[gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Aron Griffis]

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This is kinda bloggish, because it's basically a transcription of an
IRC monologue.  My apologies if it's hard to follow...  Nonetheless,
I'm interested in how other developers feel on the topics I bring up
below.

There have been some really interesting points brought up recently
about "where is Gentoo going?"  I have been wondering that myself.
Some people seem to think that Gentoo has the potential to be an
enterprise player.  I have not responded directly to those people, but
I wonder if they know what they mean.  I have worked in the enterprise
UNIX market for 6 years.  My code is running in places like NASA
mission control, 9-1-1 call centers, and most of the telephone
carriers.  I've produced patches on weekends to close $800m deals.
I now work in hp's Open Source and Linux Organization, mostly on RHEL
and SLES, so I have a good idea of what it takes to be an enterprise
player.

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 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.

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.

I like the idea of Gentoo on alternative arches and in embedded
environments.  Not because I want Sony to start using Gentoo on
walkmans, but purely because the idea of running Linux on a PDA is
cool.  I'd like Gentoo to be a place where neat things are developed.
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.

Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
users.  I think that is wrong.  Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
than switching to an actually sane approach.  The users are cool
because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
Sometimes they become developers.  But the truth is that Gentoo sees
improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
developers.  And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
the users second.

Regards,
Aron

--
Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer


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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Colin Kingsley]

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Aron Griffis wrote:
> I have worked in the enterprise
> UNIX market for 6 years.  My code is running in places like NASA
> mission control, 9-1-1 call centers, and most of the telephone
> carriers.  I've produced patches on weekends to close $800m deals.

Wow.


> 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.
> 
> I like the idea of Gentoo on alternative arches and in embedded
> environments.  Not because I want Sony to start using Gentoo on
> walkmans, but purely because the idea of running Linux on a PDA is
> cool.  I'd like Gentoo to be a place where neat things are developed.
> 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.

I couldn't agree more. World domination doesn't really excite me in the
least. All that matters to me is that I've got a distro that I enjoy
using and working on. In fact, it seems to me that many of the things I
dislike about other OS's and other distros are the result of some drive
towards an idiot-proof, user friendly, "enterprise" product. I very much
want to preserve gentoo as it is.

Thats certaintly not to say that I'm against progress, but if people
want support contracts, the absolute ultimate in stability, and install
CD's shipped in pretty boxes with manuals, there are other distros
available for them.

- --Colin
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-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Mon, 2005-06-06 at 20:36 -0400, Colin Kingsley wrote:
> Thats certaintly not to say that I'm against progress, but if people
> want support contracts, the absolute ultimate in stability, and install
> CD's shipped in pretty boxes with manuals, there are other distros
> available for them.

What's wrong with install CD's shipped with pretty boxes and manuals?
That's something I really wish Gentoo had, not because it would attract
the suits or anything, but because I think it would be friggin' sweet to
open my mailbox and see a shiny new copy of Gentoo Linux every six
months or so.

After all, it's all about the box art, man.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Lance Albertson]

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On Mon, 2005-06-06 at 19:55 -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:

<snip>

> 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 tend to agree with most of those problems you mention. I've tried to
think of ways to make Gentoo fit more into an enterprise market ... its
not that easy. 

* We'd need a tree that isn't 'live' per say, something that has a
lifecycle and only includes security/criticial software bug updates
* We'd need a full staffed QA/testing/tenderbox crew to do make it
truely 'stable'
* We'd need to have a better way to backport fixes
* We could never probably offer support contracts, but that doesn't mean
someone in the private world could do it. 
* Access to drivers/hardware would be a major problem that would be hard
to solve without corporate funding.

> 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.

I'd say as a global goal, yes I'd agree with you. Gentoo as a global
entity should stay where its at, but that doesn't mean a subset of
Gentoo could have a goal towards being enterprise. I don't really see
Gentoo has a hobbyist distribution as a whole. I know a majority of our
folks use Gentoo as a development OS which is great and it works
perfectly for that, but I can see Gentoo working into a more enterprise
environment with some work. I know several folks that run Gentoo in a
production server environment and it runs well! Doesn't mean its easy to
maintain, but it is doable and I see some very benifical situations
where Gentoo would work best in production systems. 

> 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.

I envision the 'server/enterprise' project to help create numerous tools
that help aide Gentoo in a production environment. There's a lot of cool
stuff we could do to help make it run better in that type of
environment. 

> Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
> users.  I think that is wrong.  Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
> It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
> than switching to an actually sane approach.  The users are cool
> because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
> enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
> Sometimes they become developers.  But the truth is that Gentoo sees
> improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
> developers.  And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
> the users second.

I see your point there, but I also think theres a group of people that
also like gentoo in the enterprise realm. I remember at the last LWE
show in San Francisco, there were numerous people asking about Gentoo
and making it more 'stable'. This would really be tied to an enterprise
level of Gentoo. So I know there is interest out there. We all have
opinions on were Gentoo should fit in, so I don't see why we couldn't
fit there.

To sum it up, to make Gentoo better in the enterprise isn't a bad goal
for some of us. It'd be a bad goal for Gentoo globally though. Take a
look at the hardened project for example. They've shown a good userbase
that likes how it works and the tools with it. I for see something
simliar happening to an enterprise sub-project (or whatever you'd call
it). Heck, maybe this idea would be better fit as a fork, who knows.
Would be neat to have a group of people working on this and helping
Gentoo if they find bugs in the process and fix them!

Anyways, you made some great points on where we fall, but I don't think
we should shoot down the idea or potential because some of us don't
think it'd work. 

Cheers!

-- 
Lance Albertson <ramereth@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Infrastructure | Operations Manager

---
GPG Public Key:  <http://www.ramereth.net/lance.asc>
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ramereth/irc.freenode.net

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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Aron Griffis]

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Note: I've snipped a lot of quoted text below, but took full context
into account in my replies...

Lance Albertson wrote:[Mon Jun 06 2005, 09:02:21PM EDT]
> I'd say as a global goal, yes I'd agree with you. Gentoo as a global
> entity should stay where its at, but that doesn't mean a subset of
> Gentoo could have a goal towards being enterprise. 

I think that working on methods to use Gentoo in an enterprise setting
is cool.  I'm looking forward to seeing how people creatively solve
some of the problems I mentioned without disrupting Gentoo's core
development.  I did not mean to imply that *all* of those problems
need to be solved in order for Gentoo to be usable in an enterprise
setting.

> I don't really see Gentoo has a hobbyist distribution as a whole.

Sorry if it seemed like I was putting Gentoo in a box.  That wasn't my
intent.  I wasn't using the term "hobbyist" derogatorily, in case that
wasn't clear.

> I envision the 'server/enterprise' project to help create numerous
> tools that help aide Gentoo in a production environment. There's
> a lot of cool stuff we could do to help make it run better in that
> type of environment. 

Totally.  In fact, some of the same tools that would help enterprise
users would also be useful to ordinary users.

> > And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first, the users
> > second.
> 
> I see your point there, but I also think theres a group of people
> that also like gentoo in the enterprise realm. I remember at the
> last LWE show in San Francisco, there were numerous people asking
> about Gentoo and making it more 'stable'. This would really be tied
> to an enterprise level of Gentoo. So I know there is interest out
> there. We all have opinions on were Gentoo should fit in, so I don't
> see why we couldn't fit there.

If there are users wanting that, then I look forward to seeing them
step up to the plate and help to solve the problems.  I'd reiterate,
though, that the solutions need to be creative enough that they don't
disrupt Gentoo's core development.

What do I mean by that?  Let me give you an example: multilib support.
Jeremy and others have been working on this for a while now.  They've
gone through a couple iterations of efforts, but take a look at
Jeremy's blog and you'll see that he acknowledges it needs some
reworking.  Despite that, the default amd64 profile is multilib, and
there is no higher indication of stability in portage than that.

How should the enterprise subproject approach this problem?  Options:
(1) They could raise a fuss that Jeremy has taken amd64 down this path
before the technology was ready.  After all, that makes a mess of
enterprise-readiness, because any consumer is going to need to migrate
to the next multilib attempt in the future.  (2) They could continue
to rely on the non-multilib profile and wait for the multilib
implementation to stabilize into something that isn't going to keep
seeing big changes.

IMHO the best approach is (2).  It leaves the default amd64 profile
multilib, which is fine for most users.  It is more work for the
enterprise subproject, but allows Jeremy to continue his development
unhindered.

