As someone who thinks PulseAudio is conceptually flawed, I don't really get the way old linuxers hate on systemd. I mean ok, from a user perspective certain common things in systemd could have been friendlier, but I always got the things I needed to work and it is clearly a powerful system. While I don't really like the way Poettering handles projects, I think nobody who does open source software deserves that kind of hatered for a piece of software they have written.<p>Usually if you don't like a piece of software, you just don't use it. And this is the core of the problem: If I got the critics correctly the problem has more to do with the way this has been "forced" onto the community. Most criticism on the substance has been just bias colored by this aspect or people being like "I was used to the old system, now I need to learn something new".<p>The latter is of course a totally <i>valid</i> point. If you want people to change their habits, you need to give them a clear reason why and — more important — they need to <i>want to change that habit themselves</i>.<p>The same greybeard friend of mine who <i>still</i> complains on systemd happily adopted pipewire. Why? Because he saw a clear benefit in doing so and nobody forced this onto him.<p>Critica might argue Pöttering now going to Microsoft is proof that he always has been the devil, I'd argue it is proof that a certain kind of culture can drive people out of open source. I could imagine a different kind of universe in which the communications between the systemd devs and the rest of the community had been different and we would not only have gotten a better systemd, but maybe also a Pöttering who would not go to MS.<p>The saddest thing about the whole affair is that it has a stifeling effect on new devs. Who would <i>dare</i> to write another systemd after <i>that</i>? Certainly not me.
Agent Poettering, welcome back. You've done tremendous work for us.<p>*I actually don't care strongly about systemd one way or the other but couldn't resist the joke
Hahaha, he's your problem now!!<p>Just kidding, I hope everything goes well for him and I've really enjoyed following his work and reading his blog throughout the years.
i am not surprised that he made this move quietly.<p>poettering's work attracted a disproportionate share of criticism, and moving to microsoft is not exactly a helpful move to quell that criticism. on the contrary, it will only get worse.<p>since he continues to work on systemd, critics will now start to decry systemd as being a microsoft product, or at least strongly influenced by microsoft. so this move is likely to strengthen the anti systemd camp. we'll see what comes from that.
It'd be nice if Microsoft finally incorporated systemd support into WSL in a first-class way. At the moment, if you want to run a distro with its normal init system and service manager, you have to run the whole thing inside a user namespace so that systemd can be PID 1.
Am I the only one who finds that weird that the author of this piece purportedly a journalist relies on twitter and rumours rather than you know email or call Pottering to ask him what he is doing? Is Phoronix supposed to be taken seriously?
Looks like a tactical 'Embrace'.<p>On top of that, surveillance capitalism is winning over the free software / open source developers as companies like Microsoft are buying out / hiring the majority of them.<p>The free-software activists from the FSF and other free-software supporters have lost to the tech bros at these big tech companies that have hijacked 'open-source' and ran with it.<p>They have failed in their mission to stop all this closed-source software from spreading. It looks like it is here to stay; especially with the help of former free software developers.<p>I guess if you can’t beat them, join them.
I am not surprised that much by this news. Red Hat paid him well, and there are not a lot of companies that would offer more for the kind of job he does. I am sure this feels like a step forward from his perspective. He will still be able to do what he wants, work on something interesting, and continue to trigger the Linux community.
If this is true, it's more than likely that Poettering would join Microsoft only if his work was focused on systemd, or something similarly interesting and low level. I for one, will be glad that a company is willing to pay for such work, even if it's them.
"...now confirmed from additional sources that Lennart Poettering did indeed quietly depart Red Hat earlier this year for another employment opportunity." Can't we just wait for any official info?
Great, can the Linux heads now finally excise all of systemd along with it's monstrous scope creep, .ini files, binary journals from Linux, or will they continue to find excuses for their tastelessness and corporate slavedom?