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NixOS moderation team resigns over NixOS Steering Committee's interference

120 points by TheFreim 1y ago

TheFreim 1y ago
Explanation of the NixOS Steering Committee and NixOS Moderation Team (https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1nrsu9c/nixos_moderation_team_resigns_over_nixos_steering/ngi5rh5/ https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1nrsu9c/nixos_modera...): > The Nix Steering Committee (SC) (https://nixos.org/community/teams/steering-committee/ https://nixos.org/community/teams/steering-committee/) is the elected community leadership body. It was established as part of the Nix governance constitution (https://github.com/NixOS/org/blob/main/doc/constitution.md https://github.com/NixOS/org/blob/main/doc/constitution.md) last year, after which the first elections were held, where 450 contributors voted for the current members. This years election (https://discourse.nixos.org/t/the-election-committee-announces-the-second-steering-committee-election/69354 https://discourse.nixos.org/t/the-election-committee-announc...) is currently in progress. The SC generally is responsible over project direction and community matters, including management of teams. While most responsibilities are delegated, the SC has the authority to step in when necessary. > The moderation team (https://nixos.org/community/teams/moderation/ https://nixos.org/community/teams/moderation/) was established before the SC or constitution existed. The initial moderators were appointed from RFC 102 (https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/blob/master/rfcs/0102-moderation-team.md https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/blob/master/rfcs/0102-moderati...), with the mandate to self-select successors. Over the years the team has changed members a lot, none of the initial members are part of it anymore, and the last larger rotation happened last year. The responsibilities include moderation according to the Code of Conduct (CoC) (https://github.com/NixOS/.github/blob/master/CODE\_OF\_CONDUCT.md https://github.com/NixOS/.github/blob/master/CODE\_OF\_CONDU...) of the official community spaces, which is mostly the Discourse and a bunch of Matrix channels. Earlier this year the now-existing SC took on the responsibility of approving new mod team members and CoC changes (https://discourse.nixos.org/t/code-of-conduct-and-moderation-policy/61759 https://discourse.nixos.org/t/code-of-conduct-and-moderation...).
- deleted 1y ago
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- pizlonator 1y ago
  This feels like a lot of political baggage for an open source project and a recipe for drama. Is any of this overhead really needed? What does it accomplish? (Serious question, maybe I’m just too dim to get it)
  - HumanOstrich 1y ago
    It mirrors the complexity of Nix and NixOS. Similar to Rust and all its community drama.
  - wizzwizz4 1y ago
    All large organisations have huge amounts of "useless" overhead. When this overhead is removed, you no longer have a large organisation. Sometimes, having a large organisation is worth the overhead: organisations quietly solve a great deal of issues. But, since they do this quietly, it can be hard to tell which issues they solve; and they loudly create a lot of issues, too. This means it can be hard to tell when they are or aren't worth it, and when organisational reform would actually be expected to improve things.
  - Mathnerd314 1y ago
    It seems to be a combination of a lot of corporations using NixOS and a lot of community members using it as their personal distro. Nix is pretty flexible as a package manager but there are tensions that do crop up and you get arguments over really unimportant things that just sort of escalate because people bring in politics and all sorts of other stuff. And my understanding is that the moderation team was cooling off a lot of these disagreements, but now that there's no moderation team, I'm kind of curious to see what happens. Disclaimer: I use nixos but try not to participate in it (private fork), after seeing how they treat prospective contributors.
    - bhy 1y ago
      How does your private fork work? Does that mean some flakes and packages for your own use, or you maintain patches that touch deeper into the system?
ranger_danger 1y ago
In my experience watching their mods over the years, they seem to have a big problem with other people having opinions they disagree with. I get the feeling like their insistence on things like CoCs is ultimately just used as a false flag to censor "wrong" opinions based on colorful interpretations of subjective terminology used in the policy. And they're moderators, so, what they say is already "the law" (at least in their eyes) anyways... don't need a code of conduct to tell people the mods have the final say regardless.
- zahlman 1y ago
  > I get the feeling like their insistence on things like CoCs is ultimately just used as a false flag to censor "wrong" opinions based on colorful interpretations of subjective terminology used in the policy. I don't think the term "false flag" works that way, but it 110% is exactly that. Consider how they frame the proposal to add other mods: > intially phrased as a suggestion, with a stated goal of adding “diversity of opinion” and “tension” to the moderation team > apparently trying to address perceptions of political bias by making political appointments > despite this suggestion being immediately rejected as destructive and misguided by the moderation team Which is to say, they think it's inherently wrong to put people on the mod team who disagree with their political views, when they don't even moderate a space that's about politics. This is what you get when you have an unelected body that appoints its own successors and give it the power to enforce "conduct". ... Incidentally, this also perfectly describes the Python Software Foundation's "work groups" for their Code of Conduct (https://wiki.python.org/psf/ConductWG/Charter https://wiki.python.org/psf/ConductWG/Charter) and for "diversity and inclusion" (https://wiki.python.org/psf/DiversityandInclusionWG https://wiki.python.org/psf/DiversityandInclusionWG). (Actually, it seems like most of the work groups work this way.) I'm also amused at how both of these charters refer to "Folks" rather than, say "People". Seems to me like a clear signal of the intended culture, frankly.
  - squigz 1y ago
    > Which is to say, they think it's inherently wrong to put people on the mod team who disagree with their political views, when they don't even moderate a space that's about politics. My reading of that is they think it's inherently wrong to add people to the mod team because they disagree with their political views. Which seems reasonable to me.
qmr 1y ago
"The steering committee dared to steer us, therefore, we resign." Welp.
TacticalCoder 1y ago
Just to be clear: in some drama about one year ago the moderation team considered that people could be banned solely based on their political opinions if those happened to be right-wing / MAGA / anti-wokism. Then the drama extended because people, even if they weren't right-wing/MAGA/anti-wokism had to agree with the moderators' political opinions. So when TFA writes this: > apparently trying to address perceptions of political bias by making political appointments What they really mean is: "We went so far left our brains left our bodies and we now consider anyone to the right of Stalin to be a nazi".
- k__ 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - zahlman 1y ago
    > Some people just don't seem to understand that 1. Everything is political To "understand" this, it would have to be correct.
