[gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Mike Frysinger]

This is your monthly friendly reminder !  Same bat time (typically the
2nd Thursday once a month), same bat channel (#gentoo-council @
irc.freenode.net) !

If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
Gentoo dev list to see.

Keep in mind that every resubmission to the council for review must
first be sent to the gentoo-dev mailing list 7 days (minimum) before
being submitted as an agenda item which itself occurs 7 days before the
meeting.  Simply put, the gentoo-dev mailing list must be notified at
least 14 days before the meeting itself.

For more info on the Gentoo Council, feel free to browse our homepage:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Henrik Brix Andersen]

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On Sun, Jan 01, 2006 at 05:30:01AM +0000, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
> vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
> Gentoo dev list to see.

I would like GLEP 45 [1] - GLEP date format - to be discussed and
voted on.

Regards and a Happy New Year,
Brix

[1]: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/glep/glep-0045.html
-- 
Henrik Brix Andersen <brix@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Metadistribution | Mobile computing herd

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Kalin KOZHUHAROV]

Henrik Brix Andersen wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 01, 2006 at 05:30:01AM +0000, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> 
>>If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
>>vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
>>Gentoo dev list to see.
> 
> 
> I would like GLEP 45 [1] - GLEP date format - to be discussed and
> voted on.
> 

> [1]: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/glep/glep-0045.html
I am not a full time dev, so I cannot vote, but I am for this change.
For the last several years I have been fighting with all possible software and OSes and even
appliancies to implement/display/store ISO-8601 dates.

I realized how good it is since I came to Japan which uses ore or less the same date format.

2006-01-02T13:10+0900

Kalin.
-- 
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|[ ______________________ ]|

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Lance Albertson]

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Mike Frysinger wrote:

> If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
> vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
> Gentoo dev list to see.

Gentoo has been missing some kind of direction/goal for some time now.
Looking back at the last two years, what are the major
changes/accomplishments that we have done? Granted, I know there has
been great strides in improvement in some things, but I really wonder
about any ground breaking enhancements.

Since the council is the closest representation to a leader we have, I'd
like to ask if they can come up with some kind of global goals for 2006
and beyond. You don't need to come up with goals by this meeting if you
haven't had time, but at least by the February meeting. Each group can
have their own goals, but we lack any overall binding goals or
direction. We've brought on numerous devs in the past year, and I have
yet to see a huge improvement in QA or anything else. Numbers aren't
everything. If anything, it makes it harder to maintain good QA.

There's a lot of people out there frustrated with Gentoo because of the
lack of QA and direction. Package foo changes a bunch of config
locations, package bar gets upgraded and causes a bunch of QA
nightmares. At least from an admin point of view, Gentoo has gotten
harder to maintain. Granted, thats a question for Gentoo itself. Who
exactly are we catering to? Power users? New users? We can't satisfy
everyone out there and need to draw a line of how much we'll devote to
keeping the new user from destroying their system, etc.

I'm not sure of the exact solution. Its just been pretty frustrating
lately hearing folks complain about this and that when I know that we
could do so much better. Maybe we're just happy with being where we're
at. I know I'm not. There's a niche that Gentoo fits really well and I
think we should focus on perfecting that niche instead of trying to be
better than distroA or distroB.

Ok, thats all my ranting for today. Hopefully I didn't start off the
next world flamewar :-)

Cheers-

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

---
GPG Public Key:  <http://www.ramereth.net/lance.asc>
Key fingerprint: 0423 92F3 544A 1282 5AB1  4D07 416F A15D 27F4 B742

ramereth/irc.freenode.net

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Lares Moreau]

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On Mon, 2006-01-02 at 12:14 -0600, Lance Albertson wrote:
> Mike Frysinger wrote:
> Gentoo has been missing some kind of direction/goal for some time now.
> Looking back at the last two years, what are the major
> changes/accomplishments that we have done? Granted, I know there has
> been great strides in improvement in some things, but I really wonder
> about any ground breaking enhancements.
> 
> Since the council is the closest representation to a leader we have, I'd
> like to ask if they can come up with some kind of global goals for 2006
> and beyond. You don't need to come up with goals by this meeting if you
> haven't had time, but at least by the February meeting. Each group can
> have their own goals, but we lack any overall binding goals or
> direction. We've brought on numerous devs in the past year, and I have
> yet to see a huge improvement in QA or anything else. Numbers aren't
> everything. If anything, it makes it harder to maintain good QA.
> 
> There's a lot of people out there frustrated with Gentoo because of the
> lack of QA and direction. Package foo changes a bunch of config
> locations, package bar gets upgraded and causes a bunch of QA
> nightmares. At least from an admin point of view, Gentoo has gotten
> harder to maintain. Granted, thats a question for Gentoo itself. Who
> exactly are we catering to? Power users? New users? We can't satisfy
> everyone out there and need to draw a line of how much we'll devote to
> keeping the new user from destroying their system, etc.
> 
> I'm not sure of the exact solution. Its just been pretty frustrating
> lately hearing folks complain about this and that when I know that we
> could do so much better. Maybe we're just happy with being where we're
> at. I know I'm not. There's a niche that Gentoo fits really well and I
> think we should focus on perfecting that niche instead of trying to be
> better than distroA or distroB.
> 
> Ok, thats all my ranting for today. Hopefully I didn't start off the
> next world flamewar :-)
> 
> Cheers-

I have been involved with many Volunteer organisations over the last
couple years. Not all computer related.  Something Gentoo is notably
missing is a Mission Statement. IMO a Mission statement acts as a beacon
on the horizon, allowing us to have a gauge against which to measure our
progress. In the process of discussing and generating this statement the
issues mentioned above, can be ironed out and/or flamed about.

-Lares

-- 
Lares Moreau <lares.moreau@gmail.com>  | LRU: 400755 http://counter.li.org
lares/irc.freenode.net                 |
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Lance Albertson]

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Lares Moreau wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-01-02 at 12:14 -0600, Lance Albertson wrote:

> I have been involved with many Volunteer organisations over the last
> couple years. Not all computer related.  Something Gentoo is notably
> missing is a Mission Statement. IMO a Mission statement acts as a beacon
> on the horizon, allowing us to have a gauge against which to measure our
> progress. In the process of discussing and generating this statement the
> issues mentioned above, can be ironed out and/or flamed about.

A mission statement only goes so far. The underlying leadership has to
make sure that statement is upheld and kept alive. Too many folks have a
mission statement, but no one ever remembers what it is or abides by it.

I guess I'm almost hinting at that Gentoo needs a single entity that's
sole purpose is to drive/research the direction and goals for Gentoo.
It'd be almost ceo-like, but the council is still top dawg. Right now, I
view our group as a bunch of chiefs with no real single leader saying
"lets strive to do this". The main problem is, too many people fear
about such a person could turn into a dictator, so I'm not sure if this
could ever happen. This person would be in constant contact of all the
groups and try to muck together what everyone is doing. They could
suggest things to help minimize user impact, maybe try to join two
projects if they are both working on a similar goal, thus minimizing the
workload. Stuff like that essentially. We need a good visionary. If such
a position were created, I also think that person's sole focus should be
that focus within Gentoo. (i.e. they aren't a major contributor for a
subproject in Gentoo). This position would take too much time for them
to keep those other duties.

Dunno, maybe I'm the loner here thinking this...

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

---
GPG Public Key:  <http://www.ramereth.net/lance.asc>
Key fingerprint: 0423 92F3 544A 1282 5AB1  4D07 416F A15D 27F4 B742

ramereth/irc.freenode.net

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Patrick Lauer]

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On Mon, 2006-01-02 at 12:50 -0600, Lance Albertson wrote:
> A mission statement only goes so far. The underlying leadership has to
> make sure that statement is upheld and kept alive. Too many folks have a
> mission statement, but no one ever remembers what it is or abides by it.
I guess there isn't one driving force behind Gentoo - we have many 
differing opinions on things like QA, handling of bugs, ...

It's just that usually Gentoo gets the least in your way when you're
trying 
to do something :-)

> I guess I'm almost hinting at that Gentoo needs a single entity that's
> sole purpose is to drive/research the direction and goals for Gentoo.
There was this Robbins guy ... remember him? ;-)
> It'd be almost ceo-like, but the council is still top dawg. Right now, I
> view our group as a bunch of chiefs with no real single leader saying
> "lets strive to do this". The main problem is, too many people fear
> about such a person could turn into a dictator, so I'm not sure if this
> could ever happen. 
I wonder if any single person would be accepted?
After all there is noone capable of forcing anyone to do anything as far
as I can tell - worst case you fork Gentoo (again) and don't resolve
the issues.
> This person would be in constant contact of all the
> groups and try to muck together what everyone is doing. They could
> suggest things to help minimize user impact, maybe try to join two
> projects if they are both working on a similar goal, thus minimizing the
> workload. Stuff like that essentially.
Communication ... should happen anyway, but it seems to get more and
more 
difficult. Another layer of bureaucracy won't help that ...
>  We need a good visionary. If such
> a position were created, I also think that person's sole focus should be
> that focus within Gentoo. (i.e. they aren't a major contributor for a
> subproject in Gentoo). This position would take too much time for them
> to keep those other duties.
... and you'd burn out a capable person within half a year I think
> Dunno, maybe I'm the loner here thinking this...
Maybe a bit idealistic, but I mostly agree :-)

Patrick
-- 
Stand still, and let the rest of the universe move

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Lares Moreau]

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On Mon, 2006-01-02 at 20:03 +0100, Patrick Lauer wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-01-02 at 12:50 -0600, Lance Albertson wrote:
> > A mission statement only goes so far. The underlying leadership has to
> > make sure that statement is upheld and kept alive. Too many folks have a
> > mission statement, but no one ever remembers what it is or abides by it.
> I guess there isn't one driving force behind Gentoo - we have many 
> differing opinions on things like QA, handling of bugs, ...
> 
> It's just that usually Gentoo gets the least in your way when you're
> trying 
> to do something :-)
> 
> > I guess I'm almost hinting at that Gentoo needs a single entity that's
> > sole purpose is to drive/research the direction and goals for Gentoo.
> There was this Robbins guy ... remember him? ;-)
> > It'd be almost ceo-like, but the council is still top dawg. Right now, I
> > view our group as a bunch of chiefs with no real single leader saying
> > "lets strive to do this". The main problem is, too many people fear
> > about such a person could turn into a dictator, so I'm not sure if this
> > could ever happen. 
> I wonder if any single person would be accepted?
> After all there is noone capable of forcing anyone to do anything as far
> as I can tell - worst case you fork Gentoo (again) and don't resolve
> the issues.
> > This person would be in constant contact of all the
> > groups and try to muck together what everyone is doing. They could
> > suggest things to help minimize user impact, maybe try to join two
> > projects if they are both working on a similar goal, thus minimizing the
> > workload. Stuff like that essentially.
> Communication ... should happen anyway, but it seems to get more and
> more 
> difficult. Another layer of bureaucracy won't help that ...
> >  We need a good visionary. If such
> > a position were created, I also think that person's sole focus should be
> > that focus within Gentoo. (i.e. they aren't a major contributor for a
> > subproject in Gentoo). This position would take too much time for them
> > to keep those other duties.
> ... and you'd burn out a capable person within half a year I think
> > Dunno, maybe I'm the loner here thinking this...
> Maybe a bit idealistic, but I mostly agree :-)

Upon doing some reading about what _exactly_ Gentoo council does, it
seems to me that Gentoo Council is an operations board.  I think what
Patrick and Lance are getting at (correct me if I'm wrong) is that we
need to have some form of Governance board. A board that doesn't worry
about implementation details; a board that gives a long term vision to
our project.

I am a big believer is having a common goal to unite all people who work
with an organization.  I'm sorry If I am repeating myself, but I feel
this is an issue that is vital to the continued success of Gentoo.

-Lares
-- 
Lares Moreau <lares.moreau@gmail.com>  | LRU: 400755 http://counter.li.org
lares/irc.freenode.net                 |
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Lance Albertson]

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Patrick Lauer wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-01-02 at 12:50 -0600, Lance Albertson wrote:
> 
>>A mission statement only goes so far. The underlying leadership has to
>>make sure that statement is upheld and kept alive. Too many folks have a
>>mission statement, but no one ever remembers what it is or abides by it.
> 
> I guess there isn't one driving force behind Gentoo - we have many 
> differing opinions on things like QA, handling of bugs, ...
> 
> It's just that usually Gentoo gets the least in your way when you're
> trying 
> to do something :-)

See, thats the exact problem we have. Its too opinionated with no ground
rules. Nothing ever gets done, and flame wars just go on. Sure we have
the council, but minor things shouldn't have to wait on the council to
meet each month. Such a person would only have one vote on the council
IF it were ever decided they even had a vote on there. (Perhaps a tie
breaker type of thing, though I think we already have an odd number of
council members)

>>I guess I'm almost hinting at that Gentoo needs a single entity that's
>>sole purpose is to drive/research the direction and goals for Gentoo.
> 
> There was this Robbins guy ... remember him? ;-)

Of course, but that was then, this is now. We can't play by the same
rules as when Daniel was around.

>>It'd be almost ceo-like, but the council is still top dawg. Right now, I
>>view our group as a bunch of chiefs with no real single leader saying
>>"lets strive to do this". The main problem is, too many people fear
>>about such a person could turn into a dictator, so I'm not sure if this
>>could ever happen. 
> 
> I wonder if any single person would be accepted?
> After all there is noone capable of forcing anyone to do anything as far
> as I can tell - worst case you fork Gentoo (again) and don't resolve
> the issues.

That's what I fear might be the only solution because of the
indecisiveness we are as a group.

>>This person would be in constant contact of all the
>>groups and try to muck together what everyone is doing. They could
>>suggest things to help minimize user impact, maybe try to join two
>>projects if they are both working on a similar goal, thus minimizing the
>>workload. Stuff like that essentially.
> 
> Communication ... should happen anyway, but it seems to get more and
> more 
> difficult. Another layer of bureaucracy won't help that ...

Its not another layer of bureaucracy. Its the bonding part of the
communication that will help. We can't assume that everyone will
communicate everything they need to. This person would ensure they got
in contact with every group regularly. They won't govern what those
groups do, just summarize and report back to the council who has the
authority.

>> We need a good visionary. If such
>>a position were created, I also think that person's sole focus should be
>>that focus within Gentoo. (i.e. they aren't a major contributor for a
>>subproject in Gentoo). This position would take too much time for them
>>to keep those other duties.
> 
> ... and you'd burn out a capable person within half a year I think

Possibly, I mean look at what happened to Daniel. Of course, there were
other reasons going on, but I do realize such a position would be
demanding. Why else do CEOs get paid the big bucks in the corporations?
:) (Since they essentially do the same type of work).

>>Dunno, maybe I'm the loner here thinking this...
> 
> Maybe a bit idealistic, but I mostly agree :-)

Yeah, maybe so :-)

Reflecting on this more, I see that most of the council members are a
very important part of the active Gentoo development model (toolchain,
etc). They need to keep those roles active as much as possible, then
help on the council. I guess I view this person as a sole chairmen of
the board that just focuses on council type duties and roles. I think
the current council has lots of great people, but they're all busy with
their subprojects and can't take on a role like this. We really need a
single voice to bind everything together, but doesn't have total control
like Daniel did.

Hopefully I'm making sense...

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

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Lance Albertson]

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Lares Moreau wrote:

> Upon doing some reading about what _exactly_ Gentoo council does, it
> seems to me that Gentoo Council is an operations board.  I think what
> Patrick and Lance are getting at (correct me if I'm wrong) is that we
> need to have some form of Governance board. A board that doesn't worry
> about implementation details; a board that gives a long term vision to
> our project.

No, we don't need yet another board for this. Just a single voice.
Operating everything by a committee will get us no where but more
bureaucracy and headaches. See my previous email about where this person
would fit in.

> I am a big believer is having a common goal to unite all people who work
> with an organization.  I'm sorry If I am repeating myself, but I feel
> this is an issue that is vital to the continued success of Gentoo.

Yup, I agree there. I think Gentoo is dying a slow death right now
because of the lack of vision in the past few years. Thus why I brought
this topic up because I'd like to see us move forward with progress.

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

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Grobian]

On 02-01-2006 20:03:54 +0100, Patrick Lauer wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-01-02 at 12:50 -0600, Lance Albertson wrote:
> > I guess I'm almost hinting at that Gentoo needs a single entity that's
> > sole purpose is to drive/research the direction and goals for Gentoo.

