Should the Gentoo trustees accept Daniel Robbins offer?

[Kasumi_Ninja]

oh boy... so now someone leaked it to slashdot...

Here's the article:

Gentoo in Crisis, Robbins Offers Solution
mrbadbar writes "Gentoo Linux founder Daniel Robbins says Gentoo's leadership is in crisis. 'the Gentoo Foundation's charter has been revoked for several weeks, which means that as of this moment the Gentoo Foundation no longer exists.' Robbins offers a solution: his return as President of the Gentoo Foundation. According to Robbins: '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.'"

http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?si ... 8&from=rss

I really feel this whole topic get blown out of proportion and threatens to overshadow all that goes well withing Gentoo. Even worse it's an insult towards the Gentoo devs that work hard day and night on Gentoo.

[kernelOfTruth]

Drobbins, I welcome you back. Please give us the Gentoo back that it was meant to be.

++

Daniel, you have my full respect

If the foundation and trustees are not "delivering the goods", why not get rid of them and let the (elected) council run things. Gentoo is a community distribution, so let it be run by the community.

++
sounds good even though I don't know anything about being a trustee / council member and their obligations

I really feel this whole topic get blown out of proportion and threatens to overshadow all that goes well withing Gentoo. Even worse it's an insult towards the Gentoo devs that work hard day and night on Gentoo.

might be, but there's more to running a (big) distro than only developing for it, if no one does the organisational things, etc. (domain, "weekly" newsletter, homepage, attraction of potential clients, etc. ) it wouldn't get that great
if you take a peek a *buntu, etc. you see that having customers who pay for your development, etc. isn't a bad thing after all ...

(hope everything's clear I wrote, i came directly out of my head )

[alveraan]

oh boy... so now someone leaked it to slashdot...

If you mean this thread, that would be me. Go ahead, ban me forever

[DanZ]

Drobbins has my support. All things being equal, I believe he has at heart the best interests of Gentoo.

[Nerdanel]

I think Gentoo is currently on autopilot and coasting on sheer inertia, but little problems are being left unaddressed, giving them time to accumulate into big problems. I think something radical should be done. I support the return of drobbins. Things were better when he was at the helm.

[zeek]

Gentoo needs Robbins!

[Sodki]

I think Gentoo is currently on autopilot and coasting on sheer inertia, but little problems are being left unaddressed, giving them time to accumulate into big problems. I think something radical should be done. I support the return of drobbins. Things were better when he was at the helm.

I agree. I fsomeone is willing to take care of the legal problems, and if that someone is one who really cares about Gentoo (Robbins surely is!), then he has my support. I'm still waiting for a Trustee's answer to this challenge. I hope they come out and say something, otherwise they really deserve the boot. How can one be a Gentoo Trustee if he can't be trusted?

[rambam]

But there seems to be some issues with Daniel - some mistrust or something.

He left Gentoo to set up a commercial company based on Gentoo.
His attempt failed.

He then worked at Microsoft and left because of conflicts
He then worked at ABC Coding Solutions in Albuquerque and left after 4 months
His next stint at FSMLabs lasted 11 months
He has been at his current job for around 6 months.
ie: He seems to want Gentoo back since he failed in private enterprise.

My concern is that once he takes over Gentoo, sacks the trustees and appoints a puppet board, he may try to commercialise it Gentoo again.

[dano]

as a user on and off for the past 3-5 years I would have to say that there has definitely been changes (for the worse) since he left. no newsletter (doesn't have to be weekly), front page updates, online package database is very broken (used to be browseable/searchable), and the general quality of the portage repository (very subjective here). I don't necessarily blame the individuals responsible for the features listed above, rather I believe it's a symptom of a much larger problem. My company just went through a (painful) year of restructuring but in the end we're in infinitely better shape. And it started with an external entity buying a bunch of shares and getting seats on the board.

Besides, he was one of the originators of the project. Look at Apple since Steve Jobs came back. $4/share -> $172/share.

I love Gentoo and I would be sad (and very busy unnecessarily) if it were to really suck or disappear altogether.

