I have no idea how you’re getting packages older than Debian. Unstable is a rolling release and stable has a 6 month release cadence with no LTS. Were you pulling from an old dead repo? If you followed an outdated guide, they probably linked you to an old one.

I do agree that the learning curve is steep and the knowledge is nontransferrable though. In my case, that just encouraged me to unify all my systems onto NixOS at home. Not sure if that’s a solution or addiction yet.

… Yes. You will have to behave like a civilized adult. If your opinion is that you shouldn’t have to, then you are correct that I do not respect that opinion.

Personally I’d rather have a choice of who to follow based on whose opinions align better with my own, instead of everyone being forced to go with the majority…

NixOS is FOSS. People can freely fork it. Your choice is not being taken away.

in other words I respect people’s freedom to have opinions I do not like, which I think this type of “community power” is in some ways the opposite of that.

I’m not sure how voting makes it so we can’t respect each other’s opinions.

I would rather have a strong dictatorship focused on technical merit, to be deposed in the future for another dictator, again, based on technical merit.

Normally when I see people say something like this, what they actually mean is “based on technical merit (and also has the right opinions that agree with mine)”. The concern is that democracy will produce outcomes they find disagreeable.

Overall I’m quite pleased with this news, but I’m a bit of a zealot when it comes to democracy. Barring any breakdown of process during the drafting and election phases, I see this as an absolute win, and the first step towards repairing the community.

I’m not sold on the name, but I’m definitely interested in the fork. I think there is an irreconcilable schism in the NixOS community that cannot be fixed unless the Benevolent Dictator steps down as leader, and it sure seems like he’s not gonna do that, as he’s built his entire company on top of NixOS.

That caused a lot of tension, the foundation came to a decision not to accept sponsorship

This part is actually not true, they are still a sponsor of NixCon NA 2024.
https://2024-na.nixcon.org/#sponsors

They proposed a policy to handle deciding sponsorships in the future, but it’s pretty lackluster. It basically just says the people in power promise to do a good job, pinky swear.
https://github.com/NixOS/foundation/blob/bb7af14ae242ab87c8312bb4122b2a3cd184462d/policies/sponsorship_policy.md

but stop at equality for everyone, not suppression of those you may disagree with

Equality for everyone requires the suppression of those who would take away that equality, otherwise you eventually lose equality for everyone. This is similar to how maximizing freedom for everyone requires restricting your individual freedom to harm others, because in doing so you remove their freedoms. Your individual freedom is less, but the total amount of freedom in the system is greater for it.

Furthermore, it is not a moral failing, or even a difficult moral quandary, to suppress people for their actions and choices. We do it all the time to murderers and other criminals, or even people who don’t shower. This can be done in multiple ways, including ways that do not involve state power. We frequently use social means to suppress people, for good or bad. A society simply works that way. And if they don’t like it, they can simply choose to stop trying to take away equality; I cannot similarly choose to stop being the kind of person they want to take equality away from.

To protect equality we must win every fight; to lose it, they need only win once. Everybody is protected by equality so long as they believe in it. I do not believe that those who do not believe in equality should be extended its benefits, for they will seek to destroy it from within like a parasite.