As someone who thinks PulseAudio is conceptually flawed, I don't really get the way old linuxers hate on systemd. I mean ok, from a user perspective certain common things in systemd could have been friendlier, but I always got the things I needed to work and it is clearly a powerful system. While I don't really like the way Poettering handles projects, I think nobody who does open source software deserves that kind of hatered for a piece of software they have written.
Usually if you don't like a piece of software, you just don't use it. And this is the core of the problem: If I got the critics correctly the problem has more to do with the way this has been "forced" onto the community. Most criticism on the substance has been just bias colored by this aspect or people being like "I was used to the old system, now I need to learn something new".
The latter is of course a totally valid point. If you want people to change their habits, you need to give them a clear reason why and — more important — they need to want to change that habit themselves.
The same greybeard friend of mine who still complains on systemd happily adopted pipewire. Why? Because he saw a clear benefit in doing so and nobody forced this onto him.
Critica might argue Pöttering now going to Microsoft is proof that he always has been the devil, I'd argue it is proof that a certain kind of culture can drive people out of open source. I could imagine a different kind of universe in which the communications between the systemd devs and the rest of the community had been different and we would not only have gotten a better systemd, but maybe also a Pöttering who would not go to MS.
The saddest thing about the whole affair is that it has a stifeling effect on new devs. Who would dare to write another systemd after that? Certainly not me.
The issue not being forced only. It's how valid criticisms are just tossed out of the window and systemd is developed as is because "the lead developer and the team knew way better than the collection wisdom accumulated over the years".
Funny thing is they have bitten by the bugs they claimed they're immune to, so they had to apply these principles like they're first adopters of these.
I've voiced my criticisms over the years, yet I still use systemd. I don't like it, but I don't hate it either.
I want to share them, but, It'll be long, so I'll just leave links to my own comments:
At the end of the day, if a critical component of an OS is being replaced, people at least want their concerns addressed. Want to have some conversation. Being yelled at literally and proverbially as forcing adoption of said software is bound to create some backlash.
*Edit:* Initial text contained in this reply misunderstood the parent. Corrected, clarified, softened and re-written. Sorry about that.
> The same greybeard friend of mine who still complains on systemd happily adopted pipewire. Why? Because he saw a clear benefit in doing so and nobody forced this onto him.
I still use OpenRC + ALSA (with apulse for those programs that shit on backwards compatibility) and I too am looking at PipeWire. Beyond the not being forced aspect and actually adding something that is useful (to me), PipeWire also seems to take much more care about working with existing programs/interfaces rather then wanting to get them on the shiny new API.
> The saddest thing about the whole affair is that it has a stifeling effect on new devs. Who would dare to write another systemd after that? Certainly not me.
Me! I want systemd capabilities in a small package. I also want it to not take over my machine like systemd did. I want to be able to compose individual daemons, not have the init subsume them.
I do like the idea of supervision systems, though, and I am glad systemd popularized (not invented) them. So since the alternatives are quite...user unfriendly (s6), I'm making my own.
It's called Ur (universal runner, also after the ancient city of Ur), and I'm building the dependency management for it, which will also go into a build system.
So why wasn't this affair stifling to me? It's because I see why people got angry: Poettering used politics to limit user choice. User choice has been a theme of Linux use for decades, and people were not happy about it. I'm not going to limit user choice, so I'm not worried about angering people in that way. I'm also not going to advertise and push Ur like systemd was. I'm going to advertise my build system, and Ur will be bundled with it, and I will help people use Ur, but I'm not going to push Ur because an init and supervision system is just too central to Linux machines to push it on people.
Actually, the dichotomy between build systems and init systems is a good example. If a distro choose a build system to base their package manager off of, and you are on that distro when they make the change, their choice does not affect your use of another build system, unless your build system does not come installed by default, in which case, you install it and then continue as normal.
But if your distro changes the init, you're in for a long period of relearning and retooling everything.
I think Poettering pushed systemd through politics because he wanted to have a popular piece of software, and that's only the real way to do it because distros adopt init systems, not users. I don't blame him for wanting a popular piece of software; I do too. That's why I have another piece of software to advertise, just so I don't have to advertise the init.
