Re: Wouter and Gergely: software monopoly vs diversity
Eugene V. Lyubimkin jac...@debian.org writes: What is your vision about how many different software pieces can be supported by Debian as a project for each part of the software stack, would it be architectures, kernels, init systems, high-level package managers, desktop environments or something else? In short: as many as there are enough people to support them with. Exceptions do exist, as always. In other words, would you want Debian: a) concentrate more on the things people use most; b) or give more choices; A little bit of both, as these choices do not always conflict. What people use most, should be the defaults in most cases. But that does not prevent us from offering a choice, either. However, defaults MUST be consistent, and if choosing a new default would kill off the ability to choose, then I would advise against that change, as freedom of choice is in my opinion one of the great strenghts of Debian. However, too much choice is just as bad as none at all: one gets lost in the maze, and it's a pain to maintain such a diverse system in the long run, both for debian developers, and for up- and downstreams alike. Ideally, we should have a balance of choice and maintainability. Where that balance lies, depends on a lot of factors, ranging from the quality of the choices, to the available manpower needed to keep all of them in good shape, and so on and so forth. There is no silver bullet: monopoly is just as bad as too many possible choices. Ideally, we would need to strike a good balance, and have a little bit of both. -- |8] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87vclk1kqu@luthien.mhp
Re: Wouter and Gergely: software monopoly vs diversity
(this is getting increasingly off-topic for -vote, so this'll be my last post on the subject on this mailinglist) On Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 07:36:22PM +0100, Luk Claes wrote: AFAICS one is requesting to change the default to a dependency based boot system as the early boot gets less and less reliable (networking as the key example). The remaining issue seems to be choosing between upstart and systemd as default. Obviously making sure initscripts keep working will get harder and it's up to the ports that don't support the default init system to choose the lesser of two evils (porting the default init system or making sure initscripts keep working) IMHO. Opposing evolution because some architectures don't follow it, will probably only result in more tension. All ports have to evolve due to changed circumstances. It's only when they do not that the cry to not support them officially anymore gets louder and louder AFAICT. In and of itself, this is correct and reasonable. However, there's more to it than that. The systemd issue is not a simple matter of systemd doesn't work because it's not been tested upstream. I agree that in such matters, the burden should be on the port. Instead, this is a matter of systemd doesn't work because upstream doesn't care about the architecture and won't even accept patches. As a result, if you're going to make systemd the default, you're virtually forcing the kFreeBSD developers to write and maintain an init implementation that is compatible with another init implementation written by someone who is hostile to their cause. I think you'll find that that's a lot of work, the usefulness of which (at least in my opinion) is questionable for the maintainers of a port. -- The volume of a pizza of thickness a and radius z can be described by the following formula: pi zz a signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Wouter and Gergely: software monopoly vs diversity
On Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 09:01:55AM +0800, Paul Wise wrote: On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 9:57 PM, Wouter Verhelst wrote: In some cases, of course, that isn't the case, and then things get somewhat more complex. A good example on that is the systemd discussion on -devel currently: making systemd the default and required init implementation would, in the current state of things, instantly axe the kFreeBSD port. I am of the opinion that this simple fact therefore rules out systemd as the default and required init implementation for Debian; but it looks as if not everyone shares that opinion currently. I think you will find that debootstrap supports installing different packages on different architectures. Yes, but it's not about debootstrap. If an init system that is incompatible with our current default init system becomes the only supported init system, then architectures on which that init system doesn't work, suddenly have no working init anymore. having a choice of multiple init implementations is indeed a good way of fixing the issue, but that's not what some of the proponents of systemd seem to be arguing for, and it's not what's relevant for this particular question. -- The volume of a pizza of thickness a and radius z can be described by the following formula: pi zz a -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120317174627.gj10...@grep.be
Re: Wouter and Gergely: software monopoly vs diversity