    - TehCorwiz 1y ago
      The organization of the government and its actions touch literally your entire life. From childhood nutrition to your job prospects and life expectancy.
      - zahlman 1y ago
        That is completely irrelevant to the point.
    - perching_aix 1y ago
      I used to have a pretty big problem with this claim myself; I'd vehemently reject it for reasons I wasn't entirely certain of. Then I read a comment on here a while ago, something along the lines of "children have political opinions too". It was so utterly absurd, it broke something in me. One thing lead to another, and now I no longer reject the claim vehemently. I reject it trivially. It isn't that it's not correct. It is correct, it's just also stupid. I found that the fundamental anchor of it is that people do not directly observe reality - they interpret it through their senses, so nothing can be truly known. So far, fairly uncontroversial, if a little philosophical [0]. But that means all we have is experiences and opinions about those experiences. Mix this with politics just being a group's opinion, and the fact that there's more than two people alive - what you get is that every opinion can be now considered a political opinion, and since all we have is opinions, "everything" is a political opinion, so "everything" is political [1]. I then find this stupid because it hard-misses the point of the colloquial usage of the word. By being overly universal, it functions either as just a useless segmentation, or as a pointless exercise in pedantry, a rhetorical sleight of hand. It also deals in a good amount of mind-reading, where those considering something a political opinion, rather than just a personal opinion, pretty much implicitly accuse the other person of groupthink, which is a really quite cheap accusation to make with no real argumentational benefit. But maybe this is one of those rare cases where this definition does have its utility. Let's see. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism [1] Except of course the matters of mathematical logic, which by virtue of being inherently axiomatic systems, once again walk away unscathed.
Uptrenda 1y ago
Why do these useless Wrong Think police keep inserting themselves in open source projects? No one wants the drama they bring to their projects. People are just trying to build software... Open source is not a platform for forcing political and social views on people, and not wanting to be a part of that isn't equivalent to opposing it. If you're out there crawling open source projects: looking to insert "acceptable usage guides", edit doc language to be Correct (tm), or ready to jump into essays on being persecuted, people should just start blocking these posters.
- II2II 1y ago
  I'm sorry, but I don't really buy into these arguments. If open source communities stuck to technical matters, there would be little to no need for moderators to pass judgment on political or social views. Their primary role would be in conflict resolution over technical matters. Unfortunately, people being people, political and social views will emerge. Also, people being people, any attempt by moderators to check these discussions will result in complaints, by one side or the other, about being silenced over "correct speak". It does not much matter which side of the social or political spectrum a person falls on.
  - fishmicrowaver 1y ago
    Lol these kids are like the HOA. Oh no you're resigning? Good riddance.
    - TehCorwiz 1y ago
      No. HOAs were established to give cover to post civil rights redlining.
  - zahlman 1y ago
    > If open source communities stuck to technical matters, there would be little to no need for moderators to pass judgment on political or social views. Their primary role would be in conflict resolution over technical matters. As far as I can tell, this all ultimately started because a fringe of activists (aligned with this group of moderators, and possibly including them) within the community decided they didn't like the political implications of where the project got its funding.
bbor 1y ago
HA, wow, thanks for posting. It’s hard to recall another instance of someone writing something so confident that they’ll come off well, while clearly coming off as self-centered; “our (unelected) team was being steered by the (elected) steering committee” and “they kept annoyingly fighting for objective moderation practices” are pretty damning complaints, especially when given without any actual context! The framing of “the moderation team” resigning when two of them aren’t is a delectable cherry on top of the other drama. This really is like a very strange, petty version of last year’s (ongoing?) Python Foundation moderation debacle, which is quite fitting for one of the goofiest online communities I’ve ever interacted with. NixOS is probably great and laboring to improve OSS is always laudable, but they’re quite a… confident bunch. Some random thoughts from the thread: 1. “Rust has a different rule; who are you to say you know better than the rust charter writers?” is a hilarious and very Rustian point to make. 2. Describing forum moderation as some arcane art that only experts can truly understand is something I never expected to see outside of political science textbooks. Like a hyperbolic thought experiment criticizing Technocracy, but real… 3. I referenced this above, but the idea that true objectivity is impossible and thus should be forgotten applies equally as much to truth more broadly, good, and unity (i.e. definitions of terms). It’s something we must strive for in order to make society work, knowing that perfect success is inherently unreachable! ISTG, our society really needs to make philosophy courses more accessible+popular… P.S. anyone know what the political left/right split here is? I don’t want to litigate that part on HN ofc, but there’s quite a few vague allusions that make think it’s there, just like it was for the Python debacle. Sadly, no one in the linked thread has made it clear yet for us unlookers, if so.
- wizzwizz4 1y ago
  > The framing of “the moderation team” resigning when two of them aren’t One of those is resigning, but for other reasons. I don't know about the last one. > some arcane art that only experts can truly understand the intricacies of I mean, it kinda is. It doesn't take long to get up to speed, if you have good teachers (I'd say 3 months), but I keep watching new moderators making the same mistakes over and over again, in a couple of online spaces. (The problem's greater in the space without a culture of teaching the newbies.) I know nothing about what's actually happening with NixOS, but I can imagine scenarios where the moderation team's in the right, the steering council is in the right, and where neither group is in the right, which would produce the observed evidence.
xyzzy_plugh 1y ago
1) this is not the entire moderation team 2) this post is a good summary of the entire situation: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/a-statement-from-members-of-the-moderation-team/69828/6 https://discourse.nixos.org/t/a-statement-from-members-of-th... 3) as someone with a bit of a horse in this race, I feel like things are working as intended here and this is probably for the best. The past moderation team has done thankless work for a long time, but has struggled to keep up with the community growth. I think the Steering Committee is doing a good job so far. Overall, this is a bit of a flamey post. Seems to me like there is nothing much to see here. The Nix Community feels healthier than ever.
- zahlman 1y ago