Disclaimer: I don't know that much about multilib or the current state
of its development.  If I've mischaracterized it, I apologize in
advance.  My intent was to present a possible scenario and explain my
reasoning why I hope nobody will try to retarget the core of Gentoo
development at the enterprise.

> Anyways, you made some great points on where we fall, but I don't
> think we should shoot down the idea or potential because some of us
> don't think it'd work. 

I agree with you.

Corey Shields wrote:[Mon Jun 06 2005, 10:18:31PM EDT]
> 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.  

Ah, sorry, that isn't quite what I meant.  Rather I intended to point
out that we should not be deluded into thinking that the changes
required for Gentoo to be enterprise-ready are small.  Some of the
changes are surmountable, but each one could appear to necessitate,
IMHO, a change at the core of Gentoo development.  I would prefer for
the solutions to be possible more transparently.

For example, one way a company could presently deploy Gentoo
internally would be to (1) make a snapshot of the portage tree and
deploy based on that, (2) manually backport bug- and security-fixes to
their snapshot.  Sometimes the manual backport would be easy,
sometimes it would be more difficult, and sometimes the decision would
be made to move forward on a given package version.

In other words, a company can implement a Gentoo product lifecycle
as a wrapper around the existing Gentoo development process.  It is
a lot of work for the company, and they'd better hire some bright
sysadmins, but it would be possible.

If there is an enterprise subproject formed in Gentoo, I'd like to see
their methods be similar.  Develop tools that make it easier to manage
and maintain an enterprise deployment, without changing how Gentoo is
currently developed.  Without hoisting new expectations on the Gentoo
developers, release process, etc.

> 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 did not intend "hobbyist" to be disparaging.  I think that the big
companies (including HP, who has also donated tens of thousands of
dollars of equipment btw) see a lot of potential in Gentoo.

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

Great!  I think we are closer in our perspectives than it seems.

Regards,
Aron

--
Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer


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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Corey Shields]

On Tue, 2005-06-07 at 11:08 -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> Ah, sorry, that isn't quite what I meant.  Rather I intended to point
> out that we should not be deluded into thinking that the changes
> required for Gentoo to be enterprise-ready are small.  Some of the
> changes are surmountable, but each one could appear to necessitate,
> IMHO, a change at the core of Gentoo development.  I would prefer for
> the solutions to be possible more transparently.

Yeah, the changes that do need to be made are not small I agree.  I do
feel that for the most part they could be made without disrupting the
core of Gentoo.  For example, there is no need to put a freeze on the
whole tree in the name of "enterprise stability" and screw everyone else
wanting bleeding edge packages, when you could snapshot the tree (like
you mention below)

> For example, one way a company could presently deploy Gentoo
<snip>
> In other words, a company can implement a Gentoo product lifecycle
> as a wrapper around the existing Gentoo development process.  It is
> a lot of work for the company, and they'd better hire some bright
> sysadmins, but it would be possible.
> 
> If there is an enterprise subproject formed in Gentoo, I'd like to see
> their methods be similar.  Develop tools that make it easier to manage
> and maintain an enterprise deployment, without changing how Gentoo is
> currently developed.  Without hoisting new expectations on the Gentoo
> developers, release process, etc.

GLEP 19 is pretty much right along these lines, and already has some
prototype/testing going on.   :)

> I did not intend "hobbyist" to be disparaging.  I think that the big
> companies (including HP, who has also donated tens of thousands of
> dollars of equipment btw) see a lot of potential in Gentoo.

Cool.  I probably put too much personal feeling behind it.  I don't
trust corporate distros anymore.  I was in a situation where we got
royally screwed by RedHat, tried to work out a deal with them, and had
no luck.  For us we got stuck in the whole "first one is free, then
you're hooked" game.  

I'm not against paying for support and services (I think rhn is the
coolest thing since sliced bread, and worth some money), however, I do
not think that their prices are reasonable, especially when they ask you
to switch from free to paying six digits in the middle of a fiscal year
where you haven't budgeted for it.  So, my desires for Gentoo to fit
better in the enterprise stem from not wanting to stick with a corporate
distro..  Kinda selfish, I know.  :)

> Great!  I think we are closer in our perspectives than it seems.

:)

Cheers,

-Corey

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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Aron Griffis]

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Aron Griffis wrote:[Tue Jun 07 2005, 11:08:58AM EDT]
> I think that the big companies (including HP, who has also donated
> tens of thousands of dollars of equipment btw) see a lot of
> potential in Gentoo.

Btw, as an hp employee I hope you'll forgive me for tooting the hp
horn a little bit...  I know there are other companies donating
resources and I'm not trying to one-up them.

In addition to the equipment hp has lent, part of my job description
is to "work on Gentoo".  No strings attached, no agenda.  This is
viewed as positive community involvement by the hp Open Source and
Linux Org.

I spend *at least* 1/3 of my time working on Gentoo.  Without getting
into a salary discussion, that's hp donating tens of thousands of
dollars per year.

Now whether you all consider my involvement to be worth that much is
a different matter, of course.  No comments from the peanut gallery,
please. ;-)

Regards,
Aron

--
Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer


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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Tue, 2005-06-07 at 13:56 -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> I spend *at least* 1/3 of my time working on Gentoo.  Without getting
> into a salary discussion, that's hp donating tens of thousands of
> dollars per year.
> 
> Now whether you all consider my involvement to be worth that much is
> a different matter, of course.  No comments from the peanut gallery,
> please. ;-)

...and you *still* haven't gotten an ia64 livecd built?  For shame!

*grin*

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Aron Griffis]

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Chris Gianelloni wrote:	[Tue Jun 07 2005, 06:38:41PM EDT]
> ...and you *still* haven't gotten an ia64 livecd built?  For shame!

SO TRUE.

--
Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer


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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Corey Shields]

On Tue, 2005-06-07 at 18:38 -0400, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> ...and you *still* haven't gotten an ia64 livecd built?  For shame!

He's getting close..   Just got some more hardware put into dolphin last
week, and it has a spindle of blanks sitting right on top of it.  so
umm, yeah, that's a start    :)

-C

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Dylan Carlson]

On Monday 06 June 2005 16:55, Aron Griffis wrote:
> 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.

I've always felt Gentoo is better as a base or platform.  There's certainly 
enough power in the tools we provide for anyone to roll something 
"enterprise" based upon our work.  Or for any other purpose, including 
binary-only.

Much in the same way as there are numerous distros that ARE Debian -- 
derived from and cooperative with, but not separate from.

People could always try to fork, too, but many of us know how well that 
went for people who have tried...

Cheers,

-- 
Dylan Carlson [absinthe@gentoo.org]
Public Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x708E165F
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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Alec Warner]

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Dylan Carlson wrote:
> On Monday 06 June 2005 16:55, Aron Griffis wrote:
> 
>>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.
> 
> 
> I've always felt Gentoo is better as a base or platform.  There's certainly 
> enough power in the tools we provide for anyone to roll something 
> "enterprise" based upon our work.  Or for any other purpose, including 
> binary-only.
	There is power in Gentoo, the way you set things up, the choice
provided, the overall goal of Gentoo.  There is not power in our tools.
 Our tools are in fact underpowered IMHO.  Thats one of the areas where
I think work is really needed, and a lot of what I want to work on is
portage-related tools.  Much of this requires new portage API's which
are in progress but take a lot of work.

	There is an installer project that will in principle facilitate large
scale Gentoo deployments, there is a GLEP for a stable tree, there is
hardened, and all of those are great.

> 
> Much in the same way as there are numerous distros that ARE Debian -- 
> derived from and cooperative with, but not separate from.
> 
> People could always try to fork, too, but many of us know how well that 
> went for people who have tried...
>
	Much better to be a meta meta distro such as Ubuntu that runs off of a
core gentoo install than to fork stuff, especially at present.

> Cheers,
> 

 I think in the end, Gentoo is too much a dynamic entity to be used for
a stable enterprise rollout.  You would need something debianesque with
releases, or a Gentoo Snapshot ( say 2005.0 with bugfixes/security ).  I
wonder at the allocation of things ( say the mySQL profile ) and when
things like that stay on Gentoo-owned hardware, vs. something like
breakmygentoo which is 3rd party.  However I have faith that the
managers will enforce whatever is decided.

The whole point of this Open Source stuff anyway is to adapt things
however you need them, and Enterprise or not everyone has that option.

