The story summarized by me (an onlooker)

  • Anduril (founded by Peter Thiel buddy Palmer Luckey) is a US MIC geared towards getting contracts for building border surveillance technology to terrorize migrants as part of the US’s increasing hot war on the border.
  • Anduril tried sponsoring NixCon NA 2023 by becoming a Nix Foundation Gold member (like 4000 Euros, basically pennies for SV ghouls). There was a huge backlash against it by the community and the Nix foundation had to drop Anduril.
  • A Steering Council (SC) was formed in response to the governance crisis (as in there was no governance) that allowed military fash to sponsor an event.
  • The steering council is an elected body, but is mired by confusing constitutional legalese and secrecy (their meetings are private).
  • The SC takes a stand on a few topics, but overall you could be forgiven if you forgot they existed.
  • 2025 -> SC member Tomberek decides to take a position as a principal software engineer (technical leadership position) at Anduril. Anduril has been known to hire high level Nix contributors.
  • A community member (specifically a visibly queer community member) made a post asking why this change was not made public https://discourse.nixos.org/t/sc-member-tomberek-works-for-anduril/68971
  • Fash come in and respond that they should shut up and stop spreading drama. Turns out the fash get a disturbing amount of upvotes despite talking down to everyone.
  • Later on, parts of the SC decide to remove a member of the Moderation Team (a separate team) and propose adding a new member, this was rejected by the moderation team collectively and they did a mass resignation (the remaining members also resigned later due to the fact that they had no more time to dedicate). https://discourse.nixos.org/t/a-statement-from-members-of-the-moderation-team/69828
  • There are new SC elections but now there is a fear that the community has already been gutted by fash that the results would overwhelmingly represent the white fash.
  • Most of the SC have already resigned at this point, citing flaws with the role of the SC https://www.haskellforall.com/2025/09/steering-committee-retrospective.html

Fash in question:

Overall this was inevitable given that the project has no ideological tilt to speak of other than being “welcoming to all peoples who seek to promote to Nix” (liberalism). There is a marked difference between Nix EU and Nix NA with the latter being radically more fash and reactionary.

It was also inevitable considering that Nix is super nazi bar and most disputes are handled by talking down to the person who spoke up and choosing the option of least resistance (projects led by untrustworthy transphobes such as PolyMC are allowed in nixpkgs).

What can you do?

If you’re a member of the Nix community, you can spread awareness against the creeping tide of fascism infiltrating Nix. I also recommend signal boosting unofficial spaces such a Lix (a fork of the Nix language).

You can also vote if you’re an eligible member for the SC elections this year and endorse people who are not libs.

As for me?

I’m still going to contribute to nixpkgs because it recently got a core technical team, so the SC doesn’t have any unbalanced influence on it.

I’m also going to switch to Lix and get away from the other rabbit hole that is the Determinate Systems Nix vs. Upstream Nix conflict.

I’m gonna vote (yes I know cri)

  • hello_hello [comrade/them]@hexbear.netOPMEnglish
    9·
    2 days ago

    That would only inspire even less confidence in the SC but yeah even I’m hesitant to even comment directly on this issue within the forum because none of the original moderators are there.

    It very much feels like a nazi bar where the only people left are liberals and fash and it only skews the internal perception of the community itself that these people have always been a majority.

    I’m glad the fash are eating shit though and they have to deal with people speaking up.