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Debian rejects game due to authors opinion on women.

A properly licensed opensource casino video game was
recently posted to the debian bug tracker as a request
for packaging, as is the standard method for pursuing
such things in debian.

The bug was quickly closed, tagged as "won't fix"
The reason given by one of the debian developers
alluded to the authors past anti-feminist remarks:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bi...

The piece of software in question is licensed
under the GPL and is one of the only of it's
kind for linux (ascii-art console slot machine software)

Is professing progressive politics now a hard requirement
for being allowed to contribute to free software projects?

Debian rejects game due to authors opinion on women.

A properly licensed opensource casino video game was
recently posted to the debian bug tracker as a request
for packaging, as is the standard method for pursuing
such things in debian.

The bug was quickly closed, tagged as "won't fix"
The reason given by one of the debian developers
alluded to the authors past anti-feminist remarks:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bi...

The piece of software in question is licensed
under the GPL and is one of the only of it's
kind for linux (ascii-art console slot machine software)

Is professing progressive politics now a hard requirement
for being allowed to contribute to free software projects?

Debian developers also threatened author with lengthy imprisonment, denied existence of author's contributions

Previously a debian developer, Erich Schubert, claimed that the author of gpcslots had never
contributed anything to opensource, was corrected, replyed to the corrections,
and then deleted the corrections and left up his false claims.
Author has contributed gigabytes of media to opensource, years of programming
work, and has been involved in numerous projects.
http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/2...

Another debian developer, Josselin Mouette, (while bragging that he, JM, had successfuly
campaigned to ban prostitution in france, have Johns arrested, and had run
mafias out of the country) told the author that he was going to have him
arrested by the FBI (van'd) because the author suggested there was no sin
in marrying young girls (and cited a bible verse in support of that).
http://np237.livejournal.com/3...

It's also the slowest language, at least among the common ones. In fact it's so slow that it's even a lousy replacement for Basic, because most Basic implementations are faster. And it's not standardized.

A properly licensed opensource casino video game was
recently posted to the debian bug tracker as a request
for packaging, as is the standard method for pursuing
such things in debian.

The bug was quickly closed, tagged as "won't fix"
The reason given by one of the debian developers
alluded to the authors past anti-feminist remarks:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bi...

The piece of software in question is licensed
under the GPL and is one of the only of it's
kind for linux (ascii-art console slot machine software)

Is professing progressive politics now a hard requirement
for being allowed to contribute to free software projects?

What do you expect from social justice warriors (SJWs)?
Same thinking of debian vis a vi systemd opponents.
Same thinking of debian and vis a vi male programmers who oppose feminism:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bi...

Why then did Debian decide not to work on even a shim on systemd?

https://packages.debian.org/jessie/systemd-shim

Package: systemd-shim (9-1)

shim for systemd

This package emulates the systemd function that are required to run the systemd helpers without using the init service

Debian devs are feminists and SJWs, they like change for the sake of change and to defeat "the man". They care nothing for "white male tears" even though most of them are that.

Debian excludes game due to author's views on women.

A DFSG complaint opensource casino video game was
recently posted to the debian bug tracker as a request
for packaging, as is the standard method for pursuing
such things in debian.

The bug was quickly closed, tagged as "won't fix"
The reason given by one of the debian developers
alluded to the author's opinion on women:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bi...

The piece of software in question is licensed
under the GPL and is one of the only of it's
kind for linux (ascii-art console slot machine software)

Debian packages many ascii-art / text console
video games of similar quality.

Is professing inclusive social views now a hard requirement
for being allowed to contribute to free software projects?

#gamergate #geekfeminism

Don't forget that "stability" in the Debian world is in a whole other league compared to what other software providers consider "stability". Debian's standards are (or were, before this systemd bullshit) extraordinarily high.

Debian unstable typically wasn't unstable. I've also used it for years, and found it much more reliable and of a higher quality than the production-grade releases of anything Fedora-based.

Debian unstable is stable enough that Ubuntu is based off of it.

When it comes to Debian unstable, anything that prevents a user's system from booting is completely unacceptable. Even Debian experimental users would consider that sort of breakage to be completely wrong.

