The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

The Nixpkgs core team has announced its decision to disband, citing the unsustainable nature of the role in light of active technical contributions. Over the past 10 months, the team has achieved significant milestones, including reforming the committer delegation process, onboarding 19 new committers, extending the merge bot, and establishing an initial automation/AI policy.

However, the team has struggled to maintain the necessary level of engagement and cohesion required for ongoing governance. With only one person responding to their call for new members and a mixed response to outreach, recruiting sufficient individuals appears challenging. The team believes that the Steering Committee (SC) lacks the native instinct for delegation and fails to handle individual decisions effectively at higher levels.

This has resulted in inadequate coordination on matters such as GSoC, grants initiatives, and AI policy, as well as slow progress on issues related to moderation and GitHub org owner reform. Despite repeated attempts to address these concerns, the team acknowledges that they cannot solve the systemic problems within the SC. The high-trust consensus decision-making model has led to high-quality discussions and good results, but it may be more suitable for a delegated local governance team rather than the majority votes used at the top level.

The team hopes that their decision will encourage future efforts towards a genuine delegation of engaged, technically-focused, collaborative Nixpkgs leadership by top-level governance. They express gratitude for the support they have received and regret that they have not been able to resolve the issues more comprehensively and sustainably.