undefined | Better HN

0 pointsviraptor12y ago0 comments

I don't believe the CLA was the main reason for starting systemd. Otherwise they'd just fork upstart and continue to work on it without signing anything. CLA has nothing to do with technical features either.

I'm not sure why the same maintainer matters for merging. Take openstack as a counter-example. It's mostly the same pool of contributors working on a number of related projects. Not only have they been split into components (nova, nova-volume, nova-network -> nova, cinder, quantum projects), common functionality has been split into separate library projects of their own (oslo-messaging, oslo-logging, etc.) with their own releases, versioning, leadership. This is what I really like and it's exactly the opposite of what systemd is doing (merging device, network, logging, etc. into one system).

If systemd is modular (doesn't require logind) and logind is standalone (requiring only systemd as a library) - what's the point of bundling them. (apart from making it harder for others to use) Systemd owns too much at the same time and I believe it's going to lead to problems in the future.

0 comments

3 comments · 1 top-level

cwyers12y ago· 2 in thread

From Scott Remnant, who wrote Upstart when he worked at Canonical[1]:

"I don't think we ever disagreed enough for me to refuse patches from them - it was very much a case of they had different ideas to me, and couldn't contribute them because of the CLA

If the CLA wasn't there, we'd've just tugged and pulled and fought about patches like normal projects, and Upstart would have turned out much like systemd - I'd've been okay with that :)"

The CLA is absolutely why systemd exists. systemd didn't fork because there was no benefit to anyone in sharing code -- Upstart wouldn't take their patches. There are technical differences, but those could have been handled in code (like Scott says) if the CLA hadn't existed.

1 https://plus.google.com/+KaySievers/posts/C3chC26khpq

viraptorOP12y ago

I just don't buy it. The license allows them to clone upstart. Why would they care about upstream taking their patches if they were ready to start a new project anyway? If technically there was no problem for upstart to be the successful project, then what was the reason they didn't simply rename it and start from there? Dropping the whole history and starting from scratch doesn't seem like a reasonable choice in that case.

cwyers12y ago

...so you're saying that you don't buy the statements of both the people who started the systemd project AND the person who was running Upstart at the time, about what prevented them from collaborating?

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse