Refocus
Today I am making an attempt to refocus on other commitments besides Gentoo and get back to a more normal and productive life.
I enjoy having conversations with Gentoo developers on what can be done to improve the Foundation and project as a whole, and I started doing this on the -nfp mailing list. I have been engaged by various members of the Gentoo project to share my thoughts. I and I have done so. But there is so much to say, and while it is productive, it is also very time consuming.
Just having a conversation with a lot of people on a mailing list takes a lot of time. Then, if you want to get something done under the current structure, you need to start building consensus. This means not only having a conversation with many people, but getting a critical mass of people on the same page working towards building a collective plan. Then you need to convince people to stop talking about the plan, to support the plan, and then vote on the plan. This is essentially a full-time job, maybe even more than a full-time job. It is also very hard to do on a mailing list.
That being said, I don't want to be overly negative. I've taken a pretty big chunk of time to share my perspective with the official Gentoo project. I want to encourage those working within the existing structure who have the opportunity to make a difference and improve things significantly.
For those who are kind of tired of the existing structure - well, I totally feel your pain. I will not be forking the project, and you may be bummed about that, but at the same time I am going to find effective ways to help the larger Gentoo community. And I have a lot of optimism about the larger Gentoo community. This focus is also something I can pursue on my schedule, so it is more compatible with the rest of my life.
Some people still want a fork, and I really don't think that the answer to this is for me to lead a fork, nor do I really have the time to do it. There are already "forks" of Gentoo in the form of Gentoo-based projects. You can get involved with these projects and help be part of the process to move to a more open, distributed model of development.
If a project doesn't meet your needs, I encourage you to create your own project. If you do, I recommend keeping the development team small, tight-knit and independent. I think this will maximize your productivity as well as your overall enjoyment of collaborative and open development. It will also allow you to collaborate with outside projects more easily. And again, I'm definitely open to collaborating with any Gentoo-based projects.
But, I need a break from Gentoo-related things for the immediate future. So I'll be over here refocusing for a bit.
11 comments:
Way to go sir. I (along with possibly many others) am waiting patiently to sign up for your "wider-community Gentoo" effort; but I would much rather that it is in your own good time, not a rushed initiative.
Thanks for all the time you've devoted to this work.
Bravo and well said!
Now lets take a look at the binary side of the beast whisper whisper online GUI whisper whisper bandwidth not a problem whisper whisper Gentoo distros whisper whisper specific machines whisper whisper pre-installed too? whisper whisper yep, hardware specific whisper whisper to compete with Yahoo's new sugar daddy. OMG!
;)
Gentoo in its current state has too many comfy bureaucrats who have alot of time pursuing their own superficial status and/or agendas through their gentoo "councils" etc etc. Where one can flout their status and buddy lists.
Is this a Linux Distribution or what?
Most of these people would have a hard time working their way around around bash script let alone know anything about an ebuild. We know who these people are, and they have alot of power. I've got no time for gentoo as a "community project". I still use it as "my" distribution.
Gentoo has had its time, and its not going to move anywhere fast, sorry thats my prediction.
Time for a new concept, perhaps?
In my search for traces of what was left of Gentoo, I have noticed many people being very positive about your uncompromising attitude and the tremendous asset you have been for the Gentoo distro and community.
When refocussing on the larger community side of Gentoo, I am sure you will find loads of support from likeminded individuals who enjoy freedom as much as you do.
Peace!
aznach
The first thing that attracted me to Gentoo was the ability to build from source in a semi-organized manner. I'd experienced something similar to this (BSD "ports"), but Gentoo had taken this idea to another level, applying it not only to the installed packages, but to everything (GCC, libc, kernel, etc.). I thought this was great, and have enjoyed using Gentoo for the past 4-5 years.
I do think that the entirety of portage could use a refresh/re-write. I just wish the current portage dev lead would acknowledge this, and agree to work with some (perahaps all) of the current portage "forks" to come to a best-of-breed solution. From the mailing list statements he's made, I don't see this happening. I believe that Gentoo is a microcosm of the entire Linux community...in one distribution....kind of a "collection of forks". For all things but portage, this makes sense. Portage needs to have open-minded leadership for Gentoo to thrive. I get the sense that it doesn't, at present.
Regardless, I'll continue to use Sabayon (at work) and Gentoo (at home) for the foreseeable future. There's nothing else out there that better meets my needs (desires).
I found a really cool article that describes quite well all the recent goings on:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/articles/making-the-distro-p1.xml
No I'm not trying to be a "smarty-pants", I just find it striking that these situations are so similar, kinda like history repeating itself, perhaps?
Honestly, I'm surprised you won't fork. After your recent comments about how you'd like to see it go in a certain direction, and about how you would take ownership of the Foundation or of the project, it seemed to me a fork would be the natural progression. Putting your money (time) where your mouth is (was). Does that make any sense?
So have you refocussed onto something other than Gentoo? Or are you quietly formulating a plan.
I for one am eagerly awaiting an announcement of your future plans on the Gentoo front.
Well Daniel, Gentoo is on the eve of pushing out a new release. But people are still going to get the same two year old problems because of the attitudes of the devs. Here is a prime example, multiple people offering help and suggestions only to be told by the devs that it is a different problem all the while whenever the problem is opened new it is closed as a duplicate problem. A two year old bug!
This is something you could have resolved. Now the new release will go out with the same problem dozens of people have complained about for years. Not your fault I know. Just that we all had faith that you could have remedied situations such as these.
ref.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=125728
anonymous,
You make some good points. Let's see what we can do over the next few months...
-Daniel
It's funny. I was Diego Petteno's blog over at Planet Gentoo saying that he was disappointed a little in Gentoo, where I found out that he felt that FreeBSD was also becoming a little stagnant too.
I knew that Gentoo had roots in BSD methodology and thinking, but I didn't think the two were related in that dev work on FreeBSD benefits Gentoo.
Regardless of whether or not that's true, I wanted to learn more about the FreeBSD situation, where I happened to find this mail list post by one of the NetBSD founders:
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2006/08/30/0016.html
While I'm not surprised that NetBSD has fallen by the wayside, I'm shocked that I'm seeing a lot of similarities between what's happened over there with what I see (on the surface) happening to Gentoo. Mainly, the lack of strong leadership, direction & goals, and most importantly stagnated projects (ex. Gentoo finally starting some real dev work on GCC 4.2 while other distros have been using it for a while, and 4.3 is just around the corner).
I would hate to see Gentoo fall by the wayside as some of the more prevalent BSDs, but besides a brief spurt of effort and an affirmation to do better shortly after all this went down, I haven't seen any concrete results yet, except for better efforts for outward communication.
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