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Hi Hexa,

Since you were a moderator at the time of my ban, would care to expand as to why I was banned, and what you meant by "purge the Nazis?"


(Thanks for all your work on rust)

There is some work to get nix to work with Windows, this is mostly being done by john ericson.

However, the real issue is that nixpkgs (the repository containing all nix expressions) heavily assume unix paradigms.

There could be a "nix-windows repository" in the medium to far future, but it will likely be very divergent from the current nix+nixpkgs story of today.


There's nothing wrong with the fundamentals of Nix.

But working with nixpkgs is quite difficult for most. Which is why I'm attempting to address those issues in a fork, Ekapkgs.

The repos will eventually expose optional flake entry points, so it will be compatible with flakes and non-flakes.

If you're curious, https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1gatci0/announcing_t....


I love your project, Jon! I think the Nix ecosystem will be improved by having more, smaller things, where the boundaries are clear.


Well, the activity around changing the status quo was done in a github issue [1]. Which sat around for many months after proposing the Apache Software Foundation's sponsorship policy of "state of nexus". Which didn't give a basis in which to exclude Anduril from sponsoring again.

Obviously there's the "people were angry last time, they will likely be angry this time". But that's projecting personal/political views into a sponsorship.

What should have been the right course of action? I'm not sure. "Tech is easy, people are hard"

1: https://github.com/NixOS/foundation/issues/110


Well, you should know, since you have been involved with both Nix and Anduril, right?!

No MIC sponsoring would have been the right course of action. No matter your sympathies, or alliances in your case.

To even think of the sponsorship as a valid idea is US centric ignorance. Outside the US people don't get the "Thank you for your service" indoctrination and are way, way more reluctant to work with the MIC.

If you knew anything about Germany, the issue with the university host should not have surprised you at all. It's not some modern outrage of wokeism, it's a decades old academic foundation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_clause

It's hard to find a German university without: http://www.zivilklausel.de/index.php/bestehende-zivilklausel...

Losing VOC support, eh?! Have you been to a CCC event? MIC sponsorship of Nix would lose you more or less the entire German hacker scene, at the very least.

A national defense company sponsoring an international software project, not expecting uproar... I don't know what to say. It's beyond plausibly idiotic. Objectively, completely out of touch.


> In particular the civil clause demands that members of the university reject research projects and funding which could serve weapon technology.

Wait, what? Are you saying German universities are forbidden from contributing to Nix/NixOS, which is used by Anduril?

Or say, the RISC-V ecosystem, which may be used as chips driving military weapons?

... or the Linux kernel? Heck, any OS at all?


Sponsorship with the attached advertisement is very different than "used by". Don't be silly.

Are you even aware, I am referencing the issue of a Nix conference hosted at a German university, or are you in political autopilot drive-by mode?

I linked a Wikipedia article, read it, if you're genuinely interested and not debating in bad faith.


> Sponsorship with the attached advertisement is very different than "used by". Don't be silly.

Sure, but what does that have to do with the Civil clause that you mentioned? It doesn't say anything about sponsorship, but it does say about "used by": "Any participation of science and research with military use or purpose must be rejected". Obviously, this cannot be true, since it can be applied to anything that is used by the military, including paper, towels, pens, computers in general, water, etc.

> Are you even aware, I am referencing the issue of a Nix conference hosted at a German university

I am, and? I think you missed my point?

> I linked a Wikipedia article, read it, if you're genuinely interested and not debating in bad faith.

I did. The Civil clause of some universities does sound fine ("strive to", "focused on"), but the others make a blanket statement that is very hard to take seriously. Obviously, they don't take the statement to the letter, and in fact it's hard to tell what they aren't supposed to do (if anything), unless perhaps you look at the other universities. Even then, none of those clauses say anything that can be applied to hosting a conference with military sponsorship but not to contributing to Nix.

Regardless, I don't think what you linked to is well known outside Germany. You can judge by the extent and completeness of that Wikipedia article. I'm European (EU), went to a European (EU) university and I had never heard of such a clause.

To answer to your point:

> To even think of the sponsorship as a valid idea is US centric ignorance. Outside the US people don't get the "Thank you for your service" indoctrination and are way, way more reluctant to work with the MIC.

I think you're generalizing a wee bit too much -- I'm not from the US and I think there's plenty of indoctrination to go around, and yet I don't think rejecting this sponsorship is in accordance with open source and Free Software values, philosophy and spirit. You can go read about it here -- and notice how it says several times that the point is to include everyone: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

To be honest, I think the mistake with Nixcon was not Anduril, but rather, to host the conference at a German university.


Damn you got Germany good. It's all collapsing now, mensa shoot-outs, marching bands playing on public radio, students getting lectured by ICMBs.

I was just giving an example of a wider sentiment on MIC involvement outside the US. The specifics don't matter at all. In much of Europe working for or with MIC is not widely accepted and makes many people uneasy.

To point is cultural ignorance in an international project.


I've lived in 3 EU countries and visited and known people from many more and while it's true most people would be against most wars, I don't think most people would be against a MIC sponsorship for an open source conference.

