Re: [all candidates] how to choose Jessie init system
Hi,
On 18/03/13 at 13:55 +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> Some of the longest -devel thread in recent years have been about
> Debian's (default) init system: SysV, SystemD, Upstart, OpenRC, etc.
> Despite folklore, I don't think those thread have been (entirely)
> trollish, they all hint at a concrete problem:
>
> How do we make an inherently archive-wide technical decision when
> multiple, possibly equally valid solutions do exist?
Regarding the default init system decision:
There must be compromise in any such issue. My compromise is to ignore
anything from lennart. Then, anything from Ubuntu. Once we've done
that, we've decided.
But sometimes, such archive-wide technical decisions don't involve
Lennart or Ubuntu¹, so it's harder to decide.
Our goal should be to *make the best decisions*. For that, we need to make
sure that there's an healthy discussion. There are several ways someone
can contribute to having healthier discussions, and the DPL authority is
helpful for them, while not mandatory (I've done what follows on a few
occasions myself):
- summarize long discussions so that:
+ people can join the discussion without feeling they have
to read everything
+ the same arguments stop being repeated over and over again
- calm down people who get too vocal
I find it great that such discussions usually result in a throughout
review of the possible solutions by Debian.
Often, there's the possibility to limit the impact of the decision, e.g.
by providing a default, but also supporting alternatives. When that's
possible, that's something that should be explored. It's a good thing
for the current alternatives, but also to help future alternatives
later.
Regarding the decision itself, we often have developers in position to
take a decision about the default solution (d-i maintainers, maintainers
of important packages that depend on one or the other solutions, etc.)
In the last resort, it's also possible to bring the issue to the TC.
Also, as I said in
https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2013/03/msg00132.html, on rare
occasions and especially when there's no clear possible decision-maker,
we could ask the TC to decide.
Lucas
PS:
[*] In case you are not sure: yes, the first paragraph of my reply was
not serious. And mostly motived by:
18:47 <someone on #d-release> lucas: I'll buy you a beer if you post that.
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