.xyz should become the benevolent dictator for life of the project, due to pleasant sounding platitudes, or something?

depr 2y ago
People are wondering what is going on and all you're saying is I don't know either, I haven't read anything except the first paragraph of the article, but maybe it's this thing. What purpose does that serve except to further muddy the waters, making the situation even harder to understand?
- FeepingCreature 2y ago
  It is a fair point that there isn't necessarily actually anything important going on. The onus should be on the article to convince people that something is happening and what it is. Where there's smoke, there may just be someone blowing smoke.
  - depr 2y ago
    I don't think so. The article is probably intended for the Nix community, so the author doesn't need to convince HN that something is going on. If as an outsider you are interested then you need to look into it yourself, the community has no obligation to make their internal conflicts legible to the outside world. As an outsider myself, it certainly looks like something is going on as more than 20 Nixpkg maintainers left in a week: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues?q=label%3A%228.has%3A+maintainer+removal%22+is%3Aclosed https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues?q=label%3A%228.has%3... It's fine to ask if someone can explain what is going on, it's a waste of everyone's time to say you have no clue and you haven't read anything and it's probably nonsense.

mongol 2y ago

It is a mirror of the culture war you see in other parts of the society. One faction wants to apply their values onto the project, some of which are non-universal. Especially, is sponsorship with military ties (i.e. defense sector) welcome. The other faction do not want to see subjective values to be applied like that.

depr 2y ago
One faction wants to apply their values onto the project; another faction wants to apply or keep their respective values, which includes making money, and supports these values by claiming they are neutral or universal.
sloowm 2y ago
You think taking a military advertisement is value neutral? It's truly a mirror of the culture war you see in other parts of society where people declare things they like value neutral and things they don't like a war on culture.
- mongol 2y ago
  The value neutral position is Eelco's: To let event organizers choose. It is them that tries to fund the conference, let them make the call.
- rijoja 2y ago
  Do you think there's any danger in handing over absolute power to whomever just claims to have a superior morality? Has that happened before in history and what has the consequences been? Didn't Andruil get sent of after a while anyway? Why don't the do-gooders just fork Nix and do EthicalNix or whatever, and lead by example instead of trying to take over the existing structure, wouldn't that be more in line with open source ethics, and you know common courtesy? Maybe drop github and Microsoft due to ethical principles while they're at it?
  - sloowm 2y ago
    > Do you think there's any danger in handing over absolute power to whomever just claims to have a superior morality? At any point in time there are always multiple entities claiming to have a superior morality. There is also always an entity with absolute power. So both points are moot and this question is moot as well. > Didn't Andruil get sent of after a while anyway? I would assume people like a project that is lead in a way that the community doesn't have to make ad-hoc interventions to undo decisions they think are bad. And this is where the power dynamics come into play. There is leadership that assumes it has the power to take certain sponsorship. So the community does not want that entity to have absolute power, it actually wants that entity not to have power. So now there is a power struggle for absolute power. The community would like to get absolute power so it can just make decisions about military sponsorships beforehand. The current power holders want to keep absolute power and take whatever sponsorships they want. I don't think open source ethics prescribe you have to fork a project instead of taking it over. Common courtesy from the current power holders would be step down, or common courtesy doesn't actually mean anything "you know". It's up to whomever will be in power to decide where the line of ethics is drawn. I certainly hope they would consult a broader audience to see if they line up with the community. If you think github and Microsoft should be dropped as well I would implore to make that case. It's interesting that you think there are other unethical organizations involved with Nix while at the same time arguing that the current leadership should remain. If I think something is unethical I argue against it instead of for it. In case I find myself on the unethical side of an issue I try to see if there is a higher ethical standard that I hold that trumps that one instead of arguing that the unethical thing is good.

ang_cire 2y ago

Seriously. How do you write an entire post and not pin down one single person, place, thing, opinion, etc? The only conclusion I can draw, as to why an author would choose to write only in generalities, is that any concrete facts or statements would be weaker under scrutiny, or less well received, than the uneasy benefit of the doubt that we extend someone making vague, unfalsifiable claims.

