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For anyone reading this and jumping to a broader conclusion: the Nixpkgs core team disbanding does not mean Nixpkgs or Nix is dying. It does mean that this part

by ronef 2mo ago

For anyone reading this and jumping to a broader conclusion: the Nixpkgs core team disbanding does not mean Nixpkgs or Nix is dying. It does mean that this particular structure was not sustainable, very important contributors burnt out and we need to do better, faster. We need to continue learning from this and continue building a stronger ecosystem that prioritizes the contributors who are the only reason any of this is possible. Personally, I'm sorry and grateful. Sorry that it ended in core folks being burnt out. Grateful since they did some of the most amazing work, more than anyone can imagine two people doing.

throwaway260806 2mo ago
> more than anyone can imagine two people doing The core team was just 2 people and they disbanded? There was also a steerco for just 2 people? I’m now even more confused.
- anglesideangle 2mo ago
  Here's the team's description https://nixos.org/community/teams/nixpkgs-core/ https://nixos.org/community/teams/nixpkgs-core/. They were able to accomplish quite a lot of useful work. The steering committee is a separate organization (https://nixos.org/community/teams/steering-committee/ https://nixos.org/community/teams/steering-committee/) that contains more people and arguably accomplishes less.
- zem 2mo ago
  there are two distinct usesn of team/committee/council/etc in the software world, though they often get conflated. one is a formal structure to help with things like coordination and governance when many people are working on something, and it does seem a little silly to have one consist of just two people. but the other usage is to create an entity, and say "this entity is responsible for so and so problem", and humans then sign up to be part of the entity as a formal indication that they are working on this problem. and in this sense of the word it's perfectly fine for a core team to be two people, and for it to officially disband when those people no longer want to be working on the problem for whatever reason. note that they did try to recruit new people to the effort, and if they had succeeded then the "core team" entity would have provided some sort of continuity to the project despite the original people moving on.
- kesor 2mo ago
  It was 4 people originally a year ago. One left because too much drama. Another joined another committee and was ineligible to continue. The remaining two wanted to recruit new people, but no one wanted anywhere near that dumpster fire. So they got burnt out and disbanded the whole thing.
tomberek 2mo ago
The Nixpkgs Core team was established in Sept 2025 (https://discourse.nixos.org/t/establishing-the-nixpkgs-core-team/69743 https://discourse.nixos.org/t/establishing-the-nixpkgs-core-...), so it is a fairly new concept and idea. They've accomplished some good things as highlighted in the post, but are now stepping down. Yes, we'd prefer for the team to exist, but we've also functioned without one for ~20 years. It may take multiple iterations to bootstrap the concept and to figure out the right structure - or we may find it isn't needed. So no, this is not a critical emergency. It's a return to the status quo of late last year. That being said, I think it is still a concept worth pursuing.
- xyzzy_plugh 2mo ago
  I agree with the concept but the name is terrible. "Core team" gives one the impression that this is the most important team to the project. It's not! It could be called the "governance facilitator" team or admins or something. Please name the next iteration something less spicy.
  - jonringer117 2mo ago
    There was an architecture team which existed, I would assume the usage of "core" was to disambiguate. https://github.com/nixpkgs-architecture https://github.com/nixpkgs-architecture
  - nextaccountic 2mo ago
    exactly what rust devs realized. they went from "core team" to "leadership council" in the next iteratiion
- shevy-java 2mo ago
  Packages were handled way before 2025 already, so it is strange that you insinuate they'd all only burn out within a year, and before that it was all cake and tea. NixOS is dying, everyone sees this right now. > but we've also functioned without one for ~20 years. Then this is also a PR problem because why need a team when the 20 years before were allegedly so perfect?
nylonstrung 2mo ago
[dead]
aliasxneo 2mo ago
Correct, but it's another domino in a broader trend that appears to have a common root. It was only a year ago that the moderation team mass resigned pointing the finger at the steering committee [1]. It's not been the same people for the last two years, but clearly there must be systemic issues in the people getting elected to this board for there to be so many persistent problems. Also see roberth's resignation [2], and Gabriella439's retrospective [3], and then there's Jon Ringer's thing, the list goes on. [1]: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/a-statement-from-members-of-the-moderation-team/69828 https://discourse.nixos.org/t/a-statement-from-members-of-th... [2]: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/stepping-down-from-the-nix-team/70203 https://discourse.nixos.org/t/stepping-down-from-the-nix-tea... [3]: https://haskellforall.com/2025/09/steering-committee-retrospective https://haskellforall.com/2025/09/steering-committee-retrosp...
- Aurornis 2mo ago
  I don't know if the moderation team's collapse is indicative of anything. The first blog post complains about the Steering Committee for doing, well, steering. The moderators complaining that the Steering Committee is "interfering" points to a bigger issue where the moderation team didn't understand their role. The second blog post is from someone on the steering committee who complains about Gabriella439 (the author of the 3rd blog post) "turning on" them after they tried to work with the moderation team, whatever that means. The third blog post complains that the moderation team was too large, had a lot of absenteeism problems, and tried to do everything by consensus which didn't work with the large size combined with the absenteeism problems. The last post is most revealing. It's also the least dramatic. It looks to me like they tried to form a way too large group of people who treated this as a low priority, then tried to do everything by heavy procedures and consensus with half the team not showing up. That's a common mistake in community organization that leads to collapse. EDIT: I looked up the conversation about the NixOS moderation team resigning. Apparently the moderation team was causing a lot of their own problems within the community. I'm not going to read it all, but this looks like familiar overzealous moderator drama My favorite example so far was that someone got banned and one of the conditions for getting unbanned was removing steak from their profile picture: https://github.com/NixOS/moderation/commit/e9d67b7efa03e6e9bc0bf2d03c6344d60c103395#commitcomment-132961513 https://github.com/NixOS/moderation/commit/e9d67b7efa03e6e9b...
nullsanity 2mo ago
[dead]
shevy-java 2mo ago
> the Nixpkgs core team disbanding does not mean Nixpkgs or Nix is dying. Nice attempt to try to rescue here, but everyone sees that NixOS is dying. When a group of, say, ten people give up in a moment, that does not bode well for the future of NixOS.
- farfatched 2mo ago
  A team of two people decided to disband the team, but continue to make contributions.
Commenter1488 2mo ago
[dead]

