The community is more important than the product. — Pieter Hintjens Dear contributors to the Nix ecosystem, dear users, We recognize that the Nix community keeps growing and changing, and its governance has not been adapting accordingly. While the foundation board was never intended to lead the community, we cannot deny that it is perceived to be in that role by many, and we therefore take full accountability. We acknowledge there’s been a series of recent crises in our community, which are...

Eelco has agreed to step down from the NixOS foundation board. Over the next two weeks, a constitutional assembly will be appointed to draft a constitution to democratically govern Nix/NixOS.

  • KindaABigDyl@programming.devEnglish
    5·
    8 months ago

    It’s a hostile takeover by a handful of politically far-left individuals, stealing power away from Nix’s creator, Eelco, framed by them as “giving power to the community,” when they really just want to establish their own oligarchy and run moderation their way.

    Just like Eelco’s way of governing, it will likely have 0 effect on 99% of people using NixOS, but a handful of maintainers will be mad. Nothing will change for those out of the loop.

    • ericjmorey@programming.devEnglish
      14·
      8 months ago

      How well NixOS and Nixpkgs are maintained absolutely affects users of NixOS. This may have just saved NixOS from becoming an unmaintained or at best slowly maintained project that people advise against using for anything serious.

    • moonpiedumplings@programming.devEnglish
      13·
      8 months ago

      Just like Eelco’s way of governing, it will likely have 0 effect on 99% of people using NixOS,

      Flakes not being stabilized, or worked on by Eelco, despite him literally being the inventor absolutely has an effect on every single Nix user. The flakes-nonflakes aplit is part of why the documentation on nix is so poor. Some things only support one or the other, and it’s a pain.

      The aux fork of nix (which idk what’s gonna happen to it) said they would stabilize the current implementation of flakes as v0. I hope this new council does the same, because it’s been far too long. So much of the community uses flakes that’s it’s basically official, but it being “experimental” means they can’t be mentioned in official docs, or included by default in the official installer. You have to edit a config file to enable flakes.

      The worst part of this all, is that the Determinate Systems nix installer, only comes with flakes and no channels (old way) - and Eelco literally works for Determinate Systems. Despite all of this, flakes are still “experimental”.

      I hope things change. Flakes are legitimately better, a minor addition in complexity, in exchange for making it easy to reuse code. And finally having unified documentation and tooling (if flakes become the main way) will probably be the best benefit.

      I really hope this council moves flakes put of their “experimental” status. If so, then democracy has spoken: the users want flakes.

    • Vilian@lemmy.caEnglish
      8·
      8 months ago

      Eelco is also leftist so no (this is said in the open letter) also the maintainers are what make nix be nix so yes, it’s has the potencial to affect a lot of people and the link send explaining the situation has very good arguments(with proofs), that don’t have any correlation with left or right, you need to give a good argument if you want people to belive in you

      • MelmiEnglish
        5·
        8 months ago

        Don’t see too many leftists defending military contractors…

      • KindaABigDyl@programming.devEnglish
        3·
        8 months ago

        Eelco is also leftist so no

        There’s a difference between a leftist and a left-wing extremist like the handful of people involved with the open letter

        also the maintainers are what make nix be nix so yes, it’s has the potencial to affect a lot of people

        Yes of course, but the maintainers aren’t really affect either.

        What I’m saying is there are only a few maintainers upset right now, and if the tide turns (which it looks like it has) only a few maintainers on the other side will be upset.

        My point is overall only a few maintainers will be upset, like 10-20 or so out of thousands, so the status quo will stay the same.

        has very good arguments(with proofs)

        Not really

        that don’t have any correlation with left or right

        Strong correlation with far-left extremist ideas, actually

        you need to give a good argument if you want people to belive in you

        Those writing the open letter didn’t give good arguments, so I don’t need to either