  > this is not the entire moderation team I see five names. Who's remaining? > [the SC response] is a good summary of the entire situation It's unfathomable to me that they're even considering this: > Are you asking for an elected body to be accountable to an unelected people. I don’t think this is entirely impossible, but it at least needs more thought put into it, and before taking any sort of bureaucratic approach, we should consider changing the governance culture, which is entirely within an SC’s power. The fact that the moderators would resign and in the same breath call upon people they consider adversaries to resign as well, speaks to their character. As does the vague "Measures are in place to ensure essential capabilities are maintained." wording. This is blatantly a power grab by people who clearly already held far too much power. > I feel like things are working as intended here and this is probably for the best.... Seems to me like there is nothing much to see here. The Nix Community feels healthier than ever. If the resigned members stay gone and get exactly nothing out of their appeals, I could maybe agree. It's fundamentally unhealthy to have moderation done by a self-appointing, ideologically filtering clique that's demonstrably at odds with a large portion of the community as well as their elected steering committee.
  - xyzzy_plugh 1y ago
    > I see five names. The website lists 7: https://nixos.org/community/teams/moderation/ https://nixos.org/community/teams/moderation/ It feels inaccurate to say "the team resigns" when it's ~70%.
Modified3019 1y ago
The unelected mods who resigned were refusing accountability being enforced by the elected steering committee, which tells you what you need to know about how the mods ran things. Good riddance, and easily enough replaced.
- edoceo 1y ago
  It kind of doesn't tell us what we need (or want) to know. Or at least, its not clear to me what conclusion is right from that. On its face, none of these players have accountability. With enough noise individuals could be pressured out from either group. And if either group makes wrong choices, the penalty is just removal. It's messy; I don't see any obvious answers or conclusions.
- flykespice 1y ago
  Yep that would be my conclusion too, we still need to hear the other side of the history
  - tomohawk 1y ago
    [dead]
abtinf 1y ago
I am unfamiliar with the issues that led to this event. Could someone point me to examples of controversial moderation decisions that were “interfered” with?
- srid 1y ago
  Jon Ringer (who got permabanned) has a YouTube video talking about several events around NixOS moderation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp0FI8Gw1iA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp0FI8Gw1iA My own permanban is detailed in this post: https://srid.ca/nixos-mod https://srid.ca/nixos-mod
  - CursedSilicon 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - allarm 1y ago
      Please remove the steak.
    - zahlman 1y ago
      > The fact your blog reveals they banned you for being "anti-woke" is probably the most telling part of this entire discussion This is an impressive statement. Two people could agree with it for diametrically opposed reasons.
- mongol 1y ago
  The moderation log both explains it very well, and not at all, depending on perspective. When you follow the Discourse and other community forums for a while, you notice that moderation is unevenly applied. Some get permanent bans, other bans counted in hours, if at all. When you are familiar with the names in the moderation log, and the lack of consistency in ruling, you see a very clear moderation bias. https://github.com/NixOS/moderation/blob/main/moderation-log.md https://github.com/NixOS/moderation/blob/main/moderation-log...
paulvnickerson 1y ago
They should take a cue from sqlite and just adopt the Rule of St Benedict.
- accrual 1y ago
  Here's the official document: https://sqlite.org/codeofethics.html https://sqlite.org/codeofethics.html
- zahlman 1y ago
  Funny you should mention that. Meanwhile over in the Ruby camp, where they've been trying to gather signatures to run DHH out on a rail (pun intended), someone submitted a PR to replace the entire "open letter" with that document. (It was of course promptly rejected as a troll, which it was, but I was still amused.)
- Macha 1y ago
  sqlite contributors are a closed group, while NixOS is a project open to contributors. It's a lot easier for 3 people to avoid conflict than 300.
  - alexey-salmin 1y ago
    From experience it seems that the best way to avoid conflict is to quickly ban anyone who demands a CoC
    - zahlman 1y ago
      I thought so too at one point, but now I'm skeptical. The demanders will keep filtering in, and random people unacquainted with past stories of CoC abuse may feel uneasy. So I think the best way is to: be a BDFL, proactively have a CoC that reflects your values (and to hell with any standard formulations), and make it explicit up front that anyone who wants changes to the CoC can go kick rocks (or, you know, fork the project). And that they're welcome to do so, and won't be interfered with outside of the project's own spaces. And people who don't like an existing BDFL, rather than trying to take over or start drama in project discussion spaces, should just fork ASAP.
bsimpson 1y ago
One of the reasons I stopped using Nix is how much more often I saw posts about political bickering than anything helpful. I'm not aware of any other open source project so consumed with virtue signal bikeshedding.
- soraminazuki 1y ago
  That's hyperbolic. Help related topics are very active within the Nix Discourse. https://discourse.nixos.org/c/learn/9 https://discourse.nixos.org/c/learn/9
- abtinf 1y ago
  By “political bickering”, do you mean debates over organizational direction/technical flame wars, debates over political philosophy/ideology, or something else?
  - stevefan1999 1y ago
    I guess he means class struggles
- decorativebike 1y ago
  I'm a NixOS committer. I avoid Discourse and Matrix and thus avoid almost all drama. My impression is that: * NixOS had light governance for many years, which used to be enough, but wasn't enough to adress disagreements as of around 2022. * A moderation team partially filled that governance gap, but it was seen to be politically motivated, and is now being held accountable by an elected body (the steering committee). * This shift in power has resulted in tensions. * NixOS users skew a little idiosyncratic in general. I'd hazard a guess this coincides with wanting full control of their machines, and being willing to upend the status quo to do so. I'm hopeful that as more governance is rooted in the elected body, we'll have less tension over time. I'm thankful for all contributors who make NixOS for what it is today.
- arvigeus 1y ago
  Same here! I don’t have a problem with people having different opinions than mine, but when they start banning core contributors for that, it’s just a matter of time before ship goes down. I kind of hoped I was wrong and after all this time the dust settled - not because I was going to use it again, but because the project is a very cool idea.
qmr 1y ago
... and nothing of value was lost.
constantcrying 1y ago
Why is around 50% of the news I read about NixOS about political infighting? For no other community this is the case. The technology appears interesting, but from the outside it definitely looks like a continuously collapsing project.
userlander 1y ago
[dead]
nrdxp 1y ago
Almost as though open source software isn't a "roll your own government" adventure...
- wmf 1y ago
  Nix is just following open source best practices (but those practices have a hidden bias that you will regret later).
c0nducktr 1y ago
Odd nobody wants to give direct examples of the political opinions/statements not allowed. Lots of talk about them, but nobody will just say what they are?
