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Fedora defers systemd to F15

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 1:19 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
In reply to: Fedora defers systemd to F15 by mmcgrath
Parent article: Fedora defers systemd to F15

You know, the man's got a point there. According to his e-mail, he jumped through the hoops, done the dance etc.


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Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 1:32 UTC (Wed) by russell (guest, #10458) [Link] (73 responses)

He may have done all that, but it's not about him, it's about the code. However, his response makes more even more nervous about it. I for one welcome a cautious approach to this. I will probably won't skip F14 like I was planning.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 1:42 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] (72 responses)

> He may have done all that, but it's not about him, it's about the code.

Actually, what I wanted to point out is that it is about the process. He was told (like the rest of us that contribute to Fedora) that there are rules to get things done. He followed the rules. And yet, his doohickey got rejected.

PS. I never tried systemd in my life and I honestly don't know how many things are wrong with it. That's the whole point of having a process, I guess. There is supposed to be objective criteria in place that makes sure that users like me get something that meets minimum requirements.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 1:59 UTC (Wed) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (16 responses)

It's not rejected, it's just deferred for a little while. As a consequence, it will be tested much more thoroughly than would have been possible before F14 release. When it is released as the default in F15 it will be solid, and familiar, and nobody will be cursing Lennart. This looks to me like a win for everybody.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 2:06 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] (1 responses)

Yeah, I get that it's just deferred. However, have a look at these two posts. They confirm what Lennart's frustration is warranted:

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2010-Septe...
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2010-Septe...

I seems that "core" features will probably need a slightly different criteria in order to get in as defaults. Looks like systemd was the test case here.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 16:55 UTC (Wed) by jd (guest, #26381) [Link]

Well, yeah, if there's a set of well-defined criteria for acceptance, then changing those criteria after the fact is a bit of a no-no. I can accept that they want to update the criteria and I can accept that they'd want to test new criteria on a subset of projects before rolling it out to everyone, but it sounds like they didn't tell him, or perhaps they did but not clearly.

To be honest, I'm much less concerned with this project being delayed than I am with the lack of communication. This is not the first distro with serious communications issues (Debian is another, from my own experience), but it is good communication that makes or breaks a project on this scale. Regardless of who did what, where, when and to whom, flawed communication is a serious bug that needs fixing.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 5:03 UTC (Wed) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698) [Link] (13 responses)

It's not rejected, it's just deferred for a little while.

"deferred for a little while" *IS* rejected. The vote was whether to include it in F14 or not, and the answer was "not", despite that it apparently met the acceptance criteria.

Possibly the acceptance criteria should have been different for systemd, but since it wasn't, getting voted down is a failure of the process.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 9:19 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (10 responses)

> "deferred for a little while" *IS* rejected.

I find this false statement to be a nice and short summary of what's wrong with Lennart development's attitude. Thanks.

(On the other hand, the way he was let hoping he could make it does not look great either)

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 14:56 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (2 responses)

I'm pretty sure brouhaha is not the userid used by Lennart, so I don't understand how you relate this.

Anyway, to provide a related opinion: Within GNOME module proposals are either accepted or rejected. Then we explain what we want to have it accepted when it is proposed again. Deferred is sometimes used but only when we need more time to make a decision. After that time we will still say 'accepted' or 'rejected'. To be clear, Lennart is not on the GNOME release-team.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 19:15 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (1 responses)

In other words: "Wait for 6 months? I'd rather die".

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 16, 2010 10:00 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link]

No, that is not "in other words" what I meant, wrote or intended.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 17:03 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (6 responses)

systemd was rejected from F14. Why play language games?

I can relate to Lennart's position, I've been there myself... If systemd wasn't going to be included in F14 anyway, then it turns out all the all-nighters and missed dinners with friends spent getting it in perfect mergeable shape were a complete waste of time. It's a horrible feeling, and seriously demoralizing.

I don't think you're in a position to claim that Lennart's attitude is "wrong". And I can't say that your judgement is showing a real good example of attitude either!

