[arch-general] SystemD poll

[Norbert Zeh]

Felipe Contreras [2012.08.23 2214 +0200]:
> On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 11:02 PM, Andrew Hills <hills.as at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Felipe--if I may address you by your first name--in case you're
> > confused about why no one will listen to your arguments, let me
> > try to explain; it may reduce your frustration. You made the
> > following two statements without any evidence or even any
> > suggestion that you care about evidence:
> 
> But here's the thing: I am not the one that needs to make a claim;
> it's other people that make the claim that systemd is ready to be the
> default for Arch Linux. Where is the evidence? There is no evidence...
> All the evidence provided so far is derived from personal experience,
> mostly in the form of "It works for me", or "A lot of users have
> already switched without problems" (for which there is no direct
> evidence either, only personal experience).
> 
> So you see, I don't need to prove anything, I simply need to point out
> the fact that there's no evidence for the aforementioned claim. Of
> course, I could try to provide evidence to further advance my
> argument, and provided a few data-points, but I don't *need* to. This
> is the basic of rationality; the one that makes the claim has the
> burden of proof.
> 
> Is systemd ready? Where is the evidence?
> 
> >> But supposing there was something before, I'm
> >> sure the people that made the transition did it in a responsible
> >> manner trying hard not to break anything.
> > ...
> >> I can probably point to dozens of
> >> problems that systemd has that initscripts doesn't (today). That's
> >> enough reason to hold on the move.
> 
> Notice that I said "probably". Again, I don't *need* to provide any
> evidence because I'm not making the claim that systemd has problems,
> or that it's not ready, I am simply asking for evidence that it is.

I tried to keep my mouth shut but can't resist to reply here because I simply
don't understand how you think the world works.  Do you want to see proof that
every piece of open-source software is ready to be used?  That's ridiculous.
Open-source software is being developed.  People think it may be interesting.
They try it.  It doesn't work, they forget about it.  It does work, they use it.
It does work, except for some issues here and there, people use it and provide
bug reports in the hope the bugs will be fixed.  Even though I'm not a systemd
fanboy and probably would have been equally happy continuing with init scripts
for a while, my general impression is that systemd is in the latter category.
It works for a large number of people (the majority?), it works flawlessly for
me so far.  Yet, here you are raising doubts about systemd being ready to be
used.  That puts *you* in a position to explain why you think there are serious
reasons why systemd should not be adopted.  Your confusion stems from a
misunderstanding of what the default is.  In law, the default assumption is that
the accused is innocent and any claim to the contrary needs to be proven.  You
seem to assume that the default assumption is that the software is broken, and
it needs to be proven that it works.  In reality it works the other way around,
and I think it's the only model that works because nobody would develop and
distribute software *for free* if they also had to prove that it works.  Ironing
out the glitches that still exist in certain pieces of software through early
adoption, testing, and reporting of bugs upstream is exactly the role bleeding
edge distributions such as arch play in the open-source ecosystem.

Then again, much of this has been said a bit differently before.  So I'm not
sure you'll follow the argument.

- Norbert