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The main reason for forking seems to be opposition to SystemD. Initially I was unconvinced but then I remembered the recent story of Lennart Poettering (one of

by jermo 12y ago

The main reason for forking seems to be opposition to SystemD. Initially I was unconvinced but then I remembered the recent story of Lennart Poettering (one of the authors of SystemD) on The State Of Open Source Communities where he describes the hostility towards him personally https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8414859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8414859 In light of that, forking is a more civilised approach than bullying and threatening the author.

_ak 12y ago
Lennart Poettering is a bully himself, with a well-documented instance where he continuously interruped a talk at the 27th Chaos Communication Congress, even going as far as taking over the stage while insulting the presenter. Lennart Poettering is a toxic person, toxic to the OSS community, and he's the last person that can complain about bullying.
- the_why_of_y 12y ago
  You mean that famous talk when the very poorly prepared presenter ("Datenwolf") took the stage to trash-talk and spread misinformation about large parts of the Linux Desktop, evidently oblivious to important requirements like accessibility that modern desktops such as Gnome and KDE are designed to meet, which LP had to correct by comments?
- dnlrn 12y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTdUmlGxVo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTdUmlGxVo0 This is the talk you mean right? Have you actually seen the talk? Yes, Lennart interrupts the talk but everything he says is correct, while the presenter just spreads random FUD. The presenter clearly shows that he doesn’t understand most of the stuff he talks about, talks about 3 year old bugs that already got fixed, etc. Yes, it’s not the nicest way to interrupt a talk, but the presenter should have expected some kind of reaction, given the controversial headline. People like Lennart put their heart into their software. If you shit all over it and spread random FUD, you can expect some response. What would you have done? Also he doesn’t “take over the stage”. He comes up after the talk has ended, because people on IRC asked him to.
  - enneff 12y ago
    The way Lennart interacted with the speaker during that talk was extremely inappropriate. If he had corrections to make he could have arranged a short talk afterwards or a written blog post. It is very poor form to be so disruptive to a speaker, no matter how much you disagree with them.
    - tinco 12y ago
      No it isn't.. being on a soap box doesn't give you some special permission to just spread false information without being interrupted. I heard this argument before, there was an article about book reviews, and that authors who interacted with reviewers (by writing on their own blogs about them or on twitter) would be labeled Bad Behaving Author and be shunned by the review community. What's up with that? If someone talks shit, he should be challenged as soon as possible, preferably in front of the same crowd they are talking shit in front of. If you take the opportunity to talk in front of a lot of people, you should also take the responsibility to be properly prepared, and be ready to face the consequence of not performing adequately.
      - enneff 12y ago
        > being on a soap box Let's get this straight: he's not on a soap box (a term that refers to people who shout at passers by on the street), but rather at a conference at which he was invited to speak. The audience came into the room to hear him give his talk. Lennart rudely interrupted this. > I heard this argument before, there was an article about book reviews, and that authors who interacted with reviewers (by writing on their own blogs about them or on twitter) would be labeled Bad Behaving Author and be shunned by the review community. That's not my argument at all. I specifically suggested he _should_ respond with a blog post. Don't put me in the same group as those people. I encourage anyone to share their views on their own blogs, in comment sections, and on Twitter. > If someone talks shit, he should be challenged as soon as possible, preferably in front of the same crowd they are talking shit in front of. I disagree that it is appropriate to interrupt and shout someone down just because you think they are "talking shit". The definition of "talking shit" is subjective. If someone is interrupted before they can make their point, then the observer does not have the ability to judge whether they are right or wrong. It instead becomes a matter of whoever has the best rhetorical tactics. (Or who can shout the loudest.) My job involves giving a lot of talks, and if someone were to engage with me like this I _would_ be prepared: I'd be prepared to tell them to wait until I have finished my talk and address their comments afterward. This has happened many times, and it worked out fine for all involved. It's called civility.
seba_dos1 12y ago
Yeah, especially if everything what he wrote there was like that bitcoin hitman stuff, which turned out to be just a line like "maybe we should start btc fund?" from IRC written after someone else complained about issue with systemd by guy known from his funny trolling there - and absolutely nothing more than that. While at first I felt a bit sorry for him when I read that post, after I learned about what exactly was that "hitman threat" I lost any remaining respect to Poettering. That's just grabbing attention and playing victim. He deserves negative response for that.
- adekok 12y ago
  > I'd really welcome the anti-systemd ranters to just do some work that makes them feel happy, such as making a new distribution that has the exact init system they want. Most people are already working on things that make them happy. The frustration here is that the tools they depend on are changing... in a way that they don't like. They also have limited time for projects. Any time spent fixing other peoples projects is time they don't spend on their own projects. I left the Linux desktop world nearly 10 years ago, for these kind of reasons. I use a Mac as my desktop, because I don't have to fight with it. 99% of everything works, and the other 1% breakages are ones I can live with.
  - XorNot 12y ago
    You know, provided Apple continue to agree with you...it seems more like you're just zenning over the fact that even if you did disagree, you couldn't change anything. Choice is widely regarded as actually making people more unhappy. EDIT: It's also an ironic comment, since a frequent criticism of systemd is that it's trying to be too much like Apple's launchd.
    - adekok 12y ago
      I'm not "zenning over" anything. I need a computer to get work done. I don't need to be mucking with the computer to keep it working. My choice is to use a (mostly) closed system, because it meets my needs. Other people don't like systemd because they feel it removes their choices. There is no contradiction in the two approaches. There's also no irony. If Unix had started out with something like systemd, fewer people would be complaining about it now. It's the change that people don't like. And the apparent removal of choice.
cbsmith 12y ago
> In light of that, forking is a more civilised approach than bullying and threatening the author. Yes, but it is sad that the more straightforward approach of contributing back to the community isn't taking hold. If you are worried about mission creep... you help stamp out a very clear mission. If you are worried about bloat, you contribute patches. If you are worried about a nasty hairball... you contribute code reviews. If you consider C code less readable than Unix shell... please don't reference the Unix Philosophy as the principle behind that thinking.
grifferz 12y ago
forking is a more civilised approach than bullying and threatening the author. Absolutely, in that almost anything is. :) But specifically, at this point I'd really welcome the anti-systemd ranters to just do some work that makes them feel happy, such as making a new distribution that has the exact init system they want. I suspect that Debian would love for them to do that as well. Debian is in general welcoming of downstream distros since the downstream distros—if given proper care and feeding—often feed back useful improvements to Debian. The problem here is that no one is actually doing a fork (yet). Some of the same loud, uninformed minority have just created a ranty web page that presents a skewed view of history and makes threats. It's just more of the same interminable mailing list snarks but in web page format. Trying to put out and support an entire distribution may serve to broaden their minds as to the delicate position the distribution is in with regard to integrating upstream work into a coherent whole. Sadly I'm not convinced that any enlightenment is going to be achieved because the people behind this web site admit that they haven't even got the time to become involved enough in Debian to have a vote, so I don't know where they're going to find the time to launch a non-toy distribution.

