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posted by
janrinok
on Wednesday November 19 2014, @11:25AM
from the I-hope-we-don't-regret-this dept.
from the I-hope-we-don't-regret-this dept.
Ian Jackson's general resolution to prevent init system coupling has failed to pass, the majority vote deciding that the resolution is unnecessary. This means that not only will Debian's default init be systemd, but packages will not be required to support other init systems. Presumably, this means that using other init systems on Debian (without using systemd as a base) will not be possible without major workarounds, or possibly at all. It also leaves the future of Debian projects such as kFreeBSD unclear, as systemd is linux specific.
The vote results can be found here
The winners are:
Option 4 "General Resolution is not required"
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Debian General Resolution to Prevent Init System Coupling Fails to Pass
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I don't want a pickle,
I just wanna ride on my motorsickle.
And I don't want to die,
I just want to ride on my motorcy.
Cle.
-- Arlo Guthrie
(Score: 2) by CRCulver on Wednesday November 19 2014, @02:02PM
A few Debian devs so far have said that the engine that makes things possible is developers, and if the developers chose a tool that makes life easier for them, the uncontributing community has no right to demand they use something else instead.
I oppose systemd myself and will probably move from Debian, but you can't force people to use a technical solution they don't like.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 19 2014, @02:05PM
you had me at "uncontributing community has no right to demand"
(Score: 2) by CRCulver on Wednesday November 19 2014, @03:47PM
(Score: 2) by emg on Wednesday November 19 2014, @05:21PM
Which is exactly the problem.
Devs say 'I'm gonna do X, it's shiny and cool!'
Users say 'WTF? I don't want X, what the hell are you thinking?'
Devs say 'STFU, you're just a user, I know what's best for you.'
And the users don't respond, because they' just moved to a different distro.
This has been happening far too much in Linux lately, as more and more devs think they're the next Steve Jobs.
(Score: 2) by fnj on Wednesday November 19 2014, @05:53PM
But there is no goddam use for the thing except for the user community. It would be just a shiny monument if nobody used it. And those users do not have to "contribute" to be the only reason that the distro exists. It is gratuitously disgusting to suggest that "non-contributors" do not matter. If the users want X and those in the ivory tower only deign to provide Y, sorry, those in the ivory tower are assholes.
OTOH obviously you can't please everybody all the time. In due course we shall see whether the distro has jumped the shark or continues to flourish.
(Score: 2) by CRCulver on Thursday November 20 2014, @05:30AM
Free Software in general has long been developed by people to scratch a need of their own, not to selflessly serve some unknown mass of people out there. Many Debian developers probably got involved in Linux for such a reason. Thus even if some group of uncontributing users get pissed off at the developers, so what? The technology already works for the developers.
Indeed, those of us who are leaving Debian because of systemd are moving to distros where we probably will have to be quite hands-on to make it fit our needs, and maybe contribute a few patches and bug reports back to automate that tweaking. Will we do all that because we want to serve the world? No, we'll do it because we had to meet our own needs.
No, this is a case of conflicting needs, not one party being an asshole. Users (some users, let's not overestimate the amount of people who are passionate about systemd) want one tool they think makes their life easier, while developers want another tool that they think makes their life easier. The correct thing in such a case is for the Debian population to split up. Hopefully the non-systemd-distros, once they get an influx of energetic new developers, will fare well enough to avoid systemd in the long term. I am sure that Debian will continue to do just fine.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 19 2014, @02:28PM
You can product tie to wedge stuff no one wants into place. Thats how we got systemd today instead of decade ago when it was technically possible but no one wanted it. The innovation of systemd is combining "nobody wants gnome but nobody wants to get rid of it" with "maybe we could product tie our project with gnome, using it to force us in"
Two other issues. Devs have never been king of their castle. If the FTPmasters don't like the license (usually because the dev totally Fed up documenting it) then its not going in. Or if you insist on not following Policy, out it goes, the easy way or the hard way. Or if you insist on not following the social contract / constitution, if someone wants to enforce that (not this time) then the dev is out. And there's a common sense machine usage policy (like no turning your private file space into a warez site or spamming) and a couple other rules.
Its mythological that the dev gets to be a tyrant over all the rest of humanity. systemd upstream actually thinks that way. Devs in general do not, and when they screw up its mostly honest ignorance or philosophical disagreement, or they haven't thought thru false assumptions, or occasionally I believe their paycheck is what is doing the talking although thats quite rare. Truely crazy debian devs are pretty rare. Upstream, maybe not so rare.