This is a fork that grew from https://save-nix-together.org/.
Apparently, the switch to Meson was approved, and coded, ages ago, but Dolstra kept dragging his heels on it.
For a discussion on this, see https://github.com/KFearsoff/nix-drama-explained/issues/1
> Single-handedly blocking Meson, which has a passed RFC, for five years because he doesn’t know meson but knows his own build system
I don't know about exact timelines, but the letter is definitely wrong about this part.
It's a mixture of many things — some people are reasonable and just want sensible change, others are dangerous neurotics who need to go outside; both can end up, deliberately or not, using it as blackmail for control — but the moment the ball gets rolling it's pretty much impossible to stop.
I'd bail if a BDFL was an avowed Nazi but the bar for some just seems to be ridiculously low to the point where it's hard to imagine any (offline) social aptitude.
I'm not sure what gave me the impression but even from skimming the nix discourse the community's emergent personality did seem a bit snowflake-ish.
I've heard people make a kind of reverse-conway argument about Rust attracting (auth-) leftists, perhaps for another time...
"Benevolent Dictator For Life", most famously Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu if I recall.
Your two are the first who come to mind.
He even uses `sabdfl` as his handle.