On December 7, 2019, the Debian project presented a vote to the developers regarding the status of init systems other than systemd. The options for the project to choose from were:
- F: We concentrate on systemd
- B: Systemd, but we support exploring alternative solutions
- A: Supporting multiple init systems is important
- D: We support systems different from systemd but do not block progress because of them
- H: We support portability but do not block progress
- E: Supporting multiple init systems is mandatory
- G: We support portability and multiple interface implementations
- Further discussion
The full text of each option can be read in the official letter from the Debian Secretary.
The voting deadline was midnight UTC on December 28, 2019.
Debian uses a rather complex voting system — the Schulze method. When voting, each participant ranks all options in order of personal preference.
The Schulze method satisfies the Condorcet criterion: if one option would win when compared pairwise against every other, it is declared the winner. In this vote, the winning option was B (“Systemd, but we support exploring alternative solutions”). Consequently, it became mandatory to implement.
In practice, this means that the absence of an init script in a package with the daemon is no longer considered a bug.
Source: linux.org.ru
