Why Elektra is the wrong approach (Was Re: The Strengths and Weakness of Fedora/RHEL OS management)

Nicolas Mailhot nicolas.mailhot at laposte.net
Mon Apr 3 18:26:55 UTC 2006


Le lundi 03 avril 2006 à 14:51 -0300, Avi Alkalay a écrit :
> Nicolas, is very hard to discuss opinions and that was your opinion. I
> respect that, even if I can't understand in what you based this
> opinion.

Actual shipping software which already behaves like this (server-side,
where closed app vendors are already investing in integration), some
years working in a software editor etc...

It's way cheaper to write blindly "safe" parameters in a conf file (safe
for your part of the system that is) than try to behave nicely with the
rest of the system (which may more often than not include the products
of your competitors). Especially on the desktop if your bit works and
other don't the user will blame the other bits.

The way all existing proprietary software for Linux systematically lags
two or three generations behind the FOSS offerings on the integration
front (core libs used, oss->alsa migration, core fonts -> fontconfig
migration, ia32 -> amd64 transition, selinux...) should tell you where
the keyboard manufacturer priorities will be.

> My opinion is based mostly in observable
> evidence on what happened in the Windows world (the good parts), and a
> bit of intuition.

My opinion is based mostly in observable evidence on what happened in
the Windows world (the bad parts), and the fact a lot of the good parts
only materialised after MS waving a big stick before app vendors. Plus
all I've seen on the Linux front. Your example adds the windows-like
"liberty" to fool around and removes the current big stick
(clearinghouses).

If elektra succeeds I predict this will be because big organised
projects like Gnome or KDE adopt it and force some centralized
decisions, not because various app vendors use it to poke holes in
settings they shouldn't be allowed to change in the first place.

And I'll freely admit there is demand from app vendors to get the means
to fool around like this, except the world in general and my desktop in
particular will be a better place if this stays denied to them.

upstream, upstream, upstream as Fedora decided, you should listen to the
people at Red Hat which actually have experience on the Linux
integration front and take the long term view. Short-circuiting the
integration process like you propose is a bad proposition for everyone
(including your vendor). Even if its windows habits make it lean this
way.

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot
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