this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025
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Short Summary of the Community Drama of the Linux Distribution "NixOS", so that you can get the big picture and form your own opinion with the provided sources.

Clarification of the "Steering Comittee" as Project Leadership

Moderation Team resigns in Protest

Technical Leadership works for Military Company, causing Fear of Alignment with Facism.

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[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 23 points 6 days ago

Good on the team for not aiding the genocidal American MIC.

[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 11 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

And now DHH is getting involved in this shitshow. For those not chronically online enough, DHH is one of the developers of Rails, has a rap sheet of drama, and has his own dirty laundry full of racism, transphobia, and has managed to drive his own company into the shitter.

So really a bunch of winners are coming out of the woodwork for this one.

As a happy Debian user i'm not hearing any of it.

[–] deathbird@mander.xyz 3 points 4 days ago

Sounds like interpersonal bullshit reframed as politics. Honestly impressed at the resignation letter being able to use so many words while avoiding actually directly explaining what they're upset about. Of course it would take something really egregious and extraordinary for me to give a shit, because..

The steering committee or board of trustees or whatever should be sitting the rules for the organization, up to an including adding or removing mods from a forum if they want. That's what they exist for. The idea that a mod team should be independent of the actual organizational structure of an institution is ridiculous.

[–] sudoer777@lemmy.ml 6 points 6 days ago

From the last incident, there was Aux that wanted to create an alternative for the Nix ecosystem, but it died before it even started. Right now what we do have is Lix (what I'm currently using) and Tvix as an alternative for the Nix program, and Guix as an alternative ecosystem that's nowhere near as complete.

[–] Auth@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

I wonder if this conversation can even be had on this instance. Half the conversation is missing from the comments.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

I'm not familiar with NixOS

However, short reminder that the internet was largely funded by the US military. It's not uncommon that the US military brings significant developments for the internet. This is nothing new. The latest outcry is solely because the US is sliding into fascism, not because of the involvement with the US military.

[–] emmy67@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I don't think it's solely for that reason. There are privacy concerns and concerns the os could be used for the MIC.

[–] willington@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 5 days ago

Can't the MIC just use any existing Linux distro?

I am trying to understand what the injury here is?

Is it mostly about reputational damage from association? Kinda like why are we eating the same food as MIC and at the same table? Is there an injury here beyond this that I am not seeing?

Couldn't the MIC shut down every FOSS project by declaring they love them and use them? I hope no FOSS dev is so simpleminded as to knee jerk like that.

We have to accept living in a dirty world with dirty people, to some extent. People we don't like will use our favorite projects sometimes. That's par for the course.

Where I would draw the line is implemeting some change into the distro that is either only or primarily useful for nefarious purposes, and is largely useless to 99% of normal/ethical use cases. Now THAT would be a real problem, and a real red line, imo.

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