
Resignation from the pkg-systemd maintainer team - deng
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-systemd-maintainers/2014-November/004563.html
======
pekk
With the top voted post being "systemd haters have gone too far," I find it
worth mentioning that there is no relation between approving of death threats
and thinking a systemd monoculture is a bad idea.

Death threats are wrong. Victims aren't to blame for death threats. On the
other hand, that doesn't do anything to redeem systemd or dismiss criticism of
systemd.

Unfortunately, now the meme will be that critics of systemd are dangerous
lunatics because of the death threats that most critics of systemd never made
or approved of. This (and procedural irregularities, etc.) exemplify the ugly
"total war" tone that was instrumental in pushing systemd through. The death
threats are inexcusable. But the poor tone and bitter feelings have roots in
what was done to get systemd where it is today.

And if you are telling critics of systemd, who have nothing to do with death
threats that "[they] are not welcome anymore in the community" \- you are not
contributing to the improvement of the tone. You are waging total war.

~~~
tinco
I don't think that is true at this point. Books of criticisms on systemd have
already been written. There isn't a maintainer out there who hasn't heard all
of it. Yet many people still insist on bothering the community with this, it's
become a burden. And it's not a burden because the criticisms are valid, it's
a burden because the criticisms don't actually contribute anything.

I think at this point it is safe to say that anyone voicing criticisms on
systemd without contributing fixes or solutions to said problems is hostile to
the Debian community, and should neither feel or be welcome.

Feeling unwelcome is the only way these people will realise they will either
have to solve the problem themselves, or start a new community.

~~~
wtbob
> I think at this point it is safe to say that anyone voicing criticisms on
> systemd without contributing fixes or solutions to said problems is hostile
> to the Debian community, and should neither feel or be welcome.

What the heck? Those criticising systemd _have_ a fix, and a solution (two,
even!): either don't use it, or use it but don't rely on it.

------
uselessdguy
I completely condemn such nonsense as a bunch of vitriolic people driving a
distribution maintainer away from their position all because of their indirect
affiliation with a controversial project.

Such actions are why I identify with neither the systemd opponents nor the
proponents. Unfortunately, it does dilute arguments against systemd, because
of immediate associations with fools who attack people and scream fallacies
(even though the non-systemd camp is an amorphous blob more than anything).
This in turn gives moral high ground to the proponents and any attempt at
debate devolves into the same dead ends and non-arguments between equally
clueless factions.

Yet as much as the entire display is abominable, it is sadly also completely
predictable. For all the good things the systemd crew have done, their ideas
are disruptive, in that they're trying to mold a cathedral out of what has
been a rather adamantly bazaar-based community for over two decades now.
Contrary to popular belief, simply developing your tools in one repository
doesn't magically make you "more like the BSDs" \- there's far more to the
BSDs than that, and every time I see someone make that argument, I twitch.

We're in the midst of an unprecedented schism. But, for what it's worth, this
isn't an issue with "open source". No, it's an issue with the Linux community
in particular. It is particularly dysfunctional. I have no idea why Linux
attracts so much drama and carnage amongst its constituents, but it does.

I'm pretty disappointed in all sides here. The people who attack systemd and
its developers on completely false premises, and the people who are convinced
it's the be all and the end all, and have been living under a sysvinit-based
rock their entire lives. It's just so exhausting. It really is.

I don't know how this will end. But the irony is intense: an attempt at distro
unification has led to a big divide. The best thing we can hope for is people
doing a bunch of new experimentation in Unix process management. Projects like
Epoch and nosh are up and coming. Hopefully we'll see more.

~~~
Stratoscope
> I have no idea why Linux attracts so much drama and carnage amongst its
> constituents, but it does.

It starts right from the top, just like the similar situation in the Rails
community.

When your founder and leader behaves a certain way, it gives everyone in the
community license to act like that.

Edit: I seem to have touched a nerve here. My apology to anyone my comment
offended.

Nonetheless, I stand by the idea that the culture of a company or open source
is heavily influenced by the behavior of those at the top. How could it not
be?

As an example of the other end of the spectrum, when I worked at Adobe it was
a remarkably courteous place where people treated each other with respect even
when they disagreed. I really appreciated that, and I think a good part of it
came directly from Adobe founders John Warnock and Chuck Geschke.

