It became evident after the second time though that this was very on purpose and it was known there would be an issue.
Personally, I think accepting a sponsorship is a step too far: it’s an implicit admission that Nix is associated with the defense industry. Some communities are okay with this, but such a move will definitely alienate a good chunk of people. They and other defense companies should of course be allowed to participate in the community and contribute to Nix.
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"
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.
Wait, what? Are you saying German universities are forbidden from contributing to Nix/NixOS, which is used by Anduril?
Or say, the RISC-V ecosystem, which may be used as chips driving military weapons?
... or the Linux kernel? Heck, any OS at all?
Are you even aware, I am referencing the issue of a Nix conference hosted at a German university, or are you in political autopilot drive-by mode?
I linked a Wikipedia article, read it, if you're genuinely interested and not debating in bad faith.
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.
I was just giving an example of a wider sentiment on MIC involvement outside the US. The specifics don't matter at all. In much of Europe working for or with MIC is not widely accepted and makes many people uneasy.
To point is cultural ignorance in an international project.
Airbus alone employs 40,000 people in the defense sector and there are many, many more MIC companies in Europe where many people are happy to work at (for the record, I'm not one of them). Also, all European countries have a military and buy weapons, and probably all of them also manufacture some weapons or others (microstates being the exception). Some of them even have mandatory drafts, I think.
As an example, I'd be shocked if an Airbus sponsorship would ever be rejected in Europe (perhaps Germany being the exception now that I'm familiar with the Civil clause).
Honestly, you sound like someone with a heavy anti-US and anti-MIC bias (and admittedly, I'm also known to take pleasure in anti-US and anti-MIC prejudices, but my concerns don't intersect this particular scenario at all).
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...