Re: My analysis of the proposals
Antonio Terceiro wrote:
> However, as with any piece of software, systemd doesn't and won't ever cover
> all use cases. It should be possible for people to use other init it they
> choose so, for whatever reason. How well those would work should depend only on
> the effort of those interested in doing the necessary work.
I think the discussion has concentrated too much on this principle in
the abstract. The situation is clearer when you look at the more
concrete details of what kind of changes there is controversy over.
In short: there is little to no worthwhile work being done on any
alternatives to systemd. What is happening is some people trying to
keep sysvinit working to about the level it did in 2014, while doing
very little fundamental development to the system that would fix its
widely recognized flaws. Such work will not help innovation, will not
produce a plausible alternative to systemd, and is not worth
supporting.
It was already near consensus five years ago that sysvinit was
seriously lacking and improvements were needed. The choice of systemd
over Upstart was more controversial, but systemd opponents have not
managed to create an alternative that would reach even the level that
Upstart had back then. Even Ian, as one of the main authors of the
"diversity" proposals, agrees that sysvinit is flawed and significant
future development would be needed. Yet he argues that sysvinit work
should be respected, that it should not be considered obsolete, and so
on. I disagree: it's perfectly reasonable to consider sysv init scripts
obsolete, and consider "try to keep sysvinit at 2014 levels
indefinitely" activity a dead end.
Note that I'm not saying that people shouldn't develop alternatives to
systemd. But to be taken seriously, they'd need to display some real
progress beyond sysvinit (and Upstart). Just "this allows to boot
without systemd" is not a worthwhile "alternative".
"I disagree with systemd decisions, here's my fork / alternative
system" - this may be OK depending on system quality.
"I disagree with systemd decisions, but, uh, I don't really have
resources to create a credible alternative, so... uh... let's just keep
using sysvinit indefinitely?" - this is not OK, not EVEN IF your
criticism of systemd choices were valid, and activity which amounts to
essentially this does not deserve support.
As there currently aren't credible alternatives to systemd, not even at
the level of Upstart, I think it's wrong to phrase the question in
terms of whether Debian "supports innovation" and so on. The practical
question now is whether Debian insists on supporting the obsolete
sysvinit, not because of any positive qualities it has or potential for
future development (and very little forward development has happened in
the last five years), but only because it allows systemd haters to
avoid using systemd.
IMO encouragement for supporting alternative systems could be
reasonable, but only for actual new innovation; maintainers should be
explicitly permitted to remove any existing sysvinit scripts and refuse
addition of similar scripts. Systemd units should be no worse a basis
to bootstrap a new system.
TL;DR You'd need real work to develop a credible alternative to
systemd. Nobody has done or is doing that work. As long as the
practical alternatives are crap, abstract arguments like "diversity" or
"supporting innovation" are no reason to support anything else.
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