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Debian still having trouble with merged /usr

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Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr

#71

Post by madeofpalk »

ssl232 wrote: post #39
sph wrote: post #4

Democracy is pretty decent, but comes with some big flaws: tyranny of the minority, enormous amounts of back-and-forth to get anything done, big egos at any level can stop progress. Debian is the very example of it. Case in point: other distros forced the usr migration and very few problems were had. Debian put the idea through a committee, of course a minority wanted to keep the old behaviour so Debian decided to su…

How much of Python's success is down to the BDFL(-delegate) approach of governance? It seems a lot of projects have adopted it and Python's PEP system for managing new features. I wonder if Debian could use a similar sort of elected presidential system.

Much of product development is about having a Product Owner, much like a BDFL, who makes the calls when a call needs to be made.

Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr

#72

Post by mwcampbell »

scandox wrote: post #70
necovek wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to keep in mind is that eyesight is a continuum between better than 20/20 to completely blind like you. That means that without going the only-the-perfect-survive route, there are always going to be issues with how the world operates. For any given human problem, it's probably rare that it's optimized for even half the population. Doesn't help you, being on the extreme of the eyesight problem, but the fact…

I think parent poster is actually only partially blind

Correct. Legally blind, meaning, for example, that I can't drive, but with enough sight to read text up close if it's large enough. Edit to add: I do increasingly depend on a screen reader, though not yet for my actual programming work.

ETA 2: Sorry for the confusion in the original comment. I've become wary of terms like "visually impaired", because they wreak of over-sensitivity and political correctness. But there's also something to be said for accurately and clearly communicating the actual condition.

Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr

#73

Post by necovek »

nix23 wrote: post #32
Eduard wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments section is only two levels deep and we have already arrived at Godwin's law.

I don't compare you with a nazi, but you should understand that minority's can take over a country, that's what the nazis did but also the communists in romanov-russia...china is more complicated. It's something completely different, but maybe "nazi" is a red flag for you in comments...because not comfy. EDIT: And more actual, the Taliban's in Afghanistan, an absolute minority but the one with weapons, training, conn…

If you define majority as 50%+1, and minority as 50%-1, almost all democracies in the world have the minority in the power (unless they get 100% turn out rate with all votes contributing to parliamentary seats). Winning 60% of votes with a turn out of 70% voters is only 42% of the population.

Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr

#74

Post by scandox »

mwcampbell wrote: post #45
agumonkey wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tyranny of the minority this is a trendy thing too, very often minorities who felt ignored, are now pushing to get more because of the tiranny of the majority had flaws (but to me is mostly unavoidable due to the natural economies of scale it grants). I don't know how one can design a social system where you balance both in the right way.

> the tiranny of the majority had flaws (but to me is mostly unavoidable due to the natural economies of scale it grants). In a different context, this is a source of frustration for me as a (partially) blind person advocating accessibility for blind people. The world is designed around the assumption, correct for most people, that people have the high-bandwidth, low-latency sense of sight. And that does lead to the…

First of all I think Eugenics would/will quickly lead to something akin to runaway selection: people will make increasingly absurd decisions mainly driven by status markers / perceptual drift and the human race will breed itself into some mad corner. So I don't believe Eugenics is ever going to do what even its most ardent supporters imagine.

Second of all the human race does not have some over-arching goals we need to meet like a business. It is or should be like a club run for the benefit of the members: let's create good conditions for people. We can tolerate a bit of complexity and diversity.

Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr

#75

Post by hoseja »

sph wrote: post #48
ssl232 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of Python's success is down to the BDFL(-delegate) approach of governance? It seems a lot of projects have adopted it and Python's PEP system for managing new features. I wonder if Debian could use a similar sort of elected presidential system.

I am of the opinion that BDFL style governance is best in software. In the real world the problem is a bit more hairy, but if you have an issue with a tyrant in open source, you can just fork the project. A BDFL solves the bureaucracy problem (they mandate, everybody implements) and the big ego problem (the biggest ego is at the top by definition). Also BDFL can have vision, something a committee will never have. In…

What does Jobs have to do with software.

Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr

#76

Post by necovek »

mschuster91 wrote: post #8
sph wrote: post #4

Democracy is pretty decent, but comes with some big flaws: tyranny of the minority, enormous amounts of back-and-forth to get anything done, big egos at any level can stop progress. Debian is the very example of it. Case in point: other distros forced the usr migration and very few problems were had. Debian put the idea through a committee, of course a minority wanted to keep the old behaviour so Debian decided to su…

> Democracy is pretty decent, but comes with some big flaws: tyranny of the minority, enormous amounts of back-and-forth to get anything done, big egos at any level can stop progress. The problem is not in democracy itself as a concept. In both the open-source world and in society itself, the problems arise only when the demos (the population) either grow disinterested in democracy or is small in numbers. As for "tyr…

There is the political/sociological meaning of the word "minority" that you seem to refer to, and there is the linguistic/logical/mathematical meaning (those who are not in majority or a small group).

I am pretty sure the use in the phrase you object to is of the latter form.

Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr

#77

Post by hoseja »

dataflow wrote: post #54
ssl232 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of Python's success is down to the BDFL(-delegate) approach of governance? It seems a lot of projects have adopted it and Python's PEP system for managing new features. I wonder if Debian could use a similar sort of elected presidential system.

I mean, C++ is designed by committee, and it's hard to deny that it's been pretty successful too, regardless of what people's opinions on the language are. Both styles have flaws, but both can be adequate if you put in the right incentives and the right people.

C++ committee is an interface for several powerful interest groups. Where you don't have those, a committee is probably impractical.

Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr

#78

Post by rnhmjoj »

Saint_Genet wrote: post #27
isr wrote: post #19

Sigh ... gobolinux solved this quite elegantly over 20 years ago, and to this day most folks don't quite grok how simple and elegant their solution was.

Having potentially hundreds of copies of popular shared libraries on disk isn't particularly elegant when you find a bug in those libraries

I'm sure how you're getting to this conclusion. GoboLinux filesystem hierarchy just separates executables and shared objects by name and version [1]; unlike the standard FHS where everything goes into /usr/lib, /usr/bin, etc.

For backward compatibility there are symlinks (that takes no disk space) to the standard directories, but these are hidden by the kernel so they don't show up and clutter your file manager.

[1]: https://gobolinux.org/at_a_glance.html [2]: https://gobolinux.org/doc/articles/gobohide.html

Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr

#79

Post by hoseja »

scandox wrote: post #74
mwcampbell wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the tiranny of the majority had flaws (but to me is mostly unavoidable due to the natural economies of scale it grants). In a different context, this is a source of frustration for me as a (partially) blind person advocating accessibility for blind people. The world is designed around the assumption, correct for most people, that people have the high-bandwidth, low-latency sense of sight. And that does lead to the…

First of all I think Eugenics would/will quickly lead to something akin to runaway selection: people will make increasingly absurd decisions mainly driven by status markers / perceptual drift and the human race will breed itself into some mad corner. So I don't believe Eugenics is ever going to do what even its most ardent supporters imagine. Second of all the human race does not have some over-arching goals we need…

The main problem I see is breeding better citizens for totalitarian states.

Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr

#80

Post by richardfey »

Instead of all this drama the person that cannot see any way forward, despite a valid example of Ubuntu making this work, should be removed from the critical path by the instrument of a fork. Otherwise it will just be a matter of time before another bike-shedding, multiple years-spanning incident happens again.

By creating a fork and proving that it works, the discussion becomes about whether to merge patches or adopt the fork rather than sterile "what if"s.

Edit: added last paragraph

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