Should the Gentoo trustees accept Daniel Robbins offer?

[lonex]

Does anybody know more details about what is going on or not with the Gentoo Foundation?
I just stumbled across this blog:

http://blog.funtoo.org/2008/01/and-it-gets-worse.html

edit by nixnut: inserted the offer here:
http://blog.funtoo.org/2008/01/here-my-offer.html

Here is my offer to resolve the most recent Gentoo leadership crisis, and is an offer I am making to the current Gentoo trustees, who are the ones who need to decide whether to accept or refuse it.

I have received permission from my employer to return and serve as President of the Gentoo Foundation, renew its charter, and then work in some capacity to help to get Gentoo going in the right direction from a legal, community and technical perspective.

I do have some conditions attached to this offer, however. First, I am going to ask that all currently-serving trustees assist in a quick transition, and if they accept my offer, they do so with the understanding that I will be appointing new trustees to the Foundation after the transition is complete.

In other words, if the current trustees accept this offer, they are basically handing the leadership of the Foundation over to me and the trustees that I will choose.

If I return as President, I will preserve the not-for-profit aspect of Gentoo. Beyond this, you can expect everything to be very, very different than how things are today. Here is a basic overview of the changes I will be making in how the Foundation operates, basically by refocusing on its core mission:

1) The Foundation will be responsible for the overall health of the Gentoo community and for pursuing the Foundation's mission of advancement and education and promotion of software development in an open environment.

2) The Foundation will be responsible for providing general guidance and direction for the project and for ensuring that the Gentoo project is moving in a positive direction and has proper leadership.

3) The Foundation will be responsible for ensuring that Gentoo developers, individual Gentoo users, external Gentoo-related projects and Gentoo-using organizations have a voice and the opportunity to influence the overall technical direction of the Gentoo project in a clear, open and organized way.

4) Legal paperwork will be filed properly and on-time and the Foundation will maintain a proper level of transparency with the community.

5) The Foundation will help the Gentoo community to be a positive and pleasant environment for all participants.

Please understand that if the trustees say "Yes", then I will be returning in a part-time capacity only. I will not be the hands-on Chief Architect as I was in the past. I am going to be focusing mainly on the Foundation side but will do a few key things here and there to get the project as a whole back on track.

Again, the trustees are the ones that get to decide whether or not to accept this offer.

If they say "no", then I will stay out, and let them try to resolve this situation on their own.

I also want to have some kind of answer to this offer soon. If the trustees want to pursue this transition plan, they need to let me know within the next 7 days - by Friday, January 18th, 2008 at the latest. If you want my help, I'd like to get things back on track soon. If you don't want me to take back the reigns of Gentoo, that is totally OK with me - just please let me know soon so I can focus on other things.

As always, you can post comments here, as well as emailing trustees@gentoo.org with your feedback.

In general, I don't like doing stuff like this publicly, but I think the Gentoo community deserves to know what's going on. The trustees also need to be accountable to the community to do what is in the best interests of the project - and to simply let people know what's going on.

[psomas]

and this post at gentoo-dev:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/54066

[didumos]

Well, well, well... things just got interesting:
http://blog.funtoo.org/2008/01/here-my-offer.html

Daniel Robbins has offered to return and serve as President of the Gentoo Foundation!

[psomas]

wow...

i'm very curious to see how the trustees, and devs in general will respond...

[ryker]

Well, well, well... things just got interesting:
http://blog.funtoo.org/2008/01/here-my-offer.html

Daniel Robbins has offered to return and serve as President of the Gentoo Foundation!

I was just going to post this and you beat me to it.


If you support the Gentoo founder (Daniel Robbins) coming back part time to help get things back on track and make some needed changes, you should send an email to trustees@gentoo.org and/or the members of the Gentoo council which can be found here.

[takooakes]

The trustees have let things slip to far with out providing strong leadership. If Robbins wants to take charge and get things moving again I more than welcome him.

[Bluespear]

The trustees have let things slip to far with out providing strong leadership. If Robbins wants to take charge and get things moving again I more than welcome him.

