This is a basic represention and inclusion issue. Unless you are actively seeking out voices of those minorities and addressing their concerns you will have a reinforcing loop where behaviour that puts people off engaging will continue and it will continue to limit people from those minorities being involved (and in the worst case causing active harm to some people who end getting involved). From what I understand the behaviour that has been demonstrated and from who those people leaving it is clear this is active issue within Nix. Having a diverse range of people and perspectives will actually make the outputs (software) and community generally better. It's about recognising the problems in the formal and informal structures you are creating and working to address them.
Additionally, but just to clarify nepotism would be giving positions based on relationships with people in power and not ensuring that your board contains a more representative set of backgrounds and perspectives.
Others have replied pointing out this is a strawman and that merit doesn't make any sense as a metric if you have discrimination. In practice performance ('merit') is complex interaction between an individual's skills and talent and the environment and support they get to thrive. If you have an environment that structurally and openly discriminates against a certain subclass of people and then chose on "merit" you are just further entrenching that discrimination.
This is a project that seemed to be having specific problems on gender that was causing harm and leading to losing talent. In a voluntary role particularly this is a death spiral for the project as a whole. Without goodwill and passion open source projects of any meaningful size just wouldn't survive.
I'm glad you care enough about diversity and evidence to have worked out how to solve these problems without empowering and listening to those minorities. Please do share it.
You say remove discrimination and then use a discriminatory strawman. No one is suggesting a code contribution must be accepted based on a minority status. They are saying that to get a decent functioning community for everyone you need a diverse range of people in positions that set the behaviour of the community. You can't get the CoC and enforcement of it right unless those affected are in positions that influence it. Your enforced anonymity doesn't work because there are other ways of gendering and racialising people (e.g. based on who people talk). Additionally, what you are saying is that minoritised people have to hide who they are so they don't get discriminated against rather than just deal with those doing the discrimination. They are called communities because that's what's they are: people want to be part of something and that involves sharing a part of themselves too. Open source projects live or die on their communities because they mostly don't have the finances to just pay people to do the work. You need people to beleive in the project and not burn out etc.
You lose nothing by making sure people from all backgrounds have the same opportunity and enjoyment being part of it. If you aren't in a minority and don't care about those that are then just say so!
It's not about "satisfying the minorities". It's about ensuring a basic base level of respect and behaviour for people from all backgrounds. The roles you are talking about were specifically to deal with the fact there was an active problem around that minority in that community that needed dealing with. So bringing in that lived experience is absolutely important. Someone can be adequate, sane, have "proper" mindset and judgement and be from a minority that is currently being targeted with lived experience of the problem. Dealing with issues around diversity and inclusion make life easier and better for everyone: it's well evidenced. I benefit daily from work that's been done to make my area easier for people with disabilities despite not having one. Those only came about by people with disabilities challenging and getting in the room where decisions are made.
It's really not that hard! If you don't feel minoritised in your daily life and therefore don't see the importance, fine, but all of us are only one incident or cultural shift to end up being the target so if you aren't motivated by the plight of people you are happy to "other" than do so because one day you might be the other.
I suspect this will generate a lot of discussion and opinions on both sides but what I think we lack is a culture of longitudinal data and study. Maybe you are right or maybe dropping new users in the deep end puts them off forever. It would be nice to see some quantative study on the Linux user experience. Does it shift wider tech beliefs or political beleifs?
Who knew recommending Distros could be so controversial 😛?
Seriously though I think this is a great flowchart and you took on board the more reasonable suggestions from the intial post. This flowchart now quickly eliminates some of the distro choice anxiety. Worst case a newbie might end up on a distro like mint and then end up migrating to a different one.
One comment I had is that I actually didn't know what opinionated DE meant without googling despite being a long time Linux user (maybe thats just my ignorance) and I wonder if a newbie might be confused maybe there's another way of saying it (flexible versus simple?).
Anyway, I really think early me would have appreciated this when I first started even if that would been ultimately "use Ubuntu" back then.
I'm in a bit of a productivity rut and whilst I suspect the issue is mainly between the keyboard and chair I'm also interested in what (FOSS) tools there are that people find effective....
Ah thanks for the clarification. I never did manage to use Virtual Desktops effectively but it sounds like the problem was me trying to use them within the workflow rather than for different projects. I always found it difficult to switch compared with just having an extra monitor.
I do worry it might be quite resource intensive just sitting loads in the background though.
Particularly excited about Trillium. I'm current trying Joplin but labour and time reflect and organize the noted means I'm rarely using it effectively.
Habitica sounds interesting. I definitely feel I need something like that. My struggle sometimes is in splitting projects into bitesize chunks (some are easier than others) some of my work can be quite open ended thought projects. I get caught in a trap of doing the easier work to plan work (like coding) rather than necessarily the most urgent.
I worry I'm not "hardcore" enough for emacs (I have tried in the past and now mostly use Vim). I will give it a try though as quite a few people recommend here!
It's on the list to try. I briefly tried i3 but couldn't get on with it. Though that was a bad time to try change as there was a lot of deadlines and I didn't really have the time to learn. I have a bit more time so I'm going to try again.
Avoiding going on yt is definitely a plus. I am trying to move more to active choice of music rather than just what the algorithm is pushing. Obviously that requires upfront work but I think it's worth it.
Much ado about "nothing" - Xe Iaso (==Goodbye NixOS) ( xeiaso.net )
https://discourse.nixos.org/t/much-ado-about-nothing/44236...
Fedora Linux 40 Officially Released with Kernel 6.8, Gnome 46 & KDE 6 ( 9to5linux.com )
Sadly, DNF5 and the new Anaconda installer didn't make it to the party, in case you were wondering.
[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]
Gnome Flashback And Gnome Classic. ( www.youtube.com )
Random UK grandma in my recommenced giving a tour of classic gnome.
How to choose your first distro - A guide for beginners (flowchart + text post)
So, you're new to Linux? Welcome to our community!...
What Linux "Productivity" (ideally FOSS) tools do you use?
I'm in a bit of a productivity rut and whilst I suspect the issue is mainly between the keyboard and chair I'm also interested in what (FOSS) tools there are that people find effective....