Or call it proper hierarchy.  Management.  Probably all evil words, in
this context, but they for sure apply.

> > It'd be almost ceo-like, but the council is still top dawg. Right now, I
> > view our group as a bunch of chiefs with no real single leader saying
> > "lets strive to do this". The main problem is, too many people fear
> > about such a person could turn into a dictator, so I'm not sure if this
> > could ever happen. 
> I wonder if any single person would be accepted?

If it isn't one person, then you would need to find two persons or even
more that are completely aligned and have the same visions.  Since
leaders usually are charismatic and controversial where necessary to
achieve their goals, it is hard to find two that don't get conflicts,
stalling any vision to become a mission.

> After all there is noone capable of forcing anyone to do anything as far
> as I can tell - worst case you fork Gentoo (again) and don't resolve
> the issues.

...or only resolve the ones that you care about.  Your first sentence
forms the basis of the problem, IMHO.

> > This person would be in constant contact of all the
> > groups and try to muck together what everyone is doing. They could
> > suggest things to help minimize user impact, maybe try to join two
> > projects if they are both working on a similar goal, thus minimizing the
> > workload. Stuff like that essentially.
> Communication ... should happen anyway, but it seems to get more and
> more difficult. Another layer of bureaucracy won't help that ...

Call it "bureaucrazy", or whatever you like.  I think it has nothing
to do with bureaucracy at all.  It's just a matter of having
communication on a high level, in order to get an overall view of
Gentoo.  IIRC this is one of the tasks of the council, to align teams
somehow, for example.

> >  We need a good visionary. If such
> > a position were created, I also think that person's sole focus should be
> > that focus within Gentoo. (i.e. they aren't a major contributor for a
> > subproject in Gentoo). This position would take too much time for them
> > to keep those other duties.
> ... and you'd burn out a capable person within half a year I think

Depends on the person.  Lance is just putting a lot of Mintzberg and
probably (work) experience on the table to apply it to Gentoo.
But ok, fine, if that's the case, gives a nice refresh rate :) (j/k)

> > Dunno, maybe I'm the loner here thinking this...

Well, you're not alone for sure ;)  However, the amount of measures to
take, why and what are a bit of an open question to me.  I do, however,
share your concerns of a missing 'Mission Statement'.  It is a commonly
known problem and primary point of concern (ie. Heene).


-- 
Fabian Groffen
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Patrick Lauer]

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On Mon, 2006-01-02 at 20:49 +0100, Grobian wrote:
> On 02-01-2006 20:03:54 +0100, Patrick Lauer wrote:
> > On Mon, 2006-01-02 at 12:50 -0600, Lance Albertson wrote:
> > > I guess I'm almost hinting at that Gentoo needs a single entity that's
> > > sole purpose is to drive/research the direction and goals for Gentoo.
> Or call it proper hierarchy.  Management.  Probably all evil words, in
> this context, but they for sure apply.
Well ... it's like every dev has a special title - Gentoo/MIPS gcc senior integration specialist and stuff like that ;-)
Doesn't resolve the communication / hierarchy issues, but makes us all
feel warm and fuzzy inside.
(I know I'm a bit evil here, but ...) what I think is needed is more
communication. Not more "discussing", trolling, yelling etc. etc. but
general info. Quite some time ago I tried to get some info from all
subprojects what they had been doing - security and docs replied, then a
bit later I think Alt and Toolchain gave a short "we're not dead yet".
If all projectss could agree to deliver a "mission statement", progress
report or whatever you wish to call it every $TIMEUNIT (3 months? 6
months?) it'd be really nice ... (and would make the GWN really exciting
*nudge nudge wink wink*)

> If it isn't one person, then you would need to find two persons or even
> more that are completely aligned and have the same visions.  Since
> leaders usually are charismatic and controversial where necessary to
> achieve their goals, it is hard to find two that don't get conflicts,
> stalling any vision to become a mission.
To extrapolate from that ... council etc. are incapable of doing "real work"? ;-)
Or in other words, a person is smart, people are dumb

> > After all there is noone capable of forcing anyone to do anything as far
> > as I can tell - worst case you fork Gentoo (again) and don't resolve
> > the issues.
> 
> ...or only resolve the ones that you care about.  Your first sentence
> forms the basis of the problem, IMHO.
There are ways to get people to do what you want, but they are quite limited.
For example for QA reasons you can make people fix their ebuilds, but
that's about the limit of influence you can have right now.

> Call it "bureaucrazy", or whatever you like.  I think it has nothing
> to do with bureaucracy at all.  It's just a matter of having
> communication on a high level, in order to get an overall view of
> Gentoo.  IIRC this is one of the tasks of the council, to align teams
> somehow, for example.
I don't know if the council is the right group to get project progress
reports collected, but the point stands - communication is good :-) 

> > ... and you'd burn out a capable person within half a year I think
> 
> Depends on the person.  Lance is just putting a lot of Mintzberg and
> probably (work) experience on the table to apply it to Gentoo.
> But ok, fine, if that's the case, gives a nice refresh rate :) (j/k)
<troll> I say we put ciaran first to that job ... </troll>

> > > Dunno, maybe I'm the loner here thinking this...
> 
> Well, you're not alone for sure ;)  However, the amount of measures to
> take, why and what are a bit of an open question to me.  I do, however,
> share your concerns of a missing 'Mission Statement'.  It is a commonly
> known problem and primary point of concern (ie. Heene).
I guess we should decide on a problem before solving it :-)
Is the problem the lack of a mission statement? I don't see the need for
that, we all have our own definitions what a Gentoo is and why it's
cool. Trying to get that defined will be really tricky (and I predict a
smallish flamewar)

We already have a mission statement - to produce the best software
distribution, ever ;-)
Wether it should be Linux only, GNU-based or a metadistribution is a
rather touchy subject, so please try to keep the discussion
civilized ...

wkr,
Patrick
-- 
Stand still, and let the rest of the universe move

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Grobian]

On 02-01-2006 21:12:03 +0100, Patrick Lauer wrote:
> > If it isn't one person, then you would need to find two persons or even
> > more that are completely aligned and have the same visions.  Since
> > leaders usually are charismatic and controversial where necessary to
> > achieve their goals, it is hard to find two that don't get conflicts,
> > stalling any vision to become a mission.
> To extrapolate from that ... council etc. are incapable of doing "real
> work"? ;-) Or in other words, a person is smart, people are dumb

Your words here.  I don't follow your logic, and I don't see where your
statement comes from.  I want to make explicit that -- in any case -- I
didn't mean my words like that.

> > > > Dunno, maybe I'm the loner here thinking this...
> > > Maybe a bit idealistic, but I mostly agree :-)
> > 
> > Well, you're not alone for sure ;)  However, the amount of measures to
> > take, why and what are a bit of an open question to me.  I do, however,
> > share your concerns of a missing 'Mission Statement'.  It is a commonly
> > known problem and primary point of concern (ie. Heene).
> I guess we should decide on a problem before solving it :-)
> Is the problem the lack of a mission statement? I don't see the need for
> that, we all have our own definitions what a Gentoo is and why it's
> cool. Trying to get that defined will be really tricky (and I predict a
> smallish flamewar)

I reinserted your first response.  It looks like you changed your mind
inbetween to me, and that you probably don't agree 'mostly' anymore?

> We already have a mission statement - to produce the best software
> distribution, ever ;-)
> Wether it should be Linux only, GNU-based or a metadistribution is a
> rather touchy subject, so please try to keep the discussion
> civilized ...

Lance mentioned something about what he sees is a niche where Gentoo
does quite well.  "Produce the best software distribution, ever" sounds
a bit vague to me.  That's why I agree with Lance for now.  Maybe after
a little research, trial and error period it turns out to be better to
keep the target vague.


-- 
Fabian Groffen
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Lance Albertson]

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Grobian wrote:
> On 02-01-2006 21:12:03 +0100, Patrick Lauer wrote:

>>We already have a mission statement - to produce the best software
>>distribution, ever ;-)
>>Wether it should be Linux only, GNU-based or a metadistribution is a
>>rather touchy subject, so please try to keep the discussion
>>civilized ...
> 
> 
> Lance mentioned something about what he sees is a niche where Gentoo
> does quite well.  "Produce the best software distribution, ever" sounds
> a bit vague to me.  That's why I agree with Lance for now.  Maybe after
> a little research, trial and error period it turns out to be better to
> keep the target vague.

Yeah, if we're content to being a hobbyist distro, then that mission
statement will work. But, the technology behind Gentoo has far broader
benefits for various things. Especially with the recent work of the alt
related subprojects, embedded, etc ... its changing. Like for me, I
would love to use the portage technology to build packages for solaris
machines I maintain at work. We have a build system currently, but its
nothing like portage. Gentoo is more than just Linux now and we should
have goals that fit that. When I say "we have a niche we're perfect at",
I'm mainly referring to the source-based nature of our OS. There isn't
another distro out there that does it as well as us and we should
improve on that fact. Let the other distros get better at being
binary-based.

Anyways, thats my thoughts.

-- 
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] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Chandler Carruth]

Lance Albertson wrote:
> Yeah, maybe so :-)
>
> Reflecting on this more, I see that most of the council members are a
> very important part of the active Gentoo development model (toolchain,
> etc). They need to keep those roles active as much as possible, then
> help on the council. I guess I view this person as a sole chairmen of
> the board that just focuses on council type duties and roles. I think
> the current council has lots of great people, but they're all busy with
> their subprojects and can't take on a role like this. We really need a
> single voice to bind everything together, but doesn't have total control
> like Daniel did.
>
> Hopefully I'm making sense..
As perhaps a good way of thinking of this, the common term used in 
commitees (as I have interacted with them in various beaurocratic 
situations) is a "non-voting chair". This person would organize, 
schedule, direct, communicate, and facilitate the work of the committee, 
to allow the voting members to more effectively handle the issues 
arising for the committee. The voting members need not take on much of a 
workload to vote and serve on the committee because most (if not all) of 
the time consuming tasks and aspects of the committee are handled by a 
non-voting chair. Simultaneously, the singular nature of the chair is 
less of a concern because they are non-voting. The lack of a vote checks 
their singular power, while still allowing them to very efficiently 
organize and direct information in and out of the committee. *shrug* I'm 
not entirely sure that I agree or disagree with this solution, but 
wanted to give an example of what (I think?) Lance is getting at here.

That said, I do think _some_ direction needs to be given to the project, 
although how best to achieve it is quite fuzzy to me. Lance's 
proposition does have potential, but I worry over the competence and 
dedication of the individual to fill that role.

-Chandler Carruth, yet another gentoo user.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Andrew Muraco]

Chandler Carruth wrote:

> Lance Albertson wrote:
>
>> Yeah, maybe so :-)
>>
>> Reflecting on this more, I see that most of the council members are a
>> very important part of the active Gentoo development model (toolchain,
>> etc). They need to keep those roles active as much as possible, then
>> help on the council. I guess I view this person as a sole chairmen of
>> the board that just focuses on council type duties and roles. I think
>> the current council has lots of great people, but they're all busy with
>> their subprojects and can't take on a role like this. We really need a
>> single voice to bind everything together, but doesn't have total control
>> like Daniel did.
>>
>> Hopefully I'm making sense..
>
> As perhaps a good way of thinking of this, the common term used in 
> commitees (as I have interacted with them in various beaurocratic 
> situations) is a "non-voting chair". This person would organize, 
> schedule, direct, communicate, and facilitate the work of the 
> committee, to allow the voting members to more effectively handle the 
> issues arising for the committee. The voting members need not take on 
> much of a workload to vote and serve on the committee because most (if 
> not all) of the time consuming tasks and aspects of the committee are 
> handled by a non-voting chair. Simultaneously, the singular nature of 
> the chair is less of a concern because they are non-voting. The lack 
> of a vote checks their singular power, while still allowing them to 
> very efficiently organize and direct information in and out of the 
> committee. *shrug* I'm not entirely sure that I agree or disagree with 
> this solution, but wanted to give an example of what (I think?) Lance 
> is getting at here.

I'm not sure if this would apply, but in the US Government System, the 
supreme courts are basicly a committee (or council, which ever word you 
like better), the "leader" (Chief Justice) of the supreme court doesn't 
have any extra power, but has extra duties, and has senority over the 
other Justices. Perhaps a situation like that would the Gento Council, 
or maybe it should stay in the Justice System.

wkr,
Andrew
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Patrick Lauer]

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On Mon, 2006-01-02 at 15:03 -0600, Lance Albertson wrote:
> > Lance mentioned something about what he sees is a niche where Gentoo
> > does quite well.  "Produce the best software distribution, ever" sounds
> > a bit vague to me.  That's why I agree with Lance for now.  Maybe after
> > a little research, trial and error period it turns out to be better to
> > keep the target vague.
> 
> Yeah, if we're content to being a hobbyist distro, then that mission
> statement will work. But, the technology behind Gentoo has far broader
> benefits for various things. Especially with the recent work of the alt
> related subprojects, embedded, etc ... its changing. Like for me, I
> would love to use the portage technology to build packages for solaris
> machines I maintain at work.
While I do agree with you here there's still the problem that each and
every one of us has his (or her or its) own idea what "we" should do.

Some want the ricer flags and tweakability.
Others want to see one package manager to rule them all.
Then there's the "because we can" group.
The enterprise-oriented persons.

I wonder ... can we have one precise mission statement without
alienating a big part of our user base? 


>  We have a build system currently, but its
> nothing like portage. Gentoo is more than just Linux now and we should
> have goals that fit that.
I guess some people would like to disagree there. (Not me, I like that
whole "metadistribution thingy, it's the way to world domination)
>  When I say "we have a niche we're perfect at",
> I'm mainly referring to the source-based nature of our OS. There isn't
> another distro out there that does it as well as us and we should
> improve on that fact. Let the other distros get better at being
> binary-based.
Why would one prevent the other from happening? 
Maybe someone finds an elegant way for "Binary Gentoo" ... should we
stop that person because it conflicts with a weird mission statement?

-- 
Stand still, and let the rest of the universe move

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Greg KH]

On Mon, Jan 02, 2006 at 10:52:43PM +0100, Patrick Lauer wrote:
> 
> I wonder ... can we have one precise mission statement without
> alienating a big part of our user base? 

To copy another opensource group's mission statement,
	"Total World Domination"

Hey, it's been working for them so far, and I don't think they would
mind it if it was copied by others :)

thanks,

greg k-h
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Donnie Berkholz]

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Hash: SHA1

Lance Albertson wrote:
| Mike Frysinger wrote:
|
|
|>If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
|>vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
|>Gentoo dev list to see.
|
|
| Gentoo has been missing some kind of direction/goal for some time now.
| Looking back at the last two years, what are the major
| changes/accomplishments that we have done? Granted, I know there has
| been great strides in improvement in some things, but I really wonder
| about any ground breaking enhancements.
|
| Since the council is the closest representation to a leader we have, I'd
| like to ask if they can come up with some kind of global goals for 2006
| and beyond. You don't need to come up with goals by this meeting if you
| haven't had time, but at least by the February meeting. Each group can
| have their own goals, but we lack any overall binding goals or
| direction. We've brought on numerous devs in the past year, and I have
| yet to see a huge improvement in QA or anything else. Numbers aren't
| everything. If anything, it makes it harder to maintain good QA.

Why don't we start at a smaller level and see where we get? In other
words, we can build the big picture goals from where our projects and
subprojects are going.

Now that projects can be freely created, I see no reason that any herd
or any developer in Gentoo cannot be part of a project. Each project
could come up with its goals and directions, and we could see how (or
whether) they fit together.

Thanks,
Donnie
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Thierry Carrez]

Lance Albertson wrote:

> Gentoo has been missing some kind of direction/goal for some time now.
> Looking back at the last two years, what are the major
> changes/accomplishments that we have done? Granted, I know there has
> been great strides in improvement in some things, but I really wonder
> about any ground breaking enhancements.
> 
> Since the council is the closest representation to a leader we have, I'd
> like to ask if they can come up with some kind of global goals for 2006
> and beyond. [...]

Yes, the Gentoo Council can / should set some global goals for 2006, and
should probably discuss about this in the January meeting so that they
can be set in stone by the February meeting.

That said, we weren't elected as "managers" but as "global visioners",
so we don't really have any power to force people to do some work in an
area in which they don't want to. We can say "it would be good to reach
that" then follow progress using the regular meetings, but we can't make
it happen just by saying it must be done.

