Talked to one of the founders a bit over a year ago and he essentially said that it's about having something you can present to co-workers and bosses as a way to start using nix that isn't painful to get up and running for people who aren't already in the nix world. At the time, their hub didn't have a good privacy policy and they didn't have answes as to why or when it would change, so I stopped paying attention to them. No clue what it's like now.

disclosure: i'm an engineer at flox so take this with a grain of salt (or pepper or any spice of your choice).

i've been around the nix community for some time and i've been using nix for over 15 years and i don't plan to stop. but you know what frustrated me the most in all these years? using nix at work. and seeing it being used after i leave. this is what i learned in all these years: everybody wants the benefits of nix, but not everybody is willing to climb "the nix mountain". for some it just makes no sense to spend all those hours and i've learned to accept that. and that is why i joined flox, to bring nix to everybody, especially at work.

if you are interested to see how nix works and why it works the way it works, please learn it. it is an amazing idea and i don't see myself using anything but nix. but if i need to onboard +500 engineers i'm definitely reaching for flox and sharing my nix magic with the help of flox.

tldr; flox was built to bring nix to work.

re the privacy policy concern raised here, i'm happy to answer specific questions about where things stand now

VC funding, presumably.

Its new to me, but "not being nix while doing nix things" seems like the appeal.

Its a compelling one to those of us curious about nix, but baffled by the herky jerky documentation and community.