zlacker

>>elikog+(OP)
> In short, Dolstra is acting as "the effective Benevolent Dictator for Life (BDFL)" of the project, even though the NixOS Foundation's charter doesn't grant anyone that authority.

This is silly - authority in a software community doesn’t come from a nonprofit charter. Being founder is also no guarantee of authority, but it is more relevant because it’s rooted in actions and outcomes.

The more I observe from the sidelines of open source the less attention I pay to these sorts of disputes. In the end they are all adjudicated by delivering useful software and updates quickly to end users. Whoever does that better “wins.”

Sometimes this is the founder of the project and sometimes not. In general I think it’s a mistake to think anyone cares all the much about anything beyond the license, capabilities of the software, and how quickly the community/maintainers fix bugs. They may say they do but people who are taking software for free are in no position to dictate much and at the end of the day they know and accept it (especially something like who sponsors a conference, who is the keynote speaker (Rails incident) etc)

>>educti+aj
The letter's entire criticism is that Dolstra is clinging to that position through an extended, conflict-of-interest-ridden campaign of toxic behavior and that this toxic behavior is preventing Nix from "delivering useful software and updates quickly to end users."

>>saulrh+Gm
Right and if that’s all true he will ignore them and they will eventually fork and bury him. But personally I try to ignore letters like this especially if I’m not personally in the community (but even then sometimes) because words are cheap.