Architecture astronauts take over

Posted May 23, 2012 4:35 UTC (Wed) by nhippi (subscriber, #34640)
Parent article: Announcing printerd

This really sounds like a project that is started on horribly wrong basis.

Instead of starting with declaring

1) what the problem is
2) how their new software will solve it

They go and explain how it going to be great since they use dbus and gobject?

Sounds like one of the many cases where the needs of architecture takes over the needs of users.

Please take a deep breath before posting.

Posted May 23, 2012 5:45 UTC (Wed) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link] (4 responses)

I would like to ask you (and others) to reconsider posting a comment like this in the future. I don't believe that the authors of this project are out to get anyone. You may have had frustrations with software before, we all have, but I doubt that this particular project is the cause of any of them so it seems missplaced to attack them. They just started a project to write some software they thought might be useful and they ask nothing of you. No one is asking you to appreciate what they are doing. If you don't like their ideas or software don't use them, but it just seems hurtful and disrespectful to put them down so quickly, those are people whom you likely know nothing about and have little to judge them by. We have little to judge you by too, do you want it to be a message like this?

This message isn't just aimed at you (so forgive me if it feels too strong of a response to your post). I just felt upset reading the many replies above which had somewhat angry tones and yours was the last one in the series. It has become more and more common here to direct such anger or contempt towards free software creators. These are people who are hopefully just sharing with you and others. As long as they are just sharing freely without trying to extort you in some way, or maliciously convince you to use their malware it feels wrong to attack them (even if their code or designs are flawed). I know that I would feel upset reading the reception that these authors are getting here if I were them, and I don't think they were even asking for a reception.

Please take a deep breath before posting.

Posted May 23, 2012 7:35 UTC (Wed) by nhippi (subscriber, #34640) [Link] (1 responses)

Fair points. The authors are not out there to get anyone sure, but I think it would be better if they would improve the plumbing of existing solutions instead of starting something out of scratch.

Creating a competitor for a existing system disrupts Linux ecosystem while the transition is going on, and fragments Linux further if it fails to be clearly superior than the historic alternative. Yes sometimes that has to happen, but it is not a decision to be taken lightly.

I think people take too easily the route of having fun of creating their project from scratch using their favourite technologies (like gobject and d-bus) than to joining the existing project and working with their preferred methods to make existing project work better for everyone.

I guess it is a bit of fame issue as well. Nobody will get famous plumbing an existing free software project, while someone who creates a new project will be known as the author of the new project...

Let me bow to the unsung heroes of free software development: plumbers of existing projects.

Please take a deep breath before posting.

Posted May 23, 2012 9:07 UTC (Wed) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

You're putting the blame on the wrong people.

It's absolutely right -even critical- to create alternatives to existing projects. It ensures there's no single point of failure at any level, and that we don't get stuck too long because of evolutionary dead-ends.

The _problem_ starts when bigger projects (desktops and distros) push an immature alternative, sometimes for shady reasons. Sometimes is because of someone's agenda, but often is just a combination of stupidity and stubborness (we are all humans after all).

So, I salute and thank the developers for the effort they are putting into this, but distros and desktops better stay clear from it, at least until they can demonstrate that it brings something valuable to the table _and_ can take over the functions of whatever is being replaced.

Please take a deep breath before posting.

Posted May 23, 2012 11:09 UTC (Wed) by intgr (subscriber, #39733) [Link] (1 responses)

Erm, as far as I can tell, the purpose of a project announcement is to introduce the project to other people. This blog article is incomplete on that front. My takeaway from that article is exactly the same as the grantparent poster's: they don't have a problem, but they're trying to solve it anyway. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a project announcement to state what problems the project aims to solve.

Look at the announcement of systemd for example: http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html -- when reading it, I immediately recognized a few of my pet peeves listed and understood the value of the project.

> If you don't like their ideas or software don't use them

It's not as simple as that. The author of this project is also a Fedora developer. I think that users have the right to complain when they see a distro going in a direction that they don't like.

Please take a deep breath before posting.

Posted May 23, 2012 12:44 UTC (Wed) by kmike (guest, #5260) [Link]

>> If you don't like their ideas or software don't use them

> It's not as simple as that. The author of this project is also a Fedora developer. I think that users have the right to complain when they see a distro going in a direction that they don't like.

Exactly. I wouldn't be surprised to see printerd as the default in Fedora 19.

Architecture astronauts take over

Posted May 23, 2012 7:19 UTC (Wed) by alexl (subscriber, #19068) [Link] (9 responses)

Its *possible* that Tim Waugh, maintainer of printing in Red Hat since time immemorial and one of the very few long term active participants in the Linux upstream printing echosystem has made a mistake, and that some random commenter on LWN has a point to make. However, this seems more like a no-brain cheap complaint about the announcement text, making fun of some techical decissions with no apparent real thought behind it.

Just because the announcement doesn't fulfill your wet dream about how a perfect project announcement should look, please don't assume that the people involved are complete idiots who have no idea about the problem they are trying to solve. It just makes you look bad. Smart people don't think others are stupid.

Architecture astronauts take over

Posted May 23, 2012 12:07 UTC (Wed) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link] (8 responses)

I don't understand the hate that nhippi's comment seems to have provoked; so far as I can see it's an objective assessment of the facts - the announcement really doesn't give any indication of what the project is for, what it's aims are, why it even exists, or much of anything really.

