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posted by LaminatorX on Saturday November 08 2014, @11:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the resignationd dept.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/11/msg00174.html

Joey Hess has apparently left Debian after 18 years, stating that the Debian Constitution is leading Debian in "very unhealthy directions".

 
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  • (Score: -1) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @11:23AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @11:23AM (#114012)

    Constitution? What the fuck is that? Joey grab a pen and a phone and take over control, now man now!

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @02:44PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @02:44PM (#114037)

      Systemd isn't a political problem. It's the software equivalent of a biological infectious agent.

      You don't hold a "coup" against an outbreak of Ebola or AIDS or syphilis. You need to contain it, to stop it from spreading, and to eventually let it die out.

      • (Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Saturday November 08 2014, @07:11PM

        by Jeremiah Cornelius (2785) on Saturday November 08 2014, @07:11PM (#114090) Journal

        Joey is the "tipping point".

        G'bye, Deb! I remember when I installed you via FTP over ISDN on a SPARC Classic. Those were good times, but we've all changed a little - even a lot - since then.

        --
        You're betting on the pantomime horse...
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @11:32AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @11:32AM (#114013)

    Time for a Fork, perhaps he could lead it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @11:34AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @11:34AM (#114015)

      A NON-systemd Fork.

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @11:39AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @11:39AM (#114018)

      Fork it, we already have Buntu and Minty. Let's have another fork.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @12:16PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @12:16PM (#114022)

      If he forked it a lot of the better Debian devs might well follow him to the fork, it could become the BETTER Debian.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @02:18PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @02:18PM (#114033)

      It's absolutely insane that there needs to be a non-systemd Debian fork.

      It should be the other way around: the systemd supporters should have been the ones to fork Debian, integrated systemd, and then proven to the world that it was better, without affecting the rest of the Debian community and installations.

      When developing any software, you make breaking changes in a separate development branch, not in your stable trunk or master branch. And you only integrate them if and when they become stable.

      • (Score: 2) by jackb_guppy on Saturday November 08 2014, @04:58PM

        by jackb_guppy (3560) on Saturday November 08 2014, @04:58PM (#114067)

        Agrred -

        The limited system in Ubuntu 14.04 that I have installed - daily fails (2 months now), I keep dropping in documentation and still no fix.

  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @11:37AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @11:37AM (#114017)

    Stuffy old distro for senile pedophiles.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 09 2014, @05:35AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 09 2014, @05:35AM (#114210)

      Alot of young girls are absolutely stunningly beautiful and cute.
      Old religions allowed or encouraged marraige to them.

  • (Score: 2) by Marand on Saturday November 08 2014, @12:44PM

    by Marand (1081) on Saturday November 08 2014, @12:44PM (#114025) Journal

    Does anyone here have any insight on why this happened? A quick search turned up some general disgruntledness that seems to be related to how Debian policy has been used during the "init wars" going on -- both with the technical committee's close vote on defaulting to systemd and the current vote to force non-systemd compatibility -- but it it wasn't clear what parts pissed him off.

    Is he pissed about the vote to require non-systemd compatibility? Or is he just sick of how the entire thing has gone? Or is it something else entirely?

    • (Score: 2) by NoMaster on Saturday November 08 2014, @01:20PM

      by NoMaster (3543) on Saturday November 08 2014, @01:20PM (#114027)

      Have a read of the links in this message [debian.org] from the posted thread.

      Short answer: systemd, but not like you may think.

      --
      Live free or fuck off and take your naïve Libertarian fantasies with you...
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @02:01PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @02:01PM (#114030)

      I skimmed bits of the messages linked by above. He seems to be saying systemd is the fact on the ground, and so debian must go with it - it makes debian packagers' task manageable. A short-sighted view, in my opinion.

      Then he found the tone of systemd opponents' messages offensive, and faults the debian constitution for it. He found the kitchen too hot, and so he's getting out.

      I don't know how much weight he pulls in debian project, though.

      • (Score: 1) by quixote on Saturday November 08 2014, @03:22PM

        by quixote (4355) on Saturday November 08 2014, @03:22PM (#114044)

        I skimmed them too, and saw something about Gnome requiring systemd. And since that's such a major desktop manager (Is it? Still?) Debian has no choice but to go with the flow.

        It'd be a huge shame if something like Gnome, who apparently lost their minds years ago when they came out with 3, managed to splinter Debian on their way down.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @04:28PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @04:28PM (#114060)

          Gnome will be directly integrating with systemD in the next few releases. It plans on using it's handling of cgroups to provide sandboxing for all running applications.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:38PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:38PM (#114129)

            The way things are going, the Linux kernel will be directly integrated with systemd a few releases after that.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by fritsd on Saturday November 08 2014, @03:34PM

      by fritsd (4586) on Saturday November 08 2014, @03:34PM (#114050) Journal

      I've been trying to read the debian-vote mailing list on the systemd issue, and the following is only my own interpretation: please, read the discussion for yourself.

      Joey Hess commented at one point that he didn't like that the discussion became mired in "legalese" (my interpretation remember!!), that the discussion was about formalities of the
      voting process and who can change an amendment on which day etc. etc.

      And the timing was bad, just before the Jessie freeze. (Ian Jackson agreed and apologized he hadn't called for a vote half a year ago).

      I'll try to find the relevant mail..

      here's the one about the timing
      https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2014/10/msg00023.html [debian.org]
      and
      https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2014/10/msg00128.html [debian.org]

      I found it!!

      https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2014/10/msg00260.html [debian.org]

      "So if the project makes a "position statement about issues of the day",
      it's not actually making a technical decision, but just a (nonbinding)
      statement. A statement that the TC has decided will override their
      (binding) decision.

      Well, at least I've found yet another reason to perfer to not vote on
      this GR: It's too darn complicated to understand the procedural hacking
      that's going on."

      It's sad that this systemd has become so polarizing, but I have an intuition (yes, I am indeed talking out of my ass here--well spotted!) that it's a very important issue for the continued "universality" of Linux.

      Remember that it was the Debian project that decided, against "common sense", that the root shell should be changed so some obscure minimal shell (dash), so that init scripts were forced to not depend on "bashisms" and to keep
      Debian strictly compatible with any POSIX correct shell scripts.

