Re: (Really) Free Software future

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Alfred M. Szmidt <address@hidden> writes:

>    > I agree that systemd has quality/complexity issues, but it is not
>    > vendor lock-in. It is free software so you can fork it – and if your
>    > fork would be better, distributions would use it and Red Hat would
>    > stay alone with their original systemd.
>
>    In your dreams. How can you compete with a company having full-time
>    software developers with your own free time??
>    It is a vendor lock-in. Period!
>
> There are many projects that have grown large, and it would be
> impossilble for a single person to do the same amount of work -- but
> that is not the same as being locked to a vendor.  You can still try
> and do the work, you can get others to help you, or you can hire other
> hackers to do it for you.
>
> With systemd, and really any free software, you are not dependant on
> some other organization to do your bidding -- you can do it yourself.

I agree.  I’d also like to point out that this has in fact been done
already.  Elogind exists — it was carved out of systemd — and it is
sufficient to use GNOME.  It’s a rather healthy project in its own
right.

Elogind and the corresponding parts of systemd provide a service of
actual value to GNOME, so it is not surprising that they use it and
depend on it.  I would not call this lock-in, just like any other
dependency on free software tools or services would be an instance of
lock-in.

FWIW this is what the elogind README has to say:

   You're welcome to use elogind for whatever purpose you like -- as-is,
   or as a jumping-off point for other things -- but please don't use it
   as part of some anti-systemd vendetta. We are appreciative of the
   systemd developers logind effort and think that everyone deserves to
   run it if they like. No matter what kind of PID1 they use.

:)

--
Ricardo