-d

[M]

No, gentoo doesn't need Robbins, nothing is wrong with gentoo, in fact everything is just fine. I been using gentoo for 3 years now, and for that time I notice just improvements, what are you talking about... What, there is no 2008 stages and no gwn updates and suddenly gentoo is in crisis? And here comes the Robbins to the rescue...

[LemurFromTheId]

Well, one thing has been proven already: something is seriously wrong. As I'm writing this, 127 votes out of 139 or 91% say 'yes' to Mr Robbins, which strongly suggests that the trustees don't have the trust of the community. Even if everything else is going well — and I am open to the possibility — this in itself is a major problem.

I openly admit I don't know the current situation all that well and and I don't really know what should be done about it either (and I probably belong to the majority, even though everyone seems to have an opinion) but of this I am sure: this should be addressed openly, publicly and with all speed by our benevolent leaders. Mr Robbins deserves an answer, but more than that, the community deserves an answer.

[AllenJB]

My big question is what is Gentoo doing about the whole situation, drobbins offer or no? There's like 1 post to gentoo-dev and apparently no mention of the situation anywhere else. I would've expected to see atleast some discussion on remedies by now, but to me it looks like the people who are expected to be discussing this (the Trustee's) are either all awol or have decided to resign because this situation happened in the first place (which seems like a damn stupid reason to resign to me).

From what I've seen so far, while Gentoo may not die totally without resolution of this situation, I think the danger is one day the devs who are working hard on Gentoo will "come to work" and find all the doors locked and the lights switched off.

Gentoo does need leadership, and better than it's had in the past couple of years IMO.

[simon_irl]

i agree with those who are saying we need more information before we can make a well-informed vote on this one...however, i also regard this fact in itself (i.e the lack of information as to what's going on in terms of gentoo's development and leadership) as suggesting that a change would be good for gentoo. by this i mean that keeping the community informed is an important part of responsible leadership, and this responsibility seems to have been neglected. in a recent thread i asked whether gentoo's missed release and dead website indicated that gentoo was in poor health: i was assured that they did not, and that gentoo was doing fine. now a few days later i see drobbins claiming that gentoo is in crisis and offering to fix things.

i am not claiming that the forum members who were kind enough to answer me were wrong nor that drobbins is right, nor even that the issues are so simple that anyone is simply "right" or "wrong" about them. my point (re information) is merely that it's frustrating trying to learn about gentoo's leadership via hearsay and rumour. why should i have to try to make sense of different claims in these forums, irc, or whatever? as a member of the general public, i should be able to find out about gentoo by referring to an official source of information (e.g. the website). if drobbins is wrong, how am i supposed to know this? i'd love to visit www.gentoo.org and see "the release is delayed because bla bla, which is being taken care of by bla bla, and is now scheduled for bla bla. drobbins has offered to take over and appoint new trustees, and while we think bla bla about this, we also think bla bla bla. in other news..." etc. the fact that the flow of information from that one source (the website) has dried up may be, as i've been told, a poor criterion for judging the health of the distro: but is judging it based on the views of forum members any better? "official" voices may not represent "the community" as well as the cacophony of different voices in here, but they might at least represent the *leadership* of the community, which is after all what we're discussing.

while i'm not voting in this poll (because, as a relatively inactive community member who isn't using gentoo at present, i have even less information to work with than most gentoo users do) i'm inclined to think that if gentoo's leaders (trustees, developers, whatever) don't regard things like the website as having much importance, then i would likely vote for new leaders with different ideas about what looking after gentoo involves. so again, while i agree that we don't have enough information here, i also think that the lack of information is itself a point in favour of change.

[MoonWalker]

If the foundation and trustees are not "delivering the goods", why not get rid of them and let the (elected) council run things. Gentoo is a community distribution, so let it be run by the community.

I think many really misses the point here, and maybe even the trusties them self. You kindastart to wonder when you read something like this from one of them (in this thread)

Trustees: Well, the Foundation no longer exists, legally, so it's pretty
obvious that things are not "fine" here.

