Debian decides on systemd—for now

Posted Feb 13, 2014 21:30 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46)
In reply to: Debian decides on systemd—for now by rsidd
Parent article: Debian decides on systemd—for now

The fact that "Portable OpenSSH" is developed with the tacit approval of (and shares many contributors of) the core OpenBSD OpenSSH project doesn't make it any less of a fork.

But back to my original point.

If anything, Theo is more of a poster child for "my way or the highway" and "I don't care about implications for other systems, I'm making mine the best there is" attitudes than is attributed (often deservedly) to Pottering, and that attitude has helped make OpenBSD what it is today.

OpenBSD's kernel (and libc) is a world unto itself; anything that interacts with the kernel isn't even portable to the other BSDs, much less Linux. (And why should it? I don't say this as criticism; they are doing what they want, for their own goals, and appear to be successful)

Meanwhile, OpenBSD is only relevant to the vast majority of Linux users (and distributions) due to it being the upstream of Portable OpenSSH and the occasional security problem the OpenBSD folks find in 3rd-party software.

So, please, explain how Theo is an advocate of portability, and how his attitude (and practice) is different/better than Lennart's -- Because on the face of it, Lennart seems to come out on top in such a comparison.

Debian decides on systemd—for now

Posted Feb 14, 2014 1:43 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (1 responses)

I think you guys do not understand what "interoperability" means. And I did not just say "portability". I said "standards, compatibility and portability". OpenSSH satisfied the first two from day 1, and the last very soon after. Other OpenBSD projects -- OpenCVS, OpenSMTPD, etc -- are compatible and portable too, if less successful in the wider world than OpenSSH.

Debian decides on systemd—for now

Posted Feb 14, 2014 13:39 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

"standards and compatibility" are red herrings, because OpenBSD necessarily has to interoperate with *pre-existing* specifications for network services (eg SSH, CVS, and SMTP, NTP) or find themselves completely unable to talk to anyone else, rendering the whole exercise moot. In other words, *everyone* [re-]writing a network service defined by third-party specification (eg a pile of RFCs) has to care about standards and compability.

In areas where they are not forced work with the outside world (eg kernel+libc, syscall interface, system configuration, and even the userspace ABI) they are completely non-portable (even when only compared to other BSDs) and non-standards compliant (unless you consider themselves to be compliant with themself).

(Nevermind you're trying to draw a comparison between a by-definition interoperable network service and something that *launches* network services. Apples and oranges...)

So, two of three of your items are irrelevant, you just now added a fourth ("interoparability") which is equivalent to the first two (and still irrelevant), and the third has been demonstrated to be completely false using the very documentation you accused me of not reading.

Even if one accepts your attempt to move the goalpoasts, you still haven't supported your original assertion that Theo de Raat (and the other core OpenBSD developers) are more dedicated to "standards, compatibility, and interoperability" than the systemd developers.