On Sat, 2015-03-21 at 17:04 +0100, Didier Kryn wrote:

>      However, the long term policy of Devuan can't be "We hate systemd 
> and Lennart Poetering". Instead Devuan should advertize the reasons to 
> reject software like systemd, in the form of  a set of rules for 
> acceptability, in a sensible and attractive form, for users, 
> developpers, and distros to easily share. I see these rules as an 
> addendum to the definition of free software.

Yea, this is a topic I have been pondering along with apparently many
others. Easy to say what we don't want, but what do we want? I think I
have an idea. Lemme start with an analogy that I think is similar to
where we are now.

Imagine a bunch of Boy Scout Troops in an area. Now imagine a large
influx of new people into the area joining and contributing much
volunteer labor, etc. Great! But these new people have some strange
ideas. They want to organize baseball leagues into the activities. Ok,
that isn't too strange, why not? Then they want to convert the normal
summer camps into baseball camp. Oh, and you start noticing a lot of
nike.com and spalding.com, etc. addresses on these new guys. Next thing
you know they have simply outvoted the guys who think Scouting is
camping, pinewood derbies and merit badges and by dint of numbers now
own all of the physical and cultural assets, leaving the folks who
wanted traditional Scouting to go found a new organization and start
raising money to buy new campgrounds, design new uniforms, etc.

The Troops are the distros, the newcomers are the Pottering and Gnome
armies, nike.com is of course redhat.com and so on. That is sorta where
I see us being, driven off of what we thought we had built as permanent
institutions and forced to reinvent most of them again. But there are
differences which is why I settled on this particular analogy; the
differences point to what might be a better way to see the situation and
the way forward.

The situation described couldn't really happen because the BSA has a
written statement of what it exists for and the National organization
would eventually move in and set things aright. Debian didn't have one.
It didn't really even have an unwritten one. Ask "What is Debian trying
to build?" and get a different answer from every person asked. Building
a Great Free Software OS is not an answer. systemd/linux is a perfectly
valid direction if that is the mission. For that matter so is ReactOS
but Debian was never about that, so why not?

What has happened is that a decade ago, Linux was Linux, distributions
had different package managers, included/excluded a few less used
applications, upgraded to newer versions of things on their own
schedule, etc. but they were all the same basic thing. Without having
to spell it out, we all knew we were building a POSIX/UNIX/GNU sort of
thing. And then things, quietly at first, changed. Where once there
was one, one has already arrived and two more are clearly visible on the
horizon. Google had the decency to go off and build their own
infrastructure for their projects, unlike the Windows refugees and other
misfits who have swarmed and seized most of the existing Linux distros
and other infrastructure to host their fork.

1. For want of a better term, GNU/Linux. The original POSIX/UNIX
Operating System with Linux as the OS kernel, Glibc (usually) as the C
Library, a mix of BSD and GNU userland, the GNU toolchain and X for
workstations along with one of the many Desktop Environments.

2. Android/Linux. Not too important for today's topic but it probably
set some minds to thinking of the possibilities of putting a totally
alien userland atop a Linux kernel.

3. ChromeOS/Linux. For now basically a mutant Gentoo but the wise
shouldn't put a lot of money on that remaining true. Today it is only a
distro but a full fork is likely.

4. Systemd/Linux, PotteringOS/Linux, POS/Linux, GNOME/Linux, whatever
it eventually adopts as a brand. It ain't just GNOME3 and it ain't just
Systemd. Reading what just Pottering has in store makes that clear; yum
and apt-get relegated to 'distro maintainer use only', the OS shrunk to
an anonymous stripped down platform to launch apps running in
containers, all user space software appified into ad infested, in app
purchase enabled security nightmares vended from App Stores that will
need the extensive sandboxing planned for them.

Seen this way, what we want is clear. We want what we wanted from the
beginning, option #1. Simple, easy to articulate and pretty easy to
decide to include/exclude features based on the criteria. And when it
gets time to organize beyond some folks in an IRC channel, some thought
into codifying exactly what the project is and is not trying to
accomplish would be a good idea.

The worry is that if #4 is really where Debian is being driven toward,
sharing much of anything with them is strictly a short term solution as
they are going to quickly become unrecognizable.

>      These rules would obviously put systemd out of the free-software 
> category, let's call it anti-freedom, which is worse than non-free. This 
> does not mean there needs to be an anti-freedom repository, after all :-)

No, not anti-freedom. Systemd is Free Software. What it ain't is UNIX.
I hope their new OS makes its creators happy and they all live happily
ever after in fact. Because if they don't they will more likely than
not come once again for our successful time tested UNIX base and try
again. And they will always outnumber us. Because remember, UNIX is
User Friendly, it is just particular about who it's friends are.