Lennart Poettering: Open Source Community "Quite a Sick Place To Be In"

An anonymous reader writes "Free software programmer Lennart Poettering has been part of his fair share of controversy in the open source community, and his latest essay may raise the most eyebrows yet. Poettering takes on the idea that the community is one big happy family and has some harsh words for the loudest and most obnoxious members. He says in part: "I don't usually talk about this too much, and hence I figure that people are really not aware of this, but yes, the Open Source community is full of a#@&oles, and I probably more than most others am one of their most favourite targets. I get hate mail for hacking on Open Source. People have started multiple 'petitions' on petition web sites, asking me to stop working (google for it). Recently, people started collecting Bitcoins to hire a hitman for me (this really happened!). Just the other day, some idiot posted a 'song' on youtube, a creepy work, filled with expletives about me and suggestions of violence. People post websites about boycotting my projects, containing pretty personal attacks. On IRC, people /msg me sometimes, with nasty messages, and references to artwork in 4chan style. And there's more. A lot more."

Comments

Systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

Lennart is 110% correct, but the rampant, mostly unjustified hatred of systemd is going to discredit what he says.

What am I kidding? The "open source" community stopped caring about the effects of their actions years ago. Much easier to just insult Microsoft (with added dollar signs) than worry about your own problems.

Re:Systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you don't troll, you are still bound to get a lot of negative feedback on account of the fact that you have such a large audience on the internet.

Most people don't/can't grasp the concept of hundreds/thousands/millions of people using their product(s) and responding in sometimes unreasonable or irrational ways. The fact that most of it sent directly to the "victim" (for lack of a better word) means the larger public is simply never aware of it.

Re:Systemd

[LWATCDR]

In a "civil" world this is how things should work.
Statement:I think this technical solution is better.
Reply: No and here is the reason why.

In a world where "civil has descended to the Jr. High level.
Statment: You morons are doing it wrong.
Reply: You're an idiot.

In a world that is terribly out of control.
Reply: A threat of violence and or sexual assault.

That is never justified. And frankly that is what is happening here.

Re:Systemd

[davydagger]

Poettering is not a troll. He's a software developer, who has the unforunateness of writing lots of great software that a lot of people simply do not like.

Simply not liking someone's software is one thing, but the level of Poettering hate, while amusing, is counterproductive, and at sometimes scary.

That said, I'm a fan of the man and his work, based purely on its technical merrits.

Re:Systemd

[Chas]

Really?

You're a fan of non-standards-compliant software that breaks compatibility, creeps features all over the place, and compromises system integrity, stability and reliability by introducing a massive SPOF?

Good for you! Me? I like software that works RIGHT.

Re:Systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a moron and you're doing it wrong.

Re:Systemd

[morgauxo]

The real problem isn't that he writes such software. To each their own, everyone should be able to write anything they want without attacks. The problem is the distributions that insist on making his crap the new default!

Re:Systemd

[geminidomino]

Are you aware that you're helping to reinforce one of the points two comments up? And somehow, writing software that a group of people deem as bad means that you should be met with horrible physical tortures?

Nowhere did GP say anything about whether or not LP deserved the abuse. He offered counterexamples to GGP's assertion that LP writes "great software," which has had plenty of objective explanations as to its flaws. He said nothing about the person himself.

Re:Systemd

[davydagger]

What standards? you mean backwards compatibility that you never really had with software originally designed to run on a machine with 64 kbit of RAM. Or compataibility with other Operating Systems, that no one really cares about except their propretary forks. You know, the same people who complain about "Freetards", and generally bitch how terrible FOSS is, but yet dependant on BSD licensed components to make their proprietary systems run, because they are too dense to do it themselves. That?

I've also yet to see systemd, or networkmanager, really comrpomise system integrity, mabey you can give a few examples?

Here is another thing, most distro's initscripts never worked right, and they were also completely non-standard, and usually tied to one distro, and incompatible with eachother. Systemd is distribution agnostic, and is doing a fine job at creating new, better inter-distro standards.

Its not ported to other OSs, but fucking shit, its free software, if someone else wants it, they can port it.

Leonart dragged the linux desktop kicking and screaming into the 21st century and contiues to do so, again and again addressing major defeciences between Linux and Windows featurewise, and time and time again, surpassing the proprietary competition.

People keep talking about "the year of the Linux Desktop". Guess what, Leonart is the only fucking person who is actually working on getting us there.

Re:Systemd

[DamnOregonian]

To be fair, Pulseaudio seems to work OK now, and something like it was needed.

Well, it definitely works... better than it used to.

I'm pretty sure it still holds some kind of record for being the only piece of software that every single distribution has a wiki entry for turning off.

Re:Systemd

[Cramer]

Unfortunately, yes they do. Unless you want to switch to BSD, or roll your own distribution -- which now involves resurrecting old init shell scripts, or writing new one, and maintaining them going forward -- you are very likely to be forced to use systemd by the distro or 3rd party apps that deeply integrate systemd.

