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> 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 Somethi

> 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 statement that is is mission focused (https://www.coinbase.com/en-ca/blog/coinbase-is-a-mission-focused-company https://www.coinbase.com/en-ca/blog/coinbase-is-a-mission-fo...). Anything that isn't directly related to its mission is out-of-scope. I wish the same was true about software projects like Nix. If you care about the way your software is used, then by all means, say it in the license! Of course, such software won't get used much.

dilyevsky 2y ago
It’s doubly funny with haskell considering the biggest haskell shop i am aware of has a lot of defense contracts
ParetoOptimal 2y ago
> 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.
- zer00eyz 2y ago
  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.
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    Yet you participate in society. Curious.
    - zer00eyz 2y ago
      Yes from a place of massive privilege, just like you, fellow hacker news user. One that comes at the expense of 1000's of years of marginalized and disenfranchised groups. One that comes at the elimination of entire branches of the family tree. It's a coin toss that you have neanderthal and densoivan DNA. Those ancestors that we raped and murdered off the face of the earth. And then did that to each other for 1000's of years... Regardless of what political or social values you believe the reality is that no matter how you envision the world working we're going to have to get in line. Be that for food or iPhones. And a line means there is someone at the back. It's poor form to complain about the millions of people in front of you when there are billons of them looking at your asshole.
- orthecreedence 2y ago
  I disagree. I think of movements taking input and energy. It is an active and conscious effort to change something. Upholding the status quo is akin to doing nothing. It's not active; it's passive. It's not a movement, it's a stationary. The two seem distinct to me. I tend to agree with you on a moral/culpability level: passive acceptance is doing something but I wouldn't call it a "movement."
- lliamander 2y ago
  The mission of reproducible builds is a social mission that will bring good to the world regardless of whether other social goods are achieved. Trying to tie that mission to other social movements is a strategic error that will more than likely cause Nix to fail in its primary mission while doing virtually nothing meaningful for any of those other causes.
Powdering7082 2y ago
The issue isn't whether Anduril can use the the software. They can. This stemmed from whether they can publically attach their name to NixCon, which is fundamentally a social event.
- takeda 2y ago
  Right now they are not only attached to NixCon but Nix itself. People who hadn't heard about Nix now hear about Anduril. Before this drama started I had no idea they even existed. Now I know they are a big Nix shop. Those people who are creating the drama (and looks like they are a small minority) are trying to turn a tech tool into a social movement. This will kill the project.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  Exactly. The license of software and code is not the surrounding community and events. Likewise, support or protest against various sides in an international conflict does/should not affect the code/software, but is a product of the people involved and their personal convictions. HN runs on open source software, but the HN community is strongly opposed to certain things, as is their right.
pantsforbirds 2y ago
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?
- fabrice_d 2y ago
  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.
  - ndriscoll 2y ago
    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 https://cloud.google.com/gov/federal-defense-and-intel
    - fabrice_d 2y ago
      Yes I believe it's acceptable to be upset at any company that undermines democracy. That very likely includes most big tech companies, and absolutely includes Google and Facebook.
      - ndriscoll 2y ago
        I suppose what's interesting to me is why is no one (except maybe you) upset over e.g. this sponsorship list for LinuxCon: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/archive/2022/open-source-summit-north-america/about/linuxcon/ https://events.linuxfoundation.org/archive/2022/open-source-... with Google right there as a diamond sponsor and Meta as a platinum sponsor. IBM is also a diamond sponsor, and we've all heard about them and the literal Nazis (and the time they got a license exception for JSLint to be able to use it for evil). Or perhaps the same people are upset over things like Linux sponsors, but everyone ignores them in that context? The LWN article indicates 24 maintainers have removed themselves, which appears to be ~0.7% of the maintainer list. Were these people particularly impactful? Is there an actual crisis here? I also don't really get it; are they going to use a different (worse) OS because of this? Or just stop pushing changes upstream for packages they care about (either staying out of date or maintaining a personal fork)? It seems like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.
colinsane 2y ago
> Nix is a software project, not a social movement. everyone loves to assert that Nix is this or that. whatever label you fight to place it under, it's a product of some thousands of people. whatever it actually is, it's underpinned by something social.
- haswell 2y ago
