open letter to the NixOS foundation
save-nix-together.org

this thread fucking sucks for me to have to post, but the linked open letter is an important read. none of the systemic issues pertaining to marginalized folks and commercial/military-industrial interests in the Nix community I’ve previously written about on TechTakes have been solved; in fact, they’ve gotten worse to the point where the Nix community moderation team is essentially in the process of quitting. that’s the beginning to an awful end for a project I like a whole lot.

even if you don’t give a fuck about Nix, the open letter is an important read because the toxicity, conflicts of interest, and underhanded tactics detailed in it are incredibly common in the open source space. this letter could have been written about a multitude of infamously toxic open source projects; Nix is lucky that it has marginalized folks involved who care about the direction of the project and want to make things better, but those people are actively leaving, after being burnt out by the toxic people and structures entrenched in Nix’s community. that’s a fucking tragedy.

  • David GerardAEnglish
    5•2 months ago

    the obvious question is “when fork” but FFS SELF DON’T TAKE THIS ONE ON TOO

    • @selfOPMA
      8•2 months ago

      every bone in my body wants to, but spinning up the infrastructure for a Nix fork would literally bankrupt me

      I will definitely contribute what I can (including a reasonable monthly donation, expertise if needed, and any code improvements I haven’t contributed to nixpkgs) to any fork that fixes Nix’s structural and leadership issues to the satisfaction of the authors of the open letter

      I can also promise to be a particularly persistent advocate for the fork, but that goes without saying