| 9 Apr 2024 |
 delroth | To expand on my previous point: this is the problem with pushing people past their unnegotiable ethical boundaries. No, people don't usually compromise on that, or they do so against significant well-being. You'd think the people pushing for MIC sponsorships would realize that and stop, but I'm starting to suspect they enjoy fragmenting the community. | 10:50:48 |
 Julien | In reply to @zimbatm:numtide.com
Numtide has no financial ties to Anduril or any military contractors Can Determinate Systems make the same statement ? | 10:51:41 |
| delroth | (And the situation is not symmetrical: nobody is asking people that support the MIC agenda or work for MIC companies to not be part of the community.) | 10:52:01 |
| delroth | * (And the situation is not symmetrical: nobody is asking people that support the MIC agenda or work for MIC companies to not be part of the community. At least no significant amount of people.) | 10:52:25 |
 Jonas Chevalier | Yeah, I don't know why this situation has to be forced TBH | 10:54:56 |
| Jonas Chevalier | We should just pick a bunch of sponsors that feel good and that are non-controversial, and enjoy the conf | 10:55:20 |
| delroth | yes | 10:55:25 |
| delroth | that's all I'm asking for | 10:55:33 |
| Jonas Chevalier | same | 10:55:39 |
| Jonas Chevalier | we get lost in all of these other things | 10:56:00 |
| Julien | In reply to @zimbatm:numtide.com
Can I maybe also clear some misunderstanding I see. I think there is a conflict in expectations of what is excepted from the board. There are largely two different models that I see.
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One is that the foundation is in charge of the community, and makes decisions for the community. This is a more heavy handed approach.
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The other one is that the foundation is in service to the community, and is more like a fiscal host, legal proxy, .. and would leave more of the decisions up to the community.
When the foundation says it doesn't want to be involved in this, I think it largely stems in wanting to be (2). Internally, the discussion we had is that no-military is a difficult criteria to apply since there is so many gradients in there, and we didn't feel equipped to deal with this.
I would like to dispel this idea that the foundation is pro military. I don't think this is what is happening.
Does that help a little bit?
I understand that as a general policy the foundation prefers to let the community find consensus on its own, but on this instance consensus between such opposed view is impossible and the stakes are just too high. The board has to take its responsibility and take a decision that in any case cannot content 100% of the community. | 10:56:17 |
| Julien | In reply to @zimbatm:numtide.com
We should just pick a bunch of sponsors that feel good and that are non-controversial, and enjoy the conf We are asking precisely that yes ! Just take uncontroversial sponsors. | 10:56:46 |
| Jonas Chevalier | Agreed, and on many dimensions, not just MIL | 10:57:17 |
| Julien | Yes, it's about taking sponsors that will not hurt the community | 10:57:41 |
| Julien | We want to avoid a superset of sponsors that probably include MIC but not onlyu | 10:58:20 |
| Julien | * We want to avoid a superset of sponsors that probably include MIC but not only | 10:58:21 |
| Julien | And we want people that know the community to decide "at runtime" if a sponsor is in that category or not | 10:58:44 |
| Julien | The should not be that complicated | 10:59:03 |
| Julien | And I'll reiterate: not taking any sponsor will likely not hurt people the way taking a sponsor that makes people feel in dissonance with their own project will | 11:01:20 |
 flokli | You can't ever sponsor up the amount of time and energy this whole discussion drained from everyone. | 11:03:35 |
| delroth | In reply to @julienmalka:matrix.org
And I'll reiterate: not taking any sponsor will likely not hurt people the way taking a sponsor that makes people feel in dissonance with their own project will Full agreement, see https://discourse.nixos.org/t/should-organizations-relating-to-the-defense-sector-being-able-to-sponsor-nixos/41252/205 - 23 days ago now, time flies... | 11:05:05 |
| flokli | Yeah, it's just on the foundation to make that decision, once and for all. The same arguments can be repeated over and over again. | 11:07:55 |
|  @marsam:matrix.org joined the room. | 11:08:07 |
| Jonas Chevalier | I think we should also make it clear that the community comes before commercial interests. That's how I think. | 11:13:29 |
| delroth | I don't even think any commercial interest is impacted here in the general sense, the only argument I've seen to that effect is "oh but it makes nix unprofessional to not accept some sponsorships and not having a clearly defined policy" but that's unmeasurable and likely insignificant | 11:19:20 |
| delroth | (the corporate world routinely acts on ethics when deciding to have or not have commercial relationships with other entities - just look at the twitter advertising exodus for a recent example) | 11:19:52 |
| delroth | (as much as some people think companies are exclusively amorphous blobs of capitalism looking at maximizing $ short term, there are plenty of counter examples that go against this...) | 11:20:35 |
| Jonas Chevalier | Building good relationships with companies is also important for the foundation to accomplish its goals. We spent a lot of time in the negative, but this is also an important aspect to develop. | 11:22:18 |
| Jonas Chevalier | Brand is a delicate thing and a valuable asset for companies, so we also have to balance that in if we want to build good relationship with them. | 11:24:25 |
| Julien | I am fairly sure that most companies prefer to be quietly rejected than get the bad publicity of a community outcry | 11:25:13 |
