That is what I also want to say. Gentoo as a Distribution can not just live with Code and Devs. In this World there also needs to be done some stuff no Coder likes to do. But someone needs to do it. If the devs find someone who will take care of this that's fine. But if the devs will not find someone and drobbins is the only person around that has enough knowlegde and the will to do this job ...... what other choices are there?douglas_goodall wrote:After spending some time reading all the forum traffic about this issue, I started to get a feel for the situation. The problem as I see it, is that everyone can see quite clearly the situation from their own perspective. Towards the end I could see that some enlightened people were looking at the middle ground and trying to find a solution that worked for everyone. Here are several of my observations for what they are worth.Code: Select all
This page is a candidate for deletion Reason given: Not a good topic for this wiki. This is a short term situation which will be resolved by the devs. Use the gentoo forums for discussion. ...
It is a lot of fun to immerse yourself in technological work and create elegant solutions. I have spent many years writing operating system code myself. In fact years ago I was self employed working on my own version of a popular operating system, and while I was distracted being the most important person at my company (the developer), I ignored the mundane business issues around me, and a business partner stole my company out from under me. There were two important lessons learned from this by me. One was that I was only a member of the team, and while everyone can't write hardware drivers like me, everyone in the company had a job to do, and when everyone did their thing, business went along fine. I was too important to distract myself with mundane business issues, and I let things get away from me. It is a privilege to be allowed to write code instead of doing less interesting but nonetheless important jobs such as technical support and writing documentation. I learned that if you are too arrogant about your occupation, you can find yourself in a situation where people don't want to work with you, and suddenly you are not so important after all. Also we learn from our life experiences, and in the 20-20 hindsight we often have regrets about how we handled things and how other people responded to us.
I think Daniel has had time enough to consider his interaction with others at the gentoo project, and right now it looks to me like he understands that someone needs to take care of less fun things like management issues. On some level I am sure he would rather be eating pizza and writing code, and enjoying the company of his technical comrades. If the people who had a difficult time with him before don't allow him to change and grow, they will in effect keep him in a little box with his regrets. Right now he wants to take a chaotic situation and straighten it out so that developers can continue taking pride in their work and users can continue to enjoy using the gentoo operating system, and that is of course the centrally important value for everyone.
I am sorry to hear that, "This is a short term situation which will be resolved by the devs." This is not only a developer problem. The project lacks central management. When a company reaches a certain size, and a product reaches a certain complexity level, the project priorities can not be determined by developers unilaterally. I think the developers are used to working on the parts that the like or are interested in, but in the real world, team members pull for the team, and do what is needed for the benefit of everyone and that means some sacrifice sometimes.
Daniel has generously offered to do what he can to help the project now in its time of need. If he is a little vague about all his plans, it may be that he has considered and committed to the less fun business tasks and realities and has not planned every aspect of the future other than he wants to do a good job for the sake of the project.
I would be more impressed with the gentoo developers if they would pull together and make things work with a new management team instead of straining to keep things the same as they have been. Change is the natural state of things. Sometimes change is exciting. When a huge project for an important client happens, a truck full of great computers can arrive. Or extra developers can arrive for a while to help with difficult development tasks. Change is not always bad. Some of what there is to learn is project management and the mentoring of younger engineers. I encourage the developers to take a wider view of things, and to share the pending decisions with the other stakeholders, for this challenge affects many other people besides them.
Continue like the last months will not solve everything but Bugs.
Of course I want to thank the devs for the good work on the Code!
But also I hope that in a soon time I can thank someone for the good work getting the legal stuff done ..... whoever this will be.
Most of the concern, I believe, emanates from the fact that internally the project was showing fairly major stress fractures by the time Daniel left, caused by his leadership style. Attempting to force that same leadership style onto a much larger project, as Gentoo Linux is in 2008, would likely cause very bad things to happen IMO.
