Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Boycott Systemd

[Phil Turmel <philip@turmel.org>]

On 10/07/2014 11:19 PM, Harry Holt wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 10:28 PM, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:

>> You're basically arguing that if somebody putting together an OS has a
>> working solution for something, they should spend just as much effort
>> maintaining 3 other solutions for that something, and ensure that none
>> of the solutions becomes any better than the others.  OpenRC and
>> Portage should work just as well with only csh installed as it does
>> with bash installed, etc.
>>
> 
> No.  Just no.  If somebody is putting together an OS, they maintain the
> interfaces / APIs that applications on top would use.  That's all.  If one
> solution for, say, package managers or daemon startup works better than
> another, so be it.  It's not the responsibility of the Kernel / OS
> developer, unless some application reveals a bug that others do not.  Other
> than that, pick the package manager / initializer / etc. that works best
> for YOU.
> 
>>
>> That just isn't realistic.
> 
> 
> The above scenario is ABSOLUTELY realistic, and the way it should work.
> The straw man you've created above, not so much.  But it's just a straw man.

You may think its absolutely realistic, but the market doesn't agree
with you.  Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical, et al call their products
*distributions*, not *operating systems* because their customers don't
want to create their own solutions.  They want a collection of software
pieces--kernel, libraries, applications--that solve their (end-user)
problems.

>>   Most distros would rather support 47
>> features that users want, and not 3 features implemented 5 different
>> ways each in a manner that is completely interchangeable.  If a distro
>> did things the way you wanted, very few would bother to use it, and
>> likely fewer would bother to maintain it.

Precisely.

> But isn't that the point of Gentoo in the first place?  You're selecting
> packages for various functions that are typically source compatible, and
> you compile them yourself.  How many text editors can you choose from?  How
> many cron implementations?  How many development languages and libraries?
> How many email servers and clients?  What would happen if the maintainers
> decided Gentoo should only support one desktop environment, one shell, one
> option for everything?  Would emacs users look elsewhere because only VI is
> available in Portage?  I suspect so.
> 
> The beauty of Gentoo is that even options not available from official
> sources can be integrated with either an overlay, your own ebuild, or even
> just building from source.

But Gentoo is still a *distro*, not just an operating system.  And it is
less commercial than most, relying on volunteers to code "useful" stuff.
 There's coding going on, and a lot of whining going on.  It's easy to
see who's credible.

>> Nothing is preventing you from starting a "Foundation for Redundant
>> Solutions" - with the express aim of maintaining all the stuff nobody
>> uses any longer.  I can't imagine you'll get a lot of donations - even
>> if people might agree with you philosophically at some level, they're
>> going to want to spend their money investing in stuff they actually
>> use.

Thank you, Rich.  This is perfect.

Phil