On Sun, 27 Nov 2016 at 23:04:18 +0100 Klaus Ethgen <Klaus+dyne@???>
wrote:

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> Just for your amusement or your seriousness, have a look at the most
> recent gaffe of debian systemd people Biebl. #845480.

Let me see... https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=845480

> The ignorance of that guy has no limit. :-(

I'm going to play the devil's advocate in this case.

> In the begin, I asked Craig to not reassign it to systemd as I already
> knew of the outcome.

They (Craig Small <csmall@???>) did advance a technical reason for
the reassignment:


= There is a reason for linking to libsystemd and it is to do with accessing
= the systemd type parameters that can be applied to a process.
=
= - Craig


> But then, this Biebl sees it and closed it right
> away with a ignorant note.

Actually he wrote a remark concerning a Debian design policy:

= We no longer support a split /usr which is not pre-mounted in the initramfs.
=
= So you either have two options:
= 1/ Don't use a split /usr
= 2/ Use an initramfs to mount /usr


That is, it's a matter of distro policy, of design decisions. It is
precisely for a matter of policy (or philosophy if you prefer) and design
that we chose to fork Debian into a system that is going to be:

0) simpler;
1) more adaptable;
2) more portable;
3) more predictable;
4) more resilient;
5) easier to debug;
6) with fewer strong, deep, indirect, hard to eliminate dependencies that
limit users', admin's and developer's choices.

One of the reasons I like Devuan better compared to what Debian has become
is precisely that it forces fewer OS layout choices on me, I am free to take
parts out and design it's FS layout the way I prefer, not the way the OS
packagers or init developers decided. However, should a distro choose to
force it's user base to limit their design possibilities and should they
stick to such a decision year after year, I'd stop complaining the day after
I found another distro that does not tube-feed me their fodder. At Debian
they chose to go the easy way, they chose to be assimilated. I disagree, but
I find it useless and even wasteful fighting in their mailing lists against
what they wanted Debian to be and accordingly turned it into.

While we do differ from what not just Debian did, what most distributions
indeed did, and do think our position has merit and will eventually prove a
better choice, they have their right to follow the mainstream and deliver a
system that they, as well as Debian users, have less control over, but that
turns out to be easier to pack together (since most of the dirty work is
carried out by the Gnome/Red Hat/Freedesktop folks).

> It is really hard to not get personal to him via mail.

Taking things on a personal level when if fact it's a matter of
/legitimate/ different philosophy and technical approaches towards how an OS
is best put together and operated *Is* *Wrong©*. Devuan is still a
minuscule, new distribution, last time I checked did not even rank in the
top 100 at distrowatch. Let's not make ourselves be noticed for all the wrong
reasons, we just do not deserve it and definitely do not need it. Let's make
Devuan a distro that everyone is going to acknowledge as the most adaptable,
robust and dependable disto in Tuxland, not as the minuscule community that
raises a fuss in other distribution's mailing lists whenever they do
something different from us.


Just my 2¢.


Alessandro