/dev/chat - 2016-01-21

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12:50 AM

0

Q: Is this cross-post against site rules?

I'm asking about this question (U&L) which was recently posted again here (AU). Gilles once stated that cross-posting between UL and anywhere is against the FAQ/on-topic guidelines which specifically mention and strongly discourage it. The AskUbuntu policy, according to Oli, one of AskUbuntu's ...

discussion specific-question asking-questions cross-posting

2 hours later…

2:26 AM

@cat it's Ask Ubuntu, with a space ;P

and I can't edit it D:

I need to stop slacking and get some more rep here.

@Seth Here meaning U&L?

yeah

2:42 AM

@Seth fixed, sorry

@cat thanks! One of my pet peeves ;)

13 hours later…

3:14 PM

Just got the silver (?) debian badge. Apparently only the second person (after Gilles, of course) to get it. Weird. I thought there were a lot of Debian people here.

2 hours later…

5:07 PM

@FaheemMitha I have apparently carefully answered questions broadly spread out enough to avoid badges.

@derobert How very sneaky of you.

@terdon can mods cancel a bounty? unix.stackexchange.com/questions/254325/… seems like it really should be closed, but it can't be with an active bounty

Though the specific case of why it appears blank in a screenshot is probably answerable. At least for some things, just like xvideo does.

Well, unless you're running a compositing window manager

Though OP is probably not running X11.

5:30 PM

I was just reading again about Joey H's departure from Debian. He never did explain clearly why he left.

@FaheemMitha I wonder if he even knows.

@derobert One would hope he does. You read his goodbye message, right?

yes

he had a recent LWN interview, btw

He describes the Debian constitution as a "toxic document". Strange.

@derobert In the current LWN, I think.

yep lwn.net/Articles/672352

you probably still need an LWN subscription to read that

5:38 PM

@derobert Yes, you do. I used to have one, but I let it lapse. Do you have one then?

yeah

ok

if you haven't read it... I can send you a free link...

Does the interview bring up Debian, then?

@derobert Ok, sure.

hmmm... I guess I'll post it for a second then delete the message

since I don't have any other way to send it to you...

@FaheemMitha let me know when you've seen that

5:40 PM

@derobert Got it. Thanks.

Interesting. Lars explicitly asks him why he left, and he doesn't answer.

Yep, he dodges the question.

Yes, maybe he himself doesn't know why he left.

@derobert Yes, he does.

Maybe it was a combination of plain burnout along with disgust at watching the Project quarrel over systemd.

He'd been a DD a really long time. He joined in 1996, I think.

Yes, he says that in his goodbye message.

Which means he might have been accepted by Ian Murdock himself.

Probably. I forget if it was from that interview, or from somewhere else, but it sounds like he much prefers small nimble projects, without politics. Debian used to be such a thing...

oh, it is there... second question...

I suspect that's the best answer we'll ever get as to why he quit.

@derobert Yes, in 1996, the Project was very different.

Even in 2005 it was.

5:50 PM

I wonder what he meant by "accumulated non-technical debt".

@derobert Why 2005 in particular?

@FaheemMitha oh, because I forgot it was 2016 when doing 10 years ago

@derobert Huh?

You were arbitrarily picking a year 10 years previous?

yep.

Take it as "mid-2000s"

I'm not sure when Debian's current organizational problems became so huge...

@derobert It's partly the natural consequences of scale.

I mean, I don't think it'd ever been fast to make decisions—but at least it was civil.

5:55 PM

And an organization like Debian is historically unprecedented. What's perhaps more surprising is that it exists at all, not that it has problems.

@derobert Well, it's so big now that people don't know each other. And it's easier to be nasty to strangers. Well, that's part of it, at any rate.

The systemd stuff seemed a lot less like an attempt to come to consensus, and much more like an attempt to destroy the other side.

@FaheemMitha Sure, but it's been big for a while.

@derobert I don't know the issues, but it did seem very vicious. Maybe I'm missing something there.

@derobert True, but it's been growing steadily. Eventually the stress starts to show.

Not really. It was vicious.

What's your alternative explanation?

The older people leaving also may not help. They probably exert a stabilizing influence.

This is all guesswork, of course.

@FaheemMitha I don't really have one either.

And even more I have no idea what to do about it.

5:59 PM

joeyh.name/blog/entry/on_leaving says more...

@derobert Do about the problems of Debian?

@FaheemMitha yeah, I have no idea how to solve them

@derobert Let's hope the problems don't get worse, and that Debian survives.

Right now, it's quiet—but next time a big decision comes up, I'm not sure how you re-establish the norm of arguing to establish consensus vs. arguing to win. Doesn't help that the former is harder!

@derobert You don't think people learned anything from the systemd debacle?

I hope so.

At some point, they'll have to decide on something else that effects the whole distro.

I'm not sure which core part of the Linux stack someone will reinvent next.

6:05 PM

Ther is also some discussion here: reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2lmk7s/…

@derobert True.

I doubt there will be that much complaining over Wayland, as no one seems to really like X11.

@derobert Agreed.

Part of it seems to be the systemd folks are really not very popular, and their style gets people's backs up.

BTW, joeyh seems to be a real hermit. It's a littls surprising he doesn't miss a normal social life.

Then again, "normal" life has a lot of drawbacks.

@FaheemMitha Yeah, udev got people upset too. (Some of the same folks involved.)

@derobert Yes, that too.

They thought the systemd folks were doing a land grab.

I don't think anyone is upset about udev anymore, because technically it's worked out quite well.

6:11 PM

@derobert Ok.

Well, sleep time. Take care, Anthony.

7:07 PM

weather.gov/lwx/winter oh fun...

7:25 PM

@derobert i'm waiting to Sen. Inhofe to bring a bunch of that into the senate floor to make an another attempt at discrediting climate change like he did last year with snowballs

@casey Yeah. Maybe we'll be lucky and he won't be able to make it to the Senate through all the snow.

4 hours later…

11:19 PM

@derobert Yes. The rep is returned in full, I think. I've never done it though. Is the question really so egregious?

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