What can be said about NixOS that hasn’t been said already? It’s plainly the most-discussed Linux operating system of the past five years. Nobody does Linux quite like NixOS - and that applies to the community to the same degree as it does to the operating system.
A quick disclaimer - I’m not a NixOS contributor, or involved with the community at all for that matter. I’m not a qualified primary source for detailing the problems the project is experiencing. There is a well-documented overview available here. The subject of this post is absurd enough to stand on its own, though - the rest is just window dressing.
NixOS’s latest own-goal comes by way of a blog post from the pseudo-BDFL of NixOS . There’s a lot wrong with the post (see the above recap), but one thing sticks out in particular. A paragraph, about halfway through the article, reads:
It is my opinion that it is not for us, as open source software developers, to decide whose views are valid and whose are not, and to allow or disallow project or conference participation as a result.
This is, at face value, a response to criticisms raised over NixCon accepting money from defense contractors. Specifically, sponsorships from those working closely with and providing software to border enforcement elements of the US government.
In that light, it’s hard to read this paragraph as anything but a chicken-shit cop-out. It also, more importantly, makes no god damn sense. It’s a sophomoric misunderstanding of the dynamic of open-source software development. Why is it not for developers to decide who they should and shouldn’t interact with? They’re the ones doing the development!
The degree to which that paragraph professes this…paternalistic, happy-go-lucky view of the world where we all just put our guns down and write Linux drivers together is so incredibly out-of-touch that it hails from a universe where the concept of touch does not exist.
It fails to recognize is that software is, too often, the law by which we are required to live our lives. Software tells us what our rent will be. Software controls whether we can get on the train. It is more than pushing pixels around on an 8-bit computer for fun.
If we want to live in a world that abides by our values, we cannot compromise our values when writing software. We software developers are lucky enough to have a predilection for a very important skill - we should learn to treat it with the respect it deserves.
I’m more than happy to completely abandon NixOS based on that paragraph alone. It’s the clearest sign of delusional leadership - not only from an ethical perspective, but from a community management perspective.
The own-goals will continue until leadership changes.