Re: [Lennart Poettering] Re: A few observations about systemd

[Uoti Urpala <uoti.urpala@pp1.inet.fi>]

Russ Allbery <rra <at> debian.org> writes:
> Uoti Urpala <uoti.urpala <at> pp1.inet.fi> writes:
> 
> > Upstart is still used in Ubuntu but doesn't seem to have much future
> > elsewhere.  There's quite a lot of interest in systemd for Debian too,
> > whereas I've seen few people express interest in Upstart.
> 
> Funny, my personal experience has been the exact opposite, including the
> conversations that I had in-person at the last Debconf.

Last? As in 2010? Given how quickly systemd has gained momentum, the 2010 status
is hardly representative of current interest in systemd or its relative
popularity compared to Upstart.


> > The interest is especially low when you consider Debian's ties with
> > Ubuntu and people who only care about Upstart because of that.
> 
> This is completely false.  I have no affiliation whatsoever with Ubuntu
> and personally have no interest in using it.  Nonetheless, I think upstart
> looks quite interesting

I didn't claim that there would not be a single person interested in Upstart.
You could be more familiar with the attitudes of Debian developers than I am,
but if 2010 experience and your personal opinion are the only things you're
basing that on then it's not enough to show that low interest in Upstart would
be "completely false" (even restricted to developers only). 

> systemd also looks interesting, and I'm generally happy with either of
> them as possibilities, I'm rather concerned by systemd's lack of interest
> in portability.  The upstart maintainers have expressed considerably more
> willingness to date to work with Debian on meeting our project's goals and
> incorporating those changes into the upstream release.

I think the important question is whether portability to other kernels is or
should be a "project's goal", and how much else you're willing to lose for the
sake of that goal. I know I would personally be a lot happier with a Debian that
supports systemd functionality than with a Debian that can run on a BSD kernel.