So, Can I have Gentoo back?
This is one of those uncensored, late night blog posts that I may regret in the morning. And it's about Gentoo.
It appears that the Gentoo Foundation may be disappearing in a matter of time. Apparently, no one has time to actually do the work required to run the Foundation. There seems to be some momentum building behind the idea of handing over all of Gentoo's intellectual property to another Foundation, so no one has to deal with running the Gentoo Foundation anymore. (see this thread)
As the creator of Gentoo, the guy who led the project from its inception through my departure as Chief Architect in May 2004, and the guy who actually set up the Gentoo Foundation, I find this to be somewhat insulting. I set up the Foundation at the request of quite a few extremely vocal Gentoo developers who were tremendously passionate about the need for Gentoo to be rushed into a not-for-profit entity before its time. Unfortunately, it seems that many of these people were enamored with the idea of having a not-for-profit bloom into existence overnight, but weren't actually interested in doing the hard work required to run a not-for-profit. I appointed 13 people to the board of directors to replace my individual role on the project. Maybe some people were expecting me to stick around after the not-for-profit was established to do all the heavy lifting - but instead, I resigned. I figured that 13 people could fill my shoes and wanted them to have the opportunity to do so.
So, I have this suggestion. If no one has the time or ability to run the Foundation and advance Gentoo, maybe the Foundation should give Gentoo's intellectual property - Portage, code, logos, etc - back to the person who actually created Gentoo and made many personal sacrifices to help it become the extremely successful project that it is today, namely me? Yes, I am being foolish by tooting my own horn, and there are many other contributors to Gentoo - but, honestly, wouldn't this be the right thing to do? At least as a courtesy, as some kind of admission of "Oops - Daniel gave up his future with Gentoo to accommodate our requests - and in return we neglected our responsibilities. We should put the project back into his hands in recognition that we were not good stewards of the project."
Am I demanding Gentoo back? No. And, frankly, I do not expect Gentoo to be offered back to me. I'm just pointing out that this would have been the proper thing to do.
I just want to let all of you know that I gave you, the community, and the Gentoo Foundation a tremendous project and made many personal sacrifices to make Gentoo great and successful. I never viewed Gentoo as a volunteer job - when I was serving as Chief Architect, it was always more than a full-time job and I often (mistakenly) put the needs of the Gentoo community above the needs of my own family.
I also want those who demanded a not-for-profit and then didn't live up to their responsibilities to be rightly embarrassed.
101 comments:
Daniel,
I can understand your frustration if the Gentoo Foundation indeed is to disspear. On the other hand I truly regret you have left Gentoo so sudden this year, thereby giving up the possibility to improve Gentoo from the inside.
Furthermore what I am missing in your article is what can you offer? How will Gentoo benefit from you taking over again? I personally think that a 'benevolent dictator' can tremendously improve the focus of Open Source projects. And why do you want Gentoo back? What's in it for you?
Besides you can always fork Gentoo, call it for example 'bringing back the fun in Gentoo'. In short there are numerous possibilities for you to continue ;)
I don't think there is a mechanism in place to improve Gentoo from the inside.
What I can offer is my genuine vision for Gentoo, and my commitment to building a positive, open and friendly community.
Really, there is nothing in it for me, and that is the problem. I can't afford to focus on Gentoo at the moment as I need to provide for my family.
But I think I could help Gentoo to evolve into a better, more open structure and encourage changes that would allow it to continue to grow and innovate, by contributing in a more limited capacity, like a coaching role.
Daniel you know what i thing about this... Gentoo is not fun without you, and your strange slang ;)
regards
Daniel,
this is an excellent proposal. I've been using Gentoo since 2004, and admire your work.
I think that the current situation calls for a general election among all Gentoo users. I for one wouldn't hesitate to vote for you as the Gentoo BDFL (Benevolent Dictator For Life). It's an empirical fact that the most successful open-source communities all have a BDFL.
regards, Leif
Daniel:
What is the current legal status of the Gentoo Foundation, Inc.? It is not registered with Guidestar or with the IRS thus it does not have 501(c)3 tax exemption status as a charity.
The only database that contains any legal information to the status of the Gentoo Foundation is in your state: Status of Gentoo Foundation in New Mexico. You are still listed as the registered agent and office and President of the Gentoo Foundation. Nobody seemed to inform the New Mexico Secretary of State of the changes which they are required to by New Mexico laws.
In short, according to the New Mexico State database, you are still the President of the Gentoo Foundation until they are informed in writing.
Until new documents prove otherwise, I think you still have a legal claim to the Gentoo Foundation, per se.
With all due (and considerable) respect, I disagree. I think it is possible that you don't have all of the facts.
One way or another, the existing Foundation is likely to disappear, for
a rather annoying and prosaic reason: we have no members of the Foundation who live in New Mexico. (When we first became aware of this problem, you were no longer living in NM, either.) The plan that we've been working on has been to reincorporate the Foundation in a state that has more convenient residency requirements, such as Delaware. Also, over time it's become clear that we have willing, but remarkably unskilled, Trustees when it comes to taxes, accounting, and legal filings, so a reincorporated Foundation probably would have looked into finding (and presumably paying) people better skilled in those areas to help us out.
In the midst of all of this, we came across the Software Freedom Conservancy (http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/), and we contacted them to get more information. They've invited us to
join, and you can see a good portion
of the details of what that would mean
in the blog post I put together: http://www.grantgoodyear.org/g2blog/
The short version, though, is that the Conservancy would hold Gentoo's IP in trust, handling the financial and legal duties that the Foundation is (poorly) handling now, with input and assistance from Gentoo devs, but without interfering in Gentoo development. (Pretty much the same separation you set up between Gentoo and the Gentoo Foundation.) Moreover, if at any time Gentoo decided that the Conservancy wasn't working out satisfactorily, then the Conservancy would not only return all of Gentoo's assets, but would assist in reincorporating the Foundation to hold those assets. So yes, the Foundation would disappear in name, but the substance would actually be rather more robust, I would think. (Of course, I could be completely off my rocker, too, which is why we've opened up a discussion about this, instead of just blindly plunging ahead.)
I apologize for not talking to you about this before you read it on -dev; that was amazingly tactless of me. You are always welcome to let me know of any objections that you have; I'm certainly willing to listen.
