[Arm-netbook] Logging and journaling

Thu Feb 9 19:38:43 GMT 2017

On 02/09/2017 12:15 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
>  i have some rules, julie, which are not really negotiable.  i cannot
> provide something to people which i *know* will cause them pain and
> anguish.  it's simply not possible for me to do that, even if they
> themselves are not able to follow the (potentially complex) logic
> which led me to conclude that, by providing something to them, it
> would cause them distress at some point in their future.

I've been using systemd ever since I installed Debian 8, and then Ubuntu
16.04. It's the same experience: I push the power button, and it boots
successfully every time. It hasn't caused me "pain" or "distress".

What *could* cause me distress is if I ordered a computer with Debian on
it, and I instead got some modified version that doesn't work the same
way. Another thing that could cause me distress is if a problem occurs
that just doesn't happen in stock Debian because of unnecessary
modifications you made. Anyone experiencing distress for either of these
reasons is not going to be persuaded by your vague "I looked into it,
systemd is terrible" stance. They will simply stop trusting you.

>  the *whole project* is based on that premise.  if i start
> deliberately and consciously compromising *even once* then i am
> screwed and cannot be trusted publicly to ever honor my commitments to
> integrity of purpose, ever again.  mistakes, yeah fine.  *deliberate*
> compromises that cost me my integrity: i'm done, and the entire
> project's a failure.

Where in the EOMA68 campaign did you say that you would purge systemd
from the Debian and Parabola systems you distribute?

For the record, if you had said that, I would have only ordered a
computer card with the understanding that I would have to wipe clean
whatever system is pre-installed on it and install my system of choice
myself. Not because I want systemd per se, but because I've used an
unofficial barely maintained spin of Debian before (Pandian), and it was
not a great experience.

As for not compromising, the only compromises you should avoid are
*ruinous* compromises. Is offering systems that have systemd on them a
ruinous compromise? I don't think so. The only issues raised by it are
technical issues. If there is any reason that systemd is *unethical*, no
one to my knowledge has raised that as an issue.

If your principles include refusing to give something to someone simply
because of *technical* inferiority, that's just a bad principle. You
seem to be an intelligent guy, but you don't know everything, and in
particular you are not in a position to judge the entire world's
technical needs. If you don't think Debian is something that fits
people's needs, it's fine to not offer it, but if you do agree to put
Debian on the card, that should be *stock Debian* to the best of your
ability, not some custom version of it.

>  you noticed that all the individual distros made a choice.  they made
> those decisions freely and without consultation with other distros
> because their job is to focus on *their* distro.
> 
>  and that the systemd team, working in isolation from distros and only
> having links to the software package writers, also made their
> technical decisions as best they can.
> 
> then, also, the package writers, working in isolation, because it's
> not their job to be a distro maintainer or an init PID1 software
> developer, *also* made their decisions freely and perfectly well,
> without wider consultation, because that's *also* their job.
> 
> so it's important to note: there is *nothing wrong* with these
> separate processes, *nobody did anything wrong*.  each team is
> *perfectly* executing their localised strategy for the development and
> maintenance of *their* project.
> 
> taken collectively, however, is where the problems start.  the
> *ENTIRE* free software community, like a "shoal of fish", suddenly
> switched direction, without warning, without thinking, and, crucially,
> WITHOUT CONSULTING THE USERS.

Luke, that's standard practice in libre software development. No one
voted on GNOME 3, the recent interface change for Firefox, or Linux as
the kernel everyone uses. These all just *happened*. Some are the result
of individual projects, and in that case you get forks like MATE and
Pale Moon. Some are a result of implied consensus, like the adoption of
Linux and now systemd.

But in any case, no one is ever forced to go with the changes. They go
along with the changes either because they agree with them, or they
don't care. Now, the people who don't care can cause social inertia to
favor things that are bad, like proprietary programs, but you have to
demonstrate that those things are bad. You can't just say that
*everything* that's allowed to happen because the users don't care is a
problem, and if there is a problem you can identify, the fact that it's
being adopted because of social inertia from people who don't care is
unimportant.

And like you admitted here, the systemd developers did nothing wrong. So
how, then, is it appropriate to boycott systemd?

> now, if we take for example debian, we know that it has a charter.
> it's a written contract that everyone understands and accepts.  the
> bits that are *NOT* included - *NOT* written down - but are
> "unspoken", is that the end-users place their trust in the debian
> maintainers to not disrupt their lives by making decisions that would
> force them to take drastic and costly action.
> 
> this UNSPOKEN and UNWRITTEN agreement is what the debian developers
> very unfortunately violated by ignoring the vote on default choice of
> init system which SPECIFICALLY concluded that systemd would be the
> absolute worst possible choice to make.  they paid the price for that
> decision with the loss of many key strategic developers, and are
> beginning to make amends by incorporating several init systems into
> the current debian/testing (but still leaving libsystemd0 in place).

First of all, Debian made a change for its *next* release, i.e. during
the testing period. There is not an unwritten agreement that the testing
release will be stable; only the stable releases are stable. People who
are using Debian still have time *now* before they need to upgrade to
the version of Debian that uses systemd, and heck, there's nothing
stopping them from continuing to use sysvinit if they really want to. I
find it baffling that you consider this to be something that "disrupts
their lives", and not the Iceweasel updates which always come in due to
the way Firefox is developed. Because of security concerns, Debian
Stable actually adds major updates to Iceweasel. Yeah, it sticks with
ESR releases when possible, but when the next ESR release comes in, it's
updated to that. So you have the potential (although unlikely) for
browser add-on breakage *within* a stable release, and what you're
worried about is the potential (although unlikely) for init script
breakage *between* releases?

Secondly, it just isn't true that systemd was voted as the "absolute
worst possible choice to make". systemd was tied for *first place* with
Upstart.[1] In fact, *sysvinit* was voted as least favorable.

But ultimately, if you think that *Debian* did something wrong, why are
you pinning this on systemd? If you're going to take a hardline stance
based on the way that Debian switched to systemd, then surely you should
be refusing to give people Debian, period.

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2014/02/msg00402.html

-- 
Julie Marchant
https://onpon4.github.io

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