Hostility in plain sight [LWN.net]

Hostility in plain sight

Posted Dec 18, 2012 15:16 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)
In reply to: Hostility in plain sight by ovitters
Parent article: The eudev project launches

An explanation is no use if the recipient does not learn what is explained. There are many possible reasons: it may be that whoever explains is using a hostile or condescending tone, or that the reasons given are just weak or untrue. That is assuming that the explanation reaches the recipient at all. I don't know what is the case here, but "explanations have been given and ignored" is not good enough.

I am not (god forbid) a udev expert. From a quick scan of the announcement and the comments here and there, I see many valid reasons and others that have been refuted. The top reason:

The systemd developers are uninterested in providing full support in udev to systemd alternatives.

seems valid to me, especially after Poettering has accused other distros of fragmenting the Linux ecosystem. I may be wrong, but the hostility I see here reinforces the feeling. Anyway it is good to keep an eye about modifications to udev; and keeping a fork is cheap these days.

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Hostility in plain sight

Posted Dec 18, 2012 15:27 UTC (Tue) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]

Thanks for taking the time to educate me :)

Hostility in plain sight

Posted Dec 18, 2012 20:11 UTC (Tue) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]

The top reason:
The systemd developers are uninterested in providing full support in udev to systemd alternatives.
seems valid to me,

It's a total red herring. udev works just fine without systemd and that isn't about to change. Poettering even praised the cooperation with Ubuntu's udev maintainer.

Hostility in plain sight

Posted Dec 21, 2012 7:45 UTC (Fri) by felipec (guest, #75494) [Link]

And he also said he was looking forward to the day when this stops and udev only works on systemd.

The only reason he is OK with udev working without systemd *for now*, is that it advances his agenda, and it's doesn't really require much effort.

Hostility in plain sight

Posted Dec 21, 2012 17:58 UTC (Fri) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]

> And he also said he was looking forward to the day when this stops and udev only works on systemd.
So? If he intended to drop support for udev on non-systemd systems, he could have done it already. He didn't, and other than one off-hand command in one email, there's no indication that he will in the forseeable future. OTOH, he and Kay Sievers repeatedly confirmed that they *will* keep udev working on non-systemd system. Who are you to accuse them of such a blatant lies?

And even if they do drop support for non-systemd systems (which wouldn't be a huge loss anyway, I might add), people should fork *then* and not now.