Mastodawn

серафими многоꙮчитїи 12h ago

[object Object]

the thing you must understand now is that regardless of their stated views, liars like Bryan Lunduke, Lennart Poettering, and Dylan M Taylor have demonstrated by their actions that they all have the same goal: a fascist software ecosystem that operates against our interests and exploits but does not empower our labor. it is the destruction of FOSS as we know it.

1/

[object Object]20h ago

Bryan Lunduke has always treated FOSS like a right-wing political project. he has also always misrepresented his goals as technical ones. the current moment is very convenient for him: he is using the valid need for an alternative to systemd to funnel people into fascist-controlled software ecosystems like Devuan and Artix. under no circumstances will Lunduke ever acknowledge the many init alternatives and distributions run by marginalized leftists. this is the game he has played for years.

2/

[object Object]20h ago

systemd has always been a lever of power; there’s no other reason to create an ecosystem of its shape. the person who grasps that lever is Lennart Poettering, and it always has been. I don’t need to write much on this; I watched the “oh shit” moment last week when systemd started accepting slop code, and again when an age verification mechanism was imposed on every systemd user and distro on Poettering’s final word. this was always the social structure on offer, enforced by a rigid ecosystem.
3/

[object Object]20h ago

when Dylan M Taylor (the author of the age verification code in systemd, Ubuntu, and Arch, and a defender of Google’s dreadful new restrictions for Android apps) and others in his wake compare his age verification implementation with an age gate on an adult site, they know full well that adult content online is a gray area rapidly verging towards illegal as US states and other repressive regimes implement age verification laws.

4/ (Taylor cont.)

[object Object]20h ago

they are fully aware that said laws disproportionately punish individual online creators. they must be aware of these things, as they are presenting themselves as experts on the downstream effects of age verification when they state that it’s just like an age gate that can easily be bypassed.

you must understand that the unfairness is the point. you must understand that you are the individual, marginalized online creator who will be punished. that is the point of all this.

5/

[object Object]20h ago

at this point I have no remaining patience for the “if you don’t like it just fork it” crowd. patches don’t fix any of this. the only thing that does is to refuse; to get angry and organize. none of these people deserve your advocacy or your loyalty. they do not give a shit about technical merit, the FOSS ecosystem, your contributions, or you. there is only one goal, and it’s very clear what it is.

end

@zzt I hate this so much, thank you for writing such a clear analysis of the situation.

I had a feeling things were going wrong with slop being accepted into systemd, and worse when "left" media personalities started citing the fascist Lunduke as a source.

@taylorlorenz this is why you shouldn't platform that piece of shit.

staringatclouds 5h ago

@zzt So how do we remove Bryan Lunduke, Lennart Poettering, and Dylan M Taylor from the "I can push through any changes to the Linux core I like" chain ?

Stephen Foskett 20h ago

@zzt I hear ya pal. Having a similar discussion on systemd this morning right here.

Jules 🍺11h ago

@sfoskett @zzt yes, me to, along the lines of small groups of three make changes to Foss projects all the time like its fixing a bug, also if we had to have a committee for all minor changes nothing would get done.
Its so devisive and misleading, suggest we drop d.conf, I've never liked it, to much like the MS registery
#dropDconf

Dualtronic 16h ago

@zzt When we used to shout this off the rooftops, people were all, "no no, see, it's *progress*! there are Good Reasons(tm)!"

Steven Reed 15h ago

@felix @zzt I was one of those, I'm afraid to say. Now rapidly reconsidering my positions and wondering if I'm too old to learn a BSD :(

Steven Reed 15h ago

@felix @zzt (actually, mostly, it's reinforcing my desire to set all the tech in my life on fire and run away to farm goats)

@srtcd424
If you're not too old to learn about farming and goats, you're not too old to learn a different OS ;)
@felix @zzt

Chuckles 7h ago

@viq @srtcd424 @felix @zzt technology is so much easier than goats, or more specifically a goat.

Dualtronic 15h ago

@srtcd424 I've been considering a switch to BSD for years, but it's hard after a quarter century on Linux. Thankfully there are still a few distros that managed to keep the systemd alien parasite at bay.

Steven Reed 15h ago

@felix for me, going back to something non-declarative after nixos though would feel like a huge step backwards. I don't want to get sucked into ansible or anything equally icky in order to make my stuff reproducible :(

@srtcd424 @felix haha, lately I've been wondering if I could run liminix (uses s6-rc) on my laptop. But right now I can barely run it on my router so I guess I should fix that first.

