8 ms·

I'm very grateful that Lennart Poettering wrote this post. I don't necessarily use the software he writes (my next distro will be systemd based) but I'm still h

• laumars 12y ago
  I don't advocate bullying nor would I dare to justify such personal attacks. But the abusive content aside, he does deserve constructive criticism because, frankly, his contributions towards open source have brought far more problems than any of the solutions he looked to replace. I could write a lengthy blog post about the unnecessary problems that PulseAudio and systemd have thrown up over the years (problems I'd never had an issue with in all the years of running Linux and other UNIX-like platforms), but those topics are done to death now. However my point is I think Lennart's been so carelessly cavalier in rolling out his code, and so unapologetic about the shitstorm he started that he's gotten a lot of peoples back up. Obviously this doesn't warrant the kind of bullying that he discussed in his post; however although he doesn't deserve such attacks, he has largely brought them on himself. Maybe instead of fighting against the community as he tries to impose his own imperial vision of Linux, maybe if he worked with the community then the aggressive dickheads might leave him alone (or at least he'd receive more supporters from friendly folk - of who massively outnumber the aforementioned dickheads). But just to be clear, as much as I think he might draw negative attention to himself, I think that any kind of personal abuse, let alone of the quantity that Lennart's been subject to, is absolutely disgusting and undeserved. Period.
  • joelthelion 12y ago
    > his contributions towards open source have brought far more problems than any of the solutions he looked to replace. If this were true, nobody would have adopted his work. If most of the major distros have switched to pulseaudio and systemd, it's because the people who actually know about this stuff have looked at his work and found it excellent.
    • enneff 12y ago
      > If most of the major distros have switched to pulseaudio and systemd, it's because the people who actually know about this stuff have looked at his work and found it excellent. Here's a theory. This is pure conjecture on my part—I'm not close to the systemd project or the various distros—so please take it with a grain of salt. Programmers prefer to do less work. Simple tools get the job done and are easy to understand, but often require more effort to use effectively. Using a hand saw, it is hard work to cut a solid piece of wood, but the only servicing it needs is to sharpen the blade. On the other hand, with a chainsaw it is much easier to cut through wood, but there are many more things that you need to care about to keep it running smoothly. When put this way, the hand saw seems superior in its simplicity, but remember that it's not immediately obvious that chainsaws can be difficult to start, or that the chains get stuck sometimes. Standing in the hardware store, the chainsaw might seem like the way to go, but one might regret not choosing the simpler option when complications arise later. It seems to me (conjecture, remember) that systemd offers a lot to the distros. It gives them hooks to manage difficult things and, after all, the systemd people are doing all the work. That explains why the distro maintainers might choose it, but my worry is that the convenience comes at a cost.
    • laumars 12y ago
      So you're assuming that I don't know about this stuff? And that the members of Debian who voted against systemd doesn't know their stuff? Or even that Linus Torvalds (who's often complained about how bugs in systemd get pushed back as bugs in the Linux kernel) doesn't know his stuff either? While it's true that systemd does have it's supporters; equally not everybody "who actually knows about this stuff" likes systemd either.
      • 12y ago
  • dbaupp 12y ago
    > I could write a lengthy blog post about the unnecessary problems that PulseAudio and systemd have thrown up over the years (problems I'd never had an issue with in all the years of running Linux and other UNIX-like platforms), but those topics are done to death now I haven't been keeping up with the linux side of things, could someone give some links to descriptions of this?
  • csirac2 12y ago
    I agree with most of your post. His attitude toward keyscript users is less than inspiring. But I still try - yesterday I spent 4 hours tweaking my VM builds against debian sid; by the end I had found a way to segfault systemctl, filed a bug, and still have absolutely no debugging info that explains why docker.service doesn't start at boot on its default network.target. But the elephant in the room is that distros have adopted systemd and pulseaudio en masse. There must be buy-in for a reason. This outpouring of faux outrage is being leveled at an individual, what of the distro vendors?
    • xorcist 12y ago
      > distros have adopted systemd and pulseaudio en masse. There must be buy-in for a reason There is, and this reason is not always on the merits of the software. I would like to add NetworkManager to the list of software that (used to) pain my existence. The case for including this were pretty much the same as PulseAudio, that other entities already had settled on it, in this case Gnome. So the fact that some of the developers were important members of the Gnome community sort of gave their creation a direct path into Red Hat and Ubuntu, who based their desktops on Gnome. Had they not been, the software would have had a much harder time getting included, and based on merits alone it would not have happened. That rubbed a lot of people the wrong way at the time, for some very good reasons.
      • VLM 12y ago
        "based on merits alone it would not have happened" Which adds salt to the wound, or irony, of his claim of meritocracy in the second line of his post "Where contributions are valued only by their technical quality". Uh, no, that's definitely not why we're being forced into systemd.
    • VLM 12y ago
      "There must be buy-in for a reason." Never forget chronology. The ideas and architecture in systemd are nothing new, in fact they're kind of obsolete. What has changed politically / strategically such that this specific instance can be rammed down everyones unwilling throats? Lets run a thought experiment about if this hatred is a result of technical actions and behaviors or back room politics. Lets try... the upstart init system. A direct competitor. How many people have threatened to kill the authors of upstart? Oh, none you say? What a complete non-surprise. This is the key weakness of his post. Hatred of authors of badly architected software is very rare in open source. Hatred of back room political dealings and extensive "embrace extend extinguish" product tying, well the feeling of hatred is completely unsurprising given that behavior being the opposite of the meritocracy straw dog he tries to tear down, but some claimed behavior does sound over the top (hire a hitman? really? a bit ridiculous if true). He could have made a decent post about misbehavior and over-reaction in politics and it would have been a correct and good post, but he can't admit in public the corrupt way an unwanted systemd is being shoved down our unwilling throats, so we end up with ridiculous "I am a technical guy" LOL yeah as if anyone believes the reported social problems are due to that.