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 19:18 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (5 responses)

Seriously, get a life.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 19:35 UTC (Wed) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]

I'm all for other people not having a "life", if it results in them working on interesting software like systemd instead. :)

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 16, 2010 10:18 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (3 responses)

Suggest if you don't have anything constructive to say to just not respond. Thanks.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 16, 2010 10:44 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (2 responses)

I will be more explicit just for you. I am seriously suggesting that people like Lennart switch to a more adult relation with software development. This means not missing dinners with friends and being generally more relaxed.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 16, 2010 11:04 UTC (Thu) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

When attempting to suggest someone behave more maturely, it is perhaps best to be mature in one's expression of the notion. "I [suggest] that people like Lennart switch to a more adult relationship with software development. This means not missing dinners with friends and being generally more relaxed." is useful advice, maturely expressed; anyone who takes issue with it (rather than merely declining to follow it) is a jerk.

"Get a life", on the other hand, mostly evokes memories of obnoxious teenagers.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 20, 2010 12:08 UTC (Mon) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]

If being an adult means not caring about someone's work, I will happily only employ kids forever more...

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 16:48 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] (1 responses)

"deferred for a little while" *IS* rejected. The vote was whether to include it in F14 or not, and the answer was "not", despite that it apparently met the acceptance criteria.

If I understand correctly, it will be included in F14, it just won't be the default. So any F14 user who wants to try it out can turn it on.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 16, 2010 16:35 UTC (Thu) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698) [Link]

I should have been more specific. The vote was whether it would be included in F14 as the replacement for upstart. It was rejected.

Deferred *is* rejected, since the decision means that it will NEVER ship as part of F14 as the replacement for upstart. It may be accepted for F15, but that won't change the fact that it was rejected for F14, despite having met the acceptance criteria. Any claim that deferring it is somehow not rejecting it is an attempt to dodge responsibility for rejecting it.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 2:03 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (45 responses)

Yes, I think we failed Lennart in terms of process. In our defence, Fedora is currently undergoing something of a shift in priorities in an attempt to ensure that we provide a more stable and useful distribution. In the past I don't think there'd have been any significant argument against systemd going in with, but now we're questioning these things more and I don't think our process has entirely caught up.

But yeah, it's pretty much impossible to avoid empathy with Lennart here. He did everything he was asked to do and more, and then at the last moment we have a short conversation and decide not to use his work by default. I think he's justifiably angry, and I hope we can use this to come up with a policy that provides stronger guidance on the criteria that will be applied to high-profile features.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 2:30 UTC (Wed) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link] (1 responses)

It would be nice if there were a way to turn systemd *off* if it started misbehaving. I'm aware that it would probably be twice the work for everybody. For instance, applications might have to be packaged with both an upstart/sysv init script and a systemd init script. But having a working init system is just such an important issue.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 19:17 UTC (Wed) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link]

That is exactly the current status: You can use systemd or upstart, your choice. Selectable at boot or via grub configuration.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 2:32 UTC (Wed) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (38 responses)

he's justifiably angry

I reject that utterly. The machines that will run F14 aren't Lennart's. The people who have to make F14 systems work aren't Lennart. They don't owe Lennart anything. The group that made the decision doesn't owe Lennart anything either; they are supposed to be representing F14 users. Any F14 user who wants to try systemd will. Come F15, systemd will be mature and bulletproof as it should be, and then F15 users will owe Lennart and the early adopters who tried it in F14 a debt of gratitude for having improved their experience. First things first.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 2:45 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (2 responses)

I don't think the decision was wrong. I think it's entirely fair that someone who does everything that's asked of them be unhappy if additional criteria are introduced right at the end of the process. We should have been clearer about what we were going to look at in making this decision.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 10:54 UTC (Wed) by njd27 (subscriber, #5770) [Link]

It's a very rare software project that can establish all its "criteria" at the beginning and then proceed to the end without something new cropping up.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 21, 2010 10:34 UTC (Tue) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link]

>I think it's entirely fair that someone who does everything that's asked of them be unhappy if additional criteria are introduced right at the end of the process.