One example of such point is the portage signing thing, which the
council already set as a global goal and for which is follows progress
at every meeting, but we can see that doesn't mean a lot of work is
done. We still need a group to coordinate such goals, much like what the
security team does with security bugs (call the right people at the
right time rather than doing any committing work). That's what I called
the "MetaBug taskforce" in various metastructure proposals. If we don't
have people that want to form (and work in) such a group then we can set
as many global goals as we want and follow as much progress as we
want... it won't get us very far.

In brief, we need the team to coordinate such goals, even more than we
need global goals.

-- 
Thierry Carrez (Koon)
Gentoo Linux Security & Gentoo Council Member
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-dev] Re: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Duncan]

Patrick Lauer posted <1136238763.23404.171.camel@localhost>, excerpted
below,  on Mon, 02 Jan 2006 22:52:43 +0100:

Lance Albertson wrote:
>>  When I say "we have a niche we're perfect at",
>> I'm mainly referring to the source-based nature of our OS. There isn't
>> another distro out there that does it as well as us and we should
>> improve on that fact. Let the other distros get better at being
>> binary-based.

> Why would one prevent the other from happening? 
> Maybe someone finds an elegant way for "Binary Gentoo" ... should we
> stop that person because it conflicts with a weird mission statement?

I believe that's where the differing opinions begin to come in.  Here's
mine.  I don't believe that Gentoo, /as/ /Gentoo/, will ever be very
successful as an Enterprise distribution, and I don't think that it can
every be very successful as a binary distribution, either.  The things
that make us, that is Gentoo, unique, and the best in our area, by
definition are the /same/ sort of things that make a relatively poor
enterprise or binary distribution.

I'm all for a /separate/ enterprise effort based on Gentoo, and likewise,
all for a /separate/ binary targeted distribution based on Gentoo. 
However, the goals are sufficiently different that I don't believe either
one will work well /as/ Gentoo, or, in the event that it /does/ work well,
it will change Gentoo into that image, and Gentoo won't continue to fit
the current niche, a relatively fresh "source based" distribution for
those who aren't afraid to take responsibility for managing their systems,
as well as it does.

What I expect will happen if we try, is that we won't be the sort of best
of genre solution in those other areas, that makes Gentoo what it is today
within its own "admin's source based distribution".  At the same time,
splitting our efforts in that direction will end up weakening the Gentoo
we all know and love.

Rather, I'd prefer an independent distribution, Gentoo based is great,
some devs doing both is great, to do the enterprise stuff.  Same with the
binary.  There are of course already several smaller Gentoo based
mini-distributions, and I think that's the way to go.  Doing it that way
will prevent fuzzing up our image and our drive, allowing us to continue
to be the best at what we are good at, while others get to focus on the
stuff they can be good at.  Some devs will naturally be attracted to one
or the other -- not a problem.  Others will find they can spend time on
both (or all three) projects and drive up personal productivity, much as
Greg KH seems to thrive on all his projects, managing to be more
productive on all of them than many devoting all their time to the
project.  Again, that shouldn't be a problem, for those that can
effectively handle it, and for those that can't, well, it's a volunteer
situation, and as such, a natural solution tends to appear.

-- 
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: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 04:08 -0700, Duncan wrote:
> Patrick Lauer posted <1136238763.23404.171.camel@localhost>, excerpted
> below,  on Mon, 02 Jan 2006 22:52:43 +0100:
> 
> Lance Albertson wrote:
> >>  When I say "we have a niche we're perfect at",
> >> I'm mainly referring to the source-based nature of our OS. There isn't
> >> another distro out there that does it as well as us and we should
> >> improve on that fact. Let the other distros get better at being
> >> binary-based.
> 
> > Why would one prevent the other from happening? 
> > Maybe someone finds an elegant way for "Binary Gentoo" ... should we
> > stop that person because it conflicts with a weird mission statement?
> 
> I believe that's where the differing opinions begin to come in.  Here's
> mine.  I don't believe that Gentoo, /as/ /Gentoo/, will ever be very
> successful as an Enterprise distribution, and I don't think that it can
> every be very successful as a binary distribution, either.  The things
> that make us, that is Gentoo, unique, and the best in our area, by
> definition are the /same/ sort of things that make a relatively poor
> enterprise or binary distribution.

I completely agree with you here.  What Gentoo does is make a
meta-distribution, that one can utilize to build their own distribution
easily.  This isn't limited to Linux, either, thanks to Gentoo/Alt.

I think that any single direction that we shoot towards will cause
friction internally and will reduce productivity, along with leaving
certain projects out.  We're simply moving in too many directions to
have a single direction.

The biggest concern that I see here is a lack of communications, really.
We don't need direction.  We just need some way for people to know who's
going where.  I think Koon's "MetaBug" project would be an excellent
idea to assist in this.  We need a body with some teeth to get things
done in a timely manner.  We also need enforcement of some sort to
ensure projects are active and reporting information on their status.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Grant Goodyear]

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Henrik Brix Andersen wrote: [Sun Jan 01 2006, 05:35:26PM CST]
> On Sun, Jan 01, 2006 at 05:30:01AM +0000, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> > If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
> > vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
> > Gentoo dev list to see.
> 
> I would like GLEP 45 [1] - GLEP date format - to be discussed and
> voted on.

I doubt that GLEP 45 really needs a vote by the full council.  The lead
GLEP editor's decision should probably suffice for something this
trivial.  (Recall that the GLEP process is that the GLEP author let's
the GLEP editors know when a GLEP is ready to go up for approval, and
that it is generally the editors who work out precisely who needs to
approve the thing.)

I'll happily approve GLEP 45, with the exception that I don't know how
to implement part of it.  The GLEP Last-Modified string is autogenerated
from CVS, so it's not in the yyyy-mm-dd format that the GLEP requires.
Help?

Thanks,
g2boojum
-- 
Grant Goodyear	
Gentoo Developer
g2boojum@gentoo.org
http://www.gentoo.org/~g2boojum
GPG Fingerprint: D706 9802 1663 DEF5 81B0  9573 A6DC 7152 E0F6 5B76

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Grant Goodyear]

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Lance Albertson wrote: [Mon Jan 02 2006, 12:14:05PM CST]
> Gentoo has been missing some kind of direction/goal for some time now.
> Looking back at the last two years, what are the major
> changes/accomplishments that we have done? Granted, I know there has
> been great strides in improvement in some things, but I really wonder
> about any ground breaking enhancements.

Assuming that we can ever get GLEP 42 out the door, I think that will
constitute ground-breaking.  There has actually been a considerable
amount of progress on the Portage front, as well, although not all of
the new stuff is out yet.  Similarly, the slowly-rolling website
redesign is truly on the verge of being released.  We also have had
excellent modular X11 support for some time now, and it appears that
gcc-4.x support is doing quite well, too.  

Oh, and we've also retired an amazing number of no-longer-active devs,
so I don't know if it's actually true that we've added numbers.

> I'm not sure of the exact solution. Its just been pretty frustrating
> lately hearing folks complain about this and that when I know that we
> could do so much better. Maybe we're just happy with being where we're
> at. I know I'm not. There's a niche that Gentoo fits really well and I
> think we should focus on perfecting that niche instead of trying to be
> better than distroA or distroB.

Okay, so you're not happy with Gentoo's direction, but what are you
actively doing to change it?  (Other than starting this discussion, that
is?)  I don't mean that question as an attack, although it may well
appear that way.  It's also not directed at you, since others have 
made similar comments.  Instead, I'm suggesting that the reason that Gentoo
lacks a leadership position right now is that, at least where Gentoo is
concerned, effective leadership generally means an individual who is
putting in a _lot_ of hard work writing code and implementing changes.
That's one of the reasons that drobbins could be effective--he had the
time to extend portage, work on the website to fit his vision, and make
sweeping changes to the tree.  In that respect, I would argue that
Gentoo's most leader-like person right now is vapier, because he's a dev who
actively enacts wide-ranging changes.  Similarly, flameeyes, ciaranm,
and the portage team all deserve credit for having a significant impact
on where Gentoo has been going recently.  (Yes, I also realize that
people may not agree with some of what those devs have been
doing, but they have been out there getting their hands dirty, and it
makes a huge difference.)  

*Shrug*  My feeling is that Gentoo is not advancing all that quickly
right now, but that it's being maintained fairly well.  More
importantly, we still ensure that people _can_ make sweeping changes, if
they want to put in the work to do so.  I'm actually fairly confident
about Gentoo having a decent future.

-g2boojum-
-- 
Grant Goodyear	
Gentoo Developer
g2boojum@gentoo.org
http://www.gentoo.org/~g2boojum
GPG Fingerprint: D706 9802 1663 DEF5 81B0  9573 A6DC 7152 E0F6 5B76

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Simon Stelling]

Hi,

Lares Moreau wrote:
> need to have some form of Governance board. A board that doesn't worry
> about implementation details; a board that gives a long term vision to
> our project.

This sounds very scary to me. Perhaps that's because I'm not sure how 
detailed such a plan would be. If our goal is...

* "Make Gentoo the best distro 0n 73h p14n37"
   I can only say "what a lame marketing."

* "Make Gentoo the most customizable distro"
   I'm pretty sure some users with silly ideas will ask us to implement
   the feature/whatever. If we reject their idea, they come up with
   something like "But Gentoo is all about customisation!!!111".
   (Actually, I was already confronted with such a situation in a
   real-world meeting, it was pretty annoying.)
   Also, this might not be where everybody wants to go.

* "Let's implement $foo with $bar."
   Oh well, then we already have implementational details, which don't
   belong into a 'general goal'.

> I am a big believer is having a common goal to unite all people who work
> with an organization.  I'm sorry If I am repeating myself, but I feel
> this is an issue that is vital to the continued success of Gentoo.

If you replace 'organization' with 'project', I agree. There should be 
something like a common goal. However, I don't think Gentoo has to have 
one single goal. I'm pretty sure everybody of us has his own ideas where 
Gentoo should go and his own motivations which make him contribute. So 
why make generalisations? Just as an example:

Taken from the project listing page:

  The developer relations Project is an effort to recruit, train, and 
manage developers for Gentoo's development structure.

Now let's have a look at the three possible goals I stated above.

* "Make the best distro 0n 73h p14n37"
   Obviously devrel's goal somehow supports this, as you can assume that
   people spend more time on Gentoo-related work if there is a good
   climate, but do you really need a global goal for such a trivial
   thing? I don't think so.

* "Make Gentoo the most customizable distro"
   I can't see how devrel contributes anything to this goal. Oh, wait a
   sec, it doesn't contribute anything to Gentoo's goal? Let's drop it!
   </sarcasm>

* "Let's implement $foo with $bar."
   See above.

My point is, either you have to generalize each project's goal to a real 
triviality or you have to define a goal which doesn't match some 
project's goals. Conclusion: Let it be.

Regards,

-- 
Simon Stelling
Gentoo/AMD64 Operational Co-Lead
blubb@gentoo.org
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Sven Vermeulen]

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On Mon, Jan 02, 2006 at 12:14:05PM -0600, Lance Albertson wrote:
> Since the council is the closest representation to a leader we have, I'd
> like to ask if they can come up with some kind of global goals for 2006
> and beyond. 

I couldn't agree more, yet I'm afraid Gentoo has grown too large to do this
efficiently. Many ideas are easily marked as WONTFIX (due to resource
restrictions), CANTFIX (since it would mean a rewrite of Portage) or
WORKSFORME (when /your/ way works). And when a proposal makes it to the
mailinglist, only a small number of developers is interested in
participating. The majority doesn't care, and a vocal minority tries
everything in its power to prevent the project from succeeding.

What could Gentoo bring out as a global goal for 2006 which isn't part of a
single Gentoo project? Things like "Have an automated installer" (Installer
Project), "Document enterprise usage of Gentoo" (Documentation Team), "Port
Gentoo to ReactOS" (Gentoo/ALT), "Introduce signing of all Portage Tree
files" (Portage Team), ... are all great accomplishments if they succeed
(note: some of the above are hypothetical, in case you are wondering :) but
only span one project.

In my opinion, all projects should bring out global goals for themselves.
The Gentoo Global Goals for 2006 would then be an overview of those goals.
Yet the Gentoo Council doesn't bring any input here.

There are some interesting ideas on the Gentoo Forums that aren't situated
in any of the current projects, such as "Top-100 Feature Requests" [1], "Gentoo
Binary profile" [2], "Gentoo Knowledge Base" [3], "USE-flag triggered
software installation" [4], etc.

Wkr,
      Sven Vermeulen

[1] A site where the community can vote (one vote per bugzilla account?) on
    feature requests (or bugs), could be integrated in bugzilla if that's
    possible, but can also be a separate site where the feature request is
    formed dynamically (wiki?) or by discussion (forum).
[2] A profile that freezes CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS/CHOST/USE/... and uses a build
    server to build binary packages for that binary-package profile. The
    project should not focus on the end result itself but rather on how all
    this is accomplished using Gentoo and how companies and organisations
    can easily implement a similar environment
[3] Something like Microsoft's KB where common issues are well explained,
    resolutions documented and where a good search mechanism is in place to
    help find the right solution. Would require moderation so that solutions
    are correct. Could provide dual solutions: one community-written (open
    wiki), one developers accepted (moderated wiki).
[4] Setting a USE flag triggers the installation of some recommended
    software so that novices don't need to search for the right software.
    Fex: USE="kde cdr" -> kde-meta + k3b 

-- 
  Gentoo Foundation Trustee          |  http://foundation.gentoo.org
  Gentoo Council Member  

  The Gentoo Project   <<< http://www.gentoo.org >>>

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Donnie Berkholz]

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Simon Stelling wrote:
| My point is, either you have to generalize each project's goal to a real
| triviality or you have to define a goal which doesn't match some
| project's goals. Conclusion: Let it be.

Not necessarily. I just wrote on my blog [1] about this, and got a
constructive comment [2], which I'll talk a little about.

Here's one example of a global goal: Reduce the learning curve of Gentoo
and increase its usability.

This goal would involve a number of projects:

- - Releng would work to ensure that installing Gentoo is as easy as 
possible.
- - The documentation team would continue working to make its docs easy to
follow and find.
- - The installer project (as part of releng) will continue making Gentoo
faster/easier to install.
- - The portage team could conduct usability studies of portage (perhaps
with the help of openusability.org?).
- - Similar goes for some GUI / curses interfaces to configuration files
and portage itself, such as porthole, ufed, etc.
- - Others

Thanks,
Donnie

1. http://www.livejournal.com/users/spyderous/68149.html
2.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/spyderous/68149.html?thread=117301#t117301
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Sven Vermeulen]

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On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 06:21:39PM +0100, Sven Vermeulen wrote:
> There are some interesting ideas on the Gentoo Forums that aren't situated
> in any of the current projects, such as "Top-100 Feature Requests" [1], "Gentoo
> Binary profile" [2], "Gentoo Knowledge Base" [3], "USE-flag triggered
> software installation" [4], etc.
[...]

(Sorry, pressed "send" too soon).

However, having such proposals is great, but they need to be worked out by
one or more users and formed into a GLEP. Such GLEPs can then be discussed
on the mailinglist and sent for "approval" to the Gentoo Council.

Now this is where the Gentoo Council comes in: its role is to /advise/
Gentoo's development, not regulate. If GLEPs come occasionally, there is
barely any reason not to positively advise to implement GLEP. After all, if
there are issues with it they would either be broken down during the
mailinglist discussions, or they are broken down when the teams themselves
refuse to implement them.

When several GLEPs require (immediate) attention, the Council will try to
advise where the priorities should be placed (which GLEP goes first).

When several GLEPs interfere with each other, the Council will try to advise
which GLEP is most beneficial for Gentoo and its community.

Some people hope to see the Council as a regulating body. Forget it,
developers are the brains that lead Gentoo's evolution, voluntary work is the 
blood that keeps Gentoo rolling, the community is the heart for which
we all work. As such, there is no single regulating body.

And as much as I hope to see a select few bring bright ideas, coördinate
projects and make everyone's work easier, I have seen too many attempts that
kill bright ideas to know far from everyone would be happy with such a
situation.

Wkr,
      Sven Vermeulen

-- 
  Gentoo Foundation Trustee          |  http://foundation.gentoo.org
  Gentoo Council Member  

  The Gentoo Project   <<< http://www.gentoo.org >>>

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Tue, 03 Jan 2006 09:28:24 -0800 Donnie Berkholz
<spyderous@gentoo.org> wrote:
| Here's one example of a global goal: Reduce the learning curve of
| Gentoo and increase its usability.