- -Ajec

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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Corey Shields]

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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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Collins Richey]

My $.02 after reading a lot of discussions on the CentOS (ie free
REHL4) list is this:

1. Many Enterprise users are looking for an SLA, ie someone who will
guarantee to fix anything that breaks in a specified period of time.
Such users have the big bucks to pay for such a guarantee. I'm sure
that Gentoo will not be in a position to provide this, but some
enterprising group might want to undertake this.

2. Enterprise users (as a general rule) are not interested in the
latest and greatest but rather in a stable, reasonably current system
that can remain in place (with guaranteed security fixes, of course)
with no "feature creep" for a few years. Even Gentoo stable is too
much of a moving target for such users. The user base (engineers
developing embedded Linux) I support is still well served by RH9 for
the most part!

Not to say that Gentoo has no place in a production environment, but
my company would never use anything without an SLA, ie not even CentOS
which mirrors REHL faithfully.

-- 
 Collins
       Head teachers of the world unite: you have nothing to lose but 
       the Start button.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Dylan Carlson]

On Monday 06 June 2005 19:45, Collins Richey wrote:
> 2. Enterprise users (as a general rule) are not interested in the
> latest and greatest but rather in a stable, reasonably current system
> that can remain in place (with guaranteed security fixes, of course)
> with no "feature creep" for a few years. Even Gentoo stable is too
> much of a moving target for such users. The user base (engineers
> developing embedded Linux) I support is still well served by RH9 for
> the most part!

"Feature creep" is largely a problem upstream, not with package 
maintainers.  And no, we're not gonna backport anything.  If people really 
believe that backporting fixes = stable and/or secure, let them use RH.  
It's a belief, nothing more.

Cheers,
Dylan Carlson [absinthe@gentoo.org]
Public Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x708E165F
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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Mike Frysinger]

On Monday 06 June 2005 11:29 pm, Dylan Carlson wrote:
> On Monday 06 June 2005 19:45, Collins Richey wrote:
> > 2. Enterprise users (as a general rule) are not interested in the
> > latest and greatest but rather in a stable, reasonably current system
> > that can remain in place (with guaranteed security fixes, of course)
> > with no "feature creep" for a few years. Even Gentoo stable is too
> > much of a moving target for such users. The user base (engineers
> > developing embedded Linux) I support is still well served by RH9 for
> > the most part!
>
> "Feature creep" is largely a problem upstream, not with package
> maintainers.  And no, we're not gonna backport anything.  If people really
> believe that backporting fixes = stable and/or secure, let them use RH.
> It's a belief, nothing more.

you really cant make that kind of general statement and expect it to hold ... 
often times there are packages where newer versions suck more than previous 
ones (the way in which they suck i leave up to your imagination) ... 
security/stable minded people are often served best by ripping out the small 
fixes for the current 'most stable' version

and i'm talking bugfixes here, not feature backports like redhat is known 
for ... these are two very different things afterall
-mike
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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Dylan Carlson]

On Monday 06 June 2005 20:36, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> you really cant make that kind of general statement and expect it to
> hold ... often times there are packages where newer versions suck more
> than previous ones (the way in which they suck i leave up to your
> imagination) ... security/stable minded people are often served best by
> ripping out the small fixes for the current 'most stable' version

Sure, but I'd say the instances where that is truly necessary is rare... 
given the # of packages we deal with.  Regardless of whatever QA we have 
or RH has, every "enterprise" organization has to do their own tests 
before they deploy new software.  Backported fixes occasionally cause 
problems.  In the end, RH has very little liability if a customer 
experiences downtime.  If someone blindly deploys updates from any vendor 
and has downtime, they only have themselves to blame.  

I'll leave that to each respective package maintainer what's best.  Setting 
a policy either way seems like a mistake.  When people say that 
"enterprise" environments have these requirements (backporting fixes, et 
al), they're really talking about another distro, not Gentoo.  A separate 
organization that uses Gentoo as a base, which would be great and the 
right way to go about it...  

If we stay flexible enough, people can get what they want out of Gentoo, 
even if it's not specifically tailored for either enterprise or home 
desktop environments.

Cheers,
Dylan Carlson [absinthe@gentoo.org]
Public Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x708E165F
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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Greg KH]

On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 07:55:50PM -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> I'd like Gentoo to be a place where neat things are developed.
> 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.

I second this.  That's why I joined...

> Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
> users.  I think that is wrong.  Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
> It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
> than switching to an actually sane approach.  The users are cool
> because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
> enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
> Sometimes they become developers.  But the truth is that Gentoo sees
> improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
> developers.  And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
> the users second.

Heh, I like this too.

One thing that people might want to remember, if Gentoo ever changes
into a "real, we take your money for support" type of distro, a lot of
the employers of the us developers might reconsider allowing them to
participate.  Which would pretty much suck...

Aron, thanks for writing this up, I enjoyed it.

thanks,

greg k-h

p.s. And yes, Gentoo is used for a "base" distro all over the place, and
that's great.  Lots of embedded people like it, and even the nitwits at
OSDL are using it for their "Linux Reference Platform" or whatever they
are calling it these days...
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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Lance Albertson]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1744 bytes --]

On Mon, 2005-06-06 at 21:51 -0700, Greg KH wrote:

> One thing that people might want to remember, if Gentoo ever changes
> into a "real, we take your money for support" type of distro, a lot of
> the employers of the us developers might reconsider allowing them to
> participate.  Which would pretty much suck...

Oh, I'd never want to see Gentoo become like that! But that doesn't mean
we can attempt to make a sub-project to make things at least better for
the enterprise folks. Whether that be creating tools to help management
multiple Gentoo machines, or dealing with a more 'stable' branch. I'm
not saying we'll ever achieve a level of where RHEL is, but we can at
least make it more manageable for folks. I know that won't help
companies that require a service agreement since we as Gentoo will never
be able to do that.

I get the sense that when people hear 'enterprise' they think we want to
take Gentoo to becoming a corporate monster like RH. I pray and hope
that never happens. All I'd like to see is a sub-project devoted to
Gentoo in the enterprise. It'd sit in a similar role as Hardened Gentoo
does providing tools, etc for folks in the enterprise. 

Let the people who want to use Gentoo as a 'hobbist' distro use it like
that, and let the people that want to use it in the enterprise use it as
that.

Btw, I'm hoping to get this said sub-project going once I get settled in
with my move and new job. At least get some organization sorted with it.

-- 
Lance Albertson <ramereth@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Infrastructure | Operations Manager

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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

I'm not a developer, but I'm a Gentoo bigot and I'd like to join the
discussion :).

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.
>  
>
Another thing worthy of mention here is that Gentoo is a non-profit
organization, with some rather tight restrictions imposed by US tax laws.

>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.
>  
>
You aren't -- trust me. You're not on corporate America's radar screen.
I'm not sure SuSE or Novell is either. Corporate America lives, breathes
and eats Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

>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.
>  
>
Gentoo is running in my home. And it's running in a *lot* of laboratories.

>I like the idea of Gentoo on alternative arches and in embedded
>environments.  Not because I want Sony to start using Gentoo on
>walkmans, but purely because the idea of running Linux on a PDA is
>cool.  I'd like Gentoo to be a place where neat things are developed.
>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.
>
>  
>
It's also fine with the GPL :). I'm not sure I care about alternative
arches, given Apple's announcement today. In case you didn't hear,
they're migrating to Intel processors for Macs, starting as soon as next
year on the Mini-Mac. I've got a Zaurus; it's running some kind of Linux
and I'll probably put Gentoo on it when I get some spare cycles,
provided Gentoo runs on the 6000. But I'm sure as hell not gonna try to
run R or TeXmacs or Maxima on it!

>Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
>users.  I think that is wrong.  Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
>It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
>than switching to an actually sane approach.  The users are cool
>because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
>enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
>Sometimes they become developers.  But the truth is that Gentoo sees
>improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
>developers.  And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
>the users second.
>  
>
Well ... OK ... I'll never become a developer; I just have too many
hobbies to pin myself down that tightly with what little free time I
have. I think you're right, though ... Gentoo *is* for the developers.
Ultimately, though, so is GNU/Linux. It's an enviroment of the
programmers, by the programmers, and for the programmers, to paraphrase
Abe Lincoln.

