https://discourse.nixos.org/t/much-ado-about-nothing/44236
Not directly related to this blog post but from NixOS discourse forum, a tl;dr from another person about the NixOS drama here :
If you’re looking for a TL;DR of the situation, here it is: Nix community had a governance crisis for years. While there has been progress on building explicit teams to govern the project, it continued to fundamentally rely on implicit authority and soft power Eelco Dolstra, as one of the biggest holders of this implicit authority and soft power, has continuously abused this authority to push his decisions, and to block decisions that he doesn’t like Crucially, he also used his implicit authority to block any progress on solving this governance crisis and establishing systems with explicit authority This has led uncountably many people to burn out over the issue, and culminated in writing an open letter to have Eelco resign from all formal positions in the project and take a 6 month break from any involvement in the community Eelco wrote a response that largely dismisses the issues brought up, and advertises his company’s community as a substitute for Nix community
Others have replied pointing out this is a strawman and that merit doesn’t make any sense as a metric if you have discrimination. In practice performance (‘merit’) is complex interaction between an individual’s skills and talent and the environment and support they get to thrive. If you have an environment that structurally and openly discriminates against a certain subclass of people and then chose on “merit” you are just further entrenching that discrimination.
This is a project that seemed to be having specific problems on gender that was causing harm and leading to losing talent. In a voluntary role particularly this is a death spiral for the project as a whole. Without goodwill and passion open source projects of any meaningful size just wouldn’t survive.
I’m glad you care enough about diversity and evidence to have worked out how to solve these problems without empowering and listening to those minorities. Please do share it.
Others have replied pointing out this is a strawman and that merit doesn’t make any sense as a metric if you have discrimination.
So remove discrimination. Put in the CoC that any information about gender, race, religion and so on must not be disclosed since it is not relevant to the quality of the code/work you submit. Then you have merit only.
I really find stupid that someone really think that his contribution must be accepted just because he is from a minority, irregardless the quality.
You say remove discrimination and then use a discriminatory strawman. No one is suggesting a code contribution must be accepted based on a minority status. They are saying that to get a decent functioning community for everyone you need a diverse range of people in positions that set the behaviour of the community. You can’t get the CoC and enforcement of it right unless those affected are in positions that influence it. Your enforced anonymity doesn’t work because there are other ways of gendering and racialising people (e.g. based on who people talk). Additionally, what you are saying is that minoritised people have to hide who they are so they don’t get discriminated against rather than just deal with those doing the discrimination. They are called communities because that’s what’s they are: people want to be part of something and that involves sharing a part of themselves too. Open source projects live or die on their communities because they mostly don’t have the finances to just pay people to do the work. You need people to beleive in the project and not burn out etc.
You lose nothing by making sure people from all backgrounds have the same opportunity and enjoyment being part of it. If you aren’t in a minority and don’t care about those that are then just say so!
It is impossible to satisfy all minorities at once. The best outcome is to pick an adequate, sane person from the community with proper mindset and proper judgement, irrelevant if they’re from a minority or not.
You say remove discrimination and then use a discriminatory strawman.
Why ? Because I basically say “keep these personal informations for yourself since they are not needed while developing” ?
No one is suggesting a code contribution must be accepted based on a minority status.
But they are saying that a board member should be elected based on the fact that he came from a minority, which is as wrong as asking that a code contribution should be accepted based on the minority status.
They are saying that to get a decent functioning community for everyone you need a diverse range of people in positions that set the behaviour of the community.
Agree on this. My point though is that the people in these positions need to be there for the merit and not for a status.
You can’t get the CoC and enforcement of it right unless those affected are in positions that influence it.
Nope. You can enforce a CoC if the ones delegated to enforce it are acknowledged as authoritative people and there is a clear path to do it. If you put a person in charge to enforce the code “just becasue [insert your favorite minority reason]” you end in the same place: the CoC will be selectively enforced only on a certain group of people.
Your enforced anonymity doesn’t work because there are other ways of gendering and racialising people (e.g. based on who people talk).
Assuming you track them outside the project, yes you are right.
Additionally, what you are saying is that minoritised people have to hide who they are so they don’t get discriminated against rather than just deal with those doing the discrimination.
That is what you are saying now, not me.
I said that I don’t care about what your identity is but only about the quality of your work, why did you assume that i mean that only the minorities should not disclose these informations ?
Else explain to me why it is relevant that the pull request just created is done by someone from a minority group.
You lose nothing by making sure people from all backgrounds have the same opportunity and enjoyment being part of it.
Equal opportunity does not mean equal outcome. I lose something if a board member of the project I contribute is elected only because he is from a minority group because he replace a more knowledgeable member and the average quality of the work decline.
If you aren’t in a minority and don’t care about those that are then just say so!
It is not that I don’t care, it is that in certain situation it not pertinent if you are from a minority or not. Software development, particularly OSS where the entry point is really low, is one of this situation: why I should care about the group you are part of when you submit a contribute ? How it is pertinent. Do you want to have a voice in the project ? Earn it by contributing and being better of the ones you think are bad and or toxic. But wanting to have a say in the project “just because” is toxic too.
I think you are right here. By cherry-picking gender minorities we sow a dissent and we underline their “otherness” from everyone else.
I am from an ethnic minority myself, and somehow people perceive us as maniacs and killers, try to burn our houses and fire us from work. Often it’s the same people who preach equality and diversity. Somehow in my case they don’t care about “empowerment” or “representation” at all. And somehow, the only place I feel comfortable is 4chan, where no one gives a damn who you are, and everyone’s racist and sexist. To everyone else. Equally.
