Quoting russ...@coker.com.au (russ...@coker.com.au):
> More complex things have been done in Debian before. Getting the full GNOME
> functionality without systemd might not be possible, but getting the
> functionality that most people want (IE what has been commonly available
> before systemd) shouldn't be difficult. Unless of course they alienate most
> of the people who are capable of doing the coding in question.
Even at that, maintaining compatible repos of components modified to the
preferences of a community is something done all the time. I pointed
out to the Devuan people that the Siduction and (now-dormant) Aptosid
distributions have done exactly this, for many years.
(Both of those are installable live-CD distros closely compatible with
Debian-unstable with repos to do stabilisation and add some small local
improvements.)
> Why systemd out of all the things that I have blogged about?
Give me a few milion AUS$, and I'll do a proper sociological study.
Short of that, I can speculate:
Being angry at SE-Linux maintainers would be the world's lamest and
least dramatic way of expressing pique at NSA over data collection.
Also, poorly socialised nerds don't perceive NSA as taking their toys
away the way (e.g.) entitlement-crazed debian-user subscribers do when
faced with the prospect of 1000+ developers not promising to do do
exactly what they, the debian-user subscribers, want.
I intend the phrase 'taking their toys away' figuratively, but sometimes
this can be observed more literally, a spit the dummy instance[1] --
such as when my co-worker Nick Moffitt at VA Linux Systems rashly
mentioned on the internal developers' mailing list that one of the tools
they were using is proprietary. I told him 'Nick, you shouldn't have
been surprised at the screams of outrage. They read your posting as
threatening to take their toys away.' Technogeeks do that at the drop
of a hat.
However, I think it a rather more likely factor that the 8Chan types had
already glommed onto the systemd discussion within Debian as being a
symbolic 'SJW' issue, hence they jumped in with their characteristic
vitriol even though they overwhelmingly have little or no interest in
Debian or even Linux.
And, if you're referring in particular to your 'anti-systemd-people'
blog post, if you didn't set out to flamebait that lot (and, actually,
to flamebait anyone who's not an admirer of the systemd suite), you sure
did a heck of a job of it without trying in _that_ posting. I mean, if
you tell me you weren't aiming for that, I'll believe you, but I've
seldom seen something that _is_ that flamebaity, so intended or not.
And, of course, that lot are simply the noisiest people around.
> Why is systemd the sole technical issue which has resulted in so much abuse?
> Why are 2 of the 3 topics which get abuse targetted by the same people?
Because you drew spillover from dumb, noisy, emotive culture-warfare
habituated by dumb, noisy, emotive people. Obviously. Has nothing
really to do with Debian, and nothing even really to do with Linux.
> Actually others have been identified. But some of the discussion in question
> has been on private mailing lists.
I commented (obviously) only on what I saw, which is what you posted
here and on your blog.
> The options that were most seriously considered for a Debian default were
> systemd and SysVInit.
I'm of course aware of that, but this seems entirely unresponsive to my point.
> Some addresses have been banned from the Debian BTS. But that doesn't
> scale well and causes some annoyance to people maintaining the
> packages in question and the Debian sysadmin team. You don't get to
> just use a killfile if you are part of a project like Debian.
I see nothing in the Social Contract, New Maintainer's Guide, or any
other aspect of being a DD that would in any way mitigate against
killfiling abusive people. Nor should there be.
But on the other had, Joey Hess is a good friend of mine, and I know
quite a bit about how his dismay over the whole systemd fiasco lead to
his resignation and walking away -- a terrible loss to the project.
I might point out that his primary source of alienation was not the
flamers but rather the extreme organisational dysfunction revealed to
him by the way the project conducted itself. Joey came to the
conclusion that the Debian Constitution is toxic, causing dysfunction
and pushing away good people as an emergent effect.
> True. But the whole process of arguing about systemd has put a lot of people
> off. Anyone who's not up for an argument is probably giving such packages a
> wide berth.
As I said, Joey is a good friend of mine -- and in his view the problem
was less the outside users' misbehaviour than Debian Project's, itself.
(I make no comment on his view. You would have to ask him for any
further particulars, so please don't expect me to provide them.)
> It is exactly linked with those utilities.
{sigh} Your phrase 'linked to' has multiple meanings, and I thought it
would be entirely evident that I was reading your comment as implying
some of those broader meanings. _Of course_ I know that Busybox
implements its version of cp, mv, ls, etc. via hard links to
/usr/bin/busybox. That's the _first thing_ to learn about BusyBox.
I had _thought_ my meaning was quite clear. Sometimes, Russell, you are
pretty amazingly unable to deal with nuance.
> Not that I think such concerns about security should be an issue. I think
> that PID1 should be simple enough that attacks aren't viable.
It seems wisest to pare it down to the minimal functionality required.
> One corner case that socket activation could be good for is daemons that
> aren't really needed.
Indeed. This is where inetd/xinetd (or s6-tcpserver or tcpsvd) really
shine -- on the rare cases where you need them.
> > I'm hardly 'desperate' to call myself a feminist.
>
> Then why are we even discussing it?
Because (some months ago) you went out of your way to deny that I'm one,
and I found that _very_ amusing, and because I have an entirely unfair
sense of humour such that I'm glad to still needle you over that. ;->
[1] Nobody I know here in California would understand that figure of
speech, so call that Oz localisation. Yr. welcome. ;->
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