an open letter to the NixOS foundation
an open letter to the NixOS foundation
this thread fucking sucks for me to have to post, but the linked open letter is an important read. none of the systemic issues pertaining to marginalized folks and commercial/military-industrial interests in the Nix community I’ve previously written about on TechTakes have been solved; in fact, they’ve gotten worse to the point where the Nix community moderation team is essentially in the process of quitting. that’s the beginning to an awful end for a project I like a whole lot.
even if you don’t give a fuck about Nix, the open letter is an important read because the toxicity, conflicts of interest, and underhanded tactics detailed in it are incredibly common in the open source space. this letter could have been written about a multitude of infamously toxic open source projects; Nix is lucky that it has marginalized folks involved who care about the direction of the project and want to make things better, but those people are actively leaving, after being burnt out by the toxic people and structures entrenched in Nix’s community. that’s a fucking tragedy.
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Big Daddy happily reminds Anduril that this should have no impact on their murder bot deliverables.
wow I was expecting a nothing of a statement from Eelco, but that was worse than nothing. let’s look at some lowlights:
It is my opinion that it is not for us, as open source software developers, to decide whose views are valid and whose are not, and to allow or disallow project or conference participation as a result.
this is utterly wrong. one of the most important jobs an open source developer has is to evaluate contributors and their contributions to prevent bad actors from damaging the community — whether that’s through bad code or bad intent (and see the xz incident for when maintainers don’t do this).
also, in general, it’s part of our job as good people to actively enable marginalized folks to participate regardless of the type of project we run. that’s why this “non-political” horseshit from Eelco and co just (very intentionally) favors the rich defense contractor that spends a lot of money flooding Nix’s community platforms with trolls.
Throughout my career, I have consistently supported work towards creating a welcoming and inclusive environment for all individuals, regardless of their background. I continue to support initiatives to ensure that everyone feels valued and appreciated, and I have actively encouraged opportunities to amplify the voices of those who have been historically marginalized.
not one example, Eelco? Nix has been around for 20 years and you didn’t have one anecdote or example of an initiative to link? is it because the historically marginalized folks you say you’ve supported are now very loudly calling you out, and your stupid ass thinks that’s because they’re ungrateful for all the shitty initiatives you started to shut them up that didn’t actually address anyone’s concerns in a material way?
I encourage everyone reading this who feels that they have not been heard or feels displaced to join the Determinate Systems community as we continue working to make Nix as easy to use and as impactful as possible. Our code of conduct is available here, and you can join our Discord at https://determinate.systems/discord.
oh finally, the classics! Determinate Systems doesn’t control Nix, but if you’ve got issues with how we control Nix you should join our Discord where we can more effectively shout down anyone who complains too much. the classic cryptobro move, now in a project I give a damn about!
Eelco can fuck all the way off
I've been fairly surprised by how poorly they've handled community engagement since they were "founded". If there's one good thing that can come of all this, it will be to make DetSys sufficiently toxic that they lose purchase in the larger enterprise and end up the first ones to blink with a fork. Some have suggested that they've all but done that already, and while there's no conclusive evidence, I'm looking forward to breaking out the popcorn if they end up trying to speedrun Hashicorp.