The installer issues are annoying. I just barely started using Nix, and I'm completely new to it. I wasted an entire day tinkering with the default Nix install to enable flakes and other features that are apparently experimental, even though they are widely used by the community. In the end, I did use the Determinate Systems installer simply because, on Mac OS at least, it provides Flakes out of the box, functioning package search, and the Zero-to-Nix guide assumes you are using their installer. It's hard for me to judge why exactly this is a bad thing. The site seems to just list it as an aside for the ineptitude (intentional or not) of the Nix maintainers.
Not sure what you are talking about wrt the dates. Why did you ignore the Meson example? And here is another example: https://mastodon.delroth.net/@delroth/112310645064859357 This is a guy who has implicit authority to veto anything. Sometimes he does so, and sometimes he just comments on something perhaps not necessarily intending to veto it but that is what happens anyway.
What really caught my eye was this discussion thread on the RFC98 PR (https://github.com/nixos/rfcs/pull/98#discussion_r683938993) where one of the signatories of this open letter kept arguing for why fascism should be included, in the sense of:
Do not allow the Nix community to be a place for spreading ideas rooted in fascism or bigotry
To me this whole thing exemplifies the worst aspects of the "code of conduct" initiatives you see in various projects. Ostensibly a reasonable idea that could really improve the participation experience especially for people from, as they call it, marginalized communities, but with the end result being that it back fires and makes people come across as radical ideologists.
If they could've, they would've. Unfortunately, this has been bit of a problem in the Nix community for a while. No one mentioned in this letter is an "abusive" "right-wing" "concern troll" by any stretch of imagination. Actual behavior that kind would most likely result in an unanimous ban. But none of the evidence buried in this wall of text supports that assumption. Whether the authors realize it or not, this letter consists almost entirely of ad hominems and accusations of ulterior motives.
Just as an aside, I wrote "almost," because I do think the handling of the sponsorship was an issue here despite the letter framing this as not the central issue. Military sponsors aren't a great fit for a community of international volunteers, especially one trying to put AI on drones. I'm not comfortable with that either. But were the accused members of the Nix community abusing and concern trolling to push a right wing agenda? Definitely not.
The other issues though, are just disagreements. The letter is taking screenshots of random disagreements and claiming it as proof of, again, "abusive" "right-wing" "concern trolling" behavior. Some vocal members of the Nix community love to do this. All. The. Time.
They disagreed with me. They didn't do this or that. That means they must be against social justice. They're persecuting minorities. They're concern trolling. Oh, here's another person trying to stay away from all the drama. They're complicit too.
This is the stated mentality of these vocal members. This is also the reason I avoid posting in NixOS Discourse and Matrix off topic chat channels. It just feels like some are more interested playing Game of Thrones. It's not representative of the community, but I don't want to attract unnecessary attention from the vocal few. I think this is harmful because destroys healthy decision making on difficult issues by excluding people not looking to pick a fight. Fun fact, the same sort of drama also played out when #nixos IRC migrated to Matrix following the Freenode incident.
Actual concrete example. The Nixpkgs repository includes a file containing a list of maintainers. A PR was made against this file, and one member of the community asked the PR author if they can make the maintainer name the same as their GitHub username.
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/120729#discussion_r621...
And this exploded. Way out of proportion. Some were pouncing on the member who made that comment. To me, the response seems far more abusive than the original comment ever was.
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/120729#discussion_r621...
Accusations were flown, like "denying someone of a name." Like, seriously?
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/120729#discussion_r622...
I feel bad about bringing this back up, but it only seems fair to show the whole picture given the drama.
Note that you can't discuss this open letter -- or any issues of that nature -- openly in the official places (NixOS Discourse & Matrix), because there is a risk of getting tarred as "fascist" or "concern-troll" before getting banned. Someone named Ailunarenth respectfully engaged in such a discussion only to get banned:
https://twitter.com/sridca/status/1782200842571198962
If you post in Discourse, it is likely to get "unlisted" (meaning censored from Google and other search pages) by the mods. A case in point: you can't reach this post without a direct link (the open letter alludes to Jon Ringer being one of these 'fascists'):
https://discourse.nixos.org/t/objection-to-minority-represen...
I myself got banned for a picture of a steak and a link on my website, back in November last year:
But none of this is surprising because "ejecting fascists" (where 'fascist' means "someone whose opinion I don't like") has been the theme of these activists since 2021. See the downvotes in this sensible comment: https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/98#issuecomment-902913333
As for the dates, I am talking about this bullet point from the letter, quoted in full:
> puck having to remind him multiple times to even read her PR message at
> all and think about if he could be mistaken
> https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/9911#issuecomment-19252073...
> (after eelco ignored the PR for quite a while, also!)