Airbus alone employs 40,000 people in the defense sector and there are many, many more MIC companies in Europe where many people are happy to work at (for the record, I'm not one of them). Also, all European countries have a military and buy weapons, and probably all of them also manufacture some weapons or others (microstates being the exception). Some of them even have mandatory drafts, I think.

As an example, I'd be shocked if an Airbus sponsorship would ever be rejected in Europe (perhaps Germany being the exception now that I'm familiar with the Civil clause).

Honestly, you sound like someone with a heavy anti-US and anti-MIC bias (and admittedly, I'm also known to take pleasure in anti-US and anti-MIC prejudices, but my concerns don't intersect this particular scenario at all).


There is still a massive difference between gigacorp Airbus, Siemens, SpaceX, ... or whoever does defense stuff as a side hustle, and a pure defense company like Anduril or Rheinmetall to plaster their logo onto things, or recruit at events. There is no plausible deniability with these companies' intentions and product consequences.

To me at least, there is even a difference between the military and private companies profiting off war and suffering. I would rather have the Bundeswehr around than Anduril. Just because it's something of a necessary evil, doesn't mean I respect the people who seek this career, who want to engineer and sell death.

My stance on the issue is irrelevant. The devision caused in the Nix community was predictable. It was objectively an idiotic idea considering cultural and consequential differences. Even a pro-MIC person should realize this.

And let's not forget the conflict of interest of Nix's VIPs here in this particular matter, greatly shading any presumption of good-faith arguments. It's been wildly stupid.

And lastly, FYI, these sponsorships do have strings attached, especially when money matters:

https://www.computerworld.com/article/1338390/darpa-pulls-fu...


For those that are curious about an alternative perspective on this matter, I detailed much of my personal views in my reddit suspension post. I don't have much context on the EU NixCon 2023 events, but I've been actively involved with the project for 2019, 2020, 2021, beginning of 2022, and late 2023.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1cd5fod/in_case_im_u...


There's a lot of issues right now around communication, moderation, and community.

- One of the release managers (myself) was banned/suspended [1]

- Attempts to assert control on the board's decision-making by proxy group [2]

- Use of social media to target individuals [3]

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1cd5fod/in_case_im_u...

2: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/objection-to-minority-represen...

3: https://github.com/NixOS/foundation/pull/133


dear goddess, anduril really employs gobshites from the top to the bottom.


As much as I think they overreacted when banning you, it also feels like an overreaction to fork that soon.

I hope a compromise will be found, and that you'll be back on NixOS as soon as possible!


Bro, you should really take the hint soon.


That there's an established clique? I agree.


Wow, is #3 disingenuous.

"Use of social media to target individuals" sounds like some internet personality doxxed you, or sicced their followers on you.

But it looks like... someone linked your own public comments from a Nix Discourse thread, and then the board rejected your bid to join them?

Apparently this Jon Ringer guy has it out for you, as much as anyone else. He keeps sabotaging you and putting words in your mouth. /s

Reading your comments, I'm continually reminded of MLK's Letter from Birmingham Jail, "Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will." It's clear you still haven't educated yourself on the issues around representation, and the distortions of "meritocracy" in a world where we didn't all get to race from the same starting line.


Correct, there was an open letter [1].

And to clarify above, there was no "contributors of this company" dynamic to the outrage.

"jobs" are things which come and go, not a lot of people are will to burn their personal image for a [potentially] uncaring company. And I'm certainly not one of them either.

[1]: https://nixos-users-against-mic-sponsorship.github.io/


Nice, really interesting usage of nixpkgs :). Almost a command line friendly version of docker build.

I like it.


That's the ideal! We want to make it more trivial to build OCI compliant images without all the knowledge required to understand how Dockerfiles/Container Filesystem/BuildLayers/etc work

BuildKit makes this possible and we've got lots of stuff planned. Would love to hear anything you can think of that would make this more friendly!


Compost takes 20 days to 20 months depending on the feed stock. The main issue with compost is that it can be effective in high-intensity operations like market gardens, but it's much less effective on large acre operations (corn, soy, wheat, etc).

Not to mention that compost is really difficult to come by now.

Unless a farmer is making compost on the side, they can't really treat it as a known input.

I would also argue that chronic over-usage of ammonia-based fertilizers and over-tiling has contributed to degradation to much of the world's farming soil. Which has given rise to many adverse effects such nutrient runoff, poor water infiltration, soil erosion, and downstream effects.


For external users, probably the most exciting "feature" is the use of a calamares installer for the gnome and plasma isos.


I'm really happy this has made it into a release! Iterating on a NixOS configuration has been crazy easy for a really, really long time. The installation procedure never matched that level of ease and fluency for new users.

I think the new installer will help more people realize how easy Nix(OS) can be (and in some ways, NixOS is easier than trying Nix any other way), and invite them to dive in without feeling like they ought to somehow prepare first. Dive in, break it, roll back, and learn as you go! I think that's a learning process a lot of people find very natural, and I'm glad that the new installer makes it more accessible to NixOS users.


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