Add sponsorship policy. [WIP]

[djacu]

Fixes #110.

Formally submitting this as I think it is a sufficiently good place to start.

• Taken from @piegamesde's and @tomberek's input in the related issue.
• Modified to improve spelling and grammar.
• Wasn't sure how to parse the "and should be a home page or content related" phrase so I removed it.
• Changed line numbers so it formats in Markdown nicely.

[piegamesde]

@paperdigits apologies for my tone.

Of the two placeholder points you remark, I have basically given up on both of them, so consider them removed. At this point, I think it is easier for me to focus on adding the points I care most about back into this proposal instead of polishing my own draft further.

Especially about my point 5. "Rejected company applications", I can live without what I drafted in 5.3, although not specifying it here will mean that the same task will simply be delegated to the event organizers. However, I'd like to see 5.2 "Employees of rejected companies must be welcomed as community members in the community and at events, as long as they drop all public affiliation with their employer within these spaces." incorporated into this proposal in some way or another.

[djacu]

That said, the current policy requires 2 objections, and it's unclear if that would only count as a single objection. Or if the same objection can come from two members. What did you have in mind @djacu ?

Well that was taken from the issue. But my thoughts were that two separate members would need to bring up the objection. Similar to a motion on a council where one person brings up a motion and a second votes to carry the motion forward. Except here it would be simply two votes.

[djacu]

However, I'd like to see 5.2 "Employees of rejected companies must be welcomed as community members in the community and at events, as long as they drop all public affiliation with their employer within these spaces." incorporated into this proposal in some way or another.

I am good with the first half of 5.2 but the second half is a bit ambiguous. To what degree would they have to drop all public affiliation?

• Not having their company on their badge (if that is a thing)?
• Not wearing apparel from their company?
• Not mentioning their company if they give a talk? E.g. "Hello, my name is X and I work for company Y."

Any of these seem a little too much to put on the individual.

[nixos-discourse]

This pull request has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/update-on-sponsorship-policy-discussion/42704/1

[paperdigits]

@piegamesde thank you. I'm sorry for redirecting/demanding work, that is never OK and I'll strive to be more mindful in the future.

However, I'd like to see 5.2 "Employees of rejected companies must be welcomed as community members in the community and at events, as long as they drop all public affiliation with their employer within these spaces." incorporated into this proposal in some way or another.

This seems like it'd be impossible to enforce. How do you tell an employee from a fan of the company? And at what point is it considered encroachment upon that person's interests?

[crertel]

I'm just somebody quietly using Nix over in the corner and reading some of the work on this problem, but I'm not comfortable with a de-facto power grab by the moderation team here for vetoing events and then enforcing opinions on whether or not somebody can freely associate themselves with their employers at an event.

This is extremely unusual from everything I've seen at industry conferences, and the one time I recall it happening (over in the Elixir community) we still make fun of everybody involved in that decision and the awkwardness it caused.

I'll also point out that, as written, it seems that any rejected sponsorship would mean you couldn't fly your flag--for example, if I had some small business whose proposed sponsorship is of too little value to handle and got rejected this proposed change would mean I couldn't wear my company T-shirt. That seems dumb.

---

Taking a step back though, I think y'all are overthinking this and making mountains out of molehills. It's hard enough to get events organized and harder still to get funding for those events. Maybe just focus on getting a few years of events with sponsorship up reliably, assume good faith from everyone involved, don't overindex on what might happen with a sponsor that some people might not approve of, and then check in to see if anything needs to be changed if you can do that without goofing up a few times in a row at scale.

I guarantee that the handwringing over theoretical bad PR or whatever is a distraction from the already hard work of setting up events and getting paid. Few people know about Nix at all outside of a few corners of tech, fewer people still are actually running it meaningfully in production, even fewer of those are doing so for companies.

The ugly but reassuring truth is "basically nobody cares in the world at large." Take refuge in that, go outside and touch grass, and maybe consider removing roadblocks to sponsorship and avoiding adding processes that allow subsets of the ecosystem not doing the work to make it harder for those actually doing it.

[RaitoBezarius]

I'm just somebody quietly using Nix over in the corner and reading some of the work on this problem, but I'm not comfortable with a de-facto power grab by the moderation team here for vetoing events and then enforcing opinions on whether or not somebody can freely associate themselves with their employers at an event.
[...]
The ugly but reassuring truth is "basically nobody cares in the world at large." Take refuge in that, go outside and touch grass, and maybe consider removing roadblocks to sponsorship and avoiding adding processes that allow subsets of the ecosystem not doing the work to make it harder for those actually doing it.

