Gentoo fork???!

lurid · Guru Joined: 12 Mar 2003 Posts: 595 Location: Florida

bcavalieri: It seemed more along the lines of:

"Hey, I'd like to contribute to Gentoo in order to push forward the idea of Embedded Gentoo for use by my company and while I'm at it, I'll offer 5 servers (of which, forums.gentoo.org and bugs.gentoo.org were mentioned), plus make an intregal contact for you which offers you loads of bandwidth, in order to make Gentoo better. You know, lets take it a step further and LOAN YOU MONEY from my own personal business so you can make your trips to Linux conventions. Meanwhile, I'll work privately for the good of Gentoo and of my own personal company and ask only to be concidered leader of the Embedded Gentoo project when the side-company is created."

And it looks as if DRobbins snatched it out from under him. Again, its a one sided arguement. This makes the dude look like a saint, which I'm sure he isn't, but his contributions to Gentoo were/are more than significant.

quag7 · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 7:50 am Post subject:

First of all, I would caution anyone who was not involved in this dispute to refrain from forming opinions too quickly. There are multiple sides to any story. This is just kind of ugly and sad, and I don't know who is right, and things like this tend to cause problems when people start taking sides when they weren't there or don't have all the facts.

Second, I will say this - I don't think it's unreasonable for someone who spends all of his or her time and effort working in a project to feel like he or she should have more of a say in the direction of a project than, say, peripheral contributors or end-users. I certainly have my own opinions about things I'd like to see change in Gentoo, but I've never done much more than put a few entries in bugzilla. Why should anyone really care what I have to say? I don't think I should have a vote. I would hope though that those who do at least take the time to assess the opinions of end-users and maybe introduce some good ideas that we have from time to time. I think they do that now.

Fact of the matter is, Gentoo simply wouldn't *be* if it weren't for the serious efforts of Daniel Robbins and co. The people who run the project should be cut some slack and given some consideration. If it turns out that there is some horrible shit going on at the top, you can always participate in the fork, fork it yourself, or just fork off and use another distribution. Or protest and maybe they'll listen. But it should be given some time, I think. From my perspective, Gentoo has been remarkably successful so far - not perfect, perhaps, and certainly it can be improved, but I'm pretty impressed.

I just would hate to see this incident explode into some horrid political thing. I hate it when this happens and it always seems to, eventually, in any large, successful project.

As it is now, all I have is gratitude for everyone who's ever helped me in these forums, helped me on #gentoo, developed, patched, and built Gentoo Linux.

I hope that everyone involved - as well as the observing user community - can step back, take a deep breath, and move forward constructively without additional rancor. Let's just all be cautious about this is all I'm saying.
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avenj · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 7:53 am Post subject:

Mnemia · Guru Joined: 17 May 2002 Posts: 476

avenj · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 8:24 am Post subject:

avenj · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 8:30 am Post subject:

I think that a mistake many people are making is that they feel that one side has to be the bad guy: either Zach is a bad guy or Daniel is a bad guy.

I have had extensive personal interaction with both, and I feel that neither one of them is a bad guy. They are two people with a personality conflict, and one of them has reacted angrily to that. People are like that.

My opinion on the whole situation: why paint either one as a bad guy?

(Additionally, with regards to the comments about developer arrogance, there are certainly some developers who are arrogant. There are also some - more, I think - who are definitely not arrogant. People are different; you cannot expect every person on a team to come across the same way or interact with other people the same way. I don't see why that should reflect on the team as a whole; I certainly don't judge,say, the entire forums community based on the comments of a couple people. I admit to being a jerk on mailing lists from time to time myself when I get tense; I apologize for that.)

Okay, that's enough 5:30am rambling...

Mnemia · Guru Joined: 17 May 2002 Posts: 476

ciguanabo · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 9:39 am Post subject:

I think Zach has given a lot of valid criticism to the way Gentoo is organized, and there are a couple of lessons the Gentoo community should learn from this event.

This is the main lesson, I think, that can be learned from this: Because of the GPL it should be possible for many people to start companies that want to go into the Gentoo Embedded business (or any other Gentoo based business). The point is, none of these people should have any decision-making rights in the Gentoo developement, because this could result in unfair business practices. Ideally though, all of these companies would have people contributing to the Gentoo developement (directly or just financially), but the person actually making the decisions shouln't be directly linked to any one of these companies.