No, you can run full blown linux on the Amiga if you have a model with an MMU (which an A1200 with accelerator typically does), see https://www.debian.org/ports/m... for instance.
I used to run linux on an A1200 with a 68040, and i still have an A4000 with linux installed on one of the drives.

to be able to run full featured Linux on it.

what is with this obsession of running "Linux" on things? this does run Linux. it even runs the x86 version of Linux so what is running a distro other than android on this going to achieve that you cannot achieve with the android distro?

want a different desktop environment? you can install an X server and LXDE or IceWM or whatever.

want a full debain x86 environment? run it in a chroot

you can even run debian binaries outside of the chroot.

replacing android with a different linux distro just means losing access to the android application library and the hardware drivers whilst gaining nothing, what benefit are you expecting to get?

As the tentacles of systemd reach out and penetrate more areas of the system, more applications will inevitably require systemd which means that a Linux installation without systemd will only be able to run a small subset of Linux apps.

This is totaly arse-backwards.

systemd isn't "reaching out and penetrating" anything. People writing apps need features that systemd provides. If you want to use some other init package just provide those features. Maybe bundle them up in a package called systemd-shim.

Still, the only advantage is if someone manages to run Linux on it. Might make up for the extra heat and lower battery life, to be able to run full featured Linux on it.

Um, you know Android is Linux, right? There's not much special about the Linux kernel in Android, just a few tweaks to the stock kernel to make it suitable to the environement on which it runs.

Almost all the Android special sauce is the user space, so the main difference between an Android system and a regular Linux distribution is what happens when PID 1 is executed. Change init, and you change the system entirely.

Run a debian chroot under Android if you want a regular looking Linux. Install a terminal app on android, and use a BT keyboard for input, and you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference from a regular Linux distro command line.

You systemd haters are simply living in your own delusional world, undisturbed by the harsh realities:
Don't do know that Debian systemd users now outnumber SysVinit users 3-1, even before Debian have released a stable systemd distro?

Where did you get that wee gem? Not popcon to be sure.

https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=systemd
https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=sysvinit

You systemd haters are simply living in your own delusional world, undisturbed by the harsh realities:
Don't do know that Debian systemd users now outnumber SysVinit users 3-1, even before Debian have released a stable systemd distro?

Where did you get that wee gem? Not popcon to be sure.

https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=systemd
https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=sysvinit

Is there a pattern developing of people resigning from their roles as Debian maintainers? Recently Joey Hess submitted his resignation from the entire project: https://lists.debian.org/debia...

All this makes me wonder why someone can't build some other piece of software which would perform the required session management in this particular case? It's not dependency for nefarious means, it's dependency which provides a specific feature that a programmer would like to use. Why can't that be coded separately from systemd by someone other than the systemd maintainers?

Systemd is also somewhat know for having no stable interfaces between its parts; combined with the increasing large number of parts it has, one would need to implement quite a lot to handle the required functionality. Systemd does have a chart of its API stability promises, but it looks to be last updated a year ago.

FWIW, I ran Debian Jessie with sysv for a while - and for about a month it was impossible to login via gdm (workaround was to switch to kdm or lightdm), so there's already been (testing-)user visible impact.

This is all very frustrating, especially since I really like the init/process-management parts of systemd, but not the glomp-up-all-the-projects and explicitly not working with others parts...

Serious question here: how avoidable is systemd currently?

For what it's worth, I managed to purge everything systemd-related from my debian testing system the other day. I had to replace NetworkManager with WICD, which is a pretty good straightforward replacement (although you need to re-create your configuration). Also, I run KDE, so that made things easier.

As I understand it (if I correctly noted the packages which got removed), you can't run a gnome system without systemd; however, you can still run debian jessie with kde without systemd.

The only packages which are coming from the systemd source package on my system any more are udev and libsystemd0 - however, given that systemd-sysv and systemd-logind are no longer installed, I consider that basically a win.

libsystemd0 is only still there because cups-daemon and kde-runtime require it; but given that it only defines the interfaces, it seems benign.

udev and libudev1, despite being packaged as part of the systemd source, do not depend on it according to the package info...

Serious question here: how avoidable is systemd currently?