      This year we learned that that decision means that Debian is much easier to secure against the Shellshock attack. But it takes smart people to figure out that something will become a problem before it is an *immanent* problem.

      In my opinion, systemd is a problem for Linux, but not an *immanent* problem. But I spent 3 days rebuilding separate packages and downgrading my installation just to get rid of it. It's really much more "infectious" than it seems.

      My problem is that I don't actually understand many of the related issues.

      Has anyone wondered why we actually *need* D-Bus? It is a complicated program. What is its purpose, what are the trade-offs? Any program on the computer can try to connect to D-Bus and if it manages to produce the correct byte sequence, it is believed to be authorized to do certain admin tasks like shutdown or suspend.

      This is what I did to deinstall systemd on a partial-Wheezy partial-Jessie partial-Sid system:
      rebuild libpulse0 without the libsystemd-journal dependency (surprise surprise)
      rebuild dbus without the libsystemd-journal dependency

      major surgery to get rid of libsystemd-daemon0 and libpam-systemd:
      get rid of policykit colord accountsservice gvfs-daemons gnome samba kde libpam-systemd and cups

      (I use LXDE after I gave up on KDE so I can do without gnome and KDE)

      later on, downgrade-reinstall samba and cups so that you can print again.

      It's all going much too far...

      • (Score: 2) by tonyPick on Saturday November 08 2014, @03:58PM

        by tonyPick (1237) on Saturday November 08 2014, @03:58PM (#114053) Homepage Journal

        Has anyone wondered why we actually *need* D-Bus?

        Uh, wait, D-Bus?

        I'm not the biggest fan of D-Bus[1] but we certainly need something like D-Bus, and D-Bus wins the "Better than Corba and DCOP" award that puts it into most systems. Certainly we need a common, well known, IPC mechanism and D-Bus won. D-Bus is a dependency of systemd, but the two are (or should be) fairly distinct.

        Now kdbus I'm less convinced by, since using D-Bus to co-ordinate acquisition of system specific resources seems to solve the problem kdbus aims at with much less risk/issue, and since kdbus is only ever going to be a Linux specific that leaves the current solution the only reliable multi platform approach. I could be persuaded otherwise, however this should be somewhat separate from the whole systemd argument, even if practically it's not, since systemd wants/needs this stuff in place.

        [1] I've spent a fair bit of time coding apps that use it, and I'm of the opinion that when the guy who wrote it sobers up, he'll be very embarrassed. However most of the Qt/Gtk abstractions seem to hide as much of the madness as they can, and there are moments when I almost like it. At least for some of the simple use cases.

        • (Score: 1) by fritsd on Saturday November 08 2014, @04:32PM

          by fritsd (4586) on Saturday November 08 2014, @04:32PM (#114061) Journal

          "D-Bus is a dependency of systemd, but the two are (or should be) fairly distinct."

          It is my understanding that Lennart Poettering said that the systemd project intends to absorb dbus (can't find where I read that now). That might make it more difficult in the near future to recompile D-Bus without systemd depencencies.

          When I tried to get rid of systemd, I read the D-Bus documentation (wire protocol etc.) on the freedesktop.org site. I wasn't impressed; it doesn't seem very "settled down" yet, if you know what I mean. Of course "Use the Source, Luke!" but for something that all Linux systems are going to require from now on it seemed a bit experimental. And why are there two different ones, anyway (--system and --session)? Doesn't that imply that it's one solution for two unrelated problems?

          (I'm not impressed with the programmer-friendliness of System V IPC either, for the record, so if you say so, I'm sure D-bus is a lot better).

          • (Score: 2) by CRCulver on Saturday November 08 2014, @05:45PM

            by CRCulver (4390) on Saturday November 08 2014, @05:45PM (#114076) Homepage

            I read the D-Bus documentation (wire protocol etc.) on the freedesktop.org site. I wasn't impressed; it doesn't seem very "settled down" yet, if you know what I mean. Of course "Use the Source, Luke!" but for something that all Linux systems are going to require from now on it seemed a bit experimental.

            DBus has been mainstream on Linux installations now for a decade. On my Nokia N900, a device developed half a decade ago whose software is antiquated now, not at all bleeding-edge, DBus provided a number of useful benefits such as running commands automatically on network up (allowing me to e.g. run scripts to automatically log in to public or academic wifi instead of having to always type manually). Even Emacs has had D-Bus integration since 2007 and there are plenty of useful applications for it (such as automatically toggling Gnus's online status or notifying the user of an Emacs development when the Emacs window is not presently visible).

            • (Score: 1) by fritsd on Sunday November 09 2014, @11:03PM

              by fritsd (4586) on Sunday November 09 2014, @11:03PM (#114360) Journal

              You know, I find it very valuable to read comments such as yours that show the positive side of all of that newfangled shit ;-)

              I can imagine that your mobile phone is a lot cheaper if it switches to university Wifi when it gets into range of the hotspot!

              Could you explain to us in small words how that actually works? I'm imagining something like this:

              - the kernel gets some kind of trigger from the Wifi hardware

              - the kernel creates a network interface and gives it a name

              - the kernel notifies (some kind of user-space daemon like udev?) that a new network interface has become available?
                  or does the kernel just create the device inode and udevd watches /dev for changes?

              ^-- kernel side
              ============
              v-- userspace

              - something creates the device inode in /dev and udevd gives it the correct permissions and user/group

              (??? profit [ please fill in ])

              - "running commands automatically on network up"

              How does that work with DBus? Is it the case that udev pushes a DBus message "new network device is available", and you have a service listening on DBus "when a new network device becomes available, start DHCP or pump or ifup or pppd whatever"?

              I'd imagine that the bringing up of the network interface is done by a root process, and the notification "your wifi is now on and pointing to XYZ" is done by your user's window manager process.

              Your example of Gnus is a use case of IPC between some kind of notification agent and the window manager and mail user agent or news user agent, I believe. In the old days I remember that a crappy drawing of a mailbox inverted its background whenever I had new mail. That sounds like a similar use-case as your example. I'm quite sure it was more than 2 decades ago :-(. All three programs would have the same user privileges and belong to the same log-in session.

              How did the IPC work then in the times of the crudely drawn X Windows American mailbox icon? I forgot :-( Was it something complicated with MIT-SHM?