As an outsider I don't know how this usually works, but I would never expect acceptance criteria to mean 'anything fulfilling these criteria will be accepted', but rather 'anything *not* meeting these criteria will be *rejected*'. I would be somewhat suspicious of a process in which the assumption is the other way round, particularly when it comes to core components.

It sucks to work hard in the hopes of some payoff only to see it not happen for another six months, but I remain unconvinced that such a strong expectation was warranted in the first place.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 2:45 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] (23 responses)

Lennart is angry because he decided to do all this work in a hurry in order to get systemd into good enough shape for F-14, only to be told that the rules changed and that his software isn't getting in anyway.

If he was told that a core component like his can only be optional in the first incarnation of Fedora in which it appears, I'm sure he'd be under no pressure to deliver on all of what was considered "blocker" for F-14.

This has absolutely nothing to do with what users of Fedora think about systemd.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 3:00 UTC (Wed) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (22 responses)

If he hadn't done that work, then systemd wouldn't be ready for optional use in F14, and so wouldn't get thorough field testing before F15, and then would not be ready for default use in F15 either. It's great that Lennart takes on rats' nest problems, but there are reasons why they are rats' nests, and it takes time to get solutions and the world ready for one another. Didn't he learn anything from pushing pulseaudio out before it and the world were ready for one another?

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 3:19 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] (21 responses)

> If he hadn't done that work, then systemd wouldn't be ready for optional use in F14

I don't think you can have a blocker against an optional component. So, systemd could have gotten into F-14 as an option, with many of what would otherwise be blocker issues. He wouldn't have to rush to fix any of that - he'd have another 6 months. If only he was told that systemd could not be accepted (I'm not blaming anyone here, just pointing out that process probably needs adjustment).

> Didn't he learn anything from pushing pulseaudio out before it and the world were ready for one another?

He didn't push anything on anyone. That's what the process is for. That's what blocker bugs are all about.

Sure, sometimes things get shipped that are, shall we say, undercooked. Hey, Fedora is not a "shy" distro, so we all learned to cope with this in various ways. The price of progress etc.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 3:35 UTC (Wed) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (20 responses)

systemd could have gotten into F-14 as an option, with many of what would otherwise be blocker issues

How much field testing would it have got, then, with its blocker issues? Then it wouldn't be ready for F15, and would be (assuming the committee is responsible) optional in that release, too, to be released as the default only in F16.

I'm astonished anybody, Lennart included, seriously considered any alternative to what actually happened.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 3:40 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] (19 responses)

> How much field testing would it have got, then, with its blocker issues?

That depends on how many people would be willing to test, I guess. When compiz was introduced, for instance, I was willing to test right away, although the results were not always pleasant.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 6:11 UTC (Wed) by jmorris42 (guest, #2203) [Link] (18 responses)

> That depends on how many people would be willing to test, I guess.

And that gets to the nub of the problem. How many folks are crying out for a solution to the current init? How many will try systemd before it is forced down their throats? Probably fewer than would have willingly submitted to Pulseaudio in the first couple of years when it was mostly full of fail.

Systemd is wonderful on paper but is likely to impact the real world with about as much mess as PA did. System init is another area where you are likely to run into hundreds of obscure packages which will still be turning up broken years from now. 90% compatible isn't going to cut it here.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 6:46 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] (17 responses)

And what exactly is you point here? That software has bugs? We already knew that.

At some point, bullet has to be bitten. If you don't like doing that, stay away from latest Fedora spins. Me - I don't mind trying out a thing or two.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 10:35 UTC (Wed) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] (16 responses)

> At some point, bullet has to be bitten.

Nope, as long the current init system is working acceptably. And it is working better than acceptably, IMHO.

