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Slalomsk8er · Post by **Slalomsk8er** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 5:17 pm

It looks like Gentoo decided against 501(c)(3) and decided for 501(c)(6) instead.

cyrius · Post by **cyrius** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 5:19 pm

I vote yes for the daniel's come back.

Tallak · Post by **Tallak** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 5:44 pm

Slalomsk8er wrote:It looks like Gentoo decided against 501(c)(3) and decided for 501(c)(6) instead.

Well but wouldn't Gentoo profit more if donations were deductible as charitable contributions? Is there any information why Gentoo decided to go with 501(c)(6)?

grx · Post by **grx** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 6:15 pm

Problem: Courtesy has significantly declined on the part of all, users and devs alike.
Why the problem exists: ???
Proposed solution: ???

I don't think there's anything to be done about this issue. I haven't used linux at all (I used gentoo before) for a while, as circumstances have changed and I don't have the time to think about it. So I've gotten lazy and reliant on my Vista installation, though I intend to get back to linux as soon as it's feasible for me. I really liked gentoo, and one of the reasons is that everyone seemed to treat each other with a certain degree of courtesy. Most people would even use ***'s to replace words that may be considered vulgar. I came back to the forums because I had found out about this issue, and was curious to see what was happening. I also hadn't even heard of Paludis, so I checked that out. It seems there's a lot of fighting, insulting, and disrespect happening everywhere. Some may argue that it's just the nature of these two particular topics. I thought that might be the case, and while it certainly seems to happen more frequently here, I read through a number of other topics too and found evidence of the same problem elsewhere. I won't point out specific examples, as that ends up calling attention to specific people, as well, and I won't point fingers. We're all at fault here.

Perhaps the best solution is for all of us to rethink our attitudes, and recognize that though we are free to speak, one of the responsibilities of that freedom is to treat each other civilly and allow each to have the same freedom to the same degree we enjoy it.

I think this problem is appearing in all aspects of our society, and it's getting worse. I'll admit the attitude problem is worse with other distros than gentoo, but it's a pretty steep and slippery slope for us to be on. I for one think the gentoo culture is better than that. I hope we can live up to it.

Nerdanel · Post by **Nerdanel** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 7:44 pm

I found this comment by Michael Cummings:

Michael Cummings wrote:So I once again, and this time with finality, bid Gentoo a farewell. It’s been a fun ride, and I hope to still be able to talk to the folks that have become my friends over the years, but I just don’t have the time and will to keep it going.

From this blog post of his

And more:

Michael Cummings wrote:But when they cut me off from being able to retrieve trustee news/mail/info (despite technically being a member of the trustees until replaced), I didn’t put up a fuss but happily got on with my life.

Nerdanel · Post by **Nerdanel** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 9:01 pm

It appears that the trustees couldn't decide between 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(6) (and between joining the SFC) in last July and ended up doing nothing...

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.nfp/471

cyrius · Post by **cyrius** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 9:20 pm

All this is my feeling and opinion about gentoo organisation:

Anyway, the courtesy problem is not the real one, the real one is the internal organisation of gentoo. The un courtesy is the consequence of it.
I know and use gentoo since 2003 (My previous id was "nemoflo").
After 5 years of use and experience with gentoo dev, i remarked some negative reaction against new proposals, new idea.
The mainly kind of answer is "it's not the aim of Gentoo" .... instead of : discuss the new idea, help to finish it and make it as a project, charge the person as the project leader during the incubation period. If after the incubation period, the guy didn't finished it, the project is dead. Otherwise, it's integrated in the official Gentoo release.

A non profit organisation is not an organisation against the enterprise stuff (i mean a freeze and stable version, or a portage orientation that permit to integrate easely a group of computers...). A non profit organisation needs money to finance travels, manifestations, and support, why not, external open source projects. A non profit organisation can employ professional developers to develop gentoo core. A non profit organisation can do profit until it doesn't reach the fiscal year.

Sincerely, Debian is a not a profit organisation but there is a lot of professionnal involved in. That's one of the keys of the success of a distribution today. There's no shame around this. The real problem from my point of view is the unmature headers of gentoo today. Portage made the success of gentoo and that's all. Without portage, no gentoo at all. Portage was designed by Daniel robbins. Daniel Robbins is Gentoo like Linus Torwald is linux. Please, give a head to gentoo and accept the offer of D.Robbins.

