Systemd and ConsoleKit

Posted May 5, 2011 16:56 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
In reply to: Systemd and ConsoleKit by marcH
Parent article: Systemd and ConsoleKit

I do not blame Lennart for the great software he writes for free. I do not even blame him for how fast and how much software he buries. I was only blaming him for his extremely naive "just a free offer" above. No drug dealer is that naive.

Since when has having started a piece of free software implied that you must maintain it forever? If Lennart finds a more convenient (to him) way of doing what ConsoleKit is doing then he should be free to do what he thinks makes sense.

No one complained when Linus Torvalds decided he would much rather continue hacking on the Linux kernel than work on Git; instead, other people stepped up to take over. Similarly, if someone else wants to hang on to the original ConsoleKit they can go on using and developing that for as long as they wish. Last I checked it was under the GPL, so they don't even need Lennart's actual consent.

Finally, as has been mentioned many times before, systemd can work with unchanged old-style init scripts. It is reasonable to assume that there will also be a migration path from ConsoleKit to a version of systemd that contains the equivalent functionality (however it will be implemented). Hence chances are that most current ConsoleKit users will be unlikely to even notice the difference.