by jermo 12y ago

_ak 12y ago

Lennart Poettering is a bully himself, with a well-documented instance where he continuously interruped a talk at the 27th Chaos Communication Congress, even going as far as taking over the stage while insulting the presenter. Lennart Poettering is a toxic person, toxic to the OSS community, and he's the last person that can complain about bullying.

the_why_of_y 12y ago
You mean that famous talk when the very poorly prepared presenter ("Datenwolf") took the stage to trash-talk and spread misinformation about large parts of the Linux Desktop, evidently oblivious to important requirements like accessibility that modern desktops such as Gnome and KDE are designed to meet, which LP had to correct by comments?
dnlrn 12y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTdUmlGxVo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTdUmlGxVo0 This is the talk you mean right? Have you actually seen the talk? Yes, Lennart interrupts the talk but everything he says is correct, while the presenter just spreads random FUD. The presenter clearly shows that he doesn’t understand most of the stuff he talks about, talks about 3 year old bugs that already got fixed, etc. Yes, it’s not the nicest way to interrupt a talk, but the presenter should have expected some kind of reaction, given the controversial headline. People like Lennart put their heart into their software. If you shit all over it and spread random FUD, you can expect some response. What would you have done? Also he doesn’t “take over the stage”. He comes up after the talk has ended, because people on IRC asked him to.
- enneff 12y ago
  The way Lennart interacted with the speaker during that talk was extremely inappropriate. If he had corrections to make he could have arranged a short talk afterwards or a written blog post. It is very poor form to be so disruptive to a speaker, no matter how much you disagree with them.
  - tinco 12y ago
    No it isn't.. being on a soap box doesn't give you some special permission to just spread false information without being interrupted. I heard this argument before, there was an article about book reviews, and that authors who interacted with reviewers (by writing on their own blogs about them or on twitter) would be labeled Bad Behaving Author and be shunned by the review community. What's up with that? If someone talks shit, he should be challenged as soon as possible, preferably in front of the same crowd they are talking shit in front of. If you take the opportunity to talk in front of a lot of people, you should also take the responsibility to be properly prepared, and be ready to face the consequence of not performing adequately.
    - enneff 12y ago
      > being on a soap box Let's get this straight: he's not on a soap box (a term that refers to people who shout at passers by on the street), but rather at a conference at which he was invited to speak. The audience came into the room to hear him give his talk. Lennart rudely interrupted this. > I heard this argument before, there was an article about book reviews, and that authors who interacted with reviewers (by writing on their own blogs about them or on twitter) would be labeled Bad Behaving Author and be shunned by the review community. That's not my argument at all. I specifically suggested he _should_ respond with a blog post. Don't put me in the same group as those people. I encourage anyone to share their views on their own blogs, in comment sections, and on Twitter. > If someone talks shit, he should be challenged as soon as possible, preferably in front of the same crowd they are talking shit in front of. I disagree that it is appropriate to interrupt and shout someone down just because you think they are "talking shit". The definition of "talking shit" is subjective. If someone is interrupted before they can make their point, then the observer does not have the ability to judge whether they are right or wrong. It instead becomes a matter of whoever has the best rhetorical tactics. (Or who can shout the loudest.) My job involves giving a lot of talks, and if someone were to engage with me like this I _would_ be prepared: I'd be prepared to tell them to wait until I have finished my talk and address their comments afterward. This has happened many times, and it worked out fine for all involved. It's called civility.