  Every human endeavor is underpinned by something social. I think it's appropriate to separate concerns and use categorizations to help us separate ideological goals from practical reality. Paper is also used to fight wars, as are a myriad of other goods and services that exist in a more or less neutral space. There's an important and very large conversation to be had about what we do and don't think is acceptable use of technology and general goods/services, but issues like the Nix meltdown seem like misapplied frustration at how resources are allocated (to buying things used for war) and an attempt to solve that allocation problem by cutting off supply instead of addressing the allocation of funds at the root. Clearly some people think this is a good tactic, but I question both the effectiveness and the net good of such a tactic when the slope required to implement said tactic is indeed a slippery one. I would prefer that code I write is never used for purposes I believe to be harmful. But this is fundamentally incompatible with the OSS model.
- soraminazuki 2y ago
  > > Nix is a software project, not a social movement. I believe people say that in part because every political topic gets dragged into the community. Yes, there is a political aspect to everything, but that doesn't mean everything under the sun has to be dragged in. Just take a look into some of the discussions that frequently happens in the NixOS offtopic Matrix channel. A small yet vocal portion of the community constantly brings up extremely hot takes on a broad range of topics. Anyone who objects are met with dismissal, condescension, and personal attacks. Topics include: * How tech companies should handle takedowns Many of us probably already know how this is a very complex and controversial issue. But some folks advocate SESTA / SOPA like measures, accusing anyone who objects of supporting Kiwifarms and telling them to shut up. * The use of the term "enshittfication" A vocal member expressed annoyance and went into a long rant when someone mentioned the term. Apparently the term is a self-benefitting slogan for privileged folks because it wasn't popularized by someone they approved of. Fortunately, that didn't result in a argument because the other person immediately stopped engaging. * AI use In another case, someone who said they use AI was accused of supporting modern slavery. I'm somewhat skeptical of AI too, but this is just absurd. It really looks like the accuser was looking for a fight because "AI" could've been replaced with literally any other commercial product, from the clothes we wear to rare earth materials present in computers we use to write code. It's a modern day supply chain problem, not an AI problem per se. It's one thing to express these opinions. But the aggression that followed in many of these cases is unacceptable. It seems to me that this constant cycle of hot takes and aggression is in no small part fueling this conflict even further. Like, supporting the same causes as the EFF can get you branded a right winger by very vocal people.
Shrezzing 2y ago
There are a lot of people who will find their workplace being singularly "mission focused" a good thing, but 5% of Coinbase's staff announced that they'd be leaving within one working week of that post[1], and others followed shortly after. I think that shows that in a corporate environment, it's not possible to retain all of the best staff if you're very publicly burying your head in the sand with regards to social issues - particularly in the immediate aftermath of the George Floyd protests. The author talks about the productivity losses rising from social-issue disagreement in the workplace, but it's rare that you can point to a press release from a C-suite employee and say "this specific document caused one in twenty staff members to leave immediately". The productivity destruction at Coinbase from that press release was enormous. https://www.coinbase.com/en-gb/blog/a-follow-up-to-coinbase-being-a-mission-focused-company https://www.coinbase.com/en-gb/blog/a-follow-up-to-coinbase-...
- lliamander 2y ago
  No matter how smart or skilled they are, people who spend an inordinate amount of time arguing politics (and dragging others into it) at work are by definition not "the best staff". Having a narrow mission focus is the only way to retain your actual best staff.
  - saulrh 2y ago
    Not necessarily the case. Consider the possibility that strongly-held political beliefs correlate with software engineering skill, in which case it could easily be that a politically-active but superior engineer comes out ahead despite "wasting" some time on political issues. Yes, they're not as productive as a hypothetical engineer with the same skillset and no political beliefs - but that hypothetical engineer may not exist. Alternatively, consider that forty hours of dedicated software engineering may be beyond the capability of the human brain and that political arguments happen during what would be classified as rest and relaxation time if not for labor standards developed for physical laborers and factory workers in the 1930s. Alternatively, consider that most people work better with motivation, the belief that you are doing good is among the healthiest and most powerful motivators available, that maintaining such a belief requires continuous effort, that such effort would likely involve discussion, and that that discussion would almost necessarily happen at work. I'm not claiming that any of these scenarios are the case. I'm simply pointing out that they are possible and plausible, and thus it is not necessarily the case that an employee arguing politics at work is underperforming, either in relation to their own potential or relative to others.
marcosdumay 2y ago
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.
bfrog 2y ago
This is the FSF situation in a nutshell, gcc has slowly been eroding in favor of llvm and clang because of this. FSF donor listing/sponsorship listing is... spartan at best. Compare this to Linux Foundation and LLVM Foundation, and generally wide swaths of both corporate and personally interested parties contributing time and money and tell me that trying to be idealistic is good for FOSS. The evidence I see is to the contrary.