> What are we going to do:

GWN: no clue, looks like nothing

RelEng: work on catalyst/genkernel, no further plans

PR: no clue, looks like nothing

Trustees: I retired as a Trustee since there's not much point without a
Foundation to run, leaving us with one (or possibly two) trustees.

Obviously there is no longer any foundation as those appointed to it hasn't done their job. I am not sure of how the organization of this works, but I assume "those" are the trustees.

Then to the point some/many seem to miss, at least as I have understood it. The Foundation is the owner of all Gentoo's assets including servers etc. I guess donated by various parties. Sure Gentoo "could" continue as before w/o it but I think as the legal process starts to proceed in the end a lot of stuff would be "taken back" or simply disappear... I am terrible with papers, legal stuff and other real world "obligatories" etc. but luckily I have a wife who knows how to run that part of our "body" - she's terrible with computers on the other hand but thanks good she has me

I think this at least part of the problem, Gentoo has too many like me and is of great need of "a wife" type of people to care for certain things, and maybe a super wife heading it all, at least for a while. People like me should not be or even apply for being "trustees" no matter how trustworthy we may be, we are techs and at best manage to prepare an instant soup in the kichen - but not run it!

Last time mr. Robbins came back I didn't support him (or the other side) because I think he and most involved acted in a naively stupid way - although I might understood his concerns. This time however I am with him and I think he's the best option Gentoo has in this situation. There is no reason belive his intentions isn't for the best and he obviously knows how this should be done, current leadership apparently do not. My fear though is that it not even will respond and ... I don't even want to think about it.

I love Gentoo and will stay on the ship as long as there is a chance to get it sailing again, but at some point you always have to think on your own survival as well.

[xahodo]

Well, Drobbins return is nearly fine with me... except that a few questions are unanswered.

Who will he install as trustees?
What will he do with gentoo when he's president of the foundation?
What will he do once things are up and running again?

NOTE: I'm only a user, and rarely have a need to visit the forums, irc or the mailing lists. But I do care what happens to gentoo.

[percy]

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.

Well, this is partially true. But apparently, since the Foundation is in crisis, the whole thing is affected. The newsletter is/was never updated - and where's the Gentoo 2007.1 ? It's already 2008.

So you see, the technical side of Gentoo may exist - but it may exist without direction. Developers will be demoralized, contributors may shrink in number if the Foundation is in "mess" - the whole thing may collapse. We cannot simply separate the business aspects (the Foundation) and the technical aspects of Gentoo.

[Kosa]

Presently, I am moving my servers to Ubuntu, simply because I lost my faith in Gentoo. It looks like pilots are away and autopilot is slowly taking plane down. I do not need information, feeling is enough for me. Staging looks dead, GWN is dead, p.g.o had been dead for many days before someone posted explanation and it took months to get it into current state (pretty unusable without search anyway).

Btw. need of information is a bad sign too - it means that trustees/council/whatever do not speak with community.

[NeddySeagoon]

Grahammm,

There are lots of new posts in this thread I would like to respond to but it would just become too confusing.

The Gentoo Foundation and Gentoo Council were deliberately set up as two separate bodies. I recall that drobbins had a hand in that decision as he left the first time. They have responsibilities in different areas:-

The council looks after Gentoos Technical direction. For example, it arbitrates when developers want to do something but cannot agree that one method is superior to all others, so that they can just do it. The council is transparent. It holds regular meetings in #gentoo-council which anyone may attend and recently, speak. Logs and summaries are also posted.

The Foundation is charged with looking after Gentoos Legal interests and holding Gentoos assets. I'm not aware if its supposed to be as transparent as the council but it doesn't appear to be in practice. However, nobody should conclude that the Trustees are doing nothing because it appears they are not communicating. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Gentoo is full of people with technical interests, the council had to be elected as there were more people interested in serving than seats on the council. The election for new Trustees was never held as there were too few nominees to fill the seats. Agian, this reflects interests within Gentoo.
The trustees need to be interested in law and management. There are fewer people in Gentoo with those interests.