by ronef 2mo ago

throwaway260806 2mo ago

> more than anyone can imagine two people doing The core team was just 2 people and they disbanded? There was also a steerco for just 2 people? I’m now even more confused.

anglesideangle 2mo ago
Here's the team's description https://nixos.org/community/teams/nixpkgs-core/ https://nixos.org/community/teams/nixpkgs-core/. They were able to accomplish quite a lot of useful work. The steering committee is a separate organization (https://nixos.org/community/teams/steering-committee/ https://nixos.org/community/teams/steering-committee/) that contains more people and arguably accomplishes less.
zem 2mo ago
there are two distinct usesn of team/committee/council/etc in the software world, though they often get conflated. one is a formal structure to help with things like coordination and governance when many people are working on something, and it does seem a little silly to have one consist of just two people. but the other usage is to create an entity, and say "this entity is responsible for so and so problem", and humans then sign up to be part of the entity as a formal indication that they are working on this problem. and in this sense of the word it's perfectly fine for a core team to be two people, and for it to officially disband when those people no longer want to be working on the problem for whatever reason. note that they did try to recruit new people to the effort, and if they had succeeded then the "core team" entity would have provided some sort of continuity to the project despite the original people moving on.
kesor 2mo ago
It was 4 people originally a year ago. One left because too much drama. Another joined another committee and was ineligible to continue. The remaining two wanted to recruit new people, but no one wanted anywhere near that dumpster fire. So they got burnt out and disbanded the whole thing.