Lets see. One can classify users into four categories regarding their attitude versus changes:

- "new! new! new!" users (1%) will test anything that's new just because. Systemd is certainly ready for those.
- "Features!" users (4%) can accept some breakage (growing pains) if the new stuff provides something of value for them. I don't think systemd has show anything that makes it qualify for those (does it make the system boot any faster?).
- "It's not broken, don't fix it!" kind of users (15%) will reject anything new unless it improves things considerably AND has proven track of stability. systemd is certainly NOT ready for those.
- "I don't care" kind of users (80%) will use whatever comes by default with the distro. They may appreciate any benefit provided, but will not tolerate inconvenience, as usually cannot fix broken things themselves. Also, no score here.

So, to recap: systemd is ready for 1-5% of the users, but seems not ready for the World at large just yet.

Note: all statistics are based on the proven and reliable method of educated guesstimation, aka pulling them out of my hat.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 11:00 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

Thanks, I had a good chuckle!

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 14:54 UTC (Wed) by ewan (guest, #5533) [Link] (13 responses)

If that were anywhere near true then 95% of users would be using something like CentOS. The fact is that people do care about having shiny new things, really quite a lot.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 17:18 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (9 responses)

Pretty much. If you don't want to deal with changes then use CentOS or Redhat.

That's the point of them. The last thing we need is another CentOS.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 19:22 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (8 responses)

> If you don't want to deal with changes then use CentOS or Redhat.

There is an enormous distance between Fedora and CentOS, much bigger than what was discussed here.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 16, 2010 2:02 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (4 responses)

Indeed, and are there also an enormous number of additional volunteers to develop something more to your taste?

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 16, 2010 6:36 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (3 responses)

What you still do not get:
- the vast majority of Fedora users (not just me) did NOT ask for systemd, not even for improvements to the current system, whatever ugly it was.
- it takes ZERO volunteer not to develop systemd. How demanding for a taste?

I am totally convinced Lennart is a fantastic developer. Sorry, but "Ooooh! aaaahhh!" does not give him an automatic right to push his software fast forward.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 16, 2010 10:07 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] (1 responses)

> - the vast majority of Fedora users (not just me) did NOT ask for systemd, not even for improvements to the current system, whatever ugly it was.

The vast majority of Fedora users have no idea what an init system does and why it is important to have a truly dynamic one. Please go and view that Apple presentation on launchd. Apple is not in the business of pleasing geeks for geeks' sake. They switched to launchd because it is ultimately better for users and developers.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 27, 2010 16:14 UTC (Mon) by topher (guest, #2223) [Link]

True, but Fedora also already switched to upstart, which provides a similar framework for that dynamic and "cool" system startup.

Personally, I'm not yet convinced that systemd is actually an improvement over upstart, so forcing it through as the new default because it "works pretty well, and is mostly reliable" doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm still waiting for a better explanation of why I should want it.

(Yes, I've read the docs on it. Some of it is looks kinda cool. . . and like a big improvement over the old SysV init. And like a marginal improvement, at best, over upstart, which is more established and significantly better tested. And, as someone who has to use multiple distributions, consistency counts for far more than any of the minor potential improvements. I don't want to have to deal with yet another init system on another distribution.)

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 16, 2010 20:53 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

Fedora 14 will introduce numerous package updates, new features, and bug fixes and not a single one of them will have achieved your arbitrary threshold of "the vast majority of Fedora users" asking for it.

Raymond Chen has written a number of thought experiments which are valuable for those who want to understand why their idea is stupid before they propose it. The relevant one here is not "Features do not exist by default" (as you seem to think) but "What if two people did this?"

If you are entitled to a systemd-less Fedora just because not making systemd would have been zero effort, obviously all other Fedora users are also entitled to new versions which lack whatever features they don't happen to want.

But all these extra versions of Fedora require considerable integration and maintenance effort. The project will inevitably collapse if this approach is taken. On the other hand, Fedora is pointless if it each new versions just consists of a few uncontroversial bug fixes against the previous one.

So Fedora has a process to decide which new features land. In those parts of this discussion which aren't taken up with you ironically asking other people to "get a life", it is clear that the process failed, badly.