- veeti 1y ago
  Kind of like the Soviet Union.
- cyberdick 1y ago
  if I tweet trans women are not women somewhere else whats the outcome?
- philodeon 1y ago
  You are not allowed to have a moderate opinion on gender representation in tech, and you are not allowed to have photos of steak on your NixOS discussion forum profile: https://srid.ca/nixos-mod https://srid.ca/nixos-mod
  - zahlman 1y ago
    > Srid states his opinion on the gender survey question under a topic titled “Nix Community Survey 2023 Results”. This response, a week later (see next point below), gets moved to a separate thread and gets unlisted (meaning, nobody can reach it without a direct link) by a moderator. The problem is that communities want to have (or at least tolerate having) these demographic surveys in the first place. The easiest way to avoid identity politics drama is to avoid identity politics, and the easiest way to avoid identity politics is to minimize and discourage mention of identity. pg was right (https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html). Open source is for everyone. The OSI is abundantly clear about this. For any given project this means everyone in principle; there is no obligation to check whether you have collected all the identity Pokemon. If your group is small this is impossible and if it is large then it is either inevitable or a failure is not your fault (and trying to force the issue is in fact the discriminatory thing). Besides which, the identity Pokedex doesn't exist in the first place. Why even invite the argument about the categories that need to be considered? You don't draw a circle by adding more sides. You draw it by using a damn compass.
matthewsh 1y ago
I've had NixOS on a list to give it a shot one day when I wanna tinker on a weekend project, it's been on that list for quite some time now and just haven't had time for it. I hear good things about the project when I ask other devs, but all I read these days about Nix is about infighting, politics, global bans, governance wrongdoings, and drama. From the outside, this concerns me for the longevity of the project. I'm sure if it makes it through it could be better for it; but it is concerning and makes me push it further down the list to try.
- microtonal 1y ago
  You should try it. Nix/NixOS/nixpkgs is really great and if you are just a user or do occasional PRs, you are unlikely to be affected by anything.
  - matthewsh 1y ago
    I worry though as politics and the way the org is run can impact the end user; maybe not today, but in a year. That's my concern with these style projects, there seems to be no real leader. Say what you will about Linus Torvalds, and there's a lot to be said, he really does care about the quality of the project.
- xupybd 1y ago
  Most of the pain in Nix is about getting applications to run and navigating the documentation or lack thereof. The politics has never impacted me as a nix user.
mirzap 1y ago
[flagged]
sunshine-o 1y ago
I don't really have much context and I do not know those people but every time this type of post pop up on HN I read it. It is obvious those people are mentally ill and terminally online. And it is not even about politics and woke, I do not think there were any political statement here. It is just obvious this again was written by a crazy person. So some people had a problem with the Nix leadership for years, they made numerous drama and forked the project (as they have the right to). But strangely none of those forks really got any traction or are going anywhere it seems... I am wondering why are those unhappy contributors helping the Lix project or some other forks?
- zahlman 1y ago
  > And it is not even about politics and woke, I do not think there were any political statement here. It is just obvious this again was written by a crazy person. There may not have been political statements here but the people doing this absolutely are motivated by their politics. > But strangely none of those forks really got any traction or are going anywhere it seems... I am wondering why are those unhappy contributors helping the Lix project or some other forks? Presumably they aren't helping forks because they despair of any fork getting anywhere near the traction of the original. But that shouldn't be NixOS's problem.
bookshed 1y ago
################## MODERATION TEAM REMAINS IN PLACE - NOTHING HAS CHANGED ################## If you review the post and refresh it frequently, you will observe the censorship in action. Some instances of censorship are quite extreme. They censor individuals for even the mildest comments. I saw one person get flagged for linking to Eelco Dolstra's PhD thesis and requesting more scientific discussion. The TLDR was something like "More of THIS" were "THIS" was a hyperlink to Dolstra's PHD thesis that sparked NixOS. I wanted to reply, stepped away for a meal, and by the time I returned, the comment had been censored. NixOS isn't a technical project anymore. It's just Dolstra's stole life's work being kept in life support. I don't care which side of the political spectrum you are... this should anger you. They stole this man's life's work through distasteful political shenanigans. It's like removing Linus from Linux (unsuccessful removal attempts), Stallman from FOSS (unsuccessful removal attempts), and Eelco Dolstra from NixOS (removed). I don't care for these people thoughts or beliefs, I see them for what they are, thought leaders. People that ACTUALLY move us (humanity) FORWARD. They should stay in place leading their respective movements for as long as possible or until they break the LAW. Not some "constitution of NixOS" or "bylaws of NixOS", the actual LAW of their respective jurisdiction.
gigatexal 1y ago
Usually when popular projects have this much turmoil there a fork. Centos stream Node to deno Etc etc Why hasn’t there been a fork of nixos? And the folks who want to do things in a certain politically leaning way gravitate towards that and those that don’t stay. And boom. There’s peace again.
- colinsane 11mo ago
  > Why hasn’t there been a fork of nixos? And the folks who want to do things in a certain politically leaning way gravitate towards that and those that don’t stay. v.s. > Why hasn’t there been a fork of nixos? And the folks who want to do things in a certain politically leaning way stay and those that don’t gravitate towards that. now let's spend the next few years arguing which of these is the correct proposition. sure, it's more complicated: there's questions about _what_ to fork (Nix is an _ecosystem_, not necessarily a single repository), there are certain things which can't trivially _be_ forked (e.g. a multi-hundred-TB S3 cache that's actually critical infrastructure; project websites, wikis, uncountable automation services). how do you coordinate all the details of forking, if forking isn't actually as trivial as pushing the "fork" button? that requires highly capable leaders, and if the ecosystem were good at finding and promoting that type of leader, then it wouldn't be in this place to begin with. more optimistically, various parts of this ecosystem _have_ been forked, or reshaped, by various entities. things happen; sometimes that happening is just a lengthy process.
- bookshed 1y ago
  Imagine Bazite's mascot made a distro, well that distro would be NixOS's fork and it's called Lix (https://lix.systems/ https://lix.systems/). When they kicked Eelco Dolstra out of his project (NixOS) Lix became redundant so they stayed in NixOS. Also google is your friend.
- zahlman 1y ago
  Seriously, you'd think NixOS users would rank especially high in willingness to fork something they considered less than ideal.

