On Thu, 2014-01-16 at 17:52 +0000, Ian Jackson wrote: > * Debian is a forum for cooperation and technical development.
> * Debian, as a piece of software, tries to be all things to all > people (within reason). > This flexibility and tolerance for divergence has made Debian an > extremely attractive target for everyone to work within, work on, and > derive from. I think it has been key to the success of the project. I think the divergence has gone too far in things like non-Linux ports. They have had an overall negative effect on people working on Linux within Debian and people creating derivatives. > I passionately believe that we need to retain this aspect of our > community, even if that causes us extra work; and even if it causes > friction with those who would like to make the world nice and simple > by only supporting certain goals, certain use cases, or certain > software. > > > Now let me apply that to init systems: Even if you start from the assumption that diversity is positive, you can't justify support for any particular system without analyzing costs and possible alternative goals. Is support for multiple init systems more important than having a good SELinux policy for each package? Being able to compile packages with several different compilers? Just fixing more known bugs in existing packages? You could come up with hundreds of possible goals that would all have at least some positive effect; just saying that diversity is good can't allow you to pick some and reject others. > If you think that the difference between upstart and systemd, or > between either of those and systemd, is not important, then perhaps > you could conclude that it was OK to impose a particular decision on > all of our users and all of our downstreams. I think there are important differences: upstart is significantly worse than systemd in several areas. > But I think the differences /are/ important. Do you actually believe that upstart has some nontrivial technical advantages over systemd, such that it would be a noticeably better alternative even when considering only some specific use case? IIRC you did not identify any when saying you preferred upstart earlier, and mainly based your opinion on the assumption that upstart would be more likely to get ported. Even the upstart proponents do not seem to have significant arguments about upstart having better functionality, and there don't seem to be all that many people who would have a reasonably informed opinion that upstart would be technically better even for just their particular use. To me it looks like the main reason Upstart is still alive at all is that Ubuntu don't want to pay the cost of the conversion to the better system and don't want to admit that "their" alternative was inferior. If the differences are mainly just "it's worse" rather than tradeoffs where each software has clear technical advantages, it's unlikely diversity would give any significant benefits. > That means that we need to be the venue where systemd proponents, and > upstart proponents, and openrc proponents, can make the best system > they can. I do not believe it is possible to create such a venue. The result of the kind of "everything must be supported" policies you seem to favor would be a venue where nobody is able to create a system they would be happy with. Or possibly only sysvinit/openrc proponents would be happy with, if everything is dumbed down to the level where those systems can handle it. > Naturally that will involve some compromises. That's an unavoidable > cost of trying to be the best place for everyone to pursue their own > goals. "The best place for everyone to pursue their own goals" is self-contradictory. You need to choose whose goals matter most; if you don't, it'll require so many compromises that it's not only not "the best place" for most, it outright sucks. Everyone can maintain their own leaf package, but not everyone can design how boot and service management should work. > I think in this case those compromises are absolutely essential. Not > just from a technical point of view because of the advantages of one > system over another. But also to ensure that Debian continues to be > the place where serious and dynamic people come to do their stuff. Debian has been successful in some ways, but I don't think it is "the place where serious and dynamic people come to do their stuff". For example, none of the newer init systems come from Debian itself; I think that reflects how hard it is to create the kind of progress I'd associate with the word "dynamic" within Debian. Debian mainly integrates serious new developments long after they've been used elsewhere. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-ctte-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1389919551.4304.123.camel@glyph.nonexistent.invalid