              In the different use-case of "notifications by the system of events meaningful to a logged in user with a GUI" we could make a list:
              - tell the user sitting at the console that a DVD has been inserted in the DVD drive
              - tell the user sitting at the console that a USB mass storage device has been inserted
              - tell the user sitting at the console that network activity is now faster and cheaper
              - tell the user sitting at the console that the laptop battery is getting empty

              I don't see why we'd need an encrypted bus for that because it's notifications from a "privileged" program to an end-user program (the window manager?)

              And then there's the different use-case of "system actions the logged in user wants to do which are usually allowed by the system":
              - tell the system to eject the Shrek DVD
              - tell the system to umount the USB mass storage device (or maybe it's mounted by the user anyway)
              - tell the system to suspend
              - tell the system to reboot
              - tell the system to shutdown

              If the user tries those actions, then the system call gets done or rejected depending on the privileges of the (effective) UID and GID and SELinux security context of the user, amirite?

              If the user tells D-Bus to do those actions, then those actions get done if the correct byte sequence is issued by anyone to the dbus daemon. There's a small difference, I think. The listeners on the system D-Bus must already have the privilege to do all those actions, but how can they really tell if they were issued by a privileged user? (In this context I mean "privileged" as in: logged in on the console and not an X terminal, with physical access to the computer).

              Some days I wish I was a lot smarter...

        • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday November 09 2014, @12:29AM

          by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Sunday November 09 2014, @12:29AM (#114167) Homepage
          D-Bus should never be considered an IPC mechanism - you have no idea what you're communicating with. You just fling something out there, and hope that something that's listening for that kind of thing is going to act in the way that you want. However, you will only grow to truly hate it when you see two tasks play dbus ping-pong, grinding your mobile phone to a halt. That's not quite true, I think I learnt to hate it when it became clear that it was using Omega(N) algorithms to send a message that could only come from one task on the system to a uniquely defined other task on the system, and N was the number of other stupid tasks that wanted to play the dbus game. Designed by a fucktard, clearly. OK, they eventually fixed that, but it never should have been designed to be so freaking stupid in the first place.
          --
          Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday November 09 2014, @12:20PM

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 09 2014, @12:20PM (#114251)

          we certainly need something like D-Bus

          Who's this "we"?

          I checked

          http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/DbusProjects/ [freedesktop.org]

          and there's nothing on that list I want my DB servers or web servers running.

          Also my desktops don't use any of that stuff.

          • (Score: 2) by tonyPick on Sunday November 09 2014, @01:44PM

            by tonyPick (1237) on Sunday November 09 2014, @01:44PM (#114262) Homepage Journal

            Also my desktops don't use any of that stuff.

            What, not even udevd? Or the replacements like eudev, or uselessd, which AIUI also rely on a dbus implementation? You're creating static device nodes?

            • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday November 09 2014, @02:10PM

              by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 09 2014, @02:10PM (#114267)

              You're creating static device nodes?

              Hmm dynamic devices are kinda nice although basically useless in the modern era.

              It certainly wasn't a "real" problem even in the olden days when we did have static devices and we actually plugged in old fashioned USB flash drives and stuff like that.

      • (Score: 2) by hubie on Saturday November 08 2014, @05:13PM

        by hubie (1068) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 08 2014, @05:13PM (#114070) Journal

        I don't really follow these things, so forgive my ignorance if this is well known, but why is it against common sense to keep out bash-isms and keep it POSIX-compliant? That sounds like a pretty good idea to me.

        • (Score: 1) by fritsd on Saturday November 08 2014, @07:38PM

          by fritsd (4586) on Saturday November 08 2014, @07:38PM (#114097) Journal

          The counter argument would be "but that involves extra work, and it works fine now, with all the bashisms, so why change it for some abstract notion of compliancy"

      • (Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday November 09 2014, @12:13AM

        by Marand (1081) on Sunday November 09 2014, @12:13AM (#114163) Journal

        Remember that it was the Debian project that decided, against "common sense", that the root shell should be changed so some obscure minimal shell (dash), so that init scripts were forced to not depend on "bashisms" and to keep
        Debian strictly compatible with any POSIX correct shell scripts.

        Debian's TC decisions are usually a clear consensus, though. Major changes like that get approached cautiously, like Ents of the Linux world. This has been different, as I mentioned in this reply [soylentnews.org].

        In my opinion, systemd is a problem for Linux, but not an *immanent* problem. But I spent 3 days rebuilding separate packages and downgrading my installation just to get rid of it. It's really much more "infectious" than it seems.

        The problem I have is that it wants to take over init and logging and tie everything together. Some pieces of it don't bother me, or are at least tolerable, as long as they keep their tendrils out of init. I've been giving some of those parts a reluctant trial because of some software having dependencies on systemd's login service, though I'm still using systemd-shim to keep my init and logging non-systemd. Having systemd-logind has basically had no impact on my everyday use, other than some annoyingly verbose console vomit any time I drop to console and log in.

        Like dbus, systemd does seem to provide some useful features for certain software, and it doesn't need to be your init to do so.

        This is what I did to deinstall systemd on a partial-Wheezy partial-Jessie partial-Sid system:
        rebuild libpulse0 without the libsystemd-journal dependency (surprise surprise)
        rebuild dbus without the libsystemd-journal dependency

        major surgery to get rid of libsystemd-daemon0 and libpam-systemd:
        get rid of policykit colord accountsservice gvfs-daemons gnome samba kde libpam-systemd and cups

        (I use LXDE after I gave up on KDE so I can do without gnome and KDE)

        later on, downgrade-reinstall samba and cups so that you can print again.

        It's worth noting that, unless it's just the principle of it for you, you can generally leave the libsystemd* type dependencies. They don't actually force systemd itself to install. They're just used to allow other parts of the system to interact with systemd if it's present, and otherwise don't matter beyond using a bit of space.

        You can also still use KDE without any part of systemd installed, though I believe you lose some USB automount related stuff and maybe some power management related bits. Not KDE's fault, though; upower and udisks started relying on systemd, and there isn't anything KDE can do about it.

        It's all going much too far...

        Definitely. Though the same thing happened with dbus, udev, and some other parts of what is now a standard Linux system. When I started using Linux, neither thing existed, but they've both provided sufficient benefits to be considered tolerable. Some of the things systemd does could fall in the same category, and if they were approached in any other way (rather than requiring basically full system control), it would probably be far less contentious.

    • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Saturday November 08 2014, @04:45PM

      by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 08 2014, @04:45PM (#114063)

      I would suggest looking at this message (don't think it's been linked to before):

      https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2014/10/msg01058.html [debian.org]

      and this one:

      https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2014/09/msg01897.html [debian.org]

      My summary would be that as a developer he felt the devs & technical committee had put a lot of time and effort into fully evaluating and coming to a technical decision, only to have a general resolution / policy proposed that would override the technical decision (on the basis of the opinion of people who hadn't participated in the original technical discussion) a matter of weeks before a release / freeze, then to see the whole thing descend into arguments over legalese, and then escalate to threats.

      Some devs and techies are very intolerant of legalese - I can understand that, if I have to spend more time reading the contract than doing the work, I conclude you probably don't want me to do the work, and if you threaten me then it's definite. If I wanted to spend all my time on legal aspects of corporate constitution I would have been a lawyer.

      Users of distributions need to think carefully - if your distribution takes a technical direction you don't like, then there are others, you can find a new distro. Or you could decide to call your developers names, and collectively try and override their technical decisions. You could show less respect than I've seen from any commercial software boss who is actually writing paychecks for the devs. Then you don't have to find a new distro, instead you have to find a new set of devs, to work for you, for free. Good luck.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Marand on Saturday November 08 2014, @11:50PM

        by Marand (1081) on Saturday November 08 2014, @11:50PM (#114157) Journal

        My summary would be that as a developer he felt the devs & technical committee had put a lot of time and effort into fully evaluating and coming to a technical decision, only to have a general resolution / policy proposed that would override the technical decision (on the basis of the opinion of people who hadn't participated in the original technical discussion) a matter of weeks before a release / freeze, then to see the whole thing descend into arguments over legalese, and then escalate to threats.

        Some devs and techies are very intolerant of legalese - I can understand that, if I have to spend more time reading the contract than doing the work, I conclude you probably don't want me to do the work, and if you threaten me then it's definite. If I wanted to spend all my time on legal aspects of corporate constitution I would have been a lawyer.

        After reading the links in your comment and the ones in fritsd's post, the impression I get is that, at a basic level, this is essentially "the developers have spoken, and you are not developers, so you should do as we say. How dare you question our judgment?!" Same sort of thing that has been happening in GNOME since forever, except that Debian (perhaps unintentionally) provided a way to fight the decision and now people are pissed about that and claiming it isn't what it was intended to be used for.

        Thing is, everything I remember of that TC decision looked like some kind of surreal joke. The TC itself was abruptly proposed to bypass a more tempered (and more Debian-like) approach to choosing which init and when to support that was already in the process of being set up, for one. Then, because of how the vote itself was set up, the split vote ended up resulting in a massive change instead of a decision to wait. One would think that the init should be important enough to not be changed over a split decision broken by a single vote. The fact that the TC itself couldn't reach anything even close to consensus should have been a clear indication that the decision needed to be postponed until the next release, because none of the proposed replacements were a clear enough improvement.

        Users of distributions need to think carefully - if your distribution takes a technical direction you don't like, then there are others, you can find a new distro. Or you could decide to call your developers names, and collectively try and override their technical decisions. You could show less respect than I've seen from any commercial software boss who is actually writing paychecks for the devs. Then you don't have to find a new distro, instead you have to find a new set of devs, to work for you, for free. Good luck.

        I wonder if the entire tone and reaction would have been milder if the abruptly called vote hadn't happened, and the original approach had instead been taken. There still would have been vitriol on all sides, but the GR itself probably never would have happened, since there wouldn't be a TC vote to need overriding.

        Personally, I appreciate the work they do and normally respect their decisions even when I don't agree with their changes, but the way this one has been handled on both sides just stinks. It was a pissing match between the systemd and upstart proponents, and anybody that suggested anything else basically got told to butt out. I don't love systemd, but my problem wasn't that it won, it was how it won. I would have felt the same about Upstart or even OpenRC (which I have no issues with) winning.

        As for losing devs over it, it sucks, but maybe this is the kind of shake-up Debian needs. This whole thing has brought to light various types of agenda-based policy abuse that never really happened before. Perhaps policy will change/improve and Debian will end up stronger for it.

        • (Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday November 09 2014, @12:27AM

          by Marand (1081) on Sunday November 09 2014, @12:27AM (#114166) Journal

          Addition to comment based on something I found:

          This post [debian.org] by him seems to indicate he was bothered by the TC voting farce, too. So, I'm not sure if the combination finally pushed him over, or if he's backing the decision even though he disagrees with it because he feels it shouldn't be contradicted, and thus angered by the GR fighting it.

          • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Sunday November 09 2014, @09:20PM

            by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 09 2014, @09:20PM (#114337)

            With respect, I think you are reading it wrong. His previous posts indicate that he backed and respected the previous TC decision process and felt it was inappropriate for someone to try and overrule all the effort that went into that by appealing to a different forum, and doing it 2 weeks before release freeze. He also believed it was an abuse of process:

            https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2014/10/msg00246.html [debian.org]

            I don't know what his position is on systemd itself, and I'm not sure it matters. I have had stand up rows with PHBs for trying to micromanage and override technical decisions at incredibly stupid points in the development cycle, after they had not wanted to be involved in all the technical discussions leading to the decision. It wouldn't have mattered which side of the decision I was on, if I even took a side - I would back my technical team's right to make their technical decisions at the right point in the development cycle and have them respected. In exactly the same way, I would _not_ (and would _not_ back a developer who wanted to) go to the PHB a day before quarter accounts deadline to suggest that the revenue recognition model is wrong (whether I thought it was or not).

            The comment you have linked is not at all about the TC default-systemd vote, it is about more recent discussions on how the init system should be selected on upgrade. His point seems to be that this was all already resolved by consensus with all the relevant init package maintainers, but then someone stepped in and made it political, together with statements that he (see https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2014/11/msg00047.html) [debian.org] interpreted as overriding the current work on upgrade path. I don't think it is a coincidence that the same person was also behind the GR, and consider it entirely possible that breakdown in relations between those two people has lead to this resignation. Interestingly it appears to be not the only recent TC resignation...

