A request [LWN.net]

A request

Posted Nov 19, 2014 13:36 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1)
Parent article: Today's Debian technical committee resignation: Ian Jackson

Regardless of how you might feel about Ian's recent activities in Debian, it would be good to allow him to have a rest now. Actually, we could all use a rest. So could I please ask that any comments posted here be respectful and not rehash the same old arguments about related topics?

Thank you.

A request

Posted Nov 19, 2014 14:25 UTC (Wed) by niner (guest, #26151) [Link]

Regardless of how one might feel about Ian's recent activities in Debian, one has to admit, that he stepped down with grace.

Thanks Ian and have much fun coding :)

Here's to sunnier days

Posted Nov 19, 2014 15:55 UTC (Wed) by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417) [Link] (1 responses)

Thanks Ian and everyone. My hope is that this divisive topic is put behind, systemd improved (and perhaps eventually replaced/refactored) for the betterment of the platform.

And perhaps all the parties involved come back to the TC or other leadership positions strong but... more patient :-)

We will need them; systemd won't be the last controversial moment in Linux...

Here's to sunnier days

Posted Nov 19, 2014 17:23 UTC (Wed) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link]

I'd just like to thank Tollef Fog Heen, Russ Allbery, Colin Watson, and Ian Jackson, and Joey Hess for their tireless effort, even in those cases where I disagreed with their decisions. I have never met any of them but I greatly respect their efforts to provide guidance for the improvement of the Universal Operating System's architecture. Debian is generally the better for their struggles to do the right thing, and that will particularly be seen in the long run.

I also am quite happy with the improved functionality of Jessie, especially the rapid boot time. I agree with the Technical Committee that systemd was the best choice in a difficult field and acknowledge their valid concerns about both a certain arrogance of upstream and the porting issues.

That said, systemd is free software. It does not have the problematic license assignments of upstart, and is more technically mature. It is one of Debian's great successes in the past that they have built tools to split unwieldy master codebases into modular packages -- with some cleverness on Debian's part and a willingness to collaborate on the part of the systemd team, I hope that great things can happen.

Sorry, but no.

Posted Nov 19, 2014 18:27 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link] (7 responses)

People need to deal with the consequences of their actions. Ian has been spreading all kinds of lies and trolling against systemd, he engaged in tactical voting and added fuel to a fire that was bad enough already and ultimately led to the resignation of several project members.

I'm all for respect, but there's nothing wrong with calling a spade a spade. I'm sure Ian did terrific work in the past, but that doesn't give him the right to behave like this.

Sorry, but no.

Posted Nov 19, 2014 19:23 UTC (Wed) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link] (1 responses)

> there's nothing wrong with calling a spade a spade

Oh, how I wish I could right now, but corbet asked me not to.

Sorry, but no.

Posted Nov 19, 2014 19:29 UTC (Wed) by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417) [Link]

And thank you :-)

Sorry, but no.

Posted Nov 19, 2014 20:45 UTC (Wed) by tomegun (subscriber, #56697) [Link] (4 responses)

Whatever we may think of recent events. Jackson did a great deal of work over many years, and now he has resigned. There is no point in rehashing whatever disagreements there may have been, let's be respectful and acknowledge his achievements instead. Water under the bridge and all that...

Sorry, but no.

Posted Nov 20, 2014 10:41 UTC (Thu) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link] (3 responses)

People get judged by their recent actions. To illustrate it with an extreme example imagine someone that people know as being a nice person goes and kills people. The latest action will surely overshadow what he did in the past.

So while Ian's recent actions are surly not comparable to "killing people" they did harm the debian project. So not really surprising that people forget about his past achievements and focus on that.

Sorry, but no.

Posted Nov 20, 2014 12:42 UTC (Thu) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link] (1 responses)

No, because his actions "harming the project" is debatable. Now you could say that isn't so and have *that* debate, but:

-the votes are in
-Ian resigned from the TC

so it would be perpetuating the debate to perpetuate the debate, since it would involve the same amount of strife, but with nothing at stake.

Sorry, but no.

Posted Nov 20, 2014 14:00 UTC (Thu) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link]

Oh I am not asking to rehash the debate actually its good that this whole thing is finally ending. Just tried to explain why some people don't simply go "ok doesn't matter he did great work in the past" ... things simply don't work that way.

No imagination required

Posted Nov 20, 2014 19:00 UTC (Thu) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]

To illustrate it with an extreme example imagine someone that people know as being a nice person goes and kills people. The latest action will surely overshadow what he did in the past.

It doesn't take much imagination, given that one prominent Linux developer was convicted of killing his wife. A fair number of people were willing to defend him when there was still a serious question of his guilt, but he quickly became an unperson once he confessed.

A request

Posted Nov 19, 2014 21:12 UTC (Wed) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

Amen to that.

This has all gotten ridiculously out of hand, and I feel like I've added to the problem despite trying not to side with either "camp". So I offer this open apology, whatever it's worth, for ever getting involved in those kind of threads at all.

All that time spent telling others they're wrong would be better spent coding.