> 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<p>Something similar happened in the Haskell community, where some people called for Anduril job postings to be removed.<p>Nix is a software project, not a social movement. The goals of Nix are entirely separate from how the software is used.<p>I really like Coinbase's statement that is is mission focused (<a href="https://www.coinbase.com/en-ca/blog/coinbase-is-a-mission-focused-company" rel="nofollow">https://www.coinbase.com/en-ca/blog/coinbase-is-a-mission-fo...</a>). Anything that isn't directly related to its mission is out-of-scope. I wish the same was true about software projects like Nix.<p>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.
Skimming the letter makes it look like another attempt at pushing through their Code of Conduct (RFC98) targeting "ideas rooted in fascism or bigotry", whatever that means. Now going a step further by erasing the people in charge.
The main reason for the persistence of Nix despite its warts and general mess is just "first-mover advantage": it was the first, therefore it has more libraries/packages/development of the ecosystem than the alternatives.<p>Stop being lazy, go back to engineering first principles and it makes little sense to stay with Nix. Guix or any rewrite as a library in a well-developed language* makes more sense.<p>*For example, why are Haskellians using Nix so much instead of integrating its concepts into their own tooling?
> In short, Dolstra is acting as "the effective Benevolent Dictator for Life (BDFL)" of the project, even though the NixOS Foundation's charter doesn't grant anyone that authority.<p>This is silly - authority in a software community doesn’t come from a nonprofit charter. Being founder is also no guarantee of authority, but it is more relevant because it’s rooted in actions and outcomes.<p>The more I observe from the sidelines of open source the less attention I pay to these sorts of disputes. In the end they are all adjudicated by delivering useful software and updates quickly to end users. Whoever does that better “wins.”<p>Sometimes this is the founder of the project and sometimes not. In general I think it’s a mistake to think anyone cares all the much about anything beyond the license, capabilities of the software, and how quickly the community/maintainers fix bugs. They may say they do but people who are taking software for free are in no position to dictate much and at the end of the day they know and accept it (especially something like who sponsors a conference, who is the keynote speaker (Rails incident) etc)
The reaction to Anduril sponsoring Nix is very similar to some people's reaction at Kubecon 2018 where the U.S. Air Force gave a talk about how they are using k8s to deploy software on F-16s.<p><a href="https://thenewstack.io/how-the-u-s-air-force-deployed-kubernetes-and-istio-on-an-f-16-in-45-days/" rel="nofollow">https://thenewstack.io/how-the-u-s-air-force-deployed-kubern...</a>
People seem to forget that a lot if not most of IT has some form of military background/funding behind it.<p>Be it the first computers, the Internet, RISC CPUs, BSD UNIX and much much more.<p>You’re free not to like this fact of course, but then using the technologies anyway is a bit of a double standard.
Culture war grandstanding drowning out the much more interesting discussion around Determinate System’s pledge to support the long-debated Nix Flakes officially.<p>Nix Flakes looking like the real source of the schism in the Nix community.
The Anduril issue seems to have been the main catalyst for the drama. Seems like Anduril probably did more harm then good - who at Anduril couldn't have predicted that the Nix folks would start to have a major freakout the minute they attempted to sponsor?
There are too many stakeholders, it’s too forkable (guix, flox, Anduril).<p>Maybe the official leadership has a shuffle, maybe it’s even big.<p>I’m not changing my Nix investment, I discourage others from changing theirs.
I don't have any knowledge about nix, the community, about Eelco Dolstra, or about this particular drama. What I do know is that there is no such thing as "community leadership" and that extremely long diatribes about the flaws of the founder can be safely ignored.<p>People who are unhappy with the community or the direction of nix should leave and start their own thing. They'll discover that building something is actually a great deal harder than it looks from the outside.
Seems like this is becoming the terminal phase of the FOSS lifecycle for many projects.<p>I wonder what makes some long-lived communities immune to this behavior...OpenBSD comes to mind.
I really don't see the problem with accepting sponsorship money from Anduril. Rejecting it just results in less improvements and exposure for Nix.<p>They're going to continue to use Nix either way, and in the same way that the community can fork Nix because they're unhappy with the sponsorship, so can Anduril - and their fork might just be private.<p>Defence companies and all sorts of other companies that people might disagree with heavily use open source projects.
