Re: [gentoo-dev] State of Developement

[Grant Goodyear <grant@grantgoodyear.org>]

> And they have to go through a specific set of privileged people.

True, although to the best of my knowledge all distributions have
a similar system.  I don't think it will ever make sense to 
provide CVS write access to all users; it's simply too easy to
mess things up.  Goodness knows that our developers regularly 
manage to render Gentoo uninstallable, and they're trying very
hard not to do that.  Our system isn't perfect, but I'm not sure
what would be better.

> Q: Can I help, can I help
> A: Sure, you can take out the trash and scrub the toilets.

Well, right now that's pretty much what the developers are doing,
too.  Our biggest need for help right now is good bug reports and
help with existing bugs.  The only major "development" that is
ocurring right now is portage and some people starting to work on
a sensible installer.  Everything else is really bug fixing of 
one sort or another.

> > > 	I havent checked, but is gentoo-core still closed?
> > yes, it is.
> > 
> Ivory tower?

The original rationale for closing gentoo-core was that it allowed
developers a chance to propose wacky ideas (and get shot down) 
with minimal embarrassment (and without generating a flood of
"hey, some dev wants to do _this_!) posts on the mailing lists
and forums.  I don't particularly have an objection to gentoo-core
being made read-only.  I certainly think it would be an improvement from 
a PR standpoint.  At the same time, I could also see how making the
list truly public might cut down on the number of "hey, some unnamed devs 
have been doing _this_, and it really has to stop!" messages that need
to be sent but might not be if everybody gets to read our "dirty
laundry", so to speak (and mix metaphors).

> As a user of Gentoo, I feel like a child whose parent has to double
> check everything I do. And in the same way that the child 
> becomes frustrated with their parent because they place no trust
> in the child, I am frustrated with Gentoo because it places no
> trust in the users.

That's an interesting argument, because I would still argue that
other than Linux From Scratch, Gentoo provides users with more 
flexibility than does any other distribution.  If you want to 
play with a masked ebuild, unmask it.  If you want an ebuild
that has been languishing on bugzilla for a while, download it
and emerge it (or write it, if that's necessary).  If you want
to be a developer, start fixing bugs on bugzilla and make your
good work known.  If nobody gets around to inviting you to be
a developer, e-mail me and tell me what you've been doing, and
I'll look into it and get back to you.  I'm pretty sure that
nobody is actually trying to be rude, but we all are quite
definitely overworked.

> Among all the distributions I am familiar with, Gentoo is,
> in my opinion, the best as far as placing trust in it's users.
> But Gentoo is also, in my opinion, far from what I imagine as ideal.

Fair enough.  If you have additional ideas on how we can trust our
users better, please do post on bugzilla.

-g2boojum-
-- 
Grant Goodyear				The Secrets of Physics:
Dept. of Chemistry			1. Add zero.
Clemson University			2. Multiply by one.
Clemson, SC  29617			3. Expand in a Taylor series
e-mail: grant@grantgoodyear.org		4. Integrate by parts.
http://www.grantgoodyear.org		5. Fourier transform.