(Your personal attack on the other hand I found offensive and obnoxious)

Architecture astronauts take over

Posted May 23, 2012 13:31 UTC (Wed) by alexl (subscriber, #19068) [Link] (6 responses)

The complaints about the announcement are factual and not really the problem. The problem is saying things like:

"Architecture astronauts take over"
"going to be great since they use dbus and gobject"
"the needs of architecture takes over the needs of users"

It might not be all that easy to understand what printerd is for from the announcement, but that doesn't mean you should jump to the wrong conclusions and flame the people doing the work about those.

Tim has been working on Linux printing for the last decade. To claim that he has no knowledge about the needs of users, or that he just does this so he can use dbus or gobject is ridiculous. He is one of the few people who actually work to make printing work in Linux, and what does he get for it? Flames by people who do not even understand the problem (although the lack of understanding is partly the fault of the announcement).

Architecture astronauts take over

Posted May 23, 2012 14:49 UTC (Wed) by spaetz (guest, #32870) [Link] (5 responses)

One thing I'd have liked to learn from the announcement is how this relates to CUPS. Is it supposed to be bolted on to CUPS, replace CUPS (given the recent Linux-unfriendly turn that CUPS development seems to have taken, this would not be unwelcome news) or what? All it says, that CUPS drivers will continue to work.

Architecture astronauts take over

Posted May 23, 2012 15:01 UTC (Wed) by alexl (subscriber, #19068) [Link] (4 responses)

CUPS will not be entirely replaced. It will still be what talks to the printer, picks the right drivers, manages the installed printers, etc.

printerd is more like a session print spooler. It lets you enumerate printers, submit jobs to them, etc. If the printer was a network (ipp) printer that supports pdf, or a cloud service like Google Cloud Print then everything will run without any instance of CUPS.

However, if you're printing to a local printer, or a printer attached to a print server (on linux) then printerd will hand the pdf over to CUPS, running locally or on the server.

Tim has a nicer explanation in an earlier blog entry:
http://cyberelk.net/tim/2012/03/08/session-printing/

Architecture astronauts take over

Posted May 23, 2012 16:56 UTC (Wed) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link] (3 responses)

Hi alexl,

CUPS already has support for being a print spooler. It already allows you to "enumerate printers, submit jobs to them, etc." What is printerd going to provide that CUPS does not?

Please keep in mind that another layer of software is another layer of bugs that we will all have to debug. Even the best programmers sometimes make mistakes. If there's no value add from the additional abstraction, then I would prefer to keep things simple.

I would love to see something take over from cups, but only if it provides the same features that cups provides. I'm not really interested in running the printer daemon version of "duelling banjos."

Architecture astronauts take over

Posted May 23, 2012 18:42 UTC (Wed) by alexl (subscriber, #19068) [Link] (2 responses)

I'm aware of how CUPS work. And the link I posted explains this too.
For the case of a local printer printerd would just call out to the local cups daemon just like currently, and printerd would be nothing more than a frontend for cups with an API that is nicer for async code (ever tried to write async code using libcups?).

However, if you're not using a local printer, but rather some network printer or cloud service then having to have a local system-wide print spooler is completely unnecessary, and printd would just forward the job to the spooler on the remote server, working completely in the user session.

Running in the session has some advantages besides just needing less code. It also allows the spooler to do things like authenticate to the cloud service in a normal way, as its part of the user desktop session, rather than some system service.

Anyway, Tim knows this stuff better, and he posted a new blog entry: http://cyberelk.net/tim/2012/05/23/some-benefits-of-print...

Architecture astronauts take over

Posted May 23, 2012 22:41 UTC (Wed) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]

To be honest, I really don't care about asynchronous printing. How can I say this in the most tactful way-- I care more about dusting my ceilings than I do about the fact that applications need to spawn an extra thread to print.

My printer is a USB printer. It requires a printer driver to work. A driver which, incidentally has not been updated or fixed in years, and is not officially supported by the distro. Luckily I know enough about the plumbing to know how I can get this thing to work. (Should "work" be in quotes?)

At work, there is an IPP printer which I mostly use. The time I spent setting it up in CUPS was about 5 minutes, including printing test pages and all that.

> Running in the session has some advantages besides just needing less code.
> It also allows the spooler to do things like authenticate to the cloud
> service in a normal way, as its part of the user desktop session, rather
> than some system service.

Again, I just don't care. I've never used a multi-seat Linux machine (and I've had 5 jobs where I used Linux, including one where we used it in the cloud.) I also don't see what fundamentally prevents CUPS from doing the same thing-- i.e., accepting or rejecting jobs based on the user id that submitted them.

So far, printerd has not proposed to solve any of the problems I have ever had. Of course, I'm just one user-- perhaps others will have different needs.

Architecture astronauts take over

Posted May 23, 2012 23:02 UTC (Wed) by jjs (guest, #10315) [Link]

I read his articles, and am still uncertain of the benefits. CUPS talks fine to remote printers. He admits CUPS integrates with polkit. Right now I tell my app to print, answer the various questions (# of copies, printer, etc), and off it goes. I go back to my app,and sometime later the printer prints my work (asynchronous from my viewpoint).

So other than adding another layer between the application and CUPS, what does printerd do?

Architecture astronauts take over

Posted May 24, 2012 7:05 UTC (Thu) by jku (subscriber, #42379) [Link]

"sounds like a project that is started on horribly wrong basis" -- this is how he starts. Maybe he intended to say what you said ("announcement doesn't give any indication of what the project is for"), but I'd say there is room for misunderstanding there... There's a world of difference with "there's not enough information to evaluate this project" and "this project started on the wrong basis".

It's true that the announcement should have come with a link to http://cyberelk.net/tim/2012/05/23/some-benefits-of-print... but lets not make that omission a larger issue than it is.