Re:Systemd

[Somebody Is Using My]

While I agree with the above, I think that Poettering is incorrect in his assessment that the "Open Source Community" is a sick place to be. This problem is not just limited to that particular group; it is endemic on the Internet. But its not really limited to that either, because people have been making those sorts of comments (e.g., "Man, some days I'd really like to kill my boss") throughout history; they aren't meant seriously and are just a method of expressing spleen. The Internet just provides a larger audience. Open Source advocates, by nature of their dealing with digital products, just happen to be more common and comfortable with the digital medium of the Internet.

So I I think it would be more accurate to say that it is the Human Race that is a sick place to be in.

Of course, I personally think the bigger problem is taking these comments so seriously. It's just "feeding the trolls" by giving them the audience they desire, providing the sort of feedback that only provokes them - and others - into worse and worse behavior in order to get attention. After all, if everybody is already screaming at the top of their lungs, even a "normal person" (is there such a thing?) might feel obligated to use a bullhorn to get his message out.

Re:Systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

Poettering is not a troll..

No, he's a troll, just of a different sort. If you want proof of his trolling, here you go. The haranguing and general harassment starts at around 12:00 and continues for the rest of the presentation (almost 45 minutes), gradually getting more and more volatile as things progress. You can see how uncomfortable the presenter is, and he starts flipping through slides at the end because he's run out of time, all because Poettering chewed up his time being a jerk. Poettering should have written down his points and discussed them after the presentation ended. But the very end... well, where I come from, nothing says "douchebag" to me like getting up on stage, beer in hand... fuck it, just watch the video. Also take note of his "usually we don't get much criticism" comment around 54:00 -- classic textbook narcissism combined with ostrich syndrome.

I ask you to put yourself in the shoes of the fellow giving the presentation, while simultaneously asking yourself "why didn't the folks putting on the event do something?"

Nothing justifies Poettering getting death threats or things that could actually impact him personally (deeply) or professionally -- I urge everyone to actually read, not skim, RFC 2635 (Lennart should be the first to) -- but karma is playing somewhat of a role here. The video should speak for itself. It is that type of personality that I think drives people to dislike him in the same way that people dislike Theo de Raadt.

Anyway, his whinging makes me chuckle a bit because it's extremely pot-kettle-black, but nobody should be subjected to physical threats, continual harassment, or anything even remotely extreme like that.

Re:Systemd

[TheCarp]

This right here.

I didn't know who this guy was, but now I see people listing a littany of things I either avoid, or grudgingly accept because its easier to do so than figure out what I have to do to rip it out and replace it and keep it out through updates.

Don't get me wrong, network manager works. I use it, but, whenever I have had an issue with it, I have generally found it to be far more of a time sink than its worth and very hard to make heads or tails out of if you need to get under the covers

Basically, it is, in many ways, very similar to the problems I had 13 years ago when I said "screw redhat, this debian system is cleaner and I can figure it out without the gui" . (of course I ended up having to learn for work anyway, so I guess the joke was on me...twice now)

That said.... my main disagreement with him is this idea that there is an "open source community". Its too big for "a community". That is like saying the "Eastern seaboard community has a bunch of assholes" or "boston has a lot of assholes", yup, all over the place.

I think he draws so much ire because of the visibility of his software. Its not a problem endemic to open source, you think closed source companies don't get nasty emails? Hell, I have SENT companies nasty emails about their software....maybe not death threats but, certainly some very choice metaphors about their general material makeup have certainly been given.

This is not "the community" this is "the public".

Re:Systemd

[grcumb]

Poettering is not a troll. He's a software developer, who has the unforunateness of writing lots of great software that a lot of people simply do not like.

See, this, right here, is why people lose it when they deal with Lennart.

This is not a matter of 'like' or 'do not like'. If it were, we could tell Lennart his software sucks and move on. But no, he's so fucking clever he not only has to be right, he has to foist his rightness onto systems before it's anywhere near mature.

And then.... and then, to add insult to injury, he refuses to accept that integrating core software, which in his own words claims to offer a one-stop-shop for kernel-userland interaction, without extensive use in real world conditions, might reasonably be thought a little rash. No, he has to go and accuse the entire software establishment of bias, an unwillingness to change (without even beginning to address where that inclination comes from), and ultimately, of a simple lack of ability to see and accept just how fucking right he is.

Amazingly, astonishingly to abso-fucking-lutely no one, his actions give rise to more than a little rancour. And now he has the gall to say that he was right all along, that his opponents are irrational and that it's a problem with the rest of the world.

To which I can only reply: seek help.

Re:Systemd

[Chas]

Why would they want it? It's setting itself up as a single point of failure and breaks POSIX compliance.

That's like asking "Why doesn't FreeBSD just use the Windows bootloader?"

Re:Systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

Poettering is not a troll. He's a software developer, who has the unforunateness of writing lots of great software that a lot of people simply do not like.

