The dire state of NixOS's moderation culture
github.com
github.com
From what I could gather, the main factor that led the community to this point is Anduril's involvement in the community. Anduril is a miltech company and a contractor of the USA DoD. It looks like they use Nix extensively to train ML models and deploy combat drones, and several of their employees have very close ties to the Nix community; Jon Ringer (an Anduril employee, who is mentioned several times in this document) has recently been a release manager for three versions of NixOS, and was nominated to become a release manager for the upcoming 24.05 release.
Anduril wanted to sponsor NixCon last year because of this deep involvement in the community. I was not there to see it, but from what I've seen lately, many members of the community were not happy about it. The sponsorship was eventually pulled, because the on-site video team for the conference (https://c3voc.de/) threatened to pull out on their own over this sponsorship.
From my understanding there has been no official decision taken over Anduril's sponsorship since last year's debacle. Many people in the community think that this is because Eelco Dolstra, the creator and de-facto BDFL of Nix, is currently employed by Determinate Systems, which is rumored to have a contract with Anduril.
Edit: I just want to make it clear that I don't agree with what is presented in this document. I just wanted to present an overview of what, from my perspective, happened up to this point.
As far as I understand it, the objection would be if
- you were simultaneously a key person in Nix, like a release manager
- your company officially sponsored events that associated Nix with military
- several of your employees were active contributors to core parts of Nix
Surely, the usage of Nix in any domain is a free choice. You can't really police that anyways.
And to clarify above, there was no "contributors of this company" dynamic to the outrage.
"jobs" are things which come and go, not a lot of people are will to burn their personal image for a [potentially] uncaring company. And I'm certainly not one of them either.
* taking non-anonymous donations, making Nix seem like the extended arm of the military industrial complex
* DetSys being the de-facto nix consultancy due to employing the BDFL, not moving work done / guarantees given (installer, flake stability) back into the foundation and taking money from the same military industrial complex
FOSS is open to everyone and one can't stop people from using it; that doesn't mean the foundation (and it's de-facto corporate arm) need to openly become dependent on military contractors either.
Why should they care? You try to make yourself sound like some kind of important user they should cater to, which is absurd. They don't want you to use it for military stuff, so it's not a big gotcha that someone with "decision making power" (wow!) doesn't want to use it.
Like, most FOSS projects just gets abuse and entitlement from their users, but actually little value from their users. You would be no different, and frankly sound entitled just from the get-go.
This isn't accurate.
Per a summary at the time, https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nixcon-2023-sponsorship-situat...
- c3voc resolved to not redistribute talks from Anduril (or with Anduril branding), but would otherwise cover the event.
- Anduril was withdrawn as a sponsor, since the venue had a policy against military funding (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_clause), and time constraints didn't allow for clarity about whether the event could be held with Anduril as a sponsor.
FWIW, at the time of writing this post, Anduril is a sponsor of Nixcon 2024. https://2024-na.nixcon.org/
The two authors of this RFC, shortly after they opened the PR, got banned by the NixOS moderators.
You may join the following Matrix room to discuss the RFC openly, https://app.element.io/#/room/#rfc-175-all-together:matrix.o...
I can't believe some people are upset because other people don't want to take money from a company that specializes in killing people.
America is very naturally safe because we're on another continent than everyone else, but eventually if you don't build weapons someone else will and fire them at you.
The document is very long and I don't really get the structure. It's very hard to make anything of it really. It somewhat makes me suspicious, even. I would write exactly like this if I knew how to do this and had to sidestep an issue. Long, hard to follow stuff filled with words.
Is there a clear summary, an easy-to-follow timeline? (of course these are always going to be presented from one side)
Also,
> Simultaneously, this group, still upset about the failure of RFC 98, is using the myth of fascism combined with an abusive extension of the paradox of tolerance
- What is the myth of fascism?
- What is the abusive extension of the paradox of tolerance?
I get the paradox of tolerance is that you can't really tolerate intolerance or else you'll be eaten. [1]
> The paradox of tolerance states that if a society's practice of tolerance is inclusive of the intolerant, intolerance will ultimately dominate, eliminating the tolerant and the practice of tolerance with them
When there's stuff like this going on, I don't think it's helpful to try and do a full review of who did what wrong, or what the hypothetical motivations of any of these groups of people are, but instead to just review the actual proposed policy changes.
