On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 7:36 AM, Tanstaafl <tansta...@libertytrek.org> wrote: > On 12/20/2016 9:33 PM, Rich Freeman <ri...@gentoo.org> wrote: >> On Tue, Dec 20, 2016 at 5:51 PM, Alan Mackenzie <a...@muc.de> wrote: >>> systemd is primarily a political project, not a technical one. > >> What political benefit do I gain from using and maintaining systemd? > > Interesting that you snipped the rest of his comment - or more his main > point - that followed. >
I don't really consider it political, but I think it was largely correct insofar as one of the goals of systemd is to standardize the core system dependencies/etc so that packages can rely on them being present and vertically integrate. I don't agree that you are "forced" to use systemd. Maybe you might be forced to use a different browser or fork your browser or patch it or stick with an old version and backport security fixes if you want to use it without systemd some day. But, if the entire Firefox developer community quit and decided to do something else (a la Thunderbird) you'd be in a similar boat. Sometimes you get what you pay for. I get that people who want to avoid systemd are frustrated by this, but honestly it feels like spitting against the wind at this point. I was frustrated back when everybody stopped taking care of kde-3.5 and kde-4 wasn't really ready and was a resource hog on older systems. I switched to xfce for a while, because ultimately I can't demand that the kde project cater to my whims. The moment you choose to run code that you didn't write yourself, then you become dependent on them. With FOSS it gives you a lot more options as anybody can potentially fork it and take it in a new direction. That doesn't change the reality that developing FOSS takes work, and if 1% of the community wants to take it in a substantially different direction they're going to have a much harder time of it than the 99%. In general though, nobody is required to engage in debates/arguments/etc here, or even read your posts. People choose to participate in list discussions just as they choose what software they want to maintain. -- Rich