For what it's worth, I managed to purge everything systemd-related from my debian testing system the other day. I had to replace NetworkManager with WICD, which is a pretty good straightforward replacement (although you need to re-create your configuration). Also, I run KDE, so that made things easier.

As I understand it (if I correctly noted the packages which got removed), you can't run a gnome system without systemd; however, you can still run debian jessie with kde without systemd.

The only packages which are coming from the systemd source package on my system any more are udev and libsystemd0 - however, given that systemd-sysv and systemd-logind are no longer installed, I consider that basically a win.

libsystemd0 is only still there because cups-daemon and kde-runtime require it; but given that it only defines the interfaces, it seems benign.

udev and libudev1, despite being packaged as part of the systemd source, do not depend on it according to the package info...

I've read all of the comments in this thread (at -1), and I think you're the only one to have truly nailed what's going on here.

Systemd has been a total disaster for many Debian users already. The animosity toward it doesn't come out of nowhere. It comes out of a situation like this, described as a "horrible experience". People are having their Debian systems utterly trashed thanks to systemd being forced upon them during routine updates.

I, too, fear that these early disastrous results will just be amplified many times over once Jessie starts to become more widely used. There will likely be problems, and they won't be pretty. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Debian's reputation is completely ruined. That's a real shame, given how many decades of effort have gone into making it such a respected and trusted distro.

This is also where FreeBSD could make a triumphant comeback. If the FreeBSD project play their cards right, and end up on the right side of this (which is obviously taking a strong stand against systemd, and standing in favor of stability and reliability), they could win over many refugees who are fleeing Debian.

One down, four to go!

Remaining team:0

Michael Bieble
Marco d'Itri
Michael Stapelberg
Sjoerd Simons

Tollef's smart to get out before Jessie is released. The looming spectre of broken systems that are going to haunt sysadmins everywhere when they update their Debian systems to Jessie is going to phenomenal. Who's gonna wanna stick around for that grief?
Sure, they'll all cry about "muh feels!" as the reason for leaving, but when you abandon a project (systemd packaging) this late in the schedule, everyone knows it going to be because you're trying to distance yourself from the inevitable shitstorm that going to happen.

One down, four to go!

Remaining team:0

Michael Bieble
Marco d'Itri
Michael Stapelberg
Sjoerd Simons

Tollef's smart to get out before Jessie is released. The looming spectre of broken systems that are going to haunt sysadmins everywhere when they update their Debian systems to Jessie is going to phenomenal. Who's gonna wanna stick around for that grief?
Sure, they'll all cry about "muh feels!" as the reason for leaving, but when you abandon a project (systemd packaging) this late in the schedule, everyone knows it going to be because you're trying to distance yourself from the inevitable shitstorm that going to happen.

One down, four to go!

Remaining team:0

Michael Bieble
Marco d'Itri
Michael Stapelberg
Sjoerd Simons

Tollef's smart to get out before Jessie is released. The looming spectre of broken systems that are going to haunt sysadmins everywhere when they update their Debian systems to Jessie is going to phenomenal. Who's gonna wanna stick around for that grief?
Sure, they'll all cry about "muh feels!" as the reason for leaving, but when you abandon a project (systemd packaging) this late in the schedule, everyone knows it going to be because you're trying to distance yourself from the inevitable shitstorm that going to happen.

One down, four to go!

Remaining team:0

Michael Bieble
Marco d'Itri
Michael Stapelberg
Sjoerd Simons

Tollef's smart to get out before Jessie is released. The looming spectre of broken systems that are going to haunt sysadmins everywhere when they update their Debian systems to Jessie is going to phenomenal. Who's gonna wanna stick around for that grief?
Sure, they'll all cry about "muh feels!" as the reason for leaving, but when you abandon a project (systemd packaging) this late in the schedule, everyone knows it going to be because you're trying to distance yourself from the inevitable shitstorm that going to happen.

One down, four to go!

