For those interested in technopolitics: the concern around a necessary fork of
Debian is growing. This declaration generated some interesting threads on HN
http://debianfork.org . Pasting it here.
Needless to say I feel very much like the Veteran Unix Admins. Not debating if
this systemd is amazing good code or not - simply smells not to me, knowing
pulseaudio: really made by desktop minded people in comparison, for instance,
to jack
But srsly wearing the admin hat: I would never run anything so big as systemd
on my production servers before it has been at least 10 years around...
Shall we fork Debian™? :^|
Who are you?!
We are Veteran Unix Admins and we are concerned about what is happening to
Debian GNU/Linux to the point of considering a fork of the project.
And why would you do that?
Some of us are upstream developers, some professional sysadmins: we are
all concerned peers interacting with Debian and derivatives on a daily
basis.
We don't want to be forced to use systemd in substitution to the
traditional UNIX sysvinit init, because systemd betrays the UNIX
philosophy.
We contemplate adopting more recent alternatives to sysvinit, but not
those undermining the basic design principles of do one thing and do it
well with a complex collection of dozens of tightly coupled binaries and
opaque logs.
Are there better solutions than forking?
Yes: vote [1]Ian Jackson's proposal to preserve freedom of choice of init
systems.
Then make sure sysvinit stays the default for now, systemd can be
optional.
Debian leaders can go on evaluating more init systems, just not impose one
that ignores the needs of most of its users.
Why don't you do that yourselves?
We are excluded from voting on the issue: only few of us have the time and
patience to interact with Debian on a voluntary basis.
Now we do what we can, hoping our concerns will be heard by those who can
cast a vote about it.
[edit/clarification]
Since this seems to be one of the most prominent critiques, we'd like to
clarify this point.
With lack of time and patience we refer to our possibility to be involved in a
complex
bureaucratic system like the one governing Debian. While we respect this way
of working,
we think that our time is better invested in new directions, also according to
our expertise.
Is really all this fuss necessary?
To quote Ian Jackson:
This resolution is not only important within Debian, and not only for
jessie (its next release). It is also important feedback for upstreams,
and our peer distros and downstreams.
Why is this happening in your opinion?
The current leadership of the project is heavily influenced by GNOME
developers and too much inclined to consider desktop needs as crucial to
the project, despite the fact that the majority of Debian users are
tech-savvy system administrators.
Can you articulate your critique to systemd?
To paraphrase Eric S. Raymond on the issue, we see systemd being very
prone to mission creep and bloat and likely to turn into a nasty hairball
over the longer term.
We like controlling the startup of the system with shell scripts that are
readable, because readability grants a certain level of power and
consciousness for those among us who are literate, and we believe that
centralizing control services, sockets, devices, mounts, etc., all within
one daemon is a slap in the face of the UNIX philosophy.
How long are your beards?
This is not a beard contest, rest assured the furry ones among us are not
sheeps.
To sum it up?
If systemd will be substituting sysvinit in Debian, we will fork the
project and create a new distro. We hope this won't be necessary, but we
are well prepared for it.
We need to talk.
Sure, write an email to VUA at debianfork dot org.
Are you guys alone in this?
Not at all, there are more protests against the imposition of systemd on
users.
This article is a good introduction to the issue at hand: [2]Systemd:
Harbinger of the Linux apocalypse.
There is the [3]boycott systemd website providing several references.
Then there is the systemd fork called [4]uselessd with some good points
and lots of lulz.
The wikipedia page lists also some critiques in its [5]systemd reception
section.
With our protest we intend to represent the discontent of Debian users,
because that's who we are. We intend to keep using Debian on our servers,
or a fork if necessary. Others might have other goals, but we all share a
common problem: systemd being imposed on us.
Thanks for doing this. How can I help?
Cheers.
You can help by talking to fellow Debian developers and convince them of
how wrong is to betray a very big and relevant userbase by listening to
desktop needs.
Also it can be helpful to monitor and update the
