That newfangled Journal thing

Posted Nov 21, 2011 14:43 UTC (Mon) by corbet (editor, #1)
In reply to: That newfangled Journal thing by bferrell
Parent article: That newfangled Journal thing

Hmm, I've reread my comment for "what could possibly go wrong?"-type statements, but I'm not finding any. Maybe I've not had enough coffee yet?

Clearly there's plenty that can go wrong; I outlined one or two of them in the article. But, then, it's a rare software project that can't go wrong somewhere.

The SCO Group got a lot of airtime; shall I consider myself on record as having advocated for them too?

In fact, a common LWN pattern is to post a brief item when something comes out, followed by a more detailed look. That is what was done here. It also fits into a fairly long series of articles about messaging, which is something I've seen as a problem for some years now.

to post comments

Still lots of discussion

Posted Nov 24, 2011 23:23 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

The LWN pattern I was naïvely expecting is: a short note with a link gets a lot of comments, then our sage editor writes a wise piece which calms the waters and gets few comments. At this point however the original article has 239 comments, but our editor's take has an astounding 169.

I would say that there is still room for discussion, but (not having read all comments yet) most are still going round and round: Unix good vs Unix bad, PulseAudio good vs PulseAudio bad, Poettering good vs Poettering bad. Very few people are advocating to wait and see what the authors come out with, offering some suggestions in the process -- which is what our beloved editor did in his piece, or at least what i read in it. I am not sure if it is just that people need to vent steam, or some previous sins of Poettering; probably a combination of both. But there is a definite need for more articles on this fundamental issue; most of us will hopefully understand that writing about something critically but with caution is very different from an enthusiastic endorsement. Level-headed requirements, improvements and suggestions are especially interesting since Poettering (aka mezcalero) often reads and comments on LWN. Not on this op-ed though, which I read as a sign of Poettering's maturity.