Caveat: I am a part-time contribuer to two geeky distros, meaning I get paid in beer at conferences, and so am constantly inundated with seeing a certain cycle play out over IRC and email lists. This isn't about that at all, rather it's the community being treated as less of a community and more MBA/business tactics being employed against that community -- and eventually hitting resistance against people with little other leverage. There are several things going on:

1. It isn't that people don't like the software and/or design choices, it is that Poettering and Redhat have made design/business decisions purely to force adoption of what they want as business tactics to push "a standard" which happens to be Redhat. This is not good community behavior, and instead of competing on technical merits makes people feel they are competing via other tactics. For example, if they roll in udev, you then either have to fork udev and deal with keeping it patched or adopt systemd. No one has a real issue with logind as software as consolekit wasn't getting much love, but then Gnome3 depends on logind, and logind depends on Systemd, so then you'd have to fork Gnome3 to stay off systemd. And on, and on.

2. They have made claims they haven't followed through on, and come to be seen as disingenious in what they say. There is little to no reason for udev to be rolled into systemd, the "it's easier to develop as one tree" stuff is true yet kind of silly considering the issues it causes for everyone else. Still, it was claimed it'd also be seperate so people should just relax and not make a fuss... and then udev became dependent. It is a tactic that gets repeated because it works unless you are really paying attention. Another example coming to mind is text logging vaporware: "Don't worry, we get that you need that but adopt it now as we'll have an option shortly on month x where you can turn off binary logging and have..." and then just decide not to do it.

3. They have pushed solutions that aren't ready for prime-time for everyone, yet gloss over everyone having serious problems and/or shunt the blame elsewhere. This doesn't build community.

4. His software has become politicized, often by Poettering himself as a tactic. Poettering will mock rather than people who don't share his views and are interacting/criticizing choices rationally and calmly. Just a bit ago I watched him publically mocking gentoo devs who have been putting time into eudev as an alternative, using the same verbage someone might to mock climate-change deniers. It's language obviously designed to mock and exclude. When he then complains about the same, it just furthers the image people have of him.

5. Redhat and Poettering have some really, really big sticks: mostly a bank account to pay developers to have things and an existing code base/market. If you're debian, gentoo or any distro, forking half of Gnome3, etc, etc just to deal with this stuff is one hell of a tall ask considering how they are comprised and/or not funded. Many users lacking any of this leverage are using the tools they feel they have: public vitriol and mocking.

I run systemd, but I basically had to switch because I had no choice. I agree with Poettering on some technical issues, disagree with him greatly on others, and absolutely abhore how they treated the community. In every controversy involving him I can think of, it all could have been avoided via either 5% more effort on Poettering/Redhat's part.

Re:Systemd

[The Technomancer]

I think systems admins would care a lot less about systemd if it didn't take over a ton of other things beyond booting, to make gains on boot time, when that's something that a sysadmin should be doing rarely (and in a cloud infrastructure, once per instance). systemd is fine for the desktop. It's great software for that. My issue is with the project managers for the various major distros that make this the new normal going forward and sacrifice stability and tested software on the server side for the desktop.

Re:Systemd

[Vellmont]

Are you aware that you're helping to reinforce one of the points two comments up?

I don't agree. Being critical of his work on a technical basis is VERY different from personal attacks. I found poettering's post to be good, and I agreed with that he has to say. I've also had shitty problems with the sound on Linux before, which I _think_ might be attributable to pulseaudio. I can't be sure, but I have no trouble beliving pulseaudio might be shit. I don't take a stand on systemd yet, but my instincts are that it's the wrong approach. But I'd never get personal with the man, after all, it's just software.

And somehow, writing software that a group of people deem as bad means that you should be met with horrible physical tortures?

Umm.. what? Where did that come from? Nobody suggested physical violence. Nobody even got personal. Please stick to what people actually said rather than pulling stuff out of nowhere.

Re:Systemd

[amicusNYCL]

I'm missing part (ok, the vast majority) of this story, but if his software is such shit, then why are so many distros, who presumably enjoy when their operating systems run correctly, using his software? Is there actually a consensus on his software being shit, and if so, why do people use it? If not, why do people act like it's a foregone conclusion that his software is shit? To an outside observer this kind of looks like a shouting match amongst a huge group of egotistical assholes.

Greater Internet F***wad Theory

[Anonymous Coward]

This happens online a lot. It's bad, it's stupid, most of us oppose it, but as GamerGate shows, it can do real harm.

Re:Greater Internet F***wad Theory

[i kan reed]

I don't know if "most of us" oppose it. On the whole, there's a lot of people on slashdot who are like "whatever it's harmless". They bother me almost more than the threateners, because at some level, they consider themselves moderates rather than enablers.

Re:Greater Internet F***wad Theory

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe we just were smart enough to realize there's pretty easy ways to avoid the mobs of idiots, like not hanging out on IRC, or writing blogs trying to get a reaction out of a bunch of neck-beards then acting all surprised when you poked them and they lash out. Perhaps we realized that there's really no way to stop it even if we wanted to. Maybe we understand that trying to do so would be starting down a slippery slope that does more harm for all of us then good for the naive that don't understand the mob internet mentality that's existed since back when newsgroups were new and browsing the web was via gophers. Especially when things like threats of bodily harm are already illegal in most places...

