nixos/community-builder: add user craige

[craigem]

I used to have access to the old aarch64-build-box and came back from holidays in late January to find it was dead :sob:

TIL that we have a replacement, so I'm requesting access so that I can resume dev work on aarch64 and mobile-nixos.

Thanks :smiley:

[zowoq]

resume dev work on aarch64 and mobile-nixos

Could you elaborate on this please?

This is what I usually say to people asking for access:

We don't really have specific rules for allowing access to these machines but it is basically limited to people who are well known in the nixpkgs/nixos/etc community, is there somebody who is known (e.g. nixpkgs committer) (or mobile-nixos maintainer) who can vouch for you?

[craigem]

resume dev work on aarch64 and mobile-nixos

Could you elaborate on this please?

Yes, since 2019 I had access to the old box (granted by Graham Christiansen) and I have used it almost once every week since to build, test and run images for targets like:

• Pinephone
• Librem5
• Raspberry Pi
• and others

I have written many practical blog posts although that has slowed down recently due to all my code being in public repos, self-hosted repos - on which I've had a some positive feed back - so I've tended to let my active code do the talking rather than blog about it.

This is what I usually say to people asking for access:

We don't really have specific rules for allowing access to these machines but it is basically limited to people who are well known in the nixpkgs/nixos/etc community, is there somebody who is known (e.g. nixpkgs committer) (or mobile-nixos maintainer) who can vouch for you?

It was pretty much the same with the old repo. I met Graham at NixCon 2019 and he added me to the community builder then to help me with what I was doing. I also met Samuel Dionne -Riel there have been building and testing mobile-nixos since (only the one commit though and several others that were not merged). Other NixOS people like Michael Bishop and Sam Leathers are people who are very familiar with me but while they're heavy NixOS users, I'm unsure how active they are in the community today.

I've made some drive-by PR's and issues over the years, although not enough to obtain voting rights or be particularly visible.

I have an account on our discourse but rarely use it.

I do a fair bit of advocacy on my Fediverse socials as I'm a heavy NixOS user, both personally and professionally.

I was the first Australian to attend a NixCon (2019) and my timezone and the bulk of NixOS users being CET-adjacent so I'm usually late to conversations and often just read rather than contribute.

I've been in the Matrix room #nix-community:nixos.org for long enough that I don't recall how long I've been there and I'll say "Hi" after I post this :-)

[zimbatm]

Hi @craigem,

I had a quick look and based on your activity, it looks like your use-case is mostly geared towards personal infrastructure.

These builders are made available to people contributing actively towards the NixOS or nix-community projects. Our sponsors have an expectation that the money they give us will be used towards that goal.

I'm inclined to reject this application but feel free to tell me if I missed something.

[craigem]

Hi @zimbatm :wave:

Thanks for getting back to this. The word infrastructure is doing a lot of heavy lifting a for a couple of mobile phones and Pi's :rofl:

The nix-community infra team need to do what they feel is right by the community. If you feel you need to decline this, that's fine and that's your call to make.

I do think though that to decline this request, is to have a rather narrow view of what community contributions look like. It devalues low code[0], active participation and feedback to more active devs via channels like Matrix etc.

So before you do accept or decline, I'd recommend the team have a discussion and define amongst themselves what they consider community contribution and the result of that should probably be added to the doco?

[0] because I'm unfortunately heavily occupied elsewhere in life, so testing and feedback is my primary contribution for now

[craigem]

Hi @zowoq @zimbatm :wave:

I was wondering if we could make a call on this PR one way or another?

I'm kinda on hold with my fingers crossed that I'm approved but if I'm not, I'll need to sort out other arrangements.

Thanks :smiley:

[craigem]

Thanks for your time @zowoq and @zimbatm :smile:

I'm sure it's unintentional but closing without comment though comes across as impolite.

[zimbatm]

Respectfully, we told you where the line is. We're providing this service for free, but only to active contributors. Telling us we are narrow-minded typically doesn't change our opinion.

If you start contributing actively, feel free to re-open an application.

[craigem]

Hi @zimbatm, I just saw your comment where you said:

Telling us we are narrow-minded typically doesn't change our opinion.

I want to be clear that not only did I not say that, I also did not infer it.

I did say:

a rather narrow view of what community contributions look like

which was absolutely not labeling this team as "narrow-minded".

It is referring to a broader problem in the FLOSS community where only direct code contributions are valued.

The work this team does and the services it provides to the community are absolutely valued, as are all the members of this team that I'm familiar with - which includes yourself.

I was absolutely not calling yourself or this team "narrow-minded" and I'm sorry that I left my words open enough to be interpreted that way.

[zimbatm]

All good, sorry the conversation didn't work out great for you either. Let's put that behind us and hopefully we can have better interactions in the future!