Remaining team:

Michael Bieble
Marco d'Itri
Michael Stapelberg
Sjoerd Simons

Tollef's smart to get out before Jessie is released. The looming spectre of broken systems that are going to haunt sysadmins everywhere when they update their Debian systems to Jessie is going to phenomenal. Who's gonna wanna stick around for that grief?
Sure, they'll all cry about "muh feels!" as the reason for leaving, but when you abandon a project (systemd packaging) this late in the schedule, everyone knows it going to be because you're trying to distance yourself from the inevitable shitstorm that going to happen.

So true. So very, very true.

One down, four to go!

Remaining team:

Michael Bieble
Marco d'Itri
Michael Stapelberg
Sjoerd Simons

Tollef's smart to get out before Jessie is released. The looming spectre of broken systems that are going to haunt sysadmins everywhere when they update their Debian systems to Jessie is going to phenomenal. Who's gonna wanna stick around for that grief?
Sure, they'll all cry about "muh feels!" as the reason for leaving, but when you abandon a project (systemd packaging) this late in the schedule, everyone knows it going to be because you're trying to distance yourself from the inevitable shitstorm that going to happen.

So true. So very, very true.

One down, four to go!

Remaining team:

Michael Bieble
Marco d'Itri
Michael Stapelberg
Sjoerd Simons

Tollef's smart to get out before Jessie is released. The looming spectre of broken systems that are going to haunt sysadmins everywhere when they update their Debian systems to Jessie is going to phenomenal. Who's gonna wanna stick around for that grief?
Sure, they'll all cry about "muh feels!" as the reason for leaving, but when you abandon a project (systemd packaging) this late in the schedule, everyone knows it going to be because you're trying to distance yourself from the inevitable shitstorm that going to happen.

So true. So very, very true.

One down, four to go!

Remaining team:

Michael Bieble
Marco d'Itri
Michael Stapelberg
Sjoerd Simons

Tollef's smart to get out before Jessie is released. The looming spectre of broken systems that are going to haunt sysadmins everywhere when they update their Debian systems to Jessie is going to phenomenal. Who's gonna wanna stick around for that grief?
Sure, they'll all cry about "muh feels!" as the reason for leaving, but when you abandon a project (systemd packaging) this late in the schedule, everyone knows it going to be because you're trying to distance yourself from the inevitable shitstorm that going to happen.

So true. So very, very true.

And iwj's original comparison of systemd and upstart:

https://lists.debian.org/debia...

iwj's rebuttal to rra's write up:

https://lists.debian.org/debia...

One down, four to go!

Remaining team:

Michael Bieble
Marco d'Itri
Michael Stapelberg
Sjoerd Simons

Tollef's smart to get out before Jessie is released. The looming spectre of broken systems that are going to haunt sysadmins everywhere when they update their Debian systems to Jessie is going to phenomenal. Who's gonna wanna stick around for that grief?
Sure, they'll all cry about "muh feels!" as the reason for leaving, but when you abandon a project (systemd packaging) this late in the schedule, everyone knows it going to be because you're trying to distance yourself from the inevitable shitstorm that going to happen.

One down, four to go!

Remaining team:

Michael Bieble
Marco d'Itri
Michael Stapelberg
Sjoerd Simons

Tollef's smart to get out before Jessie is released. The looming spectre of broken systems that are going to haunt sysadmins everywhere when they update their Debian systems to Jessie is going to phenomenal. Who's gonna wanna stick around for that grief?
Sure, they'll all cry about "muh feels!" as the reason for leaving, but when you abandon a project (systemd packaging) this late in the schedule, everyone knows it going to be because you're trying to distance yourself from the inevitable shitstorm that going to happen.

One down, four to go!

Remaining team:

Michael Bieble
Marco d'Itri
Michael Stapelberg
Sjoerd Simons

Tollef's smart to get out before Jessie is released. The looming spectre of broken systems that are going to haunt sysadmins everywhere when they update their Debian systems to Jessie is going to phenomenal. Who's gonna wanna stick around for that grief?
Sure, they'll all cry about "muh feels!" as the reason for leaving, but when you abandon a project (systemd packaging) this late in the schedule, everyone knows it going to be because you're trying to distance yourself from the inevitable shitstorm that going to happen.

One down, four to go!