As for your argument that we should return the Gentoo IP to you, I can certainly see your point. Doing so,
however, would not seem (to me, anyway) to best serve the Gentoo Social Contract that you wrote, and that you charged me and the Foundation to maintain. "Gentoo is and will remain Free Software" It is hard for me to see how a single individual can preserve that contract as well as a Foundation dedicated to that task, whether it be the Conservancy or a reincorporated Gentoo Foundation.
Sincerely,
g2boojum
Grant, the trustees clearly should have informed me of the situation some time in the last 3 years, don't you think?
I don't have any specific interest in getting Gentoo IP back - I want to make it clear that this was meant to be a late-night therapeutic blog rant, nothing more. So I am not starting any kind of battle to wrestle back Gentoo's IP.
I was shocked to read SaigonNezumi (Kevin)'s post and find out that it appears that I am legally still President of the Foundation.
I will need to figure out what my newfound role means and how I should deal with this.
While I don't have any interest in Gentoo's IP, I am interested in helping Gentoo be better than it is currently, and this may give me some opportunity to make changes. I will need to look into it.
If you're looking to provide guidance, have you at least familiarised yourself with what's going on with Gentoo now? As I recall, last time you tried to make technical recommendations you wasted an awful lot of other people's time by spreading misinformation about the status of various Gentoo projects and making bold judgements that have no basis in fact. If you're genuinely interested in Gentoo's wellbeing, avoiding a repeat of that episode would be a good start.
Ciaran,
Well, let's be fair, I actually had an axe to grind with you personally, due to some behavior of yours I saw on gentoo-dev directed towards Jakub. I was pretty much expressly trying to be argumentative and nitpicky. Right?
As to whether Paludis is an official Gentoo project, I personally don't think it should matter, as independently-run projects like Paludis need to be the future direction of Gentoo. I was frustrated that the Foundation was providing a special exception to Paludis rather than creating an open ecosystem so other projects to have this autonomy and ability to organize independently. It is still not open enough. I think that Gentoo needs to move to totally autonomous small teams with their own internal leadership, and a producer-consumer model where small teams have full autonomy to make decisions without politics.
In other words, I have nothing against Paludis and think it is from an organizational perspective a model of where Gentoo needs to go - towards autonomous independent teams. I also have no issues with its technology and I am very glad you are doing it. I may have done things differently technology-wise, but then that is to be expected, isn't it?
I am in support of allowing autonomous "Gentoo" teams to form and produce valuable technologies, and be totally unhindered by often arbitrary Gentoo policies and rules. It should be up to the autonomous teams to define practices and procedures that work for them, even policies for recruiting new devs.
daniel no need to answer poisonous people who don't even recall their own past and how they have contributed with their attitude.
It's your project based on your own thoughts and nothing will change it...
You talk about autonomous projects. Well that's the way for all the time I have been involved to some degree. But I couldn't imagine how for example Java project could decide that they want use flags and get them implemented without contributing to Portage proper. But we can make every decision only dealing with Java on Gentoo inside our team. I suggest you read GLEP 39:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/glep/glep-0039.html
I am afraid mightly of having 3rd party manage Gentoo. Such a thing implies to me disinterest and remoteness. Jobs without Apple, Gates Microsoft, there seems to be a intrinsic link there.
Daniel,
Long time I want to say this to you and I think this is the right moment.
I can remember when you say that the main development of gentoo and go to work in Microsoft.. Everyone blame this idea, but I don't see anything wrong with that, for me.. its just a job. Better when you can use 100% of your capabilities in a new job. Theres nothing wrong with that, and, IMHO, anyone that says this is "ultrageous" is something stupid, you have a family, you need to give time and money to your family... everyone needs a paid job, even in microsoft, novell, etc. For example, in my actual job, we are IBM and Microsoft Partner, we are obligated to use Office 2007 and Vista and in my home I don't need use this OS and even in my dreams I'll never change my gentoo with any other OS. :-P
BTW. If you really want to get the gentoo back, and give your effort again in this project, you're always welcome, this is my personal opinion, even when I'm unable to help gentoo community at this time.
And yes, lets do something with Gentoo Foundation, and lets do something about grow and "bringing back the fun in gentoo" if you know what I mean (like aniruddha says). If you want to do something like that, you can count on me.
(and sorry, my english is horrible)
I think that Gentoo needs to move to totally autonomous small teams with their own internal leadership, and a producer-consumer model where small teams have full autonomy to make decisions without politics.
You're describing a meta-meta distribution that consists of a "gentoo-core" that dictates acceptable flags and profiles. What if a number of qualified devs wanted to "fork" the java virtual? Could there be a virtuals.conf where [virtual-package]=[defined-overlay]? Just how meta can you make it? How small can you make the "core"?
Could Gentoo become an ecosystem much like the linux world general is today with regards to distros? Would that eventually lead to a few "Enterprise" profiles that compete head-on with Redhat/Novell? A "luser" profile that makes Linspire obsolete? Gentoo is the MS killer?
Mr Ciara* seems to like inviting trouble whenever he tries, however miserably, to defend himself and his supposedly valiant actions...
I was a user of Robbins' time Gentoo. Now Sabayon makes for a better option.
Until some know-it-all current developers shut their trap there is little potential for Gentoo to re-attract former users.....
Mr Ciara* seems to like inviting trouble whenever he tries, however miserably, to defend himself and his supposedly valiant actions...
I was a user of Robbins' time Gentoo. Now Sabayon makes for a better option.
Until some know-it-all current developers shut their trap there is little potential for Gentoo to re-attract former users.....
You cant compare Sabayon to Gentoo. Sabayon is just a configuration and binary method to install Gentoo.
Daniel, go get a mailbox in New Mexico and take back your corporation. Then you can do whatever you want. Sure, there will be some temporary confusion and resentment, but in the long run Gentoo will thrive again.
I agree with you. It would be the decent thing to do, and the thing that decent people would do, but like you I do not expect it to happen.
Unfortunately we live in a world where doing the decent thing means nothing - morality is an outmoded concept, replaced with greed and ego.
By the way I do not use Gentoo but rather Ubuntu, so I have no axe to grind.
I'm just a linux desktop user; and I know the emotions are running high, but wow! Fight the good fight.
I hope to try Gentoo one day (maybe; GenXubuntu? Huh, kinda catchy? You can have it, if you can make it.)
Regardless; I've heard so many good things about this distro, I hope it stays alive with the basic purpose intact, whatever the organizational fundamentals.
Hi Daniel,
Why don't you (and hopefully the Gentoo Foundation board) ask for help from a specialized umbrella organization like SPI (http://spi-inc.org/) ? Works for PostgreSQL, Debian, Drupal and others.
