10mo ago

Is NixOS at the advent of an implosion? | Community inquiry on recent drama

NixOS' influence and importance at pushing Linux forward into the (previously) unexplored landscape of configuring your complete system through a single config file is undeniable. It's been a wild ride, but it was well worth it.

And although it has only been relatively recently that it has lost its niche status, the recent influx of so-called 'immutable' distros springing up like mushrooms is undeniably linked to and inspired by NixOS.

However, unfortunately, while this should have been very exciting times for what's yet to come, the recent drama surrounding the project has definitely tarnished how the project is perceived.

NixOS' ideas will definitely live on regardless. But how do you envision NixOS' own future? Any ETA's for when this drama will end? Which lessons have we learned (so far) from this drama? Are there any winners as a result of this drama? Could something like this happen to any distro?

In case you're out of the loop. Though, there's a lot that has transpired since but which hasn't been rigorously documented at a single place; like how 4 out of 5 NixOS board members have quit over the last 2 months or so.

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I believe there is a much larger, silent majority of nix users, contributors and enthusiasts that are not affected by this drama. Here’s a post that resonates with me: https://nrd.sh/blog/nixos-policy-breakdown/
Over 20 years in this technology space, I’ve come to recognize software built on very solid foundational concepts. Nix is one of those. It’s not going anywhere and neither is NixOS. I encourage anyone interested in Nix to read Eelco Dolstra’s thesis: https://edolstra.github.io/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf
- That's a thought-provoking article you linked. Thanks. Unfortunately, ideological purity testing is a major problem across all sectors and spans the political spectrum. I was particularly struck by the part of the article that discussed whether "marginalized" status should be considered permanent or temporary.
  I've worked in social services for a long time. Social activism is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, marginalized groups need activists to push their agenda. On the other, activists often adopt that social activism as their primary identity and sometimes even their career. This sets up an incentive structure whereby they don't actually want to solve the problem of marginalization. Instead, they focus on ideological purity rather than pragmatically solving whatever problems they face.
  Sexual orientation, indigenous rights, trans rights, disability rights, race, gender, even recreational drug use, are all marginalization issues that have all received a reasonable degree of social acknowledgement and formal protection.
  In all the years I've worked in social services, the one issue that never goes away and is never solved or even seriously tackled is the intersection of poverty and mental illness. We are getting better as a society with treatable mental illness like depression and anxiety. However, major mental illness or untreatable/undiagnosed conditions like lack of impulse control that make it hard or impossible to work lead almost inexorably to poverty, addiction, and involvement with the criminal justice system. The activism on that front is itself marginalized because the "fix" isn't a matter of changing language or mind set, but rather a massive investment of resources. It is easier to sit behind a keyboard and advocate online for nebulous issues like representation than to get out there and make people care about issues that cost real money.
  As someone who works with seriously impoverished and mentally ill people, I find the sometimes extreme drama associated with identity politics, representation, pronouns, etc. rather ridiculous. A lot of it is just people trying to externalize their personal issues and force others to acknowledge them, which is unfortunate when it poisons a project or community. It is a form of narcissism, essentially. People who do that should go down to the tent cities, homeless shelters, and jails to get some perspective on just how "marginalized" they actually are and whether publicly exorcising their personal demons is worth destroying the enjoyment of others in a project or community. Their energy could almost certainly be better spent in less narcissistic pursuits.
  
  When I see posts like this and suggest keeping politics out of technical communities, my comment just gets removed by the mods for "transphobia". I can't even wrap my head around that one...
  Other (multiple) times I've had different people respond with "a person's right to exist is not a political issue, it's a human rights issue"... as if I was ever talking about anyone's right to exist.
  Then I get the people who say that it's impossible to not have politics in a community, as eventually someone will come along and do things like the SerenityOS drive-by PR and now any action or inaction by the owner that doesn't fit their narrative is labeled as some kind of personal attack against them and they call on their friends to go full-on SJW war against the project because someone had an opinion they don't like.