            • (Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday November 09 2014, @11:56PM

              by Marand (1081) on Sunday November 09 2014, @11:56PM (#114371) Journal

              You're right, I missed that it was a follow-up TC vote instead of discussion about the original one. That puts things back where my longer post left them: the whole thing still stinks.

              I can understand him (and others) being pissed that people want to undermine the TC decision, but I also still think that the way the vote was handled in the first place fueled that fire. This was an odd thing for Debian: a distro that cautiously approaches sweeping changes has jumped head first into this one, despite problems, lack of maturity in the solutions, and a lack of consensus in the TC.

              It's also looking like either Debian's policies or its people aren't holding up well when faced with contentious decisions. Hopefully the end result is that things end up better, with a stronger Debian. If not, though, there will still be other options. Not that I wish ill on the project or its members. Not at all, in fact. I've generally had good interactions with Debian and KDE folk (which is one of many reasons I still use Debian+KDE), so it's kind of a shame that this crap is happening. Still, maybe a shake-up will be good in the long-term, either for Debian or for something new that may come from it.

  • (Score: 2) by Pav on Saturday November 08 2014, @02:18PM

    by Pav (114) on Saturday November 08 2014, @02:18PM (#114032)

    I've installed:

    apt-get install popularity-contest sysvinit-core

    ...even though he doesn't see what all the fuss is about re: systemd. I think the new constitution kept the devs fighting eachother so much that they were not focused outwards enough and so didn't keep the communication channel with their users open.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Pav on Saturday November 08 2014, @03:28PM

      by Pav (114) on Saturday November 08 2014, @03:28PM (#114048)

      Debian and free software in general has felt subverted somehow... and for some time. I'm almost almost paranoid enough to feel there's some kind of updated halloween document out there circulating between Microsoft, Redhat, Ubuntu, Oracle etc... :) I think I've noticed some patterns... they'd certainly make good bullet points in such a document. Creative writing time:

      * Hire away the developers: A paycheque often means control, but hackers are difficult to herd, and there's a right and a wrong way to do this.
          - Apple hires FreeBSD desktop devs: This was wonderfully executed, and the FreeBSD desktop sagged and became a non-entity almost overnight. This also meant the FreeBSD desktops small but tech savy userbase was more likely to shift to Apples product - developers, developers, developers! ...not to mention free advocacy in tech-savy forums. Most of them even felt they'd made this decision themselves! The license enabled keeping code proprietary, and we all know the retention benefits - the best coders aren't fond of leaving a project they're personally invested in, and Apple now has monopolies on many such projects. It's even better than the good old days - proprietary goodness, with the uninteresting parts of the OS being largely maintained by volunteers and other parties.
          - Oracle buys MySQL: This was poorly executed. Granted, Oracle acquired MySQL by accident, and the GPL2 isn't the most company-friendly license, but if they'd also hired the original developers and slowly tempted them away with interesting but proprietary projects MySQL probably would not have forked, and most likely would have lost vitality over time. Only Oracles directors know if this is something they might have wanted, and we are not privy to this information at this time.
      * Infiltrate and subvert organisational structures:
          - Microsoft vs ISO document standards: Superlative example. Enough said.
          - NSA vs encryption: Again... tremendous, as one would expect from such an organisation.
          - Mozilla foundation: Several of our members (including Microsoft, Google etc...) fund this foundation. Other than Microsoft originally benefiting by having a browser competitor as a foil for antitrust lawyers, and embedded Google+Bing search it's unclear what benefits we might acrue, but funding is a powerful reign as our congress critters know well.
          - Debian constitution: Social engineering in the right document can enable a coup. Debian developers are now too busy playing politics to communicate with their users, with predictable results - wonderfully done! Both Redhat and Ubuntu are warring by stuffing key decision making committees to decide if Debian dies or becomes an Ubuntu satellite. It will most likely do a little of both.
      * Move from simplicity to complexity: ie. gently lifting technology from the fingers of the lone hacker under the guise of genuine technical benefits. The life of a lone part-time developer can be made much more difficult simply by increasing complexity to a point where only a full time company man can meaningfully contribute. Projects that remain too simple will never be truly "tamed". Some examples of complexity induced control:
          - systemd: This is schadenfreude in code. Company hardware driver-devs repeatedly waste costly time on unstable APIs in the Linux kernel, supposedly for technical reasons that mostly don't benefit them... and are STILL criticised for guarding valuable IP in closed code. Now we've forced large sections of the Linux community to accept similar reengineering effort which mostly doesn't benefit them, or else move to a platform more amenable to our control (eg. one of the BSDs).
          - OpenLDAP: This project has always been controlled by companies whos lifeblood is herding customers to the cash register with complexity-pain, and as a result OpenLDAP is generally only installed for the largest and most profitable customers. It also benefits from the NSAs standard-subverting efforts - a secure deployment is almost impossible even for relative experts.
      * Astroturfing: hackers are a stubborn bunch, but even they are susceptible to the oldest mind control technique known to man - repetition... repetition... repetition! It's even possible to use the developers you've hired as astroturfers, many will even do this unpayed - it's natural for most to gradually begin drinking your koolaid. Emphasise your projects benefits (technical, ease of use etc...), and de-emphasise freedom and flexibility as unimportant and irrelevant to mass acceptance.

      ....wow... that was much longer than I'd intended... I'll stop here.

      • (Score: 1) by fritsd on Saturday November 08 2014, @05:04PM

        by fritsd (4586) on Saturday November 08 2014, @05:04PM (#114068) Journal

        I think your tin-foil-hat is screwed on more tightly than mine ;-) , but I have one additional item to contribute:

        * Hubris/shame about competence: if you have doubts about systemd, maybe it's because you're really *too stupid* to understand its magnificence.

        This is an illogical but very effective technique.

        To take myself as an example: I'm not a Debian Developer. I'm a long-term Debian user. I know that I'm far from the smartest or most competent Debian user.
        But I'm old enough to know that if a system is too complex for *me* to use on days that I'm not smart, it's probably also too complex to maintain for the average system admin.

        This leads directly to your point about "moving from simplicity to complexity": simplicity is a virtue for everyone that works with computers, even if you're smart enough to understand systemd ;-)

        Maybe I *am* too stupid to understand the benefits of systemd's assimilation efforts. It is very possible. But I don't want it installed, because it's going to be more difficult by the day to get rid of it.