-- stratus
stratus at debian dot org
Daniel,
You don't know me, but I've been using Gentoo since about 3 months after you started it. My other alternative was ROCK Linux.
I think you underestimate the number of people who really wish you would come back and take over Gentoo again. It wasn't just your technical abilities, it was also your amazing ability to form a happy and well functioning community around the distribution.
I was pleased to see you come back last year, but disappointed to see you leave again. I felt that all you had to do was to be there for a while, then more and more of the decision making within the project would have naturally moved towards you again.
I don't know how the current bunch of people have their position, as ciaran is far from being well-loved. Your point against him was well made, but perhaps better made when more of the user base was aware that _the_ Daniel Robbins was back.
Do it, Daniel. Gentoo's going to shit without you, and nothing much has changed since you left. Portage _still_ doesn't save advisory notices and upgrade warnings to a text file during emerges, and there are still numerous problems with half-baked ideas like webapp-config.
Don't join the -dev list and get kicked out like last time. Join the project and inform the users that you're back. Wait for the public swell of opinion, and then you have leverage within the -dev group. Tackling -dev head-on doesn't work because they have their own positions and arses to lick.
Gentoo is still worth it. Come back!
i hope u need some humour stabilizer.
Personally if i was you i would just take gentoo back and tell all of them developers to take a hike because most of them are asses anyways.
I for one welcome our new/old benevolent dictator.
Hopefully you can straighten out many of the problems.
Gentoo is not what it was, really. Gentoo needs you back.
That blows. I have been thinking about switching my OS of choice though. Having to compile can be a pain even with distcc and with these newer machines it's not really worth it. Ubuntu is pretty speedy and has a lot of momentum as far as development goes.
The best part about Gentoo is the community. I've always gotten top notch support from the forums and IRC channel #gentoo. If you've ever wandered into an Ubuntu or RedHat support area you get the standard 'RTFM noob' especially when they aren't sure of the answer themselves. If Gentoo does die it will be a sad day.
yeee. Even on Daniel's own blog does ciaran come bullsh*ting again. im sick an tired of readin his crap talk.
Daniel, you really really should come back. Gentoo needs you.
Daniel, i'm a former Gentoo user. I'm reconsidering from time to time to use Gentoo again, but reading about all the troubles at -dev, all the unnecessary ruddeness to you... makes me think that the thing i always love from gentoo (it's vibrant community) is lost forever...
but maybe if you comeback, with the enough strong to kick out everyone that deserves to be kicked out and rearrange the things, probably that day a lot of things would start working again.
BUT if taking back again gentoo means that you must lost family time, income, or anything at all, please DON't come back, You would not deserve that. Gento is not worth it.
You've done ENOUGH for this, almost your life and GENTOO didn't stand up for it.
So do what really fills you up and makes you happy!.
Thanks A LOT for giving us Gentoo, i assure you that a lot of us (former and even actual users) won't never forget you.
In fact, maybe you can try joining Ubuntu, probably all of you've got /known would be better appreciated and taken into account.
Thanks again!!!
as a gentoo user since 2003, I can definitely tell you we need house cleaning.
we need you.
come back.
Daniel, I'm not a Gentoo user, but I have been using Linux for a number of years now, but I was always fascinated by what Gentoo had done. Sir, the best way to deal with all of this is to fork the whole thing. If people in the Gentoo community loved what you did, they will follow you and leave Gentoo. There's a reason why the GPL exists, and this situation is one of them. Don't waste any more time with those who simply refuse, strike out on your own direction, with your vision. Don't be too attached with the name, you can choose other names - it's the quality of the work the you do that will give the name meaning. This plodding and pedantic back and forth wastes the most precious resource of all - time. Time to start fresh, time to start new, time for you to be doing what you do best - lead and code - for your own show.
When you get all this sorted out, let us know. In the meantime, I for one, will find an linux distro with less human drama, and more dramatic innovation.
-Possible future user / contributor
I'm a systems administrator who loves Gentoo. Most of the systems I manage are non-graphical servers. From this standpoint, and In My Humble Opinion:
The community is fantastic. I almost never need to ask a question, because it's already answered, someone has posted a HOWTO, etc. And there is so little glop to sort through--no fighting, no "you should…" just help with getting things done.
Gentoo works, and unlike other distributions, most things are painless if you're a technical person, which is why one would use Gentoo in the first place. (I believe you should use a flavor of Ubuntoo if you want a graphical install and menu-based configurations later.) I love being able to use text files and a few scripts to do most everything. I love the way daemons are started/stopped.
The package manager is great, uh, mostly, at least compared to many others. I did have to write a few scripts to catch compile errors during mass updates, and a few ordering scripts on which apps to upgrade first, and that part is surprising, and not too friendly. I'm also surprised the package manager can't compile multiple non-dependent sub-packages in a distributed compile environment simultaneously, greatly speeding installs, especially since I laid out and demonstrated how to do it years ago. In the end, it does do the job, and does it fairly well.
Compiling is generally non-painful (just slow for large installs), and the speed vs. size, what to include, etc. choices make it great for those who can't break the bank to continually purchase new hardware. I really can't say enough about how great this is. I've run Debian and had to wait 7 minutes for a full startup, and the same hardware started Gentoo in 45 seconds. Granted, that's highly-optimized Gentoo, but for me, that's what Gentoo is all about.
In summary, I use Gentoo because it meets my needs, and is so easy to use in almost every respect.
To me, and still IMHO, there is a secret, lurking-in-the-shadows dark side to Gentoo: Upper Management. People don't want to step back, look at the big picture, think, make a suggestion or two, take a few moments to chose a good path for the long-term, and proceed. Instead, it's dive-in-right-now, form a (!) opinion, and fight like hell to force others to see it that way, forcing out of the project most everyone that has a differing opinion. Perhaps that's not the way it really is, but that's the way I see it, and why I don't get involved more. I just write my own modifications and keep them to myself, and totally stay out of the way--anything else is too costly.
Others seem to see this; I've seen many, and read a few articles on Gentoo's management, including Daniel's brief return. IMHO, reading about Gentoo's management is like reading about Theo de Raddt: any time either is involved there's a reasonable goal, a lot of ranting, and a whole bunch of accusations. In the end the results are also similar: a good product emerges, but it could have been an excellent product that didn't fall short in many areas if the top-notch contributors didn't bail out due to the unnecessary in-fighting. It's so disappointing: You could have THE product that everyone talks about because it's truly incredible, but instead you get a heaping helping of disappointment if you were involved, and one of many possible solutions if you weren't involved.