~~~
uselessdguy
But then by this logic, OpenBSD should also be a dysfunctional mess. It's not.
It has almost the same number of contributors per 6-month release cycle that
systemd alone gets in only about 3 months, yet it is a _remarkably_ productive
project.

No, I do not think Linus is at fault here. I think a more likely explanation
is that (GNU/)Linux is the go to alternative operating system, and it gets a
lot of cocky newbies who think they're special for using a Unix-like operating
system.

~~~
cbd1984
I don't know, BSD seems to attract a lot of people who seem self-
congratulatory that they're not using Linux, just like how MacOS has been the
Anti-Windows since circa 1995.

My theory is that it's straight-up due to how many people use Linux compared
to other non-Windows OSes and the fact the average people have more say (or
think they do) compared to The One Apple Way. Any large group will have
assholes, and the number of assholes is a simple percentage of the total.

~~~
X-Istence
So because BSD attracts people who seem self-congratulatory that they are not
using Linux it begets a productive non-asshole environment?

The parent poster was stating that OpenBSD also has a strongly opinionated
leader at the top (Theo de Raadt) who has been known to rant and rave like the
best, yet unlike the Linux community the OpenBSD community as a whole does not
behave like that and ships functioning code quickly and efficiently.

~~~
cbd1984
The Linux community is mostly just like the BSD community. It's just larger so
there are numerically more assholes because the proportion is constant.

------
andyjohnson0
There is some discussion of this on Slashdot [1], with responses by Tollef Fog
Heen.

[1] [http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/16/2142244/longtime-
de...](http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/16/2142244/longtime-debian-
developer-tollef-fog-heen-resigns-from-systemd-maintainer-team)

------
cwyers
It seems like this was only the first domino to fall. Russ Allbery is
resigning from the Technical Committee:

[https://lists.debian.org/debian-
ctte/2014/11/msg00071.html](https://lists.debian.org/debian-
ctte/2014/11/msg00071.html)

Russ was, to my mind, a voice of reason through this entire process. Losing
him is a bad, bad sign.

~~~
uselessdguy
That's three Debian maintainers in a single week. Wow.

~~~
infinity0
To be clear, only Joey Hess actually left Debian. The other two only left
particular positions within Debian, but are staying on with other positions.

------
cwyers
Upon reflection, I don't think this is a systemd problem -- which is to say,
many other distros (not even ones sponsored by Red Hat -- Arch, SuSE, Mageia,
NixOS, etc.) have managed to switch to systemd as a default without this kind
of a fuss. It's only Debian where this kind of a shitstorm has kicked off --
even Gentoo, which has been a rather vocal systemd holdout, offers systemd and
doesn't seem to have this kind of political infighting about it. Now, yes,
Debian and its downstreams have a large part of the Linux userbase, so there's
apt to be more attention paid to it. But I'm starting to think this is a
Debian problem, not a systemd problem.

And the reason I think that is because this isn't a question of whether or not
people do or don't use systemd. It's a question of who is going to do the work
to ensure that people who choose not to use systemd can continue to use
popular packages like GNOME, etc. And to this end, Ian Jackson is leading a
vocal group that is willing to use ANY means at hand -- the Technical
Committee, General Resolutions, whatever -- in order to cudgel Debian package
maintainers and upstream software into doing the work that they think needs to
be done in order to support their desire not to use systemd. The problem in a
volunteer project like Debian, forcing volunteers to do work they don't want
to doesn't lead to the volunteers doing the work you insist they should do, it
leads to volunteers leaving. And the upstreams are not going to respond to
Jackson's quite frankly childish attempts to bully them into continuing to
support sysvinit from now until the end of time. And until Jackson and his
backers step into the breach to actually write freaking code to do what they
want to instead of politicking to try and force others to write they code they
want, it's going to continue to drag the Debian project into this kind of a
mess.

~~~
SFjulie1
debian is much more open source than companies.

The switch to systemd is made by authority, not competence.

