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Author: Didier Kryn
Date:  
To: dng
Subject: Re: [Dng] Devuan commitments - will trade-off be applied?
Hi Jude.

     Your 4 points are expliciting very clearly, I think, what mean 
DOTADIW, or simply Unix principles. I think that these principles, plus 
the decision method you give - always favor a Unix-wise solution when 
there is - make a good and simple policy. I think what people on this 
list want in their OS is softwares which comply to both GPL *and* Unix 
requirements.



     Hi John,


     When I wrote anti-freedom, I considered a stricter definition of 
freedom than GPL, beyond free access to the source and gratuitous 
redistribution, including e.g. the absence of technical lock-in. I won't 
argue about words though; it wouldn't be constructive. One way to 
prevent the corruption mechanism you describe is to spell out what you 
say we didn't: that "we are building a POSIX/UNIX/GNU sort of thing".


     Didier



Le 26/03/2015 23:53, Jude Nelson a écrit :
> Hi John,
>
> I think the general consensus right now is that Devuan prioritizes the
> inclusion of Free Software that adheres to the Unix software design
> philosophy. Like Debian, Devuan strives to be a Universal Operating
> System by giving users as much freedom as possible in the choice of
> what software they run. However, when two or more competing programs
> cannot be run at the same time (such as init), Devuan dedicates its
> energies to supporting the one that most strongly adheres to the Unix
> software design philosophy (design goal 1 you had above). In other
> words, Devuan tries to include everything Debian does and more, and a
> program's "Unixy-ness" is only relevant when it comes to resolving
> conflicts between them.
>
> I took a stab at stating what "Unix software design philosophy" means
> earlier up the thread, but I'll reproduce it here for your convenience:
>
> """
> 0. A program is a file that contains executable data (e.g. a binary, a
> script, or a library).
> 1. Each program has a single well-defined responsibility.
> 2. If two programs have orthogonal responsibilities, then they are
> logically independent of one another's implementation (i.e. programs
> with orthogonal responsibilities are not coupled to each other's
> implementations).
> 3. Functionality encompassing multiple responsibilities is obtained by
> composing two or more programs (such as through piping, I/O
> redirection, dynamic linking, and so on).
> """
>
> I think it's clear that under the most charitable interpretation of
> the above principles, systemd does not meet criterion 2. The programs
> it replaces, however, meet all four principles. Therefore, Devuan
> prioritizes supporting sysvinit, cron, syslog, ifupdown, dhcpd, etc.
> over systemd.
>
> -Jude
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 5:10 PM, John Morris <jmorris@???
> <mailto:jmorris@beau.org>> wrote:
>
>     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 <http://nike.com> and spalding.com <http://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 <http://nike.com> is of course redhat.com
>     <http://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
>     havingspell it out, we
>     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.

>
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