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Comment by lomnakkus | Hacker News Reader

Haven't heard of this particular issue, but my main point is that the reaction should then be: "Ok, so let's fix that in systemd, upstream systemd .service files or whatever, and it gets fixed for everybody all at once.". The reaction should not be "systemd sucks!".

That is the real value of standardization.

EDIT: As far as I can tell as an outsider systemd is at least engineered well enough that these things can be solved, eventually. That wasn't the case before: Everybody had their own quarter-assed solutions that only worked for their specific case and would fail horribly in other cases, etc. etc.

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> value of standardization

But the Linux community has always prided itself on freedom and diversity. Otherwise we might as well be all using one "standard" Linux distribution.

There are things that are worth diversifying on. Basic subsystems that only serve to keep the OS running is not one of them -- the benefits of standardization far outweigh the costs of lack-of-diversity. (Of course this is just my opinion, yours may differ.)

As to freedom: I'm not sure what you're driving at here. Can you expound?

I think freedom and diversity simply do not exist one without the other. Freedom of choice that has been essential in making Linux popular in the first place may be severely limited by imposing more and more "standards"; I would argue that the very spirit of Linux lies exactly in this freedom. This is why we have so many distributions; and the more we standardize, the less need there is for this diversity, which, I think, is bad for Linux and, ultimately, for its users.

Ah, yes, the old

> freedom and diversity simply do not exist one without the other.

"freedom and diversity" defense. Nobody's trying to take that away, FWIW.

It may feel threatened, but I assure you that systemd is the least of your worries if you really care about F&D.

When everybody standardizes on possibly the worst implementation available for that platform, then it is worth diversifying.

Worst by whose standards? Obviously it works quite well for a huge number of people.

We have all these 'words' like standardization, fragmentation, duplication that sound good but seem unworkable in open source without creating a monolith.

There is a real risk this approach ends up concentrating power and influence and destroying dynamism. I suspect Linux would not have got to where it is with 'gatekeepers'.

For proper standardization the design and development has to be done openly with the collaboration of major open source vendors and inputs of users to prevent one entity gaining control rather than now of trying to push vendor controlled projects as standards which looks too self serving.

If the project is already done the vendor should be willing to give up control to a 'standards body'. 'Standards' can't be controlled by a single vendor. It's not a standard then.

See my other reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14174674

> I suspect Linux would not have got to where it is with 'gatekeepers'.

Uh, Linus? ... and distros, in general? There are very few people who decide to fork their own distro because, ultimately, good enough is good enough.

You're portraying this as some of cabal of nefarious shady characters trying to do back-handed deals... it really was just a case of the other non-RH distros realizing that systemd was actually good enough.

This is still all Free/Libre software, so if things go awry there's always the option of forking.

I was actually talking about standardization. If Systemd seeks to be a standard then Redhat would have to give up control to a 'independent standards body' where others can influence the design, development and direction of the 'standard' outside the influence of Redhat and its employees.

That seems to be the only credible way to create workable standards. Open source ecosystems clearly do not yet have the thinking and infrastructure around standardization so it may take concerted effort and time to develop the right processes.

Ah, sorry. I was using standardization in the "de facto" sense.

I think the "forking threat" applies nonetheless as long as RH doesn't at least broadly go along with the "committee" of the (F)OSS community. Honestly, I don't really see how they would extract any value from not doing that, so I'm mildly mystified by all the "they're trying to take over the world" rhetoric.

EDIT: Aside: Honestly, I don't see much value in trying to "de jure" (as in: ISO or similar) standardize a thing like systemd. Do you see value in doing that?

EDIT#2: I used to work in the semi-embedded space, and I'm sure many of the people I was working with would kind of see a value prop, but I would point out that they were already working with 2-5 years out-of-date Linux distros anyway...

Forking is an extreme action, a last resort. Standards are about establishing ground rules to avoid escalations and disagreements. The whole idea of standards is collaboration and co-operation.

Software is not static and decisions need to be made by everyone the standard impacts. Which is why it is important that control rests in a collective that represents everyone's interests. I think that's the only way we could call it a 'standard' without taking liberties with the word. Wouldn't you agree?

(I think we've reached thread depth limits here, so I'll stop at this.)

Yes, it's a last resort and that does give the incumbent a bit of leverage. However, we've seen this type of thing before in the (F)OSS world: EGCS is an almost model example.

> Software is not static and decisions need to be made by everyone the standard impacts.

Sure, but systemd actually has very good reference documentation which you can hold them to.

> Which is why it is important that control rests in a collective that represents everyone's interests.

That may be the thing we disagree about, actually. I actually do think that the systemd maintainers actually do have everyone's best interests at heart and not just RH. That doesn't mean that they formally represent everyone's best interest, obviously. (I readily acknowledge that I may have this perception because I happen to agree with them on many issues, but I do try to be as impartial as possible when discussing it.)

>I think that's the only way we could call it a 'standard' without taking liberties with the word. Wouldn't you agree?

I don't. Off the top of my head, my best example would be AC vs. DC[1]: They were both 'standards', but were basically pioneered by two individuals. (For -- as it turns out -- absurd reasons.)

The point is that a 'standard' for me means something more along lines of a 'standard of service' or 'standard of care'. It's more about having a formalized set of parameters of X. It's not so much about the process itself.

[1] Oh, how I wish I could do a real proper link on those words, but here you go anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2AC41dglnM

I kind of better like the current Linux community without a backwards standard body, where everyone can write their own stuff and use it. It's just like early flight where anyone with a bike workshop could build a flying machine out of bicycle parts if they wanted to.

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