[systemd-devel] I wonder… why systemd provokes this amount of polarity and resistance

[Lennart Poettering]

On Sun, 21.09.14 15:31, Martin Steigerwald (Martin at lichtvoll.de) wrote:

> I just have one question. In the light of

[...]
> 
> in the light of the ongoing discussions on linux-kernel, debian-devel, debian-
> user and other mailing lists more than some dozens threads meanwhile:
> 
> Did you ever ask yourself why your project provokes that amount of resistance 
> and polarity? Did you ever ask yourself whether this really is just resistance 
> against anything new from people who just do not like "new" or whether it 
> contains *valuable* and *important* feedback?

That's already two questions...

But anyway. Let me turn your question around: we swapped out one of
the most central pieces of Linux systems, one of the pieces that is
probably the most core of what administrators interface with every
day. How could this change ever have gone *without* any noise?

Administrators probably are a generally more conservative bunch,
anything that interferes with their day-to-day workflow that they are
used to is a distraction. That's quite understandable. In fact, I used
to be an admin myself a long time ago, and I still administer a couple
of machines. I have similar feelings when I update them, and in
particular when some component I don't want to spend the time to relearn
changes I end up being annoyed (dovecot config file changes!).

Moreover, init systems are just an auxiliary tool to run
things. Nobody starts a computer up to run systemd on it. People start
up a computer to run a web app or database server software on
it. Because of that, systemd is just a tool to make something else
work, and the focus is always on that other thing, and any time spent
on systemd or relearning it feels like wasted time to many. I totally
and absolutely understand these feelings.

However, I also believe that the change we are making is for the good,
and even though it might not be obvious to many immediately, it brings
major benefits when administering machines, and they massively
outweigh the disadvantage of changing things. And apparently I am not
entirely alone with this, as the folks who make technical decision for
the various distributions ended up deciding in favour of systemd in
most cases.

Yes, we knew exactly we'd be getting a lot of heat for all this. We
have been getting it from the day on we announced the project. And I
am pretty sure it will continue this way for a while still. 

(What I didn't expect though is how awful the Linux community can
actually be. That people collect Bitcoins to hire a hitman on me, that
people start petitions to make me stop working, and all that other
really hateful, personal stuff is really apalling. I guess I have a
thick skin, because I don't care too much, but jeezus christ, it's
really disgusting sometimes.)

I monitor the feedback posted on the Internet regularly. I browse
reddit and the debian and gentoo mailing list archives sometimes, and
try to distill the useful bits out of all the noise and hate dumped
there. This actually used to be very productive for quite some time,
and much of the polishing that systemd got over the years was a result
of the feedback I read through this way, even if I had to read between
the lines of all the hateful mails. Today, it's much less useful, I
figure partially because the worst usability issues with systemd have
long been fixed, but also because the crowd commenting changed from
folks who were genuinely interested (early adopter folks) to a more
general audience which also includes a lot of haters.

The current increase noised level around systemd adoption I attribute
to three things: the fact that RHEL7 is out now, the fact that due to
the adoption of systemd as default by Debian and Ubuntu the folks who
ignored the discussion so far now are faced with this change, and also
to a big part to certain "columnists" who in the interest of
generating traffic to their sites try to create a hubbub out of very
little.

Anyway, long story short: we knew what we did, and yeah, I read
feedback, even if it is written in a hateful style, and we learn from
it.

> For now I use systemd. I like quite some features. But on the other hand I am 
> vary about it myself. I look at a 45 KiB binary for /sbin/init as PID1 and a 
> 1,3 MiB binary in systemd 215 and wonder myself. I see systemd --user 
> processes running and wonder: 

Well, note that systemd used for user services actually saves you
resources, as the systemd binary only needs to be mapped into memory
once and then is shared between all user instances and the system
instance.

> Is it really all just nay-sayers for the sake of nay-saying? 

No, it's not that simple.

> Or do they – at least partly – provide *valuable* and *important*
> feedback.

Well, some is valuable and important, but much certainly isn't. The
200nd complaint that systemd was "monolithic" or so is something I am
genuinely not interested in anymore, for example...

I will continue to scan reddit and the mailing list archives for stuff
I find, but of course, I always prefer if people would contact us
directly and constructively with feature or change requests, instead
of requiring me to follow these forums...

Let me stress this: constructive feedback is *always* welcome!

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering, Red Hat