I'm certainly not in this to try and take money away from Bill Gates, or
to torture intellectual property attorneys. I'm in this because I like
the tools, I use the tools, I've been using similar tools for 20 years,
and I'm fortunate enough to have a day job where I spend at least a good
chunk of the time working with Linux.

So ... since nobody has asked ... why Gentoo? Well, I started out in
Linux with Red Hat 6.2, stayed with them through Red Hat 9. When they
created Fedora, I went to Debian. If Debian had the level of support for
Java that Gentoo has, I'd probably still be there. But it doesn't, so I
switched. The rest of Gentoo's joys just grew on me. :)

The best thing for me about Gentoo is that it's almost trivial to
package software. If you can download it, follow directions, and install
it, you're 90 percent of the way to packaging it! I was in a discussion
on the R developers mailing list the other day about package management.
They, like Perl, have their own source repository, dependency tree, etc.
It struck me that it would probably take less than a week to create
"/usr/portage/app-sci-CRAN" -- CRAN is the Comprehensive R Archive
Network -- and populate it with 500-odd R packages, complete with R
package dependencies *and* dependencies on underlying Linux packages,
something they don't seem to have now.
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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

>I've got a Zaurus; it's running some kind of Linux
>and I'll probably put Gentoo on it when I get some spare cycles,
>provided Gentoo runs on the 6000. But I'm sure as hell not gonna try to
>run R or TeXmacs or Maxima on it!
>
>  
>
Dang -- I just remembered -- I *am* running Maxima on the Zaurus.
There's a package of it, and I've got it. :)
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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[James Northrup]

On Jun 6, 2005, at 4:55 PM, Aron Griffis wrote:

> This is kinda bloggish, because it's basically a transcription of an
> IRC monologue.  My apologies if it's hard to follow...  Nonetheless,
> I'm interested in how other developers feel on the topics I bring up
> below.


overlay capabilities are understated.

The use of USE flags might someday emerge overlays which open up the  
gateway to ricer heaven for one group while an entirely seperate  
group does in fact bolt down RHEL analogs in function and process.

Does the growth of metadata processing overhead exceed moore's law?


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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Luca Barbato]

Aron Griffis wrote:

>  But the truth is that Gentoo sees
> improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
> developers.  And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
> the users second.

Amen

lu

-- 

Luca Barbato

Gentoo/linux Developer		Gentoo/PPC Operational Leader
http://dev.gentoo.org/~lu_zero

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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Simon Stelling]

Hi,

Aron Griffis wrote:
> 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.

I don't think we're a good base for enterprise distributions with our
current tree either.

> 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.

As you stated before, many of the enterprise goals may also fit the
"hobbyist"'s ones. I'm running Gentoo on my Pentium-MMX for server
pourposes and I really would benefit from a slower moving tree, for example.

> I like the idea of Gentoo on alternative arches and in embedded
> environments.  Not because I want Sony to start using Gentoo on
> walkmans, but purely because the idea of running Linux on a PDA is
> cool.  I'd like Gentoo to be a place where neat things are developed.

Ack. Additionally, I like the idea of running Gentoo on a server. ;)

> Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
> users.  I think that is wrong.  Gentoo exists for the *developers*.

Depends on which side you are. When I was a user, I always had the
feeling that Gentoo exists for me, since it doesn't force me to
something I don't want, I can decide what my system looks like.
Now that I became a developer I see Gentoo as a great opportunity to
expand my knowlege and experience and to meet nice people, so it's
primarily for me.

> It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
> than switching to an actually sane approach.  The users are cool
> because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
> enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
> Sometimes they become developers.  But the truth is that Gentoo sees
> improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
> developers.  And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
> the users second.

I agree with this, but there are also situations where that isn't really
true. For example, I'm really interested in getting a true multilib
environment for AMD64, not because I want to run 32bit apps -- the few
ones I need already run smoothly -- but because it's an interesting and
ambitious project. For those who want to decide whether they want 32bit
or 64bit on a per-package-basis, multilib exists for them. To me,
multilib exists for me.

Although it's nearly everywhere the case, there doesn't have to be a
conflict of interests per-se. Gentoo has managed to not run into these
troubles, and that's why it's such a great distribution and community.

Greetings,

blubb

-- 
Simon Stelling
Gentoo/AMD64 Operational Co-Lead
blubb@gentoo.org
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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Aron Griffis]

Hello,

A user wrote to me personally:
> i thought several times if i wanted to reply at all, and after
> i wrote my mail if i really should send it out. I finally decided to
> send it off list since this might just end up in flames on the list.

I hope you don't mind I'm putting this back on the list.  If you are
concerned, then there are probably others in the same boat.  Hopefully
my response below will ease their concerns as well as yours.

> So here it is:
> 
> On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 07:55:50PM -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> > Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
> > users.  I think that is wrong.  Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
> > It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
> > than switching to an actually sane approach.  The users are cool
> > because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
> > enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
> > Sometimes they become developers.  But the truth is that Gentoo sees
> > improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
> > developers.  And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
> > the users second.
> 
> Sheesh, i really don't know what to say. I really don't have
> a problem with developers having fun by doing their work, but
> a linux _distribution_ is probably one things intended most directly
> at users.  I've been a user for a long time, and i always tried to
> give something back by filing bug reports or helping other users.
> I had the feeling my contribution was welcome and i never wanted to
> leech the guys doing development off. As for today, i can say pretty
> sure i've given quite an amount of time (and even some money) to
> Gentoo. I've had my share of fun with it, but seeing you dividing
> people involved in Gentoo into developers (good, have fun, their
> playground) and users (bad, but we'll have to live with them) really
> makes me speechless. Gentoo should be there for everyone
> disregarding if he's developer or not. If you don't like that, turn
> of the rsync mirrors and let only devs check out the tree. ;-)
> 
> Maybe i've just gotten your statement really wrong, but as far
> i understand it, i really have a bad feeling about it.

I entirely see your point, and I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong
impression.  I really appreciate your contributions, and I take pride
in helping to fix bugs that affect you and other users.  I think it's
great that Gentoo is a distribution that has such a welcoming
reputation.

My point was not that I don't care about users.  It was that the
developers working on Gentoo are ultimately here because it's a fun
project.  We decide our own priorities, and none of us is completely
self-sacrificial.  The areas that see real improvement are the areas
that are interesting to the developers.  This is a contrast from the
commercial distributions, which see improvement in the areas that
customers demand, or which management perceives as adding value.

Let me give you an example: epm.  I wrote epm, a work-alike to rpm.
A lot of people use it, and I've gotten a number of feature requests
in bugzilla.  In response, I often request a patch, then eventually
close the bug because no patch is forthcoming.

If I were working for paying customers, this would not be an option
(provided the feature requests were reasonable).  It would be my
*responsibility* to cater to the request.  In Gentoo, however,
developers are able to use their own discretion.  This is what I am
talking about.

    (Psst... I'll let you in on a little secret.  It doesn't have to
    be a good patch.  If a user gives me a really crappy patch, I'll
    usually work on an implementation just because I appreciate that
    they made an effort.  Heck, even a detailed and thoughtful
    description will usually suffice... ;-)

I hope that this clears up your confusion and puts us on the same team
again.

Best regards,
Aron
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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Haas Wernfried]

Hi,
On Tue, Jun 07, 2005 at 03:18:03PM -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> > Maybe i've just gotten your statement really wrong, but as far
> > i understand it, i really have a bad feeling about it.
> [..]
> I hope that this clears up your confusion and puts us on the same team
> again.

Yeah, that cleared up a lot of things, seems i didn't quite get your
point from your first mail. Things are clear now and i actually agree
to your point.

cheers,
	Wernfried

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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Maurice van der Pot]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2498 bytes --]

On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 07:55:50PM -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> We understand when real life gets in
> the way of bug-fixing, because all our developers are volunteers.

I never ever would have considered becoming a developer if this hadn't
been the case. I have my day job to worry about responsibilities and
planning.

> Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
> users.  I think that is wrong.  Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
> It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
> than switching to an actually sane approach.  The users are cool
> because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
> enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
> Sometimes they become developers.  But the truth is that Gentoo sees
> improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
> developers.  And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
> the users second.

Back when I was not yet a Gentoo developer but just a developer using 
Gentoo, whenever I ran into a problem with one tool or other I was 
quite motivated to try and come up with a fix, because:
- it was easy to include the fix in the system because of the ebuild 
  format as well as the PORTAGE_OVERLAY feature
- it was easy to submit the fix back to Gentoo in a ready to use format
- I didn't have to wait forever for the next official release containing 
  the fix I contributed

I was also very pleased with all the up-to-date tools/applications at my
disposal.

