He's rejecting the sponsor, not the product

I always find this moral duality quite interesting, the product only exists because of the sponsor.

You seem to be unfamiliar with the situation, then. The sponsor wasn't for NixOS itself, but a related in-person event. NixOS had existed for literal decades prior to this.

No, it not because of "the" sponsor, but because of sponsoring in general. Replace the sponsor by any other company/institution/patreon/....

Insert "yet you participate in society. curious!.jpg"

You don’t understand that meme. DARPA is direct military money for a bunch of tech people are happy with supporting. They just pretend it’s not the military so they don’t have to have any hard moral conflicts.

Oh I do. We're chatting now on an evolution of DARPA network. If anyone rejects all DARPA projects, they're not on the internet.

Yet you can be on the internet and make things a bit better by rejecting military sponsorship/influence in things you're involved in today.

I should have been more clear. This set of people that don’t like sponsorship from Boeing, Lockheed, etc would absolutely swoon over a DARPA grant.

In what way does rejecting military sponsorships make things better?

Gonna answer your question at face value.

Sponsorships are generally acknowledged with quid-pro-quo advertising opportunities - otherwise they'd be called silent donations.

In the case of tech conferences like the inciting incident, that means your logo everywhere, maybe an ad spot in between talks, and booth space. You might get some intangible reputational benefits from whatever other sponsors are present if they are viewed as highly prestigious or respected. Might even have opportunities to do a talk by one of your employees, we've all been to conferences where a vendor conspicuously also has a talk that coincidentally features their products heavily. All in all, it can elevate your perceived legitimacy in various ways.

Advertising might get you more business or more applicants and thereby grow your reach and success.

In terms of my personal values I'm a pacifist. I don't want to see something I like(d), something I made modest code contributions to, used to advertise for a commercial military organization that manufactures equipment for violence. It's the same way a vegan probably doesn't want to see advertisements by the beef farming industry or that someone who cares about renewable energy and sustainability doesn't want to see sponsorship by someone whose holdings are a huge stake in coal mining and fossil-fuel power plants.

In the case of the inciting incident, it wasn't a case of massive dollar amounts, it was ~$5k USD and it wouldn't have jeopardized the conference at all to say no thank you.

I think the opposite of pragmatic pacifism is the military-industrial market. The expansion and brinkmanship of weapons development brings out the absolute worst qualities in privately owned businesses. If you think lock-in is bad when it's your phone or email account, imagine how horny investors get suggesting DRM for hand grenades. This escalates because the goal of defense companies isn't to defend America, but to make as much money as they can get away with.

I'd like to think that I'm pragmatic as well, which is why I won't deny that NixOS would likely get used in conflict with or without event sponsor deals promoting it. However, if your in-person events pivot from a technically-focused gathering of like-minded individuals to a war council bankrolled by Anduril, I'd expect most attendees to be angry. Especially once you consider that the United States sponsors the export of weapons to countries that don't use violence for justifiable or proportional causes.

all you're doing is making DARPA funding have even more reach and success!