That goal is silly and oxymoronic. Reduced learning curve decreases
usability.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (King of all Londinium)
Mail            : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web             : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Donnie Berkholz]

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Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
| On Tue, 03 Jan 2006 09:28:24 -0800 Donnie Berkholz
| <spyderous@gentoo.org> wrote:
| | Here's one example of a global goal: Reduce the learning curve of
| | Gentoo and increase its usability.
|
| That goal is silly and oxymoronic. Reduced learning curve decreases
| usability.

I disagree. I see that something _could_ become less usable as people
remove more and more features to make it easier to learn, but that's
certainly not a requirement.

As the saying goes, make the common tasks easy and the uncommon ones
possible. Making common tasks easier doesn't necessarily decrease
usability of the whole.

Thanks,
Donnie
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Lares Moreau]

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On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 18:19 +0100, Simon Stelling wrote:
> My point is, either you have to generalize each project's goal to a real 
> triviality or you have to define a goal which doesn't match some 
> project's goals. Conclusion: Let it be.

Maybe we are looking at this problem the wrong way.  Instead of trying
to have Gentoo be the distro, perhaps Gentoo can be thought of as a
provider of infrastructure and tools to allow 'sub-distros' to flourish.

THere are many projects which now are trying to pull Gentoo in many
different directions, such as bianary distro vs. enterprise distro.  If
we remove "Gentoo as distro" from out thinking and replace it with
"Gentoo as provider of tools and infrastucture", These two seemingly
contradictory goals can each flourish in their own way.

Haveing sub-distros, lack of a better term, is not new to Gentoo.
Hardened has their own LiveCD, profile and tools.  I feel this can be
nurtured. Allowing the Binanary group to move in one direction, and
'tweakers' in an other, and die-hard security people in yet another,
while not severely conficting with each other.


Maybe what we need is a clearer definition of what each herd does?  I am
considering writing a GLEP about this, having each herd answer three
questions periodicly (say 6mths).
 - What do we want to do?
 - How are we going to get there?
 - How to we measure success?
and /maybe/ add a section about current devs and AT/HTs.
Just a thought.

-- 
Lares Moreau <lares.moreau@gmail.com>  | LRU: 400755 http://counter.li.org
lares/irc.freenode.net                 |
Gentoo x86 Arch Tester                 |               ::0 Alberta, Canada
Public Key: 0D46BB6E @ subkeys.pgp.net |          Encrypted Mail Preferred
Key fingerprint = 0CA3 E40D F897 7709 3628  C5D4 7D94 483E 0D46 BB6E

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 09:28 -0800, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Simon Stelling wrote:
> | My point is, either you have to generalize each project's goal to a real
> | triviality or you have to define a goal which doesn't match some
> | project's goals. Conclusion: Let it be.
> 
> Not necessarily. I just wrote on my blog [1] about this, and got a
> constructive comment [2], which I'll talk a little about.
> 
> Here's one example of a global goal: Reduce the learning curve of Gentoo
> and increase its usability.

The problem here is that the two don't necessarily correlate.  They
*can* but many times they don't.

A common thing I have heard about the comparison between Windows and
Linux is this:

In Windows, it is easy to learn how to do the simple things, and
extremely hard to do the complex things, if possible, at all.

In Linux, it is hard to learn how to do the simple things, yet it gets
easier to use the system as one uses it more and more.

As a prime example, I strongly believe that making Gentoo "as easy as
possible" can only come about by reducing its usability.  If there is a
large number of choices, no matter how well documented, it isn't easy
for a beginner.  The only way I can see to make installing Gentoo "as
easy as possible" is by removing choice and functionality to the point
of it being a few clicks of the mouse and everything being done for you.
The problem is that anything that is stated generally can be taken to an
extreme.  If you say "as easy as possible" then I think unattended
identical installations for all Gentoo machines.  After all, what's
easier than that?

I would *never* agree to this, nor force any member of any project that
I am a part of to participate in such an endeavour, so you now already
have at least one person opposed to it.  Would action be taken against
me?  Who knows.  The point is that we do not get paid.  You cannot force
volunteers to do things they do not want to do.

There are workable solutions to this problem, but none that I see as
very effective for us.

For one, we could leave things alone.  This works fairly well for a
project even as large as ours.  Sure, there are people out there that
think that this doesn't work, but the truth is that they might be
looking to have Gentoo become something that it is not.

Second, we could "fire" most of the developers and move to a paid
developer pool.  This would ensure that developers would do what they're
told.

Third, we could come up with some form of enforcement (CEO, council,
whatever) capable of "firing" developers that stray too far from the
proposed Gentoo goals.  This will quickly bring back the "cabal" screams
and will probably result in the very quick diminishing of the Gentoo
developer pool.

I think part of the problem is that many people are forgetting exactly
what Gentoo really is.  Gentoo is not a distribution of Linux.  Gentoo
is not anything more than a loosely bound group of developers all doing
their own thing in a collaborative and collective manner.  You cannot
use corporate thinking to manage such a beast.  We don't have mission
statements.  We don't have road maps.  We don't have quarterly earnings
and market projections.  We simply exist.  The only way we can give
Gentoo a direction is by restricting what we, as developers, are allowed
to do.  The only real restrictions we have right now are "be civil" and
"don't break stuff".  Anything beyond that is inhibiting one of our
greatest strengths, our individuality and individual ideas.

Do you want to be a part of a project that doesn't allow you to
implement some cool new feature because it might make Gentoo slightly
harder to use for some people and that's against the mission statement
so not allowed?

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Simon Stelling]

Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> Not necessarily. I just wrote on my blog [1] about this, and got a
> constructive comment [2], which I'll talk a little about.
> 
> Here's one example of a global goal: Reduce the learning curve of Gentoo
> and increase its usability.

Sounds like a good idea, but as Ciaran already said, 'low learning 
curve' and 'great usability' are just opposite things. Also, it is 
*very* vague.

> This goal would involve a number of projects:
> 
> - - Releng would work to ensure that installing Gentoo is as easy as 
> possible.

This is very vague too. Easy for who? Easy for a user who is too lazy to 
read docs and doesn't have any experience or easy for a sysadmin with 
plenty of experience trying to setting up Gentoo on a cluster with >100 
boxes? I think this makes it pretty clear that there is not simply one 
implementation referring to one idea, but I'm afraid that these 'goals' 
could be misused to force a common direction instead of having multiple 
efforts addressing the same idea in different ways.

> - - The portage team could conduct usability studies of portage (perhaps
> with the help of openusability.org?).

'to conduct usability studies' sounds great, but it's IMHO not much 
more. I don't need studies to point out annoying things from a user 
perspective, I'm a user myself. Sure, feedback is good, but we already 
get feedback, in the form of bug reports.

> - - Others

How do e.g. arches fit into this scheme? Yeah, sure, they make Gentoo 
easier to use because they keyword stuff. Great. I'm really glad 
somebody tells me why I am doing the stuff I've been doing for more than 
a year.

So, the 'easy to learn/use' goal might be a goal that quite some 
projects already are trying to attain, but it really isn't *THE* goal 
for Gentoo, is it?

-- 
Simon Stelling
Gentoo/AMD64 Operational Co-Lead
blubb@gentoo.org
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Donnie Berkholz]

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Chris Gianelloni wrote:
| As a prime example, I strongly believe that making Gentoo "as easy as
| possible" can only come about by reducing its usability.  If there is a
| large number of choices, no matter how well documented, it isn't easy
| for a beginner.  The only way I can see to make installing Gentoo "as
| easy as possible" is by removing choice and functionality to the point
| of it being a few clicks of the mouse and everything being done for you.
| The problem is that anything that is stated generally can be taken to an
| extreme.  If you say "as easy as possible" then I think unattended
| identical installations for all Gentoo machines.  After all, what's
| easier than that?
|
| I would *never* agree to this, nor force any member of any project that
| I am a part of to participate in such an endeavour, so you now already
| have at least one person opposed to it.  Would action be taken against
| me?  Who knows.  The point is that we do not get paid.  You cannot force
| volunteers to do things they do not want to do.

This isn't about forcing you to do things a certain way. It's about if
somebody asked you to make Gentoo easier to learn and use, what would
you do as part of releng? How would you do it?

Perhaps you would have to make some sort of choice of usability over
easy to learn, or vice versa. That's your decision. The council would
just suggest what it would like to see happen to Gentoo.

You're focusing too much on forcing people to do this or that. Why
wouldn't you want to make Gentoo easier to use, or learn how to use?
That's my question.

Thanks,
Donnie
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Donnie Berkholz]

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Simon Stelling wrote:
| Donnie Berkholz wrote:
|> - - Releng would work to ensure that installing Gentoo is as easy as
|> possible.
|
|
| This is very vague too. Easy for who? Easy for a user who is too lazy to
| read docs and doesn't have any experience or easy for a sysadmin with
| plenty of experience trying to setting up Gentoo on a cluster with >100
| boxes? I think this makes it pretty clear that there is not simply one
| implementation referring to one idea, but I'm afraid that these 'goals'
| could be misused to force a common direction instead of having multiple
| efforts addressing the same idea in different ways.

I'm guessing that the vast majority of our users have Gentoo installed
on one or a few computers, and are typical hobbyists. That's who I would
target with making things easier, while trying to avoid regressions in
the other cases.

That could certainly use some research though.

|
|> - - The portage team could conduct usability studies of portage (perhaps
|> with the help of openusability.org?).
|
|
| 'to conduct usability studies' sounds great, but it's IMHO not much
| more. I don't need studies to point out annoying things from a user
| perspective, I'm a user myself. Sure, feedback is good, but we already
| get feedback, in the form of bug reports.

OK, but you're one user. Maybe you are very unusual and 99 out of 100
other Gentoo users would do things totally differently.

| How do e.g. arches fit into this scheme? Yeah, sure, they make Gentoo
| easier to use because they keyword stuff. Great. I'm really glad
| somebody tells me why I am doing the stuff I've been doing for more than
| a year.
|
| So, the 'easy to learn/use' goal might be a goal that quite some
| projects already are trying to attain, but it really isn't *THE* goal
| for Gentoo, is it?

Who said we can only have one goal?

Thanks,
Donnie
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Lance Albertson]

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Grant Goodyear wrote:
> Lance Albertson wrote: [Mon Jan 02 2006, 12:14:05PM CST]
> 
>>Gentoo has been missing some kind of direction/goal for some time now.
>>Looking back at the last two years, what are the major
>>changes/accomplishments that we have done? Granted, I know there has
>>been great strides in improvement in some things, but I really wonder
>>about any ground breaking enhancements.
> 
> 
> Assuming that we can ever get GLEP 42 out the door, I think that will
> constitute ground-breaking.  There has actually been a considerable
> amount of progress on the Portage front, as well, although not all of
> the new stuff is out yet.  Similarly, the slowly-rolling website
> redesign is truly on the verge of being released.  We also have had
> excellent modular X11 support for some time now, and it appears that
> gcc-4.x support is doing quite well, too.  
> 
> Oh, and we've also retired an amazing number of no-longer-active devs,
> so I don't know if it's actually true that we've added numbers.

All of those of course are true. I guess I'm thinking more in the large
picture of things. Retiring non-active devs isn't something I'd exactly
call 'ground breaking' :-). I know there are things being worked on now
that will probably be in that category. I was mainly looking at the long
term flow of ground breaking progress we've made. Sure, we've made lots
of great improvements, but I'm concerned that we have too many
subprojects all working in their little world and no one really looking
over the whole project making sure things flow together well. There's no
one out there who's responsibility is to track all these subprojects and
make sure things are flowing right.

>>I'm not sure of the exact solution. Its just been pretty frustrating
>>lately hearing folks complain about this and that when I know that we
>>could do so much better. Maybe we're just happy with being where we're
>>at. I know I'm not. There's a niche that Gentoo fits really well and I
>>think we should focus on perfecting that niche instead of trying to be
>>better than distroA or distroB.
> 
> 
> Okay, so you're not happy with Gentoo's direction, but what are you
> actively doing to change it?  (Other than starting this discussion, that
> is?)  I don't mean that question as an attack, although it may well
> appear that way.  It's also not directed at you, since others have 
> made similar comments.  Instead, I'm suggesting that the reason that Gentoo
> lacks a leadership position right now is that, at least where Gentoo is
> concerned, effective leadership generally means an individual who is
> putting in a _lot_ of hard work writing code and implementing changes.
> That's one of the reasons that drobbins could be effective--he had the
> time to extend portage, work on the website to fit his vision, and make
> sweeping changes to the tree.  In that respect, I would argue that
> Gentoo's most leader-like person right now is vapier, because he's a dev who
> actively enacts wide-ranging changes.  Similarly, flameeyes, ciaranm,
> and the portage team all deserve credit for having a significant impact
> on where Gentoo has been going recently.  (Yes, I also realize that
> people may not agree with some of what those devs have been
> doing, but they have been out there getting their hands dirty, and it
> makes a huge difference.)  

Sigh, I get the impression that you think I wrote this email just to
start another long drawn out debate. I know what you're talking about
above and I somewhat agree on what you're saying there. We all have our
limited amount of time and energy to work on things. There are days I
wish I could just devote 100% of my time to Gentoo to improve those
areas I want to. But sadly, I cannot do that so this is my one attempt
at getting a feel for our group to see where they see us going. If I had
more time and energy, I would try to do more active things.

> *Shrug*  My feeling is that Gentoo is not advancing all that quickly
> right now, but that it's being maintained fairly well.  More
> importantly, we still ensure that people _can_ make sweeping changes, if
> they want to put in the work to do so.  I'm actually fairly confident
> about Gentoo having a decent future.

I have no worries about people actually getting things done. What I'm
concerned about is that there's no true direction of where things will
go. Everyone has their own way of doing something, without any kind of
proper overall plan. I know the GLEP system is designed to help with
that (which is it). I'm looking at more of overall direction in Gentoo,
not specific things. We all have different opinions on how things should
be done and nothing ever seems to be totally decided on. Sure we have
the council, but I really haven't seen any direction from them on where
Gentoo should go. We have debates on the mailing lists that seem to
never go anywhere. Is everything that's debated on there needing to go
through a GLEP, or how do such things get decided with a final say?

I dunno, I just get the impression that people fear having a goal to
work on and would rather just let things work out in a random way (like
they have been for a while now). I'm not wanting to take the fun out of
this, but I feel more structure and less redtape would help make us move
forward faster and better.

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

---
GPG Public Key:  <http://www.ramereth.net/lance.asc>
Key fingerprint: 0423 92F3 544A 1282 5AB1  4D07 416F A15D 27F4 B742

ramereth/irc.freenode.net

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Donnie Berkholz]

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Lance Albertson wrote:
| All of those of course are true. I guess I'm thinking more in the large
| picture of things. Retiring non-active devs isn't something I'd exactly
| call 'ground breaking' :-). I know there are things being worked on now
| that will probably be in that category. I was mainly looking at the long
| term flow of ground breaking progress we've made. Sure, we've made lots
| of great improvements, but I'm concerned that we have too many
| subprojects all working in their little world and no one really looking
| over the whole project making sure things flow together well. There's no
| one out there who's responsibility is to track all these subprojects and
| make sure things are flowing right.

Shouldn't that be the council's job?

| I dunno, I just get the impression that people fear having a goal to
| work on and would rather just let things work out in a random way (like
| they have been for a while now). I'm not wanting to take the fun out of
| this, but I feel more structure and less redtape would help make us move
| forward faster and better.

More structure and less red tape ... How do those two work together? I
feel like they're connected -- a more structured organization will have
more bureaucracy and more red tape.

Thanks,
Donnie
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Lares Moreau]

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On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 12:35 -0800, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> More structure and less red tape ... How do those two work together? I
> feel like they're connected -- a more structured organization will have
> more bureaucracy and more red tape.

To me red tape means that there are odd and peculiar steps in the
process. Make the tape clearly defined, and have no exceptions; everyone
plays by the same rules, no back doors.

