Hostility in plain sight

Posted Dec 18, 2012 13:14 UTC (Tue) by demarchi (subscriber, #67492)
In reply to: Hostility in plain sight by man_ls
Parent article: The eudev project launches

I don't mind any fork. The problem is the accusations they make for the program they forked and related ones. This just shows they have absolutely no understanding what they are trying to maintain, yet (smart) people think they are doing a good thing because of past issues they had. See the amount of nonsense that was pointed out in their announcement in the comments here and elsewhere.

I have not relationship with RH and no intention to politically defend it.

to post comments

Hostility in plain sight

Posted Dec 18, 2012 13:20 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (8 responses)

Even so, if eudev developers are ignorant or just wrong, just educate them. Why take everything they say as "accusations" and get angry? This project might as well be just an educational experiment for them, and it is alright.

Hostility in plain sight

Posted Dec 18, 2012 14:20 UTC (Tue) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (7 responses)

The explanations have already been given various times. I lurk on various distribution mailing lists, so have noticed that claims are made despite the various explanations by multiple people. The explanations&corrections were given, claim is repeated again.

There is of course no need to get angry.

Hostility in plain sight

Posted Dec 18, 2012 14:39 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (6 responses)

Explaining is not educating. Anyway, the developers will probably realize the errors of their ways now that they have to maintain the project, in those respects where they are wrong. Or reinforce their beliefs if they were right.

Qualifying the forking decision as "hostile", as has been done above, is unnecessary.

Hostility in plain sight

Posted Dec 18, 2012 14:55 UTC (Tue) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (5 responses)

Could you either explain the difference between explaining and educating or suggest how to educate them?

I'm not sure which of the two have been done, as I'm not sure of the difference.

That someone creates is a fork is totally fine IMO, no reason needed to do so.

Hostility in plain sight

Posted Dec 18, 2012 15:16 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (4 responses)

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.

Hostility in plain sight

Posted Dec 18, 2012 15:27 UTC (Tue) by ovitters (guest, #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] (2 responses)

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] (1 responses)

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.

Hostility in plain sight

Posted Dec 21, 2012 7:48 UTC (Fri) by felipec (guest, #75494) [Link]

Either way it's the fault of udev developers in the first place for not listening to their users, and forcing them to fork.

It's funny how people say "if you don't like it, then fork; it's open source", and then when they do "oh, but you don't know what you are doing". The original developers probably didn't know either, it's only with time that they learned enough to be udev developers.