| 20 Mar 2023 |
 tea | smol nitpick: I don't think making the architecture team -> NAT acronym is needed because it is only used twice | 19:11:42 |
| tea | no more nits other than that | 19:12:50 |
 infinisil | Alyssa Ross: Looks alright to me, just left a comment, but also requested reviews from the other NAT members | 19:13:52 |
| infinisil | tea: Thanks, fixed! | 19:14:29 |
 K900 | I am super hyped about this but as usual don't have a consistent schedule to commit to pushing it :( | 19:16:27 |
| infinisil | I just announced that we need more shepherds for RFC 140: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/shepherds-needed-rfc-140/26543 | 19:27:21 |
| tea | In reply to @k900:0upti.me
I am super hyped about this but as usual don't have a consistent schedule to commit to pushing it :( same | 20:02:19 |
 Alyssa Ross | ^ This is why it's important that the architecture team doesn't become an authority. Participation in NAT requires being able to attend regular synchronous public video meetings, which is fine if it's just a group that works on its own stuff, because you can always work on your own stuff outside it, but it is less fine if it's privileged in decision making. | 20:22:24 |
| infinisil | Alyssa Ross: Hmm, this asynchronous channel exists too though. And the meetings are streamed to YouTube too, I have the live chat open. If somebody comments in either channel I read it. | 20:25:26 |
| infinisil | And technically even members of the team don't need to be in the synchronous meeting (though I think it's a great thing to have that) | 20:26:08 |
| Alyssa Ross | It does exist, but it's not the primary communication method for the team | 20:30:45 |
| Alyssa Ross | for example, I follow this channel, but the first I heard that the team was going to be talking about the Rust thing was after the NACK comment was made, on behalf of the team | 20:31:25 |
| infinisil | Hmm yeah, that could definitely be done better | 20:32:19 |
| Alyssa Ross | And again, I'm not saying the team shouldn't work this way, that's fine. It's a fine way to get a lot of work done, as can be seem from the impressive results so far. I'm saying that the NAT should not be something that speaks with a collective voice, at least on other people's ideas. | 20:34:32 |
| infinisil | In reply to @qyliss:fairydust.space
It might be worth discussing though, what's the scope of the architecture team? The web page talks about it as being a group of people who work together to propose solutions to big problems in Nixpkgs. Commenting on other people's proposed solutions as a team, rather than as individual team members with their own opinions, feels not so in line with that, and more like an attempt to establish the team as an authority over Nixpkgs architecture. I haven't answered this, here's my opinion: I do think the Nix ecosystem at large is lacking a vision of where it wants to go. And I think this is why Nixpkgs is such a mess today, it's the accumulation of a decade of various people pulling it in various directions. The primary goal of this team is to reconcile that, to try to make it not a mess anymore. But a secondary goal for me is to actually give Nixpkgs a vision for the future. And yes, having a vision means being opinionated and actually pulling off that vision requires having some authority over Nixpkgs. My hope is that the community is decently represented in this team so that we can be trusted with actually doing reasonable things. | 20:38:33 |
| Alyssa Ross | but what gives the NAT the legitimacy to be the group who gets to set the vision, and have that authority? | 20:39:35 |
| Alyssa Ross | from my perspective, we have produced the most powerful package repository ever, leagues ahead of anything else, precisely because there is no single vision that has to be adhered to | 20:40:43 |
| infinisil | I mean, it's not like a black-white thing, you can either have a vision or not. I think Nixpkgs could benefit greatly from having some things be a bit more guided. | 20:41:30 |
| infinisil | In reply to @qyliss:fairydust.space
but what gives the NAT the legitimacy to be the group who gets to set the vision, and have that authority? Inherently nothing, the NAT was bootstrapped from not much. There's no special permissions or anything that it has over others in Nixpkgs. The thing it does have is exactly what the team is doing: Transparency in its actions, accountability, the results we produced, the motivation that drives us, the sponsoring allowing us to work on the team, etc. | 20:44:25 |
| infinisil | But I'm always open to suggestions, I'm thankful for the feedback regarding the GitHub comment. I think it's okay to not use "we" there | 20:47:04 |