Remaining team:

Michael Bieble
Marco d'Itri
Michael Stapelberg
Sjoerd Simons

Tollef's smart to get out before Jessie is released. The looming spectre of broken systems that are going to haunt sysadmins everywhere when they update their Debian systems to Jessie is going to phenomenal. Who's gonna wanna stick around for that grief?
Sure, they'll all cry about "muh feels!" as the reason for leaving, but when you abandon a project (systemd packaging) this late in the schedule, everyone knows it going to be because you're trying to distance yourself from the inevitable shitstorm that going to happen.

It's a pretty long story. If you want to read all of it, you probably need to read the entire debian-devel and debian-ctte archives from approximately a year and a half ago until February/March this year.

A shorter summary is something like (from my memory, coloured by my views, etc, but I believe it's largely correct). User names are generally @debian.org, finger $user@db.debian.org for full names and such. It's a bit rambling and written in one go, but it's what you get this time:

- I upload systemd to Debian about a month after its initial release, get it into a ok-ish shape for wheezy, but not anywhere near suitable for being the default.
- Other distros start switching to systemd as default, various people in Debian start discussing if we should switch to systemd. Some people say yes, some no, some want to switch to upstart. Bickering and discussions in equal measure spread out across all media (IRC, blogs/planet, mailing lists, in-person discussions). Most of it reasonably civil.
- At some point, paultag files https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bi... (_massive_ bug report, you don't want to read it all) , asking the Debian technical committee to default on what the default should be.
- Lots of discussions happen, we use a bit of liw's and rra's Essay Debate System (https://wiki.debian.org/Debate, https://wiki.debian.org/Debate...) to structure the debate. It's Debian, it has to be A System.
- vorlon (Steve Langasek) sets up VMs using the various init systems for the Technical Committee members to play with. They do so and write up their findings and arguments. rra's writeup is at https://lists.debian.org/debia... and is possibly the best comparison I've ever read of init systems. Lots more discussions happen. I contribute a fair bit with my systemd maintainer hat on (though we're at this point a team maintaining systemd in Debian) and is very happy this happens while I'm holidaying in Spain so I don't have to deal with a day job at the same time.
- A lot of arguing internally to the CTTE whether to couple the question of what the default init system should be with whether it's ok for packages to require a given init system. bdale resolves the knot by calling for votes on a proposal very quickly after proposing a ballot. iwj sees this as backstabbing and is still very, very angry about this to this day.

The vote ends with systemd being the winner, after bdale's casting vote as the CTTE chair.

After this, there is an attempted General Resolution in March, which fails to get enough seconds, this is restarted by iwj on late October this year. The goal of this GR appears to be to forbid packages to depend on a specific init system.

It's a pretty long story. If you want to read all of it, you probably need to read the entire debian-devel and debian-ctte archives from approximately a year and a half ago until February/March this year.

A shorter summary is something like (from my memory, coloured by my views, etc, but I believe it's largely correct). User names are generally @debian.org, finger $user@db.debian.org for full names and such. It's a bit rambling and written in one go, but it's what you get this time:

- I upload systemd to Debian about a month after its initial release, get it into a ok-ish shape for wheezy, but not anywhere near suitable for being the default.
- Other distros start switching to systemd as default, various people in Debian start discussing if we should switch to systemd. Some people say yes, some no, some want to switch to upstart. Bickering and discussions in equal measure spread out across all media (IRC, blogs/planet, mailing lists, in-person discussions). Most of it reasonably civil.
- At some point, paultag files https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bi... (_massive_ bug report, you don't want to read it all) , asking the Debian technical committee to default on what the default should be.
- Lots of discussions happen, we use a bit of liw's and rra's Essay Debate System (https://wiki.debian.org/Debate, https://wiki.debian.org/Debate...) to structure the debate. It's Debian, it has to be A System.
- vorlon (Steve Langasek) sets up VMs using the various init systems for the Technical Committee members to play with. They do so and write up their findings and arguments. rra's writeup is at https://lists.debian.org/debia... and is possibly the best comparison I've ever read of init systems. Lots more discussions happen. I contribute a fair bit with my systemd maintainer hat on (though we're at this point a team maintaining systemd in Debian) and is very happy this happens while I'm holidaying in Spain so I don't have to deal with a day job at the same time.
- A lot of arguing internally to the CTTE whether to couple the question of what the default init system should be with whether it's ok for packages to require a given init system. bdale resolves the knot by calling for votes on a proposal very quickly after proposing a ballot. iwj sees this as backstabbing and is still very, very angry about this to this day.

