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
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Half the article, or more, is a description of evengalian plot. That’s some wild shit man, none of that was in any way relevent. Imma use this tactic myself.
“I’m sorry, but I am breaking up with you. You do deserve an explination as to why though but to properly convey my emotions first I’ll have to describe the entire through plot of blues clues”
Holy shit the comments on this one are vile. If you don’t like the article, don’t read it and go on with your day.
The footer of the blog shows a Nix file structure, skimming their blog they wrote a bunch of articles and guides for Nix, checking their repo they have a bunch of Nix work, they’re not exactly a nobody (if you couldn’t judge from the people saying they’ll miss them on the Nix forum post)
This entire article is an extension of https://save-nix-together.org which is the actual thing that sparked the the gasoline covered Nix community, this will probably seem more coherent with that background.
Thanks for the background, as a very recent nix adopter this drama seems like a lot 😥
I didn’t understand a thing about what the actual issues were.
Based on comments I can see that Jon Ringer objected to inserting gender minority person as a requirement for committee board.
So, why is he wrong? I totally agree that gender minorities deserve recognition, but making it a hard requirement for having a committee board sounds like nepotism.
This is a basic represention and inclusion issue. Unless you are actively seeking out voices of those minorities and addressing their concerns you will have a reinforcing loop where behaviour that puts people off engaging will continue and it will continue to limit people from those minorities being involved (and in the worst case causing active harm to some people who end getting involved). From what I understand the behaviour that has been demonstrated and from who those people leaving it is clear this is active issue within Nix. Having a diverse range of people and perspectives will actually make the outputs (software) and community generally better. It’s about recognising the problems in the formal and informal structures you are creating and working to address them.
Additionally, but just to clarify nepotism would be giving positions based on relationships with people in power and not ensuring that your board contains a more representative set of backgrounds and perspectives.
Suppose I have 1000 people from community and 10 out of them are gender minorities. I then have 5 projects, each with 10 members on board committee, and I want a representative of gender minority in each of them. And I choose hard workers based on merit, the best of the best.
In such case I will be choosing 9*5 = 45 people out of 1000, and specifically I add 1*5 = 5 people out of those 10.
So the board committees will have 45 members each with (worst case) 955/1000 = 95.5% percentile performance, and additionally 5 members of gender minorities, each with mediocre 5/10 = 50% performance.
The gender minorities will perform worse, because we specifically singled them out of the crowd. This is not how you improve diversity.
Others have replied pointing out this is a strawman and that merit doesn’t make any sense as a metric if you have discrimination. In practice performance (‘merit’) is complex interaction between an individual’s skills and talent and the environment and support they get to thrive. If you have an environment that structurally and openly discriminates against a certain subclass of people and then chose on “merit” you are just further entrenching that discrimination.
This is a project that seemed to be having specific problems on gender that was causing harm and leading to losing talent. In a voluntary role particularly this is a death spiral for the project as a whole. Without goodwill and passion open source projects of any meaningful size just wouldn’t survive.
I’m glad you care enough about diversity and evidence to have worked out how to solve these problems without empowering and listening to those minorities. Please do share it.
Others have replied pointing out this is a strawman and that merit doesn’t make any sense as a metric if you have discrimination.
So remove discrimination. Put in the CoC that any information about gender, race, religion and so on must not be disclosed since it is not relevant to the quality of the code/work you submit. Then you have merit only.
I really find stupid that someone really think that his contribution must be accepted just because he is from a minority, irregardless the quality.
You say remove discrimination and then use a discriminatory strawman. No one is suggesting a code contribution must be accepted based on a minority status. They are saying that to get a decent functioning community for everyone you need a diverse range of people in positions that set the behaviour of the community. You can’t get the CoC and enforcement of it right unless those affected are in positions that influence it. Your enforced anonymity doesn’t work because there are other ways of gendering and racialising people (e.g. based on who people talk). Additionally, what you are saying is that minoritised people have to hide who they are so they don’t get discriminated against rather than just deal with those doing the discrimination. They are called communities because that’s what’s they are: people want to be part of something and that involves sharing a part of themselves too. Open source projects live or die on their communities because they mostly don’t have the finances to just pay people to do the work. You need people to beleive in the project and not burn out etc.
You lose nothing by making sure people from all backgrounds have the same opportunity and enjoyment being part of it. If you aren’t in a minority and don’t care about those that are then just say so!
You say remove discrimination and then use a discriminatory strawman.
Why ? Because I basically say “keep these personal informations for yourself since they are not needed while developing” ?
No one is suggesting a code contribution must be accepted based on a minority status.