Thank you for your comment, it is just sad that your comment contains so much contempt and seems to discard the possibility that what happened had real effects on people over the past months. I recommend taking the time to review the existing discourse to avoid writing a message which seems to be ignoring all the feelings of people working on the matter and pouring their soul in this thing for the past days.

Furthermore, I recommend also to forego suggestions that it's sufficient "to touch the grass" for problems to disappear in a community.

[AshleyYakeley]

I'm not comfortable with a de-facto power grab by the moderation team here for vetoing events and then enforcing opinions on whether or not somebody can freely associate themselves with their employers at an event.

I agree with this. The rationale given is that the moderation team somehow represents the community? But I think it's the other way around: as an inevitable consequence of moderation, the moderation team has a great deal of influence over what counts as "the community" and who may participate in it. This isn't a bad thing, moderation needs to be done, but we should recognise that the community has no reciprocal influence over the moderation team, and so the latter should not be considered representative of the former.

[RaitoBezarius]

For information, I will take a proactive posture here to moderate the off-topic, outdated, abusive comments in this PR. We are focusing on getting a sponsorship policy off, concerns about whether a sponsorship policy makes sense can be done once, but once it is starting to run into circles, I will hide them.

Whether the moderation team or not is not representative of the community is another debate that has not its place in this PR, consider pushing proposals that encompass a condition that the selection committee is representative of the community in its decision-making, but let's not open all the debate at the same time, or we will not converge.

Dismissive comments are not tolerated anymore, and I will strongly moderate them, I include comments that disparage entities without proof, including:

• power grab fantasies
• reasoning about the perceived size of an entity to decide whether it makes sense to do proactive policymaking
• discussions that do not acknowledge the effective impact of the absence of sponsorship policy on the various operations of our community, e.g. nixpkgs

In addition, I will mention that what other communities does is, at some point, of limited usefulness to us. We have this community and not the community of other projects, it's up to the leadership of a project to answer with policies that make sense for their community, not to tell to community members that others do it like this, and therefore we must follow the "global ambient culture". If you disagree with this, please provide constructive elements to enable comparisons, otherwise, I will deem such comments offtopic too.

Again, I deeply apologize for the tone, but I will be rigorous to give everyone a chance to participate into this without being drained and dropping out of the discussion needlessly. This is not to say that those discussions cannot take place, but this might not be the right tool / right place to have such debates.

[nixos-discourse]

This pull request has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/community-calendar/18589/130

[Jaculabilis]

As a compromise between the efficiency of fewer decisionmakers and slimmer processes, and the acknowledged stake that Moderation and Marketing have in the outcome of sponsorship, here's an idea:

Suggested change

	1. The Sponsor Chair will submit sponsorship proposals to the Selection Committee via email, composed of the event organizers and the Foundation Board.
	2. Selection Committee members shall be notified at least 2 weeks prior to the event and provided with at least 1 week to submit objections to committee members in written form.
	3. Objections should be specific to the sponsor and cite relevant reasons why the sponsorship would impede the NixOS mission.
	If at least two (2) objections are received, the sponsor will be subjected to a general vote by the Selection Committee.
	4. A sponsor will be accepted unless:
	1. A majority (>50%) of the event organizers vote to decline the sponsor, or
	2. A majority (>50%) of the Foundation Board vote to decline the sponsor.
	1. The Selection Committee is composed of the event organizers and the Foundation Board.
	2. The Sponsor Chair will submit sponsorship proposals to the Selection Committee via email.
	3. The Selection Committee shall be notified at least 2 weeks prior to the event and provided with at least 1 week to submit objections to committee members in written form.
	4. The Selection Committee should consider objections that are specific to the sponsor and relevant to the NixOS mission, consulting with the Marketing team and the Moderation team as necessary.
	5. Either the event organizers or the Foundation board may decline the sponsor.

My basic reasoning here is that we should trust the Foundation Board to consult the people who may be impacted and use their veto power on their behalf. If we didn't think the Foundation would act in the best interests of Nix, we might as well pack up our bags, because what would the point of any of this be after that?