One of the reasons the linux kernel developement works great is that Linus (the one who decides what makes into the kernel or not) doesn't (directly) depend financially on the kernel. All his decisions are based on discussions in the kernel-developement list and are as such technically sound (as humanly possible). I think the gentoo developement process should try to imitate this.

As such I think it would be best if Daniel decides whether he wants to run a Gentoo business (and be a 'normal' developer at the same time) or be the lead Gentoo developer taking the final decisions about where Gentoo is heading.

zhenlin · Veteran Joined: 09 Nov 2002 Posts: 1361

Actually, I'm not sure whether or not to call this a "personality conflict". It is more like "identical exclusive personalities" - i.e. two control freaks, two vain people etc.

But one thing is for certain - they both left because what they were working on was cancelled after they had been working on it for some time.

Lovechild · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 10:10 am Post subject:

Okay, I'm seriously considering pointing my portage tree to Zynot when it gets off the ground.. the reasons?

1) Portage rewrite in C++ - finally something I'm interested in coding in my sparetime and even though a rewrite in C++ probably wouldn't bring much benefit... but I think it's a cool project, and in the end that's what matters right?

2) Well, I don't get along with the developers as much as I would like, this is my own personal problem - I trust Daniel and the devs not to screw me over but that doesn't mean I agree with all of their decisions.

3) New distro... drool... must install... must have... drool..

That being said I'm very impressed with Gentoo and the manner in which it has taken the world by storm.

All in all I think a fork might be a good idea - fresh ideas, a fresh start - maybe then some of the longstanding feature requests can be implemented.

Good luck with the fork.

KiTaSuMbA · Guru Joined: 28 Jun 2002 Posts: 430 Location: Naples Italy

I second avenj's comment on "bad vs. good guy." Almost nothing related to personal affairs and conflicts is black & white.
For the record, what I feel was the issue here is a misaprehension over each other's ambitions and "roadmaps". Zach seems to think he had "bought" the right to lead Gentoo Devices / Embedded (these two projects are quite entangled in his article) through his work and contributions (both monetary and workhours) but there doesn't seam to be a fixed agreement on that one either vocal or written by drobbins or any other in the gentoo management. In any case I refrain from forming any condemnations for anyone as it's quite a grey area and, after all, this issue doesnot directly involve or endanger the gentoo linux we all love.

What IS important for the community is to further discuss the reorganisation of the gentoo management and decision-making process since its current blurry state seams once too often to create doubts, arguements and even anger. I admit I haven't examined in length the entire management structure proposal so I will not comment strictly on that but rather discuss what I feel is good sense in managing a community-based project.

Whoever has been strategically involved even with small community projects knows perfectly well that there is a very hard dilemma:
- community means "power to the base", to autocontrol and decide by a majority or strongest current mode.
- on the other hand, it's more often than not the case, that such projects left with no formal managerial infrastructure remain stagnant because there are a million voices all different and many roads proposed by people without that lack the time, will or capabilities to affront and even taken for a while by the whole community only tobe abbondoned in later times when the dead-end becomes obvious to everybody. Under these conditions, sooner or later, you will see the formation of informal "groups" that tend to agree and that, in filling the gap left from a missing management structure, "push" a certain policy/decision/whatever down to the base. Different groups or people on their own, will inevitably come to a clash and there will be no pre-defined set of rules and procedures to solve the dispute and make a choice in a timely manner. Egos will get hurt, someone might attempt shutting another's mouth and the project will pass through a serious storm and probably get out of it bruised if it makes it at all.

