[Arm-netbook] Logging and journaling

[zap]

On 02/09/2017 12:15 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 3:49 PM, Julie Marchant <onpon4 at riseup.net> wrote:
>
>> I don't personally care whether or not my system includes systemd (it
>> does), but I have seen no evidence of wrongdoing by the systemd
>> developers. Every single case of systemd adoption I am aware of was
>> because the maintainers of a distro wanted to adopt it. And systemd is
>> libre, even copylefted. There are no ethical grounds to oppose it.
>  you're right... at face value.  it's complicated, and took me a long
> time to work out what the problem is, and even longer to be able to
> express it.
>
>> Besides, people who hate systemd would choose Devuan rather than Debian.
>> Why would you give people who ordered a computer card with Debian (i.e.
>> using systemd) something they didn't ask for? Best-case scenario, no one
>> cares. Worst-case scenario, you make a decision that turns out to be a
>> maintenance burden for you and annoys some of your backers. Regardless
>> of your opinion on the matter, this isn't a battle you should be
>> fighting, at least not here.
>  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.
>
>  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.
>
>  so the consequences are much more severe than it seems at face value.
>
>  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.
>
> 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).
> archlinux, as a smaller community which is a running distro, fared
> much better, because it is a tight-knit community where all its users
> are required to keep much more up-to-date.  thus there was much less
> of a problem.  as they are a little bit more technically-minded,
> several of them created community-based repos that allow systemd to be
> replaced entirely by sysvinit, and udev to be replaced with eudev.  it
> works very well and is faster to boot on the a20.  it's also seamless
> and completely non-disruptive.  the faster turnaround time on
> archlinux allowed debugging and testing to be completed rapidly.
>
> now, from a technical perspective, the *specific* technical issues
> with systemd are best expressed by andrew tridgell's evaluation of
> systemd, which can be found on the samba mailing lists.  the warnings
> that he outlined would come true *have* come true - several times
> already, in the form of the security vulnerabilities that he predicted
> would occur.  remember: andrew is an extremely experienced low-level
> systems programmer and reverse-engineer, who has had to deal with some
> extreme attacks against samba, so he's very knowledgeable about how to
> code and design software in a strategic fashion that will mitigate
> against attacks.
S does Systemd have security issues? privacy issues? stability issues?

or a combination of two or all three?

If you say yes to one or more,

then probably people shouldn't be using systemd... at least if it has
more issues than the other options anyways.

which I am assuming is the case.

right Luke?

I may not know all the issues so please enlighten me further.

>
> summary: he's *deeply* unimpressed with the design and continued
> escalating scope-creep of systemd, but, unlike many people who warn or
> complain about it, he actually *knows* what he's talking about.
>
> so do i... but i lack his ability to vocalise my thoughts in a
> short-term timeframe, it tends to take me much longer to be able to
> express things clearly (by which time often it's far too late *sigh*).
>
> anyway, bottom line: from what i know of systemd (that includes
> libsystemd0) i know the pain that it will bring people, and because of
> that i cannot possibly distribute it to others.  it would be a
> fundamental violation of my ethical principles to do so.  i'm *really*
> not happy with the fact that i'll be supplying it to the backers who
> pledged for fedora cards.  i'll have to think how to deal with that.
>
> l.
>
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