[arch-general] Think twice before moving to systemd

[Felipe Contreras]

On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 12:09 PM, C Anthony Risinger <anthony at xtfx.me> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 2:39 AM, Tom Gundersen <teg at jklm.no> wrote:
>> On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 9:24 AM, Felipe Contreras
>> <felipe.contreras at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Well, I see absolutely no evidence of such an analysis, so consider me
>>>>> a skeptic.
>>>>
>>>> That's ok. We are not in the PR business, we are not selling anything.
>>>
>>> You are selling a distribution.
>>
>> We are? Damn. Where is my cut. Allan!?

I wonder why you are purposely using the (clearly) unintended
definition of the word 'sell'. Just to make things clear:

a : to develop a belief in the truth, value, or desirability of : gain
acceptance for <trying to sell a program to the Congress>
b : to persuade or influence to a course of action or to the
acceptance of something <sell children on reading>

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sell

> it's interesting to me how so many can believe that
> OSS/distros/etc/etc are really driven and decided by the whimsical
> desires of the complete, mob-like user base.

I am not saying such a thing at all. I am fully aware that
contributors do their contributors mostly to scratch their own itch.
But while scratching your own itch you are often scratching other
people's itches, perhaps inadvertently (the 'invisible hand' theory).

However, that's as a *contributor* to the project. The project itself
needs contributors to survive, and keep moving, without contributors
there's no users, and without users there's no project (and no
contributors as well, as contributors most of the time are users
first).

It's fine to say "we don't target the common type of Linux user", but
you have to have at least some idea of what your users are, and what
they want, otherwise the project will never be truly successful. If
you both attract and repel your users (inadvertently), you might get
periods when the projects seems alive and thriving (as I think it is
right now), and then just experience a quick death (as the users that
came to Arch Linux for X will quickly realize they were 'deceived' and
go away). The advantages of having a healthy user-base are numerous,
but if I have to explain them I feel there's no point in discussing.

    The biggest thing any program can do is not the technical details
of the program itself; it’s how useful the program is to users.
    So any time any program (like the kernel or any other project),
breaks the user experience, to me, that’s the absolute worst failure
that a software project can make.
    -- Linus Torvalds

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras