Quite late but why Daniel Robbins left Gentoo?

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C1REX · Post by **C1REX** » Fri Feb 07, 2020 12:25 am

I've never understood and never asked what exactly happened.
Why Robbins left Gentoo exactly? Why Funtoo was a separate project that is almost like Gentoo but never merged back together?
What the whole drama and "dark times" for gentoo was about. Is gentoo getting back life force or is it slowly dying?

I remember times when Gentoo was in top 10 on distro watch. :roll:

Post by **pjp** » Fri Feb 07, 2020 1:41 am

People have been asking about Gentoo dying at least since 2003.

I'm not aware of any official details of Daniel's departure, but there is a thread with a link to a podcast in which he answers some of that: post with transcription.

Ant P. · Post by **Ant P.** » Fri Feb 07, 2020 2:10 am

AFAIK, developer drama. It stayed that way probably because it's more effort to undo at this point than keep things the way they are.

Things have gotten *slightly* better here since then. There are project-wide community standards and people assigned to enforce them, but most of that stuff happens on the mailing lists out of sight.

I think Gentoo's doing okay. Always understaffed, but that's probably because the barriers to entry aren't being improved.

erm67 · Post by **erm67** » Fri Feb 07, 2020 10:47 pm

DRobbins left because he was hired by Microsoft and worked for them for a while, he left his job at Microsoft eventually and came back as gentoo leader but was quickly forced to leave again by enraged devs screaming

"I'm Gentoo, yes I'm the real Gentoo
All you other gentoes are just imitating
So won't the real Gentoo please stand up
Please stand up, please stand up?"

the distro was really heading in a different direction already but it was the wrong direction probably, nobody remembers the (nick)names of the other Slim Shadys anyway.

Post by **Juippisi** » Sat Feb 08, 2020 6:45 am

erm67 wrote:DRobbins left because he was hired by Microsoft and worked for them for a while, he left his job at Microsoft eventually and came back as gentoo leader but was quickly forced to leave again by enraged devs screaming

If I remember correctly, BEFORE he left to Microsoft ABANDONING Gentoo, he handed all "power" to a democratic Gentoo council. He then tried to come back (few times) dictating what direction the distro should go, but couldn't overrule the council and other devs anymore. Then he founded Funtoo.
I think the "drama" everyone "remembers" is drobbins & few individual devs vs. the council, where council and majority of devs "won". But this is just out of my memory.

That council is still working and making distro-wide decisions for Gentoo, which I believe is a good thing. Drobbins is leading Funtoo alone. Both ways have their positives and negatives, for example whatever changes are decided for Funtoo, they can be implemented a lot faster. But then again, dropping multilib support for example pissed off many current Funtoo users, just because one guy didn't want to support it anymore. (My personal feeling is that dropping multilib causes a lot more work than keeping it, but what do I know)

There was a brief time when drobbins and Gentoo worked closely together, but I believe the latest drobbins vs. mgorny "drama" burned that bridge forever.

Morality124 · Post by **Morality124** » Sat Feb 08, 2020 7:09 am

Juippisi wrote:
erm67 wrote:DRobbins left because he was hired by Microsoft and worked for them for a while, he left his job at Microsoft eventually and came back as gentoo leader but was quickly forced to leave again by enraged devs screaming
If I remember correctly, BEFORE he left to Microsoft ABANDONING Gentoo, he handed all "power" to a democratic Gentoo council. He then tried to come back (few times) dictating what direction the distro should go, but couldn't overrule the council and other devs anymore. Then he founded Funtoo.
I think the "drama" everyone "remembers" is drobbins & few individual devs vs. the council, where council and majority of devs "won". But this is just out of my memory.

That council is still working and making distro-wide decisions for Gentoo, which I believe is a good thing. Drobbins is leading Funtoo alone. Both ways have their positives and negatives, for example whatever changes are decided for Funtoo, they can be implemented a lot faster. But then again, dropping multilib support for example pissed off many current Funtoo users, just because one guy didn't want to support it anymore. (My personal feeling is that dropping multilib causes a lot more work than keeping it, but what do I know)

There was a brief time when drobbins and Gentoo worked closely together, but I believe the latest drobbins vs. mgorny "drama" burned that bridge forever.