In the end, I'm not sure that Daniel isn't the best solution:
Having him in charge puts a lot of weight on one person's shoulders, and we rely on one person being able to make the right decisions, and them having the time, insight, and desire to do so. Usually, these and a plethora of other reasons make a single person a bad choice, hence the usage of the term "dictator."
However, look at where the alternative has gone. Many of us are not happy with it, the original dream, if you will, is being corroded, corrupted, and subverted, and even outsiders want Gentoo to get its act together so they can join in.
I think, again IMHO, the best solution is to clean house and get new leadership that works. However, in practice, worse leadership is often the result, and would probably be the result in this case. So in the end, I'm not sure that Daniel isn't the best solution.
pointman@geekteck.com
Daniel,
I have been using linux for years, and when I first saw Gentoo it was amazing how advanced it was. The core principles and ideas that Gentoo was built on led me to believe that it would soon be the disto that all other distros were based on. You started that.
Unfortunately, something got spoiled in the Gentoo community -leadership/devs. I don't presume to guess exactly what that was. When you left Gentoo, in quite a honorable and dignified manner I might add, I personally thought that the change of you leaving might be the catalyst for improvement. I don't mean that you were the cause of the problems by that last statement, just that at the time I thought *any* change were be for the better. Talk about being wrong.
Since you left, developer after developer has left, despite almost all saying that Gentoo has potential. They are all burning out because something is wrong in the community. (ex. Flameyes -btw- welcome back Flameyes)
There is no doubt that you can contribute technical skills Daniel. However the big question is, can your influence contribute a heathly spirit and by extension *heal/fix* the broken community? If so, then find a way to jump back into Gentoo. If not, fork it. You get all the tech for free, and focus on making the new fork's community fun. In time Gentoo will die.
I personally think it would be right and just for you to get reins of Gentoo back. However, I'm not sure it's worth the effort it will take to kick out the bad apples like Mr. C* or teach them how to play nice with others.
Anyways, although I don't recommend or use Gentoo anymore, I still follow it, hoping someday the leadership/dev community will learn how to work together again.
Daniel - you have my vote.
Polishwookie
I loved gentoo. then drobbins left.
A leader does not need actually to get all decisions by himself.
There are for sure other gentoo devs who have the potential to make a decision in a hierarchical way, but there must be the one who will give his personal touch and show the right way.
Some rants..
I can show you many sugestions from developers that have been made in the past for new projects.
They always started to discuss it in lists and almost always it was ending in months after months of flames and even resigns.
In the end the idea for the project was totally broken with the developer, mentally ill, not care any more.
Soooooo much talk and NO ACTION.
No action => NO fun & No innovation.
I think that is the job for a leader.
The leader must set his minimum standards and personal feeling. He must be able to STFU non believers and support the developers in new kind of projects and research EVEN if they fail.
I understand that some things need to be discussed but those guys have already lost it.
Suse had a hack week.
Its an insult those guys to be able to work as they wish even for a week and gentoo devs to be in danger of "crucifixion" if they start working on something new that is not acceptable by the cliques.
Daniel please consider that Gentoo has a large user base which is more or less suspended. They can any time help for new attempts of revival, especially if those efforts come from you. That is not human drama or smthing. Is just that gentoo even after years of no truly innovation remains maybe the only acceptable distro for technical guys. They (we) are not willing to move to other distro, at least not if they drop the last synch server and last developer resign.
Please come back! >_<
Daniel:
I agree, how can we the Gentoo user community help out here?
Gentoo is a wonderful distribution and I would be extremely displeased to see it "not be".
I am serious, how can an individual help out his favorite distribution here?
I think I might have a different perspective on this.
I've been a Gentoo user for several years (three I think). When I originally chose it, I had to use the handbook to guide me through the installation because I didn't know what a 'chroot' was. I had come from Debian. I switched because I was sick of having bad dependencies in the tree and having package upgrades break my system by changing config files.
I started reading planet.gentoo.org about a year back out of boredom (hey? Where does this link go?). I never subscribed to the mailing lists until today. As such, the first I knew of anything wrong with Gentoo was in posts on dev blogs.
If I hadn't been reading the blogs, I wouldn't have even KNOWN anything was wrong. The distribution is still running. The bugtracker works. The documentation and wiki are still some of the best (if not THE best) of any.
Why all the drama? I think everyone is so concerned that Gentoo "isn't what it was" that they can't see how much is still so very right. Until I start to see Gentoo falling behind in package updates (right now most things hit Gentoo before the binary distros) or having its package tree corrupted, I'll continue to use it. Because it does exactly what I tell it to do, no more and no less.
I don't care who runs the project. I only care that it gets run. If you think you can make it work better, do: the best way to do that isn't by trying to take control, but by contributing something that users can see. Me, I put ebuilds up on the bugtracker when I write them. It's not much, but maybe they're useful to other people.
Reading through all the other comments on this blog, I thought Polishwookie's argument was the strongest, but I disagree on a point: The distribution isn't about management. It's about providing for the users. The developers GIVE to the users and something great results. Even if you can't "revive" the distribution, more good can come of developing it that splitting it. Don't let Gentoo become the Tower of Babel. Let's all speak the same language.
The two large projects that Gentoo depends on (Python and Linux) have dictators, and when a 100 people are telling them to implement something not worth the time, it's there job to be the bad guy. Every project needs a bad guy, a board of directors will never be a bad guy like one evil man can be, and to be a good open source project you need a bad guy, who everyone secretly admires and wants to be like. There will be lots of starscreams (see: transformers) but they will never really have the guts to take megatrons position... Shit I am getting distracted. Anyway, good luck, if you don't get Gentoo back, why not just fork everything and make gentwo? I'd hit it.
I have not used Gentoo, since the Gentoo Foundation was started. For some reason I chose to use Slackware. However, I think that the petty in-fighting needs to stop. If the current maintainers and developers do not want to continue in their present roles, they need to shut the f--k up and allow the creator of the system take back his baby. Gentoo is one of the best Linux systems in existence. It got that way due to its original creator's vision. Let it go back, and if no one sees fit to work on it anymore, just let go. The beauty of open source is that no matter what, a product can continue as long as some one some where wants it to.
all i know is that gentoo has suffered since D.R.'s resignation. Also, i find the way the project has treated D.R. since he became interested in gentoo again to be unfortunate at the least.
