Quoting Simon Walter (si...@gikaku.com): > Did the Debian leadership do a poll to find out what their users > wanted and who were their typical users?
To the based of my recollection, no. To be clear, in the blog passage you quoted, Simon Richter (whoever _he_ is) _didn't assert_ that Debian Project's decision to use systemd as default init for new installs of Debian 8 'Jessie' was based on any belief that it 'is good for the vast majority of users'. Actually, to the best of my understanding, it's something of a misconception to claim that the Debian Project as a whole made such a decision. It was a great deal more haphazard than that, a series of blunders. Around 2013, the GNOME packagers found that they could no longer rely on ConsoleKit, because ConsoleKit had been EOLed. (Debian Project had an existing practice of installing GNOME by default if you use Disk 1 and go with defaults.) The GNOME packagers then switched to systemd-logind to provide the 'multiseat' functionality ConsoleKit had been providing. systemd-logind dragged in systemd as a dependency. The point is that it was less a _decision_ in the way the matter arose and blew up than it was a stepwise stumbling without a guiding plan. I personally wish there _had_ been pondering of a guiding plan at this point -- and that the Project had decided to dump GNOME, which would have made the original problem go away. Unfortunately, that was not the way the issue was framed. In bureaucracies, much depends on process, process has momentum, and what gets started crucially influences what happen later. Various people realised what was happening and started arguing on debian-devel at great length. A Debian developer named Paul Tagliamonte responded to the contention by opening a bug against pseudo-package 'tech-ctte', which is a way of raising an issue with the Debian Technical Committee, asking the Committee to 'Decide which init system to default to in Debian'. A discussion of mind-numbing length ensued in the bug; see https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=727708 . (Beware of extreme length and lots of annoying verbal dogfighting.) On Feb. 11, 2011, the Technical Committee decided: We exercise our power to decide in cases of overlapping jurisdiction (6.1.2) by asserting that the default init system for Linux architectures in jessie should be systemd. Should the project pass a General Resolution before the release of "jessie" asserting a "position statement about issues of the day" on init systems, that position replaces the outcome of this vote and is adopted by the Technical Committee as its own decision. This was after a complicated committee vote among these alternatives: systemd, upstart, openrc, sysvinit (no change), and 'requires further discussion'. Ian Jackson later imposed a General Resolution, to the annoyance of most Debian developers. Again, it was a complicated alternative vote among several alternatives. As amended, one of the voteable options was to state that no General Resolution was warranted. This option passed -- the voting developers essentially saying they were annoyed by Jackson's maneouvering, and voted to essentially say 'No, go away.' So, in short, no, the Debian leadership (the Project Leader and the electorate) not only did no poll but explicitly decided to take no action. The Technical Committee (a lower-level body) voted to not revert a then-fait-accompli unplanned acceptance of systemd in Debian 8 'Jessie' that had barged into the system via GNOME. And, to the best of my recollection, no other official action of any kind happened. (Reminder: I'm an outsider to the Debian Project. I subscribe to the debian-devel and debian-security mailing lists and mostly ignore the former because of vastly excessive traffic -- but have no connection to the project. I just use some of its software.) -- Cheers, "My life has a superb cast, Rick Moen but I cannot figure out the plot." r...@linuxmafia.com -- Ashleigh Brilliant McQ! (4x80) _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
