Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Corey Shields <cshields@gentoo.org>]

On Mon, 2005-06-06 at 19:55 -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> In my humble opinion, Gentoo is missing too many points to be an
> enterprise Linux.  We commit to a live tree.  We don't have true QA,
> testing or tinderbox.  We don't have paid staff, alpha/beta/rc cycles.
> We don't really have product lifecycles, since we don't generally
> backport fixes to older versions, requiring instead for people to
> update to a more recent release.  We don't have, and probably will
> never be able to offer, support contracts.  We support as wide a range
> of hardware as the upstream kernel, plus hardware that requires
> external drivers; we don't have access to a great deal of the hardware
> for which we provide drivers.  We understand when real life gets in
> the way of bug-fixing, because all our developers are volunteers.

I don't feel that the list of requirements you have for "enterprise"
linux is necessarily what the enterprise needs..

I think Gentoo has some steps that can be taken to be a better
enterprise player, but to come out and state that it won't work is a bit
bold.  It might not work for HP's description of "enterprise", but that
doesn't mean it wouldn't work for someone else.  I have talked with
people who have used Gentoo in HPC clusters with great success, and I
would consider that an enterprise arena.

> I think that attempting to take Gentoo in the "enterprise" direction
> is a mistake.  I think that we are a hobbyist distribution.  This
> doesn't mean that we should not strive to meet some of the enterprise
> goals.  Those things can be important to hobbyists too.  But I don't
> think we should be aiming for corporate America.

Wow...  as a sysadmin who has run Gentoo in some very high profile
production systems that's a bit offensive to think I used it outside of
a hobbyist platform..  IBM didn't just donate a $30k system for ppc64
development to make it better for someone's basement use, so I don't
think I'm alone in thinking that Gentoo is above "hobbyist".

> I don't even understand why that goal appeals to people.  Let other
> distros go there!  I want Gentoo to run in people's homes, in student
> dorm rooms, etc.  Places where people want a fun distribution that
> they can tailor and work on easily.

Let other distros go there at $1500/year/node (RHEL AS)...

Gentoo is already a fun distribution..  I don't think that has to change
to meet enterprise goals.

> If RH or SuSE (or another for-profit Linux vendor) wants to take some
> of those developments and use them to make a profit, that's fine with
> me.  We're over here having fun.

Personally, I was drawn to Gentoo by the community, which was a lot of
fun.  I still have fun working with the people in this community.  I
don't see why an enterprise goal should be equated with losing the fun
aspect of Gentoo.

Cheers,

-Corey

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