Re: My analysis of the proposals
Uoti Urpala <uoti.urpala@pp1.inet.fi> writes:
> I don't doubt that there exist people for whose needs an existing
> sysvinit system can be perfectly adequate. Just like there are people
> for whose needs an old 80286 computer is adequate. But I don't think
> that contradicts with "is obsolete" or "is a technological dead end".
I encourage you to take a step back and think through what you're trying
to accomplish by using phrases like that. Do you expect someone who wants
to continue to run sysvinit for the time being to see a statement from you
that sysvinit is obsolete or a technological dead end and think "oh, I
never considered that, I guess I should stop using it"?
In other words, I don't think it matters whether or not those statements
are correct because, regardless of whether they are correct, they are not
persuasive.
Saying that something is obsolete in the free software world is
essentially a forecast. Because free software can always form the basis
for additional development, it's making a *prediction* that no one is
going to use that specific piece of software as a basis for future
development or keep it working for new use cases. It's difficult to make
predictions, especially about the future [1].
Making non-persuasive statements of position like this doesn't come across
as participating in a discussion or attempting to find common ground or
shared goals. Instead, it provides tribal signaling: you are aligned with
the "stop supporting sysvinit" camp and you want everyone else to know
that.
My position is that those statements are not useful, and indeed are
actively harmful, for the following reasons:
1. We're about to hold a vote, which is the formal way in which Debian
developers can decide what position they want to take. While
persuasive arguments may be useful before a vote, declarations of
voting intention are less useful (unless they are an argument for
making a change to a proposal). There's no point in voting before we
vote. (I don't remember if you are a Debian developer; if not, perhaps
your goal is to persuade other people who can vote. However, as
mentioned, these sorts of statements are not persuasive to people who
disagree with you.)
2. Voting via mailing list post just encourages other people to also vote
via mailing list post because they're worried that silence seems like
disagreement, and then the thread degrades into a bunch of people
stating their (unsurprising and already known) positions, which is both
noisy and demoralizing.
3. It's extremely hard to make statements like this without having them
come across as implicit, or even explicit, attacks on people who
disagree with you. (And you're not currently succeeding at that, IMO.)
In my opinion, it is very, very unlikely that anyone is going to come up
with a new, insightful, and perceptive argument about init systems that is
going to change a bunch of people's minds in the course of a debian-vote
thread, given the past six (!!) years of project discussions. We've
already heard all the arguments. Many times. This is why the discussion
has focused on process and on ensuring the voting options reflect the
possible ways forward, rather than on the merits of the positions.
[1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/10/20/no-predict/
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Reply to: