Much ado about "nothing" - Xe Iaso
xeiaso.net

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/14962465

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

Background on Jon Ringer’s GitHub suspension

  • hello_hello [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    9·
    8 months ago

    White people are horrible. Imagine ruining your community and project because you wanted your anti-immigration MIC firm to sponsor an event.

    And also being a piece of shit for years and not accepting criticism. Benelovent dictator communities never work if you’re only interested in yourself.

    Weeks where decades happen except it’s the trans revolution of free software communities.

    • YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      5·
      8 months ago

      Benelovent dictator communities never work if you’re only interested in yourself.

      They always think they’re doing it for everyone’s good but eventually it always fails in one way or another

  • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    4·
    8 months ago

    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

    Tyranny of structurelessness strikes again.

  • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    4·
    8 months ago

    I’ll be honest. I still don’t get concretely what the problem is. I know that xeiaso has been a proponent of NixOS for a long time in their writings. But recently I saw a discourse thread from some white guy talking about his vulgar opposition to affirmative action on NixOS forums and seeing how long he was allowed to plead his case things seemed pretty doomed. So I would appreciate if someone could give a more approachable TLDR for the situation.

    • hello_hello [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      3·
      8 months ago

      TL;DR is in OP’s post, but basically Eelco Dolstra (the leader of the Nix project) refuses to restructure his community and consistently ignores the advice of his colleagues. This has led to poor moderation in Nix (flakes are considered experimental even though LITERALLY EVERYONE HAS USED THEM FOR YEARS) and white techbros invading the space and making it unsafe.

      An ultimatum was set up (May 1st, I think) and whatever happens after that day is anyone’s guess. Nix is a huge project so forking it is not as simple as things like PolyMC being forked into Prism Launcher. I’m personally worried but also glad that these things are coming to light.