Just reposting this here, because apparently Mr I'm All Right Jack has a problem with actual dialogue. In spite of my original comment being modded all the way to 5, he's used a bunch of sock-puppets to take it all the way back to -1, because 'Flamebait'. It seems we're supposed to remain civil when told to: 'Suck it, bitch.'

Touché...

... And the image of a dungeoness crab will remain with me till my dying day.

Dungeness crab, on the other hand, tend to disappear from my table in moments.

No, he means 'club'. The Mets frickin' hate systemd.

You do get that the FOSS community is in its very essence about consultation? That consultation and cooperation are the only fucking way this whole fucking open source thing is going to work?

Yes, people get shirty when their input is ignored. No, it is not fucking FUD when we say, 'You have no right to ignore the complaints of roughly half of everyone who actually gives a shit about this topic.' It is not FUD when people highlight at length and in detail the many, many ways that systemd's design sucks.

Maybe systemd will get better. Most software does. But until its developers grow up enough to actually argue the thing on its merits and not simply to dismiss every criticism as aversion to change, it's going to face strident opposition.

I mean this in all sincerity: Good for you.

Let's be clear about this, though: When you say 'those things', you're referring to those specific things that you and your company did. Because there is a very large volume of life-changing —and life-saving— software that came about without any thought of recompense, and with very different ideas about copy-protection and ownership.

Again, in all sincerity: Good for you and your wife.

Having traveled in first class, I found it to be full of pampered, self-important twits with more money than sense, but hey, it wouldn't exist if there weren't a demand for it. I'll take business class myself, thanks.

Ah, the famous 'I'm all right, Jack' defence. Astonishingly, this self-aggrandising approach to entitlement doesn't breed a lot of sympathy among those of us who have other considerations than ourselves. But that's okay. I've saved lives, you've saved lives —that's what counts. At the end of the day, the fact that the lives I saved were in the developing world and yours (probably mostly) weren't is not going to count for much when we're both rotting in the ground. The fact that I'm largely at peace with myself and don't get too exercised about what people do with the fruits of my labours is likely secondary as well. I daresay you're pretty content, too.

But there is this: My way of living and doing business is just as workable as yours, and my way doesn't serve only the rich. So fuck you, you self-satisfied, closed-minded, smug little shit. You think there's no other way but yours? You're wrong and I'm living proof.

Er, no. Where did you get that idea? Perl has distinct array and hash data types, and though Perl has a liberal approach to reading variable values ('$scalar = @array' does... interesting things, for example), there is a clear distinction between the two.

Feh, easy:

Porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn work porn porn porn porn porn work work porn porn porn porn porn...

(This is another paragraph that does not use repetition to make its point because Slashdot's lameness filter is rearing its ugly head again.)

But ACs still haven't learned to just fucking google clever aphorisms before they post them.

HINT: Plato didn't speak English, so the likelihood of him coming up with a cute turn of phrase like that in Classical Greek, and then having it translate to something so erudite in English is... small.

Poker?!? I hardly even know 'er!

Because that's what fucking distros do. Maintain the fucking package.

Humour aside, I am nothing but impressed by the security response on the Hill. Within 4 minutes of the first shot being fired, the assailant was dead on the ground. Aside from the initial victim, there were no other serious injuries.

I used to be an activist, and had occasion to protest (and get arrested) on Parliament Hill. Ask any activist and they will tell you that the Hill cops (who are all federal, not city police) are the ones you want to arrest you. They are trained and highly skilled, and know everything there is to know about appropriate response.

Coincidentally, I once met the man responsible for Hill security only a few weeks after his people had arrested a friend of mine. In spite of being ideologically opposite, I found myself respecting the man immensely. It was a successor of his who stopped the madman this time, but his behaviour was exemplary as well. He shouted a clearly audible warning three times, then engaged the assailant, firing 4 individual, aimed shots.

The discipline and response of the police and security forces to an unknown situation that was clearly targeting Parliament was, I think, exactly what anyone would have wanted. Let's not let the politicians - some of whom owe these people their life - spoil things by capitalising on the event.

Yes, of course Lennart's just a developer with a better idea. He's never seen software development as a means to a larger political end.

Except when he has:

Getting a clear message out what Linux is supposed to be is definitely a social issue, but to make that happen the Linux platform needs to be streamlined first, and that's a technical task, and not done yet.

All of these disingenuous statements that there's no other agenda in place are just bullshit. They're simply and self-evidently not true, because you can't do system design without some kind of vision of what you want. And you don't change the system design unless you don't like the one you've got. Lennart's vision, as he says, is a 'streamlined' Linux, which is to say catholic, not agnostic, unified rather than pluralistic, with fewer options rather than more. And when you cut away all the cruft, it's his stuff that remains.

Poettering and his acolytes can argue all they like that their vision is simply better. I disagree, but I accept that this is always an argument worth having. But when you start arguing that POSIX is a constraint and that Linux should be 'leading' the way (and that POSIX can just catch up, thank you), you're taking a stance that is not simply in opposition to others, it cannot coexist with the others because the alternatives have become mutually exclusive within a particular space.

POSIX is a limiting factor. That's true. Its limitation is that we've all agreed on a basic subset of behaviours in order that we all have enough in common to interact. So when you discard POSIX, you have effectively announced that you do not see the value of playing nicely with the other children. From that moment, your 'better idea' is being implemented at the expense of interoperability.

Which is a really fucking bad idea.

(The quote above is from an interview with Lennart, linked from his Wikipedia page.)

Lastly, to respond directly to the assertion that he is not in a position to force any distro to do anything. The tight web of dependencies, his position at RedHat and the support and assistance provided on the corporate level is perhaps not sufficient literally to force a distro to use his software, but it's enough to raise the question that undue influence is being brought to bear and that rather questionable tactics are being indulged in expressly because Lennart and his cohorts think that doing the right thing does not imply contributing in an open[*] and inclusive way.

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[*] Lennart's idea of openness is allowing others to interact with his software, but fuck you if you want him to take a second look at your requirements. And then, of course, to act shocked (shocked!) when others get upset.

Quoth Schneier:

...there's no evidence that encryption hampers criminal investigations in any serious way. In 2013, encryption foiled the police nine times, up from four in 2012 -- and the investigations proceeded in some other way.

There never is any reason to remove a citizen's right to privacy except to extend the power of the state. You can argue the reasons for and against this, but historically, we've always found that more respect for individual rights contributes significantly to better governance.

Right here:

The security problems that afflict Linux, Mac OS X and, to a much lesser extent, *BSD are fundamentally different in the way they manifest.

We have yet to see the systemic infestation that characterised Windows in the late '90s and early '00s. There was a time mid-decade when the time it took to for an unattended, freshly installed Windows box to get pwned was estimated to be 20 minutes.

Heartbleed, Shellshock, the Debian SSH debacle (can't forget that one) and numerous other problems are symptomatic of weaknesses in aspects of the FOSS environment that people used to think (unrealistically) were invulnerable. Instead, what we've discovered is that they're quite susceptible to targeted attack. This difference should not be understated. Windows is an infected system - basically, you can't run it without antivirus. Linux, Mac OS X and numerous other OSes are easily attacked individually, but there are not as yet any exploits that subvert the entire ecosystem.

None of this is to dismiss how serious the potential threat is. I just want to make it clear that, so far, the danger that we see is different from what we are living with in the Windows world. It's different in quantity and quality.