You should know that the guy you cited in the second link, Srid, is a well-known right-wing shit-stirrer who is banned from basically all NixOS spaces because he cannot peacefully coexist. He literally gets up day after day with the seemingly sole purpose of fueling drama and causing problems. Don't take his opinion at face value, he wants to see the project burn down and this colors his interpretation of events.
NixOS is going through a rocky moment for sure, but there's no indication it will implode currently.
- Thank you for mentioning who he is and what his goals are!
  
  which is hilarious because any time I make comments like that, they get removed.
- I think we should attack the arguments made and not the people, seems a bit hypocritical IMO.
  
  I attacked his beliefs which is perfectly valid. You should critically examine the motives and biases of people who feed you information.
- He literally gets up day after day with the seemingly sole purpose of fueling drama and causing problems
  That's funny because I feel like that's exactly what all these self-proclaimed "gender terrorist" SJWs are doing to projects in the first place.
  
  You made one reply to me whining that I attacked the person by pointing out his beliefs, and then made another reply to me about "gender terrorist SJWs". Do you just lack any form of self-awareness?
  
  Why the whataboutism?

It’s probably wise to simply ignore the drama. Open source seems to invite this at the “top” for whatever reason, but for the casual user there is usually little to no impact.
Unless you’re trying to be a top contributor to nix, I would just carry on with normal usage and all the current drama will blow over.
- uh, the drama being what it is about people in positions of power blocking efforts to make a welcoming and diverse nixos community, persisting right wing concern trolling, and especially what appears to be maybe a military tech company takeover of nixos, it's hella understandable people would want to reconsider using this tech on their own hardware and it's pretty sus to respond to this with 'ah just drama it'll blow over'...
  
  Just like the xz backdoor I agree "nothing to see here, move along" seems like bad advice.
  It is curious to wonder how much state actors and militaries are involved in weaponizing FOSS culture to purge potential perceived opponents.
  For this reason sticking to technological merit and leaving personal beliefs out of FOSS seems wise.
  FOSS shouldn't be state actor's play thing. When leadership behaves radically and is exclusive it looses my respect & support.
  
  military tech company
  wait until they find out where computers and the internet came from. or Tor... GPS, etc etc.
  
  If you think that’s a military take over. Don’t look under the rug of Linux/foss at large.
  
  Understandable, maybe to some. But no matter how hard the activist core currently in charge of the moderation team would like me to believe it, not everyone brings political activism to the table on this project. And that’s a good thing. It is still perfectly possible to enjoy working with good tech and build cool stuff without bringing a soap box alongside your laptop.
- Idk imo knowing about the drama makes me hesitant to go back, especially since I switched all my development environments from Nix to Guix and I dont want to have three package managers lol Plus the Guix community seems really close knit
  Also, happy cake day!
  
  Conway’s Law applies in this respect; the mess in governance of Nix has produced a product that reflects that mess. Nix started a beautiful movement but like many first movers, they rarely reap long-term rewards.
  
  Not to add fuel to the flame by asking, but how’s it been on Guix? I’ve heard Guix does a lot of things better, but also that there’s far less packages and it’s harder on modern hardware.
  
  All good reasons to make a decision, I’m not trying to sway anyone in a direction.
  I just feel bad when people see drama in a community and wonder if that thing is “safe”. I’ve seen this kind of thing many times before in other communities—PERL, Python, Ruby, Rust, etc—and it never seems to lead to sweeping changes the normal user would notice. It’s pretty safe to assume that day-to-day users of thing can just carry on if they don’t care about the community upset.
  
