[arch-general] Another rant on arch way abuse and false promises

[Ng Oon-Ee]

On Wed, 2009-12-02 at 08:38 +0100, Arvid Picciani wrote:
> Ray Kohler wrote:
> 
> > What I personally am in support of, in the general case, is
> > "suckless.org-style" minimalism, rather than following upstream's
> > direction. 
> > So if upstream changes the default to enable the hal and
> > dbus bits, I will then be in favor of Arch disabling them, and we'll
> > be in disagreement then. (That said, if that actually does happen, I
> > won't asking the Arch devs to implement my wishes, since they'd
> > clearly be in violation of the Arch way.)
> 
> Indeed. As brought up by others, forcing minimalism is as much violation 
> as forcing bloat.
> However,  arch has been built around the idea that users are capable of 
> customizing packages to non-upstream settings.
> I urge you to do exactly that.
Fair enough
> 
> I have posted  and will continue to post various bugs to the tracker to 
> restore upstream defaults in favor for minimalism. If these reverts get 
> rejected in favor for bloat, the clear bias is a disregard of the very 
> core ideas of arch, and I will eventually fork arch entirely, given 
> enough support.
Implying a bias if things do not go the way you want is just a bit of a
stretch, don't you think? What's the percentage which would tip you off?
50%? 40%? In the end, the devs make a decision and (if they're nice)
explain it, and that should be that.

All this 'fork this fork that' threatening is really quite sad. I know
its common in open source and linux in particular, but I certainly don't
see threatening a fork and dilution of resources as in an way beneficial
to Arch as a distro and to us individually as users.
> 
> Either way, i'd welcome if you contribute, in order to get the user 
> experience you (and others including me) desire. That is, either 
> contribute packages to aur, to fix insane upstream defaults, or 
> contribute to an eventual fork to restore upstream defaults.
> Will you? :)

I see dbus/hal and the rest of this bloat as part of a good user
experience. This is a difference in opinion, not a heresy.

Having said all that, contributing the appropriate packages to the AUR
is a very good initiative. Expand the choice of the user, I know some,
maybe many, agree with you on minimalism w.r.t dbus/hal/the like.
Forking is ridiculous and non-practical, and it would be better for
everyone involved in Arch if its not used as a proverbial hammer to get
one's way.