Re: State of skarnet.org projects

[fungal-net <fungalnet@obarun.org>]

Laurent Bercot:
>> I'd like to know what is your view and feeling of this expanding base,
>> what does it mean to you, and whether you see an influence of the
>> project by the growing popularity.  If I can interpret this announcement
>> correctly you seem already to be reacting to the Debian s6 incorporation
>> fiasco more than the projects who have treated s6 with greater respect.
> 
>  I don't quite understand what you mean.
>  I love that the s6 base is expanding, I really appreciate that we have
>  a community around it, and I've always been committed to supporting it.

I mean ...  (why is this Arlo Guthrie kind of voice coming into my head,
I mean ....), I think constructive criticism (public) of 66 is over due,
being the piece of software that can make someone from UX0 (windows XP)
switch to linux/s6 in an hour and not get lost.  It was Dec2018 I first
tried it, and that was late beta testing.  It is 2020 now.  What 66 does
with a short command it may take someone months to recreate with runit.

>  I keep repeating that I'm always willing to help people who are trying
> to integrate s6 in their projects; it just so happens that, for many
> excellent reasons, I don't get many requests. But when people reach out
> to me, I try to make good on the promise: for instance, making
> s6-linux-init sysvinit-compatible was a request from Adélie Linux; it
> took about two weeks of vacation time and a few week-ends; 100% worth,
> because that's what made it possible to have s6 as init in Adélie, which
> I'm very happy with and grateful to the whole Adélie community for.

Compiling and installing very very commonly used software in Adélie is
for a very limited UX spectrum.  Some of us are at an age where we don't
have that much time to wait for Adélie to mature... Not Adélie's
problem, I know.

>  The big pain point for further s6 integration in distros, as _every
> single one_ of those I contacted told me, is the user interface, and that
> UX return is basically driving my career. It is a big project that will
> need a lot of focused, uninterrupted time, so I'm currently trying to
> max out my earnings over 3 years so I'm able to take a whole year off to
> work on that project.

Even if contra-IBM hired you and paid you 6 figures to do "all" of it
for "all" UX levels, I think you would need a team to be able to keep up
with "all" of it.  It would be very inefficient use of your paid time to
waste three days to figure out what "plasma" needs today, it didn't need
yesterday, in order to work.  Unless you are planning your own
skar-desktop for the next 5 years.  3+1 = 5 ... why do those 5year
projects remind me of something :)

>  The Debian thing is a minor annoyance; it took two week-ends and a couple
> evenings to address it. You see me address minor annoyances more than The
> Big Request because it's all I have time and energy for while working on
> an outside contract. Maintenance things, tweaks around the edges, light
> QoL adjustments, and community support on IRC; no big developments.

At a quarter thousandth of UX it took me 10' to move execline to another
directory, but I don't love debian any more today than I did 3 years ago
when my wheezy finally terminally broke.

>  So, in that context, I don't understand your point; could you clarify?

Exactly what you said, you can spend 3 weekends and some dark mornings
to always be fixing what Debian devs will mess up in 23" and will not
have to respond to your inquiries.  Portability to Apple and android
should not be an issue for s6.  **F*** them!  I'll hold the oil lamp so
you don't miss!  If you get rich putting IBM out of business I would be
the happiest homeless bicyclist out there.

>  On a related note, it should now be obvious that the main obstacle to
> further s6 growth is the lack of time I can spend on it, and that comes
> directly from the need to self-fund. As a consequence (and I'm addressing
> the whole community here), if you like s6 - or other projects of mine -
> and want to see it become more widely adopted, the best thing you can do
> is find me sponsors! Long-term sponsoring would allow me to work on these
> projects full-time, and *then* they would take off.

 “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.”

― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

>  Laurent

Stop being reasonable, you are scaring me!  With the little I know,
always learning and catching up, the power that hides between you and
Eric is enough to stop the open/free software industry on its feet and
turn it around towards a healthier direction.  Not in 5, not in 4 years,
but by the end of Spring 2020.  Then you can let me mediate how much you
and Eric, and under what terms, are you willing to accept an exclusive
interview by Distrowatch.  Your turn to hold the lamp!