On Tue, Nov 05, 2013 at 11:43:16PM +0100, Marko Randjelovic wrote: > On Sat, 26 Oct 2013 11:07:36 +0200 > Lucas Nussbaum <leader@debian.org> wrote: > > > I think that it would be a failure of the Debian project if we had to have a GR > > about such a technical decision. I think that we need to trust that the > > Technical Committee will make the right decision. A GR about this will likely > > result in splitting and hurting the project even more. > > This is not at all merely a technical decision. I disagree strongly. > First of all, I do not agree Debian community is hurt because of split about init system, I disagree strongly. Please read through every flame thread over the last 4 years and try to say this with a straight face. > nor that some problems would be solved by Tech Committee rules about default init system. Init system is an essential part of any UNIX-like system. If anything can undermine an OS, it is init system. What? Sorry, what? Are you disagreeing with yourself? If it's so important to a UNIX system, why do you say it's not technical ... > Big companies all over and over again show they care much more about their economic interests than about interests of free software community. As of my understanding, Debian should be an independent project, devoted to interest of its community (users), and not the interests of any companies. However, it is obvious companies push their software because they control their development, but then if such software becomes essential for Debian, they control Debian. If you read free software principles elaborated by Richard M. Stallman and FSF, it is clear that the point is exactly in having control over your life, i.e. being independent (or in other words not under control) of any companies. No, that's not what RMS and the FSF means. They claim, by ensuring software you use is free, you can ensure that you retain your rights when using your computer by granting you basic freedoms (the four freedoms). One of those freedoms is to use the software commercially, just FYI. > Even if such projects are forked, it is not a good outcome, since they are to (and unnecessarily) complex and community will have much problems in adding any additional features or other modifications, while companies can do it because they pay full time developers and they have both psychological interest to impress their users and to control direction of free software development. If anything looks like a Trojan horse, it's an init system controlled by a big company. > > If someone is rushing this decision, it may be only in interest of companies that want by the (false) argument of urgency use Tech Committee to make such decision without taking into consideration neither interests nor attitude of whole Debian community. my day job is not in Debian development. I pushed it to the tech ctte out of my own free will, and I assure you no big corp is using me as a sock puppet. it's urgent, and it *is* causing social problems in Debian. > We don't want free software becomes just a marionette of big business. The fun thing about F/OSS is free software *can* become a marionette and we're still much more free than before (and can still express the same rights as if it wasn't a mega-corp). That being said I do like the non commercial nature of Debian, but this is not central to good free software. > If a software insists on depending on any particular init system for some only to them knows reason, then it cannot be default or we are becoming hostages of such software. We shall not stand in the way of progress. logind, systemd (such as socket based activation, dependency booting) in particular, and friends are technical wins. We'd be silly to not take them. If you want to hold your own system back, there's nothing stoping you (and your rights granted by f/oss software allow you to do so). > Users who want to use it should take care on their own about installing needed dependencies. users generally don't care about dependencies, and care more about a working system. > Gnome all the time keeps making us unpleasant surprises. Gnome is bloated, depend on to many software, and now even on specific init system. Its configuration system is surely not to much like Windows registry as it looks based on gconftool, but it is obviously to complex and far away from UNIX philosophy. When GDM3 appeared, I couldn't change theme, most options were missing. The picture was hardcoded in exe. Since then I don't use GDM anymore. And now Gnome depend on systemd. If systemd one day puts us in similar situation, will it be possible to remove it? What will systemd depend on a few years later? This is an argument unrealted to your main point, and I suggest you post this elsewhere. > And SysVInit just works well and it is simply enough. It has much less dependencies than systemd. Do not make unneeded weight on people to learn systemd in addition to shell scripts, if systemd is powerful that also means there is a lot to learn. I really doubt non-standards task can be solved with systemd without shell scripts (or similar), and every serious UNIX admin must know shell programming anyway. This is like saying "A horse drawn carrage works well enough, why do you need an airplane". "without deviation from the norm progress is not possible" -- Frank Zappa I believe this is a purely technical issue, and one that is near 100% invisible to the user. Let us not delay the decision or implementation. I'm left with more questions than answers after reading this mail :) Cheers, Paul -- .''`. Paul Tagliamonte <paultag@debian.org> : :' : Proud Debian Developer `. `'` 4096R / 8F04 9AD8 2C92 066C 7352 D28A 7B58 5B30 807C 2A87 `- http://people.debian.org/~paultag
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature