On 25/10/14 17:38, Martin Read wrote:
I would take the "several alternatives" as tending to indicate that perhaps sysvinit + sysvrc does not work "perfectly well", but instead merely BALGE (By And Large Good Enough).
I really doubt that it indicates anything like that. There are more reasons why people start working on alternatives than just the perceived inadequacy of existing solutions. The world is full of programmers, you know, and every minute or so a new young programmer feels the urge to demonstrate to the world how great he is and starts reinventing the wheel.
If you look at the history of software development you will find that the same pattern repeats itself over and over again. In the beginning, there is a need for something that doesn't exist yet. Then someone starts programming it. His solution will at first be buggy and lacking features. Then it will get better, and at some point it will do its job very well and to the entire satisfaction of the users. That's the point when programmers should stop working on that thing except for bug fixes and such. But that never happens. Instead they will start looking for more and more features to add, because the project has become an important part of their lives and their favourite passtime. And new programmers will appear and start changing things or restart from scratch, because they know better. And in the end you will always have one or more bloated and unstable monsters and disappointed users. I guess everyone here can name examples of that.
p.