Maybe we think the internet's worked fine for 30 years and all you people that can't handle the good with the bad should get the fuck off it.

Re: Greater Internet F***wad Theory

[MMC Monster]

I'm okay w/ systemd. I don't consider myself an enabler. I use Linux for my day to day work. Whatever the kernel guys put in is fine by me. If it breaks my workflow, I look for something else. That's how I switched from Ubuntu to Mint.

There are plenty of FOSS OSs out there. I don't care about the internals of them. I care about the apps they run so I can get my work done.

Re: Greater Internet F***wad Theory

[dpilot]

How would you feel if there were apparent force applied to make you use systemd, regardless of our opinion of it? Some of us perceive that that's the reality. Witness L.P.'s recent rants against Gentoo, which only offers systemd as an option, and not the default option.

I like to be a moderate too, but I don't like coercion.

Sounds like he hasn't gotten the message

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've done something to earn that much hate, maybe you ought to take a step back and re-evaluate your position.

Re:Sounds like he hasn't gotten the message

[i kan reed]

"If you've done something to trigger my just world fallacy, maybe you deserve it"

Re:Sounds like he hasn't gotten the message

[Jason Levine]

Who says he's "earned" it. I can't say I've been targeted by a group of trolls online, but I was bullied growing up. The bullies followed me in groups around taunting me and blocking my entrance to class. (If I passed just one of them in the hall, they would leave me alone.) I didn't do anything to them. The reason they did all this was because they found it fun to do. It was a sick sense of humor that never once considered that their target might be an actual human with actual feelings. (They stopped when someone else confronted them with the fact that their daily torments were actually doing damage to me. I was becoming increasingly paranoid and withdrawn.)

Decades later, I was targeted online by a lone troll who saw herself as a prophet of god. What did I do to her? Well, I liked photography and another of her targets liked photography so, in her twisted mind, this meant we were the same person and I was lying about everything when I said I wasn't. She harassed me online as much as she could, including threatening to file police reports on me to report me for horrible crimes. Granted, from what I could glean from her rantings, her view of "filing a police report" likely involved e-mailing the precinct to tell them god told her X committed Y crimes and thinking that they would immediately arrest X. Still, it was scary to have someone stalking you like this.

In the latter case, this person stalked me less than she possibly could since I used a pseudonym for the account she targeted. The other guy used his real name and got his relatives and place of business attacked as well. Change one off-kilter person to a gang of people who think someone has committed some horrible crime (i.e. expressing an opinion contrary to the one they hold true) and who have the time and resources to track down everything about this person and you can see how some online communities can be scary places.

Re:Sounds like he hasn't gotten the message

[sjames]

Before systemd sprouted tendrils of dependency everywhere, I ignored it entirely. He had his little project and that was fine.

I really don't care what he wrote or didn't, but the political manipulation to force it into everything is highly objectionable.

So the real problem is his insistence on wiping every other init off the face of the Earth. If he will kindly knock it off, I will return to not caring what he does with his project.

Re:Sounds like he hasn't gotten the message

[sjames]

He convinced Gnome and other things to depend on it. He presents an API with a built in dependency hazard and claims it's no problem. He made it so it fails if it isn't PID 1.

Re:Sounds like he hasn't gotten the message

[sjames]

Close, but he did have some help and the backing of RedHat.

Re:Sounds like he hasn't gotten the message

[qpqp]

He also won't fix a critical bug, and here's a dozen more reasons to hate this crapware.
Lennart, pack your things and go, or start playing nice finally!

This guys comes across as an asshole

[Anonymous Coward]

He deserves to work for Microsoft.

Tell me about it

[Anonymous Coward]

The same abusive jerk has been after me too. Through some savvy detective work, I figured out his real first name: "Linus"

As soon as I determine his last name I'm going to lay down some serious vengeance upon his ass!

4Chan...

[MindPrison]

people /msg me sometimes, with nasty messages, and references to artwork in 4chan style. And there's more. A lot more.

I know how you feel, 4chan has destroyed much more than open source, it has destroyed my entire peaceful suburban neighborhood, now my neighbor has decorated his little car with a HUGE Pedo Bear decal all over the car, and no one so far - have reacted to this.

Re:Hmmm

[jellomizer]

People don't like other people for a whole slew of mostly stupid reasons.

You internet presence causes a lot of those non-verbal cues to get left out. We often say a lot of things, but not all things are weighted equally.

If one would say they are for Gun Rights and Anti-Abortion you could think that they are a right wing nut-job. But if you get the non-verbal communications you may find out that the person is actually far more liberal on most issues except for say those too.

A lot of people have a hard time with gray zones anyways, so they can't really get how a person can have a complex relationship between topics and still be in a particular camp.

Critics should take positive action

[noldrin]

I haven't like the changes he's caused in Linux, but none of those things are the way one should deal with it. If you don't like where Linux is going, fork things and make it the way you like. These types of actions you'd expect from people with no discernible skills to be able to contribute. If you have skill to contribute, put the work in, if you don't have skills, put some work in and gain them.