It's often useful to know the motivation / reason behind a change. Especially a policy change. Maybe the change can subtly enable harmful stuff you don't see coming if you don't have the context around the change.
You also want to know the intents being a change to know if the change actually works towards the intended goal while reviewing. Or else how do you check if the change help?
It would be like a code change that doesn't say what it fixes or add, how do you check it does the right things?
I was there arguing against the moderation team when it was first founded because I believe in principles of consent and civility, not compulsion and coersion, which were already starting to manifest themselves in argument for the moderation team to begin with. I was very vocal at the time, but not radical, when I lost I didn't fight it. I just consented and watched as things got worse.
I've watched a lot of people, some who were quite prolific contributors walk away, I've watched extremely well reasoned positions, including some of my own going completely ignored or silenced, and I've watched technical problems that could and should have been addressed by some of these very same people (some of which were actively being worked on previously) go completely stale.
I understand the document is "a lot of words", which I am not necessarily a big fan of either. But we have tried several times to give specific examples of corruption and been shot down, so we felt the only way to show proper cause at this point, that would be impossible to dismiss, would be to compile a much longer and more thorough narrative.
And as it states at the top, it is by no means exhaustive. Only a few months worth of activity in the 4 years or so I've been watching this trainwreck. Also, the last few days have shown us almost and equal if not moreso amount of strife.
There's certainly a lot to break down, but I'll start with Jon calling the behavior of associating him with Anduril "doxing", when it's literally on his linkedin and his buddies are doing full-name callouts in this supplementary article to RFC 175, or how he starts a reddit thread that he says isn't meant to stir the pot, but then goes on in the comments about being a brave fascist-labeled throught-criminal, when he mostly got banned for being extremely abrasive / concern-trolling alongside injecting himself into every single conversation, including approving the PR that removed person with the 4. most commits leaving due to his employer.
mrustc, an independent implementation, has produced identical output.
> rustc bootstrap tested and validated (1.19.0 isn't fully repeatable, but later versions are)
https://github.com/thepowersgang/mrustc?tab=readme-ov-file#p...
This means you'd have to land the same attack in both mrustc and rustc, making the possibility infinitesimally small.
It is already happening and with the help of some known personalities in the Rust community [0].
I wonder how much of it is because they have over invested in this community versus their local ones.
And I also agree with - what they call - the opponent, that politics should not be forced upon an open-source project. Proclaiming these are fascists, identitarians or otherwise using the Nazi stamp doesn't really help the author's position either.
I'd say this document doesn't belong on HN.
The document isn't the one saying "fascists", it's criticizing the people throwing that term around.
remember the so-called """fascists""" being denounced here are just a defense contractor, and by extension anyone who doesn't have a problem with them funding a nix conference.
Just a feeling. I have no proof.
And, It should go without saying, respecting one's identity is the least we can do, including the gender since it's in there. Except, of course, for horrible stuff, but surely gender is no such thing.
Actually, while I don't care about my gender, if you are not ready to respect my fellow human beings and their identity, I don't really want to have to interact with you.
When you say "not caring", do you mean "Can't be bothered to use pronouns people wish to be referred to" or "don't mind being called with whatever pronoun?" Because the phrasing is ambiguous and two of the possible meanings are radically different things.
At this point im not sure if socially constructing your identity is that common outside of your teenage years.
then I'm with you, a part of the problem is there.
Actually this doesn't match your first sentence, trans people pretty much care about their gender. I believe only a part of the non conforming people don't care about their gender.
Anecdote but as a cis male not caring about his gender, I never quite felt hostility against me in particular (against the male gender, sure, but I understand this hostility)
I'm confused by your comments so I'm trying to clarify by making things more explicit.
To me, "non-conforming" here means LGBTQIA+. "cis" is the closest thing to "conforming". "trans" is pretty much "non-conforming". I suspect we are not agreeing on this. What do you mean by "they" and "non-conforming"? If we don't agree on those words, it most likely follows that I don't agree with your following sentence "This results in the discrimination you speak of."
