Re: Let's Stop Getting Torn Apart by Disagreement: Concerns about the Technical Committee
Martin Steigerwald <martin@lichtvoll.de> writes:
> I always found that just focusing on the technical aspects of the Init
> system discussion left out… everything else. Even the issue in itself
> was not purely technical, although back then I had the a feeling that
> almost no one agreed with me that it was not. Just focusing on purely
> technical means in that discussion was in my eyes harmful in itself.
Well, I agreed, and agree, with you that the issue was not purely
technical, and spent a substantial amount of time, effort, and writeup
energy on discussing the non-technical issues. Your description bears
very little resemblence to the process I was part of.
I think it's really important to not oversimplify past discussions. We're
in danger of learning the wrong lessons from them.
One of the reasons why the systemd discussion was so painful was precisely
that it could *not* be discussed at a level of purely technical details,
and we all knew it. Technical details are much easier to reach decisions
of fact on; the systemd discussion was painful precisely because it
*wasn't* and *couldn't* be conducted in the way that you describe. It
touched on everything from competing visions of the nature of free
software in the project, the meaning of our social contract and
"universal" in the motto of our distribution, the attitudes and behavior
of multiple different upstreams, accusations of corporate conflict of
interest, and deep personal friendships.
There wasn't *anything* "left out" of that discussion.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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