So why make it? Because I want it, and I'm on Gentoo, so I have the skills to switch out the current init (OpenRC). It's for me alone, and maybe for people who like it.
i am not surprised that he made this move quietly.
poettering's work attracted a disproportionate share of criticism, and moving to microsoft is not exactly a helpful move to quell that criticism. on the contrary, it will only get worse.
since he continues to work on systemd, critics will now start to decry systemd as being a microsoft product, or at least strongly influenced by microsoft. so this move is likely to strengthen the anti systemd camp. we'll see what comes from that.
As a person who doesn't like systemd a lot (yet doesn't hate it either), I find some of the criticisms well founded.
I've written them in the past, so I'll not re-iterate these walls of text, but all in all, systemd had to learn some things over and over just because it disregarded people's warnings about the problems some of these design patterns create.
Being a little agreeable and open to discourse is not a bad thing.
All in all, systemd makes different trade-offs w.r.t. design, and is not radically fast when compared to what's coming before that. Capability wise it made some things easier (not possible), and some things way more harder.
It's just another iteration. Hope he doesn't pulls another "De Icaza", and all goes well for him.
OTOH, I can't trust neither him, nor Microsoft, because I look actions rather than words.
What does "quietly" mean to you? It would be an exercise in conceit to broadcast such a move on social media with the assumption that people are interested, wouldn't it?
It'd be nice if Microsoft finally incorporated systemd support into WSL in a first-class way. At the moment, if you want to run a distro with its normal init system and service manager, you have to run the whole thing inside a user namespace so that systemd can be PID 1.
Am I the only one who finds that weird that the author of this piece purportedly a journalist relies on twitter and rumours rather than you know email or call Pottering to ask him what he is doing? Is Phoronix supposed to be taken seriously?
Frankly no. I don't mean to denigrate, but Phoronix is generally not seen as all that great a source of good journalism. He did say he at least tried to confirm this news however.
You know that they can be shortened right? Get-ChildItem = gci
I for one really like PowerShell, if it could consume bash completions I would switch to using it as my $SHELL. Right now I'm leaning to switch from ZSH to Xonsh (Python).
Reason for liking PowerShell: C# compability, OOP, semi-sane syntax.
You can do type definitions, serde multiple formats into native structures.
On top of that, surveillance capitalism is winning over the free software / open source developers as companies like Microsoft are buying out / hiring the majority of them.
The free-software activists from the FSF and other free-software supporters have lost to the tech bros at these big tech companies that have hijacked 'open-source' and ran with it.
They have failed in their mission to stop all this closed-source software from spreading. It looks like it is here to stay; especially with the help of former free software developers.
They pay you $500k/yr and up. Your open source project pays $50 on a good month. You have a house to maintain and family to feed. Why would you turn down such an offer?
One thing I will caution those who do take the offer, the company will use you until you are no longer necessary and then throw you out (extinguish)
That all is a lot of nonsense, this is an instance of Microsoft paying an open source developer to maintain open source. Yes, they actually do that sometimes.
"Surveillance capitalism is winning over the free software..." software that "just works" and offers the latest and the greatest features does, not "surveillance capitalism" or "open source developers".
"They have failed in their mission to stop all this closed-source software from spreading." except that was never the mission, the mission was to provide an alternative to complex licensing as well as simplify the improvement and development of things "everyone needs" both law-wise and code-wise.
The only mission that could be considered to be "failed" (depending on who you ask) is licensing.
I am not surprised that much by this news. Red Hat paid him well, and there are not a lot of companies that would offer more for the kind of job he does. I am sure this feels like a step forward from his perspective. He will still be able to do what he wants, work on something interesting, and continue to trigger the Linux community.
If this is true, it's more than likely that Poettering would join Microsoft only if his work was focused on systemd, or something similarly interesting and low level. I for one, will be glad that a company is willing to pay for such work, even if it's them.
"...now confirmed from additional sources that Lennart Poettering did indeed quietly depart Red Hat earlier this year for another employment opportunity." Can't we just wait for any official info?
They’ve worked very very hard in the past to extinguish and annihilate a lot of the values HN stands for. Either you’re too young or didn’t follow tech back then but MS and Gates truly did evil moves to try and kill any and all competition, especially Linux and open source. Many of us remember.
Some people here are a bit older than a typical %MODERN_FRONTEND_TECHNOLOGY% developer and thus they remember very well what Microsoft did to Linux and open source community a decade ago and back.
Lots of people hate MS because of their monopolistic practices in the past.
Myself, I always despised the company because of the complete shit quality of their software, starting with DOS. That was a pile of crap from day 1, and while much has changed since then, you can still see the complete disregard for quality in so much of what they do.
