Look how many platforms X supports, how many paradigm shifts has survived. systemd already has a less flexible architecture by design that an ancient system, so in the future it'll be difficult to untangle.
You should educate yourself about FUD, I recommend the Halloween documents, where they explain the unfeasibility of FUD tactics against an open source project, e.g. if someone tries to do it they won't get anywhere.
Facebook also uses PHP, the most reviled language around here. Google has a developer team to rewrite components and adapt the Linux kernel, consider that.
What offended about his post, out of curiosity? The Rube Goldberg analogy (I found that rather apt), or the "Professor Lucifer Butts" aspect of it (which I'll also confess to finding not the least apropos nickname for a certain Red Hatted German)?
I was chiding your comment for being rude, not salacious.
The first meaning of "scabrous" in my dictionary is "having a rough surface", and that's how I meant it. There's a long tradition of using that word to describe rough-and-tumble discourse, and it seemed fitting. You didn't just smack another user, you smacked them with a pointy implement (a link to an insulting image). That's not ok on HN. Neither is smacking people without a pointy implement. And telling another user "You're a liar and a coward, and you know it" is right out—a bannable offense, although we didn't ban you for it.
I'm insisting on this more than usual, because we don't want the pugilistic approach that is popular in some related (by subject matter, at least) online communities to take root here. When commenting on HN, please eliminate incivility from what you post.
This is a well thought out and complete response, it's just unfortunate that an image illustrating an overcomplicated system to solve a simple problem has elicited this censure; instead of the comment, in response to another user throwing a personal insult against an OSS hacker, where I call this user "a coward".
Your position about the place we want HN to be is clear, but I still believe the image is not insulting or offending anybody in any way. Those who flagged it, could they have misinterpreted it as an insult to the developers? An insult to the users? An inappropriate "scabrous" picture based on the URL? Or just as an attack to a program that needs our praise?
You're right. The "liar/coward" comment was the much greater offense, but that one was flag-killed.
I realize now that I was being too cute pulling out the old "scabrous" to make what is really an obvious and mundane point, and ended up confusing things. Sorry. I get bored sometimes and throw in variations which HN moderation comments are obviously not the place for. Let me try to be clearer.
There's nothing at all wrong with that image per se. It's great. I've made more than my share of Rube Goldberg analogies and know exactly where you're coming from. Had you linked to the same image in a thoughtful comment about overcomplicated systems, with no trace of incivility, of course it would be fine. It was only a problem in this context, i.e. a drive-by potshot in an inflamed discussion on a polarized topic.
Yeah, that's one of the 1% or so of politically-tinged bits of the project. The ones I can recall from the past few years are: systemd, ffmpeg vs. libav, libjpeg vs. libjpeg-turbo, and whether to ship GFDL-licensed documentation with invariant sections. Fortunately I don't really care about any of those. :-) The systemd debate is the only one of those that's actually a bit interesting to follow imo.
One quasi-political issue that has somewhat more pervasive importance is the general relationship between Debian packages and the Ubuntu packages derived from them, which occasionally is a point of friction if the maintainers have different goals. In most cases it isn't a big problem though, afaict. There are reasonable number of cases where it's even the same maintainer.
In May 2004, a Debian packet maintainer (Eduard Bloch) started to send repeated personal insults to Jörg Schilling after one of Bloch's patch requests against mkisofs was rejected because it was full of bugs.
In March 2006, a group of Debian maintainers started to attack the cdrtools project.
The latter attacks have been based on the fact that cdrtools was licensed under the GPL. As a result, on May 15th 2006 most projects from the cdrtools project bundle have been relicensed under CDDL (giving more freedom to users than the GPL does). At the same time, an important amount of additional code (DVD support code from Jörg Schilling and a Reed Solomon decoder from Heiko Eißfeldt) has been added to the freely published sources.