Re:Critics should take positive action

[CRCulver]

I haven't like the changes he's caused in Linux, but none of those things are the way one should deal with it. If you don't like where Linux is going, fork things and make it the way you like.

It's one thing to fork a single tool, but it's quite another thing to fork an entire distribution, one which already has complex organization like a legal registration and funds in the bank, and which has slowly gained hard-won recognition in government and business circles. Debian, all of the Debian-derived distros, OpenSuse and Arch have adopted systemd, and those who oppose systemd can't just create a distro of such maturity and respect overnight. Sure, Slackware and the *BSDs are left, but losing Debian too was a hard blow, and it's understandable that systemd opponents are feeling a sense of desperation.

Re:Critics should take positive action

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me set you straight:

• He wrote an init system that almost nobody liked and that many unrelated programs had to be be modified in order to work with, then started cramming all sorts of things which don't belong in an init system into it.
• He didn't agree with people's objections, told them that they were idiots and to fuck off, and continued development while completely ignoring input from almost everybody who would be affected.
• Distribution maintainers decided to replace init with systemd because Red Hat (for whom Pottering works) made sure that several large and important projects that they control depend on systemd, and since systemd is pretty much designed not to play well with others, basically had to either adopt it or drop those projects from their distributions.
• People will sometimes bully and threaten a person who acts like a bully. Color me surprised.

The discussions of systemd's technical discussions have happened, over and over. See point #2 above.

Re:Critics should take positive action

[JohnFen]

If you use Debian, trust it, and love it, and Debian has made this change, and you abhor the change, it's a good wakeup call opportunity. Most people will take this chance to say "perhaps I am on the wrong side of this issue" and then adjust accordingly.

Indeed. I use and love Debian, and this systemd thing certainly was a wakeup call to me. I'm now beginning the nontrivial effort required to move all my systems over to BSD.

Re:Critics should take positive action

[rl117]

I'm also one of the people migrating to FreeBSD, and I'm not happy that I had to do so having 15 years invested in Debian as a user and developer. Not that I'm unhappy with FreeBSD, it's really very good. I'm unhappy with the fact that a small number of arrogant and abrasive people can steamroller in a large number of very controversial changes and in doing so removed many of the reasons I was using GNU/Linux in the first place. If the system has rapidly become something you find pleasure, satisfaction and utility in using and developing it, you're not going to continue using and developing it "just because", you're going to find something to replace it. And having to make that choice was not pleasant.

Butt-hurt

[buckfeta2014]

He's just butt-hurt that Gentoo won't make systemd it's default init manager.

In the spotlight

[just_another_sean]

Most of what he's complaining about is undeserved (hiring a hit on him, WTF?) but he's not exactly known to be very diplomatic in his communications. He is, with a heavy hand, changing the fundamental landscape of a lot of people's favorite OS. This is upsetting people, in a big way in some cases. Again, constructive criticism is the way to handle dislike of systemd and his other projects, not death threats or even simple, juvenile insults.

But he shares some of the blame when it comes to the vitriolic nature of systemd discussions. He can't just brush off a large percentage of the community and not expect people to get upset.

What blows my mind is that every single major distribution seems to be hopping on the systemd bandwagon. I'm looking squarely at Debian. The short time systemd (relatively speaking) has been around and has been worked on and debugged does not justify it's inclusion in a system that's known for stability and correctness over latest/greatest.

Oh well, for me it was the kick in the head I needed to finally getting around to 100% embracing *BSD as a server system and not as something to play around with in my free time.

Re:In the spotlight

[amorsen]

He is plenty good at dealing out abuse himself. Interacting with him is not a pleasant experience.

Re:Pick a category

[MrEricSir]

The key difference between non-corporate open source projects and Microsoft or Apple is that companies have HR departments. Problem employees can be dealt with or even fired.

There isn't really an analog in your typical open source community. In fact, smaller open source projects tend to be so grateful for any help that asshole behavior is tolerated -- or even considered the norm. It's a sad state of affairs for the majority of us who want to contribute, but have no interest in dealing with a cesspool of assholes.

Re:Normal everywhere

[Jason Levine]

There's push back and then there's going over the line. People saying "X should be fired for advocating this position"? Fine. They are expressing their opinion. People saying "I'm never using SOFTWARE_PACKAGE again because of the changes X made"? Also fine. Calling for someone to physically hurt X? Not fine at all. I don't mind if this person is calling for Linux to be sold to Microsoft, raising money to hire a hit-man to take him out is NOT acceptable. Anyone who thinks it is, has a serious bug in their moral compass.

Re:Systemd AND PULSE AUDIO

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Dearest Lennart,

You can always go to work for those who adore your thinking - Microsoft and Google.

If it looks like the whole world is hurling itself against you? Maybe your headed the wrong direction into oncoming traffic.

I don't excuse boorishness or violence - but Linus and Alan Cox never got this level of treatment. Not even Hans Reiser for his obtuseness, nor Bruce Perens for his ability to scrap in an argument.