More than that, the world needs a basic income system, so that people who feel thus motivated can write open source code^ without having to worry about monetization.
^: or raise children, make art, tend to community organizations, and any number of other socially beneficial activities for which a profit motive would be irrelevant or detrimental
Great, can the Linux heads now finally excise all of systemd along with it's monstrous scope creep, .ini files, binary journals from Linux, or will they continue to find excuses for their tastelessness and corporate slavedom?
yellowapple|3 years ago
curiousgal|3 years ago
No pun intended?
atoav|3 years ago
Usually if you don't like a piece of software, you just don't use it. And this is the core of the problem: If I got the critics correctly the problem has more to do with the way this has been "forced" onto the community. Most criticism on the substance has been just bias colored by this aspect or people being like "I was used to the old system, now I need to learn something new".
The latter is of course a totally valid point. If you want people to change their habits, you need to give them a clear reason why and — more important — they need to want to change that habit themselves.
The same greybeard friend of mine who still complains on systemd happily adopted pipewire. Why? Because he saw a clear benefit in doing so and nobody forced this onto him.
Critica might argue Pöttering now going to Microsoft is proof that he always has been the devil, I'd argue it is proof that a certain kind of culture can drive people out of open source. I could imagine a different kind of universe in which the communications between the systemd devs and the rest of the community had been different and we would not only have gotten a better systemd, but maybe also a Pöttering who would not go to MS.
The saddest thing about the whole affair is that it has a stifeling effect on new devs. Who would dare to write another systemd after that? Certainly not me.
bayindirh|3 years ago
Funny thing is they have bitten by the bugs they claimed they're immune to, so they had to apply these principles like they're first adopters of these.
I've voiced my criticisms over the years, yet I still use systemd. I don't like it, but I don't hate it either.
I want to share them, but, It'll be long, so I'll just leave links to my own comments:
1- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27651567 - A general criticism comment.
2- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25616356 - A general criticism thread.
3- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29672248 - About bugs in systemd.
At the end of the day, if a critical component of an OS is being replaced, people at least want their concerns addressed. Want to have some conversation. Being yelled at literally and proverbially as forcing adoption of said software is bound to create some backlash.
*Edit:* Initial text contained in this reply misunderstood the parent. Corrected, clarified, softened and re-written. Sorry about that.
account42|3 years ago
I still use OpenRC + ALSA (with apulse for those programs that shit on backwards compatibility) and I too am looking at PipeWire. Beyond the not being forced aspect and actually adding something that is useful (to me), PipeWire also seems to take much more care about working with existing programs/interfaces rather then wanting to get them on the shiny new API.
gavinhoward|3 years ago
Me! I want systemd capabilities in a small package. I also want it to not take over my machine like systemd did. I want to be able to compose individual daemons, not have the init subsume them.
I do like the idea of supervision systems, though, and I am glad systemd popularized (not invented) them. So since the alternatives are quite...user unfriendly (s6), I'm making my own.
It's called Ur (universal runner, also after the ancient city of Ur), and I'm building the dependency management for it, which will also go into a build system.
So why wasn't this affair stifling to me? It's because I see why people got angry: Poettering used politics to limit user choice. User choice has been a theme of Linux use for decades, and people were not happy about it. I'm not going to limit user choice, so I'm not worried about angering people in that way. I'm also not going to advertise and push Ur like systemd was. I'm going to advertise my build system, and Ur will be bundled with it, and I will help people use Ur, but I'm not going to push Ur because an init and supervision system is just too central to Linux machines to push it on people.
Actually, the dichotomy between build systems and init systems is a good example. If a distro choose a build system to base their package manager off of, and you are on that distro when they make the change, their choice does not affect your use of another build system, unless your build system does not come installed by default, in which case, you install it and then continue as normal.
But if your distro changes the init, you're in for a long period of relearning and retooling everything.
I think Poettering pushed systemd through politics because he wanted to have a popular piece of software, and that's only the real way to do it because distros adopt init systems, not users. I don't blame him for wanting a popular piece of software; I do too. That's why I have another piece of software to advertise, just so I don't have to advertise the init.
