He is just another in a long line of resignations

Nov 19, 2014 15:31 GMT  ·  By

Ian Jackson, a Debian developer and member of the Debian Technical Committee, has handed his resignation following the vote to preserve the freedom of choice for init systems.

A number of resignations have shook the Debian community these days and they can all be traced back to the decision to implement systemd as the default init system, which was reached a few months ago.

The feeling was initially that this entire systemd discussion would eventually come to an end, and that the devs and the community would accept it. In fact, the opposite thing happened and now we see a wave of resignations and all sort of reactions that show the problem is far from a resolution.

Despite all the criticism regarding systemd and the three resignations that took place in just a few days, the project will continue with its plans and nothing so far has managed to deviate it.

Ian Jackson proposed a compromise solution that would eventually place the choice of the init system in users’ hands, but that was rejected, so he decided to leave the Technical Committee.

The Debian Technical Committee is getting thinner

Unlike Joey Hess, who left the Debian project entirely, Ian Jackson has only resigned from the Debian Technical Committee. He is a former project leader and he is also responsible for the development of the famous dpkg.

He was one of the developers who drastically opposed the systemd implementation, and his resignations just means he's out of options to try and change the course of Debian.

"I am resigning from the Technical Committee with immediate effect. While it is important that the views of the 30-40% of the project who agree with me should continue to be represented on the TC, I myself am clearly too controversial a figure at this point to do so. I should step aside to try to reduce the extent to which conversations about the project's governance are personalised."

"The majority of the project have voted to say that it was wrong of me to bring this GR at this time. Despite everything that's happened, I respectfully disagree. I hope that the next time a controversial issue arises, someone will step forward to advance what might be a minority view," wrote Ian Jackson on the official mailing list.

With all the high-profile resignations coming on such short notice,it's very likely that this is not the end of it. Systemd will continue to be a point of debate for the Debian community, so expect more news on this front.

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