120 points by TheFreim 1y ago

Explanation of the NixOS Steering Committee and NixOS Moderation Team (https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1nrsu9c/nixos_moderation_team_resigns_over_nixos_steering/ngi5rh5/ https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1nrsu9c/nixos_modera...): > The Nix Steering Committee (SC) (https://nixos.org/community/teams/steering-committee/ https://nixos.org/community/teams/steering-committee/) is the elected community leadership body. It was established as part of the Nix governance constitution (https://github.com/NixOS/org/blob/main/doc/constitution.md https://github.com/NixOS/org/blob/main/doc/constitution.md) last year, after which the first elections were held, where 450 contributors voted for the current members. This years election (https://discourse.nixos.org/t/the-election-committee-announces-the-second-steering-committee-election/69354 https://discourse.nixos.org/t/the-election-committee-announc...) is currently in progress. The SC generally is responsible over project direction and community matters, including management of teams. While most responsibilities are delegated, the SC has the authority to step in when necessary. > The moderation team (https://nixos.org/community/teams/moderation/ https://nixos.org/community/teams/moderation/) was established before the SC or constitution existed. The initial moderators were appointed from RFC 102 (https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/blob/master/rfcs/0102-moderation-team.md https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/blob/master/rfcs/0102-moderati...), with the mandate to self-select successors. Over the years the team has changed members a lot, none of the initial members are part of it anymore, and the last larger rotation happened last year. The responsibilities include moderation according to the Code of Conduct (CoC) (https://github.com/NixOS/.github/blob/master/CODE\_OF\_CONDUCT.md https://github.com/NixOS/.github/blob/master/CODE\_OF\_CONDU...) of the official community spaces, which is mostly the Discourse and a bunch of Matrix channels. Earlier this year the now-existing SC took on the responsibility of approving new mod team members and CoC changes (https://discourse.nixos.org/t/code-of-conduct-and-moderation-policy/61759 https://discourse.nixos.org/t/code-of-conduct-and-moderation...).

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
pizlonator 1y ago
This feels like a lot of political baggage for an open source project and a recipe for drama. Is any of this overhead really needed? What does it accomplish? (Serious question, maybe I’m just too dim to get it)
- HumanOstrich 1y ago
  It mirrors the complexity of Nix and NixOS. Similar to Rust and all its community drama.
- wizzwizz4 1y ago
  All large organisations have huge amounts of "useless" overhead. When this overhead is removed, you no longer have a large organisation. Sometimes, having a large organisation is worth the overhead: organisations quietly solve a great deal of issues. But, since they do this quietly, it can be hard to tell which issues they solve; and they loudly create a lot of issues, too. This means it can be hard to tell when they are or aren't worth it, and when organisational reform would actually be expected to improve things.
- Mathnerd314 1y ago
  It seems to be a combination of a lot of corporations using NixOS and a lot of community members using it as their personal distro. Nix is pretty flexible as a package manager but there are tensions that do crop up and you get arguments over really unimportant things that just sort of escalate because people bring in politics and all sorts of other stuff. And my understanding is that the moderation team was cooling off a lot of these disagreements, but now that there's no moderation team, I'm kind of curious to see what happens. Disclaimer: I use nixos but try not to participate in it (private fork), after seeing how they treat prospective contributors.
  - bhy 1y ago
    How does your private fork work? Does that mean some flakes and packages for your own use, or you maintain patches that touch deeper into the system?

ranger_danger 1y ago

In my experience watching their mods over the years, they seem to have a big problem with other people having opinions they disagree with. I get the feeling like their insistence on things like CoCs is ultimately just used as a false flag to censor "wrong" opinions based on colorful interpretations of subjective terminology used in the policy. And they're moderators, so, what they say is already "the law" (at least in their eyes) anyways... don't need a code of conduct to tell people the mods have the final say regardless.

zahlman 1y ago
> I get the feeling like their insistence on things like CoCs is ultimately just used as a false flag to censor "wrong" opinions based on colorful interpretations of subjective terminology used in the policy. I don't think the term "false flag" works that way, but it 110% is exactly that. Consider how they frame the proposal to add other mods: > intially phrased as a suggestion, with a stated goal of adding “diversity of opinion” and “tension” to the moderation team > apparently trying to address perceptions of political bias by making political appointments > despite this suggestion being immediately rejected as destructive and misguided by the moderation team Which is to say, they think it's inherently wrong to put people on the mod team who disagree with their political views, when they don't even moderate a space that's about politics. This is what you get when you have an unelected body that appoints its own successors and give it the power to enforce "conduct". ... Incidentally, this also perfectly describes the Python Software Foundation's "work groups" for their Code of Conduct (https://wiki.python.org/psf/ConductWG/Charter https://wiki.python.org/psf/ConductWG/Charter) and for "diversity and inclusion" (https://wiki.python.org/psf/DiversityandInclusionWG https://wiki.python.org/psf/DiversityandInclusionWG). (Actually, it seems like most of the work groups work this way.) I'm also amused at how both of these charters refer to "Folks" rather than, say "People". Seems to me like a clear signal of the intended culture, frankly.
- squigz 1y ago
  > Which is to say, they think it's inherently wrong to put people on the mod team who disagree with their political views, when they don't even moderate a space that's about politics. My reading of that is they think it's inherently wrong to add people to the mod team because they disagree with their political views. Which seems reasonable to me.

qmr 1y ago

"The steering committee dared to steer us, therefore, we resign." Welp.