For those that are curious about an alternative perspective on this matter, I detailed much of my personal views in my reddit suspension post. I don't have much context on the EU NixCon 2023 events, but I've been actively involved with the project for 2019, 2020, 2021, beginning of 2022, and late 2023.<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1cd5fod/in_case_im_unable_to_return_wish_you_all_the_best/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1cd5fod/in_case_im_u...</a>
Related submissions:<p>Open letter to the NixOS foundation (50 comments) <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40107370">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40107370</a><p>The dire state of NixOS's moderation culture (76 comments) <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40166912">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40166912</a><p>---<p>Additionally, these r/NixOS submissions may be of interest:<p>Jon Ringer: "In case I'm unable to return, wish you all the best" (348 comments) <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1cd5fod/in_case_im_unable_to_return_wish_you_all_the_best/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1cd5fod/in_case_im_u...</a><p>Transparency about jonringer’s suspension (153 comments) <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1ceeg8h/transparency_about_jonringers_suspension/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1ceeg8h/transparency...</a><p>Thoughts on Jon Ringer's temporary suspension (71 comments) <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1ceiz36/thoughts_on_jon_ringers_temporary_suspension/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1ceiz36/thoughts_on_...</a><p>Moderation no-go zones (55 comments; ongoing)
<a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1cfv8vo/moderation_nogo_zones/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1cfv8vo/moderation_n...</a><p>---<p>Finally, the RFC to improve the situation:<p><a href="https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/175">https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/175</a>
This is a meta comment, but the (apparent) style of using a different color (red) to indicate direct quotes is interesting. At first I found it confusing and a little distracting, but on the second pass where my goal was to cleanly separate the author's opinion from the sources, it was extremely helpful.
I think it’s important to make clear that the letter is mostly bogus and almost libelous.<p>Check into any one claim, and you’ll find it’s not the entire story.<p>This however is true:<p>> The Foundation board has unrepresentative composition relative to the community because, due to our count, all current members are cisgender, white-passing, men, one of whom has done military service, and one other (Eelco) likely relies on undisclosed military-tech work.
Can anybody more knowledgeable than me clarify how a project like Fedora Silverblue compares to Nix? I know Nix has the declarative configuration, but do you get the same reproducibility out of Silverblue?
NO one wants to admit that the tyranny of leadership is probably a good thing for a projects success.<p>DDH, Linus, Poettering, Im sure someone is offended by hearing one of these names, but look at the status and reputation of their projects. Now go look at Wayland, or Rust who lack these guiding voices... Note that if you did in deep on these projects your likely going to need some popcorn to go with the soap opera levels of drama.<p>Nix is going to be interesting to watch in the coming months.
<i>That same day, Samuel Dionne-Riel stated that Dolstra had refused to clarify whether he had a relationship with Anduril and asked Christensen, a co-founder of Determinate Systems: "Does DetSys have or had relationships with Anduril?" Christensen replied: "Did you know this category of question is pretty much impossible to answer because NDAs are a thing?"</i><p><i>[Determinate Systems] produces its own installer for Nix that the company promises will provide stable support for some Nix features. The letter states: "This is fine, however, it is questionably acceptable to do that while employing the lead developer of CppNix [the main Nix implementation] and saying nothing about how this will interact with the team's [decision-making] autonomy."</i><p>So "DetSys" is a commercial provider of Nix services, making corporate promises about future Nix feature support and (presumably) contracting with Anduril whose current focus is Shahed-inspired kamikaze drones, while wearing a separate hat as board chair of NixOS Foundation.<p>Effectively the tl;dr is whether Nix foundation should be bankrolled by the DoD, feature roadmap guided by the needs of mass produced suicide drones. And if they are, do other contributors want to continue providing free R&D for that organization?
> ...are going to be interpreted as a bunch of left-wing people taking over the project<p>Yeah, it's a bunch of left-wing malcontents trying to take over a project.<p>Anyways, Nix is very much decentralized as far as open-source projects go.
Dolstra nailed it:<p>> It is my opinion that it is not for us, as open source software developers, to decide whose views are valid and whose are not, and to allow or disallow project or conference participation as a result.<p>You really should not be in open source if you believe it is your purview to ideologically police the usage and contribution to your software. That notion is incompatible with the spirit of the endeavor.