Earlier this week I proposed a vote of no confidence for the Nix Steering Committee, which would have ended the terms of all currently serving members and put all seven positions up for election in November. That vote failed with 3 out of 6 votes (4 were necessary) and I’m writing up a post-mortem on why I proposed and voted in favor of the vote of no confidence even though it ultimately failed.
Background
In a previous post of mine I announced that I was ending my Nix Steering Committee term early (at the one year mark instead of the two year term I was elected for). In that post I shared some fairly polite criticisms of the Nix Steering Committee’s performance over the last year and explained why I was stepping down early (basically: burnout induced by the Nix Steering Committee’s dysfunction).
Not long after that the moderation team resigned and I was part of the problem and bear some responsibility for that. I (along with three other Steering Committee members: Tom Berek, John Ericson, and Robert Hensing) voted in favor of both of the moderation-related changes that the moderation team resigned in response to (I later changed one of my two votes at the last minute but I take responsibility for the consequences of both votes).
In the wake of that, Winter (another Steering Committee member), publicly blew the whistle on internal SC discussions specifically highlighting malfeasance from another Steering Committee member (John Ericson) although the exact conversations were not included (only summaries and third parties who had seen the conversations confirming the details). This led to a public outcry calling for John’s resignation and/or a vote of no confidence.
In response to that outcry four members of the Steering Committee (Tom, John, Robert, and Jan) responded by publishing the votes relevant to the ongoing controversy and also claiming that the conversations Winter leaked were taken out of context.
I personally agreed with the outcry based on my own experiences working on the Steering Committee. I didn’t propose to remove John from the Steering Committee but that same day I did propose a vote of no confidence and I’ll explain why I proposed and voted in favor of that.
Politics
From my perspective, three current members and one former member of the Steering Committee have already lost confidence in the committee:
- Franz is a former member of the Steering Committee who had to step down earlier for his well-being who has echoed many of the accusations being leveled at the Steering Committee based on his experiences working on the committee, and called for the current Steering Committee to resign pending reelection
- Winter has lost confidence in the Steering Committee, going so far as to blow the whistle on internal comms and vote in favor of the vote of no confidence
- I lost confidence in the Nix Steering Committee even before the recent controversy, which led me to end my term early, publish my Steering Committee retrospective, and ultimately vote in favor of the vote of no confidence.
- Jan also ended his term early and voted for the vote of no confidence
If Franz had not been forced to resign for health reasons the vote of no confidence would have gone through, but currently the Steering Committee is deadlocked over this vote. Only a minority of the original Steering Committee (John, Tom, and Robert) still believe that the Steering Committee has any legitimacy at this point.
The Nix core team
Not so coincidentally John, Tom, and Robert are the three Steering Committee members that are also members of the Nix core team. The vote of no confidence made it pretty clear to me that the Nix team has consistently put the needs of their own team and members ahead of the needs of the broader community (which is why I felt compelled to speak out).
It was probably a mistake to allow three Steering Committee members to all be members of the Nix team. There should be a constitutional amendment to consider shared membership on the Nix team to also count as a conflict of interest, which would create a soft limit of one of them on the team and a hard limit of two of them on the team. For more details, see the Nix Constitution’s Conflict of Interest Balance section.
However, besides the constitutional amendment, I’d go even further and say that the Nix community should vote against any member of the current Nix team (which would include Tom who is currently running for re-election), since I believe they are in large part responsible for why our community now has two forks (Lix and Determinate Nix) and is losing ground against both of them.
Nix has lost a large number of contributors to these forks due to dysfunction within the Nix team and now they’ve brought that same dysfunction to the Steering Committee, which has resulted in every other member of the Steering Committee abandoning ship because we can’t do our job.
The Rust rule
A few people brought up the “Rust rule” during the recent controversy, which says that under the Rust governance structure both the Leadership Council (the Rust analog of Nix’s Steering Committee) and their moderation team have the nuclear option of disbanding both teams.
The Nix Constitution has no such rule, but I do think that the Rust rule is the morally correct way to think about the recent controversies, even if it is not enforceable under our current Constitution. In particular, if the moderation team resigns in such a public manner it signals a serious loss of confidence in the leadership of the Steering Committee which justifies the need for members of the Steering Committee to run for reelection and reaffirm their mandate.
Conclusion
The committee is down a member, mired in controversy, and facing a community that feels misled by a lack of transparency. Franz’s public comment confirms that four of the original seven committee members would have supported a vote of no confidence today. I do not believe any member can now credibly claim to hold a mandate.
Note that John and Robert could still run in the next Steering Committee election (a vote of no confidence does not bar them from reelection). To me, refusing to resign under these circumstances and stand for reelection suggests a belief that voters would not return them to office.
Anyone who wishes to remain should run for re-election if they still believe their policies are the best way forward for Nix.