Daniel,
I think that you should just start a new project, fork portage, and use what you learned with your gentoo experience to create what i don't doubt would be a peerless linux experience.
The only big mistakes i can see that you made with gentoo had to do with the projects organization as you left it, and the fact that you allowed too much discussion of core issues that were not understood by some of those who !!**__SHOUTED__**!! the loudest.
I realize you wouldn't have time to do gentoo all over again, but i just wanted to express my wishful thinking. If i had $50 million or so to invest i'd give it to you try your hand at a canonical'esque endeavor, i think that would be something.
Daniel,
Gentoo needs you. Please come back - you did marvelous job when you we still in charge - I strongly believe you will do it again. Too many minds will make too much noise and too little progress.
I'm up for Benevolent Dictatorship, no doubt there.
Full support.
Take back what is rightly yours.
Gentoo is not quite what it used to be.
Daniel,
Come back and take over. If that's not possible, fork the code and tell us where you've taken it. We're right behind you.
This probably wont help but yes we need you to take over again I <3 gentoo but its garbage now.
at least join as a gentoo dev be part of the team.
This probably wont help but yes we need you to take over again I <3 gentoo but its garbage now.
Gentoo is hardly garbage, but I agree that Gentoo would benefit if the Benevolent Dictator were to return. It works for Ubuntu. It works for Apple. If drobbins returns, I'll support him.
heh... fork it, and call it... gentri
Daniel & other Gentoo posters:
Am I missing something or is this multi-page discussion an example of why people are either fanatically attached to Gentoo or want nothing to do with it? It seems to me that what the majority of people want is a distro that works well (a point in your favor) and a distro that seems to know what it is doing and where it is going (oops!).
As for a statement earlier about poor decorum in the forums of other distros ("RTFM Noob"). In my experience as a noob, the Gentoo related forums are of similar ilk. Ie: "if you cant awk, grep, and compile your own kernel, you've got no business running Gentoo". Indeed, until I saw Sabayon, I thought Gentoo was too esoteric to be of any use to me.
Just thought I'd add the viewpoint of an outsider looking in.
All the best,
NerdTool
Daniel,
This is very disturbing news, to say the least. I've been a very dedicated Gentoo user for over six years now, and have been saddened to watch the admistration slowly disintegrate over time.
One of the more critical situations i've noticed is the fact that the Gentoo team stresses additions based on 'developer' status, instead of devotion status. What I mean by this is the fact that 99% of team additions are developers and writers. I rarely ever see people put into position of responsibility that doesn't involve coding in some shape or form.
This is disheartening because as a long time Gentoo supporter, I would LOVE The opportunity to assist with my time and effort, just not as a package maintainer, or as a portage programmer.
Even more so than that, I've noticed a very sharp change in mentality. Gentoo was originally a power user's distro. Not inherently out of difficulty, but rather by the power choice brings to the table. For quite some time now i've seen this goal slowly mutate from choice to ease of use.
To sum that all up, i for one, miss you. You never forgot what Gentoo was all about. We've always taken shit for being what we are, but that was never a problem. Now it seems like it is. Gentoo was never supposed to be compared to Ubuntu, or RHCE, or SuSe.
You need to come back. Atleast long enough to get the admistration on stable ground. I for one, would be happy to put in the time and effort required to maintain the Foundation.
Daniel,
I remember when you ran things in Gentoo. I remember you leaving. I've been using Gentoo for at least four years now. And since you left it hasn't really gone anywhere. Of course it still works fine, as someone pointed out, because it has a very solid foundation. But innovation is slow, and getting slower. People are leaving. Some come back because Gentoo is still the best, but that may not be good enough. The project is losing its focus. I reckon that you could and should return that focus to it. You have the support of the community, the vision, the know-how, and the firmness and fairness needed. Please don't hesitate. I think that whatever the devs may say, the users will welcome you with open arms, and after all, Gentoo is about the users.
All the best,
Daniel,
You have my support. I have been using Linux for 4 years on Desktops, Laptops and servers. I have tried Gentoo many times and always I ended back to Ubuntu or one of its derivatives. I like the General Philosophy of Gentoo, but it needs something more. If all the complaints I am reading about here and on Digg are true then someone needs to clean up the project. Once thats done maybe I will finally be a Gentoo user.
I started using Gentoo on November 18th 2003 and left Windows for it cold turkey having never used Linux before. The Gentoo community was INCREDIBLE at that time. The disarray that formed made me drop Gentoo I still really think there is nothing that compares to it I just cannot use it with all the problems for my main computers. I do hope that it can be rescued.
Something needs to be done.
I'd like to see Gentwo.
Give it a shot; it could be fun.
Daniel,
In the beginning, Gentoo was my first dive into Linux. I spent the agony of actually installing Gentoo over dial up several times as I would experiment and break my distribution. It offered the highest learning curve of any other distributions I have currently tried. I feel that it was that learning curve that set my great foundation in Gentoo. I eventually left Gentoo to try other distributions (Yoper, Slackware and eventually settled on Ubuntu). My main reason was lack of change in the OS. The B.O.D. or whoever was responsible for O.S. level changes did not definite meet dates and year to year changes were minimally noticeable IMHO. If something were to change in Gentoo as far as this is concerned I would be willing to try Gentoo once more, however I have no reason to believe this has. You are, if anything, shaking things up for them and even if you don't want the IP back you are sending a message that things need to change and they they need to do something to make that happen. I appreciate you continued care for the project and hope something actually gets done as a result of this. If nothing gets done, then you can understand that I won't be trying Gentoo again anytime soon. I don't think I am alone in this so if the project truly wants to see any kind of return on users something needs to change within the project itself. I hope you are the inspiration to do so.
I was using gentoo at a time when you (drobbins) still were the benevolent dictator of gentoo, and I was quite happy with it. However, the time it took to compile everything was a bit too much for me and I switched to other distributions, but I always had in mind coming back to it once I had a more capable box. Sadly, it looks like the distribution deteriorated into a pile of bugs and bloat, maintained by a bunch of lazy, ungrateful know-it-alls.
I don't like it, and I doubt its possible put gentoo back on the road withe these people in place. So, what is going to happen now? Nothing. Nothing is going to happen because you chose the people with the technical knowledge, but without any social responsibility.
Well, lesson learned.