So how do you solve this problem? Let's see the options:
- The direct democracy model: all members have a say and equivalent votes. Great advantage: people decide in the open and there is nothing to hide avoiding a whole set of rants and whines. Great disadvantage: high risk of uninformed and erroneous decisions. Direct democracy made Athens what it was but also took it down when the anger-driven, impressionable base chose open war with Sparta.
- The representative democracy model: the base simply elects a council that does the direct decision making. Great advantage: similar underworks and openess to the direct model but faster and easier management with, theoretically, less risk of uninformed, impression-based decision-making. Great disadvantage: it's only too often that hard-workers and people with great ideas are the less vocal and thus less probable of getting into the decision-making ring. Plus, the possibility of election to power could generate a sort of "competition" that could block proposals straight from the base upon anything but technical merits.
- The credits/karma based model: people gain the right to vote or a "weight" on their vote based on certain criteria that should reflect workhours applied to the project or other ways of evaluating contributions. This can be combined with either direct or representative models. Great advantage: decisions are made, at least in theory, by those who not only talk the talk but also walk the walk. Great disadvantage: very few people can stand the drivel to establish and defend the way credits are appointed - even if a great land is born it's going to be through a volcanic eruption. In the case that credits are appointed by the base rather than a math formula in a /.-ish karma or K5's mojo manner, the theory of walkers > talkers is substituted in practice by karma whoring of some sort.
- The meritocracy model: people who have a say are chosen only by those who already have that right on the base of an open set of criteria and rules that should reflect a person's devotion and capabilities related to the project. Great advantage: choices are generally made by experienced people. Great disadvantage: too much of an omeostasis pattern! It's far harder to get fresh ideas inside the decision-making area. Look at xfree86 for example... it's probably the most conservative open source project of a certain extension.
- The aristocracy model: decision makers are chosen in a top-down way from a central core of initial founders. Leaves the base with a "take it or leave it" option. Great advantage: the fastest moving and most stable management. Great disadvantage: the base's only control is that the management most likely wants to keep it numerous and happy. Should the core lose interest or drift the project away from the initial principles the only way of recovery is that of starting anew perhaps from where the last left (as is the case with a GPL software project).

It's a hard call isn't it? In the end, what matters is not the model but rather how it is implemented and that depends solely on the people that form the community. In any case, any clear model is far better than the current blurry situation. It seams that the current proposal tends mostly to the aristocracy model... Drobbins and his companions have my best wishes for an even faster-evolving, enterprise-ready gentoo.
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asimon · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 10:23 am Post subject:

idl · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 10:23 am Post subject:

I'm a fickle person, and I don't find the name Zynot very attractive.

On a more serious note, I'm not against the fork, I just can't see it getting much publicity. I'd love the C++ portage rewrite however.
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ciguanabo · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 11:36 am Post subject:

jimlynch11 · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 11:42 am Post subject:

personally, im a little taken back just to learn that Gentoo has been for-profit. especially considering the big "make a donation" button on the homepage. while not outwardly claiming to be non-profit, to me, it does imply that. can you picture IBM having a "make a donation to IBM" button on their homepage? how many of you wouldve donated money, or systems, or services, coding, etc...just for a few select individuals to make money off of it, while you get nothing?

also, once gentoo tech. goes non-profit, and gentoo games and other projects stay for-profit, could you honestly see the developers giving each branch of gentoo the same amount of effort?

im not trying to jump to any conclusions, and certainly would love to hear any arguments to the contrary, but i think mixing non-profits with for-profits is dangerous

Koon · Retired Dev Joined: 10 Dec 2002 Posts: 518

TheQuickBrownFox · n00b Joined: 08 Oct 2002 Posts: 37

What is this whole thing about?

It's not like anyone is harming me or ripping me off for using/developing stuff for gentoo. If someone can make money off it, good for them! Especially if Gentoo is their full-time job.

It's in everyone's best interest to stick together. If the lead mainainers/developers mess around the minor developers/users, the users will leave and that would be bad for everyone.

I suppose the fork is just part of the process of directing Gentoo into a direction that would benefit everyone. I just hope that Zach has the sanity to join forces again, once the issues are resolved. We really don't need another distro.
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cult hero · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 11:53 am Post subject:

pilla · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 11:55 am Post subject:

People has the right to fork projects from GPL'ed projects. If they are going to be successfull, that's another story.

My best feelings to the forking people, but for now I am quite happy with Gentoo and I am not going to change distros.
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bsolar · Bodhisattva Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 2764

carambola5 · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jul 2002 Posts: 214

bsolar · Bodhisattva Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 2764

Senso · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 1:36 pm Post subject:

Raoul_Duke · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 1:41 pm Post subject:

Can't resist adding to the current 'hot topic' :wink:

I think avenj has the best attitude, don't look at this as a good guy/bad guy situation. It's obvious that management has reviewed themselves and come up with a new model.

'Words of wisdom'

Sometimes forks are good, sometimes not........only time will tell!!

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d3c3it · Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2003 1:48 pm Post subject:

im very much confused by this, does this in english mean that 1 the developers has left to do his own distro based on gentoo?
from what ive read im very shocked, esp what was/is said about the developers.
lame response i know, so dont flame me, im outta my depth

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