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Do you have some concrete evidence that the Nix project has made bad decisions because it gets money from the EU? I mean, it's not as if other projects, open s

by gjm11 1y ago

Do you have some concrete evidence that the Nix project has made bad decisions because it gets money from the EU? I mean, it's not as if other projects, open source or otherwise, funded by companies or lots of random individuals' donations or governments or no one at all, don't make bad decisions all the time. And the specific complaints you make -- "it has bad UX and bad documentation", "when money's available, most of it goes to people who have been involved in the project for ages", etc. -- are ... not exactly unusual in the world of open-source software. Consider two hypothetical worlds. In one, the Nix project has been corrupted by taking money from the EU, just as you say it has. In the other, the Nix project's flaws are just those of a typical open-source software project, and you're imagining it's caused by the project's taking funds from the EU because you really hate the EU. How could I distinguish between those two worlds?

greenavocado 1y ago
> Do you have some concrete evidence that the Nix project has made bad decisions because it gets money from the EU? As if governance meltdowns and bureaucratic capture announce themselves with flashing lights and notarized confessions? The evidence lies in the patterns, the incentives, the quiet substitutions of purpose. Take the Foundation's bylaws. They are a masterclass in ambiguity. Article 2.1's lofty mission to "develop, propagate, and promote" is conveniently elastic, stretching to accommodate whatever grant-funded side quest Brussels dreams up next. The board's unchecked authority (Article 15.1's "in all cases not provided for, the board decides") is a blank check for mission drift. And why wouldn't it drift? When your funding depends on pleasing the EU's "Next Generation Internet" bureaucrats, "supporting open-source projects" morphs into herding grantees into Nix's ecosystem whether their code belongs there or not. The NLnet grants aren't altruism; they're a colonization program dressed as philanthropy. Then there's the governance vacuum. The Foundation's refusal to define its relationship to the very projects it claims to steward. Is Nixpkgs independent? A "workgroup" under Article 11? The silence is deafening. This isn't oversight; it's strategic opacity. When maintainers resign en masse, protesting Foundation overreach, the board's response isn't clarity. It's the sound of crickets. Meanwhile, the Summer of Nix churns out metric tons of low-quality packages (1200+ and counting!) because grantors measure success in volume, not maintainability. The result? A dependency graveyard where "supported" projects go to die, abandoned the second the funding cycle ends. As for the money trail: follow the jobs. The "volunteers" touted in press releases aren't the ones landing paid gigs writing grant proposals or "mentoring" NLnet's captive projects. Those roles go to the usual suspects, the insiders who've turned grant-chasing into a career. The Foundation's financial disclosures (if they exist) won't show a line item for "compromised priorities," but the pattern's clear: when salaries depend on EU grants, the roadmap becomes a dance to Brussels' tune. The docs stay broken, the UX stays hostile, but look at all those shiny "tested examples" for the Commission's reports! The Foundation's Dutch legal structure: a stichting, deliberately designed to be unaccountable. No members, no oversight, just a self-perpetuating board that answers to no one but itself. When the community revolts? Tough luck. The bylaws grant them no leverage, just as the EU grants leave no room for dissent. The real tragedy isn't that NixOS sold its soul; it's that it did so for the pettiest of reasons: the bureaucratic equivalent of pocket change. But hey, at least the metrics look good on paper. Until 2027.

by gjm11 1y ago

greenavocado 1y ago

> Do you have some concrete evidence that the Nix project has made bad decisions because it gets money from the EU? As if governance meltdowns and bureaucratic capture announce themselves with flashing lights and notarized confessions? The evidence lies in the patterns, the incentives, the quiet substitutions of purpose. Take the Foundation's bylaws. They are a masterclass in ambiguity. Article 2.1's lofty mission to "develop, propagate, and promote" is conveniently elastic, stretching to accommodate whatever grant-funded side quest Brussels dreams up next. The board's unchecked authority (Article 15.1's "in all cases not provided for, the board decides") is a blank check for mission drift. And why wouldn't it drift? When your funding depends on pleasing the EU's "Next Generation Internet" bureaucrats, "supporting open-source projects" morphs into herding grantees into Nix's ecosystem whether their code belongs there or not. The NLnet grants aren't altruism; they're a colonization program dressed as philanthropy. Then there's the governance vacuum. The Foundation's refusal to define its relationship to the very projects it claims to steward. Is Nixpkgs independent? A "workgroup" under Article 11? The silence is deafening. This isn't oversight; it's strategic opacity. When maintainers resign en masse, protesting Foundation overreach, the board's response isn't clarity. It's the sound of crickets. Meanwhile, the Summer of Nix churns out metric tons of low-quality packages (1200+ and counting!) because grantors measure success in volume, not maintainability. The result? A dependency graveyard where "supported" projects go to die, abandoned the second the funding cycle ends. As for the money trail: follow the jobs. The "volunteers" touted in press releases aren't the ones landing paid gigs writing grant proposals or "mentoring" NLnet's captive projects. Those roles go to the usual suspects, the insiders who've turned grant-chasing into a career. The Foundation's financial disclosures (if they exist) won't show a line item for "compromised priorities," but the pattern's clear: when salaries depend on EU grants, the roadmap becomes a dance to Brussels' tune. The docs stay broken, the UX stays hostile, but look at all those shiny "tested examples" for the Commission's reports! The Foundation's Dutch legal structure: a stichting, deliberately designed to be unaccountable. No members, no oversight, just a self-perpetuating board that answers to no one but itself. When the community revolts? Tough luck. The bylaws grant them no leverage, just as the EU grants leave no room for dissent. The real tragedy isn't that NixOS sold its soul; it's that it did so for the pettiest of reasons: the bureaucratic equivalent of pocket change. But hey, at least the metrics look good on paper. Until 2027.