I think that we just suffer of the lack of a global system engineering (for the whole OS), as we have for the kernel. It's good to have only one person who ultimately makes integration decisions, and that partly explains why Slackware has been able to survive that many years, unfortunately no one controls random evolution of available components and sub-systems. Every time one of these changes, appears or disappears, we can just cross fingers hoping that integration will stay possible without regression of features and/or of non functional requirements previously fulfilled or met.

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Exactly - hence why Red Hat hired many of the developers of the key components. Without being able to control your own destiny, it makes creating and sticking to software road maps very difficult.

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Yes, but Red Hat is only a distribution/distributor of GNU/Linux, they shouldn't be the ones making the decisions on the future of GNU/Linux, the GNU project and the Linux Foundation should be making those Standards and deciding the future of Linux. This is basically going back to my argument on someone adding the proverbial onion to the soup that has no business in the kitchen or near the food.

It's nice that some companies and groups want to contribute back to GNU/Linux, but when a contribution is aimed at destroying the UNIX ecosystem to which GNU and Linux both belong to, along with hundreds of other projects, there should be Standards in place to prevent this from going any further, and those Standards are either too loosely defined, non-existent, or unenforceable by whatever means.

I honestly think an Open UNIX Specification that would state that any key structural system software that works for the GNU/OS has to be openly available for any other UNIX or UNIX-like system, minus tools developed by the Linux Foundation specifically to manage the kernel only, and if not, it can not be included in a public GNU/Linux distribution, similar to the Copyright laws that prevent CDDL licensed software from being redistributed along with a GPL licensed project in source or binary form... and then actually enforce the rules.

I am your father -- Lennart

On the flip side, maybe this will help in Hurd development.

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Yes I remember.

My 1978 7th Edition UNIX books (mostly man pages) reprinted in 1983. I haven't used them much in the last few decades however.

(Note: I'm not a time traveler from the future. The camera date/time is still set to an Asian time zone.)

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It would be nice if HURD ever became viable for production level systems, but I doubt it'll happen any time soon. At this point the only safety nets left are big brand UNICES and the BSDs laying down the law on projects and the willingness of other Linux distributions to not jump off the bridge like everyone else.

Maybe in 1995 that was the case but they are not and haven't been for quite some time since they became established in the the enterprise space in early 2000s.

They aren't, directly - and that was part of what I was getting at.

They're a business with share holders (I used to be one since I worked there a few years ago). Customers and investors need to know what's coming down the line: why should they stick with the company? The company needs to be able to execute against it plans, which means taking control of what ever it can. There is a lot of good that is done by RH which is contributed back to the community, and part of the price to pay is that some of the direction of the community is swayed by RH due to its own needs.

Vincent Batts works for Redhat, btw. I'm not sure if he's still considered a "Slackware developer", or if he ever was, but I do know that his contributions to Slackware have been substantial.

as far as I remember, he started at slackware and moved to red hat.
over the past years, he has been contributing still to slackware

Red Hat should not be in control of upstream GNU/Linux core system developments to the point that the only software being used is Red Hat's own developed stuff like systemd for example. Just because Red Hat proved years ago that a company that promoted GNU/Linux could be profitable shouldn't be an open invitation to Red Hat to do as they please, nor give them any exclusive rights to do so, but apparently nobody questions why Red Hat's tentacles are so far deep into open source systems without some level of a stop gap, and why they allowed so much freedom to do as they please unchecked.

Not to restart a debate or kick a dead horse but you do have to realize that besides the kernel control tools, kernel, shell, and other general utilities is one major component of the system that nearly controls everything called the init system. Now seriously think, who created this new octopus of an init system, and who does he work for, and who would like to see less to zero competition in a market? The answer isn't difficult to decipher.

You said it best. Red Hat is a business and what do businesses try to eliminate to make more money?

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"Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes", is that what you mean?

If you actually imply that systemd is a Trojan horse send by RH to eliminate competitors, I won't follow you on imputing them these motives.

And in any case, nobody's forced to follow them and eat the meal they cook.

But be it true, good for them. We all compete to survive, either in person or through our descendants, that's life.

Live and let live.

PS On a broader scope, I don't think that we (mankind) are smart or wise eliminating other (plant and animal) species from Earth to grow, but that's another topic.

Lennart Poettering started with it in his free time. He initially wanted to contribute to Upstart instead, but is no fan of Canonical's CLA. After debating with Canonical's lawyers to put the CLA down, to no vail abviously, he decided to start his own init system. I can't see how his original plans to contribute to Upstart instead are somehow motivated by Red Hat to want to be in control, in fact, if Canonical wouldn't insist on their CLA there would be no systemd, but Upstart with much more adoption. Is Canonical insisting on their CLA part of Red Hat's plan to take over the GNU/Linux world?
If Red Hat, the market leader for enterprise Linux systems, wanted to see less to zero competition, why do they release their stuff (L)GPL, why do they openly invite their competitors to work with them together on their software? Why do they allow their largest competitors, Suse, Canonical (commercial competitors) and the likes as Debian (non-commercial competitors) to contribute, if their aim is not to help the competition, but to extinguish it? This does not make much sense, I would think.

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A large corporation never has a single controlling mind, and it's silly to imagine one. It's entirely possible for a large corporation to be nobly philanthropic and shockingly evil at the same time.

It can't be denied that the systemd / Gnome 3 / gtk+3 affairs have generated a lot of bad sentiment in the community towards Red Hat. That bad sentiment has the wrong target -- "certain projects clustered around Fedora" might be a more useful substitute -- but it undeniably exists. So the relevant question is, does Red Hat senior management know or care about the bad feeling? The answer, apparently, is no. That's not surprising; they're focussed on enterprise customers, the bad stuff hasn't hit their enterprise customers yet, and who will ever listen to the 'techies' when it does?

EXCITING UPDATE!!!
This blog post from Fedora's own Matthew Garrett, about Red Hat's genuine commitment to the community... and how they could still get it so wrong when they tried to eject Openstack competitor Piston from the Red Hat Summit this weekend:

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It might be instructive to know if the boys over at Debian feel manipulated and maneuvered into place or the recipients of a beneficent gift.