The roadmap and the properties of systemd are totally awesome ... on the
paper.

The problem in reality is that authority does not makes good engineering.
Marketing neither. Systemd can be picked up for way too many reasons but
imposing a poorly designed solution ( _) by authority is hitting a nerve.

This move is looking like good old microsoft force feeding wrong technical
solutions (thus costing expensive resources) to ALL free unices and a lot of
projects for a wtf motivation that is clearly not the optimum technically.

You know how hard it is to make a software that works? Every resource spoiled
on a stupid idea at the OS level is like a tax imposed on every single
software that requires to be integrated in the system ... thus ALL projects.

Since some of them are impacted they voice their concern. And since debian is
one of the most prominent linux that is clearly free software, that is where
people voices their bug reports and sometimes also their concerns.

Btw look at the bugs in this mailing list, some are just non acceptable (why
would you need dbus to login? What a sysadmin can thus do when dbus fails? For
Zeus' sakes: WTF! 0_o)

_go read the internet because I won't lose my time

~~~
sounds
You may want to edit your post and use a different character than asterisk for
footnotes.

------
idle_processor
Title slightly misleading.

> I am not resigning from Debian, just from the systemd maintainer team.

Source: tfheen@ [http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/16/2142244/longtime-
de...](http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/16/2142244/longtime-debian-
developer-tollef-fog-heen-resigns-from-systemd-maintainer-team)

------
ae0000
Its hard without knowing the full context. But if it is as it appears, that
some people from the debian community have been making attacks on a volunteer
for doing their job, then it is absolutely disgusting behaviour. Those making
such attacks would be best to leave debian and perhaps the internet.

------
CoachRufus87
A bit of background on his resignation:
[http://err.no/personal/blog/tech/Debian/2014-11-16-23-55_res...](http://err.no/personal/blog/tech/Debian/2014-11-16-23-55_resigning_from_pkg-
systemd)

~~~
asveikau
> flares where people wish people involved in systemd would be run over by a
> bus or just accusations of incompetence.

Wow, these are really contrasting examples.

This HN thread is really focusing on the first category but I who haven't been
following any of this actually had the impression that the 2nd category
(incompetence) was right on the money regarding the recent bugs I've seen in
my Debian installation.

I've used Debian since 2000 or so (slink was the first release I installed). I
don't know if this problem is Debian or upstream. But ever since systemd
became the default, my machine displays "Segmentation fault" at every boot,
boots slower than before, and my previously working bluetooth pairings broke.
Even when Debian was inserting extra memset()s into OpenSSL, I've never seen
it this bad. It really doesn't feel like the system it used to be and I'm
about to give up on it.

~~~
cwyers
Can you context this up for us? Are you running the unstable testing branch
and complaining about bugs? (If so, have you filed these bugs with anyone?) Or
has your Debian system somehow gotten more buggy since they announced that
systemd would be the default init system of the version of Debian that ISN'T
OUT YET?

~~~
asveikau
> Are you running the unstable testing branch and complaining about bugs?

Yeah I'm running testing. I have been running either testing or unstable on
personal machines on a rolling basis since slink (released 1999) and I have
experienced breakage of various sorts over the years, but nothing as fucked up
as when the switch to systemd happened.

> (If so, have you filed these bugs with anyone?)

Sorry I don't have a lot of time for this. Usually when I have seen really bad
issues running sid I just wait for them to get resolved after the next dist-
upgrade or two. And that usually works well enough. Not this time though.

~~~
matthewmacleod
To be fair, if you're experiencing bugs in the _testing distribution_ and not
filing them, then you really have no right to complain when they're not
resolved…

~~~
asveikau
This is actually a common way that a lot of people run debian, or at least
used to be last I checked. Often if you don't do this you get an old kernel
version that doesn't work with the latest hardware. (I've built machines, put
Debian stable on them, and the SATA controller is completely unrecognized,
whereas unstable works.) I have been running Debian this way for a long time
without any major complaints. For something as critical as boot, typically my
expectations established by years of use is they don't fuck it up this badly,
don't merge in piece of shit software and make everything else depend on it.
That expectation was broken egregiously for the first time ever for me, during
a period of ~15 years of use. I am not exaggerating when I say I have been a
Debian fan for a long time and I really question where the quality is going.

