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

[Dale R. Worley]

> From: "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson"

> > 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?
> 
> I'm not sure why you are under the assumption that we do not consider 
> and have not and are not gathering feedback from individuals, 
> communities or companies for that matter but I'm going to address your 
> questions anyway.

I've brought a complaint about one of systemd's behaviors here.  I
have gotten useful feedback allowing me to refine what I think would
be a good solution to the problem.  What I *haven't* gotten is any
useful feedback on how to implement a solution.  I suspect others have
had similar experiences.

One metric that might be useful is to ask:  Of the people who complain
about one or another aspect of systemd, what fraction ultimately
consider their complaint to be satisfactorily resolved?

There are also "architectural" issues about systemd that I've
noticed.  I don't know to what degree these indicate quality control
problems with the code, or whether they are just a matter of things
being done in ways that are not common in the Un*x universe.  But they
do seem to me to be things that are going to inhibit adoption.

1. Systemd has some very large binaries, each of which implements many
aspects of the system.  Conversely, the typical Un*x approach is to
separate functions into many executablels, many of which are scripts.
The latter approach makes customization easier, especially for
sysadmins who aren't deeply familiar with the system.

2. Systemd includes a tremendous number of features and behaviors, but
a lot of them aren't documented very well.  That's not so unusual in
Un*x, but if you're introducing something new, nobody has any prior
knowledge of it, and the lack of documentation becomes visible.

Ultimately, writing e-mail messages saying "They're wrong" is useless,
even if they *are* wrong.  If there is a substantial body of people
out there who dislike systemd, it's going to prevent its adoption.
The fix is adjusting systemd (or the project surrounding it) so that
people like it better.

Dale