[RaitoBezarius]

We already have tried this, this resulted in the current situation. The Foundation board has many things to do, this is about giving a mandate to the people who are the closest to the community to handle this.

The Foundation act in the best interests of Nix by delegating this to the group that also aact in the best interests of Nix, for example.

[AshleyYakeley]

The moderation team is not "the closest to the community".

[RaitoBezarius]

Can you cite another set of contributors who are well positioned to make those calls?

[AshleyYakeley]

The board is best positioned to make these kinds of executive decisions. That's their job.

[jonringer]

The board is stuffed with people who have commercial interest in Nix/Nixpkgs/NixOS

Although true, I would also say that would be conjunction with massive community legacy:

• Eelco Dolstra: The creator of Nix, 20+ years of contributions
• Théophane Hufschmitt: Contributor of 5+ years, member of Nix maintenance team
• Jonas Chevalier: Contributor of ~9+ years, pillar of the community, creator of Direnv.
• Domen (recently left): Contributor of 10+ years, ~6x NixOS release manager. Creator of Cachix.
• Ron Efroni - Sadly not personally familiar with him. Only one without a large Nix legacy.

[jonringer]

I think "the board is stuffed pillars of the community who also want to see Nix be a commercial success" is a better way to phrase that.

[mweinelt]

There is no question they have had a big influence on the community in the past, but nowadays, they rarely interact with or contribute to nixpkgs anymore. But that is precisely where the largest part of the community interaction actually happens.

If you're not there you're likely missing out on a lot of people that keep nixpkgs running. And it is exactly those people who are in need of representation here.

[djacu]

contribute to nixpkgs anymore

Well if you restrict the scope of contributions to nixpkgs, you'd still be wrong. If you include other areas of the nix ecosystem such as:

• the nix language
• the nixos homepage
• the nix survey
• discourse
• matrix
• time spent in meetings
• a multitude of repositories under nix-community
• and several other repositories under the NixOS github org

then they still contribute a lot

All it takes is a quick peak at each of their github profiles to see that.

[jonringer]

I agree, nixpkgs is usually the gateway drug. And it's a "choose your own adventure" from there. I would still consider work on NixOS/nix as contributions though.

Grahamc was Mr. Infra + Mr. moderation + Mr. ofBorg for many year. I would still consider his contributions to be just as valuable as well. <3 you @grahamc. Glad his hats were distributed amongst many.

[zimbatm]

Ok, that's enough.

If your comment isn't directly helping move the policy out of the door, it will be marked. And if you aren't a contributor to this project, be extra careful, I will ask the moderation team to ban you instead. We can't afford to have the conversation be detailed.

We need a simple and practical policy we can use at NixCon, that samples a bit more of the community for opinion. This is the first version and it can be improved based on feedback.

Let's aim at next Tuesday to get this over with and reviewed by the board.

[tomberek]

As agreed with representatives on 2024-04-07.

[JulienMalka]

Suggested change

	- 2 representatives from the event organizers
	- 2 representatives from the event organizers, including 1 member of the NixCon PL team if the PL team is engaging on the event

[zimbatm]

One issue raised is that the PL team isn't officially defined yet (even if it exists and is doing a great job).

To solve this and move forward, I proposed creating a second document that establishes the PL team. As part of it, the PL team gets one of the event organizers' votes on all the events they are responsible for.

[RaitoBezarius]

What do you think of this informal post and definition (I must assume) https://discourse.nixos.org/t/governance-through-project-leads-in-nixcon-2024/33981 ? What should be improved to make it more defined ?

[zimbatm]

I like it overall. It does a good job of defining the scope, the roles and responsibilities, the team composition, and how to contact you.

One unclear point was the distinction between Bootstrap PL and PL, as well as the mechanisms around it. Are the PLs the event organizers for a specific year? This must be better defined before it can be referenced in this document.

Another aspect could be to officially assign the NixCon brand and assets to the PL. In that scenario, the foundation wouldn't even have to be involved creating this very policy, as the PL would be empowered to write it themselves.

Then give the team a homepage, move this to a founding document, done.

[RaitoBezarius]

Here we go. #134

[zimbatm]

Ok, we can work on this separately then, and resolve this thread.

Don't forget to add this notion in the other document: that the PL team would take one vote of the events team.

[mweinelt]

Including this here would IMO be the sensible thing to do, given that this was the compromise that led to the agreement on the call.

[JulienMalka]

No mention of the PL team in the sponsorship policy is a deal-breaker for me.

