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Would you leave the current Gentoo for a D.Robbins led "Gentoo fork"?
Yes
49%
 49%  [ 194 ]
No
43%
 43%  [ 168 ]
Only if he retains and uses the Gentoo trademark to form a "New Gentoo".
7%
 7%  [ 28 ]
Total Votes : 390

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c0d3g33k
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2008 9:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

tld wrote:
What kind of answer is that? I've had others along the line of "people have an uneasy feeling" or "it's hard to put into words"...I guess that says it all.Tom

All it says is that it's not all that simple. You're looking for a focused, logically addressable, cleanly definable issue or issues. Perhaps even specifically technical or procedural in nature. Something one can point at and say "that's wrong (or could be better)" and can be answered with "no it's not" or "yeah, you're right - let's fix it". Though I could provide some examples like that, and others undoubtedly could too, specifics can actually confuse the issue, which is primarily a social one. (Note I don't think there is a "crisis" as some overly dramatic people have characterized it, so we can hopefully agree on that account. Just some things that could be better.) Social problems aren't as cleanly describable as technical ones though they are arguably more important and sometimes harder to resolve.

At the risk of being guilty of providing a "canned" and irrelevant example again, I'll draw on personal experience once more. Since the discussion going on in Gentoo-land is largely about community, maybe it's a bit more pertinent.

Until recently I lived in a neighborhood with a Homeowner's Association. For those that aren't familiar with this concept, it's a small, neighborhood-based form of local government, complete with written by-laws, a budget, a president etc.

When I moved in, I went to the monthly meeting of the board. I had a specific question about something mentioned in the by-laws, but I also wanted to introduce myself to my new neighbors and perhaps even get involved, though I had little personal free time back then (new baby, new job, new mortgage). So I go to the meeting place, take a seat in the back and wait as everybody arrived (I was the first one there). Everybody noticed the new face, I made eye contact, smiled and nodded etc. Once everybody was there, the current president got up and started the meeting. As if I weren't there. I waited politely through the introductory rehash of the last meeting and the current agenda and when it was clear they were just going to go on with the meeting, I raised my hand and politely cleared my throat. I explained who I was and why I was there, asked my question, got a non-answer (the real president was out of town and they didn't know the answer, though those on the Architectural Review Board were present) and the meeting went on. When the meeting was over, everybody got up and left. Nobody came to shake hands, say hello, welcome me to the neighborhood, nothing. They just all left until I was left there in the empty meeting room. I went home, feeling quite unwelcome and told my wife I had little desire to attend any more meetings or get involved with such un-neighborly people. (Though I did attend a few more meetings to give things a chance).

Technically the neighborhood functioned as it was supposed to. The board had their meetings and did all they were called to do by the charter. But it ... wasn't quite right. The board did regular walkthroughs of the neighborhood. They measured the height of the lawn and wrote people up if it was much more than a 1/2 inch above the stated limit (which happens pretty easily if one is out of town on vacation or if steady rains over a few weeks keep one from mowing regularly). They took people to task for planting "unapproved" bushes around the house (all landscaping supposedly subject to approval by the Landscaping Review Committee) or erecting a play structure or swingset without asking. They discussed and approved major construction projects that impacted people without asking them (eg. sidewalks to a common area that greatly increased foot traffic past certain homes). Many folks new to the neighborhood joined the board if they had time. Most stopped after awhile because the core group that was there from the start (and a few more that trickled in over the years) had their way of doing things and didn't welcome feedback, new thoughts or ideas.

I should also point out that the board occasionally mentioned the low community involvement in the monthly minutes from the board meetings, and every set of minutes or other communications mentioned the monthly meetings and invited homeowners to attend and get involved. Many followed this advice and most stopped going after a year because there wasn't much point in going and things were generally unpleasant. Not in an overt, definable way (shouting matches, arguments etc.), just not pleasant or inclusive. It's really amazing how easy it is to exclude and discourage people (consciously or not) by simply being passively uninviting and slightly exclusionary. I'm not even sure they realized what they were doing. They thought they were doing the community a service (and they were, for the most part) and many took no pleasure from it and wondered why nobody wanted to get involved and lessen the burden.