In gentoo Bugg, when you correct something or propose a new ebuild, your name doesn't appears in the ebuild or as a contributor for this version. Just the id of the developer that have kept your code and translated it in good english via a friend. That's an insult to all the communauty and a high non courtesy thing.
And clearly, this won't solve the problem of gentoo dev lack.

Gentoo organisation is full closed and monolithics. I mean, there's no openning opportunities from the devs for newbies. This is really against the gentoo philosophy.
An other point is that there's no open projects, challenge for new developpers team constitution. Just developpers that are looking for other developpers...... That's not really good and open minding (As you want to enclose new participants).

An other point to mention is the representative of gentoo that i ve experienced in 2006. They were closed, not really open to discuss or animate a discussion (perhaps, my error was to not have basket, t-shirt, and a beer) . Presentation was a non suitable level and uninteressant (i mean, propose some empty slides, read the slide and that's it).

Anyway, i like the distribution and will continue to use it until i'll think it's finished and choose debian. But, please, again, give a head to gentoo by accepting the D.Robbins offer cause gentoo really goes in a real strange way.

kernelOfTruth · Post by **kernelOfTruth** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 9:25 pm

@cyrius:

++

bendy · Post by **bendy** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 10:16 pm

Slalomsk8er wrote:This sounds like news speak which makes it a bit mood for me. If I remember things right he was more or less driven out of the project by the developer because of his way to deal with persons that he did not could convince of his vision and the Foundation was a requirement he imposed on the developers to leave them the name and logo and stuff like this.

I'm a bit late into this discussion, but that's not how I remember it. My recollection is that drobbins had run up considerable personal debts whilst devoting a lot of his time (unpaid) to Gentoo. He resigned because he needed to get a paying job in order to feed his family.

When he resigned, most of us were very shocked when we heard about his difficult personal circumstances, and thousands of users donated cash via the Gentoo store to help him out (myself included).

The Foundation was part of his efforts to leave a structure behind for the Gentoo project to help it continue without a "Chief Architect".

Gentoo was growing very rapidly at the time, and whilst I'm sure there were tensions between drobbins and certain devs, no one should doubt the respect and affection that the vast majority of Gentoo users from those days have for him. Stating the obvious, without drobbins there would be no Gentoo. I would personally welcome him back in a position of authority within the Gentoo project.

The key to securing the long term future of Gentoo is in finding a better way of using the talent, experience and energy that must exist within Gentoo's substantial userbase. Even if only a small percentage of users are qualified to be devs or contribute code and fixes, there must be ways for less technical users that have other skills and the enthusiasm to help out. This is why the GWN should be an important means of communication with those who don't subscribe to the mailing lists (because they don't feel qualified to make technical contributions).

I have tremendous respect for the hard-working devs who make Gentoo a reality, but something is broken if there is not effective prioritisation and conflict-resolution, or if devs are overloaded and get burnt-out.

I'd like to hear more from the Gentoo devs about how we (the users) can help and contribute more.

Slalomsk8er · Post by **Slalomsk8er** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 10:31 pm

Nerdanel, you are great in finding informations. Thanks

Slalomsk8er · Post by **Slalomsk8er** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 10:35 pm

bendy wrote: I'm a bit late into this discussion, but that's not how I remember it. My recollection is that drobbins had run up considerable personal debts whilst devoting a lot of his time (unpaid) to Gentoo. He resigned because he needed to get a paying job in order to feed his family.

Well I am not that good in remembering and it could be that I remembered some gossip that I believed in because his tone in handling persons he had some friction with.

cyrius · Post by **cyrius** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:47 pm

That's just the creator of Gentoo. So why they hesitate ?
Won't it be courtesy and normal from the gentoo comunauty to permit his come back ?

bmichaelsen · Post by **bmichaelsen** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:54 pm

There is a brave and honest statement by wolf31o2 on bug 205554.

berferd · Post by **berferd** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 12:13 am

It got closed before I could post. Let DRobbins back, please.

Nerdanel · Post by **Nerdanel** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 12:19 am

Slalomsk8er wrote:Nerdanel, you are great in finding informations. Thanks

Thanks. That made my day.

rhill · Post by **rhill** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 12:24 am

cyrius wrote:That's just the creator of Gentoo. So why they hesitate ?
Won't it be courtesy and normal from the gentoo comunauty to permit his come back ?

because we have zero interest in returning to a state where we have only one individual in charge of everything? when Daniel was in charge he made decisions single-handedly, often without logical reason and against the feedback of the developer and user community. that is not an open model. we'd like to do better than that.

it may be that Daniel does not wish to assume his previous position of dictator and just wants to run the business side of Gentoo (the Foundation). but it's not clear right now if that's his intent.

we're discussing this amongst ourselves right now, because really the Foundation has zero effect on the Gentoo you know and love/hate. feel free to freak out amongst yourselves if you like, but we're not going to rush a big decision based on knee-jerk reactions.

russK · Post by **russK** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 12:52 am

I love Gentoo. It kicks ass. I don't want to switch to a binary distro. I have 5 boxes running gentoo in my house doing various jobs, some of them on platforms that would not work with ubuntu anyway.