[JulienMalka]

We are missing the concept that the moderation seat is supposed to ensure minorities of the community are correctly represented, and that failing that, this policy is deemed void.
As that was discussed yesterday.

[JulienMalka]

Suggested change

	This policy applies to all sponsorships at official NixCon events.
	This policy applies to all sponsorships at official events endorsed by the NixOS foundation.

[edolstra]

The sponsor rules as currently proposed by this PR seem reasonable to me:

1. Sponsors must be individuals or organizations that are legally able to operate in compliance with the laws and policies of their own origin, that of the NixOS Foundation, and of relevant third-party agreements.

since this is a non-discriminatory policy that doesn't exclude entire industries.

However, it's important to acknowledge that this policy does permit sponsorship by defense contractors, which is what triggered the current controversy. So the big question is whether committee members can reject sponsors on grounds not listed in the policy. (The proposal does mention a requirement to state "reasons why the sponsorship would impede the NixOS mission", but that's pretty vague, lacking a stated "NixOS mission".) If in practice the policy is "the ethics/politics of the committee members", then that's not a very transparent policy. Ideally it should be clear in advance to potential sponsors whether they're welcome.

[JulienMalka]

The sponsor rules as currently proposed by this PR seem reasonable to me

Just want to clarify/reiterate that the current state of this PR does not reflect the agreement that was found yesterday after countless hours of negotiation.

So the big question is whether committee members can reject sponsors on grounds not listed in the policy.

The committee members can reject sponsors on grounds not explicitly listed, yes.

[RaitoBezarius]

In our case, we can directly say this is 80 %, it's more precise and gives you a nice integer.
If we use > 70 %, people have to understand that 4 > 3.5 and 3 < 4.5.

[djacu]

people have to understand that 4 > 3.5 and 3 < 4.5.

I believe in the mental capabilities of the Nix community. 🧠

Also, we don't have to deliberate what the threshold is if the composition of the selection committee changes in the future. >70% will always be >70%.

[JulienMalka]

I want the language to be about committee members and not expressed votes. I'm fine if we say something like "A sponsor will be accepted if and only if 70% or more of committee members are in favor."

[JulienMalka]

I don't see why we don't keep the clear "4/5 members should be in favor". When we revisit the committee composition, we have to revisit this document anyway.

[JulienMalka]

Suggested change

	A sponsor will be accepted if a significant majority, defined as greater than 70% of the committee votes, is in favor of acceptance.
	A sponsor will be accepted if and only if at least 4 members of the committee are in favor.

[djacu]

@JulienMalka I'm not sure what is missing. What you have suggested is pretty close to the current language is it not? Or are you just stating what you would like to see and not making a suggestion?

Ah sorry your second and third comment hadn't loaded yet when I commented. All clear now

[JulienMalka]

@JulienMalka I'm not sure what is missing. What you have suggested is pretty close to the current language is it not? Or are you just stating what you would like to see and not making a suggestion?

1. The if and only if makes it clear that the only way for a sponsor to get approved is through the committee agreement. It's important.
2. I want the language to be clear that we need a majority of members and not voters (abstention counts as a no). It's also important.
3. I think that 4/5 is more clear than 70% but I can compromise on that.

[djacu]

To preserve the understanding of what a "significant/strong/super" majority is in the future, how about the following?

edit: added iff
edit: members not votes

Suggested change

	A sponsor will be accepted if a significant majority, defined as greater than 70% of the committee votes, is in favor of acceptance.
	A sponsor will be accepted if and only if a significant majority, defined as greater than 70% of the committee members, is in favor of acceptance.
	With the current composition of the selection committee, acceptance necessitates at least 4 members in favor.

[JulienMalka]

Can we change 70% of the committee votes to 70% of the committee members ? And for the rest no strong opinion on adding or not the last sentence.

[djacu]

Can we change 70% of the committee votes to 70% of the committee members ? And for the rest no strong opinion on adding or not the last sentence.

Ah I understand what you were trying to convey now. Members not votes. Yeah that's better.

[JulienMalka]

Please refrain from changing all the wording of the policy while we are discussing it. Let's try to focus on the open discussion points.

[zimbatm]

We have now integrated the remaining changes in #136, which I believe is very close to the consensus we reached on Sunday. For more context, please also read the discourse post. Thanks again for all your feedback, effort and patience.