Who are you?!

We are Veteran Unix Admins and we are concerned about what is happening to Debian GNU/Linux to the point of considering a fork of the project.

And why would you do that?

Some of us are upstream developers, some professional sysadmins: we are all concerned peers interacting with Debian and derivatives on a daily basis.

We don't want to be forced to use systemd in substitution to the traditional UNIX SystemV Init, because systemd betrays the UNIX Philosophy.

We contemplate adopting more recent alternatives to SystemV, but not those undermining the basic design principles of "do one thing and do it well" with a complex collection of dozens of tightly coupled binaries and opaque logs.

Are there better solutions than forking?

Yes: vote Ian Jackson's proposal to preserve freedom of choice of init systems.

Then make sure SystemV stays the default, systemd can be optional.

Debian leaders can go on evaluating more init systems, just not impose one that ignores the needs of most of its users.

Why don't you do that yourselves?

We are excluded from voting on the issue: only few of us have the time and patience to interact with Debian on a voluntary basis.

Now we do what we can, hoping our concerns will be heard by those who can cast a vote about it.

Is really all this fuss necessary?

To quote Ian Jackson:

"This resolution is not only important within Debian, and not only for jessie (its next release). It is also important feedback for upstreams, and our peer distros and downstreams".

Why is this happening in your opinion?

The current leadership of the project is heavily influenced by GNOME developers and too much inclined to consider desktop needs as crucial to the project, despite the fact that the majority of Debian users are tech-savvy system administrators.

Can you articulate your critique to systemd?

To paraphrase Eric S. Raymond on the issue, we see systemd being very prone to mission creep and bloat and likely to turn into a nasty hairball over the longer term.

We like controlling the startup of the system with shell scripts that are readable, because readability grants a certain level of power and consciousness for those among us who are literate, and we believe that centralizing control services, sockets, devices, mounts, etc., all within one daemon is a slap in the face of the UNIX Philosophy.

How long are your beards?

This is not a beard contest, rest assured the furry ones among us are not sheeps.

To sum it up?

If systemd will be substituting SystemV in Debian, we will fork the project and create a new distro: Pure Debian by Veteran Unix Admins.

We hope this won't be necessary, but we are well prepared for it.

We need to talk.

Sure, write an email to .

Are you guys alone in this?

Not at all, there are more protests against the imposition of systemd on users.

There is the boycott systemd website providing several references.

Then there is the "systemd fork" called UselessD.

The wikipedia page lists also some critiques in its systemd reception page.

With our protest we intend to represent the discontent of Debian users, because that's who we are. We intend to keep using Debian on our servers, or a Pure Debian fork if necessary. Others might have other goals, but we all share a common problem: systemd and its fundamental betrayal of the UNIX Philosophy.

Thanks for doing this. How can I help?

Cheers.

You can help by talking with fellow Debian developers and convincing them of how wrong is to betray their biggest userbase by listening to desktop needs.

Also it can be helpful to monitor and update the Wikipedia page about systemd.

How does people react to your protest?

Here below some of the messages we are receiving. If you write us please specify if you allow us to quote your nick, else we may quote you anonymously.

   I'm with you guys in the way that systemd is not the way forward. But I do
   not think that sysvinit is the way forward either. Maybe another init
   system? Like GNU DMD? I know its still pretty immature, but I think it's a
   good init system. I don't think sysvinit is ever going to make a comeback.

   And forking Debian? That's a very hard feat. Debian is the biggest Linux
   distro to date with hundreds of developers and at least 10 times as much
   users. And you'll have to change a lot of things from upstream. Even
   Ubuntu decided to use systemd instead of having to change the base init to
   upstart. Perhaps going to Slackware instead? That's what I use. Its very
   UNIX like. If that's what you strive for.

   Thank you so much for this. I've been using Debian since Hamm and this
   systemd nonsense has me ready to jump ship.

I don't know who is behind that email, but sincerely, thank you for doing this.
I'm an UNIX/Linux sysadmin for nearly 20 years, I am nowadays dealing with a
5k servers which consists of nearny 90% debian systems. I've been a long time
opponent to systemd, first because I read the code (thing that too few of that
crap's zealots do), and ultimately because I tried it. That thing is a desktop
toy, and even then, it has failed me on 50% of the cases. Its very nature is an
abomination to UNIX principles and me and my team, colleagues, friends on the
sysadmin field are *VERY* worried (to say the least) on what's coming.
Please keep that movement going, make it strong, and if you want a hand, count
me in.

Again, thank you.

   I've been using runit as my init system on debian wheezy/jessie for a
   while now and it works pretty well. glad to see the effort though
   on debianfork.org . cool.

Do you realize that there's already more than 150 Debian derivative?
Instead of doing one more, you're better off helping one of the already
existing derivatives. Writing "fork" is the joke part, since that would
only be a derivative, unless every Debian Developer follows you, which
will *not* happen.

Also, instead of just writing words on the internet, wouldn't you think
that helping some of the systemd alternative be a lot more productive?

FYI, I don't like systemd either. And I've been maintaining OpenRC in
Debian, and trying to push for it to work on as many arch as possible.
Though I currently don't have the time for it (for professional and
personal reasons), and some others are a bit taking over the work, but
it's not going as fast as it should. Some help would be awesome, and
would help a way better than writing funny text on the net.

I will support you guys with code if the fork goes ahead. But kindly
think of another name.