this post was submitted on 01 May 2024

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NixOS Foundation board: Giving power to the community (discourse.nixos.org)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Eelco has agreed to step down from the NixOS foundation board. Over the next two weeks, a constitutional assembly will be appointed to draft a constitution to democratically govern Nix/NixOS.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 months ago

Overall I'm quite pleased with this news, but I'm a bit of a zealot when it comes to democracy. Barring any breakdown of process during the drafting and election phases, I see this as an absolute win, and the first step towards repairing the community.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I wonder if the "aux" fork will continue to exist after that. However, if the forums continue to stay toxic, it wouldn't surprise me if another fork were made.

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I wonder if the "aux" fork will continue to exist after that.

Probably not. And that would save potential users from that terrible, unsearchable name.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

😂 It is not the best name, that's for sure. But I was hoping it would allow different technical decisions for example like getting off of github.

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (3 children)

someone can send me a link explaning what's happening?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Most is described here (the author probably has some amount of bias but this is the only summary I know of): https://github.com/KFearsoff/nix-drama-explained

Other than that some very active contributors resigned as maintainers in support of the open letters.

And it seems now that the community members in support of the open letters/changes have convinced the board of the foundation to agree on some things.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

thanks!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Not sure why this is getting downvoted, when it's a proper question. Quite a lot has happened, and whether people like it or not, it does affect the project

[–] [email protected] -4 points 6 months ago

Eelco is mad 😔

[+] [email protected] -31 points 6 months ago (3 children)

It's a hostile takeover by a handful of politically far-left individuals, stealing power away from Nix's creator, Eelco, framed by them as "giving power to the community," when they really just want to establish their own oligarchy and run moderation their way.

Just like Eelco's way of governing, it will likely have 0 effect on 99% of people using NixOS, but a handful of maintainers will be mad. Nothing will change for those out of the loop.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

How well NixOS and Nixpkgs are maintained absolutely affects users of NixOS. This may have just saved NixOS from becoming an unmaintained or at best slowly maintained project that people advise against using for anything serious.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Just like Eelco's way of governing, it will likely have 0 effect on 99% of people using NixOS,

Flakes not being stabilized, or worked on by Eelco, despite him literally being the inventor absolutely has an effect on every single Nix user. The flakes-nonflakes aplit is part of why the documentation on nix is so poor. Some things only support one or the other, and it's a pain.

The aux fork of nix (which idk what's gonna happen to it) said they would stabilize the current implementation of flakes as v0. I hope this new council does the same, because it's been far too long. So much of the community uses flakes that's it's basically official, but it being "experimental" means they can't be mentioned in official docs, or included by default in the official installer. You have to edit a config file to enable flakes.

The worst part of this all, is that the Determinate Systems nix installer, only comes with flakes and no channels (old way) - and Eelco literally works for Determinate Systems. Despite all of this, flakes are still "experimental".

I hope things change. Flakes are legitimately better, a minor addition in complexity, in exchange for making it easy to reuse code. And finally having unified documentation and tooling (if flakes become the main way) will probably be the best benefit.

I really hope this council moves flakes put of their "experimental" status. If so, then democracy has spoken: the users want flakes.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Eelco is also leftist so no (this is said in the open letter) also the maintainers are what make nix be nix so yes, it's has the potencial to affect a lot of people and the link send explaining the situation has very good arguments(with proofs), that don't have any correlation with left or right, you need to give a good argument if you want people to belive in you

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Don't see too many leftists defending military contractors...

[+] [email protected] -18 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Eelco is also leftist so no

There's a difference between a leftist and a left-wing extremist like the handful of people involved with the open letter

also the maintainers are what make nix be nix so yes, it’s has the potencial to affect a lot of people

Yes of course, but the maintainers aren't really affect either.

What I'm saying is there are only a few maintainers upset right now, and if the tide turns (which it looks like it has) only a few maintainers on the other side will be upset.

My point is overall only a few maintainers will be upset, like 10-20 or so out of thousands, so the status quo will stay the same.

has very good arguments(with proofs)

Not really

that don’t have any correlation with left or right

Strong correlation with far-left extremist ideas, actually

you need to give a good argument if you want people to belive in you

Those writing the open letter didn't give good arguments, so I don't need to either

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago

What is the left-wing extremism in this case?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Left wing extremism lmfao. You dropped this 🔴

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

As opposed to the right wing extremists supporting the military industrial complex and starting a capitalist coup of nixos (detsys) to take over the community? ( We can all grasp at straws you lunatic)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

I installed NixOS today. I'm optimistic

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

You are free to set up such a project, instituting yourself as the initial dictator, accepting merit challenges of some specified form, and see whether someone bothers to go for your jugular. Call it KingOfTheHillOS.

...in all seriousness the general issue with merit-based approaches is that you need a way to decide on what "merit" means, and to have an actual project and not a one person show you need a community that shares that definition, and you can't dispose of the dictator if they have the power to dictate what merit is, so you are left with either a) an unchanging definition which is just as bad as unpatchable software or b) some form of stakeholder democracy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

Normally when I see people say something like this, what they actually mean is "based on technical merit (and also has the right opinions that agree with mine)". The concern is that democracy will produce outcomes they find disagreeable.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Personally I'd rather have a choice of who to follow based on whose opinions align better with my own, instead of everyone being forced to go with the majority... in other words I respect people's freedom to have opinions I do not like, which I think this type of "community power" is in some ways the opposite of that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Personally I'd rather have a choice of who to follow based on whose opinions align better with my own, instead of everyone being forced to go with the majority...

NixOS is FOSS. People can freely fork it. Your choice is not being taken away.

in other words I respect people's freedom to have opinions I do not like, which I think this type of "community power" is in some ways the opposite of that.

I'm not sure how voting makes it so we can't respect each other's opinions.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I’m not sure how voting makes it so we can’t respect each other’s opinions.

Typically this is done by adopting a CoC and then adding things to it that you don't like. But I have seen more hostile methods too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

... Yes. You will have to behave like a civilized adult. If your opinion is that you shouldn't have to, then you are correct that I do not respect that opinion.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I think the whole problem here is that someone's definition of "civilized adult" is different from others. My definition doesn't try to suppress people's opinions, even if I don't like them.