Bitter Poettering, LibreOffice at 4, and Linux Tidbits
The systemd fallout is getting to creator Lennart Poettering, who is sounding quite disillusioned. Sean Michael Kerner scored an interview with The Document Foundation's Italo Vignoli on the future of LibreOffice. Jesse Smith reviewed PC-BSD 10.0.3 in today's Distrowatch Weekly and Paul Venezia imagines Linux servers as "transient processes and services." And finally today, we have several Linux distribution tidbits to report.
systemd has been my favorite punching-bag-de-jour lately, but I just didn't like the technology much. However, according to systemd creator and Red Hat employee Lennart Poettering, his life has become very difficult lately including feeling threatened for his work on the controversial Open Source Software. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols today quoted Poettering's Google+ post saying:
I get hate mail for hacking on Open Source. People have started multiple 'petitions' on petition web sites, asking me to stop working (google for it). Recently, people started collecting Bitcoins to hire a hitman for me (this really happened!). Just the other day, some idiot posted a 'song' on YouTube, a creepy work, filled with expletives about me and suggestions of violence. People post websites about boycotting my projects, containing pretty personal attacks.
Vaughan-Nichols said Poettering blames Torvalds (and friends) for setting a bad example with his harsh tone, rude responses, and expletives; to which Vaughan-Nichols disagrees. He said, "You can dislike Torvalds and his methods, but, like it or not, under Torvalds' sometimes rude direction, Linux has become perhaps the most important operating system in the world today."
The Document Foundation celebrated four years last week and eWeek's Sean Michael Kerner spoke to founding member Italo Vignoli about "how the open-source LibreOffice Suite has evolved over the last four years" and where it may be heading in the future. In the video interview Vignoli tells Kerner, "We have been able to grow the community in areas where the community was not growing before. The objective is not to eradicate Microsoft Office from companies. The concept of migration is about giving an alternative to companies."
Today's newfeeds contained several tidbits about popular Linux distributions. Phoronix.com is reporting that Fedora 21 may not have delta RPMs due to lack of support in the new package management system. Softpedia.com says Debian 8.0 Beta 2 is available and features GNOME as the default desktop again. "Linux Mint developers are pulling all the stops for their 17.1 update and they have already made a ton of modifications," reported Softpedia.com earlier today. DarkDuck.com says their latest poll indicates less than half of users are looking forward to Ubuntu 14.10 and Neil Rickert has posted an early screenshot of upcoming openSUSE 13.2.
In other news:
* First impressions of PC-BSD 10.0.3