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submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by lemmyreader@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/much-ado-about-nothing/44236

Not directly related to this blog post but from NixOS discourse forum, a tl;dr from another person about the NixOS drama here :

If you’re looking for a TL;DR of the situation, here it is:

    Nix community had a governance crisis for years. While there has been progress on building explicit teams to govern the project, it continued to fundamentally rely on implicit authority and soft power

    Eelco Dolstra, as one of the biggest holders of this implicit authority and soft power, has continuously abused this authority to push his decisions, and to block decisions that he doesn’t like

    Crucially, he also used his implicit authority to block any progress on solving this governance crisis and establishing systems with explicit authority

    This has led uncountably many people to burn out over the issue, and culminated in writing an open letter to have Eelco resign from all formal positions in the project and take a 6 month break from any involvement in the community

    Eelco wrote a response that largely dismisses the issues brought up, and advertises his company’s community as a substitute for Nix community
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[-] Kanedias@lemmy.ml 36 points 7 months ago

I didn't understand a thing about what the actual issues were.

Based on comments I can see that Jon Ringer objected to inserting gender minority person as a requirement for committee board.

So, why is he wrong? I totally agree that gender minorities deserve recognition, but making it a hard requirement for having a committee board sounds like nepotism.

[-] zerakith@lemmy.ml 13 points 7 months ago

This is a basic represention and inclusion issue. Unless you are actively seeking out voices of those minorities and addressing their concerns you will have a reinforcing loop where behaviour that puts people off engaging will continue and it will continue to limit people from those minorities being involved (and in the worst case causing active harm to some people who end getting involved). From what I understand the behaviour that has been demonstrated and from who those people leaving it is clear this is active issue within Nix. Having a diverse range of people and perspectives will actually make the outputs (software) and community generally better. It's about recognising the problems in the formal and informal structures you are creating and working to address them.

Additionally, but just to clarify nepotism would be giving positions based on relationships with people in power and not ensuring that your board contains a more representative set of backgrounds and perspectives.

[-] Kanedias@lemmy.ml 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Suppose I have 1000 people from community and 10 out of them are gender minorities. I then have 5 projects, each with 10 members on board committee, and I want a representative of gender minority in each of them. And I choose hard workers based on merit, the best of the best.

In such case I will be choosing 9*5 = 45 people out of 1000, and specifically I add 1*5 = 5 people out of those 10.

So the board committees will have 45 members each with (worst case) 955/1000 = 95.5% percentile performance, and additionally 5 members of gender minorities, each with mediocre 5/10 = 50% performance.

The gender minorities will perform worse, because we specifically singled them out of the crowd. This is not how you improve diversity.

[-] zbyte64@awful.systems 8 points 7 months ago

DEI requirements is not nepotism, but let's take on the core issue I think you brought up: meritocracy. If you show me two people with the same level of skill and experience, I would say the one that came from the most disadvantaged environment is more qualified because they were able to get to the same level with less support.

But you brought in numbers, let me do the same. L Consider that the minority group you mentioned actually has greater barriers to participate, so those 10 people might actually perform better than 80% of the 1000 of the majority group. Assuming both groups have the same distribution of merit is a fallacy.

[-] Kanedias@lemmy.ml -4 points 6 months ago

If the community itself is discriminating, there's no way out than to fight or wait for an opportunity. We don't see black empowerment in China or a pride parade in Iran.

What I saw in Nix community right now is someone proposed an affirmative action and Jon refused. I don't see discrimination here.

[-] baru@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months ago

pride parade in Iran.

I suggest to look at the history of Iran.

Your argument is a bit weird. People are suggesting for more diversity. Then you seem to say that's bad because they should wait until an opportunity that people fight for more diversity? I'm not following.

[-] Kanedias@lemmy.ml -1 points 6 months ago

Iran is ruled by IRGC right now. If the community is discriminating to begin with, you have to fight. I'm yet to see how Nix community is discriminating. What I saw is that an active developer got actually banned just for arguing against an affirmative action.

[-] baru@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

Are you reading what you wrote? It's full of contradictions.

It seems you think that people should be free from consequences until a certain level is surpassed? That's rather arbitrary.

What I saw is that an active developer got actually banned just for arguing against an affirmative action.

It's often not as simple as how you summarize this. Above is awfully similar to the incorrect claim of "cancel culture". While often that meant that people think someone should be able to do as they please without any consequences. Except for things they dislike, then there should be consequences.

[-] zbyte64@awful.systems 1 points 6 months ago

We don’t see black empowerment in China or a pride parade in Iran.

Sir, this is a Wendy's.

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this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
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