Allow me to quote the immortal words of Mr H.L. Mencken:

Now, on behalf of Mr Mencken, and all those who fight for human freedom, allow me to suggest you fuck off, and to remind you that just because there are a few scummy characters in the world, it still doesn't justify putting the entire state of Washington under surveillance, which is what happened here.

There are thousands (and thousands) of cases where it is simply not reasonable to expect homogeneity in your data. Of those thousands of cases, a very large number of them not only have extremely heterogeneous data, they still need to be stored and queried. NoSQL is a useful tool in such cases.

Is it 'safe' — i.e. does it do all of the data integrity stuff we've come to associate with RDBMSes? No. Emphatically no. If you didn't code it into the right logic in the right places, you are probably worse than shit out of luck.

BUT... there are still thousands of cases where the pain of living with NoSQL far outweighs the pain (and in many cases impossibility) of living with your data inside an enterprise RDBMS.

And yes, I say this based on years of work with exactly these kinds of data sets. They were my bread and butter for a long time.

So, uh, holy fuck: Believe it.

Just for the edification of the other readers here, which parts specifically do you feel you don't have to follow?

For the record, I know exactly which ones I would choose, but I'm interested to know what exactly you think makes Stallmann a 'crazy outlier'. Because, in my estimation, it would take a lot for someone to qualify for that kind of labeling.

I disagree with his statement that Linux distro maintainers allow non-free components because they're not sufficiently committed to freedom, but I don't think him 'crazy' for having said it. I think his blanket characterisation of profit motive as evil is too much of a generalisation, but tragically, I don't think he's entirely wrong in stating that the effects of profit motive on a lot of commercial organisations has been detrimental to our freedom - dangerously so. So yeah: same conclusion, more temperate language. That's not nearly crazy or even an outlying opinion, to my mind.

I take your point, but I remind you that the same could have been said about Ghandi, or even Martin Luther King, when people were blaming him for the violence in Selma and the bombing in Birmingham.

See, the problem I have with this kind of rhetoric is that you seem willing to stand to the side at a witch-burning and say, 'Well, I would never cast a spell, but I can see why people bought magic services from her.' It's a little disingenuous, isn't it, that you would be willing to profit from someone's courage, when you're not willing to defend it?

Again, this isn't a case of 'My Free Software, Right or Wrong.' On the contrary, I'm arguing that you can quibble all you like with the arguments Stallmann makes, and the rhetoric he makes them with. But I have to ask: With an attitude like yours, how much have you actually done to promote freedom?

(Real question: I'm open to correction.)

Well, if you can pay the airfare to Vanuatu (3 1/2 hours away from Sydney for about $US 750), only a couple hundred dollars more will get you a walking tour to the edge of the caldera. It's not really a mountain so much as a high plateau with two (yes, two) active calderas. It's a fucking amazing place, a lunar landscape emerging over the last rise after a morning spent walking through jungle. Pretty primeval.

But if you're not in an exercising mood, you can simply pay a pilot to overfly the volcano. I did this once. We were actually on our way to Pentecost island in a small twin-prop charter, when the pilot said, 'Hey, the visibility's really good - you folks want to see a volcano?'

We thought about it for, like, 0.273 seconds and said, "FUCK YES!"

So he took us over it. Right. Over. The Volcano.

Was it cool? Yes, it was cool.

Howdy, commentator! I just read your comment about the people of Vanuatu, where I live. Guess what? This whole country is full of 'natives'! Isn't that cool?!

One thing though: Promise me you will never, ever, EVER come here. Because witless, condescending fucks like you tend to get killed and cooked for dinner.

(We're not really cannibals, but we'd do it just to spite you.)

"Your post also brings into question your abilities as a programmer. English, like programming languages, has both structure and syntax. While your writing has syntax, it is largely unstructured. You may not have to compete for a job with someone who doesn't have a degree in Computer Science, but you most certainly will have your cover..."

... Oh, forget it. Your last sentence doesn't actually have logical coherence.

Hugs,
QA

The biggest difference we see between proprietary and FOSS systems is that the lack of maintenance in proprietary systems is often the fault of the vendor. In short, there's no way to keep a service or application patched, because there are no patches forthcoming.

Lack of maintenance by the sysadmin is a more common source of insecurity on Linux systems. The patches are often (not always, but often) there, but they do have to be applied by someone.

No, you ignorant little shit, I am not attacking Lennart directly. If I were attacking him directly, I would question his character and his motivations. I would suggest that he, like you, is of questionable (probably canine) parentage, and that his reading comprehension is at such a disastrously low level that he (like you) indulges in exactly the mistakes that I warn about in my critique.