In summer 2006, the attacks from the group of Debian maintainers escalated and in September 2006, these people created something they call a fork from cdrtools. They soon added a lot of bugs and this way turned the "fork" into a questionable experiment. The last work on this "fork" has been done eight months later on May 6th 2007, then the leader of the attacks stopped his efforts on the fork and instead started to advertize for nerolinux. During the Debian project activity, the source code distributed by Debian was modified in a way that violates GPL and Copyright and makes it impossible to legally distribute this "fork" called "cdrkit". There is no license problem with the original cdrtools.
Ok, we can add that: there was also a debate about a cd-r/cd-rw app, spanning a period roughly 7-10 years ago. I'm not arguing that there has never been an acrimonious debate regarding a Debian package, just that it involves a vanishingly small proportion of packages. So few that I mostly only hear about these things via places like Slashdot (or a comment like this one).
There was no debate; the developer of cdrtools was just an asshole who (for example) refused to let users specify their CD-ROM drive by its actual /dev entry because he thought Linux should use (scsibus,target,lun) to identify devices like Solaris did. Eventually he fucked up the licensing of cdrtools enough that distros couldn't legally distribute it, Debian forked the last legally-distributable version under a new name, and all the other distros switched to their fork.
> Except that most distros DID distributed it UNALTERED, like Slackware, Gentoo, OpenSuSE, Ark Linux.
Only the ones small enough that they don't worry about getting sued. It's not just Debian developers that think there's a licensing issue that means they can't legally distribute it; the FSF and Red Hat's legal department also agree[1], and I believe even the authors of the CDDL (the GPL-incompatible license he's releasing most of cdrtools under) think that he's wrong.
> Only the ones small enough that they don't worry about getting sued
You got it backwards. Precisely only the big commercial distros with mighty legal teams (Debian, RedHat, Fedora) could afford to get away with violating the GPL, and stealing the name of the original project for the fork symlinks. Try to name your toy project something even remotely similar to redhat or debian and you'll be crushed like a bug.
Here I see powerful entities taking advantage of an individual hacker.
""" During the Debian project activity, the source code distributed by Debian was modified in a way that violates GPL and Copyright and makes it impossible to legally distribute this "fork" called "cdrkit". """
""" The GPL preamble (see also Urheberrecht §14 below) disallows modifications in case they are suitable to affect the original author's reputation. As Debian installs symlinks with the original program names and as many people still believe that the symlinks with the original program names are the original software, Debian does not follow the GPL.
GPL §2a requires to keep track of any author and change date inside all changed files. This is not done in the fork.
[...]
GPL §3 requires the complete source to be distributed if there is a binary distribution. The Debian fork tarball does not include everything needed to compile the cdrtools fork (complete source) and Debian does not give a written offer to deliver the missing parts. """
> Try to name your toy project something even remotely similar to redhat or debian and you'll be crushed like a bug.
In Debian's case at least, I don't think there's an objection to third-party projects or forks using names derived from the name "Debian", so long as they aren't actually identically the name "Debian". For example, there is a distribution called "Illumian" which is made up of the Illumos base OS and a Debian-derived userspace.
Besides, I don't really see a trademark issue here. The term "cdr" preexists both of the projects, and is owned by neither of them. A person named their software after a fairly generic derivative of this term, "cdrtools". And now they are complaining that someone else named their software a different generic derivative, "cdrkit"? Do they claim that nobody else should be able to use the prefix "cdr" followed by a noun? Given that they did not even invent the prefix "cdr", that seems like quit a stretch. That's like someone who named their backup product "Backup Tool" complaining that a different product is named "Backup Kit". Sorry, but you don't own the word "backup".
They did that so that scripts which run "cdrecord" or "mkisofs" continued to work, which I'm pretty sure is allowed under trademark law (trademarks don't apply to functional elements - if it wasn't for this, Oracle and Microsoft could kill off any third-party reimplementation of Java or many Windows APIs quite easily). If you run "cdrecord --version" it tells you that it's actually Wodim.
