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.
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.
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.
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.
I was actually there and the talk was so much better for this. Also, I don't think the Chaos Communication Congress is that much like a business conference. It is hackers and people who care about software, not so much for proper manners.
If I remember correctly, Lennart specifically came to the congress because there were rumors before that this talk will be bashing Lennarts software, so it was no surprise to see him show up.
IMO this is the attitude that encourages toxic behaviour in the open source community. Hackers should not be exempt from standards of civil discourse.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So there you are, happy with a radically non-traditional Unix environment (no X, launchd is one of the patterns systemd is copying, etc).
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.