The vote ends with systemd being the winner, after bdale's casting vote as the CTTE chair.

After this, there is an attempted General Resolution in March, which fails to get enough seconds, this is restarted by iwj on late October this year. The goal of this GR appears to be to forbid packages to depend on a specific init system.

It's a pretty long story. If you want to read all of it, you probably need to read the entire debian-devel and debian-ctte archives from approximately a year and a half ago until February/March this year.

A shorter summary is something like (from my memory, coloured by my views, etc, but I believe it's largely correct). User names are generally @debian.org, finger $user@db.debian.org for full names and such. It's a bit rambling and written in one go, but it's what you get this time:

- I upload systemd to Debian about a month after its initial release, get it into a ok-ish shape for wheezy, but not anywhere near suitable for being the default.
- Other distros start switching to systemd as default, various people in Debian start discussing if we should switch to systemd. Some people say yes, some no, some want to switch to upstart. Bickering and discussions in equal measure spread out across all media (IRC, blogs/planet, mailing lists, in-person discussions). Most of it reasonably civil.
- At some point, paultag files https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bi... (_massive_ bug report, you don't want to read it all) , asking the Debian technical committee to default on what the default should be.
- Lots of discussions happen, we use a bit of liw's and rra's Essay Debate System (https://wiki.debian.org/Debate, https://wiki.debian.org/Debate...) to structure the debate. It's Debian, it has to be A System.
- vorlon (Steve Langasek) sets up VMs using the various init systems for the Technical Committee members to play with. They do so and write up their findings and arguments. rra's writeup is at https://lists.debian.org/debia... and is possibly the best comparison I've ever read of init systems. Lots more discussions happen. I contribute a fair bit with my systemd maintainer hat on (though we're at this point a team maintaining systemd in Debian) and is very happy this happens while I'm holidaying in Spain so I don't have to deal with a day job at the same time.
- A lot of arguing internally to the CTTE whether to couple the question of what the default init system should be with whether it's ok for packages to require a given init system. bdale resolves the knot by calling for votes on a proposal very quickly after proposing a ballot. iwj sees this as backstabbing and is still very, very angry about this to this day.

The vote ends with systemd being the winner, after bdale's casting vote as the CTTE chair.

After this, there is an attempted General Resolution in March, which fails to get enough seconds, this is restarted by iwj on late October this year. The goal of this GR appears to be to forbid packages to depend on a specific init system.

You missed the point completely. The point is that people complaining that Debian changed the default init system and that there is currently a GR to make it mandatory for upstream developers to make sure their packages run at least systemd plus something else. Which means that the upstream devs have to work to support something they don't have any interest in doing so. At that only because some complain that they should be able to replace systemd for whatever reason. That is akin to demanding that upstream devs must make sure that their packages compile with gcc + something else, or that their software must run with Linux+ something else, because some want to replace the Linux kernel.

I did not wrote that some people replaced sysvinit, or patched it or whatever. The current issue is the GR and the decision of the TC.

See for example
https://lists.debian.org/debia...

Yet nobody has proposed a
GR forcing support for kFreeBSD or the Hurd; the people working on them
have simply *done the work*, and in some cases successfully convinced
others to do the same.

(And analogously, non-Linux kernels such as FreeBSD often have
substantial shim layers providing Linux APIs for the purposes of porting
software.)

I see:
https://www.debian.org/devel/j...
https://nm.debian.org/public/s...

I guess it can take years with sponsorship. That's a pretty hefty bar. I do think it's a little biased toward inactives, but that's common for this kind of system and I certainly don't think it changes the characterization of why Joey is out.

https://www.debian.org/vote/20...

I see:
https://www.debian.org/devel/j...
https://nm.debian.org/public/s...

I guess it can take years with sponsorship. That's a pretty hefty bar. I do think it's a little biased toward inactives, but that's common for this kind of system and I certainly don't think it changes the characterization of why Joey is out.

https://www.debian.org/vote/20...