Ok, I agree with you entirely, just a quick response because I was quoting and so have the responsibility to avoid distorting other people's words. This didn't happen 7-10 years ago, that's when it started, but this continued happening until 2 or 3 years ago.
I hope all is clear now.
"""
Ask your Linux distributor to include recent originals instead of broken forks.
Tell them that you like to decide yourself which program you choose. Whether it is the fork or whether it is the original program depends on which package works better.
[...]
The following Linux distributions currently work against the freedom of their users:
Debian, RedHat, Fedora
If you know of other unfree distributions, please report.
The following Linux distributions currently grant their users the freedom to select the better CD/DVD/Blu-Ray writing software:
Your response only makes sense if your alternatives are: (1) systemd, (2) sysvinit and (3) a horrible death.
I know dozens of init systems that do much more, markedly better than systemd, and are modular so you can easily replace them when the time for a new technology comes. systemd is very recent, and still its opinionated architecture is showing inflexible to changes.
(1) systemd
(2) write and advocate the usage of a different init system.
(3) a horrible death
I'm certainly not opposed to having a better alternative, but the systemd people managed to write something that is better than sysvinit and made the package good enough to get people to use it. Now people complain that they're taking over the linux world by force, but they actually don't. They just provide something people want - it's not that they forced the gnome people at gunpoint to use systemd.
Better in some ways, worse in others. If systemd were unequivocally better in all areas, nobody would be complaining. By saying what you said, you're subtly but deliberately telling every one of those people that their concerns are irrelevant and/or a result of their ignorance. This is the systemd developers' M.O. and a large part of the reason why there's so much drama over systemd.
Right, "better" is a relative term in software. I'm not disputing that there certainly are problems in systemd, but as a package I still think that systemd does more things "better" than sysvinit than it does things worse. There's certainly a lot of room for improvement - build upon it and create and advocate an init system that is better than systemd in more areas than it is worse.
> This is the systemd developers' M.O.
So far I've mostly seen "we believe this is better and we'll build it this way, like it or leave." That's certainly opinionated, but hey, they're totally entitled to have that view (why would they build it if they thought it's worse?!) My view and your view may differ, but we don't get to complain unless we provide something that we think is better and get a lot of people to agree on that.
>I'm not disputing that there certainly are problems in systemd, but as a package I still think that systemd does more things "better" than sysvinit than it does things worse.
The community seems pretty evenly split on this point, with folks like myself taking the opposite view: systemd is a regression in so many fundamental areas that its improvements in things like boot times and init script syntax just are not worth the tradeoffs that it imposes. I don't care if the frogurt is free when it's full of potassium benzoate.
Sure, if that's your view, I'm fine with that. If the people that build the distro-of-choice for me decide that frogurt is the best init system for the distro they want to build, I'll either swallow that or move on to something that uses guaranteed potassium-benzoate-free-frogurt as init, but I'm not going to tell them that they're not allowed to do this. Because they are. You don't have to like it, you don't have to eat it but they're free in their choice just as you are free to build something else.
>You don't have to like it, you don't have to eat it but they're free in their choice just as you are free to build something else.
And I'm also free to correctly identify that their poor leadership decisions are ruining a wonderful piece of software and causing the community, including Ian fucking Jackson, to abandon the group that made it possible.
I happen to like modern daemontools-like init systems a lot, (runit, s6) but I use various init systems depending on what I want, and that's great IMO.
The problem is that systemd is that is being forcefully pushed to all distros. For instance, by merging udev with systemd. We want to keep all the alternatives available.
I don't see any force involved. udev is their code. Don't like how they use it - fork.
I understand your pain, I sometimes don't like the direction things that I use move or the ways they change, but I'm not sitting at the sidelines complaining about being pushed around. I get to use stuff others provided for free, I'm grateful for that and I either fork/change it or move on to something else. I'm not in a position to tell them what they should be spending their time on.
Lennart Poettering could just stop developing and supporting udev any second, that's his personal decision and I couldn't say "he forced me to use windows" and I don't see anybody else could.
