Comment by i336_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by i336_ | Hacker News Reader

It's like someone wanted to write the ultimate PHP OS-management framework.

PHP is installed virtually anywhere, unbelievably fast (really!), achieves most tasks with a reasonable minimum of boilerplate (okay, okay, within reason) while remaining verbose enough to be easy to learn, and makes it possible for anyone to get started.

But the language itself makes you want to... I don't know, exactly - scream, or something? because of stuff like this gem: https://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=204433&cid=1... (highly recommended click)

I finally figured it out: this is exactly the same mindset behind systemd! D:

The OP article says that

> systemd should be written in a memory safe language. The obvious picks are Rust or Go.

My immediate response was "no no no no no NO! You need to replace the developers!"

I totally get the idea behind using a kitchen-sink-safe language for Important Critical Stuff™, I really do. And I know that C is slowly going out of vogue for system-level tools of the same order that systemd is in.

What I don't like is that the developers just blindly bumble along thinking everything's fine, denying the importance of issues like these... and get all confused when they get death threats (https://plus.google.com/+LennartPoetteringTheOneAndOnly/post...).

It would be much nicer if the people with the power could just go "ooh, whoa, thanks. Uhh, I don't feel like working on this, but PRs are welcome, and I'll doublecheck if it's been fixed in two weeks." That acknowledgement is really all people want...

> and get all confused when they get death threats

That once traced back to the source came from the Sailfish (aka the Jolla smartphone OS derived from Nokia Maemo) IRC channel. And it was uttered as a off color joke about hiring an assassin via Kickstarter after yet another late night problem solving session because they were trying to update to Sailfish to the latest Systemd version.

It didn't come from "haters" or "trolls", it came from within the systemd community. From people actually trying to put systemd to productive use. But it was used as an example of how horrid the Linux community was behaving towards Poettering because they didn't like systemd.

Oh btw, Poettering gave a description of the big that all the recent hoopla is about over at /r/linux. Except that he got it all wrong, and glossed completely over that he was the person that did the change that caused the bug in the first place. And what was that change? The removal of the very kind of check that would stop the bug from happening in the first place.

In contrast we have a recent issue in the kernel, where Torvalds let a patch in that made the kernel oops. The first thing we see is Torvalds blaming himself for not rejecting the patch even though he had noticed tell tale signs of potential problems.

Basically a repeating pattern with Poettering, and Sievers, his right hand man in all this, is to deflect or try to blame others for their screwups.

Do you have a source? I googled first and nothing turns up for e.g. "Jolla Systemd death threat" "Sailfish death threat IRC" or other combinations.

And you DEFINITELY need a legit source when you're effectively trying to dismiss death threats as justified because they're done from within the same community.

I unfortunately don't have a source, but "assassin" and "KickStarter" do ring vague bells, I remember reading this too. TL;DR, come back in a bit.

No one deserves death threats.

Not systemd developers. Not you. Not me. No death threats.

A very small part of me wanted to reply with "Lennart Poettering does..." but then my self recanted and agreed with you.

Back in the days when games were written by one person, it was not that uncommon to get death threats or to have people say they were going to firebomb your house. We just ignored them.

Which is not to say it's acceptable to make such threats; more a comment on how times have changed.

> It didn't come from "haters" or "trolls", it came from within the systemd community. From people actually trying to put systemd to productive use. But it was used as an example of how horrid the Linux community was behaving towards Poettering because they didn't like systemd.

Okay, I really, really don't like that. I had no idea, either.

Regarding Lennart's immaturity, I'm reminded of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Crowhurst, someone who joined an around-the-world sailing race only to flounder then begin sending false position data (this was in 1968). He ultimately gave up on the race and his end was unnecessarily tragic.

Please do not misunderstand; there is no suggestion or hint of malice in my referencing this story. I'm mentioning it because it's one of the best examples I know of someone being unable to deal with losing face.

In Lennart's case, because of the reputation/status quo and hate-list he's built for himself, he sadly may never be able to move to a more mature attitude - if he ever does have a perspective change, it may be impossible for him to get others to take him seriously.

I guess the moral of this story is, if you're going to do things that are social (and open source software hacking is inherently very social), maybe fix these things early or something. Before you get famous and make a name for yourself - for the wrong reasons.

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