On Fri, 2014-02-14 at 19:15 +0100, Matthias Urlichs wrote: > http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1316 That's really interesting... and disturbing... in so many ways. First, while I don't like everything about systemd, I was/am in favour of it (as long as we can keep the non-Linux ports alive)... Russ made a very good analysis some time ago, while it's simply better and I guess many people felt the core design of upstart to be broken, not to talk about some unpleasant long time bugs in it. And I also agree with people like Ian or Andi, that it's bad if high level software makes to strong bonds to such low level stuff (most notably GNOME). I wasn't the only one who expected and posted here that Debian's decision would be also a decision about the fate of upstart,... Ubuntu was/is the only bigger distro left, that used it as their current default init system... and even though Mark doesn't clearly say it... his post is most probably the death sentence for Upstart. What I find quite amusing is that he claims it to be "truly great free software", especially when one thinks that systemd might have never came into existence if there wasn't the CLA. What's quite disturbing is, that he puts some focus on "Bdale Garbee’s casting vote" as if the whole thing was his fault and as if he'd make him responsible. Doesn't sound too friendly in my ears, to be honest,... but maybe it's just some misconception. But now there's the really interesting part: Debian and it's community went through some bad weeks now, people "shouting" at each other, TC members trying to remove others and so on. What if upstart would have been dead already? I guess no big discussion would have came up! Most people agree that sysvinit is legacy and as long as we allow the non-Linux ports to continue with something else, these would have been happy as well. And the discussion about init-system coupling is IMHO anyway a much broader one... it's more or less the same discussion whether a desktop environment should be allowed to strictly couple on something like NM, Avahi, etc.. Further, I'd guess that Mark wasn't caught by surprise with the tech-ctte's decision. He might not have followed every tiny bit of the whole lengthy story, but I'm sure he was aware. Now either he believed in upstart and it's design and strengths and hoped for it to win... and when he did that I really wonder why he gave up now? Even before a not so unlikely GR. Canonical has shown with mir that they have no problem to go a different way that what more or less everybody in the FLOSS world thinks is the right way... for whatever reasons (I don't know whether they have real technical reasons or others). So if they'd have really believed in upstart, I'd have expected them to continue now, especially when it seems that Debian will continue to support it anyway (just not choosing it as the default init-system). So that somehow makes me think: They didn't believe in it themselves and already new that systemd was superior, that upstart has design issues, etc. pp. But then the question would be: why didn't they tell us in advance? If it would have been clear that the main group behind upstart will likely abandon it, all the discussions of the last week would have likely been moot. All the "upstart may be supported in freebsd in some near future" etc. would have been pointless, since it would have been clear that upstart will see a similar fate than bzr. Now is that behaviour "nice" against Debian? I don't think so. And once more it makes me question, whether the Debian/Ubuntu relationship is really that healthy for Debian in all areas. Undoubtedly there are areas where Debian benefits... but given that it often seems that Canonical wants to drive Ubuntu rather in a lone island/hype experience than all these iOS, Chrome OS, etc. out there... I doubt that it's healthy for Debian on a broad view. Cheers, Chris. btw: And quite obviously, this post is not about bashing upstart,.. to me it seems actually as if they'd be kinda betrayed by their very own BDFL... and undoubtedly they did some great job in showing ideas for a better init-system than sysvinit was, which is IIRC even admitted by the systemd upstream.
Attachment:
smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature