[mdlug] Big brother gives M$ a 10 out of 10

[Ron / BCLUG]

Steve Litt wrote on 2024-05-26 17:04:

> sabotaging the user's and admin's ability to shape his computer to 
> his needs,

Or, it enhances the user's / admin's ability to shape their computer to
their needs by providing a robust dependency hierarchy through
relatively simple plain text files.

Depends on one's needs: get Stuff™ done vs craft a boutique desktop
experience customized exactly to one's whims.


> and his/her ability to replace systemd with other software.

And the Linux kernel doesn't make it easy to replace the network stack
with a BSD implementation.


> Systemd does this both as a technical product and as a political 
> autocracy that spent a lot of energy to get various distros to use 
> systemd and compile their programs to require systemd.

No one forced Canonical's hand here, they could've stuck with Upstart.
They're famous for Not Invented Here Syndrome (rejecting ideas they
didn't create).






> Elsewhere in this thread somebody mentioned that "systemd is a 
> marketing scheme" (I called it a political autocracy, but same
> thing) is "not worth addressing". This is perhaps the fallacy of all
>  fallacies.

Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

When I see a "Black Friday sale! systemd, By One Get One Free" offer,
then maybe I'll take the marketing claims seriously.


Marketers will spend hours with focus groups, navel gazing over whether
the red in RedHat should be #FF0000 or #FE0101, not thinking about init
systems and service management systems.



> Unix/Linux/BSD was meant to enable interchangeable parts.

Unix / Linux / BSD used interchangeable parts to get a job done, to make
computers useful. They weren't designed to implement a philosophy.


> You can use either Vim or Emacs or both

You still can.


> In fact, you can easily replace sysvinit with runit, s6 or OpenRC, or
> vice versa, or any of these with any other. But when you try to 
> replace systemd with another init system, you need to plunge into 
> every conceivable subsystem to undo the damage.

Then the issue is with distro maintainers and software developers who
don't care about obscure / obsolete init systems and prefer a single,
cross distro solution, maybe?


> There are those that say "that's because systemd is more than an init
> system". My point exactly: The fact that they jammed every 
> conceivable subsystem into systemd is the best example of systemd 
> threatening the Unix/Linux/BSD OS model.

Perhaps the concept of a services management system is still unfamiliar,
but such a thing would necessitate access to multiple subsystems. That's
the point.


I'm not sure how this threatens Unix / Linux / BSD model, but in Linux's
case, after 20-30 years, maybe the model has been revised and a unified
services management system is desirable.


Let's not be digital Amish, thinking tech should freeze at some
arbitrary point in time and never advance.


Just came across this post by  David Heinemeier Hansson (bio at his 
site) at 
https://world.hey.com/dhh/open-source-is-neither-a-community-nor-a-democracy-606abdab

> Open source is neither a community nor a democracy
> 
> Using open source software does not entitle you to a vote on the
> direction of the project. The gift you've received is the software
> itself and the freedom of use granted by the license. That's it, and
> this ought to be straight forward, but I repeatedly see that it is
> not



Still awaiting someone to address Canonical and RedHat *both* seeking a
new method to manage services (Upstart and systemd respectively) and why
they might have done that.