dilyevsky 2y ago

It’s doubly funny with haskell considering the biggest haskell shop i am aware of has a lot of defense contracts

ParetoOptimal 2y ago

> 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.

zer00eyz 2y ago
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.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  Yet you participate in society. Curious.
  - zer00eyz 2y ago
    Yes from a place of massive privilege, just like you, fellow hacker news user. One that comes at the expense of 1000's of years of marginalized and disenfranchised groups. One that comes at the elimination of entire branches of the family tree. It's a coin toss that you have neanderthal and densoivan DNA. Those ancestors that we raped and murdered off the face of the earth. And then did that to each other for 1000's of years... Regardless of what political or social values you believe the reality is that no matter how you envision the world working we're going to have to get in line. Be that for food or iPhones. And a line means there is someone at the back. It's poor form to complain about the millions of people in front of you when there are billons of them looking at your asshole.
orthecreedence 2y ago
I disagree. I think of movements taking input and energy. It is an active and conscious effort to change something. Upholding the status quo is akin to doing nothing. It's not active; it's passive. It's not a movement, it's a stationary. The two seem distinct to me. I tend to agree with you on a moral/culpability level: passive acceptance is doing something but I wouldn't call it a "movement."
lliamander 2y ago
The mission of reproducible builds is a social mission that will bring good to the world regardless of whether other social goods are achieved. Trying to tie that mission to other social movements is a strategic error that will more than likely cause Nix to fail in its primary mission while doing virtually nothing meaningful for any of those other causes.

Powdering7082 2y ago

The issue isn't whether Anduril can use the the software. They can. This stemmed from whether they can publically attach their name to NixCon, which is fundamentally a social event.

takeda 2y ago
Right now they are not only attached to NixCon but Nix itself. People who hadn't heard about Nix now hear about Anduril. Before this drama started I had no idea they even existed. Now I know they are a big Nix shop. Those people who are creating the drama (and looks like they are a small minority) are trying to turn a tech tool into a social movement. This will kill the project.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
Exactly. The license of software and code is not the surrounding community and events. Likewise, support or protest against various sides in an international conflict does/should not affect the code/software, but is a product of the people involved and their personal convictions. HN runs on open source software, but the HN community is strongly opposed to certain things, as is their right.

pantsforbirds 2y ago

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?

fabrice_d 2y ago
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.
- ndriscoll 2y ago
  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 https://cloud.google.com/gov/federal-defense-and-intel
  - fabrice_d 2y ago
    Yes I believe it's acceptable to be upset at any company that undermines democracy. That very likely includes most big tech companies, and absolutely includes Google and Facebook.
    - ndriscoll 2y ago
      I suppose what's interesting to me is why is no one (except maybe you) upset over e.g. this sponsorship list for LinuxCon: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/archive/2022/open-source-summit-north-america/about/linuxcon/ https://events.linuxfoundation.org/archive/2022/open-source-... with Google right there as a diamond sponsor and Meta as a platinum sponsor. IBM is also a diamond sponsor, and we've all heard about them and the literal Nazis (and the time they got a license exception for JSLint to be able to use it for evil). Or perhaps the same people are upset over things like Linux sponsors, but everyone ignores them in that context? The LWN article indicates 24 maintainers have removed themselves, which appears to be ~0.7% of the maintainer list. Were these people particularly impactful? Is there an actual crisis here? I also don't really get it; are they going to use a different (worse) OS because of this? Or just stop pushing changes upstream for packages they care about (either staying out of date or maintaining a personal fork)? It seems like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.

colinsane 2y ago

> Nix is a software project, not a social movement. everyone loves to assert that Nix is this or that. whatever label you fight to place it under, it's a product of some thousands of people. whatever it actually is, it's underpinned by something social.

