Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuilds for kde3 beta etc.

[Daniel Robbins <drobbins@gentoo.org>]

On Wed, Dec 26, 2001 at 03:14:20AM +0100, Mikael Hallendal wrote:

> Correct me if I'm wrong but Gentoo Linux is a community based
> distribution, meaning all developers has a say in this matter.

OK, I'll correct you :)  Gentoo Linux is a community-based distribution, but it
is not a democracy.  It's a benevolent dictatorship.  Does that mean that I go
ahead and ignore all my developers?  Of course not; developers have always had
a say, and I give tremendous leeway to my developers... most of the time.
Sometimes I need to chime in and resolve a dispute or exert my will over a
particular decision.  This was one of those situations, and I did.  And I do
not believe that my decision was outrageous, nor did I choose to withold an
explanation for my decision.  

Hallski, how many times in the past have I said "I'm giving Hallski the final
decision on this one"?  I hope you'll agree it's been quite a few times.  In
these times, the final decision has been given to you because I trust your
expertise.  You have been given authority over the desktop aspects of Gentoo
Linux, but branching CVS is something that affects more than just Desktop
developers.  You should not be surprised that, in this particular case, I
exerted my authority and made this decision.  It's certainly within my "job
description" to make this decision.  And not to be rude, but whether or not to
branch CVS is really not your decision.

> Also, the "rm -rf /" example misses the point. The point is that if we have
> lots of beta-stuff in Portage (available to the users) we'll end up spending
> loads of hours supporting it (no matter how many signs of "Unsupported" we
> write).

The "rm -rf /" example is exactly the point.  Inform the user, and let *them*
make an *educated* decision.  I trust the Gentoo Linux user base; we're not
designing a distribution for monkeys here.  Taking control away from users is
really not part of the Gentoo Linux philosophy.  

I think I should also point out that one or more of our "users" may decide to
install the beta packages and end up fixing some bugs for us.  Many of our
users are experts themselves, and I want them to be able to at least see, and
if they choose, play with the beta ebuilds.  If I were in their shoes, I would
not want to be denied this opportunity, but I *would* like to be warned about
any potential badness.  This is what we will do, and it's the right thing to
do.  Shirking away from open development is not a good solution.

If you don't want to support the one user who chooses to ignore this warning, I
won't have a problem with that.

Best Regards,

-- 
Daniel Robbins                                  <drobbins@gentoo.org>
Chief Architect/President                       http://www.gentoo.org 
Gentoo Technologies, Inc.