If you ruin everyone else's day, and change behaviour everyone else is expecting, then it's probably your own fault.
Approaching it as if everyone should simply change and do what you want, is the height of arrogance. You are generating work for others. And in this particular case, not only are you generating work for others, you are eradicating a category of software.
When a distribution adopts systemd, they let everyone know how things are changing, and slowly transition things over, releasing when stable.
We know systemd replaces init.d. It was difficult, but distributions using systemd got over that hurdle, but it did take time.
However, this is not the same.
Yes, systemd is userland, however it is also PID 1. It is a layer between most userland and the kernel, and so needs to reflect the responsibility of it's position.
Ignoring how NOHUP is supposed to be interpreted, is a _bad idea_, and yes, a violation of POSIX, specifically signals (SIGHUP and nohup), and how they are supposed to be handled.
Moreso, it greatly heightens the difficulty of many utilities that are expected to work.
Why should cron (all implementations of cron), suddenly need to rely on another userland library to maintain it's function?
You just broke most Linux automation. Across an entire industry.
Why should screen (all implementations of screen), suddenly need to rely on a userland library much bigger than most implementations, to continue it's base function?
You just broke an entire category of background systems - including systems communicating with embedded hardware. You might have caused a factory-floor fault. Which could cause injury, or worse.
A breaking change of this level can cause industry-wide ramifications that are not just limited to the digital. Unexpected behaviour is exceptional, and should take time and considerable thought before occurring.
Systemd has responsibility that no other userland system has. It's PID 1.
If they're going to require a massive change in process behaviour, then they are going to require consultation, awareness within the industry, and transition time. They should be working with distributions, aware of the man-hours they're generating, before they put something in place.
This discussion is very much apropos of what the article is talking about:
> The whole systemd battle, Rice said, comes down to a lot of disruptive change; that is where the tragedy comes in. Nerds have a complicated relationship to change; it's awesome when we are the ones creating the change, but it's untrustworthy when it comes from outside. Systemd represents that sort of externally imposed change that people find threatening. That is true even when the change isn't coming from developers like Poettering, who has shown little sympathy toward the people who have to deal with this change that has been imposed on them.
The posix violation is by design. If you think that posix dictates the wrong thing, then you will do something different and this is what Poettering has done. The fact that systemd has more or less been embraced by linux is an endorsement of his design philosophy, even if distributions reject specific features.
I am not upset that there was divergence from POSIX.
Design choices are fine - I can understand why systemd takes a different approach.
What I don't like, and completely disagree with, is systemd not working with the community they directly effect to reduce disruption.
Like it or not, the product is an industry standard, and so will be held to industry expectations.
Rather than turning around and requiring everyone to change, they could have said, "Sorry, we're making changes, here are some preliminary patches that could help."
Or a timeline for a breaking change, wherein they can negotiate with others.
I don't have significant issues with systemd's software, though some reservations about quality. My main concern, and it has been since the beginning, is that systemd acts without thought or conscience to the effects that they might cause.
They lack the ability to be a team player, despite creating an environment where people depend on them.
systemd's adoption rates is an absolute credit to it. They have some very good design thoughts, and those working on it have done some excellent work.
However, it would be better if they communicated with the people they effect, rather than letting the community be an accidental Q&A team when things go wrong.
They do get this right sometimes, but that seems to be the exception, rather than the rule.
They approached the init.d situation calmly, and slowly. They worked with Debian, and Fedora and others to make sure it would work without interruption or loss of quality.
They approached the sigkill situation like they were a kid who just learned how to light a fire and wanted to burn the library down.
You make plenty of assumptions there, in particular that there was no communication about the session killing thing. Turns however there was. We informed downstreams about our intention and the reasons in detail, and we documented this for everybody else in NEWS. We also made sure there was an easy compile-time option to pick the default for this option, and then left the rest for the downstreams to decide: whether to default to on or off to this, taking in the information we got from us and from the rest of the community. If you think they made the wrong decision, then complain to them really. But seriously, you really just assume we wouldn't talk to anyone, without actually having any idea what it communication is really taking place.
> We informed downstreams about our intention and the reasons in detail, and we documented this for everybody else in NEWS.
From The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, regarding the plans to destroy the Earth:
‘But the plans were on display …’
‘On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.’
‘That’s the display department.’
‘With a flashlight.’
‘Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.’
‘So had the stairs.’
‘But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Arthur, ‘yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard.”’
Back in the real world: you built & shipped a system whose defaults were and are broken, and now you blame others for not enabling the DONT_BE_WRONG setting. You might as well blame end users for not becoming fully-versed with your code before their first login.
It’s not the users’ fault. It’s not the distros’ fault. It’s yours, and your project’s, for shipping code which breaks the user experience.