'distance' is not the correct term here.

Posted Sep 16, 2010 11:23 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

> There is an enormous distance between Fedora and CentOS, much bigger than what was discussed here.

Not ultimately. There are a hundred thousand new ways that Fedora could introduce new functionality that would break stuff for users.

Fedora is one of the last 'happy places' for individual developers and companies that really want to get moving with new technology and have a audience that is willing to test it.

Break something in Mesa, Dbus, GTK, PulseAudio, PHP, Apache, or Nautilus or Packagekit or any of that stuff and you'll piss end users off just as hard as if you broke something in their init scripts. The OS purpose in life is nothing more then to serve the purposes of developers and their applications. End users only care about their applications... whether it's a web forum software or Gimp that is what matters most. If a PHP lib breaks or a init script gets launched out of order the effect is the same for a person that wants to host a website.

There really is no logical dividing point of saying "Well this change might piss of 70% of people so it won't go in, but this change only pisses off 30% of people then it's ok'.

Were is the line you draw?

Logically the line to draw is:
Either you accept changes that you think will probably work or you do not and only accept proven changes!

If somebody has put in the work to design a superior PID 0 from scratch, meets the obligations and goals set forth before him and then still gets all his potential end users denied from him and users are denied the better software... how does that make sense? How is that behavior on the part of the denier justifiable?

It is not, really.

'distance' is not the correct term here.

Posted Sep 16, 2010 11:35 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

Oh, and before somebody says something silly like 'init breaking is more serious then gtk breaking!'

Well, it's not. As I explained above the kernel breaking, the drivers sucking, the init sucking, the sound server sucking, the application lib sucking, etc etc. The effect is always going to be the same to the end user:

My application is broke, the OS is shit. The user is DOS'd from their application due to a bug.

And the approach for a end user dealing with the issue the issue is always going to be roughly the same:

1. Hack around the problem.
2. Bitch about it.
3. File a bug report
4. Wait a couple weeks, install a update that fixes the problem.
5. Figure out how to roll back your hacks
6. Bitch some more about it.
7. Gradually forget that it ever happened in the first place.

I know there is different levels of pissed off-ness users will get and I know that there are big differences in the difficulty of working around a broken OS component.. but, frankly, I know I'd have a much easier time dealing with a init script then I would with php_mod or a broken Mesa driver.

So how you approach things is a question of goals. Are changes done with reasonable efforts to assure correctness is acceptable, or are then not and the software must be proven elsewhere first?

That is the difference between CentOS/Rehdat and Fedora.

'distance' is not the correct term here.

Posted Sep 16, 2010 14:06 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

Your elaborated and interesting analysis is yet missing one of the most important parameters: time (or speed if you prefer). In this case, six months.

The number of people in this forum that seem to believe a gas pedal has only two positions is truly amazing. Damn, I just made a car analogy. (As an anecdote, I have seen a few people actually using their gas pedal like this).

> and then still gets all his potential end users denied from him [...] How is that behavior on the part of the denier justifiable?

Thanks to this nice formulation above I can finally see the vast ocean of average users eagerly waiting for systemd to be enabled by default (since they are not technical enough to enable it by themselves). They were all hidden by this single guy slowing down the whole process for selfish reasons.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 22:52 UTC (Wed) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]

The fact is that people do care about having shiny new things, really quite a lot.
People care different amounts about different shiny new things. They may care deeply about one set, not at all about a second set, and prefer the tried and true for a third set. But different users have different use cases, which means they disagree about which packages desperately need to be updated to include new features and which should be left alone to promote stability. So there may be just 5% of users who want the latest package for Program X and 5% who want the latest package for Program Y, but they're not necessarily the same 5%.

That means that a give user may wind up using a cutting edge distro even if they'd prefer that most of the software in it remain stable. As long as there are a few packages where they want/need the latest features, it may make sense to go with Fedora over CentOS. It just depends on whether it's harder to get the latest version of their program of interest working on CentOS or to deal with the instability of Fedora.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 21, 2010 10:37 UTC (Tue) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link]

>If that were anywhere near true then 95% of users would be using something like CentOS

Or Windows

>The fact is that people do care about having shiny new things, really quite a lot.

I guess that explains why Windows has such a tiny share of the market.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 27, 2010 15:57 UTC (Mon) by topher (guest, #2223) [Link]

You're right, people love shiny new features.

However, systemd doesn't qualify in any way for that. People don't *see* systemd unless/until it breaks. Hence, they don't care.

The kind of shiny new features people want, and are willing to run Fedora for, are overwhelmingly in the desktop area, or the rare latest-and-greatest server daemon. 99.9% of them couldn't care less about what software is used to handle init.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 15:04 UTC (Wed) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

... though for a significant fraction of the 15%, it's more "it works for me, don't fix it" and s{anything new.*}{anything new.}.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 2:54 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (10 responses)

But if you read his message, he isn't complaining that those F14 machines won't be running systemd. He's complaining (and FESCO members are agreeing) that he was told "if you can accomplish this list of things, then Fedora will ship systemd", he worked his butt off to accomplish those things, and then surprise! They changed the rules and didn't even invite him to the meeting where it happened. That's a process perfectly designed to piss off contributors, and bad process is bad process independently of whether it gives a good result.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 3:27 UTC (Wed) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (6 responses)

If anybody told Lennart that systemd might be in as the default startup mechanism without a trial cycle, shame on them. If Lennart asked for that, shame on him.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 17:22 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (5 responses)

Until now, the process has been pretty open in the Fedora mailing lists. Seems like it should be pretty easy for you to decide who deserves shame. What do you mean by "trial cycle"?

And, you sure you're not presenting a false dichotomy?

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 19:39 UTC (Wed) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link] (4 responses)

I agree with ncm. It's a core component, which is intended to replace something which is not broken, so of course there must be a trial cycle.
Everything else would have been unreasonable, no matter what anybody said or thought before.

It's the right decision, and it feels strange that so many people now feel they have to apologize to Lennart, because his code wasn't chosen to replace a core system component in the next release.

I mean, it's an exceptional honor for the author if his code is chosen, it's the default that that's not the case.

Alex

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 20:30 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (3 responses)

There are two totally distinct issues here:

1) The technical question of whether systemd should go in F14. You think it shouldn't. Sure, that's a reasonable conclusion. (It's worth noting, though, that the Fedora people seem to be in a completely different reality than you -- even now no-one there seems to be saying that core components must have trial cycles as a matter of policy, and if you read the transcript than 4 out of 5 FESCO members voted to use systemd in F14, with 1 unsure.)

2) The social question of how contributors are treated in the process of making the technical decision.

I find it very disheartening how many people here seem to think that only the technical decision is important, and it doesn't matter how many contributors are alienated along the way. (Or if some contributors do feel hurt and alienated, then obviously that's their own problem and they should just suck it up, regardless of how reasonable a response it is.)

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 16, 2010 2:43 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (2 responses)

What of the social question of the level of responsibility upon Lennart for accepting that others, notable and experienced people among them, are trying to do their best for what's right for an entire distro and its users (a lot more people than Lennart) as well as him?

His software is *still* going to be shipped in F14, it will still likely end up the default init at some stage.

Given Lennart's tendency to be quite optimistic about the quality and readyness of his code, I am more than happy to have people besides Lennart make last-minute value judgements as to the ship-default state of his code. I don't think a distro should be held hostage to Lennart's feelings.

NB: You can pretty much substitute "any contributing developer" with "Lennart" in the above comment. So there's some general points being made here.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 16, 2010 4:35 UTC (Thu) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (1 responses)

Am I being unclear somehow? I feel like I'm repeating myself a lot :-).

No-one's saying that Fedora shouldn't have made the decision it did, no-one's saying that they shouldn't have people besides Lennart making last-minute judgments about shipping his code. (Though if you read that transcript, it may not give you much confidence that they actually made a more informed decision.) And no-one's saying that his feelings should hold anything hostage.