For the most part, the community at large and the board co-existed with little real overlap. They had their meetings, collected annual dues, made sure the common plants were watered and the common grass was cut, etc. We (the people that lived there just like they did) ignored them for the most part unless they did something particularly annoying. We had multi-house backyard barbeques, we helped each other when needed (babysitting, housesitting, carrying heavy stuff etc.) and generally acted as a community, though mostly in a spotty fashion. Eg. This happened in pockets where people who lived near eachother and got along spontaneously self-organized. It was a neighborhood, yes, but the organizing body that could have pulled most of the residents together into a cohesive whole did just the opposite for reasons I think they never fully understood.

I suppose my anecdote will be dismissed as irrelevant to an open source project in some way, though I think that any human community has similar issues, no matter what the details. But for those that are asking what the crisis is with Gentoo and are frustrated about why nobody can offer any specifics, the answer is that the problem doesn't lie in the specifics, and specifics can actually trivialize the issue. The wrongness is somewhat diffuse and spread out, affecting every interaction, not just particular cases. Nothing went specifically wrong, it was about how things were done. To some extent, the tragedy was not in anything actually being definably bad, it was in not realizing what the neighborhood and community could have been. With a slightly different dynamic but exactly the same players, what turned out to be merely a place to live could have been a community that people were happy to live in.

To those of you who keep asking what's wrong with Gentoo and what the big deal is anyway, this is what people are trying to tell you. It's as much about what could be as it is about what is definably wrong. These issues are common to any human community, and I think the causes are often the same. Ask yourselves why some cities, towns or communities near you seem to be thriving while others seem to be either in decline or just sort of ... stagnant. When you are looking for a community to live in, why do some places appeal to you while others don't. Why do people want to live certain place but not others? Why do some people in a community want to do things like "revitalize downtown" when there's nothing really "wrong"? Why do people talk about boosting the local economy when all the same old shops are there and people are buying their goods same as always (never mind the occasional closed up shops and empty buildings)?

I think at the heart of things, the answer to these questions are ultimately the same as those being asked within the Gentoo community. It's not about what is blatantly wrong, it's about what's not quite right and what could be great.

[Footnote 1: Just as in a geographic community, the answer isn't always provided by the new leadership. Meet the new boss - same as the old boss. But every now and then, electing the new mayor or turning over the city council actually does seem to make things better, particularly if the community is behind the new leadership. Daniel Robbins may not be the answer, but maybe people understand that just as in geographic communities, changing the status quo is the only real way to institute real and lasting change.]

[Footnote 2: About communities. Work caused me to move out of the old neighborhood and to another state. Though we were never unhappy living where we were, it turns out we are more content in the new one. Where before my attempts to become actively involved were passively dismissed, things are subtly different here. The very day after the moving van pulled away, there was a knock on the door and a smiling face with a plate of brownies stopping by to say hello. Followed by similar visits off and on throughout the next week. The whole neighborhood (about 60 houses) routinely pulls together to stage events like this year's "Luminaria" display where the entire street from beginning to end was lined with them. Awesome to see. I was surprised to notice people putting out lights for those who were clearly away on vacation, stuck at work or (in the case of some elderly folks) unable to participate. I am amazed and happy because this shouldn't really be happening. We've got the typical mix of all kinds of people who shouldn't even get along - liberal, conservative and in between (based on the signs people put up during a recent election). I've become interested in understanding just why this is, because I think the answer has a lot to do with the reasons some communities work and some don't.]

Alright, dig in and let me have it. I'm curious to learn why I'm wrong and this was all really irrelevant to anything. :-)


Last edited by c0d3g33k on Wed Jan 16, 2008 10:08 pm; edited 2 times in total
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AllenJB
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2008 9:54 pm    Post subject: Re: Why not a fork? Reply with quote

TheChessPlayer wrote:
As a chess player I would say that a fork is a powerful method under some circumstances. More seriously, a fork could be beneficial to Gentoo as any competition is as a driving force for innovation.