I'm sorry I'm not a dev and have not contributed a thing to the project but now I am wishing I had paid more attention to the 'donate' button in the upper right corner of the website. Someone mentioned a bounty system which might be cool. But I would like to thank all the developers for their efforts and I would suggest that although Gentoo is a volunteer organization I think there should be perks for people doing thankless jobs like the trustees, maybe a free trip somewhere nice to hold the yearly meeting and then someone should be paid to do the legwork like submitting papers or whatever.

I hope this all gets straightened out and if it does I will at least be contributing monetarily if there is some entity to accept my paypal submission.

dalek · Post by **dalek** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 1:03 am

bmichaelsen wrote:There is a brave and honest statement by wolf31o2 on bug 205554.

I couldn't find it. Can you post what was said or recheck your link please?

Thanks

think4urs11 · Post by **think4urs11** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 1:09 am

dalek wrote:
bmichaelsen wrote:There is a brave and honest statement by wolf31o2 on bug 205554.
I couldn't find it.

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=205554#c20

dalek · Post by **dalek** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 1:22 am

Think4UrS11 wrote:
dalek wrote:
bmichaelsen wrote:There is a brave and honest statement by wolf31o2 on bug 205554.
I couldn't find it.
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=205554#c20

Is it public? What it took me to is this:

(In reply to comment #16)
> (In reply to comment #14)
> > I live about a mile from one of the members, so I can go annoy her if necessary
> > ;P
> >
> > But yes I've talked to at least three people, one of which reviewed the news
> > items and said he was fine with them getting posted as long as someone else
> > reviewed them. I hope for that to happen sometime today.
> >
> > -Alec
> >
>
> What does it take to get involved with pr?
>

No idea; I'm not on PR. I just thought news items would be a good idea

I got feedback from Chris and Nesyx today (some of my xml was wrong or could
use better tags). Still waiting on review (I can't post news items myself).

-Alec

Looks like they are talking about making a public statement, which I have not seen happen yet. Maybe I am missing something.

I did see Chris's post below that tho.

c0d3g33k · Post by **c0d3g33k** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 1:39 am

dirtyepic wrote:because we have zero interest in returning to a state where we have one individual in charge of everything? when Daniel was in charge he made decisions single-handedly, often without logical reason and against the feedback of the developer and user community. that is not an open model. we'd like to do better than that.

How is "one individual in charge of everything" significantly different from a secretive cabal, particularly one who considers the wider members of the community "stupid" and not worth interacting with or listening to? If there's a commitment to an open model, I'm not seeing it, and I don't consider conducting ones business in secret to be a very open approach.

dirtyepic wrote:we're discussing this amongst ourselves right now, because really the Foundation has zero effect on the Gentoo you know and love/hate. feel free to freak out amongst yourselves if you like, but we're not going to rush a big decision based on knee-jerk reactions.

First observation: "Discussing amongst ourselves." Above you accuse Daniel of working against the feedback of the developer and user community. I suppose one way to avoid the sin of working against feedback is to eliminate the chances of feedback entirely. Then there's no feedback to work against.

Second observation: There is a clear "us vs. them" bias in your mindset. The wise and benevolent "us" is rationally discussing amongst themselves (allegedly, since this in secret). The great unwashed "them" is 'freaking out' and engaging in "knee-jerk" reactions.

Perhaps it would be beneficial to adjust your viewpoint a bit. Serious and vocal concern might not quite equate to freaking out, though it's certainly easier to dismiss uncomfortable feedback by trivializing it*.