I appreciate your vision. It’s a good one. You’re a smart guy. But have some humility! Have a sense of your own limitations, and those of the distros and users who will use your code. You’re a human being; the distros are made up of human beings; your end users are … human beings. Think of them.
This is kind of a ridiculous reply. Is the only solution then to admit that Linux is "done"? Because it sounds like there's no room for change, even when change is communicated and multiple options to avoid it are provided.
> What I don't like, and completely disagree with, is systemd not working with the community they directly effect to reduce disruption.
> Rather than turning around and requiring everyone to change, they could have said, "Sorry, we're making changes, here are some preliminary patches that could help."
> Or a timeline for a breaking change, wherein they can negotiate with others.
But they did exactly that.
They contacted the tmux mainteners and asked if some modifications would be possible to accomodate the new option (see poettering comment here: run things as child of systemd --user or just register a separate PAM session). If I remember correctly, it would not even have been the first special case in tmux ; there already is one for OSX.
The discussion was actually progressing nicely until the anti-systemd flooded it. I remember seeing posts in a lot of place urging people to comment on the bug report with specious arguments. The whole thing was kind of upsetting.
POSIX isn't a law. You don't "violate" POSIX. It's a standard for compatibility. You can choose to not be compatible with a standard when you think it makes sense. That's something that lots of projects do. You are using standards compliance as a moral cudgel.
Your argument is way too impassioned to be just technical. You just basically accused Lennart of hurting people with no evidence whatsoever.
Apologies for that part, then. I just don't see standards compliance like other people do. Personally, I don't see standards as things that imply some kind of morality. They are tools to accomplish a goal. sometimes other goals may supersede their usefulness.
That is fair enough. I have not argued against your point of view. My comment was more on the linguistic side of things.
You criticised the parent's language saying that "you don't violate a standard" because it "isn't a law". I was just pointing out that you do indeed violate a standard because it's a standard, and saying that does not add any kind of moral or passion value - it's just using the language the way it's intended.
Aren't we just a few weeks after Rich Hickey's "you have no right to make demands of open source software" rant?
Systemd has responsibility that no other userland system has. It's PID 1.
No, you have the responsibility to check what the software you are installing does, and if you don't approve, change it or reject it. Or, don't check, and deal with it.
Systemd developers do not owe you working POSIX, working cron, industry wide working Linux automation, screen, separate userland for everything. They don't owe you anything. If you don't like their thing, don't use their thing.
Although I very much like the "don't break userland" approach, I agree with you. Especially in the light, that 1. You can start your background process the systemd way (shown elsewhere in this thread)
2. You can configure the desired behavior
3. Your distro probably already has configured it for you (Debian)
So it comes down to "something changed which is absolutely extremely important for me but I would rather discuss about it for hours then take the few seconds to configure it". Especially since the new behavior is intended behavior and also has upsides for a lot of use cases.
So don't be ungrateful. Be happy that some people are really putting a lot of work behind the software you use daily FOR FREE and just configure the darn thing the way you like.
And last but not least, most people here (me included) are not in the position to complain so much about free software, unless they show some commitment to open source themselves.
If you ruin everyone else's day, and change behaviour everyone else is expecting, then it's probably your own fault.
Approaching it as if everyone should simply change and do what you want, is the height of arrogance. You are generating work for others. And in this particular case, not only are you generating work for others, you are eradicating a category of software.
When a distribution adopts systemd, they let everyone know how things are changing, and slowly transition things over, releasing when stable.
We know systemd replaces init.d. It was difficult, but distributions using systemd got over that hurdle, but it did take time.
However, this is not the same.
Yes, systemd is userland, however it is also PID 1. It is a layer between most userland and the kernel, and so needs to reflect the responsibility of it's position.
Ignoring how NOHUP is supposed to be interpreted, is a _bad idea_, and yes, a violation of POSIX, specifically signals (SIGHUP and nohup), and how they are supposed to be handled.
Moreso, it greatly heightens the difficulty of many utilities that are expected to work.
Why should cron (all implementations of cron), suddenly need to rely on another userland library to maintain it's function?
You just broke most Linux automation. Across an entire industry.
Why should screen (all implementations of screen), suddenly need to rely on a userland library much bigger than most implementations, to continue it's base function?
You just broke an entire category of background systems - including systems communicating with embedded hardware. You might have caused a factory-floor fault. Which could cause injury, or worse.
A breaking change of this level can cause industry-wide ramifications that are not just limited to the digital. Unexpected behaviour is exceptional, and should take time and considerable thought before occurring.
Systemd has responsibility that no other userland system has. It's PID 1.
If they're going to require a massive change in process behaviour, then they are going to require consultation, awareness within the industry, and transition time. They should be working with distributions, aware of the man-hours they're generating, before they put something in place.