It could also cause major problems - splitting the developer community for starters (tho from what I'm hearing, drobbins may not have many followers among the developers - and I don't see any of you lot stepping up to the plate to fix the very problems you're complaining about in Gentoo, so what's going to make you want to do it for a fork?)
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2008 10:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

alistair wrote:
Lepaca Kliffoth wrote:

And what's with all the exaggerated protection we're getting? In the old days the devs wouldn't have held off KDE 4.0.0 just because of some instability, they would have put it where it belongs: in the ebuild tree, masked, so that people can test it without adding yet another retarded overlay with 10 ebuilds in it. These are the days when Gentoo can't even keep up to Debian. I won't remember them as my Gentoo days, though, I got the fuck out a couple of days ago when I finally couldn't stand the smell of smoke anymore.


KDE 4 is going into the tree, masked. what are you talking about? Where did you get that rubbish from?

If your complaining about KDE4 not being in the tree on the day of the release, there are multiple reasons. Most importantly that the kde4 eclasses are a complete rewrite (requiring posts to gentoo-dev for QA checks and the like) done by someone who is only, as of the last couple of days, just become a gentoo dev.


No doubt he heard it from the distrowatch weekly newsletter(issue 235) which said:

Quote:
The developers of Gentoo Linux have hinted that KDE 4 might only enter the Portage tree with the release of KDE 4.1 - that is, at least six months from now.


Complete FUD. I sometimes wonder who pays them to lie about Gentoo like they do.
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2008 10:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

c0d3g33k wrote:

Alright, dig in and let me have it. I'm curious to learn why I'm wrong and this was all really irrelevant to anything. :-)

Wow...thanks for putting all the time into that. I feel like I really made you work there...:D.

It's just that it seems to me that the things one would hope to have in a distribution such as Gentoo just aren't that complicated. That is: are there more buggy ebuilds that there should be? Are there too many missing or non-updated ebuilds? Mind you, I'm not even saying that there aren't. For what I use everything's been quite good...for others this may not be the case. I've seen very little in the way of specifics like that...and if people can't articulate specific issues like that, it perplexes me as to what more they can ask of something maintained for them by others who get paid nothing at all.

Tom
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2008 11:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, I would try it at least. I am afraid that current actions like posts on Gentoo homepage are here only to show some activity and if Daniel's offer would be rejected, they will slowly disappear again.
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2008 11:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

tld wrote:
c0d3g33k wrote:

Alright, dig in and let me have it. I'm curious to learn why I'm wrong and this was all really irrelevant to anything. :-)

Wow...thanks for putting all the time into that. I feel like I really made you work there...:D.

Nah. I just banged it out as fast as I could type between work and the schoolbus dropping my daughter off. Real work would have been any actual editing to make it appropriately concise. ;-)

tld wrote:
It's just that it seems to me that the things one would hope to have in a distribution such as Gentoo just aren't that complicated. That is: are there more buggy ebuilds that there should be? Are there too many missing or non-updated ebuilds? Mind you, I'm not even saying that there aren't. For what I use everything's been quite good...for others this may not be the case. I've seen very little in the way of specifics like that...and if people can't articulate specific issues like that, it perplexes me as to what more they can ask of something maintained for them by others who get paid nothing at all.
Tom


All good questions. For the most part, no, things aren't appreciably broken. I can't answer for anyone but myself, but yeah, on the technical side things are ok. ("Ok" was a deliberate choice, in place of "great" or whatever). What my much-too-long anecdote was trying to get across is that's not what people are trying to communicate.

[Heh - see? I can keep it short. :-) ]
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 2:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well I can be specific: the dev m-l and user involvement. Don't believe we need a BDFL to sort those, and would never follow a fork so: no.
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 5:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

#NULL

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 8:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

genstorm wrote:
anello wrote:
This gentoo crisis is already taking way too long. If gentoo gets a solid leadership with a proper structure I may install this distribution again.

Gentoo still works, even without proper leadership, no problem there.


I don't doubt that, but you'll never know what happens. Devs that resign/differing goals(portage/paludis)/...
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 9:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

anello wrote:
genstorm wrote:
anello wrote:
This gentoo crisis is already taking way too long. If gentoo gets a solid leadership with a proper structure I may install this distribution again.

Gentoo still works, even without proper leadership, no problem there.

I don't doubt that, but you'll never know what happens. Devs that resign/differing goals(portage/paludis)/...