tomberek 2mo ago

The Nixpkgs Core team was established in Sept 2025 (https://discourse.nixos.org/t/establishing-the-nixpkgs-core-team/69743 https://discourse.nixos.org/t/establishing-the-nixpkgs-core-...), so it is a fairly new concept and idea. They've accomplished some good things as highlighted in the post, but are now stepping down. Yes, we'd prefer for the team to exist, but we've also functioned without one for ~20 years. It may take multiple iterations to bootstrap the concept and to figure out the right structure - or we may find it isn't needed. So no, this is not a critical emergency. It's a return to the status quo of late last year. That being said, I think it is still a concept worth pursuing.

xyzzy_plugh 2mo ago
I agree with the concept but the name is terrible. "Core team" gives one the impression that this is the most important team to the project. It's not! It could be called the "governance facilitator" team or admins or something. Please name the next iteration something less spicy.
- jonringer117 2mo ago
  There was an architecture team which existed, I would assume the usage of "core" was to disambiguate. https://github.com/nixpkgs-architecture https://github.com/nixpkgs-architecture
- nextaccountic 2mo ago
  exactly what rust devs realized. they went from "core team" to "leadership council" in the next iteratiion
shevy-java 2mo ago
Packages were handled way before 2025 already, so it is strange that you insinuate they'd all only burn out within a year, and before that it was all cake and tea. NixOS is dying, everyone sees this right now. > but we've also functioned without one for ~20 years. Then this is also a PR problem because why need a team when the 20 years before were allegedly so perfect?

nylonstrung 2mo ago

[dead]

aliasxneo 2mo ago

Correct, but it's another domino in a broader trend that appears to have a common root. It was only a year ago that the moderation team mass resigned pointing the finger at the steering committee [1]. It's not been the same people for the last two years, but clearly there must be systemic issues in the people getting elected to this board for there to be so many persistent problems. Also see roberth's resignation [2], and Gabriella439's retrospective [3], and then there's Jon Ringer's thing, the list goes on. [1]: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/a-statement-from-members-of-the-moderation-team/69828 https://discourse.nixos.org/t/a-statement-from-members-of-th... [2]: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/stepping-down-from-the-nix-team/70203 https://discourse.nixos.org/t/stepping-down-from-the-nix-tea... [3]: https://haskellforall.com/2025/09/steering-committee-retrospective https://haskellforall.com/2025/09/steering-committee-retrosp...

Aurornis 2mo ago
I don't know if the moderation team's collapse is indicative of anything. The first blog post complains about the Steering Committee for doing, well, steering. The moderators complaining that the Steering Committee is "interfering" points to a bigger issue where the moderation team didn't understand their role. The second blog post is from someone on the steering committee who complains about Gabriella439 (the author of the 3rd blog post) "turning on" them after they tried to work with the moderation team, whatever that means. The third blog post complains that the moderation team was too large, had a lot of absenteeism problems, and tried to do everything by consensus which didn't work with the large size combined with the absenteeism problems. The last post is most revealing. It's also the least dramatic. It looks to me like they tried to form a way too large group of people who treated this as a low priority, then tried to do everything by heavy procedures and consensus with half the team not showing up. That's a common mistake in community organization that leads to collapse. EDIT: I looked up the conversation about the NixOS moderation team resigning. Apparently the moderation team was causing a lot of their own problems within the community. I'm not going to read it all, but this looks like familiar overzealous moderator drama My favorite example so far was that someone got banned and one of the conditions for getting unbanned was removing steak from their profile picture: https://github.com/NixOS/moderation/commit/e9d67b7efa03e6e9bc0bf2d03c6344d60c103395#commitcomment-132961513 https://github.com/NixOS/moderation/commit/e9d67b7efa03e6e9b...

nullsanity 2mo ago

[dead]

shevy-java 2mo ago

> the Nixpkgs core team disbanding does not mean Nixpkgs or Nix is dying. Nice attempt to try to rescue here, but everyone sees that NixOS is dying. When a group of, say, ten people give up in a moment, that does not bode well for the future of NixOS.

farfatched 2mo ago
A team of two people decided to disband the team, but continue to make contributions.

Commenter1488 2mo ago

[dead]