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[return to "A leadership crisis in the Nix community"]
1. cosmic+Gc[view] [source] 2024-04-29 15:54:41
>>elikog+(OP)
> Anduril, a military contractor that uses NixOS, has repeatedly attempted to become a sponsor of NixCon, which did not go over well with the community

Something similar happened in the Haskell community, where some people called for Anduril job postings to be removed.

Nix is a software project, not a social movement. The goals of Nix are entirely separate from how the software is used.

I really like Coinbase's statement that is is mission focused (https://www.coinbase.com/en-ca/blog/coinbase-is-a-mission-fo...). Anything that isn't directly related to its mission is out-of-scope. I wish the same was true about software projects like Nix.

If you care about the way your software is used, then by all means, say it in the license! Of course, such software won't get used much.

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2. pantsf+uk[view] [source] 2024-04-29 16:23:52
>>cosmic+Gc
It's wild to see how much hate Anduril gets from the same people who have statements supporting Ukraine in their READMEs or have licenses preventing Russians from using their software.

How can you demand support for Ukraine, but then get upset by the people who are meeting actual needs for the war effort?

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3. fabric+6o[view] [source] 2024-04-29 16:36:54
>>pantsf+uk
Anduril started by building tech to hunt poor people crossing the southern border of the US. Their CEO is a right wing extremist. How you can say this is the same as supporting Ukraine against Russia aggression is obviously telling more about you than about anyone else.
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4. ndrisc+Hu[view] [source] 2024-04-29 17:04:39
>>fabric+6o
Of all the things to be upset with a "defense" company over, actual literal defense (as in border monitoring and sensors) is a funny one. That stood out to me in the open letter as well. Why not the weapons systems that are apparently "somewhere between an autonomous drone and a reusable missile"? Would people be as upset at Boeing as a sponsor, or would that just be boring? Would people be as upset if Google or Facebook were sponsors? Google of course runs a global surveillance network, and says they're proud to offer AI services to the DoD:

https://cloud.google.com/gov/federal-defense-and-intel

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5. fabric+6D[view] [source] 2024-04-29 17:47:29
>>ndrisc+Hu
Yes I believe it's acceptable to be upset at any company that undermines democracy. That very likely includes most big tech companies, and absolutely includes Google and Facebook.
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6. ndrisc+NE[view] [source] 2024-04-29 17:55:12
>>fabric+6D
I suppose what's interesting to me is why is no one (except maybe you) upset over e.g. this sponsorship list for LinuxCon:

https://events.linuxfoundation.org/archive/2022/open-source-...

with Google right there as a diamond sponsor and Meta as a platinum sponsor. IBM is also a diamond sponsor, and we've all heard about them and the literal Nazis (and the time they got a license exception for JSLint to be able to use it for evil).

Or perhaps the same people are upset over things like Linux sponsors, but everyone ignores them in that context?

The LWN article indicates 24 maintainers have removed themselves, which appears to be ~0.7% of the maintainer list. Were these people particularly impactful? Is there an actual crisis here?

I also don't really get it; are they going to use a different (worse) OS because of this? Or just stop pushing changes upstream for packages they care about (either staying out of date or maintaining a personal fork)? It seems like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.

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7. oivey+U02[view] [source] 2024-04-30 03:20:42
>>ndrisc+NE
An even bigger irony is that one of major community moderators who is mad is an “ethical software engineer” working at Google.
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