I see:
https://www.debian.org/devel/j...
https://nm.debian.org/public/s...

I guess it can take years with sponsorship. That's a pretty hefty bar. I do think it's a little biased toward inactives, but that's common for this kind of system and I certainly don't think it changes the characterization of why Joey is out.

https://www.debian.org/vote/20...

From what I read there, stuff like https://lists.debian.org/debia... (trying to make technical decisions via politics when there actually is no disagreement between devs which needs any help with the decision-making) also contributed to his decision to quit.

I will try to shed light on this, the point seemed to be that involving the public in the decision-making process resulted in the same old discussions being thrashed out by people who should not have been involved in the first place, because it would lead to the same old discussions taking place.

What that vote about the automatic switching did was to invite the public to decide whether that should happen or not, which is going to cause delays and noise and the developers had already decided what to do so it was unnecessary.

Last time I noticed I do not all systemd on all of my servers. Do you say now is mandatory to install it?

systemd is the default init system, etc. in Debian Jessie.
It is currently undecided if other init systems will be supported, and whether users upgrading to Jessie will be automatically switched to it.

If other init systems are not supported under Jessie, and you wish to avoid systemd, your only choices will be to continue using Wheezy (until it's no longer supported), or to switch to a different distro.

The decision to support other init systems will be posted here: https://www.debian.org/vote/20...

For me, it's keyscript in crypttab which completely stopped my systems from booting. They're not keen to ever implement becase apparently shell scripts are intrinsically racy (for what it's worth my own keyscripts have a 10s timeout and fall-back to askpass if the crpyt token doesn't become available. I've never had one of my servers reach this time-out, the hardware config rarely ever changes). I wrote about some of the infinite permutations possible to support the use-case of just having a 4-line shell script, but it just seems that systemd is religiously opposed to shell scripts. Eventually, someone pointed out that I could pass keyscript args in the kernel boot parameters which seems to be a partially satisfactory solution for now.

For what it's worth, I do like the declarative nature of systemd for starting processes, socket activation etc. and I have migrated most of my stuff to systemd. It bothers me that debugging dependency issues is still so hard (ever tried "systemd-analyze dot"? the output is completely worthless as a debugging aid). Still, I am uneasy about the dogmatic anti-shellscript religion, I worry about the project's overall approach to security when simply accidentally running systemctl as a non-root user causes it to segfault, and it doesn't seem right that a change in pid1 should even remotely impact userland applications at all, let alone as deeply as systemd has.

At the end of the day, choice of default init system isn't going to make me switch from my favourite distro of the last 14 years (apart from a 2 year excursion to Ubuntu), but I think some of my own hostility toward systemd has been a result of the instantly dismissive remarks whenever I've tried to explain a problem I've had with it - by now I'm realizing that perhaps everybody is just too tired to tell the difference between a valid systemd complaint and yet another "get off my lawn" argument. In any case it's made me realize I should really diversify my tastes a little, currently playing with FreeBSD (again) and NixOS - that has to be a good thing.

It isn't clear that the switch isn't a purely technical decision. The speculation is that systemd will become like a second kernel and packages which run on 'linux' will need to run on systems with systemd.

So, the choice of that init system dones't just relate to the technical aspects of starting up a system. It also relates to who has power and control in the GNU/Linux world in general.

Joey Hess wrote in one of his posts:

https://lists.debian.org/debia...

So most of our concern about being locked into systemd is that desktop environments are coming to require it, and that systemd-shim may be hard to keep working in the long term. But desktop environments like Gnome were already requiring systemd before Debian switched to it; Debian cannot hold back the tide.

Well, we can hold back the tide thru patches, if we want to. That kind of decision is a political decision, not a technical one.

Based on what I've read....

His departure has to do with the interruptions to the release cycle by introducing arguments about technical minutia in sub-projects as requiring a GR vote to decide. Technical arguments being decided by the ignorant masses, versus the specific groups (which anyone from the GR can join) who have the specific job of making those decisions. At least that's one way to look at it.

