 | NixOS Foundation | 449 Members |
| Public room for chatting with the NixOS Foundation Board | 112 Servers |
| NixOS Foundation | 449 Members |
| Public room for chatting with the NixOS Foundation Board | 112 Servers |
| Sender | Message | Time |
|---|---|---|
| 27 Apr 2024 | ||
 @mangoiv.:matrix.org | In reply to @withoutwithin:matrix.orgPlease don’t 🥺 | 08:39:49 |
 Arian | I think people have very different views of the board. Personally I don't see them as our community leaders at all and I absolutely don't want them to be. It just doesn't fit NixOS. People have been trying to move it in the direction giving the board more agency and more voice over the years. But that was definitely not a push from eelco. He even pushed against that very explicitly from what I remember. He always saw it as a simple financial host for things. Not a voice or authoritative Shepard of the community as a whole. Just as a legal necessity so that we can pay bills. For a very long time it was just two board members rubber stamping financial report every year and handling invoices and that's it. There wasn't really anything public facing. Heck. Until 2 years ago nixcon didn't have any financial host, structure or plan whatsoever. We didn't even know how to legally charge for tickets. It wasn't affiliated with the foundation at all. We all forgot the drama of misappropriated funds and unclear legal struggles from the nix cons from before 2023? I think the problem is that we cant even agree on what the foundation is supposed to be. And it really changed really quickly over the last year or so. The people demanding more of the foundation in terms of support (coordinate funding from German government and European Union, be VAT host for nixcon) whilst it transforming from an extremely passive minimal foundation just for bookkeeping to a foundation from which people seem to demand a voice of authority is really the core of the whole struggle in my opinion. central questions to me is: does the community want a foundation with a voice of authority and are visible representatives of our Community? All these open letter de facto show that it has been become this without even the board members realizing. Otoh we seem to have board members (like Eelco) who clearly do not want to play that role. I see a conflict there that needs to be resolved. | 08:45:45 |
| Arian | But yeh. Defacto the board currently _is_ the face of the community. So it needs to resolve that internal conflict to give clarity and a way forward /2 cents | 08:46:40 |
 @patka_123:matrix.org | Board choses not to block controversial sponser -> community problems -> ... ? Whatever you like the job of the board to be you can't just ignore things | 08:50:13 |
| Arian | I think we can have a board that is purely a fiscal host. But then people need to accept that the board doesn't form opinions about NixCon. I think the new sponsorship policy is a way to solve that | 08:51:55 |
| Arian | Clear policy on how we choose sponsors as a community. | 08:52:01 |
 @withoutwithin:matrix.org | I don't see the board as that kind of silent fiscal host in how it operates | 08:52:21 |
| Arian | But it used to be for the past decade or so. People often didn't even know that the Foundation existed. It only changed recently. Wanted to add that as context | 08:53:31 |
| @withoutwithin:matrix.org | he who controls the purse strings controls the project | 08:53:45 |
 Jonas Chevalier |
That's very true. Our role is to be the interface between the community and legal/commercial. Not to lead the community. The intention was for the community to self-manage, with minimal intervention from the board to unblock where needed. There is a big mismatch of expectations there, that started happening when we had to weigh on the sponsorship policy. | 08:54:07 |
| Arian | If we're talking about millions of euros? Yes. We're talking about managing pocket change. We can't even pay a single developer a salary with the financials that the board is managing. There isn't much money to control | 08:55:03 |
 vcunat | In reply to @withoutwithin:matrix.orgThat's not true here at all. | 08:56:41 |
| Jonas Chevalier | We were always in the mindset of facilitating things to happen instead of directing things. That's also why we try to stay away from technical decisions. | 08:57:24 |
| Jonas Chevalier | If anything, we failed to re-center the power back to the community | 08:58:40 |
| Jonas Chevalier | There is also a mismatch of expectations in terms of capacity; we meet for 1h every 2 weeks. We're not there 24/7 to immediately respond to queries. | 09:00:03 |
| Jonas Chevalier | If we wanted to deal with the current inflow of requests, it requires restructuring the board. | 09:00:44 |
 nat-418 | seems we have a crisis of leadership: a disperate constellation of goups is not capable of forming a coherent response to challenges, let alone move forward | 09:01:58 |
| Jonas Chevalier | we're all individuals, figuring how to move forwards. that has always been the case in this project. | 09:02:44 |
| nat-418 | In reply to @zimbatm:numtide.commaybe that is the problem | 09:03:13 |
| Jonas Chevalier | maybe. there is clearly a mismatch of expectations. | 09:04:05 |
| @withoutwithin:matrix.org | for what it's worth, i reached out to the foundation board as a last resort | 09:05:37 |
| Arian | There is no leadership crisis as we never really formally defined leadership of our community. We have a crisis of community in my opinion. It's community members who organise nixcon. And its community members that twice in a row chose Anduril eventhough it was clearly a bad idea to have them sponsor the conference a second time. We need to find way how we as a community solve that. I dont see why people keep putting some appeal to authority on the board here. Whilst it's clearly not set up to provide such authority. We could set it up like that. But it would require something very diffetent | 09:06:23 |
| Arian | I'd require at least one full time paid employee | 09:06:34 |
| Jonas Chevalier | we already increased the bandwidth of the foundation, at personal costs on our personal lives and businesses, to move out of the crisis. | 09:06:44 |
| nat-418 | something like a german e.V. registered voluntary association with a presidium, members, etc. seems reasonable | 09:07:02 |
| Arian | But given we don't really have the level of funds to even sustain that I don't really see how that is currently possible. Unless we double down on getting more corporate sponsors and professionalize the foundation to have a more formal authoritative role in the project | 09:08:26 |
| Jonas Chevalier | it's the same thing with the moderation team where people start making demands, as if they were mere employees. these are also community members are are talking about. | 09:08:37 |
| nat-418 | In reply to @arianvp:matrix.orgmembers could simply pay dues | 09:08:42 |
| nat-418 | Codeberg works like this | 09:08:47 |
| nat-418 | they also have paid staff | 09:10:34 |