Re: Re: Legitimate exercise of our constitutional decision-making processes [Was, Re: Tentative summary of the amendments]
On Thu, 30 Oct 2014 16:54:33 +0900 Tristan van Berkom wrote:
> [Disclaimer: I am not a debian developer myself and probably do not have
> the right to vote here, I am however a long time contributor and
> maintainer in GNOME who has been watching this thread and I feel I have
> a responsibility to add to this conversation ]
>
> On Wed, 2014-10-29 at 16:41 -0500, Nikolaus Rath wrote:
> > Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
> > > In the battle between those upstreams and Debian contributors who want
> > > everyone to use systemd, and those developers and users who don't want
> > > to use systemd, _someone_ is going to experience duress.
> >
> > I don't think that there are developers and users who want everyone to
> > use systemd (trolls excluded). There are just users and developers who
> > do not want to do the extra work that would be required to keep their
> > systems working without systemd, because that work should really be done
> > by the users and developers who don't want to use systemd.
>
> I think you've touched on the matter on which I have an opinion
> elegantly and directly right here. And I agree with what you say for the
> most part, except for the part where users and developers who do not
> want to use systemd should be going out of their way to implement
> alternatives for GNOME to run without systemd, this does not reflect the
> high standard of quality we've come to expect in general from FOSS
> communities.
>
> So what is the situation we have on the GNOME side ? From my perspective
> it's simple, we have highly skilled professionals working on two
> separate projects, the gnome-shell and systemd, let's not get personal,
> someone has to foot the bill for all the work here right ?
>
> So if RedHat wanted to invest in their new vision of the Desktop
> Environment, they should not have to pay for the extra work it should
> take for those projects to be embraced by the larger FOSS community, and
> that's completely fine and their prerogative, in any case, they have
> their means of distribution (rpms, fedora, etc).
>
> However, I do fear for the direction that GNOME in general is taking,
> I am personally invested in GNOME and I believe that we need to hold
> ourselves to a higher standard of quality than the "GNOME and nothing
> else" attitude that seems to have evolved in the name of progress.
>
> So while I cannot blame those who are funding this largely experimental
> leap into the future for drawing the line somewhere in their budget, I
> do expect long time stable distributions such as Debian to draw the line
> as to what they accept as stable. If the developers of gnome-shell and
> systemd want to participate in the larger FOSS community and have a
> venue in Debian, they should certainly be the ones doing the work to
> ensure the system meets some minimal expectations of interoperability.
>
> I am afraid that by making systemd (a project in it's relative infancy
> performing critical OS tasks), the default init system in Debian just
> because the maintainers of gnome-shell/gdm can't be bothered to operate
> on anything else, you (the Debian community) are sending a dangerous
> message that it's just fine for said GNOME maintainers to lower their
> standards of excellence. I fear that with this message things will not
> be improving.
>
> Yes, my motivations are self-centered, I think that the quality of the
> software produced in GNOME is at risk when external projects who use
> GNOME start to tolerate a nonchalant attitude towards stability and
> interoperability.
>
> For these reasons, I would (if I could) cast a vote in favor of Ian's
> GR, because I feel that GNOME should be doing better and I am afraid
> that there will be an increased lack of motivation to do so if the GR
> does not pass.
>
> Best Regards,
> -Tristan
Thank you very much Tristan for writing that mail.
Ive been a Unix user for 30 years and happy debian user for 15
And so seeing the fracas around systemd has been alarming.
Not that I have any data/opinion whether systemd is good/bad.
[I'm typing this from a systemd-ed jessie machine]
What alarms me is the combo of
- violent vitriol issuing from the anti-systemd camp
- The couldn't-care-less resultant-vector of the official-DD's response
[So also thanks Ian for the GR]
I would reiterate: I have no position (not enough knowledge really)
on systemd.
There is this well known story chicken-leg phobia.
[For those who dont know...]
Woman had a morbid phobia of chicken legs.
Was once invited to a party.
She made her usual check by phoning the hostess to confirm there were no
chicken legs. Hostess thoughtlessly said Ok.
But there was chicken... and legs!
The phobic's reaction was so violent that both she and the hostess had to
be taken to emergency room!
1. If the anti-systemd's brigade is really phobic and are not being
reasonable enough about "I dont want systemd anywhere near my system"
why not rename libraries like systemd-shim, libsystemd0 etc to not have the
phobia-inducing word?
2. Is systemd the problem or is gnome the problem?
On Mon, 20 Oct 2014 Charles Plessy wrote:
> Regarding what is proposed, it is actually unclear. The consequence
> of accepting the main proposal may range anywhere between “do nothing
> special” and “harrass the GNOME and systemd maintainers until they
> quit”. I am sure that this is not Ian's goal, but I am not sure he is
> in position to prevent this to happen.
suggests that keeping the gnome-devs happy takes precedence over
other concerns
My impression is that when gnome went from 2 to 3 a large population
of debian-users (myself included) ran away... xfce,lxde, mate etc
Now the gnome-devs may be obstinate about their so-called progress but they
lost a significant user-base by their choices
windows lost with Vista, ubuntu with premature pulseaudio,
debian stands to lose by high-handedly pushing systemd down unwilling throats
[Note I am not talking facts but emotions and tempers:
It does not matter whether Marie Antonnete actually said "Let them eat cake"
The fact that that statement was attributed to her had bad consequences
for her and many others]
3 Finally I see a lot of binary-thinking in the pro-systemd camp; viz
Either we push systemd as default or we carry around the obsolete sysv
forever. I believe that all that is needed is an explicit policy
- for supporting sysv in jessie+1; not beyond
- if needed for now, make gnome an exception to that policy
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