So why make it? Because I want it, and I'm on Gentoo, so I have the skills to switch out the current init (OpenRC). It's for me alone, and maybe for people who like it.
boffinAudio|3 years ago
Pipewire is not from Poettering. He did Pulseaudio, which is so terrible it inspired the folks to write Pipewire to replace it.
origin_path|3 years ago
[deleted]
jeshin|3 years ago
*I actually don't care strongly about systemd one way or the other but couldn't resist the joke
wooque|3 years ago
em-bee|3 years ago
elros|3 years ago
Just kidding, I hope everything goes well for him and I've really enjoyed following his work and reading his blog throughout the years.
em-bee|3 years ago
poettering's work attracted a disproportionate share of criticism, and moving to microsoft is not exactly a helpful move to quell that criticism. on the contrary, it will only get worse.
since he continues to work on systemd, critics will now start to decry systemd as being a microsoft product, or at least strongly influenced by microsoft. so this move is likely to strengthen the anti systemd camp. we'll see what comes from that.
bayindirh|3 years ago
I've written them in the past, so I'll not re-iterate these walls of text, but all in all, systemd had to learn some things over and over just because it disregarded people's warnings about the problems some of these design patterns create.
Being a little agreeable and open to discourse is not a bad thing.
All in all, systemd makes different trade-offs w.r.t. design, and is not radically fast when compared to what's coming before that. Capability wise it made some things easier (not possible), and some things way more harder.
It's just another iteration. Hope he doesn't pulls another "De Icaza", and all goes well for him.
OTOH, I can't trust neither him, nor Microsoft, because I look actions rather than words.
Let's see.
mariusor|3 years ago
pxc|3 years ago
WastingMyTime89|3 years ago
jeshin|3 years ago
>At first I thought they were jokes or just snarky remarks, but after a day of following up with folks, it actually turns out not to be a joke.
So who's to say he didn't? Twitter seems just to be where he first heard it
the_biot|3 years ago
kasabali|3 years ago
pedro2|3 years ago
oynqr|3 years ago
lillecarl|3 years ago
I for one really like PowerShell, if it could consume bash completions I would switch to using it as my $SHELL. Right now I'm leaning to switch from ZSH to Xonsh (Python).
Reason for liking PowerShell: C# compability, OOP, semi-sane syntax.
You can do type definitions, serde multiple formats into native structures.
noobermin|3 years ago
rvz|3 years ago
On top of that, surveillance capitalism is winning over the free software / open source developers as companies like Microsoft are buying out / hiring the majority of them.
The free-software activists from the FSF and other free-software supporters have lost to the tech bros at these big tech companies that have hijacked 'open-source' and ran with it.
They have failed in their mission to stop all this closed-source software from spreading. It looks like it is here to stay; especially with the help of former free software developers.
I guess if you can’t beat them, join them.
grepfru_it|3 years ago
One thing I will caution those who do take the offer, the company will use you until you are no longer necessary and then throw you out (extinguish)
pjmlp|3 years ago
Eventually food on the table is needed and there is a family to feed and mortgage to pay, and working for the man isn't that bad as one once thought.
Crysstalis|3 years ago
caramelcustard|3 years ago
"They have failed in their mission to stop all this closed-source software from spreading." except that was never the mission, the mission was to provide an alternative to complex licensing as well as simplify the improvement and development of things "everyone needs" both law-wise and code-wise.
The only mission that could be considered to be "failed" (depending on who you ask) is licensing.
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
devonallie|3 years ago
slategruen|3 years ago
mtbkvc|3 years ago
mariusor|3 years ago
plaguepilled|3 years ago
caramelcustard|3 years ago
boxmonster|3 years ago
ornornor|3 years ago
egorfine|3 years ago
kanonieer|3 years ago
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents
[2] https://www.gnu.org/software/fsfe/projects/ms-vs-eu/hallowee...
the_biot|3 years ago
Myself, I always despised the company because of the complete shit quality of their software, starting with DOS. That was a pile of crap from day 1, and while much has changed since then, you can still see the complete disregard for quality in so much of what they do.
bayindirh|3 years ago
carlsborg|3 years ago
marssaxman|3 years ago
^: or raise children, make art, tend to community organizations, and any number of other socially beneficial activities for which a profit motive would be irrelevant or detrimental
bayindirh|3 years ago
whateveracct|3 years ago
herewulf|3 years ago
Seriously, init systems like OpenRC do one thing and do it well. Where have I heard that before?
lillecarl|3 years ago
shrubble|3 years ago
tannhaeuser|3 years ago
claudiojulio|3 years ago
[deleted]
EdwardDiego|3 years ago
Christ almighty.