Anduril was supposed to be a sponsor for a Nix conference; it was then dropped after community reacted negatively to having a weapons manufacturer being a sponsor.
"Outraged community" were about 30 people with few to no project contributions but a lot of political slogans and of likely questionable state of mind.
It doesn't take being a chef to know when something is shit :)
(on the off chance that some HN audience members have reading comprehension issues - this is aimed at politically driven non-contributing participants behind the anti-anduril outrage, Nix and its creator are absolutely fine)
Signatories to the letter against Anduril sponsorship of NixCon include contributors with thousands of Nixpkgs PRs each, like Infinisil, wegank, and Ma27, plus many other recognizable names with PR counts in the hundreds. Some of those people are also committers who have helped many, many contributors get their code in.
If you can't tell that from a glance at the signatories list, you shouldn't be commenting on 'non-contributing participants'.
yet when I posted a verbatim profile page screenshot of the author while saying absolutely nothing about them myself, it was downvoted as "arrant bigotry" lol.
Some of the more leftwing NixOS contributors hate that Anduril is using their technology and are trying to keep them from contributing/sponsoring/etc. via code of conduct changes.
Nobody is trying to stop them from using Nix or contributing code. The only objection is to their use of Nix community events for advertising through sponsorship of those events.
Only if their warhawk counterparts hold their next shindig somewhere in Gaza (So they can see first-hand what the consequences of their work and advocacy look like).
If you don’t want to build weapons because you don’t like the variety of ways they may be wielded, that’s a valid and reasonable ethical stance.
If you don’t want to build anything that could ever potentially be used in the manufacture of those weapons, you probably shouldn’t be building open source software or contributing anything to do with any programming language at all.
When the defense industry funds things they tend to go for architectures without a single point of failure and have the resources to create new things if the existing things are insufficient or adversarial. DARPA funding created the internet etc.
Meanwhile if you were to get the defense industry to not use your product, they're not going to go out of business or do less of whatever you didn't like. They're going to bring the same money to someone like Oracle or Microsoft with no qualms about taking it -- or bring even more money to them, which is your tax money, as those companies charge quite a lot.
This makes me suspicious that the people agitating for "don't take their money" are being subtly or not so subtly encouraged to do so by the people who want to take their money instead. After all, the historical norm is the opposite. Not just TCP/IP but Tor and SELinux and microprocessors and, considering that AT&T has long been a major defense contractor, transistors and lasers and solar panels and C and all the rest of it. Are the same people who want to refuse their money also inclined to refuse all of the other things it paid for?
Would we be better off if the University of California never took a Unix license or created BSD because of where it came from?
I will point out that I am well aware of, and respect the stance that bad things done multiple-degrees-removed-from-you are not, like, entirely your responsibility. Or even necessarily your responsibility at all.
I did, however, have to expand on the concept that it's very easy to have strong opinions about war when you yourself are sheltered from the consequences of it.
This comparison is irrelevant to the conversation. But even otherwise it is misleading and leaves out lots of history. The modern state of Israel has existed for that long - but if anything, it’s a war for Jewish people’s existence in land that was historically Jewish. And it wouldn’t be a “war” if Israel could exist peacefully and not constantly be threatened by terrorists. Most people don’t see a problem with a war of self defense in response to October 7, so I’m not sure what you think would happen if “warhawks” saw the “consequences” of their work. If anything, this is a low casualty conflict compared to most.
I'm referring to the settlement land grabs and displacements that happened after 1967, not to its existence of either 1947 or 1967 borders. (Which have their own humanitarian problems, but that's something else.)
I don’t think it’s right to make comparisons like this. But if you really want to go there, have you tried comparing the death toll? In Ukraine, it’s likely around three quarters of a million dead in two years.
Honestly I think military is just a scapegoat for these people, their real mission (like many before them) seems to be using the lack of CoC acceptance as their own weapon to justify bullying them for having opinions they don't like. That has always been the MO.
They want the CoC to be able to silence undesired speech in the first place, and if they refuse, it becomes their strawman to allow them to keep arguing the same thing all over again.
To me this reeks of the "paradox of intolerance" e.g. "you cannot be inclusive without allowing people to say things you don't like".
I think it’s entirely valid for a community to decide they don’t want participation and funding from a defence contractor. That isn’t a scapegoat - it’s the actual goal.