(As you probably already knew, a lot of nixpkgs works just fine without nixos, it's the modules/services that are coupled to the init system/service manager)

Siroj42 12h ago

@srtcd424 You could try Guix. It's similar in principle to NixOS (but with Guile scheme instead of the Nix language) and it doesn't use systemd, instead it uses shepherd which is itself written in Guile. Package availability is pretty good, although the default package repo excludes non-free packages. Service availability is more limited I'd say, but on the upside, a home-manager equivalent and a deployment tool are included by default.

@felix @srtcd424 give Chimera Linux a try: built on musl libc, with BSD-based userland tools, and with Dinit as init system

Dualtronic 13h ago

@jmc @srtcd424 I just might, thanks! Been looking at Chimera twice or thrice lately, and their recent statements regarding current developments are very encouraging.

Gregório 14h ago

@srtcd424 @felix @zzt same, but going to Gentoo, despite the learning courve that I know awaits me.

Ps.: what’s the issue with Artix and fascism? I considered them, but dismissed the idea after not finding an explicit anti-AI policy from them.

@srtcd424 @felix @zzt never too old to learn a BSD!
Arguably easier to understand than Linux to be honest

@srtcd424 So far, Alpine has been the easiest install I've ever done, and I started in the '90s. Just FYI :)
@felix @zzt

Dualtronic 10h ago

@KatS I've played with Alpine, thanks. It's another potential option.

anniethebruce 14h ago

@zzt I've never hated it like some, but the number of things it seems to want to control always bothered me.

Never thought of it as a tool to corrupt things, more a technical concern. Which I think is still more or less valid, but this... If systemd integrates the age verification too deeply, it's going to be a problem for distros that don't want this. Yes, open source allows that to be ripped out, but being able to do it doesn't always mean it's actually feasible to do so.

Simon Richter 15h ago

@zzt wait how is Devuan fascist-controlled?

(my feeling is more "so understaffed that they have to follow systemd's lead in more aspects than they'd like to")

Steven Reed 15h ago

@GyrosGeier @zzt I'm old enough that I have a bit of blind spot to left/right politics in older software projects, so yeah, for me too it would be great to see some elaboration on these points. I've annoyingly become a nixos convert in recent years, which is very systemd dependent. I guess I need to go look at some of the weird forks (guix itself would probably be a step too far for this ageing brain.)

@srtcd424 @GyrosGeier @zzt devuan was also supporting xlibre, I believe, which is a fascist project.

I have no idea if Devuan is actually fascist or just dangerously naive but either way I don’t trust them.

Simon Richter 13h ago

@benjamineskola @srtcd424 @zzt my impression (from reading the mailing list) is that they are mostly reacting to authoritarians infringing on their freedom, but not extrapolating that to resisting any form of authoritarianism.

@GyrosGeier @srtcd424 @zzt Yeah, I can imagine that. There’s definitely still somehow a kind of person who can think ‘keep politics out of tech’ and convinces themselves that ‘no DEI’ means being politically neutral, or something like that.

LIΞBΔCH 12h ago

@srtcd424 @GyrosGeier @zzt Oh, yes, that thing about age... not necessarily chronological age, but just having been in open source environments for over 25 years. I remember reading ESR's Cathedral & Bazaar thing and thinking he was a good guy, who just liked guns a bit much. It was a different time, and, in hindsight, not in a good way.

I think I'll go all-in on Gentoo in the future. They seem to have the right taste in things.

Michael Dexter 5h ago

@GyrosGeier @zzt Links regarding the controversy?

@zzt I’m stunned devuan is still a thing. I ran the shitdevuansays account on Twitter and they had no fucking clue what they were doing

cholling 11h ago

@zzt Devuan is fascist-controlled? I must admit I know nothing about who's behind it. What's a good source?

cholling 11h ago

@zzt Also, what init systems are run by marginalized leftists? Definitely want to check them out.

🔮 oracle of dylphi :crumb_dancing: 🇬🇾6h ago

@zzt

i apologise to my followers for unwittingly directing them towards a project with no code of conduct that actively courts fascists

as some restorative justice, i will write a guide on moving over from Debian straight to another server distro like Alpine or possibly even Void, and i will also move my webserver off of Devuan as soon as possible. This systemd thing now sucks in like seven dimensions

GhostOnTheHalfShell 13h ago

You know I just had this weird thought because I seem to be suffering a little bit of insomnia tonight.

You know how Europe is undertaking an organized effort to drop kick American tech and they are heading straight to Linux. Their incentive to wreck FOSS is very high already. But maybe Europe’s response has some given them even more motivation.

Moses Izumi 12h ago

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @zzt
Everybody gangsta until the obscure German companies who make Amiga accelerator cards and resell the Kickstart firmware start presenting themselves as champions of digital sovereignty.

Arcanoloth 5h ago

@zzt Quelle surprise…