What's the best way for the steering committee to deal with inaction or being ignored?

Question

One of the main ways in which the previous Nix governance has been criticized is for ignoring or being inactive in the face of community protests and concerns.[^1]

[^1]: I'm not interested in rehashing or re-litigating these specific cases or people involved; please do not do so in your answer.

Let's suppose that the steering committee is now responsive to the community... but when the steering committee asks for or directs action, that request is ignored, de-prioritized, or litigated by the relevant parties.

How would you as a single SC member deal with this? How would you ask for your fellow steering committee members to act as a group?

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I'll answer in two parts[1]:

Let's suppose that the steering committee is now responsive, but when they ask or direct action, that request is ignored, de-prioritized, or litigated by the relevant parties.

I think there is nuance to this. On one hand, the steering committee shouldn't just come in from day one and turn everything upside down, it should be respectful to the current culture of the various parts of the community and its contributors. At the same time, I also fear that it may end up being a collection of "figure heads", and a thing for the board to point at whenever the community is dissatisfied, to shift blame away from the board. The term "glass cliff" also comes to mind.

Anyways, in the latter case, where the steering committee's authority, as outlined in the constitution is being ignored, I'd try to build up pressure by rallying the community against the particular gatekeepers. This also would to some extend serve as a sanity check for the steering committee, since if the community wont rally behind it, then they're probably not serving the community in the first place.

If it's a board member in particular, I'd rally the rest of the committee to discuss removal, to ensure the wishes of the community aren't being stopped by the potentially conflicting interests of the board.

How would you as a single SC member deal with this? How would you ask for your fellow steering committee members to act as a group?

For starters, I'm hopeful that we will get a steering committee that is mostly representative of the community, but I am sure that we will have at the very least a minority of members that aren't aligned with the communities goals. Further, even those that are aligned with with the community may not have the resources or courage to stand up for the community when nescesarry.

In part, just by doing my best to find that courage, I hope to inspire the rest of the steering committee to do right by the community. Regardless of whether or not the steering committee can be persuaded, I'd seek to promote the ideas and criticisms of the community, and I'd do my best to vocalize the concerns to the steering committee and the board.

To give a very concrete example, in the time after the retraction of the NixCon 2023 Anduril sponsorship, I put a lot of pressure on people in positions of power to create a space for the discussion of sponsorship policy, as it was de facto banned from any other community space. Often leadership has used these unspoken bans as a way to silence criticism, for instance, they would mute and unlist threads on the discourse that criticized the sponsorship policy, to hide the dissent from the wider community and to avoid taking responsibility (and ultimately, to get away with it again).

A major win was getting this room created, after much unpleasant pushback. Even when we got this room, I found that people in leadership would misrepresent and belittle the people criticizing the board and organizers, and their decisions, and say that they were just looking to cause trouble and weren't actually contributing to the project.

I stood up to this, and made their case for them in their absence, and I was dogpiled by many of the people involved, in a way that was deeply uncharacteristic of people who should be leaders. In particular, a user on the moderation team lost his temper to such an embarrassing extend that he later resigned from the moderation team out of regret for his behavior.

The point being that even if no one will listen, I will do my best to be the voice of valid critique in the absence of the community members who's voice is being silenced, in a space where I can't be ignored, and I'll represent it in such as way that there is no space for simply dismissing the community outright on frivolous grounds. It may be that the community is unreasonable, which is extremely rare, and even if, there is some underlying need that is not being met by leadership, and we simply CANT afford to ignore those anymore.

And if leadership still fails to listen, then I will be the first to disseminate that, I will be transparent about the dismissals, and I'll ensure that any communication top down isn't deceptive, as was the case with NixCon 2023, where the communication from leadership was that Anduril had been removed as a sponsor out of respect for the community. That was an obvious lie, as I discovered and disclosed widely, it was actually removed because the venue didn't allow them. Further, it was obviously a lie, as Anduril was a sponsor for NixCon 2024 NA, and their office was a stones throw away from the location of the conference.

[1]: This was answered before the footnote was added to the question above. I think mentioning specific cases that were part of the movements that ultimately lead to the constitutional assembly is one of the most concrete ways to answer the original question, and give some historical context for those that haven't been exposed to some of these issues in the past. It also showcases a direct example of how the community ultimately overcame such an issue where it was being ignored by the board, leading to this very election. I'm not re-litigating, and purposefully avoiding using names, but we must learn from past mistakes. If the Anduril sponsorship becomes another unspeakable, we're doomed to repeat something like it again.

I think at first, as a single member of the SC, what you can do is basically talk to various parties in an effort to move forward on issues. You don' t have any real authority by yourself, and you should not act like it.

Any actual business of the SC, which the constitution places under the authority of the SC, would be decided with a vote. So if conversations with the parties in question do not lead anywhere, this would lead to a discussion within the SC. As a result of the discussion, some official action(s) the SC wants to take on the matter would be proposed, and voted on.

If any party does not take the decisions that come out of this process seriously,

the first measure would probably be reaching out and having a friendly conversation with them about taking the SC seriously, and prioritizing accordingly. We should make sure to a reasonably degree that this is not a misunderstanding.
If that does not work, we effectively have to give them some appropriate thinking time, while threatening a specific consequence, in the worst case to remove them from their position.
If that does not work, we would have take a vote to remove or replace them. If this happens really high up in the hierarchy, and
none of the people who would have the power to enact our decision do so, I think there is not much left to do for the SC besides resigning. The SC is meant to have specific powers, if it does not have those powers in practice, you don't really have an SC, and you would do the community a disservice to continue under false pretenses.

The SC is elected to act in the interest of the community. Playing issues that are raised by the community back to the community, in order to get an exact temperature reading, if 49 % or 51 % of the community are for or against the exact thing you are trying to do would be the wrong approach. Riling up the community and escalating things towards the community, would also be exactly the wrong way to go.

The SC should generally act in a way that it assumes has broad community support, but when there are tough decisions to make, the SC has to make those tough decisions as well. If we do not make decisions at all, simply because they are difficult, life tends to make them for us.

I think the constitution and values have good guiding points.

Maintain effective escalation points for issues that require further attention.

Decision authority may be delegated to other teams when significant analysis is needed, but the SC remains responsible if the delegated team fails to reach a decision.

We treat each other with respect and civility.

We are here, first and foremost, as individuals working together. Our priority here is to work on Nix projects for the benefit of all their contributors and users.

I'm going to use "team" here as a placeholder example. If the SC asked a team to do something, and it's not getting done, the first the to do is reach out. What's wrong? Is everything okay? Do you need support? If there is a 3rd party involved, then I'd ask for their feedback as well.

The exact situation dictates how the next steps play out. Is the team not fulfilling their task because:

they don't have enough people?
they don't have the right resources?
they don't want to?

In general, it is the duty of the SC to be an arbitrator and try guide people to a good resolution. However, if a resolution cannot be found through discussion, it is the responsibility of the SC to manage the team. That could mean replacing individuals, dissolving the team entirely, or making a decision using the appropriate voting methods outlined in the decision process.

This is how I would act and I would expect other members of the SC to act similarly. Using discourse, matrix, or external social media to rally the community against an individual or team would not be tolerated and would be grounds for removal from the SC as they violate the community values.

The short answer is: borrow techniques from political activism because many of the tactics from political activism work just as effectively in open source communities. I think a decent starting point is the Activist Handbook.

The slightly longer answer is: activism in the face of any sort of entrenched power has to necessarily be creative and innovative so there isn't "one simple trick". If you rely too much the same approach each time you will not get very far. This is summarized well here

Just because your tactic succeeded once, that doesn’t mean it will gain the same traction every time you use it. For one thing, your target will learn from their failures and respond differently if confronted with the same action. For another thing, people get bored of repetition and the media will more often than not avoid coverage of repetitive actions. Therefore, while you’re devising actions that directly serve your campaign objective and are in line with your strategy (see: PRINCIPLE: Choose tactics that support your strategy), try to be creative and original. Repetition can make your target immune to your actions, while an element of surprise can almost guarantee you a bigger impact. In other words, don’t become paralyzed by your success, or you’ll go down in history as just another one-hit wonder.

Instead, what you have to do is (A) be organized, (B) be persistent, and (C) be creative. I know that's not a very satisfying answer (because each one of those things is a lot of work), but I think it's the correct one.

So, like, being on the Nix Steering Committee is just one of many levers that a person can bring to bear in a strategy to effect change, and even people who are not on the Nix Steering Committee can still effect a lot of change (and they have in many cases!). Or to put it another way, I think the Nix Steering Committee's voting power is probably the least interesting power it wields and it can (and should) lean much more heavily on soft power through leadership and organization.

