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On 1/7/19 10:58 PM, Russ Allbery wrote: Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> writes:I think you're minimizing the level of investment & commitment it takes to either use Debian, particularly in production, and even more, minimizing the efforts of upstream, and kernel, developers upon whom Debian ultimately depends.I really don't think I am, particularly since I've also done many of those things, but I'm also a bit baffled as to why you think that you should get to decide what I do with my volunteer time when you're not paying me. I mean, that's really what this comes down to. Of *course* the people who are members of the Debian project have the primary say it what it does. I am not asserting any right to decide what you do with your volunteer time. What I am asserting is that the Debian Social Contract explicitly states that: "4. Our priorities are our users and free software We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free software community. We will place their interests first in our priorities. We will support the needs of our users for operation in many different kinds of computing environments ... " I DO assert that, as one user, I don't see this being honored in the breach, with decisions around systemd, and init-system-neutrality being in direct opposition to this principal. I also suggest that users, and the "free software community" do not have a voice in the matter. As to "Of *course* the people who are members of the Debian
project have the primary say it what it does." That does not
necessarily follow. There are plenty of cases, in purely
voluntary organizations, where Trustees (elected or otherwise) are
expected to represent the interests of the broader community,
and/or the broader mission of an organization. An awful lot of
organizations fail when current office holders become to insular
and unresponsive. There are also those who contribute by providing support - e.g., answering user questions on Debian lists.And those people can join the project as voting members so that they can have a say. (I would love to see more of that, in fact; it's important to include people in our community who do other things than package.)As far as I can tell, the only people who count, in Debian decision making, are packagers - which strikes me as a rather bizarre case of the tail wagging the dog.Seriously, if you want control over something that you use, you have to put resources into it, whether that is time or money. You can purchase something and have the influence of a customer and whatever contract you can get, or you can put in sweat equity and get a voice that way. Those are pretty much your choices, apart from government-controlled projects. This isn't a very radical concept. Sure. But in an environment as convoluted as the FOSS ecosystem,
where and how one contributes can become pretty indirect. For
example, Debian depends rather heavily on the Linux kernel, the
gnu tools, hosting by the OSU OSL - do they have a seat at the
table? What about people who contribute to the MoinMoin wiki,
used by the Debian project? I remain amazed how much the impacts on users, systems administrators, and upstream developers were dismissed as irrelevant.You list those things as if they're somehow distinct, when many (most, probably) Debian Developers are all of those things. I was watching the discussion on systemd fairly closely. I could
be wrong, but very little of the discussions over systemd seemed
to reflect folks who managed production servers, or kernel
developers, or developers of key backend software (Apache, MySQL,
Postfix, Sympa, ...). On a larger note, I point to the IETF as an example of a much larger community, running huge infrastructure, where pretty much anyone who shows up has a voice.Do you know how the IETF funding model works, and how the Debian funding model works? You do know that the parent organization of the IETF has paid employees, right? Yes. Yes I do. I also know that that ISOC was created,
nominally as a membership organization, but no more, to create a
home for the IETF outside of the US Government. It's the IETF
secretariat, or whatever it's called these days, that mostly has
paid staff. And... so? The IETF is a lot more like the Linux Foundation than it is like Debian. And that model has its place in the world, but I wouldn't be a Debian Developer if Debian were funded and run that way. I'm sorry to say this, but the only value that Debian provides to the world, is packaging. And, personally, over time, I've found it more and more necessary to download, build, and compile from source - reducing the value of Debian.Pretty soon, I expect I'll be migrating.Okay? I mean, you say that like you expect me to be upset, but I'm totally okay with that, and I wish you the best of luck with whatever operating system you migrate to. I've said this before, but I think it's an important reality check: it doesn't matter nearly as much who uses Debian, or how many people use Debian, because we are not a company or a product, we don't sell something, we're not trying to make a profit or maintain some growth curve, and we're not part of this capitalist system. We are building a Linux distribution, to a very large extent, for each other, and delightfully other people also find it useful. Sometimes those people even join us! Which is great! Well, I'll go back to the Social Contract - "We will be guided by the needs of our
users and the free software community. We will place their
interests first in our priorities." If you're not upset when
folks abandon Debian, or fork it, or stop recommending it. But we are delightfully not beholden to anyone outside the project, apart from the much-appreciated donations of funding and equipment of course, for our goals or even our survival. Which means that we can have a much more collaborative, communal decision-making process that doesn't obsess over market share or retaining or monetizing every individual user.And, next time I do any serious developing, I expect the only init scripts I'll provide are sysvinit based. That suggests that my platform will be something other than Debian.I hope you have fun and enjoy that platform! I'm very glad that you will be able to find a platform that is a better fit for you. -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra |