[Nix-dev] Announcing free-nix: the free Linux distribution based on the Nix package manager

[Lluís Batlle i Rossell]

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 02:34:58PM +0200, Andres Loeh wrote:
> Hi Peter.
> 
> On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 12:45 PM, Peter Simons <simons at cryp.to> wrote:
> > Hi guys,
> >
> > it is my pleasure to announce the free-nix project, which aims to provide a
> > user- and developer-friendly free Linux distribution based on the Nix package
> > manager. The project is hosted on Github at
> 
> Is this really necessary? Was there any warning from you that this
> would happen? If you're unhappy with the way Nix is being run, why not
> bring it up and try to convince people to change the overall policy,
> rather than try to fork and thereby possibly causing fragmentation in
> what's already a small community. I could somehow understand it if
> your decision was perceived by me as the outcome of a failed attempt
> of convincing the project to go in this direction, but afaics, you
> haven't even tried.

Peter, you moved a big piece. :)

I'd still try to push Eelco a bit, whether we can have a collaboration system
closer to what we had in svn. This free-nix is a way to push, but it looks to me
a bit 'unpeaceful'. :)

I particularly tried to request two pulls, which did not get into nixpkgs until
15h later, and were not accepted until Rob *tested* them. That meant for me an
amount of work much bigger than a simple svn commit, and I decided to stop
requesting pulls.

I keep my own fork, and I merge regularly from niksnut's nixpkgs. I've not taken
a look at free-nix repositories, but I imagine I could sync with them too; my
"master" of nixpkgs has only commits I'd desire in a public nixpkgs; it's not
that I abuse it considering it's mine.

I don't know how settled are Eelco opinions on the collaboration model, but
I think that this kind of free-nix fork looks agressive, and this may not help
in finding agreement on the collaboration. I'd like Eelco to relax on the
desire of microcontrol of nixpkgs, but the lack of agreement may come from Eelco
and me having different goals. In any case, I'll wait for Eelco declarations, to
see where is Eelco's nixpkgs heading.

Regards,
Lluís.