Now that I am a Gentoo developer I just want to help any development 
done on a Gentoo platform go as smoothly as possible by trying to keep 
bug response time and TTP (time-to-portage) of new versions down.

So in my mind, as someone else already mentioned, Gentoo is from 
developers for developers.

Regards,
Maurice.

P.S.: I must say I have not yet taken part in any Gentoo project that
      isn't purely maintenance. Maybe if I did my view would change...
      hmmm... /me looks for a list of current projects

P.P.S.: Oh, and I cannot send this mail without mentioning that since
        the beginning, when I just started using Gentoo, I've always 
        felt welcome... something I didn't expect to find on the
        internet.

-- 
Maurice van der Pot

Gentoo Linux Developer   griffon26@gentoo.org     http://www.gentoo.org
Creator of BiteMe!       griffon26@kfk4ever.com   http://www.kfk4ever.com


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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Mon, 2005-06-06 at 19:55 -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> This is kinda bloggish, because it's basically a transcription of an
> IRC monologue.  My apologies if it's hard to follow...  Nonetheless,
> I'm interested in how other developers feel on the topics I bring up
> below.

<snip>

> Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
> users.  I think that is wrong.  Gentoo exists for the *developers*.

This is the reason why *I* use/develop Gentoo.  I love it.  I could care
less if every single user we have drops us for Ubuntu.  I would still
develop Gentoo so long as it is still fun.

> It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
> than switching to an actually sane approach.  The users are cool
> because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
> enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
> Sometimes they become developers.  But the truth is that Gentoo sees
> improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
> developers.  And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
> the users second.

<starts slow clap>

Well, Aron, I honestly think that you've hit the nail on the head.  I
never have been able to grasp how people could think Gentoo could ever
become a serious player in the corporate world of suits and guys with
nice hair and fake white teeth.  Do we really want to go there?  Do we
really need to start sending out assclowns in suits to shake hands with
a bunch of clueless corporate types, then schmooze them over golf just
to get people to use Gentoo?  What ever happened to "because it's
friggin' cool"?

Don't get me wrong, I love our users.  That being said, I work on Gentoo
not because of them, but because of *myself* and *my* personal itches.
It just so happens that there's a group of guys out there that seem to
want similar things, so we've banded together as this loose group of
developers, determined to make the best damn Linux *for us* that we can.
If suits want to use it, great!  If not, well, they weren't paying the
bills anyway, so frag 'em!  *grin*

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Alin Nastac]

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Chris Gianelloni wrote:

>On Mon, 2005-06-06 at 19:55 -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
>  
>
>>Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
>>users.  I think that is wrong.  Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
>>    
>>
>
>This is the reason why *I* use/develop Gentoo.  I love it.  I could care
>less if every single user we have drops us for Ubuntu.  I would still
>develop Gentoo so long as it is still fun.
>
>  
>
You might reconsider this statement.

Suppose the entire user base will migrate to Ubuntu. The direct
consequence will be that the active dev corpus will grow thin, which
will lead to a dramatic decrease of distro's merits.
The dev and user communities are very close tighted together, but if
analyze who needs whom, you'll realize that dev community depends on
user community, not the other way around. No dev is irreplaceable, as
long as we have our cluefull user base in place.

Not every gentoo dev has a selfish motivation (at least not as selfish
as "having fun" or "being cool" motivations). For example, my reason to
becoming dev was to maintain unpopular (in dev world, of course)
packages and keep b.g.o as clean as I could. I ended up taking care of
100+ ebuilds, from which only 2 (ppp and squid) interests me as a person.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Wed, 2005-06-08 at 08:14 +0300, Alin Nastac wrote:
> Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> 
> >On Mon, 2005-06-06 at 19:55 -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> >  
> >
> >>Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
> >>users.  I think that is wrong.  Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >This is the reason why *I* use/develop Gentoo.  I love it.  I could care
> >less if every single user we have drops us for Ubuntu.  I would still
> >develop Gentoo so long as it is still fun.
> >
> >  
> >
> You might reconsider this statement.

Absolutely not.

I feel no reason to restate something simply because someone wants to
tear it apart and make it literal.

My point still stands.  I work on Gentoo because I *love* it.

I, too, work on things I personally don't like/use, but the reason that
I do it is because I love doing Gentoo development as a whole, not
because some suit somewhere *told* me to do it.  Like I said, I do
Gentoo development because it scratches my personal itch.  The fact that
thousands of other people can benefit from my work is an added bonus,
but it is not my reason for doing it.  I truly enjoy that our users not
only benefit from my work, but many times help with my work through
their contributions.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Nathan L. Adams]

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Hash: SHA1

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.

Using your list there would be two types of enterprise 'requirements':
process requirements and support requirements.

Improving and working towards the process requirements (sane commits,
better QA, etc.) doesn't mean that Gentoo would have to be any less fun.
And just because the Gentoo Foundation isn't in a position to provide
the support requirements (paid staff, support contracts, etc.) doesn't
mean that someone else couldn't provide those (or that Gentoo would make
it particularly hard to do so).

> Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
> users.  I think that is wrong.  Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
> It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
> than switching to an actually sane approach.  The users are cool
> because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
> enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
> Sometimes they become developers.  But the truth is that Gentoo sees
> improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
> developers.  And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
> the users second.

I would suggest that:

1) this is a pretty common belief in any software developement project,
commercial, community led, or otherwise

2) its a bit wrong headed for various reasons, IMHO (see below)

and

3) I personally find it amusing. ;)

What developers seem to forget, is that they too are end-users. For
instance, a particular developer's responsibilities may be Baselayout,
Epm, Gentoo/Alpha, Gentoo/IA64, Keychain, Mozilla, Mutt, Vim, and such.
That makes him/her an end-user for everything else thats installed on
their system. In other words, developers are just a subset of the user base.

Secondly, polishing things for developer's sake doesn't preclude
polishing things for user's sake, and visa-versa.

So if it were up to me, it would be users first , which would encompass
everyone, including the developers!

Nathan

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-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Aron Griffis]

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Nathan L. Adams wrote:	[Wed Jun 08 2005, 05:44:58PM EDT]
> Using your list there would be two types of enterprise 'requirements':
> process requirements and support requirements.

Thanks for pointing that out.  I'm not good at seeing distinctions
like that.

> What developers seem to forget, is that they too are end-users. For
> instance, a particular developer's responsibilities may be
> Baselayout, Epm, Gentoo/Alpha, Gentoo/IA64, Keychain, Mozilla, Mutt,
> Vim, and such.  That makes him/her an end-user for everything else
> thats installed on their system. In other words, developers are just
> a subset of the user base.

Nah, I don't use any of that stuff.

Waaaiiit a minute, that list looks awful familiar...  ;-)

Regards,
Aron

--
Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer


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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Chris White]

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I think the actual idea of what Gentoo does is much larger than people tend to realize it.  When Linux first came out, it was a hacker's choice and has now expanded into something much greater than Linus himself I think had ever anticipated.

Now, when this whole idea of "distributions" came to play, I think the general goals of Linux became slightly distorted.  In my opinion, the goal of Linux distributions is to get people to move to Linux.

Now, each distribution does this differently.  I think Gentoo mainly comes down to customization (note, NOT SPEED).  In a sense, this is why we are able to work so well with the embedded ports, because we can trim things down with that level of customization.  Knoppix does it through a ready made CD that users can see what linux looks like.  Fedora does it through a binary package system and automated hardware detection.  Debian does it through a binary packaging system as well as a somewhat well monitored release system.  All in all, everyone's got their own means to meet the same goal, getting people to move to Linux.

In the end I think that's why it's sometimes frustrating when I see x sucks and y sucks, just to say they suck.  Now, saying "I think you should choose x over y because z and z best meets your goals" is something far better.

So to sum it up, it's not really (for me maybe) about enterprise v. hobbyist, it's about moving ANYONE over to Linux, period.

Chris White

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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Athul Acharya]

> So to sum it up, it's not really (for me maybe) about enterprise v. hobbyist, it's about moving ANYONE over to Linux, period.