Perhaps - more structure with easy-to-use tape - would be a better way
of phrasing it.
-- 
Lares Moreau <lares.moreau@gmail.com>  | LRU: 400755 http://counter.li.org
lares/irc.freenode.net                 |
Gentoo x86 Arch Tester                 |               ::0 Alberta, Canada
Public Key: 0D46BB6E @ subkeys.pgp.net |          Encrypted Mail Preferred
Key fingerprint = 0CA3 E40D F897 7709 3628  C5D4 7D94 483E 0D46 BB6E

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Mark Loeser]

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Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org> said:
> On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 04:08 -0700, Duncan wrote:
> > I believe that's where the differing opinions begin to come in.  Here's
> > mine.  I don't believe that Gentoo, /as/ /Gentoo/, will ever be very
> > successful as an Enterprise distribution, and I don't think that it can
> > every be very successful as a binary distribution, either.  The things
> > that make us, that is Gentoo, unique, and the best in our area, by
> > definition are the /same/ sort of things that make a relatively poor
> > enterprise or binary distribution.
> 
> I completely agree with you here.  What Gentoo does is make a
> meta-distribution, that one can utilize to build their own distribution
> easily.  This isn't limited to Linux, either, thanks to Gentoo/Alt.
> 
> I think that any single direction that we shoot towards will cause
> friction internally and will reduce productivity, along with leaving
> certain projects out.  We're simply moving in too many directions to
> have a single direction.

+1

Each project has a direction they want to go in, and by setting some sort of
"global vision" we are only going to restrict this.

> The biggest concern that I see here is a lack of communications, really.
> We don't need direction.  We just need some way for people to know who's
> going where.  I think Koon's "MetaBug" project would be an excellent
> idea to assist in this.  We need a body with some teeth to get things
> done in a timely manner.  We also need enforcement of some sort to
> ensure projects are active and reporting information on their status.

Sounds good as well.  I'd like to see all of the projects/teams saying what
their goals are, or what they have done to move towards their goals.


-- 
Mark Loeser   -   Gentoo Developer (cpp gcc-porting toolchain x86)
email         -   halcy0n AT gentoo DOT org
                  mark AT halcy0n DOT com
web           -   http://dev.gentoo.org/~halcy0n/
                  http://www.halcy0n.com

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Grant Goodyear]

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Lance Albertson wrote: [Tue Jan 03 2006, 02:09:43PM CST]
> Sure, we've made lots of great improvements, but I'm concerned that we
> have too many subprojects all working in their little world and no one
> really looking over the whole project making sure things flow together
> well. There's no one out there who's responsibility is to track all
> these subprojects and make sure things are flowing right.

That's quite true.  Of course, I would argue that it's true because
nobody has volunteered to do that job.  Of course, there'd be no real
authority with that sort of position, since if devs don't want to work
on a project they probably will not do so, so all that could really be done
would be to have a group of people tracking the various projects and
encouraging or cajoling progress.  That said, having either an informal
or formal group in that role could still be quite useful.

> Sigh, I get the impression that you think I wrote this email just to
> start another long drawn out debate. 

No, I actually think you wrote this e-mail to voice your concerns, and
that your motives are pure.  *Shrug*  

> I have no worries about people actually getting things done. What I'm
> concerned about is that there's no true direction of where things will
> go. Everyone has their own way of doing something, without any kind of
> proper overall plan. I know the GLEP system is designed to help with
> that (which is it). I'm looking at more of overall direction in Gentoo,
> not specific things. We all have different opinions on how things should
> be done and nothing ever seems to be totally decided on. Sure we have
> the council, but I really haven't seen any direction from them on where
> Gentoo should go. We have debates on the mailing lists that seem to
> never go anywhere. Is everything that's debated on there needing to go
> through a GLEP, or how do such things get decided with a final say?

I agree with many of these statements, but I disagree to what extent
there's an actual problem here.  Yes, there is little real "direction"
to Gentoo.  I think that's a reality of having a mid-life volunteer
distribution.  Our devs choose the parts of the distro that are fun for
them to work on, and consequently it is difficult to motivate people to
work towards any particular plan if that plan involves "not-fun" things.
As such, the best way to get something decided with a final say is to 
provide not just an idea, but a working implementation.  Then it's easy,
since either the implementation is good enough, or it is not.  That sets
the bar rather high, though, so the second best method is to have a
strong advocate who's willing to keep slogging away at an idea.

> I dunno, I just get the impression that people fear having a goal to
> work on and would rather just let things work out in a random way (like
> they have been for a while now). I'm not wanting to take the fun out of
> this, but I feel more structure and less redtape would help make us move
> forward faster and better.

I really don't believe that fear of goals is much of a problem.  I think
the problem, instead, is a lack of sufficiently exciting goals, and a
concomitant lack of people sufficiently motivated to shepherd those
goals to a successful conclusion.

I think I'll stop here, since I'm not expressing my thoughts all that
well.  *Sigh*

-g2boojum-
-- 
Grant Goodyear	
Gentoo Developer
g2boojum@gentoo.org
http://www.gentoo.org/~g2boojum
GPG Fingerprint: D706 9802 1663 DEF5 81B0  9573 A6DC 7152 E0F6 5B76

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Lance Albertson]

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Mark Loeser wrote:
> Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org> said:
> 
>>On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 04:08 -0700, Duncan wrote:
>>
>>>I believe that's where the differing opinions begin to come in.  Here's
>>>mine.  I don't believe that Gentoo, /as/ /Gentoo/, will ever be very
>>>successful as an Enterprise distribution, and I don't think that it can
>>>every be very successful as a binary distribution, either.  The things
>>>that make us, that is Gentoo, unique, and the best in our area, by
>>>definition are the /same/ sort of things that make a relatively poor
>>>enterprise or binary distribution.
>>
>>I completely agree with you here.  What Gentoo does is make a
>>meta-distribution, that one can utilize to build their own distribution
>>easily.  This isn't limited to Linux, either, thanks to Gentoo/Alt.
>>
>>I think that any single direction that we shoot towards will cause
>>friction internally and will reduce productivity, along with leaving
>>certain projects out.  We're simply moving in too many directions to
>>have a single direction.
> 
> 
> +1
> 
> Each project has a direction they want to go in, and by setting some sort of
> "global vision" we are only going to restrict this.

I never meant that each subproject can't have their own goals. They need
to have those of course! I was more directed that there isn't a person
in charge of all the subprojects just to keep track of them (Not
governing them). i.e. if subproject foo is working on adding feature X
to portage, then this person could make sure the portage people know
that these folks are wanting to add that feature instead of blind siding
them. Of course, if we lived in a perfect world, they would go ahead and
work together like that. I'm not stating that we'd want to restrict
everyone from doing what they want, just that there's some kind of
direction/guidance/overall project manager that keeps track of all these
projects. They would keep track of all this and report back to the
council/devs/etc.

We've gotten to the size that trying to get everyone communicating with
everyone is getting difficult. Having someone overseeing these things
might help development and make sure everyone is on the same page.

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

---
GPG Public Key:  <http://www.ramereth.net/lance.asc>
Key fingerprint: 0423 92F3 544A 1282 5AB1  4D07 416F A15D 27F4 B742

ramereth/irc.freenode.net

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Grant Goodyear]

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Chris Gianelloni wrote: [Tue Jan 03 2006, 12:17:06PM CST]
> I think part of the problem is that many people are forgetting exactly
> what Gentoo really is.  Gentoo is not a distribution of Linux.  Gentoo
> is not anything more than a loosely bound group of developers all doing
> their own thing in a collaborative and collective manner.  You cannot
> use corporate thinking to manage such a beast.  We don't have mission
> statements.  We don't have road maps.  We don't have quarterly earnings
> and market projections.  We simply exist.  The only way we can give
> Gentoo a direction is by restricting what we, as developers, are allowed
> to do.  The only real restrictions we have right now are "be civil" and
> "don't break stuff".  Anything beyond that is inhibiting one of our
> greatest strengths, our individuality and individual ideas.

[remainder snipped]

Well, that was said much better than I managed.

-g2boojum-
-- 
Grant Goodyear	
Gentoo Developer
g2boojum@gentoo.org
http://www.gentoo.org/~g2boojum
GPG Fingerprint: D706 9802 1663 DEF5 81B0  9573 A6DC 7152 E0F6 5B76

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Moderated WIki -> ( Was Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January )

[Alec Warner]

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I've actually been tinkering with this idea for a whole mostly due to
the gross amount of crazy crap that is posted to gentoo-wiki.com ( no
offense to the site which otherwise does a great job ).  However I was
under the impression that the docs team wanted things GuideXML'd and not
wikified ( cvs stuff and all ).  Are you willing to host Quasi-official
docs ( ie dev approved ) on something not GuideXML, or how exactly would
that work, and I realize we should probably move this to the docs list
so I'll cross-post and subscribe ;0

> [3] Something like Microsoft's KB where common issues are well explained,
>     resolutions documented and where a good search mechanism is in place to
>     help find the right solution. Would require moderation so that solutions
>     are correct. Could provide dual solutions: one community-written (open
>     wiki), one developers accepted (moderated wiki).
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Mark Loeser]

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Lance Albertson <ramereth@gentoo.org> said:
> Mark Loeser wrote:
> > Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org> said:
> >>I completely agree with you here.  What Gentoo does is make a
> >>meta-distribution, that one can utilize to build their own distribution
> >>easily.  This isn't limited to Linux, either, thanks to Gentoo/Alt.
> >>
> >>I think that any single direction that we shoot towards will cause
> >>friction internally and will reduce productivity, along with leaving
> >>certain projects out.  We're simply moving in too many directions to
> >>have a single direction.
> > 
> > 
> > +1
> > 
> > Each project has a direction they want to go in, and by setting some sort of
> > "global vision" we are only going to restrict this.
> 
> I never meant that each subproject can't have their own goals. They need
> to have those of course! I was more directed that there isn't a person
> in charge of all the subprojects just to keep track of them (Not
> governing them). i.e. if subproject foo is working on adding feature X
> to portage, then this person could make sure the portage people know
> that these folks are wanting to add that feature instead of blind siding
> them. Of course, if we lived in a perfect world, they would go ahead and
> work together like that. I'm not stating that we'd want to restrict
> everyone from doing what they want, just that there's some kind of
> direction/guidance/overall project manager that keeps track of all these
> projects. They would keep track of all this and report back to the
> council/devs/etc.

So, is this something like Koon's "MetaBug" thing?  (I have no idea what that
is besides what Chris just said about it).  I just don't want to see someone
else telling the subprojects how to run their team, or what goals they should
have.


-- 
Mark Loeser   -   Gentoo Developer (cpp gcc-porting toolchain x86)
email         -   halcy0n AT gentoo DOT org
                  mark AT halcy0n DOT com
web           -   http://dev.gentoo.org/~halcy0n/
                  http://www.halcy0n.com

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Henrik Brix Andersen]

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On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 10:05:03AM -0600, Grant Goodyear wrote:
> I doubt that GLEP 45 really needs a vote by the full council.  The lead
> GLEP editor's decision should probably suffice for something this
> trivial.  (Recall that the GLEP process is that the GLEP author let's
> the GLEP editors know when a GLEP is ready to go up for approval, and
> that it is generally the editors who work out precisely who needs to
> approve the thing.)

I see.

> I'll happily approve GLEP 45, with the exception that I don't know how
> to implement part of it.  The GLEP Last-Modified string is autogenerated
> from CVS, so it's not in the yyyy-mm-dd format that the GLEP requires.
> Help?

Well, CVS doesn't use neither yyyy-mm-dd nor the currently used
format, so the conversion must be done in a commit-hook or
similar.

Perhaps our friendly neighbor Infra knows where this is done?

Regards,
Brix
-- 
Henrik Brix Andersen <brix@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Metadistribution | Mobile computing herd

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Kurt Lieber]

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On Wed, Jan 04, 2006 at 11:06:37PM +0100 or thereabouts, Henrik Brix Andersen wrote:
> Well, CVS doesn't use neither yyyy-mm-dd nor the currently used
> format, so the conversion must be done in a commit-hook or
> similar.
> 
> Perhaps our friendly neighbor Infra knows where this is done?

It just uses the standard $Date: $ CVS mojo.  Nothing special going on
here.  The format it generates is definitely machine parseable, though it
isn't internationalized.

If internationalization is a primary goal of the GLEP, then I'd suggest
simply changing the Last-Modified field to a manual one and having folks
input it directly.  If the primary goal is simply to make sure machines can
parse the date, then I'd say it meets that goal already.

I'd really rather avoid using custom hooks or anything that hacks CVS at
all.  It's our most critical application, so we try to be extra cautious
about making changes that aren't absolutely necessary.

If there's another way to do this (i.e. manual entry) then I'd rather go
that route and see how it works before looking at hacking on cvs.

--kurt

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Henrik Brix Andersen]

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On Wed, Jan 04, 2006 at 10:37:31PM +0000, Kurt Lieber wrote:
> If internationalization is a primary goal of the GLEP, then I'd suggest
> simply changing the Last-Modified field to a manual one and having folks
> input it directly.  If the primary goal is simply to make sure machines can
> parse the date, then I'd say it meets that goal already.

The primary goal of GLEP 42 is i18n.

> I'd really rather avoid using custom hooks or anything that hacks CVS at
> all.  It's our most critical application, so we try to be extra cautious
> about making changes that aren't absolutely necessary.

Fair enough.

> If there's another way to do this (i.e. manual entry) then I'd rather go
> that route and see how it works before looking at hacking on cvs.

That's up to the GLEP editors, I guess...

Regards,
Brix
-- 
Henrik Brix Andersen <brix@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Metadistribution | Mobile computing herd

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Greg KH]

On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 03:58:57AM +0000, Kurt Lieber wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 01:17:06PM -0500 or thereabouts, Chris Gianelloni
> wrote:
> > Gentoo is not a distribution of Linux.  Gentoo is not anything more than
> > a loosely bound group of developers all doing their own thing in a
> > collaborative and collective manner.  You cannot use corporate thinking
> > to manage such a beast.  We don't have mission statements.  We don't have
> > road maps.  We don't have quarterly earnings and market projections.  We
> > simply exist.  
> 
> Which is why Gentoo has jumped the shark and is now on a long, slow
> decline.

Ok, then what should Gentoo do to fix this percieved decline?

> > Do you want to be a part of a project that doesn't allow you to
> > implement some cool new feature because it might make Gentoo slightly
> > harder to use for some people and that's against the mission statement
> > so not allowed?
> 
> Yes, absolutely.  

We need a mission statement first :)

thanks,

greg k-h
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Kurt Lieber]

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On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 01:17:06PM -0500 or thereabouts, Chris Gianelloni
wrote:
> Gentoo is not a distribution of Linux.  Gentoo is not anything more than
> a loosely bound group of developers all doing their own thing in a
> collaborative and collective manner.  You cannot use corporate thinking
> to manage such a beast.  We don't have mission statements.  We don't have
> road maps.  We don't have quarterly earnings and market projections.  We
> simply exist.  

Which is why Gentoo has jumped the shark and is now on a long, slow
decline.

> Do you want to be a part of a project that doesn't allow you to
> implement some cool new feature because it might make Gentoo slightly
> harder to use for some people and that's against the mission statement
> so not allowed?

Yes, absolutely.  

--kurt

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Kurt Lieber]

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On Wed, Jan 04, 2006 at 07:57:06PM -0800 or thereabouts, Greg KH wrote:
> > Which is why Gentoo has jumped the shark and is now on a long, slow
> > decline.
> 
> Ok, then what should Gentoo do to fix this percieved decline?

Exactly what a lot of folks will have kittens about; appoint a CEO, leader,
boss, manager, etc.  (you know, all those corporate-type words that raise
the hackles of nearly everyone on this list.)

Right now, Gentoo is this gigantic, obese amoeba that just sort of sits in
one place.  Different parts of it try to go in different directions, with
the net result being that the whole body never goes anywhere.  We haven't
done anything interesting or innovative over the last...year?  two years?
We have no effective leadership whatsoever.  We spend far too much time
arguing amongst ourselves instead of working as a team towards a common
goal.  

We should appoint one person to lead the project.  Make sure that person
knows WTF they're doing, are respected by the right developers, has a good
vision for Gentoo and then let them make decisions.  Expect people to
adhere to the decisions and, if they don't, invite them to find other
opportunities for their creative outlet.

That person should figure out what Gentoo wants to be when it grows up.
S/he should carefully consult the various stakeholders, look at the
strengths/weaknesses of Gentoo as it stands currently and then figure out
where the best direction is for it to proceed.  They should then be
responsible for making sure everyone (and I mean *everyone*) executes
according to this direction.  Folks who disagree with the vision will be
able to go their own direction and start their own projects.  That's the
beauty of the GPL. 