seba_dos1 12y ago

Yeah, especially if everything what he wrote there was like that bitcoin hitman stuff, which turned out to be just a line like "maybe we should start btc fund?" from IRC written after someone else complained about issue with systemd by guy known from his funny trolling there - and absolutely nothing more than that. While at first I felt a bit sorry for him when I read that post, after I learned about what exactly was that "hitman threat" I lost any remaining respect to Poettering. That's just grabbing attention and playing victim. He deserves negative response for that.

adekok 12y ago
> I'd really welcome the anti-systemd ranters to just do some work that makes them feel happy, such as making a new distribution that has the exact init system they want. Most people are already working on things that make them happy. The frustration here is that the tools they depend on are changing... in a way that they don't like. They also have limited time for projects. Any time spent fixing other peoples projects is time they don't spend on their own projects. I left the Linux desktop world nearly 10 years ago, for these kind of reasons. I use a Mac as my desktop, because I don't have to fight with it. 99% of everything works, and the other 1% breakages are ones I can live with.
- XorNot 12y ago
  You know, provided Apple continue to agree with you...it seems more like you're just zenning over the fact that even if you did disagree, you couldn't change anything. Choice is widely regarded as actually making people more unhappy. EDIT: It's also an ironic comment, since a frequent criticism of systemd is that it's trying to be too much like Apple's launchd.
  - adekok 12y ago
    I'm not "zenning over" anything. I need a computer to get work done. I don't need to be mucking with the computer to keep it working. My choice is to use a (mostly) closed system, because it meets my needs. Other people don't like systemd because they feel it removes their choices. There is no contradiction in the two approaches. There's also no irony. If Unix had started out with something like systemd, fewer people would be complaining about it now. It's the change that people don't like. And the apparent removal of choice.

cbsmith 12y ago

> In light of that, forking is a more civilised approach than bullying and threatening the author. Yes, but it is sad that the more straightforward approach of contributing back to the community isn't taking hold. If you are worried about mission creep... you help stamp out a very clear mission. If you are worried about bloat, you contribute patches. If you are worried about a nasty hairball... you contribute code reviews. If you consider C code less readable than Unix shell... please don't reference the Unix Philosophy as the principle behind that thinking.

grifferz 12y ago

forking is a more civilised approach than bullying and threatening the author. Absolutely, in that almost anything is. :) But specifically, at this point I'd really welcome the anti-systemd ranters to just do some work that makes them feel happy, such as making a new distribution that has the exact init system they want. I suspect that Debian would love for them to do that as well. Debian is in general welcoming of downstream distros since the downstream distros—if given proper care and feeding—often feed back useful improvements to Debian. The problem here is that no one is actually doing a fork (yet). Some of the same loud, uninformed minority have just created a ranty web page that presents a skewed view of history and makes threats. It's just more of the same interminable mailing list snarks but in web page format. Trying to put out and support an entire distribution may serve to broaden their minds as to the delicate position the distribution is in with regard to integrating upstream work into a coherent whole. Sadly I'm not convinced that any enlightenment is going to be achieved because the people behind this web site admit that they haven't even got the time to become involved enough in Debian to have a vote, so I don't know where they're going to find the time to launch a non-toy distribution.