5 ms·

I don't think that most people have a problem with systemd itself. Only some people. Usually it's a minor problem. But then you take it to the mailing list,

by yebyen 9y ago

I don't think that most people have a problem with systemd itself. Only some people. Usually it's a minor problem. But then you take it to the mailing list, and if it gets all the way to Lennart, he'll treat it like that's a "You" problem. I have not personally experienced this, but I've been in enough of these threads to realize that it's a big problem when, on a regular basis, you can't get these little problems solved because the creator insists it's supposed to work that way, to the bemusement of experts who chime in that know it has never worked that way before (and perhaps with very good reason), never in any other related system of the kind. So we get to have all of the reasoned, technical arguments again. That's how progress works, I guess. In a modern, systemd world, maybe the arguments that led to so many system designers putting their systems together in "this way," for arbitrary values of "this" which are broken in some way by systemd, actually don't fundamentally hold water anymore. Maybe if you drink enough of systemd's kool-aid, you won't try asking these types of questions of Lennart anymore, you can just see it the way he does. "Am I out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong..."

KirinDave 9y ago
Either: Linus's behavior is fine and this is expected in the FSF community OR We burn all those MLs into the ground. Terrible culture in these projects is basically how everyone is conditioned to interact from the top down. We can't pick and choose which assholes are okay and which are not. We either push back on all of them to make a more professional environment or we accept this is what we want.
- falsedan 9y ago
  > We either push back on all of them to make a more professional environment or we accept this is what we want. This is a false choice. We can choose our battles as we please.
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    If you like being inconsistent and tribal, then yes. You can.
    - yebyen 9y ago
      There's a thing about text communication, like the kind you find on Hacker News and on mailing lists, and that is the difficulty of communicating with nuance or subtlety. I have learned not to try to use sarcasm, for example, because it often doesn't come across at all. I'm not specifically trying to defend anyone's "retroactive abortion" comments but, there is a stark difference between reading a comment that says you (op) should be retroactively aborted, and reading a comment that says with some subtlety and nuance that you have made a bad decision and should be ashamed of making a bad decision. The main difference? Impact. Agreed it's not a positive impact if it causes you to be totally humiliated and leave, rather than causing you to re-evaluate how you arrived at the bad choice and do better next time. But a poignant message should be making an impact, that's what makes it effective. These people are primarily responsible for writing code, they may not be skilled at nuance or subtlety in English language, and they may view exercises of those particular disciplines as significant time-wasting sinks that they've spent too much time on with too little ROI. (From experience, I know I often write too much, and say too little!)
    - falsedan 9y ago
      > If you like being inconsistent and tribal, then yes. You can. I feel like you're pushing an agenda & have discarded any possibility of listening to other points of view, or modifying your position. I recognise it as 'listening in bad faith'. I didn't say I liked being inconsistent or tribal, you are putting words into my mouth in an attempt to discredit my position as irrational. It's still a false choice: I can choose how I spend my time, and I can spend it in a way that I think is effective.
      - KirinDave 9y ago
        I did read your post. I just disagree with it entirely. You're picking and choosing who gets to be a bad actor based on your moral compass. That's a thing you can do, but I have a different compass. Don't expect appeals on the axis of your internalized morality to be compelling? You can choose how you spend your time. But that doesn't mean you can choose how people evaluate that time and if it's fair or not. This is a direct consequence of your own point! This thing where you suggest I listened in "bad faith" but your point is dancing around the definition of "can" seems pretty bad faith to me.
