How to handle KDE not respecting YOUR distros requirements?

[Martin Graesslin]

On Friday, March 25, 2016 1:42:30 PM CEST Eric Hameleers wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Mar 2016, Martin Graesslin wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I stumbled over a blog post by a KDE distro packager and want to do a
> > verbatim quote of one section:
> > "[] does not have a steenking systemd you crazy KDE developer"
> > 
> > I can see there some frustration about Plasma requiring systemd and the
> > distro not wanting that. First of all: that's not the case, we don't have
> > any dependency on systemd. We have a few runtime dependencies to logind's
> > dbus interface (like in this case) and are extremely open to other
> > solutions. For example the repository in question also supports
> > consolekit2.
> > 
> > Now what's wrong with the approach in the blog post:
> > 1. It creates an us vs. them! Let's not do that, let's work together to
> > solve problems. E.g. by raising concerns on this mailing list
> > 
> > 2. Insults don't help your case! If you call devs crazy you don't have to
> > be surprised that your distro's use case will be ignored. After all I'm
> > crazy ;-) Also it doesn't support your wish to have more supported than
> > logind. Reactions like that just manifest the feeling that the
> > non-systemd people are a crowd of people which cannot do anything except
> > yelling. Sorry to be that blunt.
> > 
> > 3. If your distro doesn't follow what 99 % of all other distros do, don't
> > expect we write code for it!
> > 
> > In the case of e.g. logind it's relatively easy: no Plasma dev is using a
> > non- logind system. Don't expect that we go the extra mile to support the
> > minority cases. If you want to have something else supported, write the
> > code and submit patches. We are happy about them. We don't care whether
> > you use logind, consolekit or yabadabadu. If there is code for it, we can
> > integrate it.
> > 
> > But please don't expect that new code will consider anything than what is
> > used by the vast majority of our users. Don't start jumping around
> > because of that, but help us to support more.
> > 
> > Thank you!
> > Martin
> 
> Thank you for affirming your moral superiority, again.
> 
> A few posts ago there was a lot of brouhaha about the realization that
> KDE developers should take care not to leave the BSD's in the cold -
> and the next moment you are telling me that Slackware (which is what
> we are talking about) is to blame for not accepting systemd and that
> all the consequences are for us because you are not going to support a
> minority Linux distro?
> 
> Way to go Martin.

Hi Eric,

could you please tune down a little bit? Thank you.

If you read my mail again you will notice that I did not mention Slackware at 
all. I shortened the quote from your blog post to not include the distro name, 
because I didn't want to give blame to anyone. I wanted to address the us vs. 
them attitude expressed in your blog post.

Now lets look at what we have here. The functionality in question was 
introduced with https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/124915/ - you will notice 
that we did not consider the case that a system doesn't have loginctl at all 
(this is absolutely not about sytemd, really not!). At the same time we looked 
at variations in distros like whether you have sudo or not. Most likely it was 
a plain oversight caused by us living in our own little bubble ;-)

Which means also the BSDs currently see the same message. There is no first 
class/second class going on.

If you read my mail again I also don't blame Slackware to not use systemd. To 
repeat again: "We don't care whether you use logind, 
consolekit or yabadabadu"

And I mean that! It's not just empty words. We did accept the consolekit2 code 
without any discussions, in fact on the very first review request about 
consolekit2 I asked whether the dev would please also add integration into 
kscreenlocker and kwin, see https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/124388/

So I kindly ask you as well to please stop assuming we want to force anybody 
to use systemd. The only thing we ask you is to raise such issues on our 
mailing list - either this one or more developer specific. If you don't tell 
us, we don't notice it's a problem.

And here it's absolutely important to get your work. We don't have a system 
without logind. We won't be able to test a patch. I don't even know whether 
the respective feature can work at all without consolekit2 or logind. So 
please come to us and give us the input. But don't rant, not even on your 
distro blog post which we are not supposed to ever see.

> I do not see how this is an insult, sorry Martin.

I wrote the patch in question, of course I read that as a personal insult 
calling me crazy. I hope you can imagine how it must feel to me reading your 
blog post, seeing my (useful) feature described like that, me as the developer 
attacked. If you don't want to insult devs, don't write like that.

Cheers
Martin
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