Nobody expects the spanish plonk squad!
Nobody expects the spanish plonk squad!
Posted Nov 28, 2014 15:15 UTC (Fri) by ksandstr (guest, #60862)In reply to: Nobody expects the spanish plonk squad! by flussence
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate
However, the original plonker up there only came, plonked, and then vanished. No reason was given, not even a cursory "I disagree, but cannot articulate my reasons"; and clearly there's at least one poster, you, reading it in some other way.
>(...) and leaves them an opening to do better in future.
That's exactly what a killfile doesn't do.
>Staying to face someone down and tell them why they've screwed up badly enough to end up on one's killfile — under the aggravation that leads to that kind of decision — can be quite a lot harder to do than simply throwing them on there and being done with it.
And a throwaway display of passive-aggression is more difficult and time-consuming than simply plopping them in there and being done with it, sans comments. Minimization of effort is clearly not the goal here, and neither is avoidance of posting under aggravation -- anyone can go cool down for about an hour anytime they've got occasion to be reading LWN comment chains.
Posted Nov 28, 2014 22:24 UTC (Fri)
by mgb (guest, #3226)
[Link] (3 responses)
SD believers have been ad-homineming the post you refer to as a plonk for more than two weeks now without actually addressing the issues.
It has been fascinating watching you echo each other but why should any of us experienced software professionals waste LWN bandwidth responding to you?
http://lwn.net/Articles/620159/
Posted Nov 29, 2014 16:29 UTC (Sat)
by ksandstr (guest, #60862)
[Link] (2 responses)
The short version: because failing to respond displays an outright absence of professionalism regardless of supposed degrees of experience. Every reader can confirm the former with his/her own eyes, whereas the other is a matter of taking someone's word for it.
The long version: assuming that it's at all possible, the anti-systemd concerns can be answered with a reference to a FAQ document where previous answers are listed. If those concerns aren't in the FAQ, an answer should be written and then added to the FAQ. Doing this would take as much time and effort as answering someone who isn't supposedly a nobody, and makes the pro-systemd position more solid. If it isn't possible to answer a particular anti-systemd concern, then there must be a proper argument for why that is so. The definition of proper argument excludes Mr. Pöttering's "systemd myths" page, his "claim to sacred victimhood" G+ posting, and various journalistic threat narratives concerning the Devuan (nee debianfork.org) project.
This'd move the argument into one of dueling FAQs, so I'll jump the gun on the next salvo with this <URL:http://judecnelson.blogspot.fi/2014/09/systemd-biggest-fa...> list of fallacious pro-systemd arguments and the counterarguments demonstrating them as such. Note that the document was first posted in September 2014 which makes it two months old at this time.
However instead of a civilized discussion we've seen various forms of playing to the crowd, ad-hominems, discussion-stoppers, and outright playground-style sneering. "Neener-neener, aren't you just a butt-hurt neck-beard troll! Ban his stupid ass. I'm being victimized by white males in their 30s and 40s, and I'm not going to engage in any further discussion about this post. lololo." On the pro-systemd end there are people, even Debian developers, who'd rather be publicly seen throwing their toys out of the pram than engage criticism at a level that excludes dogma.
It's my sincere opinion that this discussion must move forward regardless of the non-arguments in their various forms that we've seen so far, and especially despite the "this matter has been decided, please disperse, move along nothing to see here, go back to your homes" theme of article seen in e.g. the LWN headline two weeks ago. As it stands right now the discussion is lagging the impact of systemd and its tentacles by about three years: even commenters on a cutting-edge Linux news site such as this right here will rehash "just an init system", "socket activation makes it worthwhile on its own", "modular architecture means it isn't monolithic", and other demonstrably ill-founded quips.
I'm not one to put my faith in credibility games; they only exist to make perceived truth conform to the best player's ideology and not to empirically verifiable reality and logically equivalent derivatives therefrom. However, when open source luminaries such as Bruce Perens are getting on systemd's ass about not just technology but also communication, then it's certainly time to stop, take a deep breath, and consider just what the hell's going on outside of the pre-chewed conclusions which the pro-systemd camp is offering.
Posted Nov 29, 2014 16:49 UTC (Sat)
by mgb (guest, #3226)
[Link] (1 responses)
The opportunity for preventing harm to Debian has passed. It is now time to code around the systemd blockage - whether in blends or derivatives or forks or Gentoo/Funtoo or the BSDs.
And exploring the various technical alternatives is *much* more interesting than trying to convert systemd believers.
Posted Nov 30, 2014 1:43 UTC (Sun)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link]
I don't think anyone is trying to convert systemd believers to prefer anything other than systemd.
The only think I am seeing is people asking the systemd believers to be more accepting to other users, including ones who don't want to run systemd, or who have a need to not always run the latest (which includes kernel developers who are developing the next, because they need to compare to older versions)
Nobody expects the spanish plonk squad!
Nobody expects the spanish plonk squad!
Nobody expects the spanish plonk squad!
Nobody expects the spanish plonk squad!