Here's the thing, Nix is to slow (even ignoring `nix-env`'s terrible search functionality which should just be removed). What that requires is some good old boring profiling and optimization work. If he were to contribute that to a distro/package manager that basically shares his vision, this would be much more useful to the world.
Cause, at the end of the day, the work isn't so much maintaining the package manager as maintaining the packages. That's simply too much work for anyone to do alone.
http://blog.williammanley.net/2020/05/25/unlock-software-fre... is good piece on why the ultimate issues with packaging are social, not technological. At this point, when the vast majority of devs don't seem to act as if there is a commons that even needs integration, I don't think any 1-person technological solution is going to be so good as to upend the social situation.
It's true that the commons needs people willing to put in time and effort on boring things, but they have to be boring in the first place. If the author were to show up and say "Hey, Nix, if you rearchitect in this massive way it may or may not bring big improvements" and sent in a pull request, it would be rightly rejected. But it's still possible that a few days of rearchitecture can deliver the same results as a year of profiling and microoptimizations. The point of distri, as I understand it, is to have something to point to and say, this architectural change will actually work, and it's worth implementing in an actually-used distro.
I agree with this great summary! I’m glad I got my points across :)
Thanks!
The author has a history of delivering quality OSS projects: i3, Debian Code Search, RobustIRC, gokrazy.