But they are saying that a board member should be elected based on the fact that he came from a minority, which is as wrong as asking that a code contribution should be accepted based on the minority status.
They are saying that to get a decent functioning community for everyone you need a diverse range of people in positions that set the behaviour of the community.
Agree on this. My point though is that the people in these positions need to be there for the merit and not for a status.
You can’t get the CoC and enforcement of it right unless those affected are in positions that influence it.
Nope. You can enforce a CoC if the ones delegated to enforce it are acknowledged as authoritative people and there is a clear path to do it. If you put a person in charge to enforce the code “just becasue [insert your favorite minority reason]” you end in the same place: the CoC will be selectively enforced only on a certain group of people.
Your enforced anonymity doesn’t work because there are other ways of gendering and racialising people (e.g. based on who people talk).
Assuming you track them outside the project, yes you are right.
Additionally, what you are saying is that minoritised people have to hide who they are so they don’t get discriminated against rather than just deal with those doing the discrimination.
That is what you are saying now, not me.
I said that I don’t care about what your identity is but only about the quality of your work, why did you assume that i mean that only the minorities should not disclose these informations ?Else explain to me why it is relevant that the pull request just created is done by someone from a minority group.
You lose nothing by making sure people from all backgrounds have the same opportunity and enjoyment being part of it.
Equal opportunity does not mean equal outcome. I lose something if a board member of the project I contribute is elected only because he is from a minority group because he replace a more knowledgeable member and the average quality of the work decline.
If you aren’t in a minority and don’t care about those that are then just say so!
It is not that I don’t care, it is that in certain situation it not pertinent if you are from a minority or not. Software development, particularly OSS where the entry point is really low, is one of this situation: why I should care about the group you are part of when you submit a contribute ? How it is pertinent. Do you want to have a voice in the project ? Earn it by contributing and being better of the ones you think are bad and or toxic. But wanting to have a say in the project “just because” is toxic too.
There are two tensions here:
- Community building
- Code production
Community building can be done without any coding, coding can be done without any community. However, to build a large project you need them both.
In a large volunteer project like this, not everything can be worked on. You become selective. We are going to major on this thing, or specifically talk about that project to get community engagement and get the thing done. This drives the project, she helps it to stop chasing hairs. Someone has to decide what feature is going in this release to make it ready to be a release candidate.
That group of people, ultimately making and influencing those decisions, is the CoC.
Let’s take a for-instance: Sign up boxes.
For years, Linux sign up allows you to record random data into your profile, office, phone number, etc. These are text, and can be anything. Now, what if there’s a rising need to add a minicom number(minix, used to be used by the deaf to send messages to an organisation, before email). As a hearing person, this is going to be a low priority for me, so I work on something else. I’ve got spare capacity, so if the project leaders are calling for help on this thing, I can go and help.
This, ultimately, builds a better over-all product, but it’s not something I’d have noticed by myself, because I’m not part of the deaf community.
In our example with NixOS, asking for someone from the community to be a representative on it is not about code quality, but about the issue of visibility. Is there some need that that section of the community needs? Is there a way that the community can do y thing to make the os as a whole more accessible? I don’t know the answer, because I’m not a member of that community, just as I’m not a member of the deaf community.
In this case, the merit, the qualification, for being on the CoC is being a member of a section of the community. It brings valuable a viewpoint, and adds a voice at the table that can make a real difference. Most coders know that having a wish list of features at the start can make it infinitely easier to add them, than having to go back an rewrite to make them happen. Having a voice that might need that feature makes a difference
The debate for CoC is about merit, but merit isn’t just stubbornly focused on a single talent, it can also be about life experience.
It is impossible to satisfy all minorities at once. The best outcome is to pick an adequate, sane person from the community with proper mindset and proper judgement, irrelevant if they’re from a minority or not.
It’s not about “satisfying the minorities”. It’s about ensuring a basic base level of respect and behaviour for people from all backgrounds. The roles you are talking about were specifically to deal with the fact there was an active problem around that minority in that community that needed dealing with. So bringing in that lived experience is absolutely important. Someone can be adequate, sane, have “proper” mindset and judgement and be from a minority that is currently being targeted with lived experience of the problem. Dealing with issues around diversity and inclusion make life easier and better for everyone: it’s well evidenced. I benefit daily from work that’s been done to make my area easier for people with disabilities despite not having one. Those only came about by people with disabilities challenging and getting in the room where decisions are made.
It’s really not that hard! If you don’t feel minoritised in your daily life and therefore don’t see the importance, fine, but all of us are only one incident or cultural shift to end up being the target so if you aren’t motivated by the plight of people you are happy to “other” than do so because one day you might be the other.