+1, I noticed nothing to deal with the crisis from the leaders, perhaps it was invisible as a user ?

Even worse, I feel like nobody seems aware of what is going on or perhaps no "leader" want to inform us or deal with the problems.
There are some things that can be done with a very amount of time to improve the situation and the situation (like having a u-to date mainpage for example, which would give the impression gentoo is not dead since october...).

[nixnut]

merged the rest of the discussion too.

[m.s.w]

Daniel Robbins should come back.
There are many developers in Gentoo Team, but Gentoo needs real love, and real work of somebody who has wider overview of situation.
Don't let Gentoo fall down. If you can't handle things hand it over to somebody who can.
It's not a religion - just the best distribution I ever used, so I do want to use it in the future

[Naib]

Now we really get to see if the trustee's really care about gentoo

[NeddySeagoon]

Not without a lot more information.

[Bluespear]

Not without a lot more information.

I guess it's up to trustee's and Daniel Robbins to discuss this in detail. This just show Daniel Robbins is willing to do something against this crisis (what trustee do not do atm, I think).

[c0nv1ct]

Daniel is right.

I have to agree. Lets have someone take over that knows what they are doing. I'd hate to see this project fall apart because of the negligence of a few trustees.

[bmichaelsen]

Daniel is right.

I have to agree. Lets have someone take over that knows what they are doing. I'd hate to see this project fall apart because of the negligence of a few trustees.

Actually it doesnt matter if Daniel is "right". gentoo was pretty much in a deadlock right now (just look at the discussions of recent GLEPs). If you took your head out of the cover, you lost. Instead of doing one thing or another, gentoo did neither. So I hope Daniel gets some effective decisionmaking going.

And even if he (or his first breed of selected trustees) make wrong decisions, there might be a fork and the better solution will win. Many serious improvements of open source started as forks that were rejoined into the parent project.

[NeddySeagoon]

Hmm, theres lots of predudice and very little information.
Its not possible to judge the rights and wrongs of how Gentoo got where it it is today with the information available to everyone, in any case, finger pointiing serves no useful purpose.

We are where we are, we need to evaluate that position, determine where we want to be then all work together to get there.

Like I've already said, we need a lot more information than we have now to enable an informed decision to be made.
This information may well already be available to the trustees.

[StifflerStealth]

Several things I see wrong about this thread:
1) Almost all users do not know about the going-ons of the Gentoo Trustees.
2) Having lack of said knowledge, there is no way to compare Mr. Robbins ideas with Gentoo Trustees' ideas.
3) There is no other information to fill in the gaps of afore mentioned knowledge.
4) There is mainly idle speculation here and no solid information, except as provided from Mr. Robbins.
5) The above mentioned point only makes this a one-sided view.

Several good things about this thread:
1) Most users can learn about this and the fact that the charter was revoked.
2) This gives an opportunity for Gentoo Trustees to post their side of the issue in this thread to counter/agree with Mr/ Robbins.
3) Users of Gentoo can voice their opinion, but let's do that with well-founded statements and no attacks on any one party.
4) The best decision for Gentoo can be made if and only if Gentoo Trustees read this thread and give their knowledge.

So, let's all learn and have meaningful discussion. I would love to hear from the Trustees themselves and some information on how they feel. Maybe even a rebuttal against some of Mr. Robbins statements. Please don't keep us in the dark. This affects the whole of the Gentoo community, thus the whole of the Gentoo community should have a say and should have full knowledge needed for this situation.

Cheers.

[m.s.w]

Yeah, lot more information, so decision can be made to do something or to still do nothing?

[Paapaa]

Last time Drobbins joined Gentoo he got into many fights in little time with other devs in dev-mailinglist. Why on Earth would we want him as a President? We need someone who gets along with most devs and users.

[ps]

I'm not too worried about it.

If there's no more Gentoo,
There will surely be Funtoo.

Right?

[Insanity5902]

Hmm, theres lots of predudice and very little information.
Its not possible to judge the rights and wrongs of how Gentoo got where it it is today with the information available to everyone, in any case, finger pointing serves no useful purpose.

We are where we are, we need to evaluate that position, determine where we want to be then all work together to get there.

