Both nix and guix are exciting projects with a lot of enviable security properties. Many here can attest that using them feels like, and perhaps is, the future. I see OSS Rebuild as serving more immediate needs.
By rebuilding packages from the registries people already use, we can bring some of those security properties to users without them needing to change the way they get their software.
[1]: "it means effectively a decision was made for NixOS to be a hobby distro not suitable for any targeted applications or individuals. It really sucks, because I love everything else about nix design. Instead I am forced to bootstrap high security applications using arch and debian toolchains which are worse than nix in every way but supply chain integrity given that all authors directly sign package sources with their personal well verified keys."
Nixpkgs is more valuable than Nix at this point, but also quite vulnerable. In practice it has worked out reasonably well so far, I don't know of anyone who got "owned" because of Nix.
Not anymore with the introduction of dynamic derivations (experimental)
It's hard to know what exactly your security concerns are here, but if you look at the current ecosystem of using containers and package registries, Nix is pretty clearly a solid contender, security-wise.
NixOS knowingly discards vital supply chain integrity controls to minimize developer friction and maximize package contributions. It is a highly complex Wikipedia style distribution optimizing for maximum package variety which is absolutely fine and great for hobby use cases, but use in security critical applications is absolutely irresponsible.
Guix goes some big steps further in supply chain integrity but still ultimately trusts individual maintainers.
See this chart to understand how NixOS compares in terms of threat model https://codeberg.org/stagex/stagex#comparison
Also, it seems like you're using unstable if you're having that many breakages, sooo kinda asking for it?
It does not even try to be a workstation distro so we can get away with a small number of packages, focusing on building software with high accountability.
Thankfully OCI build tooling is mature enough now that we can build using standards and do not need a custom build framework and custom languages like nix/guix does anymore.
E.g.:
> could've contributed SLSA attestations support to nix
That sounds like a great idea! However one important consideration is that while an artifact on nixpkgs may aim to replicate the function of the upstream package, it must adhere to and interoperate with the rest of the distribution. Ultimately, its 'ecosystem' is nix. Work that goes into writing and maintaining the nix build does not generally filter back upstream to impact the build integrity of, say, its associated PyPI package. So if users continue to consume from PyPI, improving nix won't serve them.
This is not to say that the long-term source of truth for packaging will remain the language registries. Just that today's reality demands we meet users where they are.
> Would love to see Google contribute to nix in this space :)
Same :)
Until then they are still behind Debian and Arch Linux, which do in fact implement this with rebuilderd and debrebuild/archlinux-repro.