Look at the problem in the mirror. Before your friends need to call an intervention.

bolt the temple doors, brothers!

[Thud457]

He's defiling everything we hold dear.
Are you sure he doesn't work for Microsoft?

Less static hardware.

[Animats]

UNIX, and Linux, were designed with the concept that the hardware configuration was static during operation. So "startup" and "configuration" occured at the same time. Now that many peripherals hot-plug, that model is obsolete. Many people find it painful to switch to an "everything is dynamic" model, especially since, for many server applications, there is no hot-plugging.

Hence the unhappiness with a redesign.

This is a more general problem with UNIX/Linux. Many programs are designed on the assumption that they read a static configuration file in text format, and will be restarted if the configuration changes. Various hacks have been added to some programs to allow dynamic reconfiguration (often involving sending a signal to the process to tell it to re-read a text file). Real dynamic configuration models usually involve storing the configuration in a database, which a lot of UNIX/Linux types don't like.

Re:Less static hardware.

[0123456]

Redhat, who I believe are funding systemd development, is a server OS company. Guess what doesn't happen on my server? Yes, random hardware appearing and disappearing while it sits there for years running one app.

Systemd has no obvious benefit to servers, but Redhat are pushing it anyway. It could be useful on embedded systems, but, in my experience, they're either massively cut down and use traditional init to start the two or three things they run, or they use some custom init system of their own. Could be useful on desktops, but about the only things I can plug in dynamically are USB devices, which can be handled without much hassle. Faster boot time? Well, my laptop already boots in a few seconds, and my servers spend six minutes in the BIOS before they start booting. Tablets? Maybe, but does Android actually use init scripts, or did they roll their own startup?

It just looks like a solution in search of a problem, with a ton of complexity that 99% of users don't need. But it's being pushed on everyone, anyway.

Re:Less static hardware.

[GerryGilmore]

Actually, while working at Intel, I saw quite a few scenarios where hot-plugging of hardware is a critical requirement for long-uptime servers. Think adding storage, additional networking interfaces, and - for cPCI chassis - telecom interface cards. With systems that need to stay up all the time - and expand capacity - hot-swap is a great feature.

Re:Who?

[allquixotic]

He's the developer of Avahi, Pulseaudio, and Systemd, most prominently. These components are standard middleware (userspace programs, usually that run in the background, which provide useful services to make a Linux distro more useful than just providing a terminal). The first two were accepted mostly uncontroversially; I mean, pulseaudio did have some pushback, but systemd has had orders of magnitude more pushback than pulseaudio. Now that the most popular distros ship systemd by default, people who don't like it are railing against both the program and its author(s).

People need to get a life.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

This is nothing Like GamerGate

[tuppe666]

This happens online a lot. It's bad, it's stupid, most of us oppose it, but as GamerGate shows, it can do real harm.

This is nothing Like GamerGate which was as much about an educated woman calling a routinely demonised group a bunch of cunts...over and over again with a convoluted version of feminism for money championed by the verge...again.(There was some shit about that woman making a game about depression(Good for her) that got maybe more credit than it deserved, which I am really not sure about(Game about depression even if like a simple choice game is cool) and a sex scandal which I love...but nobody got and clearly by my description neither did I).

This is about making changes to the OS that are viewed as unpopular...ribbonbar, real names in youtube, removing reatures from nautilus. Gnome Shell, the list is endless.

Troll Trolls Trolls, Stop Feeding

[Bob9113]

the Open Source community is full of a#@&oles, and I probably more than most others am one of their most favourite targets.

So he's a troll who specializes in trolling trolls. Why are we feeding him?

Do Not Feed The Trolls

Re:Systemd AND PULSE AUDIO

[drnb]

"Lennart, I knew Hans Reiser. Hans Reiser was a friend of mine. Lennart Poettering, you're no Hans Reiser."

For those that don't get the above:
"Hans Thomas Reiser is an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, and convicted murderer. He is the creator and primary developer of the ReiserFS computer file system, which is contained within the Linux kernel ... Reiser was convicted of the first degree murder of his wife, Nina Reiser, who disappeared in September 2006. He subsequently pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree murder, as part of a settlement agreement that included disclosing the location of his wife's body, revealed to be in a shallow grave near the couple's home."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...

Re:Systemd AND PULSE AUDIO

[mooingyak]

Or, in car analogy terms:

If one guy tailgates you and then passes you on the right, he's an asshole.

If 50 people tailgate you and then pass you on the right, take a goddamn hint.