TacticalCoder 1y ago

Just to be clear: in some drama about one year ago the moderation team considered that people could be banned solely based on their political opinions if those happened to be right-wing / MAGA / anti-wokism. Then the drama extended because people, even if they weren't right-wing/MAGA/anti-wokism had to agree with the moderators' political opinions. So when TFA writes this: > apparently trying to address perceptions of political bias by making political appointments What they really mean is: "We went so far left our brains left our bodies and we now consider anyone to the right of Stalin to be a nazi".

k__ 1y ago
[flagged]
- zahlman 1y ago
  > Some people just don't seem to understand that 1. Everything is political To "understand" this, it would have to be correct.
  - TehCorwiz 1y ago
    The organization of the government and its actions touch literally your entire life. From childhood nutrition to your job prospects and life expectancy.
    - zahlman 1y ago
      That is completely irrelevant to the point.
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    I used to have a pretty big problem with this claim myself; I'd vehemently reject it for reasons I wasn't entirely certain of. Then I read a comment on here a while ago, something along the lines of "children have political opinions too". It was so utterly absurd, it broke something in me. One thing lead to another, and now I no longer reject the claim vehemently. I reject it trivially. It isn't that it's not correct. It is correct, it's just also stupid. I found that the fundamental anchor of it is that people do not directly observe reality - they interpret it through their senses, so nothing can be truly known. So far, fairly uncontroversial, if a little philosophical [0]. But that means all we have is experiences and opinions about those experiences. Mix this with politics just being a group's opinion, and the fact that there's more than two people alive - what you get is that every opinion can be now considered a political opinion, and since all we have is opinions, "everything" is a political opinion, so "everything" is political [1]. I then find this stupid because it hard-misses the point of the colloquial usage of the word. By being overly universal, it functions either as just a useless segmentation, or as a pointless exercise in pedantry, a rhetorical sleight of hand. It also deals in a good amount of mind-reading, where those considering something a political opinion, rather than just a personal opinion, pretty much implicitly accuse the other person of groupthink, which is a really quite cheap accusation to make with no real argumentational benefit. But maybe this is one of those rare cases where this definition does have its utility. Let's see. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism [1] Except of course the matters of mathematical logic, which by virtue of being inherently axiomatic systems, once again walk away unscathed.

Uptrenda 1y ago

Why do these useless Wrong Think police keep inserting themselves in open source projects? No one wants the drama they bring to their projects. People are just trying to build software... Open source is not a platform for forcing political and social views on people, and not wanting to be a part of that isn't equivalent to opposing it. If you're out there crawling open source projects: looking to insert "acceptable usage guides", edit doc language to be Correct (tm), or ready to jump into essays on being persecuted, people should just start blocking these posters.

II2II 1y ago
I'm sorry, but I don't really buy into these arguments. If open source communities stuck to technical matters, there would be little to no need for moderators to pass judgment on political or social views. Their primary role would be in conflict resolution over technical matters. Unfortunately, people being people, political and social views will emerge. Also, people being people, any attempt by moderators to check these discussions will result in complaints, by one side or the other, about being silenced over "correct speak". It does not much matter which side of the social or political spectrum a person falls on.
- fishmicrowaver 1y ago
  Lol these kids are like the HOA. Oh no you're resigning? Good riddance.
  - TehCorwiz 1y ago
    No. HOAs were established to give cover to post civil rights redlining.
- zahlman 1y ago
  > If open source communities stuck to technical matters, there would be little to no need for moderators to pass judgment on political or social views. Their primary role would be in conflict resolution over technical matters. As far as I can tell, this all ultimately started because a fringe of activists (aligned with this group of moderators, and possibly including them) within the community decided they didn't like the political implications of where the project got its funding.

bbor 1y ago

HA, wow, thanks for posting. It’s hard to recall another instance of someone writing something so confident that they’ll come off well, while clearly coming off as self-centered; “our (unelected) team was being steered by the (elected) steering committee” and “they kept annoyingly fighting for objective moderation practices” are pretty damning complaints, especially when given without any actual context! The framing of “the moderation team” resigning when two of them aren’t is a delectable cherry on top of the other drama. This really is like a very strange, petty version of last year’s (ongoing?) Python Foundation moderation debacle, which is quite fitting for one of the goofiest online communities I’ve ever interacted with. NixOS is probably great and laboring to improve OSS is always laudable, but they’re quite a… confident bunch. Some random thoughts from the thread: 1. “Rust has a different rule; who are you to say you know better than the rust charter writers?” is a hilarious and very Rustian point to make. 2. Describing forum moderation as some arcane art that only experts can truly understand is something I never expected to see outside of political science textbooks. Like a hyperbolic thought experiment criticizing Technocracy, but real… 3. I referenced this above, but the idea that true objectivity is impossible and thus should be forgotten applies equally as much to truth more broadly, good, and unity (i.e. definitions of terms). It’s something we must strive for in order to make society work, knowing that perfect success is inherently unreachable! ISTG, our society really needs to make philosophy courses more accessible+popular… P.S. anyone know what the political left/right split here is? I don’t want to litigate that part on HN ofc, but there’s quite a few vague allusions that make think it’s there, just like it was for the Python debacle. Sadly, no one in the linked thread has made it clear yet for us unlookers, if so.

wizzwizz4 1y ago
> The framing of “the moderation team” resigning when two of them aren’t One of those is resigning, but for other reasons. I don't know about the last one. > some arcane art that only experts can truly understand the intricacies of I mean, it kinda is. It doesn't take long to get up to speed, if you have good teachers (I'd say 3 months), but I keep watching new moderators making the same mistakes over and over again, in a couple of online spaces. (The problem's greater in the space without a culture of teaching the newbies.) I know nothing about what's actually happening with NixOS, but I can imagine scenarios where the moderation team's in the right, the steering council is in the right, and where neither group is in the right, which would produce the observed evidence.

xyzzy_plugh 1y ago

1) this is not the entire moderation team 2) this post is a good summary of the entire situation: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/a-statement-from-members-of-the-moderation-team/69828/6 https://discourse.nixos.org/t/a-statement-from-members-of-th... 3) as someone with a bit of a horse in this race, I feel like things are working as intended here and this is probably for the best. The past moderation team has done thankless work for a long time, but has struggled to keep up with the community growth. I think the Steering Committee is doing a good job so far. Overall, this is a bit of a flamey post. Seems to me like there is nothing much to see here. The Nix Community feels healthier than ever.

zahlman 1y ago
> this is not the entire moderation team I see five names. Who's remaining? > [the SC response] is a good summary of the entire situation It's unfathomable to me that they're even considering this: > Are you asking for an elected body to be accountable to an unelected people. I don’t think this is entirely impossible, but it at least needs more thought put into it, and before taking any sort of bureaucratic approach, we should consider changing the governance culture, which is entirely within an SC’s power. The fact that the moderators would resign and in the same breath call upon people they consider adversaries to resign as well, speaks to their character. As does the vague "Measures are in place to ensure essential capabilities are maintained." wording. This is blatantly a power grab by people who clearly already held far too much power. > I feel like things are working as intended here and this is probably for the best.... Seems to me like there is nothing much to see here. The Nix Community feels healthier than ever. If the resigned members stay gone and get exactly nothing out of their appeals, I could maybe agree. It's fundamentally unhealthy to have moderation done by a self-appointing, ideologically filtering clique that's demonstrably at odds with a large portion of the community as well as their elected steering committee.
- xyzzy_plugh 1y ago
  > I see five names. The website lists 7: https://nixos.org/community/teams/moderation/ https://nixos.org/community/teams/moderation/ It feels inaccurate to say "the team resigns" when it's ~70%.