- dijit 9y ago
  Let's get something distinct: Linus is like Gordon Ramsey.. If you should know better and you do junk work then you will be shit on. I've seen Linus handle people numerous times who are learning or do not claim to be experts and he is always respectful, civil and a lot less blunt. Not to mention the fact that when Linus is shitting on people it's often because they broke something for the "user"[0]. Lennart is not this way, he breaks userspace, he breaks norms and has a _huge_ ego. He conducts himself as if him and his crew are the only good programmers in the universe. That is quintessentially _not_ the same as Linus. [0]: User is a broad definition here, but it covers userspace programmers.
  - ksk 9y ago
    >If you should know better and you do junk work then you will be shit on. >times who are learning or do not claim to be experts That makes no sense. If _Linus_ thinks you should know better is not the same as "they claim to be experts". According to you, who has claimed to be an expert and demanded that Linus should listen to them? >and has a _huge_ ego. Sounds a lot like Linus Torvalds. >I have an ego the size of a small planet, but I'm not _always_ right >I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First Linux, now git. >I'm always right. This time I'm just even more right than usual. All direct quotes from him. >I've seen Linus handle people numerous times who are learning or do not claim to be experts and he is always respectful, civil and a lot less blunt. People who are sometimes rude to others can also be sometimes nice to others. This is not surprising in the least.
    - khedoros1 9y ago
      It seems like Linus tends to be rude to the right people, while Lennart is rude and dismissive of anyone who disagrees with him, regardless of who they are.
      - yebyen 9y ago
        I have nothing of substance to add, but I agree with that.
      - 9y ago
- yebyen 9y ago
  We can't really burn them to the ground either. Also to that point... I've heard that Linus will grind you into the sidewalk for breaking userspace. I'm not sure that is the same thing that we are talking about. I'm also not sure how accurate what I've heard is on the matter, but I think we absolutely can pick and choose which assholes are OK – the assholes that contribute to progress are favored over the assholes that impede it (for example, you may choose a different metric) If you have a strong opinion and you back it up with facts, that's not just your opinion, it's an argument. If you have a strong opinion and you don't argue with facts, and you're not interested in opinions to the contrary, even when they are presented with strong facts, then you're just an asshole with an opinion, right? You can be inflammatory (I've heard that this is not just Linus, it's a national characteristic of Finnish people, and probably other nationalities too... again take with a grain of salt)... you can be an inflammatory asshole, but if you still present a coherent argument with solid facts and a sound rational basis, you may still advance the state of the art in spite of alienating some people.
JdeBP 9y ago
Lennart Poettering is not the only systemd developer. This is a point that bears repeating, so I shall. Lennart Poettering is not the only systemd developer. In all of the discussion of Lennart Poettering's reaction to the User=0pointer gives superuser rights bug, almost no-one has looked at the other systemd developers. I have had to point out several times Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek's reaction, which was to work on https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/6300 https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/6300 . Or you might want to look at Martin Pitt, the systemd developer who famously turned back off systemd's widely problematic DefaultTasksMax setting, for Ubuntu. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11675133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11675133 https://anonscm.debian.org/git/pkg-systemd/systemd.git/tree/debian/patches/debian/Revert-core-enable-TasksMax-for-all-services-by-default-a.patch https://anonscm.debian.org/git/pkg-systemd/systemd.git/tree/...