Given the split in roles between the council and trustees, both bodies need to agree to drobbins conditions as there are conditions that fall under both bodies. drobbings can't just 'fix it' unaided, so who will and how ?

[MoonWalker]

NeddySeagoon,

thanks for the clear description of Foundation vs. Council

[Grayman]

Hello

I have been using Gentoo for several years now, dual booting with XP, trying out different distros and always coming back to Gentoo (I'm a control freak on the comp). However I have started to be concerned that while the technical side may be running well enough at the moment (and grateful for that!), there are other signs of things going wrong. That bless'ed front page is just a symptom of a lack of interest in some areas.

It is possible that the tiny snowball might become a wall of snow in time - and it is possible that Daniel might not be the fix that Gentoo needs, but at the moment I get the feeling (and YES it is just a feeling garnered from reading on the forums...) that things are slowing down, that Gentoo is not as good as it might be.

My vote would be to get Daniel back in - he started the project - maybe he can get it all fired up and boogying again !

Grayman

[NeddySeagoon]

Grayman,

"... maybe ..." is exactly my point.

[agnitio]

I've been a dedicated gentoo user for years now and it's the only distribution that has let me do things the way I want.

This recent development concerns me, as does the risc of this discussion blowing the issue way out of proportion. I feel that I don't have enough information about how things worked with robbins behind the wheel, but as others have mentioned there's a feeling that gentoo is lacking direction.

For me, I feel this is the time to step up, as I've said I've been a dedicated user, but I have not contributed much, other than the occational bug report here and there. I want to know what I can do to help this situation, I'm sure that Gentoo will live on one way or the other, and I'm equally sure that I want to be a part of it, what can I do?

[NeddySeagoon]

agnitio,

The situation is not a recent development, its been developing since drobbins left the first time.
What is new is that this developing situation has been raised as an issue that needs to be fixed quickly.

But does it ?
Its existed for several years.

[AllenJB]

The Foundation is charged with looking after Gentoos Legal interests and holding Gentoos assets. I'm not aware if its supposed to be as transparent as the council but it doesn't appear to be in practice. However, nobody should conclude that the Trustees are doing nothing because it appears they are not communicating. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

I feel it would be beneficial to the community if they just put out something to say "we're aware of the situation and we are dealing with it" at the very least

[MoonWalker]

agnitio,

The situation is not a recent development, its been developing since drobbins left the first time.
What is new is that this developing situation has been raised as an issue that needs to be fixed quickly.

But does it ?
Its existed for several years.

I think the urgent matter here that really needs to be fixed quickly is a legal nature. Officially we currently lack a legal identity, and that can quickly developing into something really bad for Gentoo or sure, after death comes resurrection. Apparently Drobbins can fix this quickly, but it doesn't come for free, there are terms, and I think there is nothing to object to this - after all we have all together let things develop to what it is today. As I see it, the founder comes back (and sure we don't know all his reasons, there might be hidden ones) and offer a deal/solution and I hear it as a "take it or leave it" offer. If we say no, we probably will never hear of Drobbins again, he will simply move on (that's what I would do anyhow). If we say yes, I think we can count on the urgent legal matter to be solved first of all, and then sure a process of change will start and whether we say yes or no at this stage I think it's an illusion to believe we can avoid a painful process of change - well that's if you are a true gentooer or cause and not simple escape to some other ship within range.

I think one should be clear about one thing, even if Drobbins comes back as President, it doesn't mean he will be in the possition of being an almighty dictator. here surely will have some power over things, but before he left he made sure to decentralize the Gentoo power structure so no one could come in and just "take it over" with some smart actions.

I truley belive he has the best intentions as the "father" of this project, I also belive as his current imployer supportshim in this, that there might be something for them in it - but why shouldn't it? Will it/hi fix Gentoo, no there is no "maybe", it's a deffinitive "no" - the only one who can fix Gentoo is the community but I strongly think we need Drobbins to get it done or at least get back on track.

So I really hope he will come back as I would hate it if I had to leave Gentoo as well in the end, not by own choice really but because the box all the HW is plugged in is taken away.