Modified3019 1y ago

The unelected mods who resigned were refusing accountability being enforced by the elected steering committee, which tells you what you need to know about how the mods ran things. Good riddance, and easily enough replaced.

edoceo 1y ago
It kind of doesn't tell us what we need (or want) to know. Or at least, its not clear to me what conclusion is right from that. On its face, none of these players have accountability. With enough noise individuals could be pressured out from either group. And if either group makes wrong choices, the penalty is just removal. It's messy; I don't see any obvious answers or conclusions.
flykespice 1y ago
Yep that would be my conclusion too, we still need to hear the other side of the history
- tomohawk 1y ago
  [dead]

abtinf 1y ago

I am unfamiliar with the issues that led to this event. Could someone point me to examples of controversial moderation decisions that were “interfered” with?

srid 1y ago
Jon Ringer (who got permabanned) has a YouTube video talking about several events around NixOS moderation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp0FI8Gw1iA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp0FI8Gw1iA My own permanban is detailed in this post: https://srid.ca/nixos-mod https://srid.ca/nixos-mod
- CursedSilicon 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - allarm 1y ago
    Please remove the steak.
  - zahlman 1y ago
    > The fact your blog reveals they banned you for being "anti-woke" is probably the most telling part of this entire discussion This is an impressive statement. Two people could agree with it for diametrically opposed reasons.
mongol 1y ago
The moderation log both explains it very well, and not at all, depending on perspective. When you follow the Discourse and other community forums for a while, you notice that moderation is unevenly applied. Some get permanent bans, other bans counted in hours, if at all. When you are familiar with the names in the moderation log, and the lack of consistency in ruling, you see a very clear moderation bias. https://github.com/NixOS/moderation/blob/main/moderation-log.md https://github.com/NixOS/moderation/blob/main/moderation-log...

paulvnickerson 1y ago

They should take a cue from sqlite and just adopt the Rule of St Benedict.

accrual 1y ago
Here's the official document: https://sqlite.org/codeofethics.html https://sqlite.org/codeofethics.html
zahlman 1y ago
Funny you should mention that. Meanwhile over in the Ruby camp, where they've been trying to gather signatures to run DHH out on a rail (pun intended), someone submitted a PR to replace the entire "open letter" with that document. (It was of course promptly rejected as a troll, which it was, but I was still amused.)
Macha 1y ago
sqlite contributors are a closed group, while NixOS is a project open to contributors. It's a lot easier for 3 people to avoid conflict than 300.
- alexey-salmin 1y ago
  From experience it seems that the best way to avoid conflict is to quickly ban anyone who demands a CoC
  - zahlman 1y ago
    I thought so too at one point, but now I'm skeptical. The demanders will keep filtering in, and random people unacquainted with past stories of CoC abuse may feel uneasy. So I think the best way is to: be a BDFL, proactively have a CoC that reflects your values (and to hell with any standard formulations), and make it explicit up front that anyone who wants changes to the CoC can go kick rocks (or, you know, fork the project). And that they're welcome to do so, and won't be interfered with outside of the project's own spaces. And people who don't like an existing BDFL, rather than trying to take over or start drama in project discussion spaces, should just fork ASAP.

bsimpson 1y ago

One of the reasons I stopped using Nix is how much more often I saw posts about political bickering than anything helpful. I'm not aware of any other open source project so consumed with virtue signal bikeshedding.

soraminazuki 1y ago
That's hyperbolic. Help related topics are very active within the Nix Discourse. https://discourse.nixos.org/c/learn/9 https://discourse.nixos.org/c/learn/9
abtinf 1y ago
By “political bickering”, do you mean debates over organizational direction/technical flame wars, debates over political philosophy/ideology, or something else?
- stevefan1999 1y ago
  I guess he means class struggles
decorativebike 1y ago
I'm a NixOS committer. I avoid Discourse and Matrix and thus avoid almost all drama. My impression is that: * NixOS had light governance for many years, which used to be enough, but wasn't enough to adress disagreements as of around 2022. * A moderation team partially filled that governance gap, but it was seen to be politically motivated, and is now being held accountable by an elected body (the steering committee). * This shift in power has resulted in tensions. * NixOS users skew a little idiosyncratic in general. I'd hazard a guess this coincides with wanting full control of their machines, and being willing to upend the status quo to do so. I'm hopeful that as more governance is rooted in the elected body, we'll have less tension over time. I'm thankful for all contributors who make NixOS for what it is today.
arvigeus 1y ago
Same here! I don’t have a problem with people having different opinions than mine, but when they start banning core contributors for that, it’s just a matter of time before ship goes down. I kind of hoped I was wrong and after all this time the dust settled - not because I was going to use it again, but because the project is a very cool idea.

qmr 1y ago

... and nothing of value was lost.

constantcrying 1y ago

Why is around 50% of the news I read about NixOS about political infighting? For no other community this is the case. The technology appears interesting, but from the outside it definitely looks like a continuously collapsing project.

userlander 1y ago

[dead]

nrdxp 1y ago

Almost as though open source software isn't a "roll your own government" adventure...

wmf 1y ago
Nix is just following open source best practices (but those practices have a hidden bias that you will regret later).

c0nducktr 1y ago

Odd nobody wants to give direct examples of the political opinions/statements not allowed. Lots of talk about them, but nobody will just say what they are?