        If you're too stupid to understand something, that still leaves the unresolved issue of whether that something is of benefit to you, or not. You only know that *you* can't figure it out on your own without help.

        A perfect example is the belief that voting computers are better than red pencil (cartoon in Dutch):

        http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/other/strip/ [wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl]

        I hope I'm making some sense here :-( I do have a bad cold atm.

      • (Score: 1) by novak on Saturday November 08 2014, @08:57PM

        by novak (4683) on Saturday November 08 2014, @08:57PM (#114109) Homepage

        This is spot on. I think it is generally non-malicious, but simply a victim of software design trends. In general, software has been getting heavier and more complex in order to be more understandable since it was first invented. There's always pushback from the "lone hacker" types- back in the day you had to build your own computer and write drivers for all your hardware, but that was simple enough that you could get done with that and use your computer (both kb of RAM). Now OSs are at least millions of lines of code, and require large teams to maintain. Even relatively small projects are gaining size and requiring larger and larger teams.

        And in general, that's a thing that makes people's lives easier. When was the last time you wrote a driver? Probably never (unless you're a kernel dev) but at the same time, if your hardware is without a driver for your OS, you were probably unable/unwilling to do much about it. It would probably require reverse engineering some obscure protocol which is documented nowhere.

        I enjoy keeping my system relatively minimal. But at the same time, someone from the 90s would not be able to believe how much bloat there is on my OS. (Or that linux has come this far). But as linux is more and more controlled by large professional teams, it increasingly becomes dominated by the prevailing mindset of those teams, which is that adding complexity can bring benefits. I tend to disagree. But I think I'm increasingly in the minority.

        --
        novak
        • (Score: 2) by Pav on Sunday November 09 2014, @02:53AM

          by Pav (114) on Sunday November 09 2014, @02:53AM (#114184)

          Never wrote any drivers, but banging on raw hardware was fun. I learned interrupt driven programming on DOS + mouse/soundcard/keyboard/video (pushing and pulling data from ports via INT10, writing interrupt handlers etc...). The Gravis Ultrasound was fun back in the day - a wavetable synth with up to 32 voices. Might have done some Soundblaster Pro playing also, but memory is hazy.

          • (Score: 1) by novak on Sunday November 09 2014, @06:03AM

            by novak (4683) on Sunday November 09 2014, @06:03AM (#114217) Homepage

            I can appreciate people who are actually familiar with hardware. I'm too young to have used DOS a lot; I used it but only to learn the basics of a command line around the age of 8. The point I meant to make was that as software expands working with the hardware gets more and more complex, and also more unnecessary for the average user. I would guess you've observed this more directly than I have, if you've been programming that long.

            --
            novak
            • (Score: 2) by Pav on Sunday November 09 2014, @02:02PM

              by Pav (114) on Sunday November 09 2014, @02:02PM (#114265)

              I'm no coder... but I felt the need to understand what a computer really is, and there's only one way to do that at a gut level ie. "touching" the hardware directly - no abstraction. In my first year at university we hand-compiled ASM to machine code and typed it into a hex pad connected to a Z80 processor, but I was overwhelmed by everything and didn't really understand what I was doing. My later hardware programming was for fun, and at my own pace. If I was advising a student wanting hardware programming experience today there are many options to get that gut understanding. The options I can suggest are:
              * playing with FreeDOS and DJGPP with inline ASM and learning how to interface directly to hardware. This is probably preferable to other options because it can be done on a "real" computer. I actually made my own very simple "windowing" environment back in the day.
              * playing with Arduino programming, perhaps directly in ASM, and interfacing with different peripherals/hardware.
              * building a computer from scratch. There's a project from the sixties called the "paperclip computer"... this design could use updating for more modern electronic components, and perhaps handle some extra features. The bare basics of computing hasn't changed since WWII... it's just about making binary switching faster/smaller, and hooking binary logic to more interesting peripherals. I've even seen a binary adder implemented using wooden switches and marbles on YouTube(!)

              • (Score: 1) by novak on Sunday November 09 2014, @08:48PM

                by novak (4683) on Sunday November 09 2014, @08:48PM (#114330) Homepage

                I've also thought that rather than teaching beginning programmers python or javascript, a better intro would be to get close to the hardware. Maybe that's just my own stupid idea but what originally fascinated me about computers was the really low level stuff- assembly code (or even shellcode), how to build logic gates and circuits out of transistors, and how operating systems work, and how to control things at the most fundamental level. Wanting to understand these secrets was what led me into programming, not wanting to write a basic "app."

                I think the best intro to programming book I've personally seen is "Hacking: The Art of Exploitation." It takes you through writing a simple C program, and helps you dig into every facet of it. Basically, you wind up writing buffer overflow exploits of increasing complexity (against your own program), which teaches you more about how a computer works at a really low level than you could get out of anything besides actually building your own hardware.

                --
                novak
                • (Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday November 11 2014, @11:09PM

                  by Pav (114) on Tuesday November 11 2014, @11:09PM (#115004)

                  Yeah, perhaps close-to-the-hardware is good... or perhaps a very high level and very low level perspective that meets in the middle? I guess different students have different things they'd want to know.

    • (Score: 2) by jackb_guppy on Saturday November 08 2014, @05:12PM

      by jackb_guppy (3560) on Saturday November 08 2014, @05:12PM (#114069)

      Ubuntu does not have sysvinit-core as a package for 14.04. :/

      • (Score: 2) by Marand on Monday November 10 2014, @07:19AM

        by Marand (1081) on Monday November 10 2014, @07:19AM (#114432) Journal

        Ubuntu does not have sysvinit-core as a package for 14.04. :/

        That's probably because Canonical had been pushing upstart aggressively in the same way. Now that Ubuntu decided to switch to systemd too, following Debian's default decision, upstart's basically dead-man-walking. (Though upstart still seems to be default for Ubuntu right now)

        I wonder if they'll eventually pick up the sysvinit stuff from Debian again? If not, there's still other init alternatives floating around.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @02:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @02:30PM (#114034)

    The Debian project has been infected with two diseases: systemd, and the people who support it.