Wow

[epyT-R]

This guy's victim routine doesn't sound that much different than the anti-gamergate and atheism plus crowd. let's compare..(replying to his full google+ post)

1. Pretending to misunderstand hyperbole as legitimate threats. (the 'fandom' song he mentioned, and his statements about comments made by linus).
2. Labeling criticism of his effort as a systemwide cultural problem (implying all OSS devs are assholes, and he can't even bring himself to type out the word for fear of being 'offensive'). Then later he types out 'fuck'. Go figure..
3. Many appeals to political correctness; the main argument being that the OSS culture survived in spite of the targeted behavior as opposed to because of it.
4. He targets the gentoo community specifically. Of course, it's one of the only distributions that still gives users a choice in whether to use his software stack, so he labels them all as 'haters.' Again, par for the course in 'social justice' circles.
5. Attack on the internet community as a whole. Lots of groups like to do this now. I think the main reason for this is part of an increased trend against anonymous speech, mainly by people with poor arguments who feel first and (maybe) think later, and by those with something to gain or hypocrisy to hide. It's just more generalization, which is ironic considering that generalization is usually one of the behaviors they accuse people of.
6. Finally, he attacks straight white males, which he acknowledges he is, but then makes implicit and explicit appeals of "I'm not like the others, I'm a victim of them, so help me fight the evil horde!." His whole piece is evidence to the contrary.

Again these closely parallel the behavior of the social 'justice' warriors targeting the atheism and gaming communities. Like them, I suspect that poettering is trying to hide from criticism by calling himself a victim. Don't let him. Linus is correct in booting these people out (or at least putting them in their places) before they gain momentum. They are parasites who sap resources away from the original goal and refocus them towards building hugboxes and/or political platforms. Communities that cultivate the dynamics poettering takes issue with is what keeps these groupthink hugboxes from metastasizing into forces that block the objective (technical) truth for the sake of feelings, whether this groupthink spawns naturally or is fostered by people with agendas hungry for resources and control of the zeitgeist.

Re:Pick a category

[epyT-R]

Yes, and typically in companies like microsoft or apple, conflicts between groupthink hugboxes take precedent over what the customer wants because the few individuals who dare to stand up and say 'this is bad' get labeled as 'antisocial' by HR and fired. Windows 8 comes to mind right away.. The IOSification of OSX is another. An OSS equivalent is Gnome.

Re:Who?

[epyT-R]

You don't recall any of the pulseaudio controversies? It's still a POS btw, but it's not quite as bad as it used to be. I have no need for it as ALSA now handles software mixing for today's simple DACs and has done so for years.

Re:Normal everywhere

[Provocateur]

raising money to hire a hit-man to take him out is NOT acceptable

What made it extreme was the use of bitcoin *ducks*

Re:Who?

[geminidomino]

I mean, pulseaudio did have some pushback, but systemd has had orders of magnitude more pushback than pulseaudio.

If by "some pushback" you mean "was utterly unusable for at least 4 years", then that part is at least true. Of course systemd has more pushback: it's the same sort of badly written, badly designed garbage that's injecting itself into the bootup process rather than being just a user-facing mess that was trivial to remove.

People need to get a life.

Some of us have lives that include being paid to take care of Linux servers, which this crap makes significantly more difficult.

Re:Complain to choosers, not creators

[grcumb]

Systemd was taken up, because it was the better solution for distros.

No it fucking was not. It was taken up because the pain of living with it was judged to be less than the pain of excising it. Other, equally wrong developers decided to make it a requirement, with the effect that in order to stay with init, we would have to retrofit core elements of GNOME, which would have required significant manpower.

Make no mistake: systemd integration is a textbook example of antidemocratic approaches, of how the commons can be soiled by a very small minority of the people using it. The fact that there was a closely split decision on whether to integrate systemd into Debian should have been read as a damning indictment, and at very least should have given the developers pause. But no, it got chalked up as a victory - which is exactly the kind of thinking that got this shit into our operating systems in the first place.

Any self-respecting developer would have realised that the best way to move systemd forward would be to take an incremental approach, to offer it as an optional component. Any reasonable developer would have had the fucking humility to accept that something so integral to the system cannot be made mature and robust except over the course of time. And until that time, he should perhaps quit fucking saying how sweet his shit smells.

Re:Systemd AND PULSE AUDIO

[Anonymous Coward]

This!

Or my favorite version:

If you meet an a**hole in the morning. You met an a**hole.
If you meet a**holes all day, you're the a**hole.

Re:Systemd AND PULSE AUDIO

[Barsteward]

people who tailgate are complete dangerous wankers so thats a stupid analogy.

Re:Complain to choosers, not creators

[grcumb]

Make no mistake: systemd integration is a textbook example of antidemocratic approaches, of how the commons can be soiled by a very small minority of the people using it.

So how is it there isn't enough manpower to maintain a fork with init rather than systemd? On the one hand you claim it's too much work to not use systemd but then simultaneously say systemd is pushed by a minority.

You seriously see a contradiction there? That a core part of a larger system has a new dependency, meaning that one is suddenly put in the position of considering whether it's more pain to keep it than to undo the damage? That this same core part could have been written by a very small group of people who have a track record of not playing nicely with the other children?

... Because if you can't even conceive of the nature of the problem, there's no point at all in responding to the rest of your quibbles.

As a gendankenexperiment, imagine one valve of your heart deciding it wants to change its rhythm. The others can choose to remain as they were, or adopt the new rhythm. Right and wrong are only peripherally part of the decision; what matters first and foremost is not falling out of step. The other components can reason all they like, but if the recalcitrant one doesn't budge, they're stuck either accepting the ultimatum or taking radical steps. The rest of the body parts are, for all intents and purposes, just along for the ride, no matter how the decision affects them.