What people are saying -- including the ones who actually made the decision -- is that the process of getting there could have been done in a better way, e.g., by actually deciding and communicating that that was the process they were going to use. They could have gotten to the exact same place without pissing off a very talented (in some ways) contributor, and wouldn't that have been better all around?

I'm sure Lennart will get over it, in the long run it isn't that big a deal. But I'm still astonished at everyone saying "what, nothing happened here, any rational contributor would be happy!"

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 16, 2010 17:09 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Your post seemed to focus on the social issues of treating a contributor badly by rejecting their code on a last-minute value judgement. Mine asked questions about the responsibility the other way around - for the contributing developer to have some understanding that the integration managers have wider responsibilities and to not throw a tantrum when they don't get their way immediately.

Bill Nottingham, I gather, was very well informed on systemd and in particular on the remaining problems. You'll note that the other voters who reversed from yes to no did so because of Bill's no vote, i.e. recognising his standing (both long standing in RedHat, and on systemd status). Bill had also worked with Lennart about required integration issues.

As others have noted (and I repeated in my comment), there is a need for integrators to be able to apply value judgements. It almost certainly is not possible to codify a tightly defined process for integration. I definitely want my distro's integration decision team to have wiggle room.

More importantly, their ability to do this MUST BE RESPECTED. I'm sorry, but emotional black-mail is not what I want to see be an input to the integration decision making process.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 8:19 UTC (Wed) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link]

> But if you read his message, he isn't complaining that those F14 machines won't be running systemd. He's complaining (and FESCO members are agreeing) that he was told "if you can accomplish this list of things, then Fedora will ship systemd"...

I understand that he is impatient to see the results of his work, but surely having it in Fedora even six months later than he hoped, and firmly on track to become a core component of the heaviest weight Linux distribution is a pretty good compensation prize. Which is at least the impression I get. I would personally forgive people for getting a bit jittery at the last moment about a rather abrupt change of this scale, even if I had been promised it could go in half a year earlier.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 11:59 UTC (Wed) by interalia (subscriber, #26615) [Link]

I haven't read the criteria but I don't believe in objective criteria, in the sense that if certain conditions are met then approval is guaranteed. Truly objective criteria would allow a machine-made decision, but in releasing software I would always make a human judgement call & I suspect most of us feel that way. You're never going to be able to shape the rules to cover every situation, else you get the tangled complexity of legal code.

If anyone gave Lennart an ironclad guarantee that systemd would be released with F14 given certain conditions, then yes shame on them. But I think usually people mean that those are the _minimum_ conditions for consideration and at that point a judgement call will be made.

Perhaps improvements can be made by Fedora to the process but I think it's more realistic to say that (in principle) this judgement call is made for every package and every bug. Most of them are passed semi-automatically, but deep or controversial changes will always invite manual judgement, with a possibility of denial. He's certainly entitled to be disappointed, of course - I know I would be. Being overruled is acceptable as long as you respect the intelligence/judgement of those overruling. (Is that the real problem?)

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 17, 2010 0:35 UTC (Fri) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

But, AFAIU, F14 will *ship* systemd. It just won't be the default init mechanism.

Not that I really care; I don't use Fedora. I just read this thread for entertainment...

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 3:27 UTC (Wed) by jacktanner (guest, #70122) [Link] (1 responses)

It was perfectly OK for FESCO to come up with new criteria as it was deciding whether to make systemd the default in F14. FESCO is working on a complex problem. How to solve such a problem becomes apparent during the analysis. You cannot have all the criteria determined ahead of time. (But now that you have determined some additional criteria that were important to you, you should record them explicitly so that you can refer to them next time around.)

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 5:08 UTC (Wed) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698) [Link]

It's OK for FESCO to come up with new criteria at the last minute if they can give an objective definition of the new criteria, AND they can present a very solid justification for why the criteria change is necessary. Not just a touchy-feely "I'd be happier if..." justification, but rather something like "the old criteria was inadequate because it overlooked a specific issue that if X happens, Y results."

