Re: systemd as external dependency

[Vincent Untz <vuntz gnome org>]

Jon,

Le mercredi 18 mai 2011, à 10:40 -0400, William Jon McCann a écrit :
> Hi,
> 
> On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 9:49 AM, Josselin Mouette <joss debian org> wrote:
> > Le mercredi 18 mai 2011 à 14:09 +0200, Lennart Poettering a écrit :
> >> systemd itself has very minimal external dependencies. You need Linux,
> >> udev, D-Bus, and that's it. (there are a couple of additional optional
> >> deps however).
> >
> > I don’t have anything against requiring systemd, since it is definitely
> > the best init system out there currently, but the Linux dependency is an
> > absolute no-no for us. Having optional Linux-only functionalities is OK;
> > requiring Linux is not.
> 
> For Debian perhaps.  However, I don't think this is true for GNOME.
> The future of GNOME is as a Linux based OS.  It is harmful to pretend
> that you are writing the OS core to work on any number of different
> kernels, user space subsystem combinations, and core libraries.  That
> said, there may be value in defining an application development
> platform or SDK that exposes higher level, more consistent, and
> coherent API.  But that is a separate issue from how we write core
> GNOME components like the System Settings.
> 
> It is free software and people are free to port GNOME to any other
> architecture or try to exchange kernels or whatever.  But that is
> silly for us to worry about.

I'm worried by what I'm understanding here -- and maybe I'm reading
things wrong, so please correct me if this is the case.

As much as I support the integration parts that will lead to GNOME OS,
it doesn't mean that we should ignore the non-Linux world. I'm not
saying we should actively do the work ourselves, but we can (and should,
imho) create a positive atmosphere where people will be happy to do the
job. And your mail sounds to me like "yeah, do it if you want but we
don't care", which is hardly positive :/

The portability matrix that Matthias created a while ago was a good
thing for the non-Linux world, and I'd rather keep that kind of things.
Of course, we should keep moving forward and not block changes that
currently require some Linux-only features, but that doesn't mean we
ignore the rest of the world.

Yes, it might cost us a bit to be open and friendly like this -- and to
be honest, I'm not convinced the cost is that high for GNOME code, while
it certainly is for systemd -- but our community is not just about
purely technical matters. We also care about being open and friendly.
Or at least, we should.

Cheers,

Vincent

-- 
Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés.