Russ Allbery writes:
For one specific example, it's become quite clear over the past year that systemd has achieved the same status as abortion debates in US politics. Not only is it clear that we will *never* stop arguing about systemd, opposition to or support of systemd has turned into a tribal identity marker for at least some people.
Your example comparing systemd debate vs abortion debate is definitively insane : abortion is a philosophical debate that mainly roots whether you believe or not in god, which is not something that can be argued on its technical merits, or the fundamental compatibility problem it causes. The only point were your comparison makes sense is that communication by both opponent and proponent could have been better and less hostile (at least here in France).
Part of what ian said (copied below for ref), that has not been done with systemd is definitively the root cause of all the systemd debate
I think that people who want to change Debian should take care to:
- Communicate respectfully;
- Ensure technical interoperability between different
approaches and different tools;
- Carefully plan necessary transitions;
- Approach change in a consensual manner;
- Particularly, avoid hostile acts like publicly declaring
other people's code or configurations dead or unsupported.
I have been criticizing systemd introduction in this newgroup/mailing lists because, at the beginning, it did break nearly all my systems, whereas it should not had:
1) when you find /proc/config.gz and you know that some feature are required for systemd, you could check before installing it and avoid removing sysv init system even if mots pelple do use distribution kernel (without /proc/config.gz you can write program that will check features via system calls). 2) as it started to depend on libraries located in /usr, it did break on my system with no initrd, and different / and /usr and it did break my system at least 5 or six times before stabilizing. I suggested to add a script to make sure sysdemd binary does not link with /usr located libraries to detect this before crashing people installations,
So this are clear example were simple technique could have been used to avoid breaking installed systems. It does cost a bit more effort but would have generated far less heated debate and meybe even les work at the end.
Now I do see benefits of systemd (boot faster) but the lack of easiness to define user modifiable parts (/etc/defaut/pkg) and things that are better left as the maintainer wants is still complicated and if you need to directly change default /lib/systemd/system/pkg.service its overridden during upgrade...
I have nas machines running debian without screen, video output, that have been installed via network and do not have easy way to repartition, not access to bootlodaer to install a different initrd, nor to repair other than soldering a serial line, so saying you should merge / and /usr or it may break and you will be on your own makes me less than happy. I thinks you can understand that.
I'll say it again: enthusiasm is fragile. If we slap down excited people every time they make intemperate comments out of enthusiasm, we lose SO MUCH energy. And I don't think we can afford to lose that much energy from the project.
Agreed. But making transition smooth, may not cost that much and could preserve motivated people against hostile reactions if their changes breaks people habits/systems. So having a policy like Ian did propose for making fundamental changes may at the end avoid loosing energy..
--eric