Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Optional /usr merge in Gentoo

[Alan McKinnon]

On 20/08/2013 16:08, Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 2013-08-19 4:54 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote:
>> On 19/08/2013 18:39, Tanstaafl wrote:
>>> On 2013-08-19 9:36 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote:
>>>> For your other question, you don't need an initramfs if your /usr is
>>>> not
>>>> split off and drivers for your fs on / and chipset are compiled in.
>>>> That
>>>> will stay true for ages to come (until some joker starts shipping
>>>> kernel
>>>> drivers in /var....)
>
>>> Right, but that wasn't my question, my question was will I be able to
>>> continue using eudev (or mdev, or whatever)...
>
>> Surely that depends on how well-maintained eudev remains in the future?
>> And is therefore best answered by the package maintainers?
>
> You misunderstand.
>
> I'm concerned about feature/dependency creep, where all of a sudden the
> Gentoo Council makes a decision (or is forced into a decision) that
> makes it *impossible* for eudev (or any alternative) to work without
> systemd.
>
> Or even worse, I actually had a dream (nightmare?) last night about an
> email to the list that went something like:
>
> "Announcement: The Gentoo Council, in its infinite wisdom, has decided
> to make Fedora Core the official upstream for Gentoo. This is being done
> to make all of our lives easier, and so that we can all have GNOME on
> the desktop."
>
> <shudder>
>


I just woke up from a wonderful daydream where I relived the catastrophe
that was the demise of Xfree86. Remember that, in 2004?

The project lead had been having a passive-aggressive dick-waving fight
with Keith Packard (core member) for months, then banned Keith for
committing XFixes without getting maintainer-lead blessing first.
Shortly after that, the lead introduced a license change very much like
the obnoxious advertising clause in 3-clause MIT. The community had had
enough by now and collectively said "f... this for a carry on", and
forked XFree86 to X.Org. Within a month, XFree86 was deaddeaddead,
virtually all distros started switching over, the core members voted 4
months later to disband themselves and XFfree86 source repo has had
about 2 1/2 commits in the 9 years since.

What I am saying is "don't worry". These things have a habit of fixing
themselves and nature restores the balance.

Gentoo has already been forked - Sabayon, Funtoo, Exherbo.
Gnome has already been forked - Unity, Cinnamon, Mate.
udev has already been forked - eudev and replicated - mdev

If what you fear comes to pass then many folk will have had enough and
will fork, so you are sorted.
Or what you fear does not come to pass, and there's nothing to worry about.
Or someone reigns a rogue dev in, and it all goes back to being OK.

Either way, you are still sorted. Gnome/Fedora is not Bob Mugabe - you
are not obliged to do what he wants or even to listen to a damn thing he
says.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@×××××.com