haswell 2y ago
Every human endeavor is underpinned by something social. I think it's appropriate to separate concerns and use categorizations to help us separate ideological goals from practical reality. Paper is also used to fight wars, as are a myriad of other goods and services that exist in a more or less neutral space. There's an important and very large conversation to be had about what we do and don't think is acceptable use of technology and general goods/services, but issues like the Nix meltdown seem like misapplied frustration at how resources are allocated (to buying things used for war) and an attempt to solve that allocation problem by cutting off supply instead of addressing the allocation of funds at the root. Clearly some people think this is a good tactic, but I question both the effectiveness and the net good of such a tactic when the slope required to implement said tactic is indeed a slippery one. I would prefer that code I write is never used for purposes I believe to be harmful. But this is fundamentally incompatible with the OSS model.
soraminazuki 2y ago
> > Nix is a software project, not a social movement. I believe people say that in part because every political topic gets dragged into the community. Yes, there is a political aspect to everything, but that doesn't mean everything under the sun has to be dragged in. Just take a look into some of the discussions that frequently happens in the NixOS offtopic Matrix channel. A small yet vocal portion of the community constantly brings up extremely hot takes on a broad range of topics. Anyone who objects are met with dismissal, condescension, and personal attacks. Topics include: * How tech companies should handle takedowns Many of us probably already know how this is a very complex and controversial issue. But some folks advocate SESTA / SOPA like measures, accusing anyone who objects of supporting Kiwifarms and telling them to shut up. * The use of the term "enshittfication" A vocal member expressed annoyance and went into a long rant when someone mentioned the term. Apparently the term is a self-benefitting slogan for privileged folks because it wasn't popularized by someone they approved of. Fortunately, that didn't result in a argument because the other person immediately stopped engaging. * AI use In another case, someone who said they use AI was accused of supporting modern slavery. I'm somewhat skeptical of AI too, but this is just absurd. It really looks like the accuser was looking for a fight because "AI" could've been replaced with literally any other commercial product, from the clothes we wear to rare earth materials present in computers we use to write code. It's a modern day supply chain problem, not an AI problem per se. It's one thing to express these opinions. But the aggression that followed in many of these cases is unacceptable. It seems to me that this constant cycle of hot takes and aggression is in no small part fueling this conflict even further. Like, supporting the same causes as the EFF can get you branded a right winger by very vocal people.

Shrezzing 2y ago

There are a lot of people who will find their workplace being singularly "mission focused" a good thing, but 5% of Coinbase's staff announced that they'd be leaving within one working week of that post[1], and others followed shortly after. I think that shows that in a corporate environment, it's not possible to retain all of the best staff if you're very publicly burying your head in the sand with regards to social issues - particularly in the immediate aftermath of the George Floyd protests. The author talks about the productivity losses rising from social-issue disagreement in the workplace, but it's rare that you can point to a press release from a C-suite employee and say "this specific document caused one in twenty staff members to leave immediately". The productivity destruction at Coinbase from that press release was enormous. https://www.coinbase.com/en-gb/blog/a-follow-up-to-coinbase-being-a-mission-focused-company https://www.coinbase.com/en-gb/blog/a-follow-up-to-coinbase-...

lliamander 2y ago
No matter how smart or skilled they are, people who spend an inordinate amount of time arguing politics (and dragging others into it) at work are by definition not "the best staff". Having a narrow mission focus is the only way to retain your actual best staff.
- saulrh 2y ago
  Not necessarily the case. Consider the possibility that strongly-held political beliefs correlate with software engineering skill, in which case it could easily be that a politically-active but superior engineer comes out ahead despite "wasting" some time on political issues. Yes, they're not as productive as a hypothetical engineer with the same skillset and no political beliefs - but that hypothetical engineer may not exist. Alternatively, consider that forty hours of dedicated software engineering may be beyond the capability of the human brain and that political arguments happen during what would be classified as rest and relaxation time if not for labor standards developed for physical laborers and factory workers in the 1930s. Alternatively, consider that most people work better with motivation, the belief that you are doing good is among the healthiest and most powerful motivators available, that maintaining such a belief requires continuous effort, that such effort would likely involve discussion, and that that discussion would almost necessarily happen at work. I'm not claiming that any of these scenarios are the case. I'm simply pointing out that they are possible and plausible, and thus it is not necessarily the case that an employee arguing politics at work is underperforming, either in relation to their own potential or relative to others.

marcosdumay 2y ago

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.

bfrog 2y ago

This is the FSF situation in a nutshell, gcc has slowly been eroding in favor of llvm and clang because of this. FSF donor listing/sponsorship listing is... spartan at best. Compare this to Linux Foundation and LLVM Foundation, and generally wide swaths of both corporate and personally interested parties contributing time and money and tell me that trying to be idealistic is good for FOSS. The evidence I see is to the contrary.