But OK, you and others are entitled to think I'm being capricious and haven't
thought it out.

------
belorn
Online harassment is harsh to handle. Death threats, stalking, threat of
physical violence, and I can only imagine the look if a male developer went to
the police and said that it is all because software he is developing on his
_spare time_ and giving out for free.

~~~
dsl
Why does his gender matter?

~~~
superuser2
Cops' lives (in a particularly uncharitable interpretation) revolve around
reinforcing their own masculinity by winning fights and exerting dominance.
Using that to protect damsels in distress from creepy male others/sexual
predators is a highly masculinity-reinforcing, fatherly/brotherly and
desirable thing to do.

An effiminate man (using the again uncharitable notion that nerds with desk
jobs are not manly in the eyes of police officers) walking into the station
and asking for protection from other effiminate men is more likely to be seen
as a pathetic whiner.

~~~
cbd1984
I love how this explanation is fully feminist right up to the point it utterly
ignores the existence of female police officers.

~~~
superuser2
On average, 18% of police officers in a given department are female. It is
more likely (5-1 odds) that the officer on your case will be male.

Of course you could also get a female cop, just as you could get a male cop
who takes the complaint seriously. Parent asked why the victim's gender
matters; this is a reason why it is not entirely irrelevant.

------
deng
More information from Tollef Fog Heen:

[http://err.no/personal/blog/tech/Debian/2014-11-16-23-55_res...](http://err.no/personal/blog/tech/Debian/2014-11-16-23-55_resigning_from_pkg-
systemd)

------
exabrial
Unfortunately, it's being accepted that harassment is a valid form of protest.
Example: Mozilla CEO and OkCupid.

~~~
jessaustin
Yeah, but that was different, because _good_ people don't like those guys
and/or their opinions.

------
empressplay
It should be obvious to anyone that RedHat has a vested interest in making the
vast majority of Linux distributions dependent on technology it controls.
Linux is its bread-and-butter.

It appears RedHat has realised that, through systemd, it can readily provide
preferential support for its own projects, and place roadblocks up for
projects it does not control, thus extending its influence broadly and
quickly. By using tenuous dependencies amongst its own projects it can speed
adoption even faster.

Once it has significant influence, and the maintainers of competing projects
have drifted away either out of frustration or because they are starved of
oxygen, RedHat knows that they can effectively take Linux closed-source by
restricting access to documentation and fighting changes that are not in their
own best interests.

At this point, they can market themselves as the only rational choice for
corporate Linux support -- and this would be perfectly reasonable because they
would have effective control of the ecosystem.

Linux (as in a full OS implementation) is an extremely complex beast and you
can't just "fork it" and start your own 'distro' from scratch anymore -- you
would have to leverage a small army to do it, then keep that army to maintain
it. It's just not practical.

At the same time, Linux has matured to the point of attaining some measure of
corporate credibility, and from RedHat's point of view, it no longer needs its
'open source' roots to remain viable. RedHat also, understandably, fears
potential competition.

Through systemd and subsequent takeovers of other ecosystem components, RedHat
can leverage its own position while stifling potential competition -- this is
a best-case scenario for any corporation. It will have an advantage in the
marketplace, potential customers will recognise that advantage, and buy its
products and support contracts.

I hope you can understand why many see this as an extremely compelling case.
Arguing that RedHat has 'ethics' and would 'never do such a thing' is immature
and silly -- RedHat is a corporation, it exists to profit from its
opportunities, just like any other company. To attempt to argue that it would
not do so is contrary to what we can assume is its default state.

It's no 'conspiracy theory' to assume that a corporation will behave like a
corporation; arguing that it is just makes one look like a naive child.
systemd is one large step toward RedHat gaining the ability to reap what it
has sewn -- for its benefit and not necessarily ours.