Actually, I rather like to think that Gentoo is one of the very few
distributions that cares more about meeting existing Linux
[power]users' needs rather than getting any new users to Linux.  I
mean lets face it, a distro that's largely DIY is hardly a good first
Linux, but an excellent second Linux and indeed thats the very reason
why I use Gentoo.  Let Redhat/Fedora/Mandrake do the initial user
grab, that's what they're good at.

Athul

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Zac Medico]

Athul Acharya wrote:
>>So to sum it up, it's not really (for me maybe) about enterprise v. hobbyist, it's about moving ANYONE over to Linux, period.
> 
> 
> Actually, I rather like to think that Gentoo is one of the very few
> distributions that cares more about meeting existing Linux
> [power]users' needs rather than getting any new users to Linux.  I
> mean lets face it, a distro that's largely DIY is hardly a good first
> Linux, but an excellent second Linux and indeed thats the very reason
> why I use Gentoo.  Let Redhat/Fedora/Mandrake do the initial user
> grab, that's what they're good at.
> 
> Athul
> 

OTOH, most computer users are unable to or uninterested in installing/configuring an OS.  All they need is someone to setup Gentoo for them and they can basically use it like they would an MS Windows "appliance".

Zac
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Sami Samhuri]

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* On Sun Jun-12-2005 at 01:33:02 PM -0700, Zac Medico said:
> Athul Acharya wrote:
[...]
> > I mean lets face it, a distro that's largely DIY is hardly a good
> > first Linux, but an excellent second Linux and indeed thats the very
> > reason why I use Gentoo.  Let Redhat/Fedora/Mandrake do the initial
> > user grab, that's what they're good at.
> 
> OTOH, most computer users are unable to or uninterested in
> installing/configuring an OS.  All they need is someone to setup
> Gentoo for them and they can basically use it like they would an MS
> Windows "appliance".

[Sorry, I've gone OT with this...]

I have a friend who is clueless when it comes to computers. I've set up
Gentoo for him -- after Mandrake, of all distros, was a pain to get
working with his pc -- and he's just stoked that he doesn't have to
worry about websites ruining his PC with ads and spyware. I have to
maintain it, but Gentoo makes that a breeze since I can log in from home
and update as necessary.

Gentoo draws a line between user and admin, while most OSs try to get
rid of this line. I think it's an important line to have for now. There
may not be as much danger in using a computer as driving a vehicle, but
it's still a machine which requires knowledge to safely operate well.
Most users simply aren't willing to learn what they should know since
they only see the computer as a means to an end. I don't think there's
anything wrong with that, but I sympathize with users who suffer through
needless OS problems just because they are in the habit of clicking OK
to the 100 message boxes they see pop up daily. Even if that message box
is really just a web page with a graphical link that runs some ActiveX
code...

I got sidetracked; my main point was that Gentoo is a great OS for even
the most careless user, as long as there is an admin to keep the system
running safely and smoothly.

Many thanks to the Gentoo devs, who have made this solid distro a
pleasure to run for everyone from server admins to PDA users.

(Note: I don't have Gentoo running on my PDA yet... but as soon as I can
boot the kernel that'll be my next goal)

-- 
Sami Samhuri

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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo? Where went Fido?

[Jim Northrup]

Aron Griffis wrote:

>This is kinda bloggish, because it's basically a transcription of an
>IRC monologue.  My apologies if it's hard to follow... 
>
This thread started out garnering cheers of elitest developer
sentiment.  There was even some mention of  "if they don't like it they
can run something else".

Then, that notion was reeled in, the developers are part of the user
community.

There is an open debate as to the meaning of support for 'enterprise',
'cluster', and 'hobbyist';

does gentoo mean any of these?

In this thread I posted a suggested hack which must surely have been
suggested before my reading/perusal of gentoo-dev, but also addresses a
tangible element, growth. 

-- Portage's power is too great in one place, it should be forged in the
hottest fires into the form of many rings for the leaders among gentoo,
with one ring to bind them.

Gentoo portage is growing, gentoo's communication network is growing in
complexity, and gentoo's organization is growing.

I saw it interesting that this is what describes the rise and fade of
FIDO net. 

First there were hobbyist, later came zealots, some with bad attitudes,
and eventually a full fledged organization devoted to handling the
politics, which grew large enough for division into zones.  There were
online businesses thriving from its value as well as the very
resourceful and isolated folks who had no other means of communicating
among the world at large.

One of fido's most interesting feature was its initial recognition that
its growth needed structure, and that structure was formed.   fido's own
politiks from around the world failed to vote for survival of the
IFNA(International FidoNet Association).  So fido dissolved its official
entity, and continuted to grow.  Fido became a concept which spun off
saplings and intertwined with the net, but in majority  of years it was
run by the folks with the biggest toys.

I mention fido because of one similarity which is uncannily familiar. 
"only" 26% of the potential voters recently cast a vote for the gentoo
metastructure.  we saw some puzzlement, bordering on grumbling, and some
amusement: "eeeyup that must be us!".

sooo. back to growth...

does the portage design foretell a single monolithic repo growing ad
infinitum?  this is the common watering hole which draws every single
participant to the same well.

 it's gotta work, 'emerge world' has gotta fly.   does tinderbox
indicate this is a predictable outcome with a stable margin of error, as
t approaches infinity?

if not, where goes gentoo?


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo? Where went Fido?

[Alec Warner]

Jim Northrup wrote:

>Aron Griffis wrote:
>
>  
>
>>This is kinda bloggish, because it's basically a transcription of an
>>IRC monologue.  My apologies if it's hard to follow... 
>>
>>    
>>
>This thread started out garnering cheers of elitest developer
>sentiment.  There was even some mention of  "if they don't like it they
>can run something else".
>
>Then, that notion was reeled in, the developers are part of the user
>community.
>
>There is an open debate as to the meaning of support for 'enterprise',
>'cluster', and 'hobbyist';
>
>does gentoo mean any of these?
>
>In this thread I posted a suggested hack which must surely have been
>suggested before my reading/perusal of gentoo-dev, but also addresses a
>tangible element, growth. 
>
>-- Portage's power is too great in one place, it should be forged in the
>hottest fires into the form of many rings for the leaders among gentoo,
>with one ring to bind them.
>
>Gentoo portage is growing, gentoo's communication network is growing in
>complexity, and gentoo's organization is growing.
>
>I saw it interesting that this is what describes the rise and fade of
>FIDO net. 
>
>First there were hobbyist, later came zealots, some with bad attitudes,
>and eventually a full fledged organization devoted to handling the
>politics, which grew large enough for division into zones.  There were
>online businesses thriving from its value as well as the very
>resourceful and isolated folks who had no other means of communicating
>among the world at large.
>
>One of fido's most interesting feature was its initial recognition that
>its growth needed structure, and that structure was formed.   fido's own
>politiks from around the world failed to vote for survival of the
>IFNA(International FidoNet Association).  So fido dissolved its official
>entity, and continuted to grow.  Fido became a concept which spun off
>saplings and intertwined with the net, but in majority  of years it was
>run by the folks with the biggest toys.
>
>I mention fido because of one similarity which is uncannily familiar. 
>"only" 26% of the potential voters recently cast a vote for the gentoo
>metastructure.  we saw some puzzlement, bordering on grumbling, and some
>amusement: "eeeyup that must be us!".
>
>sooo. back to growth...
>
>does the portage design foretell a single monolithic repo growing ad
>infinitum?  this is the common watering hole which draws every single
>participant to the same well.
>
> it's gotta work, 'emerge world' has gotta fly.   does tinderbox
>indicate this is a predictable outcome with a stable margin of error, as
>t approaches infinity?
>
>  
>
The portage team has tons of great ideas up their sleeves to make 
portage better, multiple repos being just one of the many.  I'll let 
them preach their stuff for now, lest I let slip ideas that never see 
the light of day ;)  Regardless changes are coming and they definately 
make me very excited.
-Alec Warner
Ajec

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-dev] Re: where goes Gentoo?

[Sven Köhler]

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> This is kinda bloggish, because it's basically a transcription of an
> IRC monologue.  My apologies if it's hard to follow...  Nonetheless,
> I'm interested in how other developers feel on the topics I bring up
> below.

Though i'm a developer, i'm not a gentoo-developer.

> 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.

QA is a problem. Bugs get fixed, but often they are only fixed in ~x86
versions, not in the stable x86 series. For example baselayout: there
are lot of ~x86 - miles ahead of that is marked x86. Maintainers think,
it's sufficient to only fix the most recent version. How do they
legitimate that?

