Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer <christel@gentoo.org>]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 10:07 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 09:51:58 +0100 "Christopher O'Neill"
> <chris.oneill@gmail.com> wrote:
> | Ideally, what I'd like is for the various dev teams to compile a
> | weekly status report, which could then be compiled into the weekly
> | newsletter (which currently seems to be lacking much useful
> | information).  It would be great if we (the users) could find out
> | what's going on behind the scenes of our favourite distribution.
> 
> The problem with this is... Once someone says "we're working on $x",
> they're continuously pestered about it by users asking when it will be
> ready. Given how few of us are paid to work specific hours on Gentoo
> things, it's very easy for provisional release dates to be missed --
> and when half of a developer's time is spent responding to questions
> about where $x is and why an early test of $x pulled out of a
> supposedly "not for end users" repo broke their system and the other
> half is spent writing status updates it's pretty much impossible to get
> anything out consistently.

So, from a developer pov Ciaran; if we could come up with some way of
keeping up to date with what you guys do (without eating up any of your
time or getting in your way) and then keep the masses informed, would
that be more attractive? Obviously making sure that information is kept
to a not exactly bare minimum, but presented in such a way that it
doesn't in any way halt progress or potential change of direction? 
> 
> Hence why some of us don't announce non-trivial projects on public
> mailing lists, and instead keep any discussion on -core and sekrit IRC
> channels. That's how what's now known as eselect was developed, and
> it turned out far nicer than the XML-laden aborted gentoo-config
> project precisely because of the lack of end user 'input'.

In more of a informative 'these are the exciting things we're doing'
sort of way rather than a 'tell us why you disagree' sort of way maybe.

> I mean, as a purely hypothetical example... Could you imagine just how
> many dumb feature requests, questions and requests for code from the
> unwashed masses someone would get if they admitted to having an early
> alpha of an alternative to Portage that didn't require Python? Having
> to deal with the noise would be more than enough to ensure that no more
> development would ever get done...

Purely hypothetically I suspect you'd be better suited for answering
that question than I am. 


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