And that, my child, is the choice the Debian had foisted on them.

Re:Systemd AND PULSE AUDIO

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I happen to know a bit - if not a fair amount - about the advantages and drawbacks of plain-text vs binary formats for I/O, and the brittleness of dependencies that are expressed through binary formats vs. parsing text.

The beauty and glory and travesty that are *NIX are living testimony to this. The trail of RSTS/E, MVS, VMS, DOS, MacOS, Windows.last and Android.next all demonstrate why POSIX-style systems, built on the "do one thing well" philosophy, with mostly human-readable text-based IO have longevity and are the leveragable core technology under most, more transient, graphical user shells.

SystemD is an abortion. It appeals to RedHat - who stacked the deck and manipulated the governing process to have it adopted by Debian. If they want an OS built like that? They can license the VMS sources and make their OWN copy of NT.

Hooks that fuckup a system, tying init to specific libraries and specific builds of individual device initialization and volume mapping schemes are a step back into darkness - and a cult of experts with necessary commercial funding. This is the breakdown of Open Source vs Free Software from a movement/philosophical POV.

The result of a Linux kernel tied to SystemD and PulseAudio approaches is similar to that of Android - where meaningful work is done by arcane parts of a system that relegates kernel function to the most undifferentiated commodity tasks, and source availability is almost irrelevant - because changes and fixes occur through closed processes, against a code base that is inaccessibly dense and full of binary dependency.

Re:Some things are beyond the pale

[sl3xd]

This.

Pottering comes off as an arrogant jerk, but the guy's trying to make Linux better.

Sure, many disagree with his vision, and he definitely could have been less of an ass in a number of documented situations... But he hasn't done anything to warrant the sort of things he's describing.

Some people carry on like he's demanding primae noctis.

Get a clue...

[DrYak]

Unfortunately, yes they do. Unless you want to switch to BSD, or roll your own distribution

If so many distributions, including several major ones (openSUSE, Fedora, Debian, etc.) are ALL switching to systemd (and before that to network manager and pulseaudio), and some of them since quite some time (openSUSE has been using it for 4 iterations) without switching back, and some are even eager to jump in as start using future project from the same source (Google has expressed interests in KDBUS), there might be 2 explanations:

- either Lennart is an Evil-Über-Wizard-Super-Mutant who is mastering the art of mass mind-control, and it forcing every distro to switch using hypnosis.

- or maybe, perhaps systemd is actually USEFUL, solves real-world problems (to the point that most distribution have decided to use it), and isn't as problematic as the detractor want you to believe (don't base your opinion on what the first beta was years ago). Some of purported evils of systemd have no base in reality (detractors tend to forget that systemd is not only PID1, but a whole constellation of helper softwares and daemons).
Systemd might have enough objective qualities, so that even if a very vocal minority doesn't agree with it, a silent majority has considered interesting enough to give it a try.

Also, online I hear a lot of people complaining about systemd and calling for boycott, but I see very few actual useful work:
- Gentoo *DID* write their own init system (OpenRC).
- Uselessd is an attempt at an alternative using as few components as possible.
- SystemBSD is an attempt to offer the same API but rewritten from scratch for BSD (so Gnome and other software which relies on systemd can run there).

But outside of there 3 exceptions, it's basically only people complaining and whining, and not much effort to actually avoid systemd and propose another alternative.

Re:Who?

[arth1]

Does Pulseaudio give anything that ALSA doesn't now?

Yes.
Non-deterministic latency.

Re:In which country?

[rnturn]

That's the law in Illinois, too.

``it's quite common where I live to see a bunch of idiots cruising in the left lane with the right lane vacant for a mile or more.''

I see that, too, and I think in many cases it's drivers trying to stay out of the right lane that's been beat up by overweight trucks.

Re:This has been a long time in the making...

[Zontar The Mindless]

He's a prima donna who thinks he knows more than what a few million developers and sysadmins have learnt since before he was a zygote.

He also makes it clear he wants to toss POSIX out the window in favour of "whatever I decide is best", which doesn't sit well with lots of folks. Including me.

Re:Systemd AND PULSE AUDIO

[AlterEager]

This!

Or my favorite version:

If you meet an a**hole in the morning. You met an a**hole.
If you meet a**holes all day, you're the a**hole.

I don't get it. Sometimes your "s" key works, sometimes it produces a "*". Maybe you'd better get your keyboard fixed.

Re:Systemd AND PULSE AUDIO

[amiga3D]

It makes you seem like a dipshit to fail to understand that you aren't supposed to be in the far left lane unless you are passing the car in the left. That's the law. I don't know how many times I've been on I-75 behind a dipshit like you running a snail race against the car in the right. The car in the right lane speeds up, you speed up. The car in the right lane slows down, you slow down. Now you know why everyone flips your stupid ass off as they finally pass you on the right side you smug, self righteous bastard.