8mo ago

Much ado about "nothing" - Xe Iaso (==Goodbye NixOS)

xeiaso.net Much ado about "nothing" - Xe Iaso

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/much-ado-about-nothing/44236

Not directly related to this blog post but from NixOS discourse forum, a tl;dr from another person about the NixOS drama here :

 undefined

        If you’re looking for a TL;DR of the situation, here it is:

        Nix community had a governance crisis for years. While there has been progress on building explicit teams to govern the project, it continued to fundamentally rely on implicit authority and soft power

        Eelco Dolstra, as one of the biggest holders of this implicit authority and soft power, has continuously abused this authority to push his decisions, and to block decisions that he doesn’t like

        Crucially, he also used his implicit authority to block any progress on solving this governance crisis and establishing systems with explicit authority

        This has led uncountably many people to burn out over the issue, and culminated in writing an open letter to have Eelco resign from all formal positions in the project and take a 6 month break from any involvement in the community

        Eelco wrote a response that largely dismisses the issues brought up, and advertises his company’s community as a substitute for Nix community

83 comments

Half the article, or more, is a description of evengalian plot. That's some wild shit man, none of that was in any way relevent. Imma use this tactic myself.
"I'm sorry, but I am breaking up with you. You do deserve an explination as to why though but to properly convey my emotions first I'll have to describe the entire through plot of blues clues"

Holy shit the comments on this one are vile. If you don't like the article, don't read it and go on with your day.
The footer of the blog shows a Nix file structure, skimming their blog they wrote a bunch of articles and guides for Nix, checking their repo they have a bunch of Nix work, they're not exactly a nobody (if you couldn't judge from the people saying they'll miss them on the Nix forum post)
This entire article is an extension of https://save-nix-together.org which is the actual thing that sparked the the gasoline covered Nix community, this will probably seem more coherent with that background.
- Thanks for the background, as a very recent nix adopter this drama seems like a lot 😥

The biggest red flag here is that someone is trying to derive meaning from Eva, an anime whose religious/philosophical imagery and themes were used "just because they looked and sounded cool" (not a direct quote.) I mean I like it too, but it's gibberish.
I'll say this about OSS and the community around it: It's painfully obvious at times that while the individuals working on these projects (often thanklessly) are brilliant people, they often lack the communication and project leadership skills necessary to make a project thrive. The last few posts I've seen on this particular issue have been extremely vague and for whatever reason just won't come out and say what they mean. They're verbose, go off on tangents, and beat around the bush. We must first have explained to us the plots of TV shows, movies, and other ancillary things in order to understand what likely boils down to "people with differing viewpoints cannot find common ground." I see the linked blog post as nothing more than someone trying to work out relatively complex feelings about the time/effort they contributed to a project they no longer have faith in more than an "expose-eh." Given that people in the comments of previous threads have boiled the issue with NixOS down to a sentence or two, I think this is an accurate view.
See: Soft skills.

I didn't understand a thing about what the actual issues were.
Based on comments I can see that Jon Ringer objected to inserting gender minority person as a requirement for committee board.
So, why is he wrong? I totally agree that gender minorities deserve recognition, but making it a hard requirement for having a committee board sounds like nepotism.
- This is a basic represention and inclusion issue. Unless you are actively seeking out voices of those minorities and addressing their concerns you will have a reinforcing loop where behaviour that puts people off engaging will continue and it will continue to limit people from those minorities being involved (and in the worst case causing active harm to some people who end getting involved). From what I understand the behaviour that has been demonstrated and from who those people leaving it is clear this is active issue within Nix. Having a diverse range of people and perspectives will actually make the outputs (software) and community generally better. It's about recognising the problems in the formal and informal structures you are creating and working to address them.
  Additionally, but just to clarify nepotism would be giving positions based on relationships with people in power and not ensuring that your board contains a more representative set of backgrounds and perspectives.
  