A very objective view of events I think. What's your view of mgorny by contrast?

erm67 · Post by **erm67** » Sat Feb 08, 2020 8:24 am

Juippisi wrote:
erm67 wrote:DRobbins left because he was hired by Microsoft and worked for them for a while, he left his job at Microsoft eventually and came back as gentoo leader but was quickly forced to leave again by enraged devs screaming
If I remember correctly, BEFORE he left to Microsoft ABANDONING Gentoo, he handed all "power" to a democratic Gentoo council. He then tried to come back (few times) dictating what direction the distro should go, but couldn't overrule the council and other devs anymore. Then he founded Funtoo.

In fact that's why nobody could stand up claiming to be the real slim shady

Juippisi wrote: I think the "drama" everyone "remembers" is drobbins & few individual devs vs. the council, where council and majority of devs "won". But this is just out of my memory.

I used a different nick before this one, but at the beginning gentoo was a lot more funny, there were a few packages supported, then people began sending in ebuilds for strange stuff, or demanding support for that or that other feature ... he was probably overwhelmed by the public reaction, soon other people came in (professional programmers, he was a sysadm before starting gentoo) and in no time even him could no longer say he was the real Slim shady. That was when the drama started to unfold, he had lost control of his creature possibly also for personal reasons.

Juippisi wrote:But then again, dropping multilib support for example pissed off many current Funtoo users, just because one guy didn't want to support it anymore. (My personal feeling is that dropping multilib causes a lot more work than keeping it, but what do I know)

There was a brief time when drobbins and Gentoo worked closely together, but I believe the latest drobbins vs. mgorny "drama" burned that bridge forever.

multilib in gentoo was flawed and still is after the recent cosmetic changes otherwise there would be no need to patch the default configure behaviour in every ebuild, it will need to be re-engineered again in the future, unless 2020 will finally be the year of the gentoo desktop, but who cares ...

BTW I would define the current gentoo direction more populist than democratic ....

C1REX · Post by **C1REX** » Sat Feb 08, 2020 7:30 pm

Is there a consensus within the gentoo developers that current state is better than having Robbins back as the king of gentoo?

Post by **asturm** » Sat Feb 08, 2020 7:45 pm

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sat Feb 08, 2020 7:51 pm

drobbins left Gentoo because he was trying to make a living out of Gentoo and it didn't work out.
When he left Gentoo to work for Microsoft, he set up the Gentoo Foundation Inc., as a non profit entity to take of all the Gentoo assets owned by Gentoo Technologies Inc.
That was 14th of May. 2004. Gentoo Technologies Inc. had two directors, drobbins and his wife.

At the time drobbins left, he was BDFL and managed Gentoo technically with the help of the Top Level Project leads.
For a while after drobbins left, the Top Level Project leads carried on without him.
For one reason or another, that didn't work too well and the seeds of the Gentoo council were sown over a few beers at FOSDEM.

Some ideas were put to all the devs for a vote and the council as defined in GLEP 39 was born.

C1REX · Post by **C1REX** » Sat Feb 08, 2020 8:21 pm

So what does "dark times for gentoo" mean? Were there problems on developers side, business side or popularity side? Why it's called that way and why it's considered to be over and better now?

I remember when first ubuntu and arch linux came out and tons of users switched that time.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sat Feb 08, 2020 8:30 pm

C1REX,

Its just different now. Not better or worse, just different.
Most devs today were not devs in 2004 when drobbins left, so they know no different.

I didn't get assimilated until 2006, so while I have been a Gentoo user since early 2002 and followed things on the public mailing lists, I was not a dev when drobbins was BDFL

erm67 · Post by **erm67** » Mon Feb 10, 2020 10:31 am

NeddySeagoon wrote:drobbins left Gentoo because he was trying to make a living out of Gentoo

Like everybody else on board

NeddySeagoon wrote: and it didn't work out.

Like it didn't for most of those that tried ..... and that fueled their envy for the few that did ...

Actually that was the problem, gentoo reputation was already so bad in 2002 (because of litigious devs and constant flame wars) that even if everybody agreed that gentoo had a potential almost nowhere was accepted in the workplace "until they sort things out" which never fully happened. Also badly needed stuff like @protected-libs came really too late, rpm was already checking dynamic library requirements in 1998 while hundreds of users were left with unusable systems at every "emerge -uDN @world" or "emerge --unmerge libx" for years fuelling even more flame-wars.
When things started to improve a bit technically systemd came out with all the weirdos ....