~~~
mtanski
A couple points about RedHat:

First, it develops almost everything out in the open. That includes developers
communicating with their coworkers through public mailing lists for those
projects. Sometimes those are hosted by Redhat but most often they are hosed
by other projects governance (free desktop, kernel, openjdk). When it comes to
those projects employees end up communicating on the list instead of internal
or in person to make sure everybody has access to the communication. Most OSS
ran by companies loved here on HN (Google, Fb, etc) has development happen on
internal lists with occasional code dumps.

Second, for almost all projects started by Redhat employees do not require
copy right assignment. Yes, I know Fedora has something for their project but
that seams to be an exception. No copyright assignment on systemd or many
gnome sub-projects they started. Compare that again to OSS from Google, FB and
even Ubuntu (upstart requires copy right assignment).

Third, and contrary to what you just said... YES YOU CAN FORK IT. It happens
all the time. People build one person distros all the time (or obscure distros
with a small group of volunteers). Hell, somebody even forked systemd (new
project: useslessd) to remove things he considers bad.

So, in conclusion, what you call a compelling case is nothing more then
argument on thin ice... at least in my eyes given the evidence. Technically
they can exert control over the projects if they employ the maintainer. But,
given the facts they not setup in a position to exploit it and given the
current status quo we should see it coming.

I'm not affiliated with Redhat; I don't run Redhat; I know some people who
work / worked at Redhat in past.

------
general_failure
It's ironic that his signature says "UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky
about who its friends are".

------
balabaster
I don't really know any of the back story of this guy, but having been on the
receiving end of similar poor behaviour myself, it's easy to see why he would
be walking away.

This malicious behaviour is not okay out of anyone - leader __or __follower.
When I was a kid, my parents asked me to consider the position: If my friend
told me to stick my finger in the fire, would I? For those that shrug and
blame it on Linus, I ask you also to consider that position; you 're not 4,
you're capable of critical thought. Stop being a dick and blaming it on
others. You being a dick is on you, period.

I don't care if this is the example set by Linus himself - just because he
does that, does not grant you leave to behave that way too. If he acts that
way, I will consider him a dick. If you do that, I consider you a dick. I
don't look at you, shrug my shoulders and say "Hey, I don't blame you, I blame
Linus for setting a bad example." I judge __him __for his behaviour and for
acting that way while being in a position of influence. I judge __you __for
bad behaviour as well as bad judgment for considering that you can blame
someone else for your own bad behaviour.

If you're working in a community that has garnered a reputation for poor
behaviour because of its leaders and/or constituents, don't become that,
you're better than that. If your leaders are like that, don't be scared to
call them out. Bad behaviour is bad behaviour, I don't care who it's from.
Respect garners respect. If you're a dick to people, you don't deserve
respect. It's okay to hold people accountable, it's okay to hold them to high
standards, but stop being a dick. That's not okay.

------
lamontcg
Seems that Godwin's Law needs to be updated for 2014. As online discussion
grows longer, the probability of doxxing and death threats approaches 1. And
the standard corollary is the side which doxxes and issues death threats first
automatically loses the argument.

~~~
digi_owl
And it is quite likely that those that do them have no vested interest in the
topic, but are in it "for the lulz".

------
ZenoArrow
Has anyone got some background information on this?

~~~
toyg
Systemd has always been very controversial.

~~~
bigiain
From tfheen on the Slashdot thread:

"I don't agree with them (at least not fully), but my resignation from the
maintainer team is not about people being skeptical, it's about personal
attacks, it's about death wishes from project members and it's about people
escalating conflicts instead of trying to resolve them."

Seriously, people sending _death wishes_ to developer or maintainers of
software who's decisions/directions they disagree with? They need to be
publicly named so I can easily find that out when I Google them when their CV
hits my desk. That's _so_ not OK. I would refuse to have those people on any
team of mine - no matter how excellent your grades, no matter how lofty your
achievements, your CV just gets thrown out, you won't even get a call back
explaining why.

~~~
jqm
While I respect your decision to throw out the CVs of people engaging in
hatred and death wishes (of course... I think most people would do this), I'm
not sure many of these people will be applying to your Australian web strategy
company.