And yes, Gentoo does not backport patches to older version. But is it
Gentoo's responsibility? If there's a bug in Postgresql 7.x and 8.x, and
the PostgreSQL people only fix it 8.x-series - well: Debian and Redhat
will backport the patches propably. They is a big reason why all the
distrubutions with precompiled packages do that:
- the updates has to be binary compatible with the old one

Gentoo doesn't suffer from that limitation. Gentoo offers ways to
migrate a system from openssl 0.9.6 to openssl 0.9.7 for example. Other
distributions doesn't offer that - although they could with better
package managers.

Also i've had too many SuSE- or Redhat-systems in the past that were
unsupported because RedHat and SuSE decide, to stop supplying updates
for older version of their distribution. So what am i supposed to do in
that case? Updating the whole distribution causing me troubles to
migrate everything to the new version (apache2 instead of apache 1.3, etc.)

With Gentoo, this is usually done as time goes by - though you have to
be very careful sometimes.

Administrating a Gentoo system takes time - much time, but ...

... writing my own packages for - let's say Redhat - takes more time
than writing an ebuild for Gentoo. If you have to maintain a system with
very special software, i would recomm Gentoo.

> I like the idea of Gentoo on alternative arches and in embedded
> environments.  Not because I want Sony to start using Gentoo on
> walkmans, but purely because the idea of running Linux on a PDA is
> cool.  I'd like Gentoo to be a place where neat things are developed.
> 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.

I like Gentoo, since everything is compiled - which offers much
flexibility, that precompiled packages don't offer.

Just some days ago, someone reinstalled a Server where we had PostGreSQL
8.0 running. He chose to install Debian - which offers PostGreSQL 7.4 -
so what did he do? He compiled PostGreSQL 8.0 himself, to be abled to
use our existing database. This will become hell the more packages you
have to compile on you own. Any configure-make-install-like package,
Perl-Module, etc... can be easy installed by using an ebuild.

In addition Gentoo is the only distribution i know, that supports
installing multiple Java-version etc...
A must-have for every real java-developer.

> Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
> users.  I think that is wrong.  Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
> It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
> than switching to an actually sane approach.  The users are cool
> because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
> enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
> Sometimes they become developers.  But the truth is that Gentoo sees
> improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
> developers.  And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
> the users second.

by using Gentoo, you learn much about Linux (the Kernel) and all the
nice little software that makes it a usable OS. Somewhere on the net,
there was page about Gentoo and Debian. The conslusion was, that Gentoo
is a great distribution to learn, and Debian is a stable work-horse.
Well, Debian is stable workhorse - as long as you don't have a very
special configuration. AFAIK, Debian doesn't drop support for their
distributions that fast - and they doen't release a new distribution
every few months (like SuSE does).

So i'd say: use Debian, if you have a relativly normal system to
maintain, use Gentoo if you have the time - and never ever use Redhat or
SuSE.


Thx
  Sven

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: where goes Gentoo?

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Wed, 2005-08-03 at 13:55 +0200, Sven Köhler 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.
> 
> QA is a problem. Bugs get fixed, but often they are only fixed in ~x86
> versions, not in the stable x86 series. For example baselayout: there
> are lot of ~x86 - miles ahead of that is marked x86. Maintainers think,
> it's sufficient to only fix the most recent version. How do they
> legitimate that?

This one is easy.  A stable package's ebuild should not change.  Period.
To "fix" the stable version, means that a new revision of the latest
stable version would need to be made, and that revision would need to be
tested, before it would go to stable.  The only real exception to this
is security bugs.  Also, in many cases, the bug in question requires
changes that are simply not feasible easily in the current stable
version, but quite easy in the latest version.  It really boils down to
this:  If you're having an issue with a package in Gentoo and it is
fixed in the latest ~arch version, then you should *use* the ~arch
version (remember, it doesn't mean "unstable" it means "testing") and
you should report back to the maintainers that this is working for you
so that they can get it moved into stable quicker.  We don't have the
staff or the time to backport every fix to every stable version.
Remember that in many cases the "latest stable" version varies between
architectures.

> And yes, Gentoo does not backport patches to older version. But is it
> Gentoo's responsibility? If there's a bug in Postgresql 7.x and 8.x, and
> the PostgreSQL people only fix it 8.x-series - well: Debian and Redhat
> will backport the patches propably. They is a big reason why all the
> distrubutions with precompiled packages do that:
> - the updates has to be binary compatible with the old one

I don't feel that this is our responsibility.  While we sometimes do
backport patches, we just don't have the manpower to make it policy.

> Gentoo doesn't suffer from that limitation. Gentoo offers ways to
> migrate a system from openssl 0.9.6 to openssl 0.9.7 for example. Other
> distributions doesn't offer that - although they could with better
> package managers.

Right.

> Administrating a Gentoo system takes time - much time, but ...

This is something that I think most people forget.  Running Gentoo makes
you a Linux Systems Administrator.  Sure, you're only being the
administrator for your machine, which might only have one user, but
you're the admin.  With some of the other distributions, *they* are the
admin, and you're just a user.  They make assumptions for you and limit
what you can and cannot do (without an enormous amount of work to bypass
their limits).  This is especially apparent in the many cases where
users expect Gentoo to do everything for them, when it doesn't.

> ... writing my own packages for - let's say Redhat - takes more time
> than writing an ebuild for Gentoo. If you have to maintain a system with
> very special software, i would recomm Gentoo.

I would agree with you.  Professionally, I work on Red Hat.  I have to
build custom RPMs on a daily basis, and I can say that the simple syntax
of ebuilds is a tremendous advantage.

> Just some days ago, someone reinstalled a Server where we had PostGreSQL
> 8.0 running. He chose to install Debian - which offers PostGreSQL 7.4 -
> so what did he do? He compiled PostGreSQL 8.0 himself, to be abled to
> use our existing database. This will become hell the more packages you
> have to compile on you own. Any configure-make-install-like package,
> Perl-Module, etc... can be easy installed by using an ebuild.

You aren't "supposed" to compile packages on your own on Debian.  You're
supposed to make your own DEB package and install that.  Otherwise, you
are working outside the package manager.  This is no different than on
Gentoo, just for many people, an ebuild is easier to write than creating
a DEB/RPM.

> In addition Gentoo is the only distribution i know, that supports
> installing multiple Java-version etc...
> A must-have for every real java-developer.

Agreed.  This is also very true for proprietary applications that rely
on java.

> So i'd say: use Debian, if you have a relativly normal system to
> maintain, use Gentoo if you have the time - and never ever use Redhat or
> SuSE.

Gentoo tends to be more flexible with a smaller amount of work.  This
makes it an excellent development platform, which is another reason why
many people say that Gentoo is "for the developers" first.  I also think
that it is a wonderful end-user platform.  My girlfriend runs Gentoo and
loves it.  I started her off on Red Hat, and she found lots of little
things that bugged her, so I showed her Gentoo, and she was hooked,
since it was so easy for her to change those little peculiarities, not
to mention she knows a lot more about what it going on behind the scenes
then with those little redhat-config-* apps.

I personally hope that Gentoo never changes.  I'd like to see quality
improve, but that doesn't require any major changes to Gentoo itself.
As far as enterprise support, I think a fork is honestly the best
answer.  Not a fork that becomes completely independent, but a fork
focused on providing the enterprise features, like a slower release
cycle and backporting fixes, and rolling what it can back into Gentoo.
I think this sort of symbiotic relationship is really the only way to
successfully move Gentoo into the enterprise.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

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[gentoo-dev] Re: where goes Gentoo?

[Duncan]

Chris Gianelloni posted <1123076347.31550.17.camel@cgianelloni.nuvox.net>,
excerpted below,  on Wed, 03 Aug 2005 09:39:07 -0400:

>> Administrating a Gentoo system takes time - much time, but ...
> 
> This is something that I think most people forget.  Running Gentoo makes
> you a Linux Systems Administrator.  Sure, you're only being the
> administrator for your machine, which might only have one user, but you're
> the admin.  With some of the other distributions, *they* are the admin,
> and you're just a user.  They make assumptions for you and limit what you
> can and cannot do (without an enormous amount of work to bypass their
> limits).  This is especially apparent in the many cases where users expect
> Gentoo to do everything for them, when it doesn't.

