[GNU-linux-libre] Is systemd long-term compatible with software freedom?

[hellekin]

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As the controversy surrounding systemd is growing, I gave a peek at
Lennart Poettering's blog (http://0pointer.net/blog/) There's a rather
large reading list to understand his goals for systemd.

The article "Revisiting How We Put Together Linux Systems"[0] is
particularly interesting.  As I was perusing it, I started thinking
about similarities with and relevance of GNU Guix's own goals.  Until
the following remark on issues of distros with upstream developers
stopped me at once:

"Since most downstream distributions have strict licensing and trademark
requirements (and rightly so), any kind of closed source software (or
otherwise non-free) does not fit into this scheme at all."

In other terms, Poettering is explicitly announcing that systemd will
facilitate the inclusion of non-free software in free software
distributions.

As systemd is already going far beyond the role of init for PID 1, and
turning into an opaque wrapper around the Linux kernel, with its
integrated functionality that wants to do it all--including enabling
upstream developers to code once, run everywhere (ahem), it starts
resembling "One Init to Rule Them All".

But apart from personal preferences and engineering value, the
increasing dependency on systemd (e.g., in GNOME) will eventually become
a hard problem for free distros if and when the core of the system will
enable built-in interoperability with non-free software.

==
hk

[0]
http://0pointer.net/blog/revisiting-how-we-put-together-linux-systems.html
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