On 03/17/2012 06:46 PM, Wouter Verhelst wrote: On Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 09:01:55AM +0800, Paul Wise wrote: On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 9:57 PM, Wouter Verhelst wrote: In some cases, of course, that isn't the case, and then things get somewhat more complex. A good example on that is the systemd discussion on -devel currently: making systemd the default and required init implementation would, in the current state of things, instantly axe the kFreeBSD port. I am of the opinion that this simple fact therefore rules out systemd as the default and required init implementation for Debian; but it looks as if not everyone shares that opinion currently. I think you will find that debootstrap supports installing different packages on different architectures. Yes, but it's not about debootstrap. If an init system that is incompatible with our current default init system becomes the only supported init system, then architectures on which that init system doesn't work, suddenly have no working init anymore. having a choice of multiple init implementations is indeed a good way of fixing the issue, but that's not what some of the proponents of systemd seem to be arguing for, and it's not what's relevant for this particular question. AFAICS one is requesting to change the default to a dependency based boot system as the early boot gets less and less reliable (networking as the key example). The remaining issue seems to be choosing between upstart and systemd as default. Obviously making sure initscripts keep working will get harder and it's up to the ports that don't support the default init system to choose the lesser of two evils (porting the default init system or making sure initscripts keep working) IMHO. Opposing evolution because some architectures don't follow it, will probably only result in more tension. All ports have to evolve due to changed circumstances. It's only when they do not that the cry to not support them officially anymore gets louder and louder AFAICT. Cheers Luk -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4f64d9a6.6020...@debian.org
Wouter and Gergely: software monopoly vs diversity
Hello, What is your vision about how many different software pieces can be supported by Debian as a project for each part of the software stack, would it be architectures, kernels, init systems, high-level package managers, desktop environments or something else? In other words, would you want Debian: a) concentrate more on the things people use most; b) or give more choices; c) stay like it is now? -- Eugene V. Lyubimkin aka JackYF, JID: jackyf.devel(maildog)gmail.com C++/Perl developer, Debian Developer -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120316085028.GA14637@r500-debian
Re: Wouter and Gergely: software monopoly vs diversity
Hi Eugene, On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 10:50:28AM +0200, Eugene V. Lyubimkin wrote: Hello, What is your vision about how many different software pieces can be supported by Debian as a project for each part of the software stack, would it be architectures, kernels, init systems, high-level package managers, desktop environments or something else? In other words, would you want Debian: Given the positions I've consistently defended over the years to problems relating to this, I think most of this, in my case, isn't a secret. Nevertheless, it's probably a good idea to make it somewhat more explicit. Thanks for giving me the chance to do that. a) concentrate more on the things people use most; b) or give more choices; For starters, I believe that in most cases, these two don't necessarily need to be in conflict. We can concentrate on what people use most, make that the default, and make that default work really really well, without making it impossible to allow people to work on alternatives (architectures, kernels, user interfaces). In some cases, of course, that isn't the case, and then things get somewhat more complex. A good example on that is the systemd discussion on -devel currently: making systemd the default and required init implementation would, in the current state of things, instantly axe the kFreeBSD port. I am of the opinion that this simple fact therefore rules out systemd as the default and required init implementation for Debian; but it looks as if not everyone shares that opinion currently. My personal opinion in the specific case of the systemd discussion, and in any case of a conflict between the above two options in general, would lean more towards providing more choices. However, I am well aware that not everyone is of that same opinion; so while as DPL I might participate in discussions about such a subject, it is unlikely I will be wearing my DPL hat in such a discussion. (Of course, the systemd discussion is a bit more complex than just the above paragraph, but a full discussion about the ifs and maybes there would be far beyond the scope of just answering your question) c) stay like it is now? I believe my above position isn't that, but YMMV :-) -- The volume of a pizza of thickness a and radius z can be described by the following formula: pi zz a -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120316135748.gh8...@grep.be
Re: Wouter and Gergely: software monopoly vs diversity
On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 9:57 PM, Wouter Verhelst wrote: In some cases, of course, that isn't the case, and then things get somewhat more complex. A good example on that is the systemd discussion on -devel currently: making systemd the default and required init implementation would, in the current state of things, instantly axe the kFreeBSD port. I am of the opinion that this simple fact therefore rules out systemd as the default and required init implementation for Debian; but it looks as if not everyone shares that opinion currently. I think you will find that debootstrap supports installing different packages on different architectures. For wheezy chroots it uses this mechanism to install the right libc package but it could easily be extended to use sysvinit on non-Linux architectures and systemd/upstart on Linux ones. apt/dpkg support architecture-specific depends. I'm assuming that d-i/tasksel also do so. So personally I don't think switching the default init system on the Linux architectures instantly axes the kFreeBSD port in any way at all. -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/caktje6fiswdojdexqa7vsqri_ngynt7k+mqtv7+zvdwcmjl...@mail.gmail.com