*According to my wife, women have had to contend with this for years, since any passionate response is quickly trivialized by branding it as "hysterical female" (along with an eye roll, a sigh and a knowing shake of the head). I see a similar kind of prejudice at work directed at any unwelcome input from the wider Gentoo community from the "Gentoo insiders".

tld · Post by **tld** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 2:04 am

c0d3g33k wrote:
dirtyepic wrote:we're discussing this amongst ourselves right now, because really the Foundation has zero effect on the Gentoo you know and love/hate. feel free to freak out amongst yourselves if you like, but we're not going to rush a big decision based on knee-jerk reactions.
Second observation: There is a clear "us vs. them" bias in your mindset. The wise and benevolent "us" is rationally discussing amongst themselves (allegedly, since this in secret). The great unwashed "them" is 'freaking out' and engaging in "knee-jerk" reactions.

I can hardly blame him actually. Most of the user community seems to be jumping on the whole messiah thing with drobbins and how he's going to fix everything that's 'wrong' with Gentoo...yet other than the website and the GWN stagnating, I've yet to hear anyone articulate exactly what's so horribly wrong with Gentoo right now, aside from the obvious business/legal stuff. Worse yet, unless I missed it, but I've yet to hear a single developer echo those sentiments. Aren't any users bothered by that?

I'm sorry, but I just don't get any of it. I'm beginning to wonder if there are some that will think Gentoo is in dire trouble as long as it's not as popular as Ubuntu or something. Never mind that, while the Gentoo website and GWN stay dormant, and even with no 2007.1 or 2008.0, I can run versions of software under Gentoo that, under other distros would require waiting for their next release.

I don't mean to offend anyone who's in favor of taking the drobbins offer or anything, and I'm not even saying I'm sure it'd be a bad thing...but seriously...the reactions I'm seeing very much do look like 'freaking out'.

Tom

slonocode · Post by **slonocode** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 2:19 am

Carlo wrote:
slonocode wrote:Uh I understand your claim. You offer no proof of it though. Do you have any stats to back that up?
You have only your wild guesses, while Kloeri has some knowledge of the inner workflow of Gentoo over a couple of years. Here's no one giving you some pointless stats. Just grok that Kloeri is right.

It was claimed that the dev base was in decline. He proposed that you could refute the decline by not counting the retires by claiming they did nothing. Logically if they did nothing then you can't really count them as additions either. There were no wild guesses on my part.

Visceral · Post by **Visceral** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 2:34 am

It just isn't going to happen. I think the responses so far from the "powers that be" pretty clearly hints at that. In addition, I wouldn't be surprised if "they" don't retaliate against the "stupid users" for having the audacity to support their removal. This is similar to the stupid crap that went down with Debian before someone with the time and talent forked it to form Ubuntu. We should be so lucky, but even Robbins admits he can't dedicate 100% of his time to it.

Prediction: Nothing happens. Things temporarily improve and the community is collectively punished in some fashion for this entire argument. Really, the users have no power or say in this, and they know it. So it's their way or the highway, anything else is just fantasy.

dalek · Post by **dalek** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 2:47 am

c0d3g33k wrote:
dirtyepic wrote:because we have zero interest in returning to a state where we have one individual in charge of everything? when Daniel was in charge he made decisions single-handedly, often without logical reason and against the feedback of the developer and user community. that is not an open model. we'd like to do better than that.
How is "one individual in charge of everything" significantly different from a secretive cabal, particularly one who considers the wider members of the community "stupid" and not worth interacting with or listening to? If there's a commitment to an open model, I'm not seeing it, and I don't consider conducting ones business in secret to be a very open approach.

dirtyepic wrote:we're discussing this amongst ourselves right now, because really the Foundation has zero effect on the Gentoo you know and love/hate. feel free to freak out amongst yourselves if you like, but we're not going to rush a big decision based on knee-jerk reactions.
First observation: "Discussing amongst ourselves." Above you accuse Daniel of working against the feedback of the developer and user community. I suppose one way to avoid the sin of working against feedback is to eliminate the chances of feedback entirely. Then there's no feedback to work against.

Second observation: There is a clear "us vs. them" bias in your mindset. The wise and benevolent "us" is rationally discussing amongst themselves (allegedly, since this in secret). The great unwashed "them" is 'freaking out' and engaging in "knee-jerk" reactions.

Perhaps it would be beneficial to adjust your viewpoint a bit. Serious and vocal concern might not quite equate to freaking out, though it's certainly easier to dismiss uncomfortable feedback by trivializing it*.

*According to my wife, women have had to contend with this for years, since any passionate response is quickly trivialized by branding it as "hysterical female" (along with an eye roll, a sigh and a knowing shake of the head). I see a similar kind of prejudice at work directed at any unwelcome input from the wider Gentoo community from the "Gentoo insiders".

hmmmm, I thought it was just me. Guess not.

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