Anyway, I have no illusions of this idea ever being implemented in the
current Gentoo environment.  /shrug.  It was a good ride.

--kurt

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Andrew Muraco]

Lares Moreau wrote:

>On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 18:19 +0100, Simon Stelling wrote:
>  
>
>>My point is, either you have to generalize each project's goal to a real 
>>triviality or you have to define a goal which doesn't match some 
>>project's goals. Conclusion: Let it be.
>>    
>>
>
>Maybe we are looking at this problem the wrong way.  Instead of trying
>to have Gentoo be the distro, perhaps Gentoo can be thought of as a
>provider of infrastructure and tools to allow 'sub-distros' to flourish.
>
>THere are many projects which now are trying to pull Gentoo in many
>different directions, such as bianary distro vs. enterprise distro.  If
>we remove "Gentoo as distro" from out thinking and replace it with
>"Gentoo as provider of tools and infrastucture", These two seemingly
>contradictory goals can each flourish in their own way.
>
>Haveing sub-distros, lack of a better term, is not new to Gentoo.
>Hardened has their own LiveCD, profile and tools.  I feel this can be
>nurtured. Allowing the Binanary group to move in one direction, and
>'tweakers' in an other, and die-hard security people in yet another,
>while not severely conficting with each other.
>
>
>Maybe what we need is a clearer definition of what each herd does?  I am
>considering writing a GLEP about this, having each herd answer three
>questions periodicly (say 6mths).
> - What do we want to do?
> - How are we going to get there?
> - How to we measure success?
>and /maybe/ add a section about current devs and AT/HTs.
>Just a thought.
>  
>

I like your idea of having gentoo not being a distro, but moreso a 
collection of tools. Mostly because gentoo's method of dealing with 
problems (problems that binary distros tend to have, like keeping 
software uptodate) are handled in a way thats just a tad more managable, 
plus when multiple repo support gets added, its just another way that 
gentoo can be customized and reflavored.

+1 for that thinking

Tux
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Alec Warner]

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Kurt Lieber wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 04, 2006 at 07:57:06PM -0800 or thereabouts, Greg KH wrote:
> 
>>>Which is why Gentoo has jumped the shark and is now on a long, slow
>>>decline.
>>
>>Ok, then what should Gentoo do to fix this percieved decline?
> 
> 
> Exactly what a lot of folks will have kittens about; appoint a CEO, leader,
> boss, manager, etc.  (you know, all those corporate-type words that raise
> the hackles of nearly everyone on this list.)
> 
> Right now, Gentoo is this gigantic, obese amoeba that just sort of sits in
> one place.  Different parts of it try to go in different directions, with
> the net result being that the whole body never goes anywhere.  We haven't
> done anything interesting or innovative over the last...year?  two years?
> We have no effective leadership whatsoever.  We spend far too much time
> arguing amongst ourselves instead of working as a team towards a common
> goal.

 I think some people have attempted things that are interesting or
innovative, although they may not have gotten off of the ground quite
yet.  I think for instance, that Stuart's webapp-config project is a
good idea, and while I also think his first attempt sucked, that perhaps
in the future it could be a great tool, especially for large virtual
host places.  I think it sucks that he has gotten the flack from it here.

The Gentoo Installer is an interesting project, not only for the
graphical frontend, but for the Distro-sponsored Network installer that
is being worked on.  I think many distributions lack tools in this area
and we can be interesting and helpful here.

The Portage project has some cool stuff coming up.  I realize that the
2.X codebase scares a lot of people away due to it's nature but recently
there has been a lot more active development in features and planning.
Plus there is code in the savior branch to do some "interesting" things :)

> <snip>
> adhere to the decisions and, if they don't, invite them to find other
> opportunities for their creative outlet.
This sounds to me like "if they don't like it then send them on their
merry way"  which is kind of a bad attitude IMHO.  If they are working
on something it usually is because they are interested.  You can't
really say "well your interest is useless so work on something else
instead" and expect them to comply.  If they are either going to work on
something they enjoy and contribute to Gentoo or do nothing at
all...well I'll take the former :)

> 
> That person should figure out what Gentoo wants to be when it grows up.
> S/he should carefully consult the various stakeholders, look at the
> strengths/weaknesses of Gentoo as it stands currently and then figure out
> where the best direction is for it to proceed.  They should then be
> responsible for making sure everyone (and I mean *everyone*) executes
> according to this direction.  Folks who disagree with the vision will be
> able to go their own direction and start their own projects.  That's the
> beauty of the GPL.

If this Gentoo project fails/falters (like you seem to think it is
heading) you are free to do the same, form your own project with it's
own set of rules and leader if you so choose.

> 
> Anyway, I have no illusions of this idea ever being implemented in the
> current Gentoo environment.  /shrug.  It was a good ride.
> 
> --kurt

I would agree overall that inter-project communication is lacking in
many areas.  I also think that people are uncompromising.  Everyone is
over-worked, everyone has no time, if you want thing X done, get
cracking...etc... I don't think that is an especially healthy attitude
to getting larger/cooler things accomplished.  If there is an entity
that can help "persuade" projects to listen to one another that would be
 great, but in the end what can you really do?

Partially I ( as currently still a user at this point ) would like to
see a bit more project management.  I see that webapps posted a monthly
meeting reminder to -dev, but how many projects really have meetings
that often?  Do they accomplish anything?  Should we have someone that
tries to attend most meetings to make sure things are going smoothly, or
going at all?  Do we need to have slacking projects that get killed off
by the council as well as "slacker" council members?

More things to consider ;)

Alec Warner (antarus)
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gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Kurt Lieber]

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On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 12:39:05AM -0500 or thereabouts, Alec Warner wrote:
>  I think some people have attempted things that are interesting or
> innovative, although they may not have gotten off of the ground quite
> yet.

That's the problem.  Lots of folks have great ideas.  Our execution sucks,
though.  We also have projects working against each other (or, at least,
not in step with each other) 

> The Gentoo Installer is an interesting project, not only for the
> graphical frontend, but for the Distro-sponsored Network installer that
> is being worked on.  

I agree, but it's been "in development" for...I dunno..almost two years now
I think and it's still not released.  I'm not slamming the -installer team
-- I think they're a great bunch of guys, but it does point to our
inability to execute.

> The Portage project has some cool stuff coming up.  I realize that the
> 2.X codebase scares a lot of people away due to it's nature but recently
> there has been a lot more active development in features and planning.

Again, lots of talk, some code, but nothing we can point to and say, "look!
see that?  We did that!!" and be proud of it.

> Plus there is code in the savior branch to do some "interesting" things :)

> > adhere to the decisions and, if they don't, invite them to find other
> > opportunities for their creative outlet.
> This sounds to me like "if they don't like it then send them on their
> merry way"  which is kind of a bad attitude IMHO.  

This is a harsher way of saying it, but yes, it's exactly what I mean.  I
couldn't disagree more strongly that it's a bad attitude, however.

> You can't really say "well your interest is useless so work on something
> else instead" and expect them to comply.

No, but you can say, "this is the direction we've decided to go in.  We'd
love to have you as part of the team, but if you want to go a different
direction, please take a copy of the source code, along with our blessings
and we wish you the best of luck."

It's great to tinker and experiment with new things, but at some point,
those tinkerings will have interdependencies on other parts of the project.
People will need/want features added to <foo> in order for them to be able
to continue.  If those features don't adhere to the overall direction that
has been chosen for the project, then they're taking time and resources
away from that direction, regardless of who does the actual coding.

--kurt

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Corey Shields]

On Wednesday 04 January 2006 21:39, Alec Warner wrote:
>  I think some people have attempted things that are interesting or
> innovative, although they may not have gotten off of the ground quite
> yet.  I think for instance, that Stuart's webapp-config project is a
> good idea, and while I also think his first attempt sucked, that perhaps
> in the future it could be a great tool, especially for large virtual
> host places.  I think it sucks that he has gotten the flack from it here.
>
> The Gentoo Installer is an interesting project, not only for the
> graphical frontend, but for the Distro-sponsored Network installer that
> is being worked on.  I think many distributions lack tools in this area
> and we can be interesting and helpful here.
>
> The Portage project has some cool stuff coming up.  I realize that the
> 2.X codebase scares a lot of people away due to it's nature but recently
> there has been a lot more active development in features and planning.
> Plus there is code in the savior branch to do some "interesting" things :)

Bingo.  Bingo. Bingo.

Where is the centralized vision that everyone is working together here that 
people not directly related to each project will buy in to and therefore do 
what they can to see it succeed?  Where is the collaboration between groups 
to make it happen?  I think this has already been hashed out enough, but your 
points can be drawn back to that.  Portage team is running in one direction, 
webapps another, GLI a third direction (while kicking anyone who wishes to 
run with them in the nuts).  In any structured environment I have worked in, 
you have a heirarchy where everyone, down to the grunts, know where they are 
heading as an organization, why they are heading that way, and what they can 
do to help.  Even though groups work on differing things, they know how those 
things are directly affecting the end goal (mission statement, whatever)

Right now, Gentoo has it's cliques that come up with their own things, and to 
get assistance from another clique you're gonna have to have some ties or 
work real hard to sell your idea to them.  It's too flat of a model to work 
for any real innovation, else, as Kurt pointed out, we would have seen some 
cool stuff in the past couple of years.

> If this Gentoo project fails/falters (like you seem to think it is
> heading) you are free to do the same, form your own project with it's
> own set of rules and leader if you so choose.

Gentoo won't fail..  I don't believe that is what Kurt or Lance are saying.  I 
think the point was that Gentoo is not moving at the typical pace of OSS 
development, and we believe that it is the organizational structure that is 
holding it back.

> Partially I ( as currently still a user at this point ) would like to
> see a bit more project management.  I see that webapps posted a monthly
> meeting reminder to -dev, but how many projects really have meetings
> that often?  Do they accomplish anything?  Should we have someone that
> tries to attend most meetings to make sure things are going smoothly, or
> going at all?  Do we need to have slacking projects that get killed off
> by the council as well as "slacker" council members?

Thanks for your comments..   As for management, anyone who reads "Five 
Dysfunctions of a Team" by Patrick Lencioni[1] will see all of the problems 
that Gentoo has, as well as the potential Gentoo has if it worked well.

Cheers,

-C

[1] - 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0787960756/104-9660666-9133512?v=glance&n=283155
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Daniel Ostrow]

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[snip]

> Thanks for your comments..   As for management, anyone who reads "Five
> Dysfunctions of a Team" by Patrick Lencioni[1] will see all of the problems
> that Gentoo has, as well as the potential Gentoo has if it worked well.

[/snip]

OK granted it is a shameless plug, but this book is so on point that I 
finished it in one night. Not to say that that is any major accomplishment 
it's a pretty short book. But it basically lays out in black and white what 
is wrong with the way things are, and what could be done better. It really 
was rather frightening how very much like Gentoo the small 'Board of 
Directors' in this book is.

-- 
Daniel Ostrow
Gentoo Foundation Board of Trustees
Gentoo/{PPC,PPC64,DevRel}
dostrow@gentoo.org

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Donnie Berkholz]

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Hash: SHA1

Kurt Lieber wrote:
| On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 12:39:05AM -0500 or thereabouts, Alec Warner
wrote:
|>The Gentoo Installer is an interesting project, not only for the
|>graphical frontend, but for the Distro-sponsored Network installer that
|>is being worked on.
|
|
| I agree, but it's been "in development" for...I dunno..almost two
years now
| I think and it's still not released.  I'm not slamming the -installer team
| -- I think they're a great bunch of guys, but it does point to our
| inability to execute.

It's actually had a 0.1 and 0.2 release. See
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/releng/installer/.

Thanks,
Donnie
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Thu, 5 Jan 2006 04:31:30 +0000 Kurt Lieber <klieber@gentoo.org>
wrote:
| We haven't done anything interesting or innovative over
| the last...year?

Codswallop. We've done lots of large, innovative changes. You've just
not been paying enough attention to have seen them, and the people
doing the changes haven't been going around screaming about it from the
rooftops.

If you'd like to see more interesting or innovative changes, start by
looking into how we can make it easier for developers to advertise what
they've been doing.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (King of all Londinium)
Mail            : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web             : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Brian Harring]

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On Wed, Jan 04, 2006 at 10:05:52PM -0800, Corey Shields wrote:
> Where is the centralized vision that everyone is working together here that 
> people not directly related to each project will buy in to and therefore do 
> what they can to see it succeed?

We've had centralized visions for a long while.  Recall use/slot deps?

See them available anywhere?

Vision ofr an installer?  Yes, underway now, but the centralized vision 
really didn't do jack for actually acquring folk to work on it, did 
it (feel free to chime in agaffney since it's effectively yours now a 
days).


> Where is the collaboration between groups 
> to make it happen?

How many projects actually require collaboration amongst multiple 
groups to pull it off?  Yes, if it's infra related we're stuck waiting 
on you guys to move, but where else is the intricate dependencies 
between groups y'all seem to be seeing?

Don't get me wrong, there *are* dependencies between groups (everyone 
reliant on toolchain fex).  What I'm getting at is that the angle of 
blaming communication for lack of progress is daft- the issue isn't 
lack of communication, it's lack of _actual_ work being done.


> Portage team is running in one direction, 
> webapps another, GLI a third direction (while kicking anyone who wishes to 
> run with them in the nuts).

Examples would be lovely.


> In any structured environment I have worked in, 
> you have a heirarchy where everyone, down to the grunts, know where they are 
> heading as an organization, why they are heading that way, and what they can 
> do to help. Even though groups work on differing things, they know how those 
> things are directly affecting the end goal (mission statement, whatever)
>
> Right now, Gentoo has it's cliques that come up with their own things, and to 
> get assistance from another clique you're gonna have to have some ties or 
> work real hard to sell your idea to them.  It's too flat of a model to work 
> for any real innovation, else, as Kurt pointed out, we would have seen some 
> cool stuff in the past couple of years.
>
> > If this Gentoo project fails/falters (like you seem to think it is
> > heading) you are free to do the same, form your own project with it's
> > own set of rules and leader if you so choose.
> 
> Gentoo won't fail..  I don't believe that is what Kurt or Lance are saying.  I 
> think the point was that Gentoo is not moving at the typical pace of OSS 
> development, and we believe that it is the organizational structure that is 
> holding it back.

Actually, here's where I'm going to get lynched- (both for bringing up 
anon* after pissing y'all off by asking about it less then 24 hours 
previously, and stepping on other toes).

Typical foss project is optimized for one thing, and one thing alone- 
maximal usage of available resources.  It has to be *easy* for folks 
to contribute whatever time they have- this means eliminating as much 
menial/manual work as possible.

Immediate access to most current source so they can raid it and patch 
it, rather then splitting against an old version, then the maintainer 
forward porting the patch to head fex is a huge issue.  It wastes both 
the maintainer's time and the random patch submitters time having to 
juggle between revisions.

Further, foss has something of a rapid release cycle.  We're actively 
trying to move in the opposite direction if you consider the actual 
implication of trying to widen the unstable keywording gap- I'm not 
stating QA is bad, what I'm stating is that QA explicitly requires 
delays built in (whether via multiple reviews by devs, or letting the 
changes sit for a while).

End result of it is that it takes longer to get stuff out, with the 
result waterfalling across the tree- cool nifty package x that has 
bleeding edge dep y, with dep y sitting due to QA concerns for 
example.

I've not yet actually touched on communication/sync'ing up between 
volunteers either- that's further delays.  For example, you've got 
crazy/nifty feature X that must be glep'd.  You've got realistically a 
wait of a month before it's worth starting the actual work for it.

Yes, a month.  Reason being that glep can be ixnayed, thus those with 
half a brain aren't going to do work that could be shot down, they're 
likely going to wait till the proposal is accepted *then* start the 
work.

Probably pissing a selection of people off here (pardon, deal), but 
the point is that this notion that introducing more communication/sync 
up points isn't going to accomplish anything.  Yes, it's required, but 
foss is not your typical business work place (thank god).

Why has gentoo gotten slower as it's gotten larger?  Because the lone 
wolf developer has less bullshit to deal with, they can just hammer 
towards their goal.  Introduce more folk into it, waste more of their 
time syncing up with each other, more time of those who see their 
goal, know how to get their, having to run it past everyone who wants 
to be know what's afoot.

