The thing is, replacing the NixOS project as a whole (language, package set, all of that) is a very large effort, because you break compatibility with the existing work, and have to recreate basically an entire ecosystem. So people have been avoiding doing that, and tried to make the NixOS project better instead.

But... the combined pile of "problems with the language", "toxic community and insufficient moderation", and "technical debt" is *also* something that requires a very large effort to keep dealing with, especially in the long term, and the community management in particular could very easily end up changing which of these two options is the most work.