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Comment by funcDropShadow | Hacker News Reader

Who is behind this fork?

Hi, I (Jake Hamilton) am.

Though, this is not an effort that can be undertaken by one person. My goal is publishing this page was to create a set of values, goals, and a roadmap for people (like myself) who would otherwise be leaving the Nix ecosystem due to its shortcomings. These values, goals, and roadmap can then be used for alignment to actually make it a reality. I worried that if these things weren't specified up front that people would instead continue arguing in circles about past problems rather than building a solution.

For reference, I use Nix a lot. I was pushing it pretty hard at Intuit while I worked there.

All my systems are managed with it:

https://github.com/jakehamilton/config

And I have created projects like Snowfall Lib to make working with certain features easier:

https://github.com/snowfallorg/lib

What communication channels do you plan to use for coordination? Forum, discord, IRC, matrix or something else?

A forum is currently being set up so people can start collaborating, but I intend to also create a Matrix space as well for real-time communications.

The name, the logo, the values and many important strategic decisions seems to have already been decided, before a public channel of communication has been created.

Was this created by just you, or is there already a team?

This page was created by me. I have tried to capture what I feel are important values that are hopefully shared by others who are leaving or have left Nix. With the values, goals, and roadmap clearly stated, others can join to contribute. Part of the reason I felt this was important was to make sure that anyone who would want to contribute did not feel like there would be some rug pull moment. I wanted to outline exactly what was going to happen and how it was going to be better than what we have currently with Nix so that we can build that vision together.

The Microsoft GitHub requirement is the only reason that I do not contribute to NixPkgs except by sending a mail to a maintainer sometimes. Everything I package stays in my own flakes. If a community arose that hosts its own repo or is hosted at e.g. CodeBerg, I would contribute.

This has been a tough one to figure out. I do not think there is a great answer here. GitHub has a large network of people and the barrier to contributing there is fairly low. Cost is also subsidized greatly by GitHub. Nixpkgs being one of the largest and most active repositories on the entire platform would certainly strain any self-hosted or otherwise unprepared service. However, the benefits of a FOSS git forge with commitments to federation and values similar to this project also exist. Perhaps the answer here is to begin on GitHub to ease initial contributions and concerns over cost and to later transition to something like Codeberg.

Migrating off of GitHub once established is very hard in practice. That is why so many projects have stayed there. But asking people to make a Microsoft GitHub account when your Goal 1. is 'Independent' starts the project off with not following its own goals.

People might be hesitant to open an account at the hoster of the aux.computer infrastructure, so aux.computer could offer the option of logging in with a Microsoft GitHub account.

The Linux kernel, GNOME, KDE, Debian, Blender and more host they own forge. It's not a very heavy service. Running aux.computer infrastructure on aux.computer OS is a good showcase of the project.

Nixpkgs used to live outside GitHub. Migration to GitHub massively increased incoming contributions. Frankly, I don't think migrating away or choosing not to use it would be worth it.

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