Essentially, the more required sync up/communication built into how 
things are done, the more bound you are to the slowest folk.  Can only 
run go as fast as your slowest member effectively.


> > Partially I ( as currently still a user at this point ) would like to
> > see a bit more project management.  I see that webapps posted a monthly
> > meeting reminder to -dev, but how many projects really have meetings
> > that often?  Do they accomplish anything?  Should we have someone that
> > tries to attend most meetings to make sure things are going smoothly, or
> > going at all?  Do we need to have slacking projects that get killed off
> > by the council as well as "slacker" council members?
> 
> Thanks for your comments..   As for management, anyone who reads "Five 
> Dysfunctions of a Team" by Patrick Lencioni[1] will see all of the problems 
> that Gentoo has, as well as the potential Gentoo has if it worked well.

Not trying to stick it to you, but I think what you're pointing at as 
good is fundamentally the issue here- more process tagged into gentoo 
isn't going to help anything, just push us further towards 
debianization (something that's bugged me for the last 18 months I 
might add).

What I've seen with gentoo is bluntly, wasted resources (bit 
intentional in some cases).  We've been progressing more towards 
keeping everyone in the loop rather then letting folks spring on ahead 
and get things done (sometimes with a bit of a mess in the process).

Note I said 'intentional'; seems like people have been pushing for 
gentoo as a whole to slow down (note the enterprise 
concerns/complaints that hit the ml every 6 months for example).

Dunno.  Maybe it's all a ramble, maybe you think I'm a loon, but final 
point I'm going to make is that pushing for a global solution (whether 
a BDFL or board or committee) totally is missing the actual issue- 
that individuals get things done, the larger the # of folks involved 
in progressing towards something the slower they're going to move.

Adding artifical sync ups/communications is a step towards slowing 
things down further, not speeding things up.

Central vision, mission statements, etc, that crap, doesn't 
actually accomplish anything; if someone is working towards something, 
someone is working towards it.  Extra beuracray/cruft doesn't 
translate to code however, nor does it really enable faster production 
of code.

~harring


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[gentoo-dev] Re: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Duncan]

Brian Harring posted <20060105064956.GC14338@nightcrawler.e-centre.net>,
excerpted below,  on Wed, 04 Jan 2006 22:49:56 -0800:

> Note I said 'intentional'; seems like people have been pushing for 
> gentoo as a whole to slow down (note the enterprise 
> concerns/complaints that hit the ml every 6 months for example).
> 
> Dunno.  Maybe it's all a ramble, maybe you think I'm a loon, but final 
> point I'm going to make is that pushing for a global solution (whether 
> a BDFL or board or committee) totally is missing the actual issue- 
> that individuals get things done, the larger the # of folks involved 
> in progressing towards something the slower they're going to move.

This man speaks my mind.  That's one of the things I'm worried about with
the Enterprise Gentoo thing, and why I think it will make a better
separate project than part of Gentoo itself.  

Anyone who thinks Gentoo isn't progressing simply isn't seeing the forest
for all the trees, as they say.  Another way of putting it is that Gentoo
seems to be in that critical period after the honeymoon, it has hit its
middle-aged crisis.  Reality has set in -- we're not going to magically
move mountains, as yes, a mountain /can/ be moved, see the  history of the
Panama canal for instance, but it takes a *LOT* of work, a LOT of
investment, and sometimes even some deaths along the way.  During that
time, progress may seem painfully slow, yet it never-the-less occurs. 
What's the alternative, dumping the project and leaving it for dead?  Then
all that work and investment, and all those deaths, /will/ be in vain.

OTOH, after a certain point, which Gentoo seems to have reached, throwing
more bureaucracy at a project, as seems to be part of the proposal here,
does  more harm than good.  I'm with Brian, here.  If we want progress, we
gotta slack off on the regulation a bit and give the folks actually down
there getting their hands dirty some room to work, at least if we aren't
willing (or able) to get in there with them.

-- 
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: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Thu, 05 Jan 2006 03:26:03 -0700 Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> wrote:
| Anyone who thinks Gentoo isn't progressing simply isn't seeing the
| forest for all the trees, as they say.  Another way of putting it is
| that Gentoo seems to be in that critical period after the honeymoon,
| it has hit its middle-aged crisis.  Reality has set in -- we're not
| going to magically move mountains, as yes, a mountain /can/ be moved,
| see the  history of the Panama canal for instance, but it takes a
| *LOT* of work, a LOT of investment, and sometimes even some deaths
| along the way.  During that time, progress may seem painfully slow,
| yet it never-the-less occurs. What's the alternative, dumping the
| project and leaving it for dead?  Then all that work and investment,
| and all those deaths, /will/ be in vain.

What makes you think we're not moving mountains? Getting 1.4 out of the
door was considered an amazing feat. Now we're doing the same thing
every six months, and it's largely going unnoticed. Is something only
an impressive accomplishment if it goes wrong and generates lots of
mess first?

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (King of all Londinium)
Mail            : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web             : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Tom Martin]

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On Thu, 5 Jan 2006 06:31:42 +0000
Ciaran McCreesh <ciaranm@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Thu, 5 Jan 2006 04:31:30 +0000 Kurt Lieber <klieber@gentoo.org>
> wrote:
> | We haven't done anything interesting or innovative over
> | the last...year?
> 
> Codswallop. We've done lots of large, innovative changes. You've just
> not been paying enough attention to have seen them, and the people
> doing the changes haven't been going around screaming about it from
> the rooftops.
> 
> If you'd like to see more interesting or innovative changes, start by
> looking into how we can make it easier for developers to advertise
> what they've been doing.

planet.g.o?

-- 
Tom Martin, http://dev.gentoo.org/~slarti
AMD64, net-mail, shell-tools, vim, recruiters
Gentoo Linux

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Thu, 5 Jan 2006 12:09:09 +0000 Tom Martin <slarti@gentoo.org> wrote:
| > If you'd like to see more interesting or innovative changes, start
| > by looking into how we can make it easier for developers to
| > advertise what they've been doing.
| 
| planet.g.o?

No, that's censored to only display what certain people want it to say
rather than the truth of what's going on.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (King of all Londinium)
Mail            : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web             : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Thu, 2006-01-05 at 03:58 +0000, Kurt Lieber wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 01:17:06PM -0500 or thereabouts, Chris Gianelloni
> wrote:
> > Gentoo is not a distribution of Linux.  Gentoo is not anything more than
> > a loosely bound group of developers all doing their own thing in a
> > collaborative and collective manner.  You cannot use corporate thinking
> > to manage such a beast.  We don't have mission statements.  We don't have
> > road maps.  We don't have quarterly earnings and market projections.  We
> > simply exist.  
> 
> Which is why Gentoo has jumped the shark and is now on a long, slow
> decline.

Strange, most indicators that I've seen are showing that we're still
gaining users and developers hand over fist.

> 
> > Do you want to be a part of a project that doesn't allow you to
> > implement some cool new feature because it might make Gentoo slightly
> > harder to use for some people and that's against the mission statement
> > so not allowed?
> 
> Yes, absolutely.

No offense, but I have a feeling that you're in the wrong place, then.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 19:57 -0800, Greg KH wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 03:58:57AM +0000, Kurt Lieber wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 01:17:06PM -0500 or thereabouts, Chris Gianelloni
> > wrote:
> > > Gentoo is not a distribution of Linux.  Gentoo is not anything more than
> > > a loosely bound group of developers all doing their own thing in a
> > > collaborative and collective manner.  You cannot use corporate thinking
> > > to manage such a beast.  We don't have mission statements.  We don't have
> > > road maps.  We don't have quarterly earnings and market projections.  We
> > > simply exist.  
> > 
> > Which is why Gentoo has jumped the shark and is now on a long, slow
> > decline.
> 
> Ok, then what should Gentoo do to fix this percieved decline?

Pander to the "enterprise" crowd, of course.  You know, take away all of
the stuff that makes Gentoo what it is and slow down development with
more committees, peer review boards, and meetings.  We need to all take
a step back and make sure that we're all a part of the "big picture" for
Gentoo.  You know, subscribe to the group think.

Personally, I *love* the fact that the Hardened team has differing goals
from Release Engineering.  I also don't see how our goals could ever
really be guided by a single vision.  That doesn't keep us from working
together to each accomplish our individual goals.

> > > Do you want to be a part of a project that doesn't allow you to
> > > implement some cool new feature because it might make Gentoo slightly
> > > harder to use for some people and that's against the mission statement
> > > so not allowed?
> > 
> > Yes, absolutely.  
> 
> We need a mission statement first :)

Our mission: To seek out new life and civilization, and to bring Gentoo
to them, by force, if necessary.  *grin*

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Dan Meltzer]

Here are my random two cents

On 1/5/06, Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 19:57 -0800, Greg KH wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 03:58:57AM +0000, Kurt Lieber wrote:
> > > On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 01:17:06PM -0500 or thereabouts, Chris Gianelloni
> > > wrote:
> > > > Gentoo is not a distribution of Linux.  Gentoo is not anything more than
> > > > a loosely bound group of developers all doing their own thing in a
> > > > collaborative and collective manner.  You cannot use corporate thinking
> > > > to manage such a beast.  We don't have mission statements.  We don't have
> > > > road maps.  We don't have quarterly earnings and market projections.  We
> > > > simply exist.
> > >
> > > Which is why Gentoo has jumped the shark and is now on a long, slow
> > > decline.
> >
> > Ok, then what should Gentoo do to fix this percieved decline?
>
> Pander to the "enterprise" crowd, of course.  You know, take away all of
> the stuff that makes Gentoo what it is and slow down development with
> more committees, peer review boards, and meetings.  We need to all take
> a step back and make sure that we're all a part of the "big picture" for
> Gentoo.  You know, subscribe to the group think.
>
> Personally, I *love* the fact that the Hardened team has differing goals
> from Release Engineering.  I also don't see how our goals could ever
> really be guided by a single vision.  That doesn't keep us from working
> together to each accomplish our individual goals.
>

Apparently it does.  How many huge threads have you seen lately that
accomplished nothing?  How many threads have people started with great
ideas, only to give up in disgust because people cause a huge fuss
about small details, and nothing ever gets accomplished?  Quite a few.

> > > > Do you want to be a part of a project that doesn't allow you to
> > > > implement some cool new feature because it might make Gentoo slightly
> > > > harder to use for some people and that's against the mission statement
> > > > so not allowed?
> > >
> > > Yes, absolutely.
> >
> > We need a mission statement first :)
>
> Our mission: To seek out new life and civilization, and to bring Gentoo
> to them, by force, if necessary.  *grin*
>
> --
> Chris Gianelloni
> Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
> x86 Architecture Team
> Games - Developer
> Gentoo Linux
>
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Thu, 2006-01-05 at 04:31 +0000, Kurt Lieber wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 04, 2006 at 07:57:06PM -0800 or thereabouts, Greg KH wrote:
> > > Which is why Gentoo has jumped the shark and is now on a long, slow
> > > decline.
> > 
> > Ok, then what should Gentoo do to fix this percieved decline?
> 
> Exactly what a lot of folks will have kittens about; appoint a CEO, leader,
> boss, manager, etc.  (you know, all those corporate-type words that raise
> the hackles of nearly everyone on this list.)

You mean the same thing that we *had* that caused the loss of quite a
few good developers and drove many people away from Gentoo before they
ever even learned of its values.  Sounds like an excellent plan.

> Right now, Gentoo is this gigantic, obese amoeba that just sort of sits in
> one place.  Different parts of it try to go in different directions, with
> the net result being that the whole body never goes anywhere.  We haven't
> done anything interesting or innovative over the last...year?  two years?
> We have no effective leadership whatsoever.  We spend far too much time
> arguing amongst ourselves instead of working as a team towards a common
> goal.

This is what I don't get.  So what if Gentoo is an amoeba?  Does it
really matter?  Would you rather that we dropped Gentoo/ALT, Hardened,
Embedded, and anything else interesting just so we can focus on a "core
technology" of some sort?  Remember that we are not out to make money.
We are a not-for-profit for a reason.  We don't have to answer to
investors and shareholders.

Another thing that I see people fail to really comprehend is what
exactly "interesting and innovative" can we do?  I would have thought
that the introduction of our Gentoo Linux Installer would qualify.  What
about the Hardened LiveCD?  Gentoo's Knoppix-style CD?  All of the
working going into Gentoo for Mac OS X and Gentoo/BSD?  The extension of
the embedded/uclibc stuff to many more architectures?

It seems as if just because something doesn't tickle the fancy of the
Linux World Expo corporate types it isn't important.

> We should appoint one person to lead the project.  Make sure that person
> knows WTF they're doing, are respected by the right developers, has a good
> vision for Gentoo and then let them make decisions.  Expect people to
> adhere to the decisions and, if they don't, invite them to find other
> opportunities for their creative outlet.

Fine.  I vote for vapier.  So next time he tells you to touch his wang,
you better damn well listen.  ;]

> That person should figure out what Gentoo wants to be when it grows up.

Gentoo doesn't want to be anything.  Gentoo is not a thing.  Gentoo is a
*collection* of over 300 individuals.  We are not some corporate entity
where individualism is destroyed for the corporate party line.

Honestly, it sounds to me like that is what you want.

I welcome you to fork Gentoo to do this.  I'll be glad to assist you in
any way that I can without giving up my ideas for where I want to take
my projects within Gentoo.  I respect that you should do the same,
rather than hijack the distribution as a whole for your own purposes.

> S/he should carefully consult the various stakeholders, look at the
> strengths/weaknesses of Gentoo as it stands currently and then figure out
> where the best direction is for it to proceed.  They should then be
> responsible for making sure everyone (and I mean *everyone*) executes
> according to this direction.  Folks who disagree with the vision will be
> able to go their own direction and start their own projects.  That's the
> beauty of the GPL.

So booting developers that have a technical reason for doing something
different should be the norm?

> Anyway, I have no illusions of this idea ever being implemented in the
> current Gentoo environment.  /shrug.  It was a good ride.

I'm glad to hear that.  It really sounds like you are interested in
turning Gentoo into some worthless shell of what it is currently.  Sure,
it'll have "added value" and "perceived worth" to the corporate drones,
but any room for innovation and creativity will have been completely
stifled by group think and yes men.  Using your own example, you and
anyone willing to work under such conditions are more than welcome to
fork Gentoo.  After all, you can use all of our work as you wish.
That's the beauty of the GPL.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Henrik Brix Andersen]

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On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 07:36:09AM -0500, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> Personally, I *love* the fact that the Hardened team has differing goals
> from Release Engineering.  I also don't see how our goals could ever
> really be guided by a single vision.  That doesn't keep us from working
> together to each accomplish our individual goals.

Hear hear.

./Brix
-- 
Henrik Brix Andersen <brix@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Metadistribution | Mobile computing herd

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 23:33 -0500, Andrew Muraco wrote:
> I like your idea of having gentoo not being a distro, but moreso a 
> collection of tools. Mostly because gentoo's method of dealing with 
> problems (problems that binary distros tend to have, like keeping 
> software uptodate) are handled in a way thats just a tad more managable, 
> plus when multiple repo support gets added, its just another way that 
> gentoo can be customized and reflavored.
> 
> +1 for that thinking

I have to completely agree.  I see Gentoo as what it is, according to
our own web page.  We are a meta-distribution.  We are a collection of
tools and services that can be customized to be what you want it to be.
That does not imply limiting what we can and cannot do in any way.

If I wanted to make an arm-only source-based hardened distribution
utilizing uclibc entirely, I could do so utilizing only the work that
has been put into our portage tree.

The problem seems to be that there are certain people who want things to
happen, but can't drum up the manpower to do so.  Rather than work
harder at drumming up support, they wish to instead create a system
where our *volunteer* developers are *forced* to do what they want.

I'm sorry, but screw that.

You guys are more than welcome to go apply at Red Hat or Novell.  Hey, I
hear SCO is still distributing Linux, too.  They'll gladly give you the
mission statements and "direction" that you so desire.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Thu, 2006-01-05 at 06:00 +0000, Kurt Lieber wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 12:39:05AM -0500 or thereabouts, Alec Warner wrote:
> >  I think some people have attempted things that are interesting or
> > innovative, although they may not have gotten off of the ground quite
> > yet.
> 
> That's the problem.  Lots of folks have great ideas.  Our execution sucks,
> though.  We also have projects working against each other (or, at least,
> not in step with each other)

Cite examples.