I think you are right here. By cherry-picking gender minorities we sow a dissent and we underline their “otherness” from everyone else.
I am from an ethnic minority myself, and somehow people perceive us as maniacs and killers, try to burn our houses and fire us from work. Often it’s the same people who preach equality and diversity. Somehow in my case they don’t care about “empowerment” or “representation” at all. And somehow, the only place I feel comfortable is 4chan, where no one gives a damn who you are, and everyone’s racist and sexist. To everyone else. Equally.
DEI requirements is not nepotism, but let’s take on the core issue I think you brought up: meritocracy. If you show me two people with the same level of skill and experience, I would say the one that came from the most disadvantaged environment is more qualified because they were able to get to the same level with less support.
But you brought in numbers, let me do the same. L Consider that the minority group you mentioned actually has greater barriers to participate, so those 10 people might actually perform better than 80% of the 1000 of the majority group. Assuming both groups have the same distribution of merit is a fallacy.
If the community itself is discriminating, there’s no way out than to fight or wait for an opportunity. We don’t see black empowerment in China or a pride parade in Iran.
What I saw in Nix community right now is someone proposed an affirmative action and Jon refused. I don’t see discrimination here.
pride parade in Iran.
I suggest to look at the history of Iran.
Your argument is a bit weird. People are suggesting for more diversity. Then you seem to say that’s bad because they should wait until an opportunity that people fight for more diversity? I’m not following.
Iran is ruled by IRGC right now. If the community is discriminating to begin with, you have to fight. I’m yet to see how Nix community is discriminating. What I saw is that an active developer got actually banned just for arguing against an affirmative action.
Are you reading what you wrote? It’s full of contradictions.
It seems you think that people should be free from consequences until a certain level is surpassed? That’s rather arbitrary.
What I saw is that an active developer got actually banned just for arguing against an affirmative action.
It’s often not as simple as how you summarize this. Above is awfully similar to the incorrect claim of “cancel culture”. While often that meant that people think someone should be able to do as they please without any consequences. Except for things they dislike, then there should be consequences.
We don’t see black empowerment in China or a pride parade in Iran.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
Hold up, let me just make up some numbers real quick to prove how wrong you are!
He is not wrong though.
Number aside, if you have a hard requirement that in a committee board there should be someone from a minority then you will end in a situation where the committee perform worse because the “forced” member has no merit to be in, or at least it is an very high probability.where the committee perform worse because the “forced” member
Ah, the common strawman. A committee where everyone thinks pretty much the same is somehow better than one where a few have a different opinion?
Such discussions took place decades ago when pretty much every manager was only male. And they often honestly thought they did the right thing. When there were more women forced to be managers the group as a whole got better insights into different opinions. Which helped to see that certain things could be done a different way.
That to me is history, plus rather logical.
Having a few people with different opinions is further usually good for a committee. Though some like every single person to think the same, more efficient or something. If most think the same it’s way easier to overlook something.
where the committee perform worse because the “forced” member
Ah, the common strawman. A committee where everyone thinks pretty much the same is somehow better than one where a few have a different opinion?
Sometime yes, sometime not.
It all depend on the context. The direction of a project ? Then maybe the fact that the committee has at least roughly the same vision is a good thing, it keep the project focused and progressing, as long as there is a way to offer suggestions.
A political group ? Then it is better to have more points of view, as long as you can decide something in the end.
There is not a single best solution.
Such discussions took place decades ago when pretty much every manager was only male. And they often honestly thought they did the right thing. When there were more women forced to be managers the group as a whole got better insights into different opinions. Which helped to see that certain things could be done a different way.
That to me is history, plus rather logical.
On the other hand I can point to examples where when a woman, to stay within your example, were put in charge the result were disastrous, so what ?
Maybe if we start to think that being in some groups does not inherently make you a better candidate to something than we will start to solve the problem.Having a few people with different opinions is further usually good for a committee.
As long as they know what they are talking about yes, else it is just stupid.
The point of all this discussion is that Jon Ringer objected to have an hard requirement for one person in the committee need to be from a minority, which honestly is not that stupid thing to say.
The biggest red flag here is that someone is trying to derive meaning from Eva, an anime whose religious/philosophical imagery and themes were used “just because they looked and sounded cool” (not a direct quote.) I mean I like it too, but it’s gibberish.
