GNU Guix provides state-of-the-art package management features such as transactional upgrades and roll-backs, reproducible build environments, unprivileged package management, and per-user profiles. It uses low-level mechanisms from the Nix package manager, but packages are defined as native Guile modules, using extensions to the Scheme language—which makes it nicely hackable.
https://blog.ezyang.com/2016/05/announcing-cabal-new-build-n...
https://cabal.readthedocs.io/en/2.0/nix-local-build-overview...
Also cabal isn't positioned to be a system level package manager. Haskell programmers are the type to want both their application builds and system dependencies to be reproducible and predictable.
> Stop being lazy, go back to engineering first principles and it makes little sense to stay with Nix. Guix or any rewrite as a library in a well-developed language* makes more sense.
Getting Guix packages to be as complete as nixpkgs isn't a matter of laziness though. One person wouldn't be able to do it no matter how disciplined they were.
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.
His article is specifically about pretend free/open source licenses that restrict what software can be used for. But the conclusion applies to similar behaviors around the entire free/open source ecosystem like conferences: it will just drive participants away and strengthen the position of proprietary solutions instead.
https://thenewstack.io/how-the-u-s-air-force-deployed-kubern...
>The result would be a system that you could not count on for any purpose. For each task you wish to do, you'd have to check lots of licenses to see which parts of your system are off limits for that task. Not only for the components you explicitly use, but also for the hundreds of components that they link with, invoke, or communicate with.
>How would users respond to that? I think most of them would use proprietary systems. Allowing usage restrictions in free software would mainly push users towards nonfree software. Trying to stop users from doing something through usage restrictions in free software is as ineffective as pushing on an object through a long, straight, soft piece of cooked spaghetti. As one wag put it, this is “someone with a very small hammer seeing every problem as a nail, and not even acknowledging that the nail is far too big for the hammer.”
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freed...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software_movement
[2] https://www.mend.io/blog/open-source-licenses-trends-and-pre...
>The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
>The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
>The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
>The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms
This just isn't true. See "Transparency about jonringers suspension"[0] and also notice it's a suspension and not a ban. Note that Jon's post to reddit titled it a "ban".
Which side seems to be trying to stir things up here?
Also, before that discourse post there has always been a public moderation log here:
https://github.com/NixOS/moderation/commit/c0f7744701cba40f0...
0: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/why-was-jon-ringer-banned-from...
I thought it wasn't a big issue until I saw how hard one side fought to keep the name "master".
After that I changed my mind and name all of my branches main and give a little push to projects I'm part of to do the same.
Plus, words do have power:
The author talks about the productivity losses rising from social-issue disagreement in the workplace, but it's rare that you can point to a press release from a C-suite employee and say "this specific document caused one in twenty staff members to leave immediately". The productivity destruction at Coinbase from that press release was enormous.
https://www.coinbase.com/en-gb/blog/a-follow-up-to-coinbase-...
Indeed. If you look at pull request 10513, you see Eelco propose a bug fix, another person point out the flaws in his approach, and Eelco subsequently closing his own pull request and filing a new PR with a different approach.
https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/10513
The save-nix-together signatories describe this as “ignoring other people and only considering his way”.
I suppose they were counting on no one bothering to read their citations?
https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1cd5fod/in_case_im_u...
https://github.com/tvlfyi/tvix
To me, the perfect solution would be to have a base like Nix/Tvix you can build on top of, for example to make a package manager for your language, and have the users of that language's PM interact with TOML or JSON.
Obviously there's the "people were angry last time, they will likely be angry this time". But that's projecting personal/political views into a sponsorship.
What should have been the right course of action? I'm not sure. "Tech is easy, people are hard"
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford#Software_lic...
Open letter to the NixOS foundation (50 comments) >>40107370
The dire state of NixOS's moderation culture (76 comments) >>40166912
---
Additionally, these r/NixOS submissions may be of interest:
Jon Ringer: "In case I'm unable to return, wish you all the best" (348 comments) https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1cd5fod/in_case_im_u...
Transparency about jonringer’s suspension (153 comments) https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1ceeg8h/transparency...
Thoughts on Jon Ringer's temporary suspension (71 comments) https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1ceiz36/thoughts_on_...
Moderation no-go zones (55 comments; ongoing) https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1cfv8vo/moderation_n...
---
Finally, the RFC to improve the situation:
No MIC sponsoring would have been the right course of action. No matter your sympathies, or alliances in your case.
To even think of the sponsorship as a valid idea is US centric ignorance. Outside the US people don't get the "Thank you for your service" indoctrination and are way, way more reluctant to work with the MIC.
If you knew anything about Germany, the issue with the university host should not have surprised you at all. It's not some modern outrage of wokeism, it's a decades old academic foundation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_clause
It's hard to find a German university without: http://www.zivilklausel.de/index.php/bestehende-zivilklausel...
