NixOS Foundation board: Giving power to the community
The community is more important than the product.
— Pieter Hintjens
Dear contributors to the Nix ecosystem, dear users,
We recognize that the Nix community keeps growing and changing, and its governance has not been adapting accordingly. While the foundation board was never intended to lead the community, we cannot deny that it is perceived to be in that role by many, and we therefore take full accountability. We acknowledge there’s been a series of recent crises in our community, which are related to issues with communication, leadership, moderation, representation, and decision making power. The purpose of this document is to take drastic steps: to announce a transition of power as a first step toward addressing those issues.
The foundation board and many members of the community have spent the past 10 days in close contact with each other, deliberating to understand the root causes and working together to define what to do about the situation. So, to you, it may have appeared that nothing was happening in the meantime. We wish we’d reached out publicly sooner, but we did not manage to, for the same reasons described in this statement.
Eelco steps down from the board
Eelco is the principal author of Nix and undoubtedly a central figure in the ecosystem that grew around it. We confirm that Eelco showed no intention to be perceived as or act like the BDFL of the Nix ecosystem, or the Nix code base. To commit to that in a timely manner, he has decided to formally step down from the board. This decision was made amicably and in mutual agreement with the board that this is the right thing to do. Our collaboration was always characterised by our deep respect for Eelco’s work and our awareness of his lasting impact on our lives.
We will ensure an orderly transition of responsibilities, which needs to happen in a thoughtful manner. We will coordinate the process on the foundation board’s issue tracker.
Community-based governance
We fully understand that at this scale, a healthy open source project is one where it is clear and transparent how decisions are made and how to participate in making them.
This isn’t how it works today. Right now, part of our role is to be arbiter in case of conflicts, which we assume, among many other reasons, creates the perception and effectively puts us in a position of ultimate decision-making power on community issues. We don’t want that to be the case, we’re not set up for it at the moment. We want to fix that and exercise our power, by explicitly giving it to you, the community.
We will appoint a constitutional assembly within the next 14 days. Its task will be to set up a new governance structure, run by the community, that is capable of serving the community’s needs. Once established, we will delegate our power to institutions within that new structure. This entire process will take place in a public space, such that it’s traceable for anyone concerned. We are committed to listening to everyone who may help with solving the problems the community is facing.
We envision that the new governance structure, which is to be created by the constitutional assembly, will be fully empowered to handle various issues including but not limited to:
- Conflicts of interest policy
- Sponsorship policy
- Moderation
- Protecting minorities
We will post more details on Discourse as we go.
How you can help
To discuss actionable, constructive suggestions on shaping the future of our community, please refer to the NixOS Foundation Discourse category.
We are also seeking input from people who have experience with open source community building, governance, or non-profits.
Signed,
Furthermore, we want to thank the community members who have helped putting this together:
- @infinisil (Silvan Mosberger)
- @fricklerhandwerk (Valentin Gagarin)
- @raitobezarius (Ryan Lahfa)
- @Within (Xe Iaso)
- @nbp (Nicolas B. Pierron)
- @lassulus
- @roberth (Robert Hensing)
- @joepie91 (Sven Slootweg)
- @jade (Jade Lovelace)
- @endocrimes (Danielle Lancashire)
- @Janik
- @hexa
- @Ericson2314 (John Ericson)
- @ryantm