A few years ago, i used Gentoo for a few months. At first, i thought it was great, but as time went by i realised that i was spending more time emerge'ing updates and hopelessly trying to sync up configuration files whenever i did a weekly update than actually getting any work done. So in the end, i jumped ship and decided to use a slightly more stable distro.
Still, i thought Gentoo was a great idea even though it had its problems.
In any case, i wish you the best of luck in getting Gentoo back.
First off, I'm a fairly new linux user (installed Ubuntu in May '07), and I've never used Gentoo. Yet.
Personally, I sorta agree with all the "just fork it" comments. If you want to go with the idea of "bringing the fun back to Gentoo," you could name it Funtoo. Maybe something like "Linux for work and fun." I dunno... I'm not in marketing, I'm just throwing out ideas.
Anyways, this could potentially be a great opportunity to compete with other distros (ie. Debian/Ubuntu) and even Windows.
I really hope so see some good come out of this mess.
I started using Gentoo shortly after you started it, and I loved it. Used it for years, but after you left something left with it. From reading the comments I don't think coming back would be the best course of action; don't worry about the name and fork it. You really had a great project with excitement and innovation - you can do it again but you need to move on from these people.
Daniel,
+1 for your come-back.
Go Establish a New Tremendous Open Organization ;-)
I used gentoo for about 2 years and then moved on after the project started to drift aimlessly and the quality of ebuilds began to slide downhill. A community is built around a leader. It doesn't take a legal document to create success. When gentoo was first created, it was the idea, goals, and leadership that moved it to become what it was. That's all it should take again. With the proper delagation, Daniel should be able to drive another successful project and still provide for his family.
Daniel,
I have been using Gentoo since 2002, and Linux since 1993. I still think that Gentoo is one of the most advanced and best designed distributions out there. (I've use a good deal of them too) In 2004/2005 I tried to get involved with Gentoo. I wanted to help out and contribute back to something I thought was great. But one of the first big things I hit was bad attitudes from existing devs. They seem to run things like they knew everything and resisted any outside input. New people were treated with disrespect. Any ideas that they didn't come up with were laughed at, called stupid, and the person insulted. This made me give up and just go back to just using Gentoo. Then in 2006 I tried again. Got involved with some devs and started to contribute again. Once again, the similar high-school drama and attitudes pushed me away. This time I got involved with Sunrise overlay and was able to find a good environment to help. However, as I'm sure many people know, there was tons of pushback from “official devs” about sunrise. Sunrise was only for packages not currently in portage and so it wasn't as helpful for keeping ebuilds up to date. If an ebuild was woefully out of date and no dev was support it you still couldn't add it to sunrise. Wanting to help with the software I used, I tried to become a Gentoo dev and took the ebuild tests. Got sponsored by an existing dev, etc. Thinking that maybe since I was soon to be an official dev I could help out in other herds. (Security and Games) Nope, again more bad attitudes and treated with disrespect. This was the last straw. So I can say as an user of Gentoo, I tried very HARD to help keep Gentoo great. However, the current administration/devs are what killed it for me. And I know I was not the only one who had this fate. Without help from the community, Gentoo is doomed. If you fork/take it back, I'll be happy to contribute.
LinuxKrn
Dude you effed up by not putting in place a mechanism where by, if the 13 did not live up to the task of the foundation, you would get Gentoo back.
Live, learn, and move on!
Daniel: You are totally correct. The scum that infect Gentoo today screwed the pooch and screwed up the chance to be real men and to see something through to the end despite the work. They should give it back to you, defer to you, as the Linux kernel world defers to Linux Torvalds. Torvalds brings the kernel, you brought the system. It deeply sickens me that you have to watch the trajectory of your project take a nose dive for the worst because this quorum of lazy idiots can't deal with real life.
I strongly hope that you do get your foundation back and these bags of feculent dog waste wake up to the reality that what they are doing is wrong.
g2boojum , they guy who seems to think he is in control of the Gentoo IP, seems like a power hungry lizard that needs to be stopped. I do think the greater good would be served by giving the IP for protection against this wanton mismanagement. Linus still holds the final say on what the license is for Linux, so I dont know what the hell g2boojum is talking about.
This seems to be a lame power struggle on the Gentoo foundation's part, and Daniel is right, give it him so the bleeding can stop, this is embarrassing. And to air this dirty laundry on mailings lists and blogs is just laughable. Give it Daniel and go home and try and convince others the Harry Potter books aren't utter crap.
Just a note that I removed some comment spam, as well as a post from an anonymous accuser. It contained misinformation and a personal rant about me taking credit for some code that he/she wrote.
My stance on this is that if someone has an issue like this, they can take the time to email me about it and work it out person to person, and I will try my best to understand their perspective and if there was any wrong done, I will do what I can to resolve it.
I am not interested in taking anonymous jabs on my blog that I have absolutely no way of determining if legitimate or not, and no way of resolving with the individual if they are legitimate.
Daniel,
Guess there's a lot that have been said here... I my self is stuck with Gentoo for 4 years now since conversion from Fedora/SuSE/Debian... All i want to say is that Gentoo has a lot of potential and it's up to Community to recognise the potential.. If i were to leave Linux it'll be BSD/OSX...
I love the distro and it needs a lot's of cleanup...
gentoo sux ass
Daniel,
I remember back in early 2004 when I had to finally decide on a Linux distribution. I was playing with Slackware and Gentoo and then you left. Look, money is important. I'm not saying you have to put family first or anything. But after you left and Pat from Slackware decided to drop GNOME, I had to look for something else. So I picked Judd's Arch, which is this hybrid creature of Pat's and your creations.
I don't regret that decision. I love Archlinux. But I love it because I didn't like Pat's plans for Slackware and Arch offered something Slackware didn't: the Gentoo model of package managements, things you pioneered. Gosh, I just wish Gentoo hadn't died down on me.
I used to like Slackware, but not anymore. But Pat doesn't care whether I like or not. He has a set mind and is the BDFL. Someone with that kind of determination can never me swayed and I respect Slackware for that very reason.
So, my point is and pointed out earlier: every successful distribution has a BDFL that can call a coup. This is what Hitler did to Germany; what Palpatine did to a doubtful Galactic Republic.
You don't have to be evil to do this either. You can be like Pat or Lance Armstrong. They had medical conditions and rose from the ashes of misery. And no, you don't have to have a medical condition either. You just need a will.
So I say you call those emergency powers, dissolve the board and reconsolidate the power and give it back to the community at a later time to those who desire it more and not to those who think of it as 'volunteer' work.
Carpe Gentooem!
