NixOS Foundation - Public Room Timeline

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Sender	Message	Time
27 Apr 2024
Arian	(I know matrix is terrible for this. I'm sorry)	09:18:12
Claes	what is "a bit"? Not even sure what to look for. Was it yesterday, last week..?	09:19:42
leona	starting here i think: https://matrix.to/#/!CJXQiUGqNPcFonEdME:nixos.org/$iEMNQHMGfZPtq3VkND088BszG3V4hzr1SGRZ6GjGa_I?via=nixos.org&via=matrix.org&via=nixos.dev	09:20:10
Arian	In reply to @arianvp:matrix.org I think a Vereniging could potentially be interesting. Where community members can pay to become a member and we rotate the board every year and people can vote for new board members (or in case of gross misconduct vote to fire them). But I think practically speaking it's super hard to operate with members that are not Dutch Here the discussion starts	09:21:26
Claes	Ok so seems to be some legal hurdles. Still, I think at some point, if the non-commercial part of Nix is to grow, something like that is needed. Perhaps we are not there yet, but where I live even the local kids football club is organized like this.	09:26:14
Janik (they/them)	In reply to @arianvp:matrix.org 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 https://github.com/NixOS/foundation/blob/master/role_and_responsibilities.md#role-of-the-board > Unblock things that would be stuck otherwise, and serve as: > - Arbiter in case of conflicts This was desperately needed with the sponsorship policy but didn't really happen. And if the board doesn't want to take that role that's fine, but then we need some other sort of governance body to do this. It's quite common for growing FOSS projects to introduce something like a governance board.	09:32:23
	erincandescent joined the room.	09:32:48
vcunat	To me conflict arbitration feels quite close to moderation.	09:35:18
vcunat	(but I'm not trying to imply anything about how to improve things)	09:36:05
nat-418	nix as a whole needs to be able to come together and make decisions. a constellation of groups cannot do this. a registered voluntary association can.	09:36:55
nat-418	* nix as a whole needs to be able to come together and make decisions. a notional constellation of groups cannot do this. a registered voluntary association can.	09:37:36
Jonas Chevalier	One thing that is criticised of the board is that we are not good at connecting with the community. I think it's true on some level. We are business people, trying to make business things happen. But that is also why the board is not a good arbiter for conflicts. It can do it, but it's a very heavy process for us. All of this is a bit of a DDoS for the limited bandwidth that we have.	09:44:21
@withoutwithin:matrix.org	yeah, it's like one of the worst possible situations for y'all	09:44:43
@withoutwithin:matrix.org	I feel for you	09:44:53
@withoutwithin:matrix.org	it's horrible that it's all came to this	09:44:58
Jonas Chevalier	I think this is growing pains	09:45:05
@theophane:hufschmitt.net	Re: a more structured governance for the community. This is something the board has discussed quite a bit in the past. In particular we've talked to a bunch of leaders from various other communies (from ones of similar size like Haskell or Plone up to very big ones like Apache and Eclipse) to get advice on the matter. One common theme amongst the bigger ones (who experienced that growth we have right now) is that structure is something that gets eventually unavoidable, but that having too much structure too early is as likely to kill the project – either by killing the spontaneity under bureaucracy, or by ending-up being ill-aligned with the community as it grows.	09:58:58
@theophane:hufschmitt.net	Hence the loose agreement on the anarchy-esque structure we've had so far	09:59:53
@theophane:hufschmitt.net	Maybe (evidently?) it's time to reconsider that	10:00:20
erincandescent	If the board wishes to just be a legal and fiscal vehicle - i.e. if it's members wish to be pure bureaucrats (and this is a very reasonable position to take; and indeed it's a job that needs going and is much appreciated), then it would be a good idea for it to explicitly delegate it's powers to a community function wherever possible, reserving just those it needs to explicitly protect itself; as opposed to the current situation where it is responsible for deciding every aspect of policy	10:06:54
erincandescent	* If the board wishes to just be a legal and fiscal vehicle - i.e. if it's members wish to be pure bureaucrats (and this is a very reasonable position to take; and indeed it's a job that needs going and is much appreciated), then perhaps it would be a good idea for it to explicitly delegate it's powers to a community function wherever possible, reserving just those it needs to explicitly protect itself; as opposed to the current situation where it is responsible for deciding every aspect of policy	10:07:15