Weird you mention resigning & Paludis as examples... when DRobbins came back this happened (summarizing parody provided instead of the real discussion). See how he probably wouldn't make for a good mediator in this matter in particular?
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 10:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

omnio wrote:
He obviously read them wrong since since he said that 99% is about the legal status (or the foundation). And you can't expect friendliness when you didn't take the time to read about the topic, but instead you feel strongly that you have something to say. And now I have some other things to do.

I'm sorry to interrupt, but I do think you could be friendlier. Even if Dirk had missed the point (I don't think he did, but if he had), someone who is showing respect to you, deserves your respect as well.

In contrast to your opinion, I've found his comments useful and your attitude aggressive. There is no need to be hostile, specially in a place like these forums where we are here to "discuss" and not ground our bad mood.
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 10:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

batistuta wrote:
omnio wrote:
He obviously read them wrong since since he said that 99% is about the legal status (or the foundation). And you can't expect friendliness when you didn't take the time to read about the topic, but instead you feel strongly that you have something to say. And now I have some other things to do.

I'm sorry to interrupt, but I do think you could be friendlier. Even if Dirk had missed the point (I don't think he did, but if he had), someone who is showing respect to you, deserves your respect as well.

In contrast to your opinion, I've found his comments useful and your attitude aggressive. There is no need to be hostile, specially in a place like these forums where we are here to "discuss" and not ground our bad mood.


You are right. Maybe there was something in the way he asked those questions that made me think about some dev's attitude ( "There is no problem @ Gentoo, go home now" ). But you are right about the style. On the other hand, when it comes about the content of what I said, there's nothing to take back: we aren't spending our time on topics like this one because gentoo suddenly stopped working on our machines, the legal status of the foundation is not 99% of the problem, and is always a good idea to have a look around before jumping into a discussion saying "So what?".

Of course, I should have put these things into other words. Thank you for pointing this out.
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 4:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'd totally support it, it seems like the project's been lacking in fresh thinking and proper direction. I hope he'll help Gentoo out.
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 4:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

If it's a better distrubtion and/or it manages to do the thing I miss in gentoo (binairy packages for a quick install on slower systems, less breakage, etc.) then I would surely switch. Gentoo is already a great distribution and if a forked one is even better then yes.
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 5:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

tld wrote:
c0d3g33k wrote:

Alright, dig in and let me have it. I'm curious to learn why I'm wrong and this was all really irrelevant to anything. :-)

Wow...thanks for putting all the time into that. I feel like I really made you work there...:D.

It's just that it seems to me that the things one would hope to have in a distribution such as Gentoo just aren't that complicated. That is: are there more buggy ebuilds that there should be? Are there too many missing or non-updated ebuilds? Mind you, I'm not even saying that there aren't. For what I use everything's been quite good...for others this may not be the case. I've seen very little in the way of specifics like that...and if people can't articulate specific issues like that, it perplexes me as to what more they can ask of something maintained for them by others who get paid nothing at all.

Tom

Quote:
In the old days the devs wouldn't have held off KDE 4.0.0 just because of some instability, they would have put it where it belongs: in the ebuild tree, masked, so that people can test it without adding yet another retarded overlay with 10 ebuilds in it. These are the days when Gentoo can't even keep up to Debian.

That sums up one opinion of mine. Personally I think we should do away with the whole ideas of overlay's. It makes it harder to install new software. It now takes longer for software to actually hit the tree as people seem content to leave it in the overlay. That was the whole point of masking software. If masking software is not suiting the current development needs, why then should we make the use of the distro more complicated just so the testing is easier?

Has Enemy Territory Quake Wars even made it to the portage tree yet? Or is the newest commercial NATIVE LINUX game still in an overlay?