Daniel,
Just wanted to say, as a user, that you are missed. I think the project started a gradual decline in the months following your departure, and is currently in need of some strong leadership to get it back to where it once was.
I was one of the people who went mental on -dev when it all blew up after you came back.
Gentoo is in a desperate situation. It needs proper leadership because all it has is a bunch of substitute teachers who can't make up their minds and argue over every little thing. It needs taking down, re-building and rebranding because it no longer stands for what it once did.
I think Funtoo would be a good distro ;)
George, I'll agree that Gentoo needs a serious "reboot." But is it really fixable at this point?
My thought on the tech side of things is that there have been a lot of advances that one could replace large segments of Portage with ready-made software and make it a much more flexible, simpler project to boot. I'm partial to current media darling Ruby, and the only non-standard component I'd add would be sqlite3 for 'caching' deps, but I'm probably totally wrong in my thinking, not having dug too deep into Portage.
As for the Foundation, though, well, let's face it, Gentoo has always attracted "ricers" who have more talk than action ;-)
Daniel, in all seriousness, Gentoo is a major contribution to the Free Software world and if there's any way you or anyone else could steer it in a better direction that'd be great. :-)
yeh gentoo sucks now adays and i hate that it was my favorite dist for a long time then it got really really breaky and really difficult to install
daniel come back and put the fun back
Come back...
...please.
I really enjoyed Ubuntu a while back, but things just kept getting changed and it seemed for the worse.
Several required improvements were never made, and eventually I just lost interest.
There were lots of directions for Gentoo to go that Ubuntu won't cover - it just didn't. It kinda got old and moldy. I guess this is why.
According to the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the defining open source document, if you cannot manage a project you should hand it over to somebody that can. i run Gentoo on four machines and would hate for it to die. it is a great idea and i love portage and the package management principles.
I cannot pretend to know the ins and outs but if the current maintainers cannot (or will not) maintain the source they have the obligation to hand it over. As soon as i graduate i will put my name forward as a developer and will contribute what I can, if the current developers cannot maintain the source they need to hand it over.
Daniel,
If the reason you resigned as Chief Architect and handed Gentoo over to the foundation was because you were unable to support your family financially I urge you to take the lead of Gentoo once again. Make it a full-time role and ask the community to pay your salary, I'll gladly contribute and it sounds like others would too.
As soon as a PayPal link appears on this page I'll be donating. Gentoo needs you and I think the very least we can do is pay you a full-time salary if you treat it as a full-time job.
Daniel,
Well I can't think of anything eloquent to say that hasn't been said already so I'll throw my hat in the ring by saying I'm behind you if you ever want to take Gentoo back. I've been using it since December '03, went to Debian for a few months, and am back to Gentoo for all my Linux needs. I have a little coding experience, am more of a Cisco guy than anything. Look at how many comments this post has elicited-- I've been reading them for a half hour and am not even halfway!-- the masses want you back and so do I! Reclaim Gentoo!
-evilshenaniganz
I've used Gentoo for a good 3 / 4 years now and I've loved it. But, now Gentoo is starting to become horrible with bugs and errors. I just had to reinstall my 2004 based Gentoo because of errors that left my install worthless. We can all wish that you would come back, but money speaks very loud.
Giving Gentoo to the community was a great idea. Unfortunately, it didn't work. Portage is a great idea with great potential, but this potential won't be realised by a psychologically immature developer community who lack the basic skills (like respect for other people) necessary to manage something as complex as a meta-distribution. Instead of distinct, focused distributions forming under the superb "meta" environment that Gentoo and portage offer, all we have is a myriad of individual systems, loosely related via the Gentoo forums, Wiki and so on.
The potential is still there, but it's not technical skill that's lacking: it's social skills, vision, and common sense. Although I used Gentoo for several years, I don't know much about you personally Daniel, so I'm not sure if you're the right person to take Gentoo where it has the potential to go. It's a strange irony if the one thing that perhaps best demonstrates your sincerity in terms of supporting the free software community (i.e. your handing Gentoo over to the community) is the same thing that prevents it from benefiting from your guidance.
Gentoo is the distro which allowed me to make the final switch at free operating system. I began to use it when you were the leader, and it was truly great. Then the way gentoo was handled changed, you moved to other things (I can perfectly understand that). Whether this was the cause or not, I can not say, but since then gentoo has mostly stagnated, and even went down in QA, to the point I left the distro. It was a bleeding edge inovative distro, now it is just a unusual.
If you believe you can put gentoo back on the tracks, by all means, please give it a try. I don't know many gentoo users personally, but all those I do have said they regret the time when you were there.
I am a gentoo user since 2 years now : I never regretted my choice, especially when I compare it to other distro (both in technical and philosophical fields).
You proposed the fundamentals of this distro which remain to me the strenghs of gentoo. I think we have much to benefit from you.
Go on!
I think you'll bring this project back to life! I remember the days before you left the 1st time, the numbers really spoke for themselves! We are in a world, stuck with lousy, irresponsible developers that like to spout their mouths off. They have no regard for the contributions of a fellow developer and are usually the one trying to bend policies to suit their crappy non-conforming bloatware.
Yet we have a responsible few that get dumped on when they are trying to make a better future for all of us!
Wake up OpenSource developers, this is "For the People, By the People", not "For the People, Against the People".
Opensource is giving....and Daniel, you really have given in a huge way! The ignorance needs to realize this and give you back the reigns to give this project some new life!
Good luck and what a vision you have....you'll always land nicely at the top in my Linux history notes!
Hi,
I use Gentoo for everything. I've been using it since 2004.0 and I've never looked back. Gentoo has allowed me to learn Linux, understand what Linux is all about and how to use my systems completely. Sure I've used other distro's but all of these seems to put up some kind of fight for my uses be it the applications (being available and/or up to date) or the package management. Portage is just THE most amazing package management system available.
Gentoo gives the user FULL and ABSOLUTE control over their system. After all, why would I feel the need to have a dozen of everything installed??? I choose what goes on my system and how it operates. Which in turn makes my system more stable, streamlined and a pleasure to use and I absolutely cannot say that about any other OS.
Gentoo has come along way since I started using it and I feel after setting up a new system this weekend, that the Gentoo project maybe trying to be more "user friendly" by holding the users hand for as long as possible (I'm referring to the 2006/2007 livecd installs) I think it's just wrong that stage1 is being phased out (unsupported) as an install method.