This is very abstract. An practical example: Answering "How would i know?" to "What are your pronouns?" will get you this kind of covert hostility.
It's also ok to ask trans people what are their pronouns. They should be glad most of the time.
About cis people, I don't know. I don't have much experience in the topic. I've never seen anybody misgender a cis person. Sometimes there is a doubt but it's vanishingly rare. It's also uncommon to ask a cis person their pronouns, and I believe a cis person won't expect to be asked this because for them it should be obvious what their gender is, though it would be logical to do so because you are not expected to notice a trans person is trans and some places push for it.
I personally won't explicitly ask pronouns unless absolutely necessary and didn't have the chance to pick the information up passively. I certainly don't need this on the internet.
On the internet, the rule is simple: you should not use a gendered pronoun to refer to someone without checking first. "they" is safer if you don't want to spend time checking their profile and sometimes you just can't know. That's what I do most of the time.
Now, trans or cis, if you keep misgendering the same person, it's a bit like using a wrong name several times with the same person. People don't usually like this. Since gender identity is (unfortunately; my opinion) a big deal in our societies you have no choice to care if you don't want to piss people off. It's general politeness, if you don't want to appear rude, you need to care, remember, etc, just like you need to remember the name. Though forgetting names is quite generally understood and accepted. I'm of people who don't easily remember names at first.
tl;dr: I use "they" on the internet or check the profile. In real life, I try to pick it up and remember the information. It has not happened to me that I misgender someone, but I consider it is fine once but will not make the mistake twice.
That isn't the case for everyone, tho.
Just use they. Try to remember the gender when told, but if this is still an issue, use they (for the names, I just find workarounds to not have to mention them when I can help it).
(especially in English that seems more and more current; in French iel is becoming more common but still not very widespread)
Surely people can understand and accept your struggle if you explain what's happening, though again, I never met someone like this knowingly, so I can't be sure how that works.
You're too ahead of your time! :-)
You could've just not commented.
Do you have a better suggestion on whats going on?
Those of us who reject the idea that women and men are to be redefined in terms of "gender identity", and consider this to be a sexist belief system, either have to pretend to hold this view or be excluded from participating.
Then they don't understand what free software is.
Not surprising considering these people are primarily activists and software is merely means of gaining personal power in another space.
And lmao wow, one of the mods involved in this is also a mod at lobste.rs. No wonder the "discussion" there looked so uncanny.
moderation is prone to power plays no matter which angle you approach it with.
- Moderation actions are public on lobsters: https://lobste.rs/moderations
- Irene wasn’t active in that discussion.
- Some of the most upvoted comments were against the moderation clique.
The author of this article doesn't seem particularly interested in checking facts, they implied some nasty stuff about my actions and motivation without bothering to read the publicly available info or contact me.
Nowhere in the ban log you mentioned "attempted brigading"; rather what you mentioned, as reasons for the ban, was "lots of off-topic stories" & "[using] Lobsters to fight with the NixOS project".
https://twitter.com/sridca/status/1751586246026313906
Neither of which is true, of course, nor can they be proven.
To let the readers judge for themselves, here are my lobste.rs submissions & comments:
https://lobste.rs/~srid/stories
https://lobste.rs/~srid/threads
And here's the submission that got me banned (after a NixOS moderator, Hexa, commented on it so as to derail the submission):
Ah, but they can.
> [your fight with Nix] only happened to be the last one you tried to start on Lobsters.
For example, readers can easily verify that this statement is lie by going to that last submission and see that there was no fight (except Hexa himself fighting into the void):
So, once again, where is the evidence for your accusations?
(Incidentally, where you say "23 of your comments and 21 of your stories" -- a figure I can't confirm -- I'm sure none of those happened in the last few months or are related to Nix in anyway, as my involvement have exclusively been technical, ergo they are nothing to do with "[using] Lobsters to fight with the NixOS project", and if they were about "lots of off-topic stories" then I would have been banned long time ago.)
The comments are deleted so nobody can verify that it was "abuse". You're basically saying "source: trust me bro".
