On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 01:04:43PM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote:

[cut]

>
> >...
> >
> > https://lwn.net/Articles/629259/ covers the most recent flare-up when
> > somebody wanted to make the AST of GCC accessible.
>
> There's a good quote in the comments to this article:
>
> "We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus
> and running code".
>

That's indeed a good link, and I thank you guys for posting it, but I
start missing the whole point here :)

We were talking about RMS not having a strong opinion about systemd
and of the person who asked him the question, who was considered
automatically a troll just for asking that question. Then we slipped
over discussing of hairballs and badly conceived software, which I
think does not have that much to do with what is discussed in the
thread you posted (which is about the possibility of allowing AST to
be exported from GCC, which has been *deliberately* made difficult for
*political* reasons, a fact that we might accept or despise, according
to personal taste). Then, this argument about the presumed
"obfuscation" in the management of the AST by GCC has been implicitly
used against RMS to justify the fact that he didn't have an opinion
about systemd, erroneously suggesting IMHO that he did not since he
himself has been loving coding obscure and hairball-like software.....

I personally don't like this kind of recursive and circling lines of
thought, so if you want to continue on this thread you are free to do
so. If you want to prove that RMS is wrong on this or that, or even
evil-minded for this or that reason, or if you want to put RMS and Mr
Poettering in the same box, then please go on and have fun :)

I just don't care about what RMS thinks of the systemd-nonsense, or at
least not much more than I care about what meself and you guys think
of it. The reason is that, IMHO, when it comes to political choices,
as the ones made by RMS and other influential guys in the last thirty
years, then technical aspects might become secondary or even
irrelevant. While in some other cases, instead, the technical
shortcomings of a formally "good" piece of software (like the
free-software-compliant systemd-nonsense) might be enough to consider
it dangerous.

The same is valid for the systemd-nonsense: I think that it is first
of all a *politically* wrong decision, since it is forcing the whole
system to be subjected to the wills of one single producer
(RedHat). On this side, I am apparently not in agreement with RMS, who
doesn't have anything against the systemd-nonsense since, as he
admitted, it's free software and this is enough *for him*.

But on top of that, I think that the systemd-nonsense is also an
overall *technically unsound* project, since its functioning goes
against the same basic principles that are behind the *nix philosophy:
KISS and DOTADIW. RMS didn't enter this technical querelle, since his
mission is "free software" not "compliance to the founding principles
of *nix". And I think I can live with this.

Finally, I am not in a position to judge whether the systemd-nonsense
is also *architecturally flawed*, as repeatedly suggested by other
guys here, since I have not had the opportunity of looking through the
code, or of studying its implementation in details. RMS has saind
nothing about that, but this would not change the fact that systemd
remains nonsense, IMHO, since even a very good, portable, modular,
documented implementation of a bad underlying concept, which is also
ill-conceived from a political point of view, is unacceptable for me
:)

In a word, the fact that RMS does not have a strong opinion (yet)
about the systemd-nonsense doesn't change anything. He does not have a
strong opinion on any technical aspect of GNOME or KDE or Xorg, so why
should we expect tech-savvy directions from him about the
systemd-nonsense?

RMS's mission is to spread free software, fullstop. He has done a lot
for our community, but he's not king, or dictator, or president of
anything. We are all grown-up and should be able to take autonomous
decisions (and actions) without RMS telling us what to do or approving
our endavours. That's why they call it "community" and not "kingdom"
:)

My2Cents

KatolaZ

--
[ Enzo Nicosia aka KatolaZ --- GLUG Catania -- Freaknet Medialab ]
[ me [at] katolaz.homeunix.net -- http://katolaz.homeunix.net -- ]
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