So you see, if I were attacking Lennart, I would have written a paragraph or two like that one. But I didn't.

You, on the other hand, deserve no such forbearance because you fucking still don't fucking get it. Fuck.

Being technically correct is not - and never has been - sufficient for technology to become successful.

There is a time and a place to stomp on the desires of others when better answers to old problems is concerned. It is a common sin of the young that they think they know where that time and place actually is. In reality, they seldom do, because it's an insight that comes from experience.

Nobody is going to stop you on your path to self-destruction. All we ask is that you let us antiquated geezers (who actually have, you know, systems to run) alone. Is that too much for you to get your tiny little head around, you strident, inexperienced little twerp?

(P.S. If I've overdone the name-calling in the pursuit of a certain tone, please accept my apology. I have no idea whether you're actually little or not.)

HTH HAND

Full disclosure: I do not like systemd, although that judgment is based on its merits as I see them relative to my needs.

There seemed to be a pretty concerted determination not to get the point in Lennart's long spiel defending the system. As someone who has been using Unices in anger since the early '90s, I've pretty much seen Linux grow from its infancy. I've seen this kind of attitude before in technology — in Windows, Linux and elsewhere. The article is clearly written (and written clearly) by someone who's clever, articulate and... far too concerned with being right. It's not a healthy perspective.

Being technically correct is not generally optional. It's just not ever nearly as conclusive as some people think it is.

Having the humility to accept an imperfect universe — and to admit that it's imperfect in a particular way for a large number of particular reasons — is a virtue that fewer and fewer people seem to possess these days.

(It's the lack of this virtue that makes people say, for example, 'less and less' where I used 'fewer and fewer' and when someone corrects them, they trot out the grammar nazi epithet and say, 'Everybody knows what I mean. Deal with it.' And the lack of this virtue as well that will make people pick on the triviality of this example to discard my entire post. The temerity of such an approach cannot be explained to those who suffer from it.)

Systemd is clearly not change for change's sake. Lennart and the dozen and a half others who have commit rights are clearly scratching an itch. But regardless of the technical merits of the system, it is horribly, horribly wrong to impose this new system —any new system— on Linux wholesale without a significant maturing process. And by significant, I mean years.

And this is where Lennart's most completely mistaken. He thinks that the technical arguments are the decisive ones, in spite of the fact that technical merit is not why systemd is going to become prevalent. He therefore tries to write a technical opus in defence of the indefensible, which requires more than a few straw men (binary config files? shyeah....), several big ommissions (binary log files) and a clearly unwilled but nonetheless unforgivable ignorance of the fact that he's winning because he's RedHat, not because he's better. (Yeah yeah yeah, it's not all RH; it's others too, you're technically awesome - I read that part and remain utterly unconvinced by the argument.)

Paul Venezia's screed, on the other hand, is just plain substance-free. He's not arguing either technical merit or political power. He's simply looking at a looming mess and saying, well, that it's going to be messy. And to that extent, he's right. Systemd is going to make a mess, and that's precisely because its proponents think that they're perfectly within their rights to claim, 'Well, nobody's forcing anything on anyone.'

What they don't realise is that that is not how cooperation works. And believing you're better or righter than others is an absolutely shit way of improving your own software.

There, right there, is where you lost me. Not coincidentally, that is the point where Poe's Law came into play.

A few months ago, I would have agreed with you. But I've been using the PopcornTime app since then, and it reliably delivers HD streams with few if any stutters. There's no reason to believe a single (video+)voice stream wouldn't be possible using a similar approach....

Dat's correck. Ever'body knows it's grows to de trees.

And jus' to prove dat I'm a really a real québecois, ah now will swear at you in ma native langue: Calice d'ostie de saint ciboire que les anglos ont la tête dur!

Because a real grumpy programmer doesn't fucking talk on a fucking video. A real grumpy programmer uses text, just like he always did, to write about how those hipster fucks who think they have even half a fucking clue deserve get run out of town on the Rails they rode in on.

A real grumpy programmer still fucking hates Microsoft, but can't be arsed even to hold down the shift key long enough to type a '$' - even though those monopolistic fucks in Redmond deserve it. Develop my ass, Ballmer.

A real grumpy programmer knows what C is for, but the pissant little twerps who bitch about the lack of strong typing in Perl can go get fucked, because fuck you, that's why. And fuck your Web 2 Point fucking Oh, and fuck your Twitter and fuck your fucking FuckBook.

And that, my child, is what a real grumpy programmer looks like, because get the fuck off my fucking lawn you ignorant little turd polisher.

I'm going to take a wild guess and speculate that the Swiss arm of the business is curiously profitable. Swiss people just LOVE romance novels. Profitable ones especially.