Personally I still think the whole expat issue was a huge mistake on the devs part too, although not like you may think. The breakage was unavoidable, thats obvious. However my big problem was that the dev's plan was as follows "Ok stuff is going to break, run revdep-rebuild and everything will work again.". Then of course, ALOT of peoples systems broke, which still isn't the problem, it was going to happen when they upgraded expat. BUT, then, all the sudden, the magic "revdep-rebuild" didn't work for a lot of people. It didn't work for me, which meant alot of time sorting out all the 40 something packages I had to re-emerge, and then figuring out which order to do it all in. And the only dev's I saw commenting, were blasting the user's who were upset. They refused to accept any responsibility for any of it. They never seemed to treat it as a serious problem because the breakage wasn't their fault; in their minds they did all they needed to, they provided a tool that should fix the problem, and they let us know there might be a problem by putting a paragraph at the end of the emerge. If you had a problem, it was your fault for not reading the documentation and running the provided fix. My problem is the provided fix didn't work, and I had no idea I was going to be doing an update that would break stuff.

Which could then lead to a discussion of why Palaudis isn't being used, portage is ancient, blah blah blah. Not going to get into any of that.

And every time somebody questions a decision, it seems like some dev snaps at them, basically calling them stupid, and tells them that no matter what things won't change just because.



Whether you combine the legal and technical Gentoo entities is irrelevant, either way, there needs to be a single person to give direction to the project, and the ability to make final decisions. The people who don't think this is a business, you need to learn more about running a business. A project of this size, whether for or not for profit should be run like a business. Sure, the worker's are volunteers, so more care must be taken in volunteer relations, but in the end people have to be held accountable, everybody has to answer to somebody. And that doesn't happen right now. If people are scared about that somebody "having too much power" or not listening to reason, structure it so that a majority vote can override him (CEO, board of directors).

Edit: To answer the topic, I will keep using my current installations, and don't plan on reinstalling. Which means I will leave my machine pointed to the mirrors that work, regardless of who maintains them. If a fork did occur, by who doesn't matter to me, and it appeared that it would truly change some things, and make some true long term progress, I would be willing to donate my time (I use gentoo in my business, it would help me in the long run).
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 6:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

speeddemon wrote:
That sums up one opinion of mine. Personally I think we should do away with the whole ideas of overlay's. It makes it harder to install new software. It now takes longer for software to actually hit the tree as people seem content to leave it in the overlay. That was the whole point of masking software. If masking software is not suiting the current development needs, why then should we make the use of the distro more complicated just so the testing is easier?

Read the latter posts - KDE 4 is going in the tree. These things don't happen overnight - if you want things to happen faster, how about you step up to the plate and help instead of whinging.

We shouldn't do away with overlays for several reasons:

1) I'm putting this one first because it's to do with something you lot whine about: They allow the devs to give potential developers a higher level of access without giving them direct access to the tree. This encourages more people to contribute more often and helps those who may do a lot of contributions in a given area but either aren't a dev or don't want to become one for whatever reason an access route.

2) It keeps a clearer separation between experimental and more stable packages.

3) It allows developers to have a place to put experimental packages they're working on and want feedback on from the community before the packages are put in to the main tree.

4) They allow developers to keep around older / less used packages that they don't want kept in the main tree - giving users more choice in what packages they can install.

(Tip of the day: eix can search a selection of overlays even if they're not installed - see http://planet.gentoo.org/developers/genstef/2006/11/ )

Quote:
Has Enemy Territory Quake Wars even made it to the portage tree yet? Or is the newest commercial NATIVE LINUX game still in an overlay?

It's currently in wolf31o2's overlay. Last I heard he was on games-herd, so I highly suspect it's because he's working on issues with it. I'm currently subscribed to the bugs.g.o issue for this and it's very active.

Quote:
Personally I still think the whole expat issue was a huge mistake on the devs part too, although not like you may think.

Lessons were learned and changes are being (or have been) put into portage to help with such situations in the future.

Quote:
Which could then lead to a discussion of why Palaudis isn't being used, portage is ancient, blah blah blah. Not going to get into any of that.

There are a number of reasons. Primarily it's not considered "complete" yet, even by its own developers. It also has a completely different interface to emerge, which some of the Gentoo devs dislike. And if you think this would have a chance of being used under drobbins, you can forget it. Last time drobbins came back, he asked for the lead paludis developer to be removed from #gentoo-dev and pretty much won't have anything to do with him. I'm not saying ciaranm has never done anything either, but just making you aware that this would not be different under drobbins, since some people think it would be.

Quote:
And every time somebody questions a decision, it seems like some dev snaps at them, basically calling them stupid, and tells them that no matter what things won't change just because.