Don't like the (maybe) coming systemd dependency for udev? Build the code to set up the bus yourself or pay someone or wait until someone knowledgeable gets sufficiently fed up and builds something. Same for the gnome dependency on systemd: Either accept it or contribute the time to make it work without while retaining the features it has.
Not only udev, they roadmap is to pack the whole system so as to remove any difference between linux installs, their words, not mine. Currently, we can fork udev, but in the future, are you telling my to fork the whole operating system? And all applications that unnecessarily depend on said system? That would require millions of dollars, at least.
Also, Windows can also be forked, by distributing patches instead of binaries. So that argument is a red herring, DOS has been forked before, and every proprietary application, but that doesn't mean I can't ask other developers a bit of respect for those of us who are using other init systems, I will maintain my software, just let me do that. All the discourse about democracy around GNU/Linux wasn't supposed to be summed up as "Fork or GTFO".
> Currently, we can fork udev, but in the future, are you telling my to fork the whole operating system? And all applications that unnecessarily depend on said system? That would require millions of dollars, at least.
Yes, indeed, I do. Because most applications will not unnecessarily depend on systemd, but rather because the dependency provides some (perceived) benefit to the developers. And if the developers decide that the benefit is worth the dependency, they'll do it. And if you want to prevent that future, you need to provide something that offsets the benefit - write the test and compat code to support gentoo, write the docs, provide the money (or other incentive) for the developers to do so. That's how it works. You don't have to do all of that yourself, you can form a group, build your own distro, run a fundraiser, whatever you choose. But you don't get to sit back and complain and hope the world changes for you and neither do I.
There's no democracy in the OSS scene, users don't get to decide what the software they use looks like and even maintainers or other software have no vote. It's more like a market - we use what's best for our personal cause. You pick and choose and the software with the most users will prevail, others either hold their ground or disappear (ConsoleKit).
Who are this developers you keep talking about? When Microsoft bundled IE, WMP with Windows, we said, OK, developers decided that the benefit is worth the dependency, they'll do it, but we didn't like that, I'm not talking about legal issues, what I'm saying is this is an attack to the GNU/Linux philosophy. If GNU/Linux closed its source and went proprietary, you would say exactly the same things: Fork or GTFO. But I would say, this is not right. I just don't want systemd bundled with necessary GNU/Linux components, like the Linux kernel, in the future. As simple as that.
All this discussion doesn't and won't preclude me from do all the things you said under "preventing the future".
People developing software. For example the gnome folks. You, me. (don't know about you, but I have services that use systemd for starting and supervising the service)
> If GNU/Linux closed its source and went proprietary, you would say exactly the same things: Fork or GTFO.
Yes, actually, yes. If Linus decided that all future development he wants to do is now closed source, I either have the option to fork and continue in the open or GTFO. I'm not the one to decide what he can to in his time. There's be a number of legal issues surrounding that, for example that he can't take the current kernel code, but if he decides that within the given framework he closes his development, fine with me. If Linus decides that he thinks that a deep integration between the kernel and systemd is the way forward for his project, I have to accept that. I may not like it, but unless I do something to change it I can't force it any other way.
The beauty of OSS is that you can exactly do that - take the last public version and make something better, something that's more the way you like it, no matter what the original owner thinks, says or does.
Not if Linus decided that, if the Linux Foundation decided that they wanted to switch the license to proprietary. See the mailing list message of Linus against deep integration between the kernel and systemd!
> The beauty of OSS is that you can exactly do that - take the last public version and make something better, something that's more the way you like it, no matter what the original owner thinks, says or does.
Read my previous comment: The beauty of proprietary software is that you can exactly do that - take the last public version, patch it and make something better, something that's more the way you like it, no matter what the original owner thinks, says or does. :)
> Not if Linus decided that, if the Linux Foundation decided that they wanted to go commercial. See the mailing list message of Linux against deep integration between the kernel and systemd!