Daniel... you founded something amazing! It would be a tragedy if the Gentoo project lost it's guidance. I understand that you have to provide for your family. After all, family must come above everything. Maybe GEL (Gentoo Enterprise Linux) could hold an answer in letting you get some control back and provide for the family at the same time?
In short.. Gentoo is amazing and I am very very passionate about it. The Gentoo forums are vital and play a big part of making Gentoo what it is. Gentoo has taught me all I know about Linux and has made every part of it enjoyable.
I do not agree that morally Gentoo is yours. It belongs to the community IMO; it is the product of the collaborative effort of many people.
Personally, I think you should not have resigned when you did; by now you could have stood on the Council and represented the interests of everybody. I still think you should just come back as a dev, and get used to the changed circumstances.
Much as I dislike CiaranM's attitude, he seemed to have other devs on his side in the flamewar that led to your resignation. You could have just backed off and consulted others instead of leaving; at least you now have an idea of how stressful the m-l can be.
You gave Gentoo to the community which had contributed to making it what it was. The people involved have moved on, and some of course have left while new devs have been recruited. It is even better now and is still innovative, eg baselayout-2. So come back, but don't try and take the IP back; it isn't yours and IMO it never was. It's just a shame that users seem to have so little influence, when they contribute so much.
+1. Please do come back. The project is lacking clear leadership and direction, which I believe you would offer!
George, you said it :) It was the first that came to my mind after reading Daniel's post: Time to show that Gentoo can be fun too.
~# emerge Funtoo Linux
Fork it...
It's sad that very few of the comments here have anything to do with what Mr. Robbins wrote -- everyone has their own favorite axe to grind. And ironically most of those who are calling for him to come back or become BDFL or fork or whatever are doing the same sort of thing he criticized. With few exceptions, they show no concern for the consequences this would have for Mr. Robbins' life and make no personal commitment; it's a just a selfish concern about how buggy or how much fun Gentoo is -- which has nothing to do with the subject of the post, which was about people not stepping forward to put in the effort to run a not-for-profit foundation after they clamored to have one.
" Grant Goodyear said... With all due (and considerable) respect, I disagree."
Disagree with what, exactly? That he gave the community a tremendous project and made many personal sacrifices to make Gentoo great and successful? That he never viewed Gentoo as a volunteer job? That he often put the needs of the Gentoo community above the needs of his own family? That those who demanded a not-for-profit and then didn't live up to their responsibilities should be embarrassed?
"I think it is possible that you don't have all of the facts."
A great many things are possible. I think it's possible that no one has "all of the facts" about anything, and that you suffer from poor reading comprehension and a tendency to attack strawmen.
Having used Gentoo since 1.4_rc days I must really say that the freaks have taken over.
I still use Gentoo because from a cli it is still probably the best, but I feel that Gentoo could be alot more.
Hi Daniel,
Thanks for all the work you did.
I hope you can still look upon it with pride.
I think you should. Gentoo is great, and for all its shortcomings, it is the best distro for me.
Maybe it would also be possible to just license all intellectual property of the GF under free licenses...
Anyway:
Thank you very much for all your work for Gentoo!
I daily see its power, and I want it to live to its full potential (and then grow its potential).
Arne Babnhauserheide
- http://draketo.de
It does not matter how long I have used Linux or even Gentoo. Frankly Daniel I dont know you or anyone in the Gentoo world... My humble suggestion is to stop all the pity party. Make up your mind and move on....
Like Nike said Just do it. As in just code it. Just build it....
Have a great Day.
bd
I have been a Gentoo user since pretty much its beginning. I noticed that when you left in 2004 things just slowly disintegrated. I then seen you joined again, only to find that some individuals were completely disrespectful to you. Here is the actual creator of the project being called down by morons. I didn't like that, nor did countless others. I noticed Gentoo starting to really lack in many areas. I stopped using it because of this and knowing about the disrespect going on.
I think, honestly, you need to do what's best. Not just for Gentoo, but for your own mind. Gentoo was your baby at one point in time. I think you should develop the next wave of excitement, the adult if you will.
No matter what happens to Gentoo, I think you can top your own creation with the innovative personality you have towards OS's. Sure, Gentoo will go its own way, but maybe it's just a stepping stone in the evolution to what comes after, a better system, team and community (although it would be tough to match that part).
Maybe by building a fork of Gentoo, you can accomplish what your actual vision was. Or, you can create something entirely from scratch that will open peoples eyes, like Gentoo once did. I don't know, but I think you should feed that hunger in whatever way you can.
I know this comment is a little late in posting, but I just couldn't read it and say nothing in return for your amazing creation, Gentoo.
Regards & a true Gentoo user,
Russ.
I doubt there would be much support for you taking Gentoo back from the current Foundation; however, Gentoo is Open Source and you would have support from many Gentoo users (and ex-users).
I walked away from Gentoo after trying the last release...
Hi, I am a 46y french self taught IT guy who spent at least 20 years in a MS world (with some OS/2 and Netware adventures) and began his career as a "programmer" on IBM S/34 and S/36. Then spend many years lurking around Linux, testing hundreds of distros at free time. As a coding guy I've been always appealed by source distros like Sourcemage...
Then came Gentoo and this was the one! I wont elaborate more but this was all pleasure and fun. Since then I've become a true linux addict and more, I also discovered the fun at making a jump into Freebsd, as a side-effect.
All this intro, to say thanks very much Daniel for having made this possible.
That was my 2cts about Funtoo. I obviously would appreciate your future involvement in Gentoo, but meanwhile I too founded a family and completely behave in accordance.
Much love from France
I came across this blog by accident. I have been obsessed with Gentoo since I got into Linux. The philosophy behind it is exactly what I believe computers should be. I will be very sorry if Gentoo disenigrates. No other linux focuses on the points like Gentoo does. If Gentoo is released to a third party that ideal is likely to die. Then what are us nerdy idealists suponsed to do?
One year later and Gentoo is still chugging along. The community and vision are too strong for it to fail, and OpenRC will probably cause another minor surge in interest. Long after Ubuntu fails under the weight of it's own commercial aspirations, Gentoo will still be driven forward by a strong core of developers and users.
Gentoo was the Linux Distro that made me switch from Windows... and believe it was difficult but completely worth it!.
I also loved Gentoo Ideals and that was another reason to select it from over hundreds of other good distros.
Gentoo community should make a good decision and giving that you are the creator... you are entitled an important place in this community... without, of course, giving it more importance than your family :)
Cheers and good luck!!!
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