Re: OT: Open letter to the Linux World

[Denys Vlasenko]

On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 9:38 PM, Christopher Barry
<christopher.r.barry@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> So why would very smart people who love and use Linux want to create or
> embrace such a creepy 'Master of All' daemon? Ostensibly, it's for the
> reasons they say, as I mentioned at the top. But partially I think it's
> from a lack of experience. Not a lack as in programming hours, but a
> lack as in time on the Planet. Intelligence alone is not a substitute
> for life experience and, yes I'll say it, wisdom. There's no manual for
> wisdom. Implementing systemd by distros is not a wise move for them over
> the long term. It will, in fact, be their ultimate undoing.
>
> Partially it's the larger-than-life egos of the people involved. Has
> anyone actually read what Poettering says about things? Wow. This guy
> is obviously convinced he has all the answers for everyone. Traditional
> ideas about simplicity and freedom are quaint, but have no real place
> in a 'modern' OS. Look, he's just smarter than you, so get over it and
> move aside. He knows what's best, and he has it under control. How old
> is this guy anyway? 12 or so? He's a fucking tool (IMHO).

Yes, this is *exactly* the problem with systemd.

Not the quality of the code. Not the desire to fix some
old design problems of SystemV-style init.
Code quality is good. The goals are legitimate.

The problem is: the author is a control freak.

I don't mean this to be an insult, it's my honest assessment
of his personality. He wants to control everything.

And I am convinced he is knowingly lying about it.

He pretends that he wants to add stuff to systemd to improve
this or that aspect of the user's experience, but in reality
he just wants to "privatize" more and more of the OS
to his project.

He probably understands that this is not a right thing to do,
that modularity is a good thing, but it conflicts with his character,
so he won't split up the projects into independent subprojects.
(Say, a semi-recent addition to systemd, the logging daemon,
HAD TO BE a separate tool)

I no longer think that talking to Lennart about this is useful.
I and other people tried. It doesn't work.

I am just waiting for a sufficient number of people to get pissed off,
fork the project, and bring sanity to it, which in this case means
splitting it up into modular bits, and probably dropping
some parts.
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