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mrfinn | 1 year ago

If you are trying to convince me that systemd happened out of the creativity of Mr. Poettering and Red Hat just followed him... well I have to say I don't believe that. But anyway, for me it really doesn't matter. It's the beauty of free software.

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SubjectToChange|1 year ago

As strange as it might sound, that’s basically what happened.

I mean, let’s assume that Red Hat leadership initiated the systemd project, then we are immediately confronted by a number of problems. First of all, if Red Hat planned to ship systemd with the launch of RHEL 7 in 2014, then why did development on systemd only begin in early 2010? It seems rather irresponsible to intentionally delay development of the new init system for your flagship product, particularly when you’ll be supporting it for the next 15+ years.

Second of all, why would Red Hat hand the systemd project to Lennart Poettering, a developer who was primarily responsible for PulseAudio? Moreover, Poettering was already notorious for being an outspoken member of the Linux community. So why would Red Hat management go so far out of their way to choose such a divisive figure lead their project?

Also, why would Red Hat management seek to imitate launchd of all things? Why not SMF or some other “enterprise” solution instead?

Last of all, upstart development was primarily funded by Canonical and it had proven itself on RHEL 6. Therefore, replacing upstart with systemd meant shifting the maintenance burden back onto Red Hat in one of the very few areas it could actually save on it.

Now, if you still have your doubts than here it is from the man himself: https://web.archive.org/web/20181108025744/https://thenewsta...

Again, what Poettering accomplished with systemd is astounding.