I came across a Reddit post indicating that Jon Ringer, a significant contributor to the NixOS project, has been banned from GitHub. This raises some critical questions: Could this adversely impact the NixOS 24.05 release? What are the specific reasons behind the moderation team’s decision to ban Jon Ringer from GitHub? I think it’s safe to say that the broader community would be eager to get answers to these questions.
As a first-hand account; Jon has been the nicest of all the maintainers I’ve had interactions with ( ~7), probably followed by Ryan Mulligan. The only reason I remember Jon’s name (I usually just recognize maintainers by their profile pictures) is because a couple years ago, as part of this thread I was reading this github issue with a really rude/attacking user. I remember reading Jon’s response and thinking “This is one of the most patient FOSS devs on all of Github”.
However, take ^that as-is, because I am not up to date on anything recent. I just wanted to provide the small bit of insight I do have.
Here’s some of my interactions for those who like to judge for themselves:
I don’t know what AstroTurf means. Jon might be in the wrong, and I’ll edit my comment to put bad stuff at the top once I’m caught up. I’m just giving the info I have. If you have some let me know.
If AstroTurf means a bot, check my history here and on Github (jeff-hykin)
them being nice and all is nice however they are causing real problems and stirring drama for troubles that they caused
I don’t really understand the reasoning behind vouching for them when they are currently creating problems and haven’t really tried to solve anything besides creating enough drama to (what it seems to me) try and force themselves back into direct repository access
I kinda of see their past and current actions as ways to maintain a position of power which is quite problematic as they still haven’t addressed a key concern being their conflict of interest from working with Anduril
being nice is good for maintaining good social cohesion and whatnot but stirring shit and creating real problems kinda negates it
Edit: turns out this story goes way beyond Jon, all of Nix is in flux right now. My personal experience is kind of irrelevant.
Edit edit: just read this: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nixos-foundation-board-giving-power-to-the-community/44552
Original Post:
As a first-hand account; Jon has been the nicest of all the maintainers I’ve had interactions with ( ~7), probably followed by Ryan Mulligan. The only reason I remember Jon’s name (I usually just recognize maintainers by their profile pictures) is because a couple years ago, as part of this thread I was reading this github issue with a really rude/attacking user. I remember reading Jon’s response and thinking “This is one of the most patient FOSS devs on all of Github”.
However, take ^that as-is, because I am not up to date on anything recent. I just wanted to provide the small bit of insight I do have.
Here’s some of my interactions for those who like to judge for themselves:
This reeks of astroturf. That’s a lot of effort to put into saying absolutely nothing of substance. I cannot assume in good faith impartiality.
I don’t know what AstroTurf means. Jon might be in the wrong, and I’ll edit my comment to put bad stuff at the top once I’m caught up. I’m just giving the info I have. If you have some let me know.
If AstroTurf means a bot, check my history here and on Github (jeff-hykin)
them being nice and all is nice however they are causing real problems and stirring drama for troubles that they caused
I don’t really understand the reasoning behind vouching for them when they are currently creating problems and haven’t really tried to solve anything besides creating enough drama to (what it seems to me) try and force themselves back into direct repository access
I kinda of see their past and current actions as ways to maintain a position of power which is quite problematic as they still haven’t addressed a key concern being their conflict of interest from working with Anduril
being nice is good for maintaining good social cohesion and whatnot but stirring shit and creating real problems kinda negates it
I’m personally not convinced