I’ll say this about OSS and the community around it: It’s painfully obvious at times that while the individuals working on these projects (often thanklessly) are brilliant people, they often lack the communication and project leadership skills necessary to make a project thrive. The last few posts I’ve seen on this particular issue have been extremely vague and for whatever reason just won’t come out and say what they mean. They’re verbose, go off on tangents, and beat around the bush. We must first have explained to us the plots of TV shows, movies, and other ancillary things in order to understand what likely boils down to “people with differing viewpoints cannot find common ground.” I see the linked blog post as nothing more than someone trying to work out relatively complex feelings about the time/effort they contributed to a project they no longer have faith in more than an “expose-eh.” Given that people in the comments of previous threads have boiled the issue with NixOS down to a sentence or two, I think this is an accurate view.
See: Soft skills.
Looking at this from the outside as a non Nix user, I see two things:
- The community is melting down over something.
- If this is the state of the Nix community where will the support go when it fractures?
If I was asked to evaluate NixOS for something and saw this, I’d keep looking, because this spells disaster for ongoing maintenance.
Not the drama itself should influence your judgment, but how they will deal with it.
Whenever people work together on something, there will be some drama, but if they are dealing with it, then that should be fine.
Nix and NixOS are big enough, that even if it fails, there are enough other people that will continue it, maybe under a different name.
Even it that causes a hard fork, which I currently think is unlikely, there are may examples where that worked and resolved itself over time, without too much of burden on the users, meaning there are clear migration processes available: owncloud/nextcloud, Gogs/Gitea/Forgejo, redis/valkey, …
Guix is a pretty good evolution of nix IMHO. I like both through
I’m not gonna read this person’s Evangelion analogy, but I did go to the trouble to hunt down what Jon Ringer actually did.
I don’t agree with him, and representation of particular minority groups, including gender minorities, are important when they are particularly under attack. It is important to actively resist the marginalization of groups under attack by elevating their voices.
That said, I’m not sure what Jon did was actually “actionable”. I’d say, stop listening to him and treating him as a leader? As someone with lots of close trans friends, I think this guy lowkey sucks, but I think this suspension is weird.
I’m not gonna read this person’s Evangelion analogy, but I did go to the trouble to hunt down what Jon Ringer actually did.
Here’s a link.
Thanks. From the same page I found this which has a tl;dr which is maybe useful for other readers.
The open letter is very vague at some points. It tries to outline some real issues that require years of context to fully grasp. Without having this necessary context - it is very hard to follow some of the points made, and evidence seems very poor.
This repository aims to list some key points that are easy to understand without all of the context. This is a compilation of damning evidence for Eelco’s leadership, essentially.
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
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Eelco wrote a response that largely dismisses the issues brought up, and advertises his company’s community as a substitute for Nix community
Through some further exploration I’ve also been able to find this which seems relevent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neon_Genesis_Evangelion
Here’s some points the source states:
In 2015, 15 years after a global cataclysm called the Second Impact, teenager Shinji Ikari is summoned to the futuristic city of Tokyo-3 by his estranged father Gendo Ikari, who is the director of the special paramilitary force Nerv. Shinji witnesses United Nations forces battling an Angel, one of a race of monstrous beings whose awakening was foretold in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Because of the Angels’ near-impenetrable force-fields, Nerv’s Evangelion bio-machines, which are synchronized to their pilots’ nervous systems and possess their own force-fields, are the only weapons capable of fighting the Angels. Nerv officer Misato Katsuragi escorts Shinji into the Nerv complex beneath Tokyo-3, where Gendo pressures him into piloting Evangelion Unit-01 against the Angel. Without training, Shinji is quickly overwhelmed, causing the Evangelion to go berserk and savagely kill the Angel on its own.Following hospitalization, Shinji moves in with Misato and settles into life in Tokyo-3. In his second battle, Shinji defeats an Angel but runs away afterward, distraught. Misato confronts Shinji, and he decides to remain a pilot. Shinji and Nerv’s crew must defeat the remaining fourteen Angels to prevent the Third Impact, a global cataclysm that would destroy the world. Evangelion Unit-00 is repaired shortly afterward, and Shinji tries to befriend its pilot Rei Ayanami, a mysterious and socially isolated teenage girl. With Rei’s help, Shinji defeats another Angel. They are joined by Evangelion Unit-02’s pilot, the multitalented but insufferable teenager Asuka Langley Sōryu, who is German-Japanese-American. The three of them manage to defeat several Angels, and as Shinji adjusts to his new role as a pilot, he gradually becomes more confident and self-assured. Asuka moves in with Shinji, and they begin to develop confusing feelings for one another, kissing at her provocation.
