Hi, After reading https://www.debian.org/vote/2014/vote_003 in full again, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to publically withdraw my support for Choice 2, after re-reading it several times and sleeping over it.
So why do I dislike choice 2?
Choice 2 has two paragraphs I disagree with, rather strongly by now:
----begin part 1
Package maintainers are strongly encouraged to merge any contributions
for support of any init system, and to add that support themselves if
they're willing and capable of doing so. In particular, package
maintainers should put a high priority on merging changes to support
any init system which is the default on one of Debian's non-Linux
ports.
----end part 1
----begin part 2
There may be some loss of
functionality under sysvinit if that loss is considered acceptable by
the package maintainer and the package is still basically functional,
but Debian's standard requirement to support smooth upgrades from
wheezy to jessie still applies, even when the system is booted with
sysvinit.
----end part 2
So, about part 1 I disagree with telling maintainers what to do, that they
should priorize supporting other init systems. IMO thats a.) completly up
to the maintainer and b.) I think prioritizing security fixes and usability
features and plain simple features is probably most always more beneficial
for the average user. Or: whatever it is, but I hardly doubt it's wise to
always prioritize support for whatever niche initsystem.
So (IMNSHO anymore) this is stupid advice (with a "should" statement no less)
harming our software and our users. I blame lost focus due to a distorted
"discussion" for this.
And part 2 is too vague and broad at the same time, and also unrealistic given
the circumstances (eg wanting to release in 2015). Again, I think these words
aim and prioritize a rather unimportant (and unspecific) feature (and whats a
smooth upgrade anyway? IMO a reboot is part of a smooth upgrade as only after
a reboot I know the system can be rebooted safely...) and take away the
opportunity to do the right thing instead.
Choice 2 is certainly better than choice 1, which completly unacceptably tells
maintainers they have to support (and provide) a removed legacy upstream
feature. Or better: invent a new system which they have no interest to create.
IOW: those who believe in choice 1 think they can tell others to write patches
(and how!). Which is soo much out of bounds with Debians ideals and practices
since over 20 years that I'm speechless.
I'm also utterly disgusted that this GR was proposed by Ian, someone who
perceives himself as loser of the tech-ctte decision (instead of accepting
a group decission of a group which he is part of) and thus deciced to beat
Debian into shape via this GR - and who has already announced that he will
not keep quiet if he looses the GR and only will be quiet if he wins.
(I'm happy to provide the message-id for this... but I'm sure people do
rememeber.)
This makes me quite very sad. From a responsible and reasonable tech-ctte
member I would have expected (and I still expect!) to see the bias and act
accordingly, as in: step back.
cheers,
Holger
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