You may or may not agree with this stance and that is totally fine. You’re still free to use the software for whatever you want; you can also go ahead and fork it, or create a new community endorsing this use. If enough people agree then it will thrive. That’s the beauty of it!
A specific community has the freedom—within the bounds of legality—to decide who is welcome to participate.
The problem is, there is not a community that is in agreement about this. There is a subset of the community, that like to pretend they are and speak for "the community", and when they get pushback from those that disagree they call it concern-trolling.
While the phenomenon you describe certainly exists, it is vital to separate it from the phenomenon of not wanting to support the US "defense" sector.
I do not identify as a leftist, and would not be considered one, but as an aerospace engineer I would never work for something that aids the US war machine.
Those weapons are never used in "defense". Do they defend an unsustainable way of life ? Sure.
The last time I saw one of these weapons in use was when I was standing in my kitchen in Ukraine and through the window I could see a missile take down a russian suicide drone.
As you might be aware, which I cannot be certain of given your insubstantial reply, international geopolitics are usually a bit more nuanced than an aggressive "land grabbing tyrant".
Ukraine is a strategically important region to Russia. They don't have to invade as long as they can threaten to invade, and thereby get concessions without armed conflict.
If Ukraine joins NATO then Russia could no longer credibly threaten to invade because it would put Russia at war with NATO. Ukraine about to join NATO is thereby destabilizing, because then Russia has to choose between invading immediately before they join, or doing nothing and permanently losing their leverage. This does not make the invasion justified but it makes it expected. US diplomats knew this perfectly well and pushed for Ukraine to join NATO anyway.
It's like telling your friend to corner a vicious dog. The dog is not innocent, the dog is going to bite them and you knew that and told them to do it anyway.
> US diplomats knew this perfectly well and pushed for Ukraine to join NATO anyway.
The initiative for joining NATO came from Ukraine and not the US diplomats. Prior to 2014 the public support was too weak for it to happen. Popular support first shifted almost overnight from the majority opposing NATO membership to supporting it after Russia invaded Crimea and Eastern Ukraine in 2014, and shifted even more towards support after Russia launched the full-scale invasion in 2022: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations...
Neither invasion had anything to do with NATO. In 2014, Russia correctly judged that the international response would be too weak and made a successful land grab. After the spectacular American retreat from Afghanistan that mirrored the last days of Saigon, Russians again sensed weakness and thought Biden was too weak to intervene in Ukraine and decided that the climate was suitable for taking the next step in restoring their former empire in 2022. Planning for the 2022 invasion began around the time of US retreat from Afghanistan.
> It's like telling your friend to corner a vicious dog. The dog is not innocent, the dog is going to bite them and you knew that and told them to do it anyway.
This is a narrative propagated by Russians, and sounds convicing on the surface, but has little actual substance. Nobody's cornered. Russia's threats are bluffs, intended to paralyze you with fear and guide you into inaction, which Russia will then exploit, as they have done in Ukraine.
To continue your dog analogy, they are a dog that barks and barks, and bites only if they sense fear and weakness and see an opportunity to bite. Show strength and they'll back down. (And this is how you deal with actual dogs too; they smell fear from sweat.)
It doesn’t make one an intellectual to shroud their own tenuous grasp on reality with a cover of “ooohh!!! Nuaaannce!!!”
The international geopolitics here are very simple.
The russian federation aims to rebuild the former russian empire. They’re prosecuting this by first trying to exterminate Ukraine as a population, as a nation, as a culture, and as an identity.
It has nothing to do with NATO expansion, or sob stories russia has published about them needing to defend themselves.
There is not any meaningful nuance to apply here. In February 2022 Russia launced a full scale military attack on a soverign neighbouring country. Ukraine defends itself with western military weapons. That is clear use of defense and no "nuance" changes that.
I will never say that the NATO is an innocent organisation; however, to say that the US/NATO is indirectly responsible is a stretch. It would imply that the US invading Mexico would be justified if they were to become allies with Russia. I would as strongly oppose that as well.
Why do you feel that you are able to see things objectively?
To me, it looks like you are repeating kremlin propaganda. It looks like you’re another victim of the Chomsky school of propaganda.
The USA isn’t responsible for russia’s invasion of Ukraine (or Georgia, earlier). If they are, it’s only responsible insofar as allowing useful idiots to apply political pressure to their governments and force them into pacifism, thereby enabling russian aggression.
If you want to have a discussion about this, could you start by not being so patronising?