And every time the devs make a decision, the users snap at them, basically call them stupid and tell them that they're wrong and should make a decision they don't want to live with. It's a two way street.

Quote:
Whether you combine the legal and technical Gentoo entities is irrelevant, either way, there needs to be a single person to give direction to the project, and the ability to make final decisions. (blah blah blah one person can manage several hundred devs + community perfectly fine on their own)

Many developers disagree. The council and foundation were set up, from what I gather, because things weren't going perfectly fine with one man at the top. Gentoo has grown since then. Why would it run fine with just one man at the top now?
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 7:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

AllenJB wrote:
Many developers disagree. The council and foundation were set up, from what I gather, because things weren't going perfectly fine with one man at the top. Gentoo has grown since then. Why would it run fine with just one man at the top now?


So now you speak for "many" developers? I thought you only spoke for "some." So tell us, is it "many" or "some" who think that we are the "stupid masses"?
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 7:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm sorry but nothing is growing here.
Growing implies innovation, fresh ideas, the freedom and the correct planning to incorporate those ideas.
IMHO the last few years nothing serious have been made except garbage, simple as that...
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 7:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

anello wrote:
Weird you mention resigning & Paludis as examples... when DRobbins came back this happened (summarizing parody provided instead of the real discussion). See how he probably wouldn't make for a good mediator in this matter in particular?


I can't understand how come this log is supposed to show, that Daniel did anything wrong last time he visited? He was attacked without any provocation, he was called punk and <gentoo-dev> did exactly nothing to mediate the fight. What Daniel was supposed to do? Start kissing up to an idiot?

IMO <gentoo-dev> should give a waring to ciaranm (who should be kicked out of Gentoo long time ago anyway, because he is a classic example of toxic personality) or at least apologize for his behaviour. But he didn't, because he probably didn't want Daniel around too. I mean, not really. Who wants someone who will gather all the spotlights around him and steal all the credit?

I was using Gentoo since early 2.4 kernel (whatever year that was) but I will stop using it now, if Daniel will not put his name behind the project. I don't care how much actual effort he can give it, I just want his name. You see, I trust him, and I don't trust current leaders at all.

BTW - My brother had to do a fresh install several moths ago and he stumbled on so many circular dependencies that it took about twice as much work as it should. It didn't used to happen in the olde days, so technically Gentoo isn't exactly thriving either.


Last edited by bakters on Thu Jan 17, 2008 7:18 pm; edited 1 time in total
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AllenJB
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 7:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

berferd wrote:
AllenJB wrote:
Many developers disagree. The council and foundation were set up, from what I gather, because things weren't going perfectly fine with one man at the top. Gentoo has grown since then. Why would it run fine with just one man at the top now?


So now you speak for "many" developers? I thought you only spoke for "some." So tell us, is it "many" or "some" who think that we are the "stupid masses"?

I speak for none of the developers. I speak for no one but myself. I have never stated otherwise. You've taken posts on completely different subjects and tried to state that they are about the same thing.

I don't think I've ever heard a dev call you lot the stupid masses, that was my phrase. Your post doesn't particularly dissuade me from this view. Also, please note the edit on the last post you quoted.


Last edited by AllenJB on Thu Jan 17, 2008 7:18 pm; edited 1 time in total
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berferd
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 7:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That wasn't a real IRC log. It was someone's lame attempt at being funny. The real to-do went down in the mailing lists. This is a better link:

http://lwn.net/Articles/225060/
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 7:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

you bring up a good point, what if PMS (or EAPI-0) was actually finished?
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 7:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

bakters wrote:
anello wrote:
Weird you mention resigning & Paludis as examples... when DRobbins came back this happened (summarizing parody provided instead of the real discussion). See how he probably wouldn't make for a good mediator in this matter in particular?


I can't understand how come this log is supposed to show, that Daniel did anything wrong last time he visited? He was attacked without any provocation, ...

If you look at posts going way back between ciaranm and drobbins (and others), I think you might find "provocation" in those posts. As in most cases, no one party is to blame overall. However the fact remains that daniel did want to get rid of a valuable contributor (even if he does get on some peoples nerves) purely because of a personality conflict, while many other developers are quite happy to tolerate him and let him contribute.

