The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

This is reminding people that this whole debian systemd debase started from the debian gnome developers deciding to make gnome require systemd

I agree that the Gnome developers should be free to do so, but it's only up to them alone if Debian doesn't use Gnome as it's default GUI

If the Gnome DDs want freedom to do anything they want with Gnome, with nobody else questioning them, then the answer is to have a different GUI be the default that takes the rest of the system into account and coordinates with everyone else.

The position of being the default package brings a lot of users, but it also brings limitations on what it's reasonable for the maintainers to do.

using an example from a different field, there's nothing at all wrong with a company becoming a Monopoly by providing better product at lower prices than their competitors, even if the competitors go out of business as a result. It's only a problem when a company that's a Monopoly uses the power of that Monopoly in bad ways.

These ways explicitly include:

1. blocking the entry of new competition.

2. leveraging their Monopoly in one area to force their way into another area.

Back to the topic. Using the position of being the default to force changes elsewhere in the system is a problem. It's a problem if Gnome does it to force systemd into the system, or if systemd uses it's position as the default init to take over other functions (logging, cron, etc)