EFFORTPOST Ongoing NixOS Drama - Of Wingcucks, Coups, and Otherkin

There is an ongoing power struggle over who controls NixOS. This is a story of politics, pointless argument, thousands of wasted man-hours, corrupt jannies, and a coup d'état. The primary factions are one of , leftoids, and otherkin, and a faction of neurodivergents, libertarians , and rightoids unified against idpol.

If you don't care about historical details, skip to the section "Assembling the Constitutional Assembly"

Previous Threads

attempts takeover of Nix project

compares the fall of the NixOS drama to Evangelion and references Star Trek because they didn't janny wrongthink right

Historical Timeline of Key Events

2003

• Eelco Dolstra creates Nix, a novel package manager, and NixOS, a Linux Distribution.

2023

• Anduril, an American defense contractor, sponsored NixCon

• Various leftoids disliked that, and complained to the university it was hosted at. The university has a vaguely defined civil clause stating it studies exclusively "peaceful goals [to] serve civilian purposes"

• Less than 48 hours before NixCon was to begin, the university threatened to shut down NixCon, unsure the sponsorship wouldn't violate their civil clause

• Anduril was removed as a sponsor, and Anduril employees could not show Anduril logos or discuss their employer during their scheduled talks

2024

• Anduril sponsored NixCon, this time hosted in Pasadena, California, which had no such clause

• Various leftoids disliked that, and complained on GitHub and social media

• NixCon went on as planned

After NixCon 2024

On the official forums, users argue over whether Anduril makes unsafe, and mods liberally ban people on the "pro-sponsorship" side.

One banned user created a GitHub page of the politically motivated mods

Note: Mods are not the Nix board, but much like reddit mods, are independent, self-selecting, and control the forums.

April 21, 2024 - The "Open Letter"

On April 21, 2024, an "open letter" was posted, accusing Eelco of making Nix vaguely unsafe for "marginalized backgrounds" and of "liking" posts the authors dislike. The letter has an Executive Summary that is 2 pages of solid text, arguing that Eelco's inaction on "concern trolling" and military sponsors constitutes a crisis he must step down over. Of interest, it also has the following paragraph:

Finally, we acknowledge that any changes in Eelco's role, even if prompted by clear misconduct, are going to be interpreted as a bunch of left wing people taking over the project. Although the authors' politics are left-leaning, this is not about Eelco's political views, it is about his actions, how they have shaped the Nix project culturally, and how his actions do not serve the project's interests. We realise how this interpretation will lead to significant moderation load due to the out-of-community brigading activities of certain banned community members, as well as internal community debate.

The letter was signed by 160 people, only 35 of which have contributed to nixpkgs.

On April 23, GitHub user "HelpMeTheShadowPeopleAreStealingMyStuff" made a PR to add a CoC to the open letter, which was accepted.

May 1, 2024 - Eelco steps down

Eelco Dolstra announced his resignation from the Nix Foundation Board, stating the board will appoint a "Constitutional Assembly" to create a new governance structure.

May 2, 2024 - Assembling the Constitutional Assembly

The forum mods posted to GitHub inviting nixpkgs contributors to join a "Zulip" (like slack but worse) created for this process.

The Assembly Code of Conduct

The Zulip instance has a mod-created Code of Conduct that includes this laundry list of protected categories

These guidelines aim to support bootstrapping our governance structure, and as such all who can, should feel safe to participate regardless of background, family status, gender, gender identity and expression, marital status, s*x, sexual orientation , plurality , native language, age, race/ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status , geographic location, education, disability, otherkin status, or other aspects of diversity.

Otherkin are now a protected category! Personally, I think this is purely a bait wedge issue.

The section "Disruptive Behavior" has these examples:

• Bad faith invitations to engage in debate, regardless of the pretense of civility.

• Attempting to use the specific wording of rules documents without referencing or understanding their spirit.

No sweaty, your bad faith behavior is not allowed . Yes sweaty, we will ban you when we feel like it.

The Assembly Jannies

The CoC gives Zulip mods great leeway, so let's look into them.

The Nix forum mods are an independent group that recruits through unanimous agreement by all current mods. Several of them signed the open letter, and, in my experience, their ringleader is joepie.

On joepie's website, he boasts

I manipulate.

In case it hasn't become obvious to you yet, I am a social engineer. Full-time. 24/7. I use manipulation and other psychological tactics in nearly every conversation I have. I will try to change the way you think, and try to solve problems you might not even realize you had.

If you do want to know, just ask. But don't be surprised if my answer, at first, reads like made-up non-sense. Social engineering is very subtle.

The only way to counter manipulation through irrationality, is by manipulating people back into rationality. That is what I do. That is also why I will gladly tell you what I am doing to manipulate you. Manipulation for a good cause doesn't need to be hidden to be effective.

Elsewhere, on mastodon, moderator Raito celebrates the y'alling of the fascists

On lobste.rs, moderator Hexa shared the open letter. The "Paradox of Tolerance" is brought up.

The Zulip discussions

Let's peek over to the Zulip discussion, shall we? I wonder what the very first topic they're considering is...

Ah, 2 jannies and a discussing whether 2/7 or 5/7 of assembly members should be "marginalized".

After some arguments on technical ability, our resident catboy and resident leftoid agree, technical merit doesn't matter. The mods move dissent into a containment thread.

Another mod also does not like merit. What was that saying? Something something, "those who can, do; those who can't, janny"?

nat's favorite pastimes include calling people fascist and racist.

Despite this, users on Zulip are split roughly 55/45 against/for quotas, as this pol.is report shows.

Chris McDonough, by the way, has since declared the entire process an illegitimate and cynical power grab. He is also well-known for prominent contributions to Pyramid, a Python web framework.

One prominent Zulip user was Shea, who generally summarized major discussions and was the most prominent and well-spoken anti-quota participant.

Aaaaand he's gone!

Shea has since written a blog post about this.

A Crisis of Legitimacy

To wrap this up, some final words on legitimacy.

Several people have taken to the NixOS subreddit and to their personal blogs describing the entire process as illegitimate. They are largely correct. As of this forum post, the mods have gone ahead their original plan anyway.

They will have the board select an assembly of 3 long-standing contributors, 2 "marginalized" individuals, and 2 external "experts" who have been quoted as explicitly anti-meritocracy.

If you're keeping count of the votes, that's 4/3 against prominent Nix contributors, and in favor of whoever the board likes.

And that's the current state of this whole affair. The mods have chosen selectorate's composition, and final Assembly applications are being deliberated.