dear Noel,

I'm happy that you are back, we really miss DWN, but I'm also sorry to
contradict you on this one.

On Tue, 05 May 2015, Noel Torres wrote:
> As a resume: If you want a systemd-free system, Devuan is your
> distribution, and will always be. But if you want a system designed to
> be unable to run systemd, please leave us. This is not the place for
> such an anti-freedom POV.

perhaps we could say it was to simplify the transition, but in operating
on packages so far we have removed systemd and the possibility to run it
on Devuan, which is now as far as that of running sysvinit on Debian for
normal users. This is more of a consequence of how Debian imposed
systemd than a deliberate choice from our side. I personally agree with
your line about init-freedom, but less agree with the line of telling
people this is not their place especially if they look for a
systemd-free system for whatever reason they have.

At the inception of Devuan we have analysed the tradeoff of keeping
systemd optional and thought it was too much work in a direction we
weren't interested: we recommend Debian as the system of choice for
those wanting to have systemd crippl*cough*cough*manage their computers.

As simple as this, the result is that there is no option to have systemd
in Devuan now and the simpliest way to have it would be anyway to use
Debian. I'm not sure it will be ever a priority to get systemd back as
optional for Devuan. Perhaps init-freedom is really realized by a
plurality of distributions and if there is a merit for Devan is still
that of preserving this freedom by providing an OS that is open to every
init system *but systemd* since the latter does exclude anyone else by
an enormous network of dependencies. In the future we'll invest efforts
in supporting sysvinit and more init systems our there (OpenRC, DMD
etc.) thus we'll be a bit more "universal" than Debian.

Again personally I think that is an arrogant move today for any OS to
declare itself "universal" as init-freedom and more freedom in the
future is really realized by a plurality of distributions, a lesson we
learn from this fork perhaps.

ciao