In other words, your post came off as a bit self important.

~~~
bigiain
Fair call.

I certainly didn't intend to imply I'm head of HR aT Google or SpaceX, but at
he same time it wasn't intended to be about me (and turning it around that way
the judging it based on 3 a year out of date HN bio or LinkedIn profile still
doesn't make it about me).

How do you suggest that "we" (these people's peers) should deal with behavior
like hat?

------
SFjulie1
/. is still a little bit useful

[http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/16/2142244/longtime-
de...](http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/16/2142244/longtime-debian-
developer-tollef-fog-heen-resigns-from-systemd-maintainer-team)

------
JoshTriplett
So far, the last two TC decisions have been two-for-two in driving developers
away; the previous one was the last straw that caused Joey Hess to leave.

~~~
SwellJoe
The TC had nothing to do with this particular developer leaving, and it is
disingenuous as hell to suggest it. He is leaving the systemd package
maintenance team at Debian because of threats and personal attacks, despite
supporting the team.

~~~
jey
Does TC == "technical committee"?

~~~
tfheen
Yes.

(CTTE being another abbreviation)

------
abhididdigi
[http://err.no/personal/blog/](http://err.no/personal/blog/)

For folks looking for more detail.

------
BuckRogers
Maybe Microsoft wasn't so bad afterall?

------
codemonkeymike
Makes me want to go into OSS development...

------
Alupis
It's time for this crap to stop.

systemd haters have gone Too Far.

Get over it. It's childish and pathetic now. Death threats to the creator.
Personal attacks to volunteers. You have carried a debate into the extreme to
where it is no longer noble.

Just leave. Just stop. You are not welcome anymore in the community.

~~~
esaym
Wish I could get over it. But every time some random process fails to start at
boot time I...well I cry a little knowing this is what we are now stuck with.

~~~
rakoo
"stuck" ? How was your init system choice enforced ? Did you have a gun
pointed at your head ?

Is there absolutely no working alternative ?

You don't _have_ to use systemd. If you keep using it when there are other
working systems and you don't like it, the fault is entirely yours.

~~~
rdtsc
> You don't have to use systemd.

Whatever the original problem was or the top link that is just not a viable
solution. It is like saying "you don't have use libc, write your own". Or
"Fine, Linus is a jerk, don't use the kernel, install minix but stop
criticizing linux".

Let's say I follow the advice and apt-get remove systemd from Ubuntu 14.10. It
doesn't look good. It takes along with it gnome-session, gvfs, nautilus,
network-manager, pulseaudio, ubunt-desktop, softare-center, update-manager,
update-notifier and others. Have you tried doing, maybe I am doing something
wrong and there is a easier way to replace it.

~~~
pikzen
Don't use Ubuntu, a distro that has explicitly said that they were going to
support systemd and abandon sysvinit ?

One major problem is that gnome relies heavily on systemd. Good thing there
are other DMs.

~~~
rdtsc
So now have to switch distro with its whole echo system.

Wasn't that exactly the point of the argument -- how saying "just replace
systemd" doesn't work and is not a realistic answer to any of the criticism?

------
nsxwolf
This is a pretty hilarious nerd fight. Unlike GamerGate this has no relevance
to anyone outside this little bubble and really sounds insane.

Init daemons, people!

~~~
thisGuysAccount
I've been thinking about pasting this news into my Facebook. Three times,
erased each time.

"Guy gets multiple death threats because of the program he wants to start his
computer is different from another program other people want to start their
computers."

This isn't a hilarious nerd fight. This is some really misguided people who
don't know how to communicate.

~~~
wtbob
No, it's more, 'guy gets multiple death threats[1] because he wishes to make
it immensely more difficult for other people to use the program they want to
start their computers, and also worsen the stability of the computers of those
who use his preferred program.'

[1] _Has_ he gotten death threats, or simply death wishes? There's a big
difference between threatening someone's life and, believing him to be a net-
negative to the world, being pleased when he dies.

~~~
thisGuysAccount
Death threats, death wishes... it's over an init daemon on a software project.

I can't imagine "Someone wants to paint the front door RED?! They should die."
happening under any circumstances. It's concerning to me, on many levels, that
this is happening over systemd, regardless of the technical benefits or
issues.

