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Debian Developers Take To Voting Over Init System Diversity
It's been five years already since the vote to transition to systemd in Debian over Upstart while now there is the new vote that has just commenced for judging the interest in "init system diversity" and just how much Debian developers care (or not) in supporting alternatives to systemd.
Due to Debian developers having differing opinions on handling non-systemd bugs in 2019 and the interest/commitment to supporting systemd alternatives in the scope of Debian packaging and various related friction points, they've taken to a new general resolution over weighing init system diversity.
The ballot is available on-line. The choices are:
Choice 1: F: Focus on systemd
Choice 2: B: Systemd but we support exploring alternatives
Choice 3: A: Support for multiple init systems is Important
Choice 4: D: Support non-systemd systems, without blocking progress
Choice 5: H: Support portability, without blocking progress
Choice 6: E: Support for multiple init systems is Required
Choice 7: G: Support portability and multiple implementations
Choice 8: Further Discussion
[Ed. note: I'm not sure what the letters after the choice numbers indicate, nor do I know where "C" disappeared to.]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday December 10 2019, @08:51PM (1 child)
That was my thought too, but isn't their voting procedure some kind of ranked choice thing? In which case it may end up closer than one might think, depending on how they do it.
If I was in a position to do so, I'd be tempted to try to galvanize people to all vote "Further Discussion" in protest until they put the choice we wanted to vote for on the ballot.
It's almost like if you try hard enough even democracy can be twisted to accomplish whatever you want /s
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 11 2019, @12:02AM
All votes in Debian use a Condorcet method. After using procedural maneuvers, they restricted the original vote in 2014 to read as follows:
The results were https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2014/02/msg00402.html [debian.org] and basically ended up with sysvinit as default getting eliminated in favor of additional discussion (the default, which in itself is a questionable choice for default and affected the outcome), a tie between upstart and systemd and 4 identical votes (D U O V F). The guy who restricted the vote in this fashion then made the tie-breaking vote for systemd.
This vote will also be Condorcet, but with ambiguous terms and splitting in there, it might not come out clean, as illustrated by the previous vote.