Clicking that link takes us to a PR that was opened on 2024-02-02. The initial response from the Nix author comes 7 minutes later. Puck has multiple back and forths with other members Github, but her next interaction with the Nix author comes the next day on 2024-02-03. This is also the first time in the conversation where she "reminds him ... to even read her PR message". There's a second interaction later that same day during which she does similar, but it's worth noting this is pointing to a different message and appears to be less a "reminder to read" and more re-iterating what they feel is their argument against the Nix author's own arguments. Puck then continues to have back and forth with other commenters but as of today, there has been no further comments from the Nix author after 2024-02-03, and no further comments from Puck after 2024-02-08.
This hardly to my mind qualifies either as "having to remind him multiple times to even read her PR message at all" or "after eelco ignored the PR for quite a while, also!" So as I said it's a fairly weak claim, and feels more like a "bastard eating crackers" reaction to the PR than an actual showing of poor behavior.
As for the "Meson example", I didn't ignore it. As I stated in my comment, I had at that point read two of the referenced discussions in detail, and thus commented on them. I didn't comment in the "Meson example" for the simple reason that I hadn't read it.
I have read it now, and equally find it confusing.
1) The claim in the letter is that the proposal has "passed RFC, for five years", yet the RFC itself only appears to have been opened 2022-08-24. It's been a while since grade school for me, and I'll admit COVID has warped all our sense of time, but I'm pretty sure 2022 is not 5 years ago.
2) The first completed working implementation of the change doesn't appear to have been done until 2023-01-18 (https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/132#issuecomment-13874661...). Again this is much less than 5 years old.
3) On 2023-03-20, the author of the PR for this change states:
> the RFC has made it past most of the early stages and the current goal is to achieve parity with the current buildsystem before replacing it.
(https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/132#issuecomment-14768433...)
Again, this doesn't seem to fit at all with the claim that the proposal has "passed RFC, for five years"
4) On 2023-11-01, the Nix author themselves asks for updates on the RFC implementation, an action which doesn't seem congruent with someone who is willy nilly single handedly blocking things and being a disruption to the process. And the author of the PR states:
>the main block is actually a lack of free time for the main devs!
(https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/132#issuecomment-17890770...)
This doesn't seem to point to evidence that the Nix author is single handedly holding up this process.
5) On 2024-03-21 the PR author notes:
> currently working on adding support to build nix-perl, waiting for assistance
(https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/132#issuecomment-20135356...)
Not to sound like a broken record, but if the issue isn't finished as of a few weeks ago, it can hardly be considered to be held up by the Nix author for 5 years.
I agree that one of the links in the open letter is to a comment on a PR from 2019, which is indeed 5 year ago, and does indeed contain the Nix author commenting that they are skeptical of the change because "he doesn't know meson but knows his own build system". But given that there's an entire wealth of history on the topic since then, including progress on the feature that appears completely unobstructed by the Nix author and an open PR that is a mere 3 weeks old for a current implementation, I find myself again unconvinced of this rampant bad behavior on the part of the Nix author. And I reiterate again that these complaints are very weak and don't do much to support the open letter at best, and act as contrary evidence at worst.
Again there might be other context to be had that is missing, but if one is going to write a massive "open letter" complaining about bad behavior, I expect the links in that letter to point to actual bad behavior, and or provide the relevant context necessary to show how what appears to be normal dissent is a passive aggressive continuation of obstruction. I have to assume the links one provides in an open letter is their strongest evidence, and if this is all the authors have... I am unconvinced.
With respect to the xz stuff I simply don't agree. Are we never adding new maintainers to open source projects anymore until xz is no longer top of mind in a couple of years? Note that a commit bit does not imply the ability to make a release in many cases. The complete release can still be done by a smaller group.
>certainly not when that reluctance is in the face of a coordinated pressure campaign complaining about a lack of speed.
The screenshot is from before the xz backdoor so it definitely wasn't top of mind for them. And they (including Eelco) even agreed in a previous meeting to add more maintainers: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/2023-06-02-nix-team-meeting-mi...
It's not about security, it's about being in charge. I don't think the letter is very good, but even before this letter and without ever using Nix, I knew about the Meson PR, and many other things that are taking a very long time in Nix.
I see no real reason to doubt that one guy is holding the project back. You are talking about "rampant bad behavior" but that is not necessary to severely frustrate a project. Simply bad leadership is enough. I don't think the letter means to convey there is rampant bad behavior either. I wonder if there is anything except blatant bullying that would convince you that Eelco needs to relinquish his position.
Source: https://hachyderm.io/@leftpaddotpy/112248186696362113
What they wrote: "there's a lot of work still to do on getting fascists out of the community and everyone is quite exhausted from the fight to get this passed. however. the fascists will get kicked out."
And where they wrote, in a post right below, that "fyi: if you still have concerns please talk to piegames, they're very involved in making this happen" - the person "piegames" being referred to here is a moderator of NixOS.
An 18000 commit user just left NixOS FYI
https://discourse.nixos.org/t/major-nixpkgs-contributor-leav...