I've found myself emphasizing this same point a number of times.  There
are general system users that don't care /what/ they are on.  Those are
/just/ users.  However, by definition, /Gentoo/ user == sysadmin,
full-stop (period, for those USians not familiar with international
English, "full-stop" seems to me to convey the idea better).  You mention
the lack of limits, and Sven mentioned the time it takes, but my emphasis
tends to be on the responsibilities of the job.  A good sysadmin invests
the time and energy necessary to keep a healthy system, known vuln and
exploit free, but more than that, "clean" and simple, because (s)he
realizes the consequences of a failure to do so.  A good sysadmin knows a
fair amount about how their system works, in ordered to do that.  A good
sysadmin enjoys the job, or finds other work.

Gentoo makes being a good sysadmin easy.  However, by the same token,
because it assumes that admin is in place, it tends to make being an
ordinary "user" on an admin-less Gentoo system very difficult.  Those that
don't like being sysadmins, really should be looking at a distribution
that, as you said, really takes on much of the sysadmin duties as part of
the services provided by the distribution.   The best Gentoo user, then,
because being a Gentoo user by definition means being a sysadmin, truly
enjoys both the responsibilities and privileges of system administration. 
Again, if that's /not/ the case, one really should be reexamining their
choice of Gentoo, as it's really not the best fit distribution available
for those who'd really rather be doing something other than system
administration.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: where goes Gentoo?

[River Yan]

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I think it's value is that gentoo is for the developers.
: )

-- 
Riverfor [A chinese, a gentoo user, a programmer]

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[gentoo-dev] Re: where goes Gentoo?

[Sven Köhler]

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>>>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.
>>
>>QA is a problem. Bugs get fixed, but often they are only fixed in ~x86
>>versions, not in the stable x86 series. For example baselayout: there
>>are lot of ~x86 - miles ahead of that is marked x86. Maintainers think,
>>it's sufficient to only fix the most recent version. How do they
>>legitimate that?
> 
> This one is easy.  A stable package's ebuild should not change.  Period.

I agree with you there - though sometimes, stable ebuilds are changed -
even without changing the version-number.

> To "fix" the stable version, means that a new revision of the latest
> stable version would need to be made, and that revision would need to be
> tested, before it would go to stable.  The only real exception to this
> is security bugs.  Also, in many cases, the bug in question requires
> changes that are simply not feasible easily in the current stable
> version, but quite easy in the latest version.  It really boils down to
> this:  If you're having an issue with a package in Gentoo and it is
> fixed in the latest ~arch version, then you should *use* the ~arch
> version (remember, it doesn't mean "unstable" it means "testing") and
> you should report back to the maintainers that this is working for you
> so that they can get it moved into stable quicker.  We don't have the
> staff or the time to backport every fix to every stable version.
> Remember that in many cases the "latest stable" version varies between
> architectures.

I chose baselayout for a particular reason. There is baselayout 1.9,
1.11 and 1.12. (i think there was 1.10 too - some time ago - perhaps)

I i reported bugs - as usual - but the bug was fixed for 1.11 or 1.12 (i
can't remeber, it was about a year ago). The problem: the fix was not
backported to 1.9 (which was stable at that time). Since baselayout is a
very important part of Gentoo, i didn't think that it would be a good
idea, to upgrade my x86-version 1.9 to a ~x86-version 1.11. So i would
have expected that such changes would go into a new 1.9-version which
could have become stable after some testing - but they didn't. So
patches the scripts manually - well, and easy task, although i had to
pay attention so they my changes weren't overwritten.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Stuart Herbert]

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> There have been some really interesting points brought up recently
> about "where is Gentoo going?"  

It feels like this topic comes up every year :)

> I have been wondering that myself.
> Some people seem to think that Gentoo has the potential to be an
> enterprise player.  

Maybe, maybe not ... but I don't see why we couldn't do a little bit
more to make it easier for others to use us as a base.  

Isn't that what *we're* about - being a metadistribution?

> 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.

We have groups focusing in other directions.  If there's a group of
people who want to make Gentoo enterprise-friendly, why not let them do
so?

> I don't even understand why that goal appeals to people.  

An enterprise-friendly Gentoo appeals to me personally because I find
those problems interesting.  They're problems that I enjoy learning
about, and trying to solve.  I have enterprise experience both technical
and managerial, and I find the whole domain fascinating.

> Let other distros go there!

If you mean let other distros go to the place with suits and support
contracts and backporting, I agree.  I want to see an
enterprise-friendly Gentoo, but I want to see the corporate risks and
costs taken on by third-parties outside the project.

> I want Gentoo to run in people's homes, in student
> dorm rooms, etc.  

Well, yes, to a point, but (without intending to offend anyone) you can
learn a lot more by learning to setup a web server cluster than you can
running a web server in your bedroom.  F.ex, in the bedroom, /home/httpd
seems as good a place as any to put your website.  It's only when you
learn how to build larger systems that you can understand the merits of
moving to /var/www/<FQDN> or better still the /srv tree.

Part of my motivation is educational.  

I believe that Gentoo can play an important educational role in people's
lives.  I want a Gentoo distribution that can grow with a user's
experience and needs, not one that the ultimately have to move away from
because someone decided for those of us who are interested that we're
not going there.

And I think Gentoo can play an equally important educational role in
developers' lives too.

> Places where people want a fun distribution that
> they can tailor and work on easily.

Amen.  I never want us to lose any of those points.

> I'd like Gentoo to be a place where neat things are developed.

Aren't we really a place where neat things are packaged up?

> Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
> users.  I think that is wrong.  Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
> It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
> than switching to an actually sane approach.  The users are cool
> because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
> enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
> Sometimes they become developers.  But the truth is that Gentoo sees
> improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
> developers.  And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
> the users second.

I agree that it's our developers who drive Gentoo, and not really our
users - simply because it's the developers who volunteer their time to
work on the things that interest them.

But I'm personally not comfortable with "it's our playground" being the
accepted approach to *everything*.  I've been away from Gentoo for
awhile, and on coming back, I've been shocked and disgusted with what
seems to pass as acceptable treatment of users these days.

I think Gentoo needs a little more "it's about the users" than we have
right now just to keep us from collectively going off the rails.

Best regards,
Stu
--
Stuart Herbert                                         stuart@gentoo.org
Gentoo Developer                                  http://www.gentoo.org/
                                              http://stu.gnqs.org/diary/

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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Aron Griffis]

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Stuart Herbert wrote:	[Thu Jun 09 2005, 06:32:04PM EDT]
> > I'd like Gentoo to be a place where neat things are developed.
> 
> Aren't we really a place where neat things are packaged up?

Hopefully both!  :-)

Regarding the rest of your email, I don't disagree.  I think that if
you read my follow-ups in the thread, you'll find that I addressed or
responded to a number of the same ideas.  I'll be the first to admit
that my initial thoughts were not a complete picture of the world,
just a limited perspective and some food for thought...

Regards,
Aron

--
Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer


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Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?

[Thierry Carrez]

Stuart Herbert wrote:
>>There have been some really interesting points brought up recently
>>about "where is Gentoo going?"  
> 
> It feels like this topic comes up every year :)

I'd say it should come up a little more often :)

>>I have been wondering that myself.
>>Some people seem to think that Gentoo has the potential to be an
>>enterprise player.  
> 
> Maybe, maybe not ... but I don't see why we couldn't do a little bit
> more to make it easier for others to use us as a base.  
> 
> Isn't that what *we're* about - being a metadistribution?

If we follow the "metadistribution" trail we should have a set of
high-level tools that really help people manage their own binary
packages building and deployment. We (all?) know that the underlying
technology is already in Gentoo, but there are still no authoritative
tool(s) to :

1- help rolling your own distribution based on Gentoo
- tool to maintain frozen Portage trees
- tool to roll out a software update pack including config files
- ...

2- help centralizing packages deployment on several workstations
- help test software update packs on gold systems
- push packages to multiple systems
- do accountability on what's installed on systems
- ...

I'm not talking about releasing an "Enterprise-oriented" flavor of
Gentoo, I'm just talking about enabling people to do so and the minimal
deployment tools needed in a 5+ machine network.

The size of the Portage tree gives us a definitive advantage : you can
have 100% Portage-packages systems, so what's-in-this-box accountability
is not the nightmare it can be with other systems that heavily rely on
third-party RPMs. We should exploit that advantage.

-- 
Thierry Carrez (Koon)
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