nebulous1 2y ago
I think this is written for the people in the Nix community. It's not intending to be an explainer for people outside it.
- ang_cire 2y ago
  That doesn't really change anything, unless they're intentionally trying to be obfuscatory to people outside the community. I don't want news I read about groups I'm a part of to be vague to the point of confusion either.
  - nebulous1 2y ago
    Sure, but is that not on whoever posted it here? I mean, the original author is clearly entitled to make a post for the Nix community, right? It's not like every communication on the matter has to contain a history of events. I should be clear: my original thoughts when reading it were exactly the same as yours.
KingMob 2y ago
This goes into more details, with receipts: https://github.com/KFearsoff/nix-drama-explained https://github.com/KFearsoff/nix-drama-explained
- ang_cire 2y ago
  Thank you, this is much better.

amiga386 2y ago

You may consider this view biased, but we have this: https://srid.ca/nixos-mod https://srid.ca/nixos-mod * September 2023: The "Nix Community Survey 2023" is looking for gender data, and the mods don't like that most contributors are men. * November 2023: The moderation team tries to institute a Code of Conduct https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/114 https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/114 ... and they get their way * November 2023: Some are not happy about it: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/moderation-team-accountability-issues/35482/69 https://discourse.nixos.org/t/moderation-team-accountability... -- the moderators talk about their "authority" and of course lock and hide the thread. It's "disruptive" and "off-topic", you see. * This sort of activity continues -- moderators consolidating and increasing their power, citing how they need the power to control "concern trolls" and such -- and now in April 2024, we get https://save-nix-together.org/ https://save-nix-together.org/ The "anonymous contributors" want to drive out the NixOS founder entirely, so that _they_ are in charge. They want "to hold people accountable for bad behaviour at all levels" and lament having "responsibility without authority" - in other words, they want power, power, power. They want power over everyone. Their justification is that they believe they have the moral high ground, and they deserve to lord it over everyone else. Hold onto that hard power, Eelco, and tell this lot to fork the project. Let's see how they enjoy moderating noxious.org instead of nixos.org

Macha 2y ago

The immediate tension is some people are unhappy for the second time that NixConf has accepted defense contractor Anduril as a sponsor, after a similar blow up last year was resolved due to the venue's rules banning military sponsors. I think the community took away from that the conference had accepted it was a bad idea and wouldn't do it again, but what the conference had taken away from it was "better check the venue's rules closely next time". The longer boiling tensions that have led to this point: - Flakes. They're largely promoted as the solution to composability but don't handle all use cases, and this has caused tensions with those that prefer more flexible but less ergonomic tools - The decision making process that led to flakes being a thing. There was a community process established to replace the previous de-facto BDFL process with a community driven process, and then the previous de-facto BDFL merged flakes in and started promoting them without following said community process. Later attempts to engage with the community process have had the issues where flakes now have a lot of genuine community support, but also some resistance from core contributors due to either the genuine feature gaps, or the fact that they're now presented as a fait accompli. - Moderation. There was a significant contributor who was up to some hateful conduct in (mostly) non-Nix community spaces that was banned across all project venues. There were groups unhappy that they were banned, and groups unhappy that they were not banned quickly enough. The project tried to navigate this with an attempt at middle grounding their moderation policies, which annoyed both groups. - Corporate influence from Determinate Systems: Newer initiatives from the former BDFL have mostly been announced through the company they founded Determinate Systems, and include stuff like a centralised repository in the form of Flake Hub. You can either see that as "proving it in the wild before bringing it to the community process" or "bypassing the community process to make it a fait accompli", but either way the ex-defacto-BDFL seems to see the community process as too slow and is end-running it with his new company. - Corporate influence from other parties: DetSys is getting the most hate right now due to employing the ex-defacto-BDFL and still having enough leadership positions to be seen as responsible, but other groups like Tweag or Cachix have also been seen as attempting to commercialise parts of the ecosystem at time.

KingMob 2y ago

https://github.com/KFearsoff/nix-drama-explained https://github.com/KFearsoff/nix-drama-explained