    Once a Linux distro is infected in such a way, there is no saving it. It will, I'm sad to say, perish.

    But this isn't all bad. This is leading to a resurgence for FreeBSD, which many serious ex-Debian users have moved to already, or are moving to now or in the near future.

    If Debian dying means that FreeBSD, which is much more immune to systemd and its supporters, thrives, then it's worth it in the end.

    It really is just natural selection killing off the weak and unworthy, while letting the strong and robust excel.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @03:06PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @03:06PM (#114040)

      Better yet, excise systemd and its supporters and let the Debian project live. Systemd proponents can go off and fork their own Debian derivative. Then in a few years time, when systemd fails, there will be no harm done to the main project. If it had been at all modular, pieces of systemd could be saved, but it's as modular as a good stew.

      • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Saturday November 08 2014, @04:51PM

        by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 08 2014, @04:51PM (#114064)

        > Better yet, excise systemd and its supporters and let the Debian project live.

        Since it seems it was the devs and tech ctte. voting to support systemd that lead to all this, you seem to be suggesting losing the majority of the project developers will be good for the project. Nice theory, haven't ever seen it work that way in practice...

        • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday November 08 2014, @11:54PM

          by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 08 2014, @11:54PM (#114159) Journal

          It's my understanding that the vote was taken by a small subcommittee that didn't rightfully have the power to make the decision, but doing it the right (legal? constitutional?) way would have taken over a year, and there was a push to release Jessie with systemd in place.

          --
          Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 09 2014, @04:53AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 09 2014, @04:53AM (#114196)

            If I didn't know you were talking about Debian, you pretty much summed up how the Pluto being demoted as a planet by the IAU "vote" went down.

          • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday November 09 2014, @12:34PM

            by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 09 2014, @12:34PM (#114253)

            The TC has the "right" to make interpretations about technical standards.

            99% of them are excruciatingly boring yet important. This decision is only interesting because everybody hates systemd but the paid astroturfers and the "desktop people".

            Most of the decisions are like a recent-ish one along the lines of can a package in main "recommend" (or something like that) several packages, one of which is in non-free, while not getting kicked into the contrib ghetto for mentioning non-free but not depending on it.

            Systemd was rammed down our unwilling throats as a "technical decision" which is kind of stretching the definition.

            You are correct, in that its a non-dogfood eating desktop coup, which should have gone to vote.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @03:27PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @03:27PM (#114047)

      It really is just natural selection killing off the weak and unworthy, while letting the strong and robust excel.

      Funny, as someone who uses systemd and likes it, this is exactly how I see systemd haters. :-)

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @04:52PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @04:52PM (#114065)

        So before proclaiming systemd the ubermensch I guess you have tried out the alternative inits in Voidlinux, BLFS, calculate...?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @07:13PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @07:13PM (#114091)

          No, because I don't see a reason to, much as I don't see a reason to try out MINIX (or other kernels). The reason I don't is because I have informed myself about the design rationale behind systemd and it's ecosystem, as well as the counterarguments provided by it's detractors, and the design rationale behind a few (admittedly not all) of the alternative systems, and as per my own criteria I found the final balance to be well in favor of systemd, despite the compromises it involves, much as I find the balance in favor of Linux, despite the compromises it, too, involves.

          Whether my criteria matches reality or not will be settled by reality itself, not by a flame fest on a forum, which is why I don't participate much in discussions.

          • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:35PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:35PM (#114126)

            Bet you support women's rights too and oppose men marrying young female children.
            IE; you're an anti-old-testament faggot.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @11:24PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @11:24PM (#114150)

            You remind me a lot of someone I used to know.

            He's one of those people who does stuff because those things are awesome, and if they weren't awesome he wouldn't do them and he's awesome by extension, because he's done these things that make him awesome.

            Like the time he diagnosed my brain injury as "using the computer too much." When I told him that he was wrong and I had a clinical diagnosis to prove it he told me he had asked a doctor.

            This is how you sound.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @04:21PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @04:21PM (#114058)

    Projects that wave a banner of doing the right things and then do the opposite.
    Arch was a similar disappointment and now Debian has joined the club.

    Great distro, great loss.

    Glad to see someone is putting the cards on the table.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @06:57PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @06:57PM (#114088)

      Just use FreeBSD. It gives the UNIX-like environment of Debian, including excellent package management support, but without the systemd infection.

  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday November 08 2014, @05:33PM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Saturday November 08 2014, @05:33PM (#114071) Homepage

    [X] systemd is a disease
    [_] LENNART POETTERING!
    [X] Debian betrayed us
    [_] UNIX philosophy
    [_] monolithic == bad!!!

    Well, we're getting somewhere, I guess. Time to post my "pro"-systemd questions for the day:

    > I don't want to use systemd for technical reasons

    Reasonable enough.

    > I can't switch back to sysvinit

    Wait, why?

    > Even though SysVinit is still supported by many distros, I can't use it because many things depend on systemd

    First, which things? and second, that's a problem with the devs of those other things, not systemd. Please stop shifting blame and dehumanizing systemd.

    > Gnome depends on systemd

    Why are you running Gnome on a server? I suppose you could be an anti-systemd desktop user, but then the technical reasons argument weakens considerably; desktop users shouldn't need to care about the init system, thanks to DEs, and most rational "anti"-systemd proponents are only arguing for loss of control on servers, recognizing systemd's benefits for desktop use.

    > Systemd is being forced onto us

    Is Lennart making the rounds and installing systemd on everyone's machines? No? Then keep running your SysVinit installation. Yes you miss out on long term support, but that was provided by the goodwill of the community and you really have no right to demand the community to support your whims and preferences.

    --
    Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
    • (Score: 2) by CRCulver on Saturday November 08 2014, @05:37PM

      by CRCulver (4390) on Saturday November 08 2014, @05:37PM (#114073) Homepage

      > I can't switch back to sysvinit

      Wait, why?

      Here's why. [debian.org] Months have gone by and that bug is still there. Once systemd is on a Debian system, you're stuck with it.

      • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:03PM

        by darkfeline (1030) on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:03PM (#114118) Homepage

        I was unaware of this, but even so, this is clearly a Debian problem and not an issue with systemd. Last I checked, for example, Arch is fairly easy to switch over to, e.g., OpenRC.