  I would avoid getting locked in to one platform. Portable and flexible is better
- Worst case the community forks. This is the benefit of open source.
  
  https://lix.systems/

In September the NixOS constitutional assembly should finish their work, and the community will be able to elect governance. I'm guessing that's when the drama will start getting resolved.
In the meantime, there are multiple maintainers that have left because of the drama - which is more troublesome than the board members leaving - but nixpkgs has a LOT of maintainers, and there are new ones joining all the time. It's still healthy and won't implode so quickly.
- Informative post. Thank you!
- Is Nix really so important to the world that it needs a constitutional assembly, a board of directors, and general elections?
  I always gathered that it was a niche project within the niche of Linux distro projects.
  Is it a bunch of people playing out a company governance fantasy or is it actually a large, well valued company? I think that the vast majority of people wouldn't even be able to make an informed voting decision.
  I am also quite out of the loop I feel...
  
  I heard developers find it rather easy to do reproducible build in Nix, so it is more utilized over dev landscape. Basically a competitor of docker, and quite significant one at that. That's why it is considered big, despite that it is niche from desktop linux pov.

My take on it is that the creator of Nix was very good technically but was not a good BDFL, and that was the root of the problem. He didn't do a good job of politicking, stepped down, and now Nix is going through a bit of interregnum. I don't think it's likely to fail overall though, nixpkgs is too valuable of a resource to just get abandoned. I expect the board seats will be filled by people that know how to politick, and things will continue on after that.
Lessons learned is being a BDFL is hard. IMO Eelco Dolstra failed because he had opinions about things like Anduril sponsorship and flakes, and didn't just declare "This is the way things are going to be, take it or leave it". People got really pissed off because there wasn't a clear message or transparency, which resulted in lots of guessing.
- Thank you for your input! I would love to read more on this. Do you happen to know a good source wherein Eelco Dolstra's leadership is discussed (as fair as possible)?
  
  Unfortunately there isn't one easy source that I've found. This is based on reading the stuff you linked to, as well as discourse/matrix discussions linked to from those sources. I compare it mentally to Guido van Rossum as BDFL of Python (though not any longer). He did a much better job of communicating expectations, like here
  It made some people unhappy that there was no Python 2.8, but everybody knew what was happening. The core Python team also wasn't surprised by that announcement, unlike with stuff like Anduril or flakes for the nix devs.
  There was also a failure to communicate with stuff like the PR that would switch to Meson. The PR author should have known if Eelco broadly agreed with it before opening it. If there was a process that the PR author just ignored, the PR should have been closed with "Follow this process and try again". That process can be as simple as "See if Eelco likes it", since he was BDFL, but the process needs to be very clear to everyone.
- IMO politics have no place in technical discussions. Full disclosure, the last time I said this, my comment was removed for "transphobia"... somehow.
  
  What you call politics (US political "issues") and politicking (the act of seeking and organizing power or influence) are different things.
  Maybe US political issues have no spot in tech but politics are a part of being human.
  
  Building an open source project is not just a technical challenge. It's a social one as well, and politics are a big factor in that.

Thanks for posting. I was unaware of current events. That's quite the rabbit hole!

Doesnt matter because all the board members could quit and nixOS community can update the config and rebuild.

There's some decent forks currently so I wouldn't worry about the technology, but yeah the organisation is probably going to implode and reorg soon

It's been 6 more months, so, here's your answer.

the recent influx of so-called 'immutable' distros springing up like mushrooms is undeniably linked to and inspired by NixOS.
This is the usual (only?) solution - the idea forks or inspires a different community to take it further.
There's usually no fixing a toxic person / community in either real life or online.
- Eelco stepped down
- lol no insight at all

https://guix.gnu.org/
https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix
- Can you link any good guides on transistioning to guix?
- Are Nixos configurations compatible with this one?
  
  As far as I can tell, they are 100% different. Guix uses Guile Scheme, NixOS uses the custom Nix language.

NixOS not the major inspiration for immutables, consumer OSes like Android and ChromeOS are. But yes, NixOS has some influence even it don't get the idea of immutable distros well.
- NixOS not the major inspiration for immutables
  Do you mean strictly mean 'immutable' distros with this?
  consumer OSes like Android and ChromeOS are.
  So, if I understood you correct, you pose that Android and ChromeOS are the major inspiration for 'immutable distros'. Which, to be fair, could be true. Uhmm..., a quick search didn't result on any conclusive evidence of this. If you will, could you perhaps help me find with sources that back up this claim?
  But yes, NixOS has some influence even it don’t get the idea of immutable distros well.
  Sorry, I don't understand this sentence. Could you explain what you meant here?
  