This is not the first time and probably will not be the last that Debian technical decisions will be handed up to the popular vote, completely subverting the whole specialized delineation of teams within Debian. GR votes are being taken (again) for the specific purpose of avoiding losing a technical argument by appealing to a larger group, which also impacts the Debian release cycle. Normally, such votes would be delayed in the interest of the distro, but this is allowed by the Debian constitution. I would believe, such an act (appealing to the GR) was supposed to be limited to hotly debated and controversial topics (like systemd) but not implementation details (which is what is happening)...much less so close to the release date.

He is stating that he expects it to continue. He's not interesting in taking up this fight as a call to amend the constitution. He obviously feels alone in calling out that it's counterproductive to argue over details so close to a release. He's just done with a community that cares about who wins arguments or following strict process procedures rather than respectfully, making deadlines that users and commercial interests depend on (or at least use as an indicator of a stable project).

https://lists.debian.org/debia...

In fact, someone on the Phoronix forums posted a bunch of links to Joey's debian-devel posts which seems to bear this out.

Especially the first one is a clanger. If you can't support systemd on technical grounds without getting threats, something is very toxic indeed.

And no, that first post is not directly related to the Debian Constitution. That the idiotic GR trying to override the Technical Committee decision two weeks before the Jessie freeze is inspired by this kind of drivel, and that the Constitution makes these kind of purely political overrides of the technical decisions possible is rather evident though.

From what I read there, stuff like https://lists.debian.org/debia... (trying to make technical decisions via politics when there actually is no disagreement between devs which needs any help with the decision-making) also contributed to his decision to quit.

This can be a warning for other groups.

The Debian constitution looks like nothing more than normal club bureaucracy. Without it, I would expect Debian wouldn't have survived as long as it has.

https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution

Without specific concerns about such a constitution, I'm inclined to not make much of this. People change, projects change, people leave, people join. It doesn't matter how vital the participant, things change.

This is the only hint of what's wrong, I don't see how it has anything to do with the existence of a constitution: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/11/msg00196.html

No offense to anyone involved... I'm more interested in learning what's wrong with the constitution so that I can avoid similar problems in my own clubs.

This can be a warning for other groups.

The Debian constitution looks like nothing more than normal club bureaucracy. Without it, I would expect Debian wouldn't have survived as long as it has.

https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution

Without specific concerns about such a constitution, I'm inclined to not make much of this. People change, projects change, people leave, people join. It doesn't matter how vital the participant, things change.

This is the only hint of what's wrong, I don't see how it has anything to do with the existence of a constitution: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/11/msg00196.html

No offense to anyone involved... I'm more interested in learning what's wrong with the constitution so that I can avoid similar problems in my own clubs.

In fact, he is very supportive of systemd, as evidenced by many of his mailing list posts. Here's one example: https://lists.debian.org/debia... Pure speculation: He is fed up with people like Ian Jackson abusing the constitution to push their agenda.

That's far too reductionist. For a start, there are many sysv-compatible init implementations that do parallel boot; upstart does it, Mandriva's pinit does it. There's a whole subset of LSB that exists exclusively to provide a way for sysv initscripts to represent dependencies *precisely in order to enable parallel init* - see https://wiki.debian.org/LSBIni... for a good write-up of that.

Secondly, insofar as systemd is intended to improve boot speeds, it wasn't actually just about implementing simple parallelization of sysv-style services using dependencies. If you read http://0pointer.de/blog/projec... it talks a lot about parallelization but it's actually talking about making *more* parallelization possible, not just *implementing* parallelization: the big idea Lennart had back then was the idea that you don't actually have to completely start up a service in order to start up another service that 'requires' it, if you can create the socket it listens on before it's ready, then queue up any requests and pass them on to the service once it's actually done starting up. Lennart was clearly really excited about this idea at the time, but if you look at systemd these days, it's a really pretty small corner of all the things it does.

All the way through the first part of that first post, Lennart is really talking about making more parallelization possible, he's not simply talking about implementing inter-service dependencies.

These days systemd does an awful lot more, and it really isn't just about making boot faster any more. Even in the very first post, once you get past the first half, it starts talking about improved capabilities. I find startup speed the least interesting thing about systemd, really, I'm much more interested in the improved capabilities for units and especially in the improved logging journald provides.