Canonical will learn that soon enough anyways, with everything surrounding Mir. And I'm glad. Their current way of doing things reminds me a lot of how GitHub works with open source, with the major difference that where GitHub builds completely new systems when they're needed/the alternatives aren't up to par, Canonical builds them all over the place, when many times it would be better if they contributed to the existing projects (Wayland, systemd) and expect the same community support that GitHub gets surrounding their open source code (Resque, Chronic, Jekyll, etc).

It's kind of disheartening that Canonical keeps trying to "disrupt" existing open source projects by muscling their way behind their own projects, developed in secret, with little to no community input. /rant

This is a common complaint about Canonical. But your post is misleading at best.

upstart forged a new path at a time when systemd didn't exist. Ubuntu pioneered it in order to solve a specific problem for which no other solution existed at the time (desktop boot speed).

You can complain that Ubuntu has not switched to systemd if you wish, but it is systemd that went down its own path, dragging other upstream projects with it (eg. udev).

Red Hat switched to upstart initially, and has now decided to drop it in favour of a new project (systemd).

So, "open source" now means "Do everything Red Hat's way."? Interesting change in definitions.

In my own definition open source means "work together, be open about your intentions, contribute".

Lennart works almost alone, his "open intentions" are to explicitly not support the wider open source community (like non-Linux kernels and non-GNOME desktops), and he "contributes" to virtually nothing but his own inventions of questionable technical merit.

Why you think Canonical is any worse eludes me.

I don't see anything wrong with a single developer concentrating on a few projects? How many developers do you know that make significant contributions to many different projects?!

Do you have a source for you claim that lennarts explicitely not supports non-Gnome? I think it is pretty clear that he doesn't support non-Linux, but why is that wrong?

Looking into the git contributions he is not even the one who contributed most! http://pastebin.com/bkUs3jXa

On the other hand: What i don't like about Canonical is their latest move to first pretend to support Wayland and then mysteriously presenting Mir all the while spreading bullshit about how Wayland is not good enough.

> I don't see anything wrong with a single developer concentrating on a few projects?

Neither would I, if they were projects worth concentrating on or of any meaningful long-term value to the community.

> I think it is pretty clear that he doesn't support non-Linux, but why is that wrong?

systemd invites/demands dependencies on its own, unique interfaces that do not and will not exist outside Linux. This retards progress of other projects in supporting non-Linux systems.

Lennart has actively encouraged this: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2011-May/...

> What i don't like about Canonical is their latest move to first pretend to support Wayland and then mysteriously presenting Mir all the while spreading bullshit about how Wayland is not good enough.

Red Hat began to support Upstart before switching to their in-house systemd and spreading bullshit about how Upstart is not good enough.

Why is it OK when Red Hat tries to come up with new things but not Canonical? Do you work for one of these companies?

> Looking into the git contributions he is not even the one who contributed most!

See my other post downthread. You are incorrect.

No, not working for any of them. See my comment that it's still incorrect saying Lennart does all the work. You can easily check the git yourself, go ahead.

Was there something wron with the methodology used in http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/05/msg01365.html which showed a 78% contribution from Pottering?

Personally I do not see anything wrong with that, but 78% is basically doing all the coding.

Well, i did the same and came to vastly different numbers. It's easy to do: Do a git checkout and run

git ls-files | grep -v udev | xargs -n1 -d'\n' -i git blame {} | perl -n -e '/\s\((.*?)\s[0-9]{4}/ && print "$1\n"' | sort -f | uniq -c -w3 | sort -n

Even taking out udev shows Kay Sievers contributing nearly as much as Lennart. It also shows many other people contributing. That there is a main developer that does a lot of work is not something negative about a project, isn't it?!

> i did the same

No, you didn't. Your command line is not limited to source code, but includes, for starters, the massive hardware database checked in by Kay:

   66888 hwdb/20-pci-vendor-model.hwdb
   66185 hwdb/20-OUI.hwdb
   49014 hwdb/20-usb-vendor-model.hwdb
    6596 hwdb/20-acpi-vendor.hwdb

You performed a fundamentally different and flawed test.

> That there is a main developer that does a lot of work is not something negative about a project, isn't it?!

You were the one who complained about Canonical not "working together", not me. I'm just holding you to your own standard.

> their latest move to first pretend to support Wayland

In November 2010 [1].

> and then mysteriously presenting Mir

In March 2013 [2].

Technologies change. The best path to follow can change. Switching paths over two years is surely acceptable and reasonable for any company. Claiming that Canonical "pretended" is false and misleading - or do you have any evidence of this?

> Looking into the git contributions he is not even the one who contributed most!

Others have already rebutted this: udev accounts for most other contributors, leaving Lennart for the vast majority of systemd.

Do you have anything to say that isn't deliberately misleading?

[1]: http://www.pcworld.com/article/210018/ubuntu_more_changes_by... [2]: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/05/canonical_mir_announ...

> In March 2013 [2]

Development of Mir started 9 months earlier. So they basically lied into the face of the whole Free Software community and the Wayland developers who counted on their support by not communicating their change of heart.