Losing VOC support, eh?! Have you been to a CCC event? MIC sponsorship of Nix would lose you more or less the entire German hacker scene, at the very least.
A national defense company sponsoring an international software project, not expecting uproar... I don't know what to say. It's beyond plausibly idiotic. Objectively, completely out of touch.
Such a license would not be considered open source or Free Software.
Someone else posted this link about a similar situation in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford#Software_lic...
If it was suicide at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Death
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".
Hygiene, folks.
Also could be the fact that the entire reason OpenBSD exists is that De Raadt got cancelled out of NetBSD: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/1994/12/23/0000.ht...
Sure, but what does that have to do with the Civil clause that you mentioned? It doesn't say anything about sponsorship, but it does say about "used by": "Any participation of science and research with military use or purpose must be rejected". Obviously, this cannot be true, since it can be applied to anything that is used by the military, including paper, towels, pens, computers in general, water, etc.
> Are you even aware, I am referencing the issue of a Nix conference hosted at a German university
I am, and? I think you missed my point?
> I linked a Wikipedia article, read it, if you're genuinely interested and not debating in bad faith.
I did. The Civil clause of some universities does sound fine ("strive to", "focused on"), but the others make a blanket statement that is very hard to take seriously. Obviously, they don't take the statement to the letter, and in fact it's hard to tell what they aren't supposed to do (if anything), unless perhaps you look at the other universities. Even then, none of those clauses say anything that can be applied to hosting a conference with military sponsorship but not to contributing to Nix.
Regardless, I don't think what you linked to is well known outside Germany. You can judge by the extent and completeness of that Wikipedia article. I'm European (EU), went to a European (EU) university and I had never heard of such a clause.
To answer to your point:
> To even think of the sponsorship as a valid idea is US centric ignorance. Outside the US people don't get the "Thank you for your service" indoctrination and are way, way more reluctant to work with the MIC.
I think you're generalizing a wee bit too much -- I'm not from the US and I think there's plenty of indoctrination to go around, and yet I don't think rejecting this sponsorship is in accordance with open source and Free Software values, philosophy and spirit. You can go read about it here -- and notice how it says several times that the point is to include everyone: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
To be honest, I think the mistake with Nixcon was not Anduril, but rather, to host the conference at a German university.
To me at least, there is even a difference between the military and private companies profiting off war and suffering. I would rather have the Bundeswehr around than Anduril. Just because it's something of a necessary evil, doesn't mean I respect the people who seek this career, who want to engineer and sell death.
My stance on the issue is irrelevant. The devision caused in the Nix community was predictable. It was objectively an idiotic idea considering cultural and consequential differences. Even a pro-MIC person should realize this.
And let's not forget the conflict of interest of Nix's VIPs here in this particular matter, greatly shading any presumption of good-faith arguments. It's been wildly stupid.
And lastly, FYI, these sponsorships do have strings attached, especially when money matters:
https://www.computerworld.com/article/1338390/darpa-pulls-fu...
People who donate to Trump are mostly people who are fed up with the way the USofA is being run by the current incumbent, i.e. they are people who are fed up with the bullshit. The mere fact that you don't like Trump as a person does not make those people non-'democrats' (you forgot the quotes around that word, 'democrats'). The type of rhetoric you're spouting polarises the discourse and does nothing for the democratic (sans quotes) process. May the best candidate win, granted the choice goes between two sub-optimal candidates [1] but that seems to be the way things go in that/your(?) country.
As an aside, can you tell me what irks you so much about Trump's policies - not Trump as a person, his policies - which makes you think so bad of people who support him? I think it safe to assume those people support him because they liked his policies, not because they are enamoured of his personality. Now that even CNN - not directly a MAGA propaganda outlet - publishes that More than half, 55%, of all Americans say they see Trump’s presidency as a success while [r]egarding Biden’s presidency so far, 61% say it’s a failure [2] there does seem to be a majority of people who support those policies versus the current ones.
[1] Biden being a long past hist due date habitual liar and grifter who has made his family profit wildly from his near half century in government, Trump being an egomaniacal billionaire who likes nothing better than to be at the centre of attention and is more than willing to let silly details like truth slide to get to that position.
[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/28/politics/biden-trump-nost...
Seems like a pretty easy win for a majority of voters. Militarization shouldn't be the only imho, but some kind of process needs to happen there. People paying coyotes and dying in the river and desert is wrong. People being stuffed in cages and treated poorly is wrong. Letting everyone in unchecked and unfettered is also wrong.
As it is, the rust-in-Nix and bazel-in-Nix stories are both pretty terrible, while the Python one is actually not too bad: https://github.com/nix-community/poetry2nix (barring these 4000 lines of horrible hacks: https://github.com/nix-community/poetry2nix/blob/master/over... and these 27000 lines of telling Nix which Python buildsystem every package ever happens to use: https://github.com/nix-community/poetry2nix/blob/master/over...)