Linus Torvalds Suspends Key Linux Developer 641
alphadogg writes: "An argument between developers of some of the most basic parts of Linux turned heated this week, resulting in a prominent Red Hat employee and code contributor being banned from working on the Linux kernel. Kay Sievers, a well-known open-source software engineer, is a key developer of systemd, a system management framework for Linux-based operating systems. Systemd is currently used by several prominent Linux distributions, including two of the most prominent enterprise distros, Red Hat and SUSE. It was recently announced that Ubuntu would adopt systemd in future versions as well. Sievers was banned by kernel maintainer Linus Torvalds on Wednesday for failing to address an issue that caused systemd to interact with the Linux kernel in negative ways."
hold on (Score:1, Interesting)
Before everyone gets all shouty, lets remember that the kernel does all of their work in public and Linus just talks like a sailor. This doesn't need to be made into a bigger deal than it is just so commentators can have their pissing matches.
Someone has to be in charge (Score:5, Interesting)
his complaint about systemd has been widely echoed in the Linux world, with prominent contributors like Ingo Molnar, slamming the “excessively passive/aggressive” attitude of the project’s maintainers.
If you ignore requests you piss people off. Sounds like banning the guy was the right thing to do.
Re:Linus is getting old and cranky (Score:5, Interesting)
Kay is either an arrogant asshat or an aspberger's victim. Either way, he hasn't demonstrated an interest in collaborating on a solution for the whole forest, over the pure vision of his one, true tree.
Without Linus, Linux is doomed.
Re:informal poll (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. I would probably be using it too if I had come to computers late. Back in the 80's when I wanted to upgrade from my Commodore 128 I looked at the PC clones and compared them to the Commodore Amiga and it was no question at all for me. The clones were a fucking joke. Once Mehdi Ali and Irving Gould decided to bankrupt Commodore and then Win 95 came out the only other active system was Apple which was a joke at that time. Everyone was buying Win 95 like it was going out of style. Later when I wanted new hardware I looked at Windows and went "ugh!" and then read about Linux. I bought a dual pentium II server and installed Linux on it in '99 and never looked back. I've never actually used windows much outside of work but I can see why people that never used anything else use it. You can buy anything at all for it. If it's all you ever used you wouldn't know that it sucks.
Re:Linus is getting old and cranky (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a feature, not a bug.
Re:Someone has to be in charge (Score:4, Interesting)
You Ban him, but you don't need to vent and throw mud at him in the process. There is no need to publicly shame someone, just stop pulling patches from him and/or assign somebody else to fix it. Torvolds lacks class when he does stuff like this.
Look, I don't have a dog in this hunt, I don't do kernel development or work with Torvolds, and I don't want his job. Torvolds can do what he wants with his project and treat his developers how he wants. Apparently this behavior works for him well enough to keep the project going. I just don't think his approach is the best. But, in the long run, my opinion doesn't matter. I'm sure Torvolds doesn't care what I think and he's made it clear to others in the past he doesn't plan to change. IMHO It's a shame that he runs off potential developers by doing stuff like this, but I don't suppose he sees it that way.
Re:systemd Architecture (Score:4, Interesting)
I adopted Linux and various other open source programs because I was frustrated with the attitude of the vendors I was dealing with, SCO, AT&T, NCR, Sperry, etc. They were all jockeying for position and creating incompatibilities with each other. I had to support a program that ran on a lot on Unices. I discovered the GNU tools that would run the same way on various platforms then toyed with Linux and eventually started using it in production.
The big difference with GNU and Linux was is seemed to be all about the users. Users creating software for other users without "vendor goals" as baggage. I was a very loyal Red Hat users for years but GNOME 3 drove me to Mint and now I keep seeing more examples where they and other "open source" companies have become like the old Unix vendors.
Glad to see Linus pushing back against it.
Re:Linus is being Linus. (Score:4, Interesting)
Blowing up at Andrew Tridgdell [theregister.co.uk] after he "reverse engineered" (i.e. - sent "help" on a telnet connection) the bitkeeper protocol, causing bitkeeper to withdraw support from the kernel.
Personally, I think bitkeeper were just waiting for an excuse to do that. Their business justification was quickly eroding. The needs of the kernel and the needs of their commercial customers were drifting apart. Supporting the kernel was becoming a liability, rather than an asset, to them. That's also the reason, I think, that they were so quick to withdraw all support after such a minor infraction.
Shachar
Re:systemd Architecture (Score:5, Interesting)
It gets even more "fun" if you're trying to netboot since you never get to see any of the output. When I whined about this problem on Slashdot before, someone suggested adding a parameter to drop to a shell. Which is great, only then systemd didn't get far enough to actually *hit* the problem so I could debug it. So then I tried the flag to systemd that is supposed to get it to tell you what order stuff starts in, but it won't let you run that as root.... Googling got me nowhere. Eventually, I discovered that DBus (another solution in search of a problem, IMO) wasn't functioning correctly because somehow the DHCP server had the wrong MAC address for the host so the network didn't come up right (why isn't DBus talking over 127.0.0.1!!??!).
In short, systemd has me looking into how quickly I can switch to NetBSD. Although I should investigate Slackware as well.
Re:Linus is being Linus. (Score:1, Interesting)
When Linus got furious with Andrew Tridgell for "reverse engineering" the BitKeeper client, causing Larry McVoy to throw a hissy-fit, take his ball, and go home, I thought that was totally uncalled for. From what I understand, Andrew had connected to a BitKeeper server with telnet, typed "help", and got a help text describing the protocol. From there he made an open source client.
In this case, Linus couldn't accept that he was wrong to use a proprietary system for source control, which could be taken away on a whim. He was right, however, in that the existing non-distributed VCS tools (such as cvs or subversion) wouldn't scale too well for how the kernel devs worked. Of course, the good that came out of this was Git, so I'd say Andrew Tridgell did the world a favor. Not sure how Linus feels about that incident now though.
Re:Someone has to be in charge (Score:2, Interesting)
Sometimes the only way to get through to somebody is to publicly yell at them. If I've talked to you civilly in private a dozen times and you pull the same shit a 13th time, I would lose it, too.
I don't see any reason to publicly shame anybody on purpose, especially in a situation where that someone is a volunteer who is not responding quick enough for you.
Torvalds prides himself in being abrupt, no nonsense and a dictator. IMHO A position he uses to self righteously justify behavior that I find unnecessarily abrasive and borderline abusive. You can be a no nonsense dictator and still not need to publicly shame someone you are frustrated with.