Re: [gentoo-user] Re: The future of linux, and Gentoo specifically now

[Alon Bar-Lev <alonbl@gentoo.org>]

On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 10:35 PM, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
>
> On Sun, 23 Nov 2014 15:25:07 -0500, Tanstaafl wrote:
>
> > > The current Gentoo policy is that maintainers cannot block other devs
> > > from adding support for systemd/openrc/etc to their packages if they
> > > lack such support.  Gentoo policy does NOT require maintainers to
> > > support any particular init system.
> > >
> > > If you feel otherwise, I suggest you cite the policy.
> >
> > Interesting... packages don't have to support the default init system...
> >
> > Can anyone say 'can of worms'?
>
> Well, if it goes the way Rich suggests, there won't be a default init
> system so this won't be an issue.
>
> Gentoo is about choice, defaults are there for when you can't be bothered
> to make the choice yourself, which makes defaults largely irrelevant in
> the Gentoo way of doing things.
>
> And if the default init system does become virtual/init, will you care or
> even notice? It was only when installing a new system recently that I saw
> that the default for virtual/cron was no longer vixie-cron, yet none of
> my systems using vixie stopped working...
>
> The choice will always be there as long as at least one person cares
> enough to ensure the choice is there.

Choice can be for components that are optional or drop-in-replacements.
It like you have expected that alternate gcc or libc will be a
*STABLE* choice, while developers a not using these "choices".
Systemd is not drop-in-replacement for init.d, and if developers
(except gnome) are not using it, then this choice is stable for gnome
users but no more than that, thus marking it as stable in the global
profile was at least "strange", also not having USE flag for openrc
and systemd was at least "strange", pushing users files and components
they do not use nor require.

As written before, Gentoo seems the only refuge from the systemd
ecosystem take over, once it is taken, it will be good time to move to
FreeBSD. People should had have -systemd USE to make sure they are not
using this ecosystem, this is one of the loses we had.

Alon