I like this question. It's a classic "how would you manage conflicts in a team environment" with an open source twist.

Maintain effective escalation points for issues that require further attention. Decision authority may be delegated to other teams when significant analysis is needed, [...]

First of all, we should really know what's going on before taking action, and it shouldn't be a surprise, because we should have been in active communication with the team this entire time, in meetings on the record. At the end of the day, though, the SC is responsible for the direction of the project, and something's not getting done.

I'd assume the best. Why is the team not making progress? Is there something they're missing? More likely, is there something we're missing as the SC? Where can we fix the leadership failure? Only once all avenues that the SC could have taken to reasonably provide support are exhausted, do we talk about invoking the constitution. So, then it goes:

[...] but the SC remains responsible if the delegated team fails to reach a decision.

This is where the SC can decide to change the composition of the team, or dissolve the team. It should ideally be done without a shred of animosity. Experiments fail. We're an open source project and a team, it happens.

We are here, first and foremost, as individuals working together.

That's the approach that will help people in the project stay friendly with each other. What will not help is pitting people in the project against each other to get what someone wants.

We treat each other with respect and civility. No matter one's individual identity, circumstances, level of contribution to the project, or status, everyone has the right to respect, and everyone has the duty to treat others with respect. We prioritise project health over individual interests.

The community has a right not to be weaponized by the Steering Committee, because doing so would be disrespectful, and an abuse of power. We all agreed on a set of values. Using the SC for destructive, antisocial purposes counter to the community's values should be grounds for dismissal from the SC.

Let's suppose that the steering committee is now responsive to the community... but when the steering committee asks for or directs action, that request is ignored, de-prioritized, or litigated by the relevant parties.

The Steering Committee cannot compel anyone if they are not being funded. I would highly discourage using political activism tactics against such individuals or to rally the community to impose social pressure upon people to do something they don't want to. That would be improper use of the power of the SC - a group with power - against an individual who likely does not.

@numinit and @mschwaig point out some of the explicit powers of the SC, such as creating and managing the teams, and some reasonable procedures the SC can follow. If the purpose of a team is to solve a particular task, and someone refuses to do so, then that task and any associated authority should be given to someone who will (after some consideration that perhaps the first individual has a proper reason to refuse). In the end, the only levers the SC should use are the ones provided in the constitution. Otherwise it would be too easy to abuse that power, regardless of the intentions.

Regarding the original topic of inaction, I would like to refer to Tom's above comment and agree.

Regarding activism

The Steering Committee is meant to represent the community, democratizing governance. Democracy isn't just one thing. Activism is a last resort of sorts, and we would be having this discussion if it wasn't for the activism of those opposed to the foundation's choices. I would encourage the Steering Committee to enter dialogue with their opponents, be respectful to them, and foster a respectful and truthful democratic culture. That said, in a sufficiently diverse community, we will have differences of opinion and activism every now and then. That is all part of the democratic process, and in some cases, the SC may have to carefully weigh the arguments and decide that it's best to decide, so that the community can move forward and not be hijacked by an issue that isn't important to the community at large.

In the worst case, the community gets another chance at the next election, possibly creating a majority for their issue within the year. That is again a last resort, but I am confident that the Steering Committee will do a better job at listening to the community than the previous leadership did. I wouldn't mind calling for a reelection if need be.

The inactivity mentioned here is part of my motivation for wanting to serve on the Steering Committee. I want the Nix family of projects to thrive, and to do so the community increasingly needs responsive and effective leadership.

Fundamentally, the governance changes are about getting results, on both a technical level and a social one: the projects will wither if their development needs are unmet, and the community will dissolve if the coordination issues are not addressed. In service of that aim:

if directives are "litigated" (I'm taking this to mean argued-with): I would work towards improving mutual understanding and consensus around the planned activity, especially since in doing so we may discover that I'm the one who didn't have some crucial piece of information! Knowing that you may be wrong is a normal part of leading well.
if directives are ignored or de-prioritized, I would first try to understand why this is happening and work with the assignee to address any issues, and if these are unresolvable (especially in the case of time pressure) I would work with the rest of the Steering Committee to reassign the request to another party who could complete it as needed. It's not uncommon for me to need tasks reassigned away as my schedule shifts to accommodate other responsibilities. Delegation and stepping-away are other important behaviors of effective leaders.

NixOS / SC-election-2024