Explicitly not support other desktops? That's wrong, systemd is supported by various desktops. In any case systemd is different level, a desktop should add support, not the other way around. Obviously best if a systemd developer helps out with that effort in a desktop, but suggesting systemd project needs to have knowledge/support for desktops is crazy. It doesn't support GNOME, GNOME has support for systemd!

> systemd is supported by various desktops

Various desktops were forced to adapt to systemd's insanities. This is different from systemd attempting to be a good citizen and support existing mechanisms.

Just because I pointed out flaws in your arguments doesn't make it ok to respond like this. Please refute what I said based on clear references and without name calling such as "insanities".

E.g. you said: "forced": prove it. Also, you didn't back up your previous claims, just made different claims.

> Lennart works almost alone

He does not. Systemd has over 370 individual contributors, 15 other people have commit powers beside him. Myth 27: http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html

Thank you, I've read Lennart's shameless lies on this and many other matters. The truth in this particular case was revealed by Steve Langasek in the recent debian-devel thread[1]. Almost 80% of the systemd code is by Lennart.

[1]http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/05/msg01365.html

You said he mostly works alone. That's something different than amount of code. "Work alone" implies amount of people, not amount of code.

Obviously he started systemd and works full time on it. Then loads of other people work on it as well, but not nearly the same amount as he does.

Kind of sad to start name calling when you're not clear about this yourself.

There are no other significant contributors. I consider that "working mostly alone".

Nope, that is changing the wording to suit yourself. He started the project and is able to work full time on this.

A Mageia packager contributed some very good patches towards systemd. He's not in the email on debian-devel, while he monitors systemd , works with Lennart and others, etc.

See his other email: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/05/msg01367.html

Our Mageia packager is not included. One of the patches he wrote: During the development of the journal he fixed a really important journal memory bug. Took a lot of effort to figure out, etc.

But the arbitrary '100 patches' is introduced. Seems rebuttal is pretty biased.

PS: Upstart has had 17 contributors. Systemd has 15 people with commit access. Systemd seems way more viable.

When you've reduced yourself to arguing whether 80% is "mostly" or not, perhaps it's time to reconsider your position?

In any case, I won't be responding to you anymore.

That's just not true, you are talking bullshit here. You can look into the git repository yourself and see who contributed most lines. And it was Kay Sievers, not even Lennart Poettering.

edit: @nknight followup:

Did you even look into git for yourself? Even with excluding udev the top contributors are:

    613 Fabiano Fidêncio  
    812 Lukas Nykryn
    929 Auke Kok          
   1138 Simon McVittie             
   1149 Marc-Antoine Perennou
   2125 Dan Horák                     
   2215 Thomas Bächler             
   3619 Harald Hoyer
   7924 Michael Biebl
  18850 Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek
  30226 Tomasz Torcz               
 168803 Kay Sievers
 170196 Lennart Poettering

On what planet is that "all by Lennart"?!

Did you read the link?

Kay Sievers wrote udev, which Lennart swallowed into systemd and proceeded to make unusable outside his own pet configurations. Exclude the pre-existing udev, which was and should have remained a separate project, and it's all Lennart.

It feels like you are implying Kay didn't work with Lennart. it's simply not true. The systemd mailling list was created in May 2010 and Kay was already registered and posting there. Check the archives. They were working on systemd from the start in a RedHat-Suse joint effort.

Also udev merge into systemd would have not happened without Kay's consent.

And I don't understand why people get downvoted just beacuse they correct you.

[Edit] Typos

I did not downvote, but my guess is because you obviously did not read the email linked to which showed the numbers with udev excluded.

udev and systemd are two separate projects who happen to live in the same repository (nothing wrong with that!) so you have to remember to exclude udev when looking at contributors for systemd.

I did read it. What does it tells you ? Well that Lennart did the commit of the first original. Has it occurred to you that they could have work together on the design ? That Kay might have reviewed/coded all or part of the prototype ?

The git can not show that. And unless Kay himself state the contrary we will not know. Lennart says Kay was associated to the project from the start. If it were not true, wouldn't have Kay said something by now ?

I don't always agree with directions Lennart goes, or on the methods. But that does not justify ferocious ad hominem attacks I've read.

I do not support the idea that Pottering wrote it without consulting people, but what is certain is that he wrote almost all of the code himself and since your comment talked about looking in git I assumed you were talking about code authorship.

No, it means repeat the errors of the UNIX fragmentation wars.

Actually it's Redhat that went their own lonely path after trying out upstart and switching away, if I remember correctly. (RHEL 6 had it, to be precise)

However, it's not a lonely path in this case, because they chose to govern it in a contributor-friendly manner: no contributor license agreements, commit privileges for non-RH developers (non-RH developers are the majority), cross-distribution collaboration, FOSDEM presence etc. In short: They managed to build a healthy community around the project.

You can see the differences in numbers: http://www.ohloh.net/p/systemd http://www.ohloh.net/p/upstart

I think those systemd stats are skewed by having udev history imported... earliest commit is 10 years ago, which is far older than systemd.