        --
        Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 09 2014, @10:25AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 09 2014, @10:25AM (#114238)

      Why are you running Gnome on a server?

      This is a stupid assumption amigo...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @05:39PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @05:39PM (#114074)

    "Ooooooooooooh systemd!"

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @06:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @06:43PM (#114085)

    Here some sentiments about systemD were put to word and tune:

    http://youtu.be/y0aTqsl-vfU [youtu.be]

    The adoption of systemd eventually leads to a lament:
    youtu.be/PCJ-CWYoY9s

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @06:47PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @06:47PM (#114086)

    (Erich Schubert etc)

    Maybe he doesn't like that Debian is now just another progressive club
    where feminists who do jack shit are lauded and men who do much but
    oppose such things are kicked the fuck out or just derided as
    "trolls" (because gigs of contribs is shit compared to a pill or ball
    shaped woman that hates you).

    Fuck Debian.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @06:52PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @06:52PM (#114087)

      Lets see what debian has been doing lately:

      Lots of talk about "transgender" this, "women in tech" that:
      *Trans Gender Moves - Rhonda D'Vine:
                              bla bla bla lives of three people: A transman,
                                  a transwoman and an intersexual person.
                              bla bla bla

      *Beware of trolls - do not feed - Erich Schubert:
                              bla bla anti-feminist hate for 10 years bla bla

      *Help empower the Debian Outreach Program for Women -
                          bla bla bla took money give to women bla bla bla

      *Switching to systemd-networkd - retarded picture of some guy
                          bla bla bla systemd awsome bla bla bla

      (Fuck Debian)

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:40PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:40PM (#114131)

        I really don't see what genitalia have to do with open source software. Why is the Debian project concerning itself with penises, vaginas, and/or surgically altered versions of those?

        • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:45PM

          by tangomargarine (667) on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:45PM (#114136)

          For the same reason that Mozilla "had to" fire that CEO guy who had made anti-homosexuality statements in the past, apparently.

          --
          "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:59PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:59PM (#114142)

            They obviously had to fire him. He dared to engage in free expression. Hipsters, like those that make up Mozilla and so much of the web development community these days, tend to consider freedom to be completely unacceptable. Somebody's feelings might get hurt!

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 09 2014, @02:04AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 09 2014, @02:04AM (#114181)

              Well, I honestly didn't give a flying fuck what he thought, but it was the idea that advertising was going to be moved into the UI for Firefox that made me jump ship. I'm now using Midori under Linux (for its warts) and Palemoon for Windows. Stating an opinion I don't like? Meh, ok. I've grown a bit since I was in elementary school. Using money to lobby against legislation that would make things better for folks like me? Ahhh, ummm, ok, whatever. Being in a position to receive additional funding because there's advertising in a program I use? Eh, no, sorry, jump ship.

              (Granted, I don't think this has actually materialized, but I wouldn't know since I haven't used Firefox in many moons.)

  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:31PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:31PM (#114125)

    Gee, wouldn't it be nice if, for those of us who don't closely follow Debian, the article at least mentioned in passing who the fuck Joey Hess is? Is he some random Debian coder, or the president, or what?

    --
    "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) by tangomargarine on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:41PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:41PM (#114132)

      Okay, maybe that was a bit too on-the-nose. I mean, we do know that he's been there 16 years, but I would prefer to know a bit more. Being a member of the community for 16 years doesn't necessarily mean you're involved for the whole time. Is he the lead maintainer of some packages or the only guy working on certain things?

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:56PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 08 2014, @10:56PM (#114141)

        I think he's pretty important. I've seen his emails on the Debian mailing lists for a long time. He also maintained some important packages. That's why his email says "Note that this also constitutes an orphaning as upstream of debhelper, alien, dpkg-repack, and debmirror." Alien is a very important piece of software for those of us who deal with old Linux software, especially old commercial Linux software that comes packaged in shitty formats like RPM.

        • (Score: 1) by mverwijs on Saturday November 08 2014, @11:49PM

          by mverwijs (2457) on Saturday November 08 2014, @11:49PM (#114156) Homepage

          He is, amongst other things, the core developer of the Debian Installer....

          • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday November 09 2014, @12:25PM

            by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 09 2014, @12:25PM (#114252)

            Arguably debhelper is more important

            • (Score: 1) by fritsd on Sunday November 09 2014, @11:22PM

              by fritsd (4586) on Sunday November 09 2014, @11:22PM (#114364) Journal

              I once made a Debian package and debhelper was a godsend. (Not that I'm insinuating mr. Hess is divine BTW).

              If you think about it, the number of different programs in the Debian distribution depends on the number of prospective Debian Developers that didn't find it too complicated, tiresome, or awkward to make a Debian package of some Linux program they liked.

              17567 source packages in "Wheezy" (May 2013).

  • (Score: 1) by Wrong Turn Ahead on Sunday November 09 2014, @01:58AM

    by Wrong Turn Ahead (3650) on Sunday November 09 2014, @01:58AM (#114179)

    If the developers and users truly feel disenfranchised by the political hijacking (technical committee vote/process) then just go on strike. Users who disagree with the way Debian has managed this issue can switch to a different distro or continue using what they have. Users who flat out hate Systemd will move to another distro or hack together their own workarounds. Devs can either strike or fork...

    I'm not one for knee-jerk reactions but this is a long-running, emotional debate that is already damaging Debian and driving away talented people. A strike could unite the developers and strengthen their voice. It could be the spark that ignites an honest conversation and saves a valuable project while doing so...

    • (Score: 1) by ld a, b on Sunday November 09 2014, @03:25AM

      by ld a, b (2414) on Sunday November 09 2014, @03:25AM (#114187)

      I don't think you realize just how insidious the political game has been.
      The RedHat warlords infiltrated/bribed every single subsystem with key mindshare among Linux distributions and steered it towards a bloated interconnected piece of software you have to pay RedHat to fix. And then to fix the fix.
      RedHat has the most commits to Linux. Yes and they turn their shameless boycott into positive PR.
      The asocial aspies have no way to combat these high-functioning corporate psychopaths.
      If somebody doubts this story just look at Android. Google corporate leaders realized that there was a problem early and extirpated the most they could and called it a day.

      --
      10 little-endian boys went out to dine, a big-endian carp ate one, and then there were -246.