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an open letter to the NixOS foundation
(save-nix-together.org)
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this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
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Eelco posted another non-apology and stepped down from the NixOS Foundation board. here’s the Aux take on it which I think has a bit more value than the original post alone did.
in essence: this is a good step, but it’s important to remember that Eelco and friends have made concessions like this in the past, and it hasn’t mattered to their (informal but very real) entrenched positions of power. specifically, Eelco hasn’t stepped down from the Nix evaluator team or promised he’d change any of his behavior there (and the evaluator is key to Nix, and to commercializing the project against the community’s wishes), and there’s no clarity on how the Nix governance changes will impact bad actors (which specifically includes Anduril). there’s still a very good place for Aux and any other Nix fork to exist as long as Eelco and company haven’t committed to taking actions that will remedy the most crucially broken parts of the Nix community.
oh the nix community thread is going fucking great:
the deepest pit of hell is just sealions sealioning about sealioning
this post in the exact tone and style of republican twitter is presented without further comment
The fascists have been incredibly effective at diverting people to all the conversations that don't matter. It's the same strategy as always -- "be loudly wrong about an insignificant issue and watch the leftists jump to correct you."
Anduril is mentioned once in the NixOS thread and zero times in the aux.computer thread. So let's say I'm not hopeful.
It's taken me way too long to learn how to avoid falling for weaponized nerd sniping, and it still gets me sometimes.
NSFW Edit: This is why we sneer, innit? Be laconic, be witty, and deprive fashy bullshit the dignity of an effortful reply.
absolutely! there’s a clear pattern to how fascists take over FOSS projects and the commons in general. what’s interesting is how visible it all is in Nix’s case; they aren’t even bothering to hide what they’re doing, other than the typical distortions from the fash weirdos flooding Nix’s discussion forums. in this case it’s such an obvious bait and switch, and it sucks to see people fall for it yet again.
I really should start writing about technofascism again. it’s becoming increasingly important that FOSS projects learn about and are ruggedized against the pathways fascists use to take over the commons, because if this obvious shit keeps working, we’ll have nothing of value left.
Something that's been interesting to observe through all of this is just how much moderation matters to the quality of discussion in a space, no matter what the space is or who runs it.
There's some bitter irony to the fact that I've been getting nonstop notices about commits to the infamous "lazy trees" branch, the thing that is supposed to make flakes usable with monorepos (but in practice has yet to do so). Watching those notifications the last couple of days has told me all I needed to know.
oops all eelco and he really ain’t doing much in these commits, is he? between that and the recent commits to the Nix evaluator it’s pretty obvious he’s keeping near-exclusive control over what gets into the evaluator and how it’s developed
it’s very likely that Eelco and Determinate Systems have employed an old strikebreaking technique: they’ve agreed to concessions that don’t inconvenience them and weren’t really what was demanded. Eelco has lost a board position he didn’t want, but maintains a position that’ll ensure he and his friends can commercialize improvements to Nix by controlling what goes into the evaluator, ensuring that only Determinate Systems can implement an improved version of Nix with a working version of flakes.
In positive News, there is now a zulip (yep, the chat system with the threads) instance where nix governance gets discussed, with a faiiiirly reasonable and toothsome code of conduct. I don’t want to hope too much but maybe there is a way this project can heal, I’d certainly appreciate not having to spend person-months migrating all my personal computing to some much worse platform.
also, Aux has just cut its first unstable release (and zero pissbaby release managers were required to do it), and I’ve joined the Aux CLI (Aux’s fork of the Nix evaluator) SIG, though I haven’t seen much movement there since that SIG’s still looking to fill some leadership roles. I’m hoping that a forked evaluator can help fix some of the deeper problems with Nix, regardless of Eelco’s plans for the ecosystem.
you should do a State of Aux standalone post
good idea! I’ll write that up when I get the chance, and unpin this one