Re: [gentoo-dev] Going against co-maintainer's wishes (ref. bug 412697)

[Ben de Groot <yngwin@gentoo.org>]

On 26 May 2013 18:04, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 3:43 AM, Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> On Sun, 26 May 2013 15:23:44 +0800
>> Ben de Groot <yngwin@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Where is this policy documented?
>>
>> Nowhere, I think. I've seen it coming in the late thread, looked common
>> sense enough to me.
>>
>> If it is to be documented, I think we should document it in a more
>> general fashion. To cover all stuff like completions, logrotate and so
>> on.
>>
>
> As others have already pointed out, we are an organization, not a CPU.
>  We can't make EVERYTHING a rule, and devs should act in a cooperative
> manner so that this remains the case.
>
> Sure, this can be made into a policy, and if things get out of hand
> I'm sure it will be.  I'm not quite sure I see the need yet, as we
> don't have an example yet of a maintainer not cooperating with the
> systemd team on the installation of init files (in the present example
> Ben isn't actually a maintainer, since he stepped down).

In packages I maintain, I will not be adding any systemd related files.
All bug reports requesting such additions will be closed as an upstream
matter.

> If Ben wants to boycott systemd by not maintaining any packages that
> support it, that is his choice.  I just suspect that the end result of
> that will be that he'll end up not maintaining much of anything.  I'd
> hate to see that happen, as it would be a loss for Gentoo.  But,
> frankly, letting any one person dictate the direction of the entire
> distro by essentially threatening to quit would be worse.

Gentoo is evolving in directions I do not agree with. I am feeling less
and less at home here. More and more often it seems I am the
minority voice of protest. I am not enjoying this role, and increasingly
the thought arises that I should just get out of people's way and
find another place that is closer to my ideas of what a distro
should be.

> Gentoo is about choice - and the nature of choice is that most of the
> choices it supports are ones that you wouldn't personally make.  We do
> a reasonably good job letting everybody have their cake and eat it
> too.  However, it really isn't an appropriate distro for absolute
> purists of almost any kind - it reeks of compromise.  We package
> proprietary software (we don't redistribute the copyrighted parts), we
> more-or-less run on Windows/OSX, we support that X32 alternate
> architecture that some believe has no useful purpose, and so on.
>
> If you really want to influence the battle of the init
> implementations, then write code, not emails.

I am not a programmer, I am a simple package maintainer.

> Maybe that is a wrapper
> that allows OpenRC to support systemd units.  Maybe that is more
> functionality for OpenRC.  Maybe it is something else.  However,
> trying to influence things by just spitting into the wind isn't going
> to do much but get your face dirty. Sure, devs can quit, but that
> isn't just a loss for Gentoo.  Frankly if your main goal in life is to
> avoid systemd then you're better off supporting Gentoo which is likely
> to support that option nearly forever far better than any other
> distro.

If forcing Gentoo package maintainers to add systemd support
to packages they maintain is your idea of the best option to
avoid systemd, then I respectfully disagree.

Obviously I have better (and more fun) things to do.
--
Cheers,

Ben | yngwin
Gentoo developer