Simon Hobson <simon@???>:

>Boruch Baum <boruch_baum@???> wrote:
>> Sorry to ruin the party, but I'll object to it because its just not a
>> nice thing to do, and its an awful thing to mess up content on the fine
>> site that is wikipedia.

>+1 for that
>Regardless of what people think of him, it's not a grown up or pleasant thing to do.


I would put it even stronger: People like us should actively work on sanitizing the public information/discussion space in this special area. If we don't, we can't complain if such childish actions as this Wikipedia messing is used against us: "You saw it happen, and didn't do anything about it, so we assume you support it" is of course not valid reasoning, but it is not entirely without merit either. And in this case the effect is even worse, it contributes to concealing what I consider is a quite aggressive behavior from Poettering et al. For example.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/lennart-poetterings-linus-torvalds-rant/

Here, it is shown how Poettering generalizes from Linus' occasional rants to suggest:

"If Linux had success, then that certainly happened despite, not because of this [Torvald's] behavior. I am pretty sure the damage being done by this is quite obvious, it not only sours the tone in the Linux community, it is also teaches new contributors to adopt the same style, but that's only if it doesn't scare them away in the first place. In other words: A fish rots from the head down."

IMHO, that is rather violent behavior communication-wise, and more violence is the worst way to counter it. Instead of being vandalized, that Wikipedia article should have been improved by including more factual material on why and how Poettering is so controversial.

>> There is obviously enough demand for systemd. So challenging his actions
>> on a technical level would be difficult. What is strange is how ditros
>> other than RH have jumped on the bandwagon - especially Debian.

>I don't find it strange at all. I haven't been following things all that closely, but it looks very much to me as though the vandals have been rapidly >inserting dependencies into so much software that it gets harder and harder to keep them out. So if your choice is between spending a lot of resource >that your don't have ripping out all the crapware, or "adopting" systemd then it's fairly clear what the choice is going to be.


Even if the adoption of systemd had happened after a thorough assessment of its merits and present and future effects on Linux (which we know is not the case), we would have to challenge it regardless of its immediate "success". Because it breaks with what may be called the "agnostic default" in Linux. Which in itself is kind of corollary to the "do one thing and do it well". I'm tempted to say that whoever thinks this is just rather lofty philosophical principles with little practical impact, has not been following the development of Unix/Linux long enough.