  • Sammi 12y ago
    > However my point is I think Lennart's been so carelessly cavalier in rolling out his code, and so unapologetic about the shitstorm he started that he's gotten a lot of peoples back up. Obviously this doesn't warrant the kind of bullying that he discussed in his post; however although he doesn't deserve such attacks, he has largely brought them on himself. That is the "look what she's wearing" argument. The victim is newer responsible for receiving such violent abuse as Pottering has.
    • laumars 12y ago
      I said about 5 times in my post that he doesn't deserve those kind of attacks, as I wanted to make it perfectly clear that I wasn't stating that he was responsible for it; yet you still drew that conclusion from my post? My point was that if Lennart worked with the community instead of against it then he would have had a more positive experience from the nice guys (who outnumber the dickheads). Or to use your "look what she's wearing" argument, you don't dress like a hooker for a date with a price. But that doesn't mean that a woman cannot wear what she wants and nor that she deserves sexual / physical abuse for her choice in outfits. But that if she wants to change the monarchy then she needs to play along with them and their silly dress codes. It's best to change a system by working with and inside the system. In other words, the nice people in the open source community would be more vocal in support for Lennart and his vision if Lennart worked nicely with the community. Dickheads will always be around (which sucks), but at least their voices would be drowned out by the millions of Lennart supporters.
      • Crito 12y ago
        > "date with a price" Freudian slip? ;)
        • laumars 12y ago
          hahaha that's my funniest typo to date. I meant "prince", but I expect everyone had worked that out already :)
    • sgift 12y ago
  • morganvachon 12y ago
    The thing is, he is a bully too. I also don't advocate the hate speech and threats he has received; no one deserves that. But his contributions to the world of GNU/Linux have been a net negative in my opinion. I get less benefit and more headache out of systemd, so I don't use a distro that has it. It's the same with PulseAudio; I think it's a good idea in concept but it was simply a bad implementation. He needs to hear that, but without the vitriol that accompanies it from certain people. Will he ever listen even to good constructive criticism? Probably not; his personality seems to be egocentric and elitist, and as I said he can be quite the bully himself. But I'd imagine he would at least read constructive criticism, rather than dismiss it outright as he would (and should) dismiss hate filled criticism.
    • FractalNerve 12y ago
      Hello! Bully or not, please be friendlier. I will start and hope you're following. I've seen a few interviews with Mr. Pöttering and I admire his cleverness and his ambitious fight for a better GNU/Linux. I am not a fan of his person, nor his speech, but this is not the time, nor place to call him an egocentric elitist. There is a reason for everything, I too would become such a person to protect myself from the everyday threatening and hatred. Things like that break a person!! Keep this in mind, we as Engineers are especially very susceptible and sensible to attacks, because we have sharpened and trained our minds to try to find a meaning behind every action. Remember Aaron Schwartz! He couldn't bear the weight on his shoulders anymore. He was not a soldier, he was not a criminal, he was like you and me a person that deserves to be respected. Souls break apart and suicide isn't rare among our people. You shall keep this in mind, when you speak up without a filter. Whenever I've been complaining about something about Linux, I was told to improve it, or shut up. That was a culture that I thought as very unfriendly, but it was nonetheless logical. I could pass that along to you, but you have an opinion about Systemd and Pulseaudio that I simply cannot fathom as authentic or fact based. ALSA did not allow controlling the volume of different applications. Period. PulseAudio made it happen!! Yes it's not perfect, but it's opensource and maybe it'll be as good as the software you want to use on your own computer. With Systemd systems are starting up much much faster than tweaks to other init systems can provide. You're comparing Apples to Oranges, when you say, but if you disable everything then and only then my favorite init system is faster than systemd. Not everything in systemd is smart or good, but it fixes a problem that people have neglected for too many years. Systemd changed that! Let's not discuss what is better or not, you have to be a Software-Architect and not an untrained Software-Developer to discuss such things in detail without being a hypocrite, desinformative or misleading. My impression was that even though the ideas of Mr. Pöttering were brilliant, his Software-Architecture skills are his Achilles heel. That's what he needs more training in. Thank you for taking the time reading this.
• raverbashing 12y ago
  "But the amount of flak he receives is unacceptable" So, did he never question why is that? Other comments explain this better, but he's creating more problems than solving them. " If you have a technical reason to disagree" Not all reasons are technical, but a lot of it has to do with shortsightedness. People don't care how PulseAudio does things, but they care that it works (at least as good and reliably as ALSA), and is it here that it's failed. Same thing for systemd, based on average reliability of what LP writes we're going to have uptimes of days... Several other projects took flak (KDE 4.0 comes to mind) but they addressed the criticism
• theflubba 12y ago
  Do you even know who Pottering is? He deserves all this hate.
• kjs3 12y ago
  But the amount of flak he receives is unacceptable. The tone which people talk about him and even to him is despicable. Sorry, but have you by any chance seen how he treats people? Respect is a two way street.
• mickrussom 12y ago
  Unix always ruled because it sucked simply. Now with lennart crapperings rubbish, unix can now suck the same way big fat stupid commercial bloated OSen suck. Simple elegance vs bloat and complexity. Welcome to Lennarts world.