NixOS SC Election Guide
The purpose of this voting guide is to provide an informed ranking for all those who are overwhelmed by the massive list of candidates, their statements and the overall Q&A. The candidates are sorted by their willingness to making the NixOS community a safe and welcoming environment for people of all identities, and their ability to standing up for those values when attacked.
Voting Method
The voting method is Meek STV, a variant of the Single Transferable Vote system where you rank candidates in order of preference.
In Meek STV, votes are transferable: If your top-choice candidate is elected with more votes than needed, part of your vote’s weight is transferred to your next preferred candidate. Likewise, if a candidate is eliminated, your vote moves to the next person on your list who’s still in the running.
When voting, it therefore makes sense to focus on a set of strong candidates, that can stand for themselves, but when these don't get elected everyone with a lower ranking can still benefit from transferable votes.
Candidates
Strong Recommendation
These candidates are strong-willed and likely the ones capable of enduring a multi-year commitment.
- K900 (Candidate statement)
- previously Moderation team, well-known supporter in
#users:nixos.org
and#offtopic:nixos.org
- contributes to staging-next, maintains Qt & KDE/Plasma, Mesa, Jovian
- previously Moderation team, well-known supporter in
- samueldr (Candidate statement)
- organizer of the "Nix users against MIC sponsorship" open letter
- aarch64-linux platform enablement in Nixpkgs
- maintains Mobile NixOS, Jovian, Tow-boot
- cafkafk (Candidate statement)
- queer, outspoken, strong writing skills
- works on projects in the Nix ecosystem like Rime, landscape.nix-community.org, and one of the previous Wikis
- eza upstream maintainer
- niklaskorz (Candidate statement)
- has prior leadership and community governance experience
- wants to reform the SC to be more transparent
- pluiedev (Candidate statement)
- very outspoken on Matrix and Discourse since the election started
- proponent for represenation of the Global South, e.g. events in Southeast Asia
- Ghostty upstream developer & community manager
Recommendation
- leona-ya (Candidate statement)
- release manager 25.05
- adamcstephens (Candidate statement)
- previously moderator on the unofficial Discord
- maintainer for zfs, incus, kanidm
- rhendric (Candidate statement)
- prev. Moderation team (~2024)
- strong integrity visible in discussions on Discourse
- nyabinary (Candidate statement)
- queer, outspoken, passionately opposing MIC in discussions
- tomodachi94 (Candidate statement)
- maintainer for Java
- jopejoe1 (Candidate statement)
- release manager 25.11
- maintainer for ffmpeg, Firefox beta/devedition
- pinpox (Candidate statement)
- Scrumplex (Candidate statement)
- has some previous experience with community management at https://prismlauncher.org/
- JulienMalka (Candidate statement)
- wants to defend the project against hostile takeover attempts https://github.com/NixOS/SC-election-2025/issues/485#issuecomment-3393733333
- nim65s (Candidate statement)
- previously Moderation team
Neutral
- getchoo (Candidate statement)
- did not answer any election questions
- philiptaron (Candidate statement)
- maintains stdenv, nixpkgs ci, kakoune, llm
- aanderse (Candidate statement)
- mschwaig (Candidate statement)
- researcher interested in supply-chain security
- djacu (Candidate statement)
- works for Anduril
- Nix Marketing team
Hostile
- drupol (Candidate statement)
- creator of the nixos-sc.pages.dev voting guide (together with Srid and others)
- pseudo-neutral reactionary; dislikes the NixOS rainbow logo but tries to hide that behind formalities and rules lawyering
- questionable track record of low-effort Nixpkgs contributions
- gaetanlepage (Candidate statement)
- self-described apolitical, wants a "big tent" and has no issues with MIC
- did not answer any election questions
- crertel (Candidate statement)
- known shit-stirrer on Discourse, contributed very little to Nixpkgs, always reappears for the drama
- weaponizes neutrality to further his own political agenda
- tomberek (Candidate statement)
- Nix team lead and hiring manager at Anduril, voted in favor of Anduril being able to sponsor and advertise jobs in the community (while still working at Flox)
- was one of the driving forces of the NixCon NA Anduril sponsorship
Closing Words
Finally, we were prompted to prepare this list in response to a group of people who were banned from the community in the last few years creating a recommendation of their own.
- https://github.com/NixOS/SC-election-2025/issues/485#issuecomment-3393733333
- https://nixos-sc.pages.dev/
Make sure to read through their voting guide, while keeping the following question in mind: If you wanted to take over the project, what would you do, and how would you frame things to best hide your intentions? This is why it is important to unite and counter their attack during this election.