[Arm-netbook] systemd nonsense ad-infinitum

[Neil Jansen]

On Tue, Jul 4, 2017 at 1:07 PM, Christopher Havel <laserhawk64 at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> With all due respect, some people can't code. Do they not deserve a voice?


As far as Linux is concerned, no, they usually don't get a voice in how the
software is written.  Why would they? Volunteer programmers usually work on
what *they* want, not what *others* want.  If others find it useful, then
great, and if they find bugs, then even better.  But I don't think that
very many loner programmers writing FOSS software these days are doing user
studies and UX whiteboarding and all that.  They're the exception, not the
rule.

Linux has always been a "my way or the highway (to look for another OSS
alternative / distro)" type thing.  In the past this worked pretty great,
if people didn't like distro A it lost popularity to distro B, and life was
good.

I think the problem is that the ecosystem has gotten so big and so
corporate that there's a bigger inequality between distros and software
that have corporate support, and those that don't.  That's a wild-ass
generalization, but stop to think for a second at how many of the most
popular distros right now are corporately backed or are using important
bits of corporately backed software.

Then look at how many Linux users are loading binary blobs like video
drivers, wifi drivers, etc.  I'd bet that the no-programming-experience
end-user is MORE likely to load binary blobs, and they're MORE likely to
run systemd without even knowing what the fuck a systemd is.  Look at the
Raspberry Pi as a primary example.  I've got senior level principle
engineers at my job that think that the Raspberry Pi is 100% open source,
PCB's and all.  Obviously not true but they've not even looked.  They're
living in a false reality, but that's OK for them, as long as they can use
it as a Kodi server they're happy.  These aren't dumb people.  These are
just people with a different set of priorities in life.

So tl;dr, 'no-programming-experience' users don't get a voice in what gets
written, but do get a voice in what software they run.  But most don't
really care, they just want free software that works, and aren't really in
it for the philosophy that others espouse.  ymmv.  herding cats and all
that.