  Yeah, Android ain't an immutible distro wtf

I don't know what drama NixOS is having but I rather read TOS than reading that giant wall of text, so NixOS is clean in my eyes

As I used to say. The Nix community acts more like a cult of people willing to support flat earth.
- What does this mean?
  
  It means that questioning decisions or problems is seen as negative in the community generally and that everyone else must be wrong for not using NixOS.

I don't believe in immutable distros. They are not well developed now so it's a bubble that should pop soon after people realize they are not ready yet and have a lot of disadvantages. Also they are unsuitable for old PCs and Nix seems relatively good for them so I don't think Nix will die completely but we'll have to see.
- Interesting take.
  I don’t believe in immutable distros.
  This seems more philosophical than on technicalities. If this is correct, would you mind elaborating on the philosophical side?
  They are not well developed now
  Even if this were the case, shouldn't the constant development and continuous improvement result in something that's (eventually) well-developed? The only way I could see this holding some truth is if by design the 'immutable' model (whatever that is) happens to be broken or something like that. Like, how some file systems are simply better than Btrfs (or any CoW filesystem for that matter) for specific tasks; i.e. ensure to use the right tool for the right task. So, do you pose that 'immutable distros' are by design not well-suited? If so, why?
  so it’s a bubble that should pop soon after people realize they are not ready yet
  So you (actually) acknowledge and imply that it will become ready at some point. Or not? Furthermore, like how do you reconcile this with Fedora's ambitions for Fedora Atomic? Or how NixOS is going strong (perhaps stronger than ever) while it's been in the making since before Ubuntu?
  and have a lot of disadvantages.
  And advantages*. Or do you ignore those?
  Also they are unsuitable for old PCs
  This is false. What makes you think that?
  and Nix seems relatively good for them
  What's "them" in this sentence? The "old PCs" you had just mentioned? Or something else? Furthermore, if it is the "old PCs", doesn't this directly contradict with "they are unsuitable for old PCs"?
  
  You have entirely misunderstood or intentionally misconcepted my comment.
  This seems more philosophical than on technicalities. If this is correct, would you mind elaborating on the philosophical side?
  There is no philosophical side. I don't believe in them getting very major on desktops and laptops. That's it.
  Even if this were the case, shouldn't the constant development and continuous improvement result in something that's (eventually) well-developed?
  Yes but the hype should disappear a long time before it happens. And that's what I meant by the bubble. It's very hyped, misunderstood and misused thing now. It will go away and then immutable systems will find their niche or die out.
  And advantages*. Or do you ignore those?
  This looks like an attempt to start a fight or act like the aggressive part of the Nix community. I said immutable systems have advantages and disadvantages (in the next comment I think) but you either didn't read or decided to just fight instead.
  This is false. What makes you think that?
  Dual system partitions and Flatpaks are both not great for machines that use HDDs.
  What's "them" in this sentence?
  Old PCs.
  Furthermore, if it is the "old PCs", doesn't this directly contradict with "they are unsuitable for old PCs"?
  It doesn't because Nix doesn't have the just mentioned disadvantages of immutable systems. Idk why you misunderstood this but imo it seems suspicious of you.
- Immutablity is like Wayland or Flatpak, ready for prime time for a subset of users and still in development which means they can only improve.
  
  Wayland is meant to fully replace X11 and become the standard. Immutability as the idea itself has significant features that are advantages for some users but disadvantages or even deal breakers for others.
  
  I can't agree. Wayland should be THE display system we use. Flatpak can't achieve full market dominance because the command line experience (especially for using cli apps) still sucks (and that's where snaps come in to play). Immutable distros target an even smaller subset of users. Not only are they unsuitable for some use cases, but they're also in complete opposition to some people's workflows.

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