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Joey Hess Resigns From Debian
An anonymous reader writes: Long-time Debian developer Joey Hess has posted a resignation letter to the Debian mailing list. Hess was a big part of the development of the Debian installer, debhelper, Alien, and other systems. He says, "It's become abundantly clear that this is no longer the project I originally joined in 1996. We've made some good things, and I wish everyone well, but I'm out. ... If I have one regret from my 18 years in Debian, it's that when the Debian constitution was originally proposed, despite seeing it as dubious, I neglected to speak out against it. It's clear to me now that it's a toxic document, that has slowly but surely led Debian in very unhealthy directions."
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.
The longest lived linux distribution has no constitution. It's based on the idea of making sure it works well for the leader of the project. Surprisingly, Slackware is gaining, not losing, users due to this.
Of course, it doesn't hurt that Patrick Volkerding seems to prefer something other than systemd.
systemd on Debian is a dependency for most desktop applications even if one avoids Gnome 3. Installing GIMP, for example, will pull in systemd libs.
During that "lengthly consultation process", nearly all of the for systemd was based on the advantages that systemd, as an init system, offer over competing init systems. In the months since Debian committed to systemd, Poettering has been increasingly vocal that he wants systemd to be more than an init system. That is why there is a renewed call for debate.
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...
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Thanks systemd.
BINGO. In spite of Joey being on the 'winning' side of the systemd debate, his resignation seems to be a direct reaction to the schism that systemd has driven into the linux community. As someone far brighter than me said:
Read the whole piece. It's one of the best round-ups of the state of the debate.
(And by 'debate', I mean 'debacle' of course.)
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Of course, you don't know Joey Hess. Being one of the most equanimous, quiet hard-working, involved-everywhere guys I have had the privilege to work with (I am a DD since 2003, and Joey has been one of my role models in the project... Of course, even if our skillsets are quite different) He is not quitting because of "not getting his way".
I disagree strongly about this being an "implementation detail", IMO it's a question of fundamental strategy. What this GR really comes down to is when the choice comes down to denying admins the choice in init systems or refusing new upstream versions bevause systemd's tendrils have dug too deep in the upstream project which side should Debian take?
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register