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And that is probably the motivation for this design philosophy of limiting options that Redhat and Freedesktop champion where more and more, simple, clean, turi

And that is probably the motivation for this design philosophy of limiting options that Redhat and Freedesktop champion where more and more, simple, clean, turing complete solutions are replaced by a discrete list of simple options. But it does not change at all why I dislike it, and why I am annoyed by Freedesktop's pushing and insistence that many keep to these more custoizable solutions supposedly simply because they are “stuck in their ways” and that their philosophy is the future and “modern”, whereas all I see is more hurdles that stop me from effectively being the master of my own machine.

awrmc 5y ago
You have a misunderstanding of what Freedesktop is. Freedesktop is just a group of desktop developers that submit standards to each other, they don't really dictate anything. For that reason it tends to self-select for developers who are actively working on desktop environments, and the standards that tend to get submitted there are things that already have some level of adoption among open source desktops. You too can submit specifications to Freedesktop but you'll probably not have much luck with getting something adopted among peers if you're not already interacting with other desktop developers on a regular basis. "Customizability" is also not the domain of a group that like Freedesktop that publishes specifications. Their purpose is to define some baseline of standard behavior for interoperability. The customization comes from individual projects. No offense but your criticism is pretty misplaced.
- Blikkentrekker 5y ago
  In theory it is that; in practice it has become a different face of Redhat because it's mostly Redhat developers that submit these standards there and the body is known to have a certain philosophy that is indeed exemplified by systemd. They aren't particularly keen on hacking in how they design their software and standards and talking with them is frustrating to say the least.
  - awrmc 5y ago
    I can't understand what you're talking about, I'm looking through the list of specifications and I don't see anything specific to Red Hat or systemd. I also see a lot of other names besides Red Hat people: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/ https://specifications.freedesktop.org/ If Red Hat engineers submit something there it's because they think it's useful to the other desktop projects. It's just a collaborative space to put specs. If you have a spec of your own you can just create a new RFC. You don't need to persuade them to change how they design theirs, unless you intend to start working at Red Hat and start maintaining some of their software for them.
morelisp 5y ago
“People who write the code get to make the rules” is perhaps the most fundamental part of bazaar development ideology. If you don’t like it, write more code.
- Blikkentrekker 5y ago
  People are writing code. The difference is that everyone outside of Red Hat an Freedesktop isn't creating artificial dependencies on each other's projects to “gently push them” so people outside of it again have to write more code to decouple them again. They did write the code to fork elongind in such a way that it no longer required systemd; they did write the code so that GNOME could run without logind like every other system; they did write the code to fork of udev from systemd again so that it could run without glibc. — None of these projects suffered loss of functionality. They're complaining that they have to, because every time, these dependencies that have no technical justification happen, it's always one RedHat project depending on another to create product tying and encouraging adoption. The rule of capitalism is simply that product tying works in practice, however bad it is for the user and consumer. That's why Apple likes to come with custom cables that only work on their hardware for no technical reason, and that's why logind was incorporated into systemd and came to depend on it for no technical reason.
  - morelisp 5y ago
    > They did write the code to fork elongind in such a way that it no longer required systemd; they did write the code so that GNOME could run without logind like every other system; they did write the code to fork of udev from systemd again so that it could run without glibc. It sounds to me like the bazaar system is working fine qua its own standards, then. Red Hat writes what they need to solve their problems, party X writes what they need to solve their problems, the code is shared, everyone gets what they want. Except: It sounds like what you really want is for Red Hat to solve your problems, not only their problems. That's definitely not how this stuff shook out historically. And it opens a door you might not want to open, because now you need to ask yourself why users liked systemd, and what obligations you have to support beyond your own needs in your own software.

awrmc 5y ago

You have a misunderstanding of what Freedesktop is. Freedesktop is just a group of desktop developers that submit standards to each other, they don't really dictate anything. For that reason it tends to self-select for developers who are actively working on desktop environments, and the standards that tend to get submitted there are things that already have some level of adoption among open source desktops. You too can submit specifications to Freedesktop but you'll probably not have much luck with getting something adopted among peers if you're not already interacting with other desktop developers on a regular basis. "Customizability" is also not the domain of a group that like Freedesktop that publishes specifications. Their purpose is to define some baseline of standard behavior for interoperability. The customization comes from individual projects. No offense but your criticism is pretty misplaced.

Blikkentrekker 5y ago
In theory it is that; in practice it has become a different face of Redhat because it's mostly Redhat developers that submit these standards there and the body is known to have a certain philosophy that is indeed exemplified by systemd. They aren't particularly keen on hacking in how they design their software and standards and talking with them is frustrating to say the least.
- awrmc 5y ago
  I can't understand what you're talking about, I'm looking through the list of specifications and I don't see anything specific to Red Hat or systemd. I also see a lot of other names besides Red Hat people: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/ https://specifications.freedesktop.org/ If Red Hat engineers submit something there it's because they think it's useful to the other desktop projects. It's just a collaborative space to put specs. If you have a spec of your own you can just create a new RFC. You don't need to persuade them to change how they design theirs, unless you intend to start working at Red Hat and start maintaining some of their software for them.

morelisp 5y ago

“People who write the code get to make the rules” is perhaps the most fundamental part of bazaar development ideology. If you don’t like it, write more code.

Blikkentrekker 5y ago
People are writing code. The difference is that everyone outside of Red Hat an Freedesktop isn't creating artificial dependencies on each other's projects to “gently push them” so people outside of it again have to write more code to decouple them again. They did write the code to fork elongind in such a way that it no longer required systemd; they did write the code so that GNOME could run without logind like every other system; they did write the code to fork of udev from systemd again so that it could run without glibc. — None of these projects suffered loss of functionality. They're complaining that they have to, because every time, these dependencies that have no technical justification happen, it's always one RedHat project depending on another to create product tying and encouraging adoption. The rule of capitalism is simply that product tying works in practice, however bad it is for the user and consumer. That's why Apple likes to come with custom cables that only work on their hardware for no technical reason, and that's why logind was incorporated into systemd and came to depend on it for no technical reason.
- morelisp 5y ago
  > They did write the code to fork elongind in such a way that it no longer required systemd; they did write the code so that GNOME could run without logind like every other system; they did write the code to fork of udev from systemd again so that it could run without glibc. It sounds to me like the bazaar system is working fine qua its own standards, then. Red Hat writes what they need to solve their problems, party X writes what they need to solve their problems, the code is shared, everyone gets what they want. Except: It sounds like what you really want is for Red Hat to solve your problems, not only their problems. That's definitely not how this stuff shook out historically. And it opens a door you might not want to open, because now you need to ask yourself why users liked systemd, and what obligations you have to support beyond your own needs in your own software.