Quoting Steve Litt (slitt@???):

> The only problem comes in when you express the opinion (and fair
> enough, you state it's your opinion) that forking Debian was <use
> whichever expression you want>, without adding the vital words "for my
> use case." Had you added those four words, there would be no problem.

I wouldn't have said that, because I don't think it's factually
accurate.

I've detailed at length (primarily on the SVLUG mailing list thread) how
Debian-variant communities Siduction and Aptosid each successfully
maintain a policy-constrained variant of Debian-unstable. (The former
live CD desktop distro is a schism of the latter, so they're very similar.)
I've described how they do it. I merely expressed my offhand opinion
that that _sort_ of method would be a less-difficult way to enforce a
no-systemd policy for a Debian-variant community. (I marked that as an
offhand opinion with phrases like 'As far as I can see...'.)

I could be mistaken, in holding that offhand opinion. But it is not an
offence to anyone for me to hold it.

And I'm not the one who sought to wave that in the faces of the Dng
mailing list, either. You are. Because, I rather suspect, you wanted
to engineer a confrontation between me and the Devuan Project.
Unfortunately, this doesn't work because I am a fan of that project.


> For my use case, Devuan's a good thing.

Nothing I said, on the SVLUG list or elsewhere, would suggest it isn't.

You seem to be having a logic problem: Saying a project did something
you think to be not strictly necessary and that less-arduous measures
would, as far as you can see, have sufficed is not an attack on that
project.

It's not like I said the project in question has has a
millionaire-businessman Benevolent Dictator for Life, and is in the
community-overriding stranglehold grip of a for-profit corporation
headquartered in the Isle of Man for tax-dodging purposes because the
millionaire-businessman founder/owner is a tight-ass manipulator of
gullible volunteers, who goes around poor-mouthing the Linux community
and attempts to special-plead and con the for-profit corporation's way
into proprietary favours usable for proprietary-software side-deals like
an infamous so-called Contributor Licence Agreements that is actually a
legal handover of copyright ownership under a deceptive name.

...which I _did_ say in the same discussion about a different
distribution project, known to many because of its relently PR. _That_
might be legitimately seen an an attack on that distribution project.
And also true. ;->

> Why don't you just admit that for the ex-Debian person who liked Debian
> until the systemd thing, but now no longer trusts Debian, Devuan fits
> their use case well.

1.  I haven't yet had occasion to use Devuan.
2.  I see no reason to switch topics to whether ex-Debian people 
    ought to be happy with whatever-else-they-use-now, which is
    simply not what I was writing about.
3.  In any event, I also reject your fundamental premise that I or 
    other people who rely on Debian-packaged software are necessarily 
    'trusting Debian' (by which you mean the Debian Project).

The Debian Project can kiss my Scandinavian ass. I don't trust _it_,
don't endorse its erroneous decisions, don't think highly of its
bumbling politics (where they cannot even debate the correct issue,
which _should_ have been whether they're willing to be lead into dumb
decisions by GNOME), and don't have any inherent respect for the views of
its ~1000 package maintainers.

Trusting the Debian Project is not in this picture. I have nothing to
do with the Debian Project. What I do is administer systems that in
most cases use selected Debian packages, with application of my system
administration judgement and in accordance with my local policies.

I had already drawn for you the distinction between the Debian Project
as a bureaucratic entity (what you erroneously called a 'vendor') and
Debian as a malleable system architecture that is blessedly in the hands
of its users and is thus, in part, me. It seems likely that none of
that sunk in, because you keep talking about 'trusting Debian' (the
bureaucratic entity), when that was not under discussion, and I
specifically do _not_ do that.

This is a poor use of your time, and mine.