Those who claim that "one man at the top" is a good thing should consider: Is refusing to allow someone to participate in the project purely because you don't like them personally a good way to run a community? Because that is, in my opinion, undoubtedly what drobbins would do.
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speeddemon
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 8:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

AllenJB wrote:

Read the latter posts - KDE 4 is going in the tree. These things don't happen overnight - if you want things to happen faster, how about you step up to the plate and help instead of whinging.


Wow, more rhetoric. I never said anything about KDE4, I could care less. And I would help out, except for the fact that I own/manage my own business while still helping out part time for an old employer until they find someone that can replace me. I don't have to time to jump through all the hoops required to become a dev. I, and most people, don't have that kind of free time.

Quote:

We shouldn't do away with overlays for several reasons:

1) I'm putting this one first because it's to do with something you lot whine about: They allow the devs to give potential developers a higher level of access without giving them direct access to the tree. This encourages more people to contribute more often and helps those who may do a lot of contributions in a given area but either aren't a dev or don't want to become one for whatever reason an access route.

2) It keeps a clearer separation between experimental and more stable packages.

3) It allows developers to have a place to put experimental packages they're working on and want feedback on from the community before the packages are put in to the main tree.

4) They allow developers to keep around older / less used packages that they don't want kept in the main tree - giving users more choice in what packages they can install.

(Tip of the day: eix can search a selection of overlays even if they're not installed - see http://planet.gentoo.org/developers/genstef/2006/11/ )


Exactly my point, overlays make it eaiser for DEVELOPERS. For everybody else, overlays simply complicate things. That used to be one of the big benefits of gentoo, at most for an unstable package all you had to do is add a line in package.*. And besides, how much clearer does a user need than hardmasked, ~arch, or stable? Is that in any way unclear? As far as the rest, if you want to attract new devs, reorganize from the ground up. Not having access to the tree isn't what's keeping people from helping out.


Quote:

There are a number of reasons. Primarily it's not considered "complete" yet, even by its own developers. It also has a completely different interface to emerge, which some of the Gentoo devs dislike. And if you think this would have a chance of being used under drobbins, you can forget it. Last time drobbins came back, he asked for the lead paludis developer to be removed from #gentoo-dev and pretty much won't have anything to do with him. I'm not saying ciaranm has never done anything either, but just making you aware that this would not be different under drobbins, since some people think it would be.


READ. I don't care about Palaudis, I chose my words on purpose. Even if it isn't any good, or can't fix any of the problems, thats not what I was getting at. Politics have kept it out of gentoo for one reason or another.


Quote:
And every time the devs make a decision, the users snap at them, basically call them stupid and tell them that they're wrong and should make a decision they don't want to live with. It's a two way street.



Yeah, but users aren't representing gentoo, the developers are. Even if it isn't official, even if they don't mean too, every response they type with a username that has Developer under it, they are speaking for gentoo.

Quote:

Many developers disagree. The council and foundation were set up, from what I gather, because things weren't going perfectly fine with one man at the top. Gentoo has grown since then. Why would it run fine with just one man at the top now?


Of course they are going to disagree, they don't want to have someone telling them what to do. Nobody wants to lose their authority. I don't know why it didn't work before, I wasn't there (neither were you) and therefore I'm not going to talk out my ass. My guess would be he tried to micro-manage things. Which doesn't work.

As to why it would run fine now with just one man at the top, oh, its the way nearly every successful business is run. The CEO makes day to day decisions, and if a majority of the board disagrees, the CEO is over-ruled. If not, his word goes. Big decisions go to the board anyways, with the CEO having a vote.


Last edited by speeddemon on Thu Jan 17, 2008 9:09 pm; edited 1 time in total
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 8:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

AllenJB wrote:

Those who claim that "one man at the top" is a good thing should consider: Is refusing to allow someone to participate in the project purely because you don't like them personally a good way to run a community? Because that is, in my opinion, undoubtedly what drobbins would do.

If that one person is the reason that other people quit/will not help, and those people are capable of taking over what the one person is doing, then yes. If one person is bringing attitude and moral down among everyone, they are a liability and should be let go. Letting them stay is playing politics.
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