Hello,
Very nicely written, especially about abandoning portability and POSIX
compatibility as well as UNIX philosophy. Examples are dbus and systemd.
Can you write this down somewhere, in devuan/elsewhere, so it can be
linked to? It might be useful to spread the word about this :-)
Thanks,
from a (currently Debian) GNU/Hurd porter
On Thu, 2014-12-11 at 18:01 +0000, t.j.duchene@??? wrote:
> Firstly, thank you, Clarke =) It’s nice to have a discussion without
> the drama and I really appreciate it.
>
>
>
> >There is a horrendous waste of effort on both sides that much is for
> sure.
>
>
> Yes, it is a wasted effort, but perhaps it may bear some fruit in the
> long run. A lot of Linux’s history has been missteps that led to
> better approaches. Things like the XFree license debacle, the
> long debate over the Qt license, and the horrific debates that
> accompanied dynamic device nodes come to mind. You have an influx of
> younger talent who believe that their approach is best. This does not
> strike me as anything different really.
>
> >I think this waste happened as soon a systemd became more than a new
> init and started replacing and encapsulating perfectly good
> > services and limiting choice of approach.
>
> Systemd doesn’t have to be the classic “choice" problem. The fact that
> most distributions of Linux are provided as binary when combined with
> systemd is the real issue. When your package manager does not provide
> alternative package chains to binary packages such as systemd, that
> leaves you at the mercy of whatever approach the distributor took as
> the default. Gentoo is the only major distribution that avoids this,
> by having you compile it yourself, while keeping systemd optional.
> Granted, not everyone has the skill to do that. This is why I made
> comment earlier that after Devuan gets released, as a long term
> strategy, the package management system needs to be reexamined. We
> can discuss this at length elsewhere if you like, but I believe that
> the only way for Devuan solve its long term goal of preserving
> choice will be to either fork APT or abandon it entirely, in light to
> the way that Linux is becoming a form of binary monoculture.
>
>
> >systemd is grabbing the very roots of the OS and sneaking into
> everything it possibly can from basic networking and device
> functioning to >desktop environment dependencies.
>
>
> What really concerns me the most with Linux/systemd debate in
> particular is that two things are different. One is the widespread
> adoption of the idea of FLOS (Free Linux Operating System) instead of
> FOSS (Free Open Source Software). This advocates the idea that
> Linux is the only Unix - rest of the world be damned. The second is
> the continuing pressure to abandon POSIX in favor of Linux-isms. Kay
> and Lennart do make some fine points. If they didn’t, they never
> would have made it this far. On the other hand, Lennart in particular
> advocates abandoning attempts at software portability and POSIX
> compatibility, which I feel is an extremely foolish thing to do. The
> main reason that opensource has prospered to this point is POSIX. It
> might be a somewhat less than stellar standard, however it provides a
> rough level of portability between operating systems and
> kernels. This makes code more useful, even between versions of
> Linux, ie RedHat or Debian. Systemd will cause long term
> problems because its API/ABI is not completely stable, nor is it
> necessarily backward compatible.
>
> What I fear is the “ghetto-ization” of entire codebases in much the
> same way that Windows code is hard to port. Even though Microsoft was
> a signatory to POSIX, they abandoned the standard in favor of their
> own. I think that Linux as an OS (not the kernel as of yet) has set
> its own course for community self-destruction, because its most
> talented and vocal people do not have the experience or common sense
> to see that their approaches are now undermining their efforts over
> the long term to foster the larger community that now includes Linux,
> Apple, FreeBSD, and even Microsoft - who is taking their first
> baby-steps.
>
> Linux users hated Ballmer for calling opensource licensing - not
> necessarily Linux - a “cancer”. I find it strange that Linux
> users are now advocating a similar disdain for everyone else.
>
> >Forking the Kernel as a way to avoid this creeping Poetterama? I
> think you forgot the winking smiley.
>
> LOL Ty for that. I needed some humor. It may come to that if kdbus
> makes its way into the Linux kernel and they succeed in depreciating
> udev.
>
>
>
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Re: [Dng] Lennart says Devuan is go…