Why not? Do you pay them for their time? I don't. So who am I, what do they owe me? Nothing. Not even a new free version of linux.
>Read my previous comment: The beauty of proprietary software is that you can exactly do that - take the last public version, patch it and make something better, something that's more the way you like it, no matter what the original owner thinks, says or does. :)
No, actually you can't. You're not entitled to unless you specifically sought a license that permits it. All Open Source Licenses grant you that permission.
Well, if Microsoft could, and did, port IE and Office to UNIX, why would the free and open software people have a problem in allowing more user choice? Why would they need to hard depend on software designed to be non-replaceable? With most free software organizations set up as nonprofit, we must hold them to a higher standard to ensure their continuity under the legal framework.
> No, actually you can't. You're not entitled to unless you specifically sought a license that permits it
> Well, if Microsoft could, and did, port IE and Office to UNIX, why would the free and open software people have a problem in allowing more user choice?
No, why? If they port it and even if they provide it closed source binary only, I'd still believe that an open source browser and office packet are fundamentally more in societies interest, but they're certainly entitled to build and distribute IE and Office for linux/unix/catOS and I'm not entitled to tell them to stop. Given the license of pretty much all linux distributions I think nobody would be. Just as microsoft allows the distribution of OpenOffice and Firefox for Windows. They don't have to like it.
>> No, actually you can't. You're not entitled to unless you specifically sought a license that permits it
> Please take a look at 17 U.S. Code § 117.
I'm not going to discuss american law with you, but please note that this paragraph puts severe restrictions on redistribution of copies, while the GPL does not. I'm not a law scholar, much less an american law scholar but I don't think this means what you think it does.
I'll tell you one thing, I know nothing about you, but this person is considered by many the best programmer in the world, one thing is certain, compared to the good done to the world, he's various levels above you and me, he's the creator of daemontools, the way it follows the unix philosophy has been an inspiration, I'll refer you to this page about software law http://cr.yp.to/softwarelaw.html
It seems you don't read my comments, because I've edited binaries, and distributed patches of proprietary software, that's not illegal, only I didn't distribute the binary or code without permission. Let me tell you, having systemd source doesn't help me at all because it's a megalithic blob.
Is the GPL a good thing? Yes, BUT just because you license your junk with the GPL you don't deserve a Nobel peace price. You seem to think that had Hitler released a hello world program with a GPL license he would be a saint, and can't be criticized, "fork or shut up", you say?
Please note that the link you posted says exactly what I was stating:
> As long as you're not distributing the software, you have nothing to worry about.
You're not allowed to redistribute the software, modified or not. GPL or any other OSS license grants you the the permission. (and no, distributing software under GPL does not make you a saint or even a good person. See Reiser)
No shit, I don't distribute the GNU/Linux software either, too big and inconvenient (GB) compared to a patch (bytes).
>> GPL or any other OSS license grants you the the permission
The sysvinit alternatives that I know and use, all use an OSS license, most of them less restrictive (BSD or MIT). I use free (as in freedom) software; that's why systemd is harmful to me, always trying to create incompatibilities with other open source programs lacking a multi-million corporation backer.
If there are really "dozens of init systems" out there that "do much more, markedly better than systemd, and are modular" how come exactly zero of them have been adopted by any Linux distro of note?
systemd is not an init system, that's how it started, but they state they want to comprise a whole OS.
Debian may seem too big to die, but they are slowly being commoditized away, because RedHat is known to offer better sales force, better service and support:
How do you differentiate your product if your core mission is to ensure
that your product operates exactly as your competition? The bottom
line is that you don't
> because RedHat is known to offer better sales force, better service and support
When did Debian ever offer support or sales? Debian is not a corporation, it works under a different paradigm. Debian will be the last Linux distribution to die, and it might even survive as a non-Linux OS. As long as there are people who can benefit from a free open-source operating system, and people willing to dedicate their time to make it possible, Debian will live on.
