this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2024
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TL;DR the nix community forums are toxic from all sides
There's been a spout between core contributors + the foundation vs a loud portion of the community. Some related to code, but from what I've seen, the loudest have been about social issues and values.
It all boiled over when a military contractor wanted to join the list of sponsors for one of the conferences (upcoming on in USA?). That caused a lot of tension, the foundation came to a decision ~~not~~ to accept sponsorship and tried to put sponsorship rules in place for future sponsors. These were however perceived as too blurry by some parts of the community as they wouldn't prevent such a situation from happening again.
In the aftermath, a frequent contributor (John something?) was suspended and we're now here.
On top of everything an open letter was released targeting the creator of nix (Eelco Dolstra). They claim his benevolent dictatorship is not so benevolent and accuse him of multiple things.
There are people who just get on with writing code and are very helpful in the forums and other community channels, but the, let's call it "management style", of some people on the project is not beyond reproach. Big egos and a mix of bringing in issues external to the project has made the forums become a very unfun place to be.
Edited to clarify that they actually did accept sponsorship from the defense contractor.
Anti Commercial-AI license
This part is actually not true, they are still a sponsor of NixCon NA 2024.
https://2024-na.nixcon.org/#sponsors
They proposed a policy to handle deciding sponsorships in the future, but it's pretty lackluster. It basically just says the people in power promise to do a good job, pinky swear.
https://github.com/NixOS/foundation/blob/bb7af14ae242ab87c8312bb4122b2a3cd184462d/policies/sponsorship_policy.md
Ah, thanks for the correction. I didn't follow it closely.
Anti Commercial-AI license
What is this Anti Commercial-AI license you have on all your messages?