After being absorbed by an Angel, Shinji breaks free thanks to Eva-01 acting on its own. He is later forced to fight Evangelion Unit-03, who has become infected, and its pilot, his friend and classmate Toji Suzuhara, becomes incapacitated and permanently disabled. Asuka loses her self-confidence following a defeat and spirals into depression, which is worsened by her next fight against an Angel who attacks her mind. It forces her to relive her worst fears and childhood trauma, resulting in a mental breakdown. In the next battle, Rei sacrifices herself to self-destruct Unit-00 and save Shinji. Misato and Shinji visit the hospital, where they find Rei alive, but claiming she is “the third Rei”. Misato forces the scientist Ritsuko Akagi to reveal the dark secrets of Nerv, the Evangelion boneyard, and the Dummy Plug system, which operates using clones of Rei, who was created using the DNA of Shinji’s mother, Yui Ikari. This succession of events leaves Shinji emotionally scarred and alienated from the rest of the characters. Kaworu Nagisa replaces the catatonic Asuka as Unit-02’s pilot and befriends Shinji, gaining his trust. He is revealed to be the final foretold Angel, Tabris, and fights Shinji, realizing that he must die to allow humanity to survive. He asks Shinji to kill him, and he hesitates but eventually kills Kaworu; an event that causes him to be overridden with guilt.
After the final Angel is defeated, Gendo triggers the “Human Instrumentality Project”, a forced evolution of humanity in which the souls of mankind are merged for benevolent purposes. He believes that if unified, humanity could overcome the loneliness and alienation that has eternally plagued them. Shinji’s soul grapples with the reason for his existence and reaches an epiphany that he needs others to thrive and to accept himself by seeing a potential Shinji in another reality. This enables him to destroy the wall of negative emotions that torment him and unites with the others, who congratulate him.
OP, you should add that link to the body of your post. It seems to be the best source so far.
Thanks.Done.
-
Thank you. Reading the blog was a complete train wreck that left me more confused then informed.
My personal bias: I really don’t like NixOS, tried it for four months and found that the config file was an annoying way of handling general system and package management (especially since there was a completely parallel nix package manager with a cli interface which I find redundant at best)
Bro actin like he got some serious dirt on the project with his emails, but all he talks about is evangeleon, how moderation is hard, one blogpost from the big boss of the project that he eleges (idk how to spell that) wasn’t accepted well (no sauce tho), and how some maintainer(s?) left. This article is a waste of time, and adds nothing to the discussion
alleges*
here’s a better source thanks to OP for sharing it in a different thread.
Really interesting but I still dont get the title, you might rename it to “TL;DR about the NixOS drama” or something?
The post title is the title of the blog and I’ve added the (==Goodbye NixOS) part to show Fediverse readers it is about NixOS. After several people commented, I have, after a suggestion of a commenter, added the tl;dr (written by another person apparently involved in the NixOS drama) in the post body. After all this I prefer to leave the post title as is.
I love Evangelion. I don’t love this stupid bullshit.
Windows: Ad Ridden
macOS: Not Enough Freedom Apparently
Linux: Community Arguments
Every OS has issues.
Yeah but here’s the thing. The linux community actually has measurable and immediate impact on the OS they choose to involve themselves in.
Have an issue with MacOS or Windows? The absolute best case scenario is that you complain to the devs and they might fix it in a future update.
Have an issue on Linux? Luckily the community you are a part of is also the development team, so you can work together to directly make changes. If those changes aren’t to your satisfaction, you can even find some like-minded people and start your own distro.
deleted by creator
So basically it’s a matter of transparency (or lack there of)?
Sorry, it’s a lot to read and reading OCD doesn’t help.Yes, it’s a lot to read but I’m just the messenger and not capable to do a tl;dr.
- Posted because the blog author is a person that I’ve seen blog posts from before, and maybe it fits with the previous posts on Lemmy about NixOS. Here a video of what the person made with NixOS booting an old Super Mario 64 game https://cdn.xeiaso.net/file/christine-static/static/blog/boot2mario.mp4 which shows the magic of NixOS. Related blog post https://xeiaso.net/blog/super-bootable-64-2020-05-06/
I’m not entirely sure what I just read… … and I don’t want to leave behind NixOS after running it for fucking years. Ugh…
DON’T RUIN IT FOR US
I would also like to have made this a video of some kind to make it more personal (mostly so you can hear my voice and intonation/emotion in it), but it would take me too long to make it at my current production schedule timelines. I’ve already been spending a fucking month working on a mostly done Pikmin 3 speedrun video that has been constantly interrupted by this shit. As much as I’d like to do this, I don’t think it’s in the cards.
This post contains massive spoilers for Neon Genesis Evangelion, The End of Evangelion, and the four part revival Evangelion movies.
A Cruel Angel’s Thesis
In order to properly convey the level of emotions that I feel about this situation, I need you to understand the weight of The End of Evangelion.
I can’t get through this article without leaving quotes of it as comments.