Like I've already said, we need a lot more information than we have now to enable an informed decision to be made.
This information may well already be available to the trustees.

You are right, we don't have any information but that of what Daniel Robbins has provided. The foundation works without letting the community know, there is no transparency, the users aren't informed. And it is obvious there is no direction.

I've avoided discussion like these inside the gentoo community for the last two years, but now I speak

Needy is right, we don't have enough information, but it is obvious as to way we don't, the is no communication from our leaders, and apparently no action either as Mr. Robbins is still Pres. of Gentoo. No matter what happens we can't do anything without him, as there is no other legal entity over gentoo or it's products.

Pointing fingers, and saying shame on anybody isn't solving any problems. I think we should entertain Mr. Robbins, we need more information from him. He isn't wanting to do this by himself, so that is good, The current leaders are required to help. But they should also be required to help find the new trustees. Mr. Robbins can pick them, but the current leaders need to have input also. Not sure what the right answer here is, but something needs to be worked on.

[NeddySeagoon]

ps,

Err, no. Funtoo is drobbins rolling some Gentoo packages his way.
No Gentoo, no Funtoo, no Saybyon, no <other-gentoo-derived-distros>

The Gentoo Foundation is not Gentoo. Its a legal body in the USA to hold Gentoos assets, like hardware and intellectual property.
The technical side of Gentoo can exist without it. There are other options besides a Gentoo Foundation for holding Gentoos assets.

[96140]

Daniel has yet to ask the developers this on the mailing lists, or otherwise contact us.

I don't think we should accept the offer. Not with the strings attached. I respect Daniel quite a bit, but we should not be dictated to by someone who came back to Gentoo (in part) because he was looking to pick a fight with a certain developer, and left after just one day. He decided he couldn't get his cake, so he was taking his toys home with him when he left. Coming back to disrupt the environment, then leaving and washing his hands of us . . . that doesn't go over too well.

He should not have any power over the developers, because his past position as chief architect may not actually matter -- it has little bearing on the present state of affairs within Gentoo. Things have changed quite a bit since 2003.

Management of the Foundation -- the legal and nonprofit issues -- is one thing. Power over actual development and related policy is another. If Daniel can actually provide something needed for the first part, then sure, why not. But he absolutely should not have attached strings to the effect of "Oh, and I get to tell you how to run the organization in some other areas, too."

This is why the Trustees are a separate body from the Council. They have two completely separate responsibilities. One is legal, the other is technical (as well as providing oversight for our our internal policies, relations, etc.)

[Paapaa]

The Gentoo Foundation is not Gentoo. Its a legal body in the USA to hold Gentoos assets, like hardware and intellectual property.
The technical side of Gentoo can exist without it. There are other options besides a Gentoo Foundation for holding Gentoos assets.

This is exactly why we need more info before these "OMGZOR, Drobbins is back and s@v3s Gent00!!". I didn't even know we had a problem in the first place. So first we should know the plans of present Gentoo Foundation staff. And what happens if they do nothing. Etc.

[bmichaelsen]

Last time Drobbins joined Gentoo he got into many fights in little time with other devs in dev-mailinglist. Why on Earth would we want him as a President? We need someone who gets along with most devs and users.

You mean this one:
http://lwn.net/Articles/224615/

However, there are always two playing a game. And regarding the two main actors in that particular incident, Drobbins has a _much_ better track record concerning flamewars and social skills.

But this is way offtopic and discussing it here will lead nowhere. The question is, who else could take a lead in gentoo give it an direction out of the current mess? All suitable candidates are either unwilling or will not be supported by the majority of the users and devs. Show me somebody with more support by devs and users!

None of us will get all we wish for. I dont care what package manager the benelovent dictator for resurrection uses, how about you? <- (Warning: This is a rhetorical question, just keep in mind every position is subjective. And please dont fall for this stupid troll by taking the last sentence serious )

[psomas]

Daniel has yet to ask the developers this on the mailing lists, or otherwise contact us.

actually,i think he said something on gentoo-dev irc channel...
and i suppose that the trusteers have been informed...