Back in the day, forums used to put a big fat USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST sticker on bad posts, but keep it around for posterity so people could see for themselves what the fuss was about. I don't like the secrecy of how moderation is done nowadays.
None of that means anything if I can't see for myself what the purported infraction was. The most important piece of the puzzle is missing! "It's in the RSS feed" -- oh that's so helpful, I'll be sure to look for that in the locked filing cabinet in the disused lavatory, the one with the sign on the door saying "beware of the leopard".
It's a hallmark of a free and democratic society that criminal and civil proceedings are generally public, when someone is punished, we can easily look up what they were punished for. Obviously software forum arguments aren't as important or dramatic as legal disputes, but we imitate in the small what we admire in the large. It is disturbing to me that one side of this culture war calls itself "democratic", but acts like a Star Chamber.
We know the game well, pretend you are legitimate at all costs, whether you are telling the truth or not. Well guess what? That doesn't inspire anyone to do anything, and only inflates your ego.
You know what does inspire folks? Being honest, even when you don't have to be. This is about more than just the BS unsubstantiated claim that Srid is somehow a "dangerous person" as so often is dubiously suggested, this is about folks being tired of this garbage already. It is quite ironic, in my view, that the only "crime" srid is commiting is being a part of a different culture. I thought we were all about inclusivity? What happened to that?
Tell the truth, or stfu so those that do can speak, I leave it in your hands. Please and thank you.
*Although comments no longer can see based on previous it was becoming a heated conversation.
**For comparison, open letter discussion in HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40107370
Sure, it would be impure, and not top-to-bottom reproducible, and you don't personally have to do it. But it's a choice to avoid a compromise, not an impossibility precluded by the laws of math or anything.
Regardless, I no longer really sympathize with Free software's concept of a "freedom" that results in either (1) obscure purity, or (2) benefits large corporations at the expense of the rest of us.
RMS was economically naive, despite his counter-cultural leanings; I can't help but wonder what Free software would have looked like if he'd imagined the likes of MS/Amazon getting rich off it while creators get a pittance. We can't all have free-floating MIT jobs.
I'm writing my comments in the first person, because I have actually made the effort to investigate this in the past, more than once.
This is precious little to do with some kind of abstract purity. Hell, I've packaged Tensorflow and CUDA crap, which is as far removed from purity as it gets.
It gets a little tiring to read about values that are projected onto Guix, that I can't find in my own work.
But you're not the spokesperson for Guix, are you?
A quick search of GUIX mailing lists turned up this thread from 2017.
From [Chris Marusich](https://narkive.com/BnGNBXUh.7):
> I don't want to use Guix on macOS to package, promote, or make it easy to use non-free software.
Interestingly, that entire thread is a good faith exploration of what it would take to run Guix on mac at the time, but they conclude that there's no Free Software way to bootstrap the entire process, and rule it out. They consider toolchains, compilers, emulators, VMs, Docker, etc. but not starting with XCode.
Which is fine! Guix simply has different values and makes different choices.
You repeatedly say "can't", but given how Guix shares DNA with nix, which has done it on a mac, I'm a bit dubious about any technical infeasibility.
I used to be co-maintainer and I'm working close to full time on Guix. I also happen to have worked on Guix on Mac before; in fact I'm involved in the very mailing list thread you dug up.
We are familiar with the way Nix does it on Mac, but I won't repeat my assessment here. Doing it with XCode and adding an arbitrary cut to the graph would get us to something that resembles Guix only in uninteresting ways.
"left-wing ethno-nationalism" is an oxymoron.
Time saved: 171 minutes.
Thanks Kagi-search summarizer....
But I suspect no AI will be able to provide correct understanding of this, we are sorely lacking context here.
Also, you guys providing LLM generated stuff in HN comment keep convincing me I should not invest time in this stuff.
"this page provides HTML and CSS to render GitHub's UI", no joke.
(edit: fixed IA -> AI)
If you're not familiar with these tools, that is very abnormal output for one of them. Normally they'd be able to provide a reasonable summary for all of this.
So taken in that context, the subtext is "is this worth any of our time"?
I did link directly to the RFC in another comment, which I think is more worth people's time.
Many people first degree post clueless LLM-generated stuff indistinguishable from your comment as-is.