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 20:04 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

Might I say that your response to Lennart in that thread was perhaps the most reasonable one could possibly expect? (I can't find any response from Lennart, which seems very shabby to me. If someone's nice to you you don't ignore them!)

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 16, 2010 15:19 UTC (Thu) by Tobu (subscriber, #24111) [Link]

Lennart made his points and stepped out of the thread, see the end of his message.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 5:30 UTC (Wed) by russell (guest, #10458) [Link] (5 responses)

I get what your saying and I understand that he feels upset. But not because process has not been followed. As I understand it having group of experienced people making a judgement call is part of the process and I think that process advocates well for all Fedora users.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 5:47 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (4 responses)

FESCo is a group of voted members. They are not necessarily experienced. The majority of people who voted for them trusted them to make the right decisions nevertheless. The process failure is not that. It is a mismanagement of expectations. If I am proposing a feature, I would like to know in more concrete terms what it would take to be accepted rather than fuzzy feelings. FESCo members have explicitly acknowledged that the process needs some adjustments for critical features.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 9:55 UTC (Wed) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (3 responses)

I do think it's impossible to create concrete terms beforehand for everything, it would not be flexible enough for the real world. There's a need for room for fuzzy feelings.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 11:03 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Yep but FESCo themselves have acknowledged the need to do better. QA team in Fedora for example has continuously revises the release criteria when they come across bugs that must be blockers but don't meet the defined criteria yet. The feature process also could use such changes and systemd has shown a need for it.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 15, 2010 15:08 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (1 responses)

So they could have said "Okay, Lennart, the final decision on systemd is going to be a judgment call made by FESCO at this meeting on this date." You can make concrete statements about your fuzzy decisions. They didn't even do that.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 16, 2010 10:28 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

While they didn't specify a date earlier, when the initial decision was made, FESCo did explicitly mention that it was a decision for alpha release and will have to make the final decision at a later point.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 16, 2010 13:16 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (2 responses)

Just because he followed the rules does not mean he's entitled to approval.

It's like speed limits: if you're over the limit, you're clearly in the wrong, but if you always ride at speed limit minus one mph, ignoring road curves, weather, other traffic, things are not going to end well.

And that's not because the limits are faulty, that's because you didn't use your common sense to evaluate the gray area between "absolutely wrong" and "appropriate to the current situation".

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 16, 2010 16:35 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (1 responses)

A car analogy? That sounds like fun!

A month or two ago some policemen had told Lennart, a well-known local driver, that it was probably OK for him to drive on Highway F14. Time was short so Lennart started immediately. He kept his speed under the speed limit, anticipated curves, weather, etc, and even wrote about driving safety on his blog.

A few days ago, however, the police voted on it. Nobody thought to invite Lennart (he was driving anyway). Severely understaffed and cranky from dealing with all the other inmates, the few policemen present decided that Highway F14 is actually a fairly perilous road, covered in fog and winding along a cliff above a penguin sanctuary. They agreed that Lennart was a good driver, one of the best on the road, but he does have one accident on his record and his SystemD sports car has had some recalls. For everybody's safety, they decided they would throw him in jail.

It's no problem, they argued, Lennart would be a stoic inmate. He can work from his cell improving the tires and brakes on his car so that, when he's paroled in six months, he can continue driving. This time he would most likely reach his destination.

Lennart yelled and banged his tin cup on the bars claiming he was wrongly imprisoned, and that if it was illegal to drive on the road anyway then they should have just put up a barrier. Why let him waste all that gas? He started a letter-writing campaign, to no avail. A few penguins, feathers still smoldering from Lennart's previous crash, cheered at his misfortune. Everyone else looked forward to watching him attempt Highway F15.

Lennart sat in his cell and quietly plotted his revenge...

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 16, 2010 21:22 UTC (Thu) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

While I think you might just have stretched the car analogies past breaking point ;) I have to say that this got a chuckle from me.


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