Should `nix-community` fall under formal governance?

[nyabinary]

Question

Do you believe that the nix-community should be managed under the formal governance? If so, how would you propose integrating community management with governance?

Candidates I'd like to get an answer from

No response

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[mschwaig]

I'm assuming you mean https://github.com/nix-community.

I think as a matter of priority we should only think about managing nix-community, if there are specific issues that need handling. I am not aware of any such issues. Even if there are issues, we should ask the people leading nix-community, and the relevant projects what they think.

[tomberek]

No. My impression is that nix-community is meant to distinct from the NixOS organization and that the existing team is not looking to fall under formal Foundation governance. It would be up to them to consider the matter. Personally, I think the role as a project incubator and playground prior to formal inclusion is being well-served and I do not recommend a change to the status quo.

[getchoo]

No. I find the strongest part of nix-community to be that it is a community project first and foremost, with only support from the Foundation and official NixOS organization, not direct oversight. I believe this helps keep the very important spirit of innovation that can sometimes be stifled by too much bureaucracy, and gives the community a place where they can freely explore possibilities we can (hopefully) adopt -- all without the fear of breaking things or pressure from decisions made before some have even joined the project

[phaer]

No, not in administrative matters. Could make sense to formalize a shared understanding of moderation policies if both, the nix-community team and the moderation team would agree to that. But I wouldn't see this as urgent as it seems to be working well in practice so far.

[lovesegfault]

Partially.

It's (essentially) impossible to gather the full power of Nix without interacting with projects hosted under nix-community (e.g. home-manager, disko, nixvim, nix-direnv) and so we should probably require that nix-community adhere to basic guidelines for healthy community interactions.

I do not think projects under nix-community should be beholden to stability guarantees, LTS expectations, or anything prescriptive and/or restrictive about scope, pace, or kind, of work, etc.

In other words, nix-community is a central part of Nix, and new users will be exposed to it no matter what, and should feel welcome and know that there are basic rules of engagement. I do not see the need for any further governance there at this point.

[Scrumplex]

No. I think it might be a great way to incubate projects into eventually becoming official, but I think nix-community as a whole should not become part of the NixOS umbrella. A big advantage of nix-community projects over official ones is rapid development. nix-community allows people from the community to work on more experimental projects without having to pass the usual review process of nixpkgs.

[nyabinary]

No.

However, I agree that community projects should follow Nix's general guidelines and values, ensuring they align with the broader goals of the ecosystem. However, I also believe that community-driven initiatives should maintain a level of independence, away from bureaucracy. There should also be a clear pathway for community projects to transition into official projects if they demonstrate sustained value, quality, and engagement with the community.

[winterqt]

At this time, no. The environment lets projects/infra move a lot quicker than third-party [0] things can, which is something we need IMO.

There are some theoretical situations I can think of where such a thing may be useful (such as moderation-related concerns), but they haven't happened yet.

[0]: Official projects = first-party, nix-community projects = second-party, in this analogy.

[proofconstruction]

I would like to see nix-community continue as an informal staging ground for new developments before they're ready for upstreaming into the NixOS organization. nix-community is the ideal setting to work on implementations of extensions addressing some RFCs, for example, as well as important projects like home-manager. Since this is the primary pipeline for upstreaming, I do believe that it should be under the purview of formal governance structures, but it's also important for the nix-community org to enjoy a higher degree of autonomy than the main organization, so we can try things that might be breaking changes or other serious departures from the upstream status quo.

[Infinidoge]

No. Some nix-community projects should probably be moved under the NixOS org and come under formal governance that way, however I feel that nix-community should remain independent, in order to let it develop independently and faster than governance might be able to keep up with. That said, as nyabinary mentioned, they should still (ideally) uphold the goals and values of the Nix community, but enforcing this would trample too much of the independence it relies upon.