by yebyen 9y ago

KirinDave 9y ago

Either: Linus's behavior is fine and this is expected in the FSF community OR We burn all those MLs into the ground. Terrible culture in these projects is basically how everyone is conditioned to interact from the top down. We can't pick and choose which assholes are okay and which are not. We either push back on all of them to make a more professional environment or we accept this is what we want.

falsedan 9y ago
> We either push back on all of them to make a more professional environment or we accept this is what we want. This is a false choice. We can choose our battles as we please.
- KirinDave 9y ago
  If you like being inconsistent and tribal, then yes. You can.
  - yebyen 9y ago
    There's a thing about text communication, like the kind you find on Hacker News and on mailing lists, and that is the difficulty of communicating with nuance or subtlety. I have learned not to try to use sarcasm, for example, because it often doesn't come across at all. I'm not specifically trying to defend anyone's "retroactive abortion" comments but, there is a stark difference between reading a comment that says you (op) should be retroactively aborted, and reading a comment that says with some subtlety and nuance that you have made a bad decision and should be ashamed of making a bad decision. The main difference? Impact. Agreed it's not a positive impact if it causes you to be totally humiliated and leave, rather than causing you to re-evaluate how you arrived at the bad choice and do better next time. But a poignant message should be making an impact, that's what makes it effective. These people are primarily responsible for writing code, they may not be skilled at nuance or subtlety in English language, and they may view exercises of those particular disciplines as significant time-wasting sinks that they've spent too much time on with too little ROI. (From experience, I know I often write too much, and say too little!)
  - falsedan 9y ago
    > If you like being inconsistent and tribal, then yes. You can. I feel like you're pushing an agenda & have discarded any possibility of listening to other points of view, or modifying your position. I recognise it as 'listening in bad faith'. I didn't say I liked being inconsistent or tribal, you are putting words into my mouth in an attempt to discredit my position as irrational. It's still a false choice: I can choose how I spend my time, and I can spend it in a way that I think is effective.
    - KirinDave 9y ago
      I did read your post. I just disagree with it entirely. You're picking and choosing who gets to be a bad actor based on your moral compass. That's a thing you can do, but I have a different compass. Don't expect appeals on the axis of your internalized morality to be compelling? You can choose how you spend your time. But that doesn't mean you can choose how people evaluate that time and if it's fair or not. This is a direct consequence of your own point! This thing where you suggest I listened in "bad faith" but your point is dancing around the definition of "can" seems pretty bad faith to me.
dijit 9y ago
Let's get something distinct: Linus is like Gordon Ramsey.. If you should know better and you do junk work then you will be shit on. I've seen Linus handle people numerous times who are learning or do not claim to be experts and he is always respectful, civil and a lot less blunt. Not to mention the fact that when Linus is shitting on people it's often because they broke something for the "user"[0]. Lennart is not this way, he breaks userspace, he breaks norms and has a _huge_ ego. He conducts himself as if him and his crew are the only good programmers in the universe. That is quintessentially _not_ the same as Linus. [0]: User is a broad definition here, but it covers userspace programmers.
- ksk 9y ago
  >If you should know better and you do junk work then you will be shit on. >times who are learning or do not claim to be experts That makes no sense. If _Linus_ thinks you should know better is not the same as "they claim to be experts". According to you, who has claimed to be an expert and demanded that Linus should listen to them? >and has a _huge_ ego. Sounds a lot like Linus Torvalds. >I have an ego the size of a small planet, but I'm not _always_ right >I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First Linux, now git. >I'm always right. This time I'm just even more right than usual. All direct quotes from him. >I've seen Linus handle people numerous times who are learning or do not claim to be experts and he is always respectful, civil and a lot less blunt. People who are sometimes rude to others can also be sometimes nice to others. This is not surprising in the least.
  - khedoros1 9y ago
    It seems like Linus tends to be rude to the right people, while Lennart is rude and dismissive of anyone who disagrees with him, regardless of who they are.
    - yebyen 9y ago
      I have nothing of substance to add, but I agree with that.
    - 9y ago
yebyen 9y ago
We can't really burn them to the ground either. Also to that point... I've heard that Linus will grind you into the sidewalk for breaking userspace. I'm not sure that is the same thing that we are talking about. I'm also not sure how accurate what I've heard is on the matter, but I think we absolutely can pick and choose which assholes are OK – the assholes that contribute to progress are favored over the assholes that impede it (for example, you may choose a different metric) If you have a strong opinion and you back it up with facts, that's not just your opinion, it's an argument. If you have a strong opinion and you don't argue with facts, and you're not interested in opinions to the contrary, even when they are presented with strong facts, then you're just an asshole with an opinion, right? You can be inflammatory (I've heard that this is not just Linus, it's a national characteristic of Finnish people, and probably other nationalities too... again take with a grain of salt)... you can be an inflammatory asshole, but if you still present a coherent argument with solid facts and a sound rational basis, you may still advance the state of the art in spite of alienating some people.

JdeBP 9y ago

Lennart Poettering is not the only systemd developer. This is a point that bears repeating, so I shall. Lennart Poettering is not the only systemd developer. In all of the discussion of Lennart Poettering's reaction to the User=0pointer gives superuser rights bug, almost no-one has looked at the other systemd developers. I have had to point out several times Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek's reaction, which was to work on https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/6300 https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/6300 . Or you might want to look at Martin Pitt, the systemd developer who famously turned back off systemd's widely problematic DefaultTasksMax setting, for Ubuntu. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11675133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11675133 https://anonscm.debian.org/git/pkg-systemd/systemd.git/tree/debian/patches/debian/Revert-core-enable-TasksMax-for-all-services-by-default-a.patch https://anonscm.debian.org/git/pkg-systemd/systemd.git/tree/...