Short Summary of the Community Drama of the Linux Distribution “NixOS”, so that you can get the big picture and form your own opinion with the provided sources.
Clarification of the “Steering Comittee” as Project Leadership
Moderation Team resigns in Protest
- Resignation Post, with examples of interference: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/a-statement-from-members-of-the-moderation-team/69828
- Conflict due different interests:
- the Moderation Team desires being independent. otherwise, they can’t moderate the behavior of people in positions of power.
- the Moderation Team is currently accountable to the Steering Comittee: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/a-statement-from-members-of-the-moderation-team/69828/6
Technical Leadership works for Military Company, causing Fear of Alignment with Facism.
- Steering Committee works for Military Company https://discourse.nixos.org/t/sc-member-tomberek-works-for-anduril/68971
- People in the community feel uncomfortable with that, since the US and its military are heading towards facsism: https://mstdn.games/@KFears/115275676459535171
- The Steering Committee made a public Post about that, explaining the Situation: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/statement-on-a-steering-committee-member-joining-anduril/69007
Can we avoid calling taking action against valid moral objections “drama”? It only serves to make the people doing the right thing sound like they’re being immature, even when they’re obviously right.
Objecting to a fascist government’s influence over very powerful build infrastructure used around the world is the right thing to do.
Why don’t we destigmatise drama?
Imagine if we referred to the recent UN walkout as “Drama at the UN.” It trivializes the topic.
valid moral objections
That’s the thing, whether or not they’re valid depends on the person you’re asking.
I personally think this is a load of bullshit and just another instance of slacktivists trying to guilt people into doing their bidding.
Hopefully the leader in question doesn’t change a single thing due to this pressure. He would be a helpless child if he didn’t have the strength to resist this kind of peer pressure from online drama.
So…you don’t believe in democracy? That people involved, stakeholders, don’t have a right to influence the direction of an organized effort?
I mean yeah, if you ask a fascist how they feel about fascism, they probably don’t think it’s a big deal.
That’s the thing, whether or not they’re valid depends on the person you’re asking.
No it fucking doesn’t! There are people who think that, but they’re wrong.
Moral relativism is bullshit.
How is taking direct action to stigmatize someone who is enabling our fascist military “slacktivism”? What do you propose would be a more fitting and effective tactic for someone who doesn’t want their work associated in any way to the US military?
Good on the team for not aiding the genocidal American MIC.
And now DHH is getting involved in this shitshow. For those not chronically online enough, DHH is one of the developers of Rails, has a rap sheet of drama, and has his own dirty laundry full of racism, transphobia, and has managed to drive his own company into the shitter.
So really a bunch of winners are coming out of the woodwork for this one.
As a happy Debian user i’m not hearing any of it.
The most ridiculous thing in the conversations I read was someone arguing that the fact that Anduril has a member at SC (Steering Committee) weakens their position. The mental gymnastic is so insane to me because it completely naively expect people who have a conflict of interest to do the right thing. What if they don’t ?
There is real smart fascists out there. they won’t kindly “recuse themselves” and weaken Anduril positions. Very suspicious that someone would argue that Anduril gets weaker at SC by having people there.
The most ridiculous thing in the conversations I read was someone arguing that the fact that Anduril has a member at SC (Steering Committee) weakens their position. The mental gymnastic is so insane to me because it completely naively expect people who have a conflict of interest to do the right thing. What if they don’t ?
The argument there was that they would be excluded of any votes related to said company.
It reads as an “honor” system rather than any objective exclusionary mechanism. Steering committee members are expected, and to their credit, were considered to have done so, but it all seems like judgement calls.
It is fully possible that grey areas or instances where other SC members didn’t personally care, were not met with recusal.
It would overall be better to not have those conflicts be likely or even possible.
I’ve been saying this for years: Just switch to Guix.
- An official GNU project;
- Herd instead of systemd;
- Uses Linux Libre and only 100% free software;
- Big, friendly, helpful community;
- Regular meetups, unconferences and other events;
- Config is done in an established language (Scheme) instead of an idiosyncratic DSL.
Yah 100% free no thanks. And I actually like systemd.
Also, a fraction of packages, users and guides.
I think Guix is great, but as a NixOS enthusiast who genuinely wanted to try it out, I gave up in the face of the lack of docs for people who aren’t working in lab or have a PhD in computing of some sort.
Also, how is shepherd better than systems? Genuinely curious.
Lastly, I agree Nix is not a very enjoyable language, but scheme doesn’t look like a very beginner friendly option either. Could be wrong, I’m not a programmer.
As someone who is curious about Nix but has given up after trying to wade through the myriad and conflicting “getting started” resources for it, I cant imagine how bad guix docs must be for a Nix enthusiast to adandon it.
If you are still trying to find the best guide, I recommend this one
That’s one the books I tried to get through. Maybe it was in a more raw state at the time, but it didn’t click for me.
Is it non-trivial to enable non-free repos?
https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix
Quite trivial
Never tried! But I’m assuming it’s a pain indeed. Not even Signal Desktop works out-of-the-box (or maybe at all, haven’t tried either) because of Electron.
Sounds like interpersonal bullshit reframed as politics. Honestly impressed at the resignation letter being able to use so many words while avoiding actually directly explaining what they’re upset about. Of course it would take something really egregious and extraordinary for me to give a shit, because…
The steering committee or board of trustees or whatever should be sitting the rules for the organization, up to an including adding or removing mods from a forum if they want. That’s what they exist for. The idea that a mod team should be independent of the actual organizational structure of an institution is ridiculous.
Good thing Linux distros can be forked, so devs who might have a target on their backs can theoretically fork NixOS and run away with that.
Good thing Linux distros can be forked,
Distro isn’t the problem; The OS is already on a far too tight update schedule, fork away, but we need the package repository to remain sound and I don’t know what this would do to that.
