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[return to "A leadership crisis in the Nix community"]
1. steve1+Bj[view] [source] 2024-04-29 16:21:02
>>elikog+(OP)
People seem to forget that a lot if not most of IT has some form of military background/funding behind it.

Be it the first computers, the Internet, RISC CPUs, BSD UNIX and much much more.

You’re free not to like this fact of course, but then using the technologies anyway is a bit of a double standard.

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2. colins+1h1[view] [source] 2024-04-29 20:57:53
>>steve1+Bj
i'm fascinated by this because a lot of my involvement in open source is a pretty direct reaction against state actors like NSA who undermine my privacy. and if i wanted to i could point out that the military took other things away from our field too, like Alan Turing. but ultimately, i think the argument is just that any institution which dumps a lot of money into a space deserves loyalty for that alone, but where's the substance in that? i mean sure, "don't bite the hand that feeds you", but also if you're grown and aren't so desperate for food anymore, then it's completely reasonable, arguably expected, for you to act on principles higher than money.
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3. steve1+D62[view] [source] 2024-04-30 04:29:48
>>colins+1h1
> then it's completely reasonable, arguably expected, for you to act on principles higher than money.

Well that was kind of my point. I see people act on principles of morality when it doesn't negatively affect their convenience and at the same time ignore those principles when it affects their convenience. For me that is the definition of a double standard.

That's it. I'm not saying we should put these people in jail ;)

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4. colins+Eg2[view] [source] 2024-04-30 06:33:12
>>steve1+D62
i've spent two years of my life getting NixOS to work well on my mobile phone because i value things like privacy. i assure you, actually ditching Android/iOS on principle is in fact very much not convenient. i do not see the link.
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5. steve1+Gi2[view] [source] 2024-04-30 06:55:48
>>colins+Eg2
You are using a mobile phone based on a RISC CPU (presumably) and the Internet. Those are the conveniences I was speaking of.
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6. colins+ln2[view] [source] 2024-04-30 07:49:38
>>steve1+Gi2
closed source CPUs are also a thing i have invested inconvenient amounts of time in trying to overcome [1]. i expect by the latter decades of my life it will actually be feasible.

i'll be honest i don't understand what point you're trying to make. if i owe some loyalty to the military for the conveniences of their products, then would not Anduril owe me loyalty for the convenience of my products? the actual request to Anduril/military is way less than that, btw -- it's less "don't use our product" as "don't advertise in our spaces".

1: https://git.uninsane.org/colin/fdtd-coremem

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7. steve1+Hp2[view] [source] 2024-04-30 08:13:07
>>colins+ln2
> it's less "don't use our product" as "don't advertise in our spaces"

I guess the problem here is the definition of "our". If Anduril sponsors development of nix, it's as much "their" product and "their" space as it is yours.

Or in other words, they are included in "ours". You might not like that, but that doesn't change the facts.

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8. colins+hy2[view] [source] 2024-04-30 09:36:09
>>steve1+Hp2
i don't disagree with this. it takes care to figure out how to actually share the commons. despite my very obvious (at this point) anti-state motivations for being involved in open source, i've actually kept that discourse away from the NixOS spaces for two years. it's only after Anduril is reshaping those spaces to be pro-military that i bring my own world views into this space overtly.

i'm not certain of the ideal approach. i would be content with an agreement that our shared spaces be neither overtly pro nor anti military -- to the degree which this is possible or enforceable. but it is extremely difficult to actually establish consensual agreement on that, and attempting to force it (in any direction) leads to the type of escalatory situation you're watching unfold now.

my most honest takeaway is that NixOS doesn't deserve to be some monolithic thing. communities grow and reshape into loosely connected smaller communities as a pretty natural effect of success every day, and do so peacefully. there are plenty of spaces occupied by people i don't get along with (say, hyprland, or lemmy.ml), and i simply keep my distance. but nixpkgs is a monorepo, with intense infrastructure needs that require a foundation/governing body to meet. for as long as all of our work is so closely linked to that governing body and brand, there's little way for us to arrange ourselves into the more socially intuitive structures which allow for that type of "live and let live" approach wherein we all flourish even without finding consensus.

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