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Linus will not be merging any code from systemd developer

by mtct on 4/4/14, 9:41 PM with 58 comments

• by e12e on 4/5/14, 4:32 AM

  Oh, the actual bugzilla thread is (if possible) even more depressing:

  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76935

  I had actually started to warm to the idea of systemd, thinking that it couldn't end up the same clusterf*ck of mismatched reinventions that didn't really solve any problems that pulseaudio was. I guess it's time to move to Debian/kFreeBSD and ignore this crap.

• by csmattryder on 4/5/14, 3:35 AM

  Systemd is soon to be integrated as the default init daemon for Ubuntu, one of the most user-friendly Linux distributions available.

  It worries me that Sievers, and the systemd team aren't approaching testing with an almost paranoid attitude. Linux is finally getting a foothold in consumer desktops, it'd be a shame for people to go back to other operating systems purely because "it broke one day, something about systemd".

• by darkarmani on 4/5/14, 3:27 AM

  Wow. This comment captures it best:

  > "Hmm, a user adds to the kernel command line "debug" and systemd starts spitting out so much crap that the system doesn't boot anymore? That sounds like a major regression to me. Note this is a kernel command line, not a systemd command line. Userspace tools should not be using the same kernel parameters that are defined by the kernel. That's just broken and wrong.

  > This bugzilla is the poster child of why people hate systemd and do not trust the developers that work on it."

• by 0x006A on 4/4/14, 10:14 PM

  Linus will not be merging any code from Kay Sievers into the kernel until Kay changes his pattern of not fixing problems in code he previously submitted.

• by userbinator on 4/5/14, 3:52 AM

  Although I've heard a lot of others disagree, I like the fact that Linus' posts are straight and to the point. No sugar-coating or euphemisms, just telling the hard reality like it is.

• by mcescalante on 4/5/14, 5:29 AM

  For anyone interested in what ensued, Greg KH submitted a patch to systemd to fix this issue. Linus then replied (among some other words) to Greg's confirmation of his patch with:

  "It does become a problem when you have a system service developer who thinks the universe revolves around him, and nobody else matters, and people sending him bug-reports are annoyances that should be ignored rather than acknowledged and fixed. At that point, it's a problem.

  It looks like Greg has stepped in as a baby-sitter for Kay, and things are going to be fixed. And I'd really like to avoid adding hacky code to the kernel because of Kay's continued bad behavior, so I hope this works. But it's really sad that things like this get elevated to this kind of situation, and I personally find it annoying that it's always the same f*cking primadonna involved."

• by jonalmeida on 4/5/14, 5:43 AM

  This is quite confusing after reading Sievers' reply on Google+ (third comment on the post) [1]

  > my last kernel patch is more than a year old, my last non-trivial kernel patch 2 years old. i stopped working on the upstream kernel "long ago" for reasons i cannot stand the attitude of these guys, i decided to work with grown up or funny, or grown up and funny people instead and i enjoy it a lot more. not sure what this childish blackmail attempt relates to.

  [1]: https://plus.google.com/108087225644395745666/posts/3cWXzYqB...

• by duked on 4/5/14, 4:27 AM

  this links provide a better context on the attitude of the systemd developer: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76935

• by estebanrules on 4/5/14, 3:15 AM

  Seems reasonable to me.

• by dkarapetyan on 4/5/14, 6:28 AM

  I don't get why there are so many egos in kernel and low-level development circles. I get that it's a bit more challenging than usual application development but the egos seem way too big relative to what's involved.

• by NotKaySievers on 4/5/14, 5:40 AM

  I was looking at devkmsg_open() because of Linus's patch, and I noticed that user->prev initialization is missing in that function and a few other places where seq/idx gets reset.

  This is at best a minor bug since it only affects the first line read from /dev/kmsg, but I thought I'd point it out if anyone wants to fix it.

• by mantrax4 on 4/5/14, 7:12 AM

  The nerd fight tl;dr so far:

  - Kay claims a system not booting due to a casual kernel log flood from systemd is not an issue.

  - Linus agrees the "debug" flag (along with other generic kernel flags) should be used by services like systemd, yet blasts Kay for using it, because it "usually isn't a problem", but here "it's a problem".

  - Linus threatens not to accept kernel patches from Kay.

  - Kay has not written a non-trivial kernel patch for over two years, and doesn't want to write any.

  - Linus agrees rate limiting should be applied on the kernel's side, but that's not a solution somehow here, because reasons.

  - Kay says Linus is involved in a "childish power play".

  - Linus calls Kay a "primadonna who thinks the world revolves around him".

  In short: http://media.giphy.com/media/6HFUDKwlWcAbC/giphy.gif