Re: [gentoo-user] Re: from Firefox52: NO pure ALSA?, WAS: Firefox 49.0 & Youtube... Audio: No

[Daniel Campbell]

On 12/16/2016 06:04 PM, Taiidan@×××.com wrote:
> Thoughts:
> Pulseaudio, ahavi, systemd, etc, any and all pottering products - it
> really makes me wonder as to why the developers of every major distro
> suddenly all at once forced them all a community that didn't want or
> need them, with no easy way to disable them.
>
> Firefox is a browser made by those who are all too willing to compromise
> their morals for profit (ads on newtab, google tracking software, pocket
> and telefonia integration, not even as an addon just simply no way to
> remove them), it is long overdue for a major fork. (gnu icecat exists,
> but it needs more developers to be a real fork)
>
> It reminds me of facebook, with each and every update there is yet
> another obscure security/privacy setting or change that a power-user
> needs to fiddle with...
>

It generally comes down to convenience for a lot of maintainers.
Apparently some maintainers (mostly Arch and Debian) had a lot of
problems with the older software and would rather Embrace what was new
than maintain what was old. Others choose to go with the new thing so
they can close a bunch of old bugs or get rid of what they consider 'bad
code'... by replacing it with newer and (at the time) untested code.
Their time, their rules, I suppose. But I don't buy into that.

Additionally, at least one of the projects you listed were actively
suggested and peddled to the greater community. I won't go into
conspiracy stuff since you really don't need to; the facts are damning
enough:

* Poettering and his followers have actively pushed for systemd to be
default init on distributions. This is evidenced by Lennart's joining of
the GNOME Foundation and suggesting that systemd be a dependency of
GNOME back in 2011 [1], and followed of course by Fedora, Red Hat, and
SuSE, given his ties to others in those communities.

* One particular follower caused a lot of drama on Debian's mailing list
a while back, [2] derailing it into systemd-pushing. Said conduct was
*congratulated* and *encouraged* by Mr. Poettering on Google+. [3]

* There was a culture change at Arch after Aaron Griffin took the helm.
Whatever happened during the time between Judd's stepping down (Oct 1st,
2007) and systemd being pushed onto user machines (August of 2012 iirc),
it resulted in a few Arch developers gaining commit access to the main
systemd repository [4] and the general treatment of Fedora and Red Hat
as primary upstream by Arch.

Sources:
[1]
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2011-May/msg00427.html
[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/11/msg00350.html
[3]
https://plus.google.com/+LennartPoetteringTheOneAndOnly/posts/jcCjMct3SJ3
(Ctrl+F "debian-devel"; from Dec 19th 2012)
[4]
"falconindy" -> Dave Reisner
https://github.com/falconindy
https://www.archlinux.org/people/developers/#dreisner

"tomegun" -> Tom Gundersen
https://github.com/teg
https://www.archlinux.org/people/developers/#tomegun

(cross-referenced from
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/graphs/contributors . As such, it
does not count merge-commits, which are irrelevant to this claim.)

---

(Everything laid out above is factual, with credible sources. No libel
or slander is intended in this e-mail. It is meant solely for
informative purposes. My opinion is below, and does not reflect Gentoo
policy or goals whatsoever.)

And again, because someone will inevitably cry foul and not read:

--- ABOVE ARE FACTS; BELOW IS MY OPINION, NOT GENTOO'S ---

Some people don't think software evangelism or peddling is bad. They're
entitled to that opinion. I personally find it horribly myopic, and
would rather a piece of software stand on its own merits, without a
marketing team trying to get people to use it. The push for these pieces
of software (all written by one particular guy...ain't that funny?)
stands out from the typical libre software projects (Random examples:
cgit, fluxbox, pelican, Tox), who at most get one large announcement and
maybe a few reblogs. Some may argue it's because these projects have a
good media team. I think evangelism taints software and detracts from
its merit. There's a fine line between "awareness" and "propaganda", and
it's important to walk it carefully.

These days, systemd evangelism is somewhat dead, unless you're a new
distro. Instead, the angle du jour is to court application makers and
figure out what they want to see in Pulse or systemd or whatever, then
put it in so the application developer will use it. Users are then
forced to adopt the packages or go without the program that they need
and/or use. This was attempted with kdbus (to force udev to run with
systemd -- good thing we forked it!), which has gone back to the drawing
board, and has been very effective with pulse (Steam, Skype, OBS Studio,
now Firefox...) This is a very shrewd practice that works on the
socially or politically unaware, and doubly so when combined with their
"technical or nothing" outlook on community.

Any person -- user or developer -- who chooses to ignore the world
around them in favor of the computer screen in front of them is missing
the rest of the libre software picture. It's all powered by people, and
every project will unavoidably have both its technical and its social
merit tested at some point or another. Ignoring it (or worse, forbidding
it) shows a distinct lack of maturity and introspection, imo. This
applies to both technical and social, though obviously I'm talking about
social merit, which fewer projects get right.

I currently run Pulse because OBS Studio requires it if you're going to
stream output *and* input; a use case that's possible with ALSA but docs
are scant on doing it right. A lot of people don't realize that Pulse is
actually on top of -- and requires -- ALSA. Have you tried using
media-sound/apulse with the new Firefox build(s)? I had a lot of success
with it when I was still purely ALSA; I'd like to return to that, if
only to send a message that homogenization agendas aren't welcome on my
machines. Just keep in mind that it (apulse) was meant solely for Skype.
The fact that it runs with other programs is just a bonus (or it
demonstrates how easily Pulse can be replaced and shim'd... depending on
your outlook).

As for Firefox, I don't really need sound in it. I use (and maintain,
full disclosure!) media-video/smtube and it works really well, though
I've only tested it on youtube so far. There's also net-misc/youtube-dl
if you want to hold onto videos for later. It supports more than
youtube, too! Should there ever be a hard dependency on Pulse, I'll
reject it and find some other browser project. I've been drifting away
from the Web for a year or two now, so I won't personally miss out on
much if I stop using Firefox (except the myriad security problems that
come with a browser + JS). The browser space is long overdue for some
competition. I'll gladly try out alternatives.

Sorry for the essay. I've discussed the subject a lot in the past and
hope that whatever others choose for their software, they choose *after*
investigating the situation and learning more. That way, they're making
the decision for themselves instead of following others. systemd is just
one choice among many, and I'm proud to be part of a distribution that
respects and enables user choice. I wouldn't have become a developer
otherwise.
-- 
Daniel Campbell - Gentoo Developer
OpenPGP Key: 0x1EA055D6 @ hkp://keys.gnupg.net
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