  Suppose I have 1000 people from community and 10 out of them are gender minorities. I then have 5 projects, each with 10 members on board committee, and I want a representative of gender minority in each of them. And I choose hard workers based on merit, the best of the best.
  In such case I will be choosing 95 = 45 people out of 1000, and specifically I add 15 = 5 people out of those 10.
  So the board committees will have 45 members each with (worst case) 955/1000 = 95.5% percentile performance, and additionally 5 members of gender minorities, each with mediocre 5/10 = 50% performance.
  The gender minorities will perform worse, because we specifically singled them out of the crowd. This is not how you improve diversity.

Looking at this from the outside as a non Nix user, I see two things:
The community is melting down over something.
If this is the state of the Nix community where will the support go when it fractures?
If I was asked to evaluate NixOS for something and saw this, I'd keep looking, because this spells disaster for ongoing maintenance.
- Not the drama itself should influence your judgment, but how they will deal with it.
  Whenever people work together on something, there will be some drama, but if they are dealing with it, then that should be fine.
  Nix and NixOS are big enough, that even if it fails, there are enough other people that will continue it, maybe under a different name.
  Even it that causes a hard fork, which I currently think is unlikely, there are may examples where that worked and resolved itself over time, without too much of burden on the users, meaning there are clear migration processes available: owncloud/nextcloud, Gogs/Gitea/Forgejo, redis/valkey, ....
  
  Guix is a pretty good evolution of nix IMHO. I like both through

I'm not gonna read this person's Evangelion analogy, but I did go to the trouble to hunt down what Jon Ringer actually did.
Here's a link.
I don't agree with him, and representation of particular minority groups, including gender minorities, are important when they are particularly under attack. It is important to actively resist the marginalization of groups under attack by elevating their voices.
That said, I'm not sure what Jon did was actually "actionable". I'd say, stop listening to him and treating him as a leader? As someone with lots of close trans friends, I think this guy lowkey sucks, but I think this suspension is weird.
- I’m not gonna read this person’s Evangelion analogy, but I did go to the trouble to hunt down what Jon Ringer actually did.
  Here’s a link.
  Thanks. From the same page I found this which has a tl;dr which is maybe useful for other readers.
  The open letter is very vague at some points. It tries to outline some real issues that require years of context to fully grasp. Without having this necessary context - it is very hard to follow some of the points made, and evidence seems very poor.
  This repository aims to list some key points that are easy to understand without all of the context. This is a compilation of damning evidence for Eelco's leadership, essentially.
  If you're looking for a TL;DR of the situation, here it is:
  Nix community had a governance crisis for years. While there has been progress on building explicit teams to govern the project, it continued to fundamentally rely on implicit authority and soft power
  Eelco Dolstra, as one of the biggest holders of this implicit authority and soft power, has continuously abused this authority to push his decisions, and to block decisions that he doesn't like
  Crucially, he also used his implicit authority to block any progress on solving this governance crisis and establishing systems with explicit authority
  This has led uncountably many people to burn out over the issue, and culminated in writing an open letter to have Eelco resign from all formal positions in the project and take a 6 month break from any involvement in the community
  Eelco wrote a response that largely dismisses the issues brought up, and advertises his company's community as a substitute for Nix community
  
  Through some further exploration I've also been able to find this which seems relevent:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neon_Genesis_Evangelion
  Here's some points the source states:
  In 2015, 15 years after a global cataclysm called the Second Impact, teenager Shinji Ikari is summoned to the futuristic city of Tokyo-3 by his estranged father Gendo Ikari, who is the director of the special paramilitary force Nerv. Shinji witnesses United Nations forces battling an Angel, one of a race of monstrous beings whose awakening was foretold in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Because of the Angels' near-impenetrable force-fields, Nerv's Evangelion bio-machines, which are synchronized to their pilots' nervous systems and possess their own force-fields, are the only weapons capable of fighting the Angels. Nerv officer Misato Katsuragi escorts Shinji into the Nerv complex beneath Tokyo-3, where Gendo pressures him into piloting Evangelion Unit-01 against the Angel. Without training, Shinji is quickly overwhelmed, causing the Evangelion to go berserk and savagely kill the Angel on its own.
  Following hospitalization, Shinji moves in with Misato and settles into life in Tokyo-3. In his second battle, Shinji defeats an Angel but runs away afterward, distraught. Misato confronts Shinji, and he decides to remain a pilot. Shinji and Nerv's crew must defeat the remaining fourteen Angels to prevent the Third Impact, a global cataclysm that would destroy the world. Evangelion Unit-00 is repaired shortly afterward, and Shinji tries to befriend its pilot Rei Ayanami, a mysterious and socially isolated teenage girl. With Rei's help, Shinji defeats another Angel. They are joined by Evangelion Unit-02's pilot, the multitalented but insufferable teenager Asuka Langley Sōryu, who is German-Japanese-American. The three of them manage to defeat several Angels, and as Shinji adjusts to his new role as a pilot, he gradually becomes more confident and self-assured. Asuka moves in with Shinji, and they begin to develop confusing feelings for one another, kissing at her provocation.
  After being absorbed by an Angel, Shinji breaks free thanks to Eva-01 acting on its own. He is later forced to fight Evangelion Unit-03, who has become infected, and its pilot, his friend and classmate Toji Suzuhara, becomes incapacitated and permanently disabled. Asuka loses her self-confidence following a defeat and spirals into depression, which is worsened by her next fight against an Angel who attacks her mind. It forces her to relive her worst fears and childhood trauma, resulting in a mental breakdown. In the next battle, Rei sacrifices herself to self-destruct Unit-00 and save Shinji. Misato and Shinji visit the hospital, where they find Rei alive, but claiming she is "the third Rei". Misato forces the scientist Ritsuko Akagi to reveal the dark secrets of Nerv, the Evangelion boneyard, and the Dummy Plug system, which operates using clones of Rei, who was created using the DNA of Shinji's mother, Yui Ikari. This succession of events leaves Shinji emotionally scarred and alienated from the rest of the characters. Kaworu Nagisa replaces the catatonic Asuka as Unit-02's pilot and befriends Shinji, gaining his trust. He is revealed to be the final foretold Angel, Tabris, and fights Shinji, realizing that he must die to allow humanity to survive. He asks Shinji to kill him, and he hesitates but eventually kills Kaworu; an event that causes him to be overridden with guilt.
  After the final Angel is defeated, Gendo triggers the "Human Instrumentality Project", a forced evolution of humanity in which the souls of mankind are merged for benevolent purposes. He believes that if unified, humanity could overcome the loneliness and alienation that has eternally plagued them. Shinji's soul grapples with the reason for his existence and reaches an epiphany that he needs others to thrive and to accept himself by seeing a potential Shinji in another reality. This enables him to destroy the wall of negative emotions that torment him and unites with the others, who congratulate him.
  
  OP, you should add that link to the body of your post. It seems to be the best source so far.
- Thank you. Reading the blog was a complete train wreck that left me more confused then informed.

My personal bias: I really don't like NixOS, tried it for four months and found that the config file was an annoying way of handling general system and package management (especially since there was a completely parallel nix package manager with a cli interface which I find redundant at best)
Bro actin like he got some serious dirt on the project with his emails, but all he talks about is evangeleon, how moderation is hard, one blogpost from the big boss of the project that he eleges (idk how to spell that) wasn't accepted well (no sauce tho), and how some maintainer(s?) left. This article is a waste of time, and adds nothing to the discussion
- alleges*
  here's a better source thanks to OP for sharing it in a different thread.

Really interesting but I still dont get the title, you might rename it to "TL;DR about the NixOS drama" or something?
- The post title is the title of the blog and I've added the (==Goodbye NixOS) part to show Fediverse readers it is about NixOS. After several people commented, I have, after a suggestion of a commenter, added the tl;dr (written by another person apparently involved in the NixOS drama) in the post body. After all this I prefer to leave the post title as is.

I love Evangelion. I don't love this stupid bullshit.