That's precisely the point, it's part of the quote, the more Debian standardizes on the upcoming systemd distro, it'll get erased by RedHat real fast, who offers a differentiating advantage.
How do you differentiate your product if your core mission is to ensure
that your product operates exactly as your competition? The bottom
line is that you don't .... Theoretically, you could have a better
sales force or better service and support .... Yet these are the assets
of the larger, entrenched companies.
> As long as there are people who can benefit from a free open-source operating system
As if Debian were the only free open-source OS... Not even considering only GNU/Linux, where Slackware was first (why not also last?).
> and people willing to dedicate their time
A complete OS will take much more than that, if Debian loses relevance, people will leave. What differentiating advantage to choose Debian over CentOS or Fedora? Debian will have to fight that battle, being or not a corporation is irrelevant.
I hope Debian endures, but you have to understand that systemd standardization is not going to be positive to Debian relevance.
It's the only free open-source OS backed by an explicitly democratic approach, enshrined in its constitution. It's "the GNU System that works, will always be Free, and will give an equal say to any developer" (at least in theory). All the other distributions are owned by a specific group of people (or in the RedHat case, by shareholders) and/or are not Free. That's the Debian differentiator that RedHat will never be able to match, no matter how many "community editions" they sponsor.
> What differentiating advantage to choose Debian over CentOS or Fedora?
Those are both owned by a corporation.
> being or not a corporation is irrelevant
I respectfully disagree there. You just have to look at the evolution of the Linux ecosystem to see how "being or not a corporation" makes a huge difference. History is littered with corpses of Linux vendors. In fact, there is an argument for big Linux projects being naturally incapable of making money as corporations in the long run, a concept that was seriously challenged only by RedHat and Ubuntu at this point.
> you have to understand that systemd standardization is not going to be positive to Debian relevance.
My point is, if that's the case, the project will likely have the necessary strength to reconsider and correct this choice later on. It's not like they can "run out of money" or something like that; they have such a huge mindshare that it would take ages to dissipate, and votes seem to indicate that most developers don't really care about the init system that much. If things come to worst, Jesse will just go down in history as a terrible release (wouldn't be the first...) and the project will move on.
If anything, it's downstream projects that have to worry (i.e. Ubuntu) since they have to differentiate in a competitive market, but they seem to have already adopted systemd, so...
> "being or not a corporation" makes a huge difference
Take a look at Mozilla, they implemented DRM, otherwise they could have lost relevance, they explained.
Now Debian must commit resources just making everything work with every new "innovation" brought by systemd. RedHat will dictate the pace and the terms, Debian will follow, and once the future "systemd + linux OS" integration has been declared standard, they can't correct the decision, they will be stuck with "systemd OS" forever.
"because RedHat is known to offer better sales force, better service and support"
And tremendously longer support periods.
Right now I'm helping a non-profit move from squeeze and XCP/XenCenter (which is CentOS), which I initially set up for them, to wheezy. And we're looking rather enviously at the RHEL/CentOS support periods. Even before this systemd debacle, something else was looking likely for when wheezy support ends.
Don't quote me on this, but I recall reading from official channels that the last Debian version without mandatory systemd is going to see its support period indefinitely extended for a long time. Good luck! :)
If it's anything like the squeeze LTS experiment it's not going to be suitable for a number of people. There are a number of things they've been forced to abandon for various reasons.
And per the above experiment, it's not something you can depend on, not something you can build your plans around.
You should educate yourself about FUD, I recommend the Halloween documents, where they explain the unfeasibility of FUD tactics against an open source project, and that if someone tries to do it they won't get anywhere.
I followed a link to webarchive and, coincidentally, ended up on the slashdot homepage from about 2000 I think, RedHat was becoming a threat to Linux, just like Microsoft, and it's interesting to me how well they predicted the future, they noticed that GPL, open source... (as Microsoft's github account shows) wouldn't stop a company from maneuvering, entrenching its position and dominating the marketplace.