stablejoy	I've been using Linux since 2008. When I discovered Eelco's thesis and the community in 2019, I was enamored. All the invisible, buried wishes I had about Linux systems were somehow embodied in this Nix thing. Moreover, it had a purely functional and lazy language, and then the module system! I remember being so excited, and I still am when I talk about Nix. It's a happy thing, and the ideas are so beneficial to the world, like reproducible builds many more ideas. At its core, it has pure functional ideas. And it’s like a nurturing ground because of that for many ideas yet to come. It’s like what makes them possible in the first place. I remember reaching out to many Nixers and Haskellers back then who all showed support and helped me through DM or publicly on Twitter. From Syd to Renzo to Marijan to SomeoneSerge who simply began talking with me because I showed interest and gave me great advices ... to last year SoN interviewers who gave me great tips and encouragement. And Jonas always responds when I ask him something on Twitter. Then, the Nix team has open meetings. I can go there and connect? There are open office hours? Wow! I remember Eelco saying in a Nix developers interview, "Yeah, everyone can come and join; there's no hierarchy." I was telling some of my friends back home, "You know, you can actually engage with the team if you have something to say." Having something to say also means saying something meaningful, but the invitation is there, and that is so wonderful in terms of being there for each other.	10:11:33
Eelco	In reply to @erincandescent:fairydust.space If the board wishes to just be a legal and fiscal vehicle - i.e. if it's members wish to be pure bureaucrats (and this is a very reasonable position to take; and indeed it's a job that needs going and is much appreciated), then perhaps it would be a good idea for it to explicitly delegate it's powers to a community function wherever possible, reserving just those it needs to explicitly protect itself; as opposed to the current situation where it is responsible for deciding every aspect of policy The board doesn't decide every aspect of policy, in fact the only real policy we have so far is the sponsorship policy, and that only arose because we're helping with the financial side of NixCon. So there really isn't much power to delegate to the community, because we don't have those powers in the first place.	10:13:45
nat-418	In reply to @nat-418:nat-418.xyz I see Determinate Systems as a VC-funded, for-profit fork of Nix (in the broader sense). It seems to me that by having an alternate installer, alternate documentation, an alternate community, &c. that promotes an alternate experimental technology (flakes), DetSys seeks to establish itself as a commercial alternative Nix ecosystem. My understanding was that your recent blog post invited Nix community members to join the DetSys community. If I am wrong, then I am more than willing to be corrected. I sincerely appreciate your work and willingness to answer questions. Eelco: is this ^ understanding of Determinate Systems wrong in your view?	10:15:33
nat-418	In reply to @nat-418:nat-418.xyz I see Determinate Systems as a VC-funded, for-profit fork of Nix (in the broader sense). It seems to me that by having an alternate installer, alternate documentation, an alternate community, &c. that promotes an alternate experimental technology (flakes), DetSys seeks to establish itself as a commercial alternative Nix ecosystem. My understanding was that your recent blog post invited Nix community members to join the DetSys community. If I am wrong, then I am more than willing to be corrected. I sincerely appreciate your work and willingness to answer questions. * Eelco: is this ^ understanding of Determinate Systems relationship to Nix wrong in your view?	10:15:46
nat-418	In reply to @nat-418:nat-418.xyz I see Determinate Systems as a VC-funded, for-profit fork of Nix (in the broader sense). It seems to me that by having an alternate installer, alternate documentation, an alternate community, &c. that promotes an alternate experimental technology (flakes), DetSys seeks to establish itself as a commercial alternative Nix ecosystem. My understanding was that your recent blog post invited Nix community members to join the DetSys community. If I am wrong, then I am more than willing to be corrected. I sincerely appreciate your work and willingness to answer questions. this relationship	10:19:05
Arian	We never had a very monolithic community in the first place. I find the suggestion of "alternate" community really strange.	10:22:42
Arian	We've always had small islands of communities flocking around nix. Krebs, tvl, OceanSprint just to identify some	10:23:39
lord-valen	I don't see any reason to comment on it before Eelco affirms or denies that that Determinate Systems presents itself as an alternate community.	10:24:41

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