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.
I’m not sold on the name, but I’m definitely interested in the fork. I think there is an irreconcilable schism in the NixOS community that cannot be fixed unless the Benevolent Dictator steps down as leader, and it sure seems like he’s not gonna do that, as he’s built his entire company on top of NixOS.
We’ll see exactly what this means. But I would love if it means that the project manages to continue without the huge amount of confusion and disruption that would come from forks fighting for becoming the canonical source.
There, fits all your criteria, is even closer to Nix and appears to have fewer SEO issues as far as I can tell.
And as a cherry on top: “Naux is a medication that combines diphenhydramine and 8-chlorotheophylline to prevent and treat nausea, vomiting, vertigo, and motion sickness.“ 😄
The SEO on this name is going to be a major irritation for adoption.
But that aside, doesn’t it strike you as a concerning that this project is born at least in part from the complaints about a “benevolent dictator”, and the very first time—at least that I’ve seen—someone asks you to put something up for community consensus you say no?
TL;DR the nix community forums are toxic from all sides
There’s been a spout between core contributors + the foundation vs a loud portion of the community. Some related to code, but from what I’ve seen, the loudest have been about social issues and values.
It all boiled over when a military contractor wanted to join the list of sponsors for one of the conferences (upcoming on in USA?). That caused a lot of tension, the foundation came to a decision not to accept sponsorship and tried to put sponsorship rules in place for future sponsors. These were however perceived as too blurry by some parts of the community as they wouldn’t prevent such a situation from happening again.
In the aftermath, a frequent contributor (John something?) was suspended and we’re now here.
On top of everything an open letter was released targeting the creator of nix (Eelco Dolstra). They claim his benevolent dictatorship is not so benevolent and accuse him of multiple things.
There are people who just get on with writing code and are very helpful in the forums and other community channels, but the, let’s call it “management style”, of some people on the project is not beyond reproach. Big egos and a mix of bringing in issues external to the project has made the forums become a very unfun place to be.
Edited to clarify that they actually did accept sponsorship from the defense contractor.
That caused a lot of tension, the foundation came to a decision not to accept sponsorship
This part is actually not true, they are still a sponsor of NixCon NA 2024.
2024-na.nixcon.org/#sponsors
They proposed a policy to handle deciding sponsorships in the future, but it’s pretty lackluster. It basically just says the people in power promise to do a good job, pinky swear. github.com/NixOS/…/sponsorship_policy.md
IDK about the issue itself but I must say the discourse post does a mighty good job at explaining the reasons the guy was NOT suspended for and a really terrible one at explaining what they actually did suspend him for, except pissing off “the moderation team, in consultation with members of the Foundation board”.
I’m still not entirely sure what’s happening. I get the one guy who works for Anduril was suspended a few days ago for being toxic, but did the community side with him or not? The subreddit sure seems to be siding with him, but something tells me that may not something to be proud of.
Was this split about trying to get away from Anduril or because they didn’t care for the moderation that suspended the guy from Anduril?
Seems like political tensions stemming from developments with situations Israel/Gaza/Iran and Ukraine have piqued the discontentment over accepting donations from organizations that profit from contracts with the US DoD.
The lead developer/organizer of the NixOS project seems to be pro authoritarian in their political values and this has also lead to an uneasiness amongst a number of contributors although things seem to be civil overall.
It seems that the “toxic” behavior from Hamilton was derailing technical discussions over concerns about the funding from military contractors.
I may have got some of this wrong, but it seems that everyone involved is trying not to draw attention to the broader political aspect of the schism in the community. So people out of the loop are having trouble figuring out what is going on.
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