Windows: Ad Ridden
macOS: Not Enough Freedom Apparently
Linux: Community Arguments
Every OS has issues.
- Yeah but here's the thing. The linux community actually has measurable and immediate impact on the OS they choose to involve themselves in.
  Have an issue with MacOS or Windows? The absolute best case scenario is that you complain to the devs and they might fix it in a future update.
  Have an issue on Linux? Luckily the community you are a part of is also the development team, so you can work together to directly make changes. If those changes aren't to your satisfaction, you can even find some like-minded people and start your own distro.

So basically it's a matter of transparency (or lack there of)?
\ Sorry, it's a lot to read and reading OCD doesn't help.
- Yes, it's a lot to read but I'm just the messenger and not capable to do a tl;dr.
  Posted because the blog author is a person that I've seen blog posts from before, and maybe it fits with the previous posts on Lemmy about NixOS. Here a video of what the person made with NixOS booting an old Super Mario 64 game https://cdn.xeiaso.net/file/christine-static/static/blog/boot2mario.mp4 which shows the magic of NixOS. Related blog post https://xeiaso.net/blog/super-bootable-64-2020-05-06/

I would also like to have made this a video of some kind to make it more personal (mostly so you can hear my voice and intonation/emotion in it), but it would take me too long to make it at my current production schedule timelines. I've already been spending a fucking month working on a mostly done Pikmin 3 speedrun video that has been constantly interrupted by this shit. As much as I'd like to do this, I don't think it's in the cards.

This post contains massive spoilers for Neon Genesis Evangelion, The End of Evangelion, and the four part revival Evangelion movies.
A Cruel Angel's Thesis
In order to properly convey the level of emotions that I feel about this situation, I need you to understand the weight of The End of Evangelion.
I can't get through this article without leaving quotes of it as comments.

What is the problem ? What particular decisions are we taking about beyond the apparent power struggle ?

Evangelion? This person is sick, and needs to get some help.

That reads like someone with minor mental illness. Rambling. Evangelion. Rambling.
I clicked their resume and there's no evidence they contributed a single line of code to the project. Yet they demand the person who wrote most of it step down? Yeah.
Write your own project and manage it how you want. Don't threaten others. Do your own thing.
- I'd just like to remind the passing reader that creating an open source project does not entitle you to do whatever you want and tell people to "make their own thing" if they don't like it. Open source projects are the result of a massive collaborative effort and the resulting work is the product of a whole community laboring to make it happen. Signed: someone with a major mental illness.
  
  does not entitle you to do whatever you want and tell people to "make their own thing" if they don't like it.
  He not only wrote it but made it open source so if anyone doesn't like what he's doing they can take all of his work and make their own project.
  The author of NixOS couldn't have been more generous. If anyone doesn't like it, they can take all his work that he did for free and make it their own project.
  Threatening the creator is wrong.
  
  Hopefully this is satire.
  If I create an open source project I can run it however I want. I do not have to create a board to manage it, there are plenty that have a single developer doing all the work, like VLC, and like Sqlite they may or may not even accept PRs. It doesn't stop it being open source.
  If I do create a foundation, I can fill it with whoever I see fit. If there is a board, then generally they have the last say but there are plenty of projects, like Python used to be, where there might be a board but the founder remains the benevolent dictator for life and will stop them doing stupid things that distracts from the core project. Look at Linux, the project is mostly self maintained but Linus will gatekeep anything that doesn't meet his definition of success.
  If my rules for my project is that all board members have to be a furry, then that's my right, and maybe the board of furries will vote to overturn that. Or maybe they won't. But you can't tell me how to run my project, this isn't a democracy.
  
  I think people like you really don't understand what OSS software is.
  What you don't understand is that OSS let you do what you want with the software I (an possibly others) created but not let you to dictate to me how I must run the project or what direction the project need to go.
  We can discuss of course, and maybe sometimes I agree with you and sometimes not (and the contrary) but in the end I am the maintainer so I have the last word.
  So no, if I create an OSS project and have a vision for it, if you don't agree I am fully entaitled to say "ok, just make your own, fork mine if you like" to you.

83 comments

A Cruel Angel's Thesis