veeti 1y ago
Kind of like the Soviet Union.
cyberdick 1y ago
if I tweet trans women are not women somewhere else whats the outcome?
philodeon 1y ago
You are not allowed to have a moderate opinion on gender representation in tech, and you are not allowed to have photos of steak on your NixOS discussion forum profile: https://srid.ca/nixos-mod https://srid.ca/nixos-mod
- zahlman 1y ago
  > Srid states his opinion on the gender survey question under a topic titled “Nix Community Survey 2023 Results”. This response, a week later (see next point below), gets moved to a separate thread and gets unlisted (meaning, nobody can reach it without a direct link) by a moderator. The problem is that communities want to have (or at least tolerate having) these demographic surveys in the first place. The easiest way to avoid identity politics drama is to avoid identity politics, and the easiest way to avoid identity politics is to minimize and discourage mention of identity. pg was right (https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html). Open source is for everyone. The OSI is abundantly clear about this. For any given project this means everyone in principle; there is no obligation to check whether you have collected all the identity Pokemon. If your group is small this is impossible and if it is large then it is either inevitable or a failure is not your fault (and trying to force the issue is in fact the discriminatory thing). Besides which, the identity Pokedex doesn't exist in the first place. Why even invite the argument about the categories that need to be considered? You don't draw a circle by adding more sides. You draw it by using a damn compass.

matthewsh 1y ago

I've had NixOS on a list to give it a shot one day when I wanna tinker on a weekend project, it's been on that list for quite some time now and just haven't had time for it. I hear good things about the project when I ask other devs, but all I read these days about Nix is about infighting, politics, global bans, governance wrongdoings, and drama. From the outside, this concerns me for the longevity of the project. I'm sure if it makes it through it could be better for it; but it is concerning and makes me push it further down the list to try.

microtonal 1y ago
You should try it. Nix/NixOS/nixpkgs is really great and if you are just a user or do occasional PRs, you are unlikely to be affected by anything.
- matthewsh 1y ago
  I worry though as politics and the way the org is run can impact the end user; maybe not today, but in a year. That's my concern with these style projects, there seems to be no real leader. Say what you will about Linus Torvalds, and there's a lot to be said, he really does care about the quality of the project.
xupybd 1y ago
Most of the pain in Nix is about getting applications to run and navigating the documentation or lack thereof. The politics has never impacted me as a nix user.

mirzap 1y ago

[flagged]

sunshine-o 1y ago

I don't really have much context and I do not know those people but every time this type of post pop up on HN I read it. It is obvious those people are mentally ill and terminally online. And it is not even about politics and woke, I do not think there were any political statement here. It is just obvious this again was written by a crazy person. So some people had a problem with the Nix leadership for years, they made numerous drama and forked the project (as they have the right to). But strangely none of those forks really got any traction or are going anywhere it seems... I am wondering why are those unhappy contributors helping the Lix project or some other forks?

zahlman 1y ago
> And it is not even about politics and woke, I do not think there were any political statement here. It is just obvious this again was written by a crazy person. There may not have been political statements here but the people doing this absolutely are motivated by their politics. > But strangely none of those forks really got any traction or are going anywhere it seems... I am wondering why are those unhappy contributors helping the Lix project or some other forks? Presumably they aren't helping forks because they despair of any fork getting anywhere near the traction of the original. But that shouldn't be NixOS's problem.

bookshed 1y ago

################## MODERATION TEAM REMAINS IN PLACE - NOTHING HAS CHANGED ################## If you review the post and refresh it frequently, you will observe the censorship in action. Some instances of censorship are quite extreme. They censor individuals for even the mildest comments. I saw one person get flagged for linking to Eelco Dolstra's PhD thesis and requesting more scientific discussion. The TLDR was something like "More of THIS" were "THIS" was a hyperlink to Dolstra's PHD thesis that sparked NixOS. I wanted to reply, stepped away for a meal, and by the time I returned, the comment had been censored. NixOS isn't a technical project anymore. It's just Dolstra's stole life's work being kept in life support. I don't care which side of the political spectrum you are... this should anger you. They stole this man's life's work through distasteful political shenanigans. It's like removing Linus from Linux (unsuccessful removal attempts), Stallman from FOSS (unsuccessful removal attempts), and Eelco Dolstra from NixOS (removed). I don't care for these people thoughts or beliefs, I see them for what they are, thought leaders. People that ACTUALLY move us (humanity) FORWARD. They should stay in place leading their respective movements for as long as possible or until they break the LAW. Not some "constitution of NixOS" or "bylaws of NixOS", the actual LAW of their respective jurisdiction.

gigatexal 1y ago

Usually when popular projects have this much turmoil there a fork. Centos stream Node to deno Etc etc Why hasn’t there been a fork of nixos? And the folks who want to do things in a certain politically leaning way gravitate towards that and those that don’t stay. And boom. There’s peace again.

colinsane 11mo ago
> Why hasn’t there been a fork of nixos? And the folks who want to do things in a certain politically leaning way gravitate towards that and those that don’t stay. v.s. > Why hasn’t there been a fork of nixos? And the folks who want to do things in a certain politically leaning way stay and those that don’t gravitate towards that. now let's spend the next few years arguing which of these is the correct proposition. sure, it's more complicated: there's questions about _what_ to fork (Nix is an _ecosystem_, not necessarily a single repository), there are certain things which can't trivially _be_ forked (e.g. a multi-hundred-TB S3 cache that's actually critical infrastructure; project websites, wikis, uncountable automation services). how do you coordinate all the details of forking, if forking isn't actually as trivial as pushing the "fork" button? that requires highly capable leaders, and if the ecosystem were good at finding and promoting that type of leader, then it wouldn't be in this place to begin with. more optimistically, various parts of this ecosystem _have_ been forked, or reshaped, by various entities. things happen; sometimes that happening is just a lengthy process.
bookshed 1y ago
Imagine Bazite's mascot made a distro, well that distro would be NixOS's fork and it's called Lix (https://lix.systems/ https://lix.systems/). When they kicked Eelco Dolstra out of his project (NixOS) Lix became redundant so they stayed in NixOS. Also google is your friend.
zahlman 1y ago
Seriously, you'd think NixOS users would rank especially high in willingness to fork something they considered less than ideal.