> > The Gentoo Installer is an interesting project, not only for the
> > graphical frontend, but for the Distro-sponsored Network installer that
> > is being worked on.  
> 
> I agree, but it's been "in development" for...I dunno..almost two years now
> I think and it's still not released.  I'm not slamming the -installer team
> -- I think they're a great bunch of guys, but it does point to our
> inability to execute.

Really?  I seem to remember a nice news story with 2005.1's release
about an Installer LiveCD for x86.  I also remember one for 2005.1-r1
for both x86 and amd64.  For 2006.0, the Installer will be considered
the default method for installing Gentoo on x86, and possibly even amd64
(if they want).  I also was planning on producing at least one more
LiveCD for another architecture for 2006.0...

> > The Portage project has some cool stuff coming up.  I realize that the
> > 2.X codebase scares a lot of people away due to it's nature but recently
> > there has been a lot more active development in features and planning.
> 
> Again, lots of talk, some code, but nothing we can point to and say, "look!
> see that?  We did that!!" and be proud of it.

Funny.  I can.  --newuse.  That alone has been one of the best features
in portage in a long, long time.  I find it absolutely amazing, as
before it was a nightmare to maintain Gentoo.  Of course, this
"nightmare" was during your glory period of innovation.

> > You can't really say "well your interest is useless so work on something
> > else instead" and expect them to comply.
> 
> No, but you can say, "this is the direction we've decided to go in.  We'd
> love to have you as part of the team, but if you want to go a different
> direction, please take a copy of the source code, along with our blessings
> and we wish you the best of luck."

Sounds like you'd rather take Gentoo back a few years to the days before
Hardened/Embedded/Alt.  I guess we really should just be "Gentoo Linux"
and ignore all of the progress and work that has been made in all of
these other areas simply because it doesn't fit with your goals.  I'd
like to also propose that we drop support for sparc, mips, sh, m68k,
s390, arm, and alpha, since they detract from our main goals of
providing amd64/ppc/x86 releases.  After all, who really uses those
"other" arches anyway but a bunch of guys that never have good ideas or
improve quality of the distribution as a whole and constantly distract
us away from getting anything constructive done?

> It's great to tinker and experiment with new things, but at some point,
> those tinkerings will have interdependencies on other parts of the project.

So what?

> People will need/want features added to <foo> in order for them to be able
> to continue.  If those features don't adhere to the overall direction that
> has been chosen for the project, then they're taking time and resources
> away from that direction, regardless of who does the actual coding.

So if I were to add some great new whiz-bang feature to portage that
would only be used in building releases for Hardened, it is a waste of
time even if I do all of the coding myself simply because that might not
be the overall direction where we are heading?

Dude, pass the pipe.  I want some of what you're smoking.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Thu, 5 Jan 2006 07:49:21 -0500 Dan Meltzer
<parallelgrapefruit@gmail.com> wrote:
| Apparently it does.  How many huge threads have you seen lately that
| accomplished nothing?  How many threads have people started with great
| ideas, only to give up in disgust because people cause a huge fuss
| about small details, and nothing ever gets accomplished?  Quite a few.

Most of them get somewhere, eventually. They'd get there a bit faster
if we booted you, Duncan, Nathan and Alec from the lists, but I guess
the cost of doing that wouldn't be worth the gain. Sure, the odd thread
ends up going nowhere, but that's usually when the original idea isn't
implementable.

Look at the news GLEP, for example. Half the replies are worthless
drivel from morons. The remainder is extremely useful input. The GLEP
in its original form wouldn't have worked -- heck, I knew that when I
posted it for review. But it's getting there, and after another round
or two we'll end up with something that will work first time when it's
implemented. Better to spend a bit of time now having an extended
technical discussion (which differs from a flamefest, but only when you
look closely) than to go ahead and screw up the tree...

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (King of all Londinium)
Mail            : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web             : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Andrew Gaffney]

Corey Shields wrote:
> GLI a third direction (while kicking anyone who wishes to 
> run with them in the nuts).

What is your problem with the installer project? Over the past year or so, there 
have been *2* people that complained about us treating them badly. The first 
person was the genux guy. While he may not have deserved it then, I think most 
of us can agree that he deserved it now :P The second complaint was from a 
person that definitely deserved what he got. He was harassing us trying to use 
the GPL to *force* us to give him the spec files used to generate the 
experimental X LiveCD. We wouldn't give it to him because 1) we didn't have it 
(wolf31o2 did), and 2) it would not work with the released version of catalyst.

What you don't see is the interaction with releng and the portage folks, the 
people that are building their own CDs with the installer, the patches and 
suggestions we accept from people who have used the installer, etc. Unless 
you're actually going to do some research into our project before bitching about 
it, please pick another project to harass.

-- 
Andrew Gaffney                            http://dev.gentoo.org/~agaffney/
Gentoo Linux Developer                                   Installer Project
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gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Thu, 05 Jan 2006 07:18:40 -0600 Andrew Gaffney <agaffney@gentoo.org>
wrote:
| What is your problem with the installer project? Over the past year
| or so, there have been *2* people that complained about us treating
| them badly.

Hrm, have the arch teams really left you in peace for an entire year
now?

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (King of all Londinium)
Mail            : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web             : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Andrew Gaffney]

Kurt Lieber wrote:
> I agree, but it's been "in development" for...I dunno..almost two years now
> I think and it's still not released.  I'm not slamming the -installer team
> -- I think they're a great bunch of guys, but it does point to our
> inability to execute.

If you're not going to do some basic research before you go spouting off, then 
shut up. The installer has had *2* releases so far (0.1 released with 2005.1 and 
0.2 with 2005.1-r1). There were announcements in the GWN, on the -installer and 
-dev MLs, and even on Slashdot! Have you been under a damn rock?

-- 
Andrew Gaffney                            http://dev.gentoo.org/~agaffney/
Gentoo Linux Developer                                   Installer Project
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Ciaran McCreesh]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 552 bytes --]

On Thu, 5 Jan 2006 06:00:42 +0000 Kurt Lieber <klieber@gentoo.org>
wrote:
| I agree, but it's been "in development" for...I dunno..almost two
| years now I think and it's still not released.  I'm not slamming the
| -installer team -- I think they're a great bunch of guys, but it does
| point to our inability to execute.

Hm. So how long has it taken to get anon SVN up and running?

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (King of all Londinium)
Mail            : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web             : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm


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[gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Duncan]

Ciaran McCreesh posted <20060105103628.316835af@snowdrop.home>, excerpted
below,  on Thu, 05 Jan 2006 10:36:28 +0000:

> On Thu, 05 Jan 2006 03:26:03 -0700 Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> wrote:
> | Anyone who thinks Gentoo isn't progressing simply isn't seeing the
> | forest for all the trees, as they say.  Another way of putting it is
> | that Gentoo seems to be in that critical period after the honeymoon,
> | it has hit its middle-aged crisis.  Reality has set in -- we're not
> | going to magically move mountains, as yes, a mountain /can/ be moved,
> | see the  history of the Panama canal for instance, but it takes a
> | *LOT* of work, a LOT of investment, and sometimes even some deaths
> | along the way.  During that time, progress may seem painfully slow,
> | yet it never-the-less occurs. What's the alternative, dumping the
> | project and leaving it for dead?  Then all that work and investment,
> | and all those deaths, /will/ be in vain.
> 
> What makes you think we're not moving mountains? Getting 1.4 out of the
> door was considered an amazing feat. Now we're doing the same thing
> every six months, and it's largely going unnoticed. Is something only
> an impressive accomplishment if it goes wrong and generates lots of
> mess first?

I guess I didn't put it too well, but that's what I meant -- that yeah,
the mountain DOES get moved (and it's us, well, you, and as a user and
bug filer as well as dev group follower, I count myself too, to some
extent), but it's FAR more work than some imagined, so naturally, they end
up rather disillusioned once the reality sinks in.

The fact is that's a natural part of any maturing relationship, marriage,
work, volunteer, the relationship on has with their state and nation... 
It happens, and if the relationship survives past it, it then often
matures and grows into something far more valued than one could have
possibly imagined back in that fantasy that lead to the disillusionment.

... But I'm going off into philosophy and it seems some don't think that
belongs on the list, so I'll stop.

-- 
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] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 22:05 -0800, Corey Shields wrote:
> Where is the centralized vision that everyone is working together here that 
> people not directly related to each project will buy in to and therefore do 
> what they can to see it succeed?  Where is the collaboration between groups 
> to make it happen?  I think this has already been hashed out enough, but your 
> points can be drawn back to that.  Portage team is running in one direction, 
> webapps another, GLI a third direction (while kicking anyone who wishes to 
> run with them in the nuts).  In any structured environment I have worked in, 
> you have a heirarchy where everyone, down to the grunts, know where they are 
> heading as an organization, why they are heading that way, and what they can 
> do to help.  Even though groups work on differing things, they know how those 
> things are directly affecting the end goal (mission statement, whatever)

Here's what I find funny.  I work on a project whose main goal is to
work with the other projects to get our releases out the door.  We
coordinate with *every* arch team, along with hardened, embedded, and
infrastructure.  We coordinate with many herds and the portage team.
What exactly would adding some level of indirection via "middle
management" or even some "CEO" add us?  Not a thing.  All it would do is
add one giant bottleneck to our work, reducing productivity.

> Right now, Gentoo has it's cliques that come up with their own things, and to 
> get assistance from another clique you're gonna have to have some ties or 
> work real hard to sell your idea to them.  It's too flat of a model to work 
> for any real innovation, else, as Kurt pointed out, we would have seen some 
> cool stuff in the past couple of years.

...or just ask nicely.  It's amazing how people really downplay the
powerful nature of civility.

> > If this Gentoo project fails/falters (like you seem to think it is
> > heading) you are free to do the same, form your own project with it's
> > own set of rules and leader if you so choose.
> 
> Gentoo won't fail..  I don't believe that is what Kurt or Lance are saying.  I 
> think the point was that Gentoo is not moving at the typical pace of OSS 
> development, and we believe that it is the organizational structure that is 
> holding it back.

Who exactly are you comparing us to here?  Mozilla?  Gnome?  KDE?

I see tons of claims but no examples.  Show me the numbers.

Not to mention we *just* reorganized.  The Council has had how many
meetings now?  How exactly can you tell the capability of a structure
that hasn't even been in existence long enough to have any valid data to
compare against?

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Andrew Gaffney]

Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Thu, 05 Jan 2006 07:18:40 -0600 Andrew Gaffney <agaffney@gentoo.org>
> wrote:
> | What is your problem with the installer project? Over the past year
> | or so, there have been *2* people that complained about us treating
> | them badly.
> 
> Hrm, have the arch teams really left you in peace for an entire year
> now?

I haven't heard a thing from the arch teams, unless, of course, you consider 
yourself to be 2 entire arch teams. All I've heard from you is how the installer 
sucks, python/parted doesn't fit in an initrd, nfs sucks so nfsroot for netboot 
is out of the questions, etc. The only semi-constructive thing you've even given 
me is "rewrite the whole thing in ash".

-- 
Andrew Gaffney                            http://dev.gentoo.org/~agaffney/
Gentoo Linux Developer                                   Installer Project
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Thu, 2006-01-05 at 07:49 -0500, Dan Meltzer wrote:
> > Personally, I *love* the fact that the Hardened team has differing goals
> > from Release Engineering.  I also don't see how our goals could ever
> > really be guided by a single vision.  That doesn't keep us from working
> > together to each accomplish our individual goals.
> >
> 
> Apparently it does.  How many huge threads have you seen lately that
> accomplished nothing?  How many threads have people started with great
> ideas, only to give up in disgust because people cause a huge fuss
> about small details, and nothing ever gets accomplished?  Quite a few.

Sure, and how many are going on in the background without so much as a
peep because people are working together?  Take *any* Gentoo release and
you'll see that an awful lot of work gets done without flame wars and
name calling.  Sometimes bad things happen.  Most of the time,
everything goes as planned.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Kurt Lieber]

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On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 07:51:39AM -0500 or thereabouts, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> This is what I don't get.  So what if Gentoo is an amoeba?  Does it
> really matter?  Would you rather that we dropped Gentoo/ALT, Hardened,
> Embedded, and anything else interesting just so we can focus on a "core
> technology" of some sort?  Remember that we are not out to make money.
> We are a not-for-profit for a reason.  We don't have to answer to
> investors and shareholders.

Gentoo will cease to be relevant if we continue as-is.  Maybe not tomorrow
or next month, but within a couple of years, we'll be Just Another
Slackware.  Personally, I don't want that.  If other folks do, then that's
OK.  

> I welcome you to fork Gentoo to do this.  I'll be glad to assist you in
> any way that I can without giving up my ideas for where I want to take
> my projects within Gentoo.  I respect that you should do the same,
> rather than hijack the distribution as a whole for your own purposes.

"my own purposes" are simply that Gentoo remains relevant.  I think it has
some great ideas and a great core technology.  I'd hate to see for all that
to be relegated to some hobbyist distro that people tinker around on but
nobody takes seriously.

Maybe you have a different vision for Gentoo.  If so, I respect that, but
please don't accuse me of trying to hijack anything.  I expressed an
opinion and you took my words and twisted them against me.  This is a
perfect example of why Gentoo's never going to go anywhere.  We fight too
much amongst ourselves. 

--kurt

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Thu, 2006-01-05 at 14:22 +0000, Kurt Lieber wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 07:51:39AM -0500 or thereabouts, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> > This is what I don't get.  So what if Gentoo is an amoeba?  Does it
> > really matter?  Would you rather that we dropped Gentoo/ALT, Hardened,
> > Embedded, and anything else interesting just so we can focus on a "core
> > technology" of some sort?  Remember that we are not out to make money.
> > We are a not-for-profit for a reason.  We don't have to answer to
> > investors and shareholders.
> 
> Gentoo will cease to be relevant if we continue as-is.  Maybe not tomorrow
> or next month, but within a couple of years, we'll be Just Another
> Slackware.  Personally, I don't want that.  If other folks do, then that's
> OK.

What makes you think this?  What empirical evidence do you have that
proves that Gentoo is dying?  All I see is more and more people using
Gentoo for more and more things.  Sure, Gentoo is no longer the talk of
the town that it used to be, but that's going to happen with any
distribution as it comes to age.  It gets replaced in the news by the
new kid on the block that is the flavor of the week.  Then again, I
don't see what's wrong with Slackware, so perhaps I simply can't follow
your train of thought.

> > I welcome you to fork Gentoo to do this.  I'll be glad to assist you in
> > any way that I can without giving up my ideas for where I want to take
> > my projects within Gentoo.  I respect that you should do the same,
> > rather than hijack the distribution as a whole for your own purposes.
> 
> "my own purposes" are simply that Gentoo remains relevant.  I think it has
> some great ideas and a great core technology.  I'd hate to see for all that
> to be relegated to some hobbyist distro that people tinker around on but
> nobody takes seriously.

Who doesn't take us seriously?  For that matter, who does?  You want to
be taken seriously?  Spend money on marketing Gentoo.

The only real issue I see with Gentoo's market penetration is that we
don't have the mind share necessary to continue to grow at the pace that
we once did.  This is due to not only our reaching a certain critical
mass, but also because of relative newcomers such as Ubuntu that will
always pull a certain group of people.  Once the next new hotness comes
out, those same people will jump the Ubuntu ship to whatever that new
flavor of the week happens to be.  This is a pretty constant and
continual cycle within Linux.  Again, I see you focusing solely on the
Linux aspect of Gentoo.

So what is Gentoo to you?  Portage?  Gentoo Linux?

> Maybe you have a different vision for Gentoo.  If so, I respect that, but
> please don't accuse me of trying to hijack anything.  I expressed an
> opinion and you took my words and twisted them against me.  This is a
> perfect example of why Gentoo's never going to go anywhere.  We fight too
> much amongst ourselves.

Really, I don't have any vision for Gentoo and I like it that way.  I
work to improve Gentoo.  If that ends in Gentoo becoming the premiere
distribution for the enterprise, or simply the best distribution for
basing your own distribution from, I don't care.  I work on Gentoo
because I enjoy it, not because I ever expected it to "go anywhere" at
all.  Yes, I twisted your words against you.  I'll freely admit it.  Why
did I do it?  I did it simply to prove a point.  I am attempting to show
that what you are proposing is not very well thought out and really
reads to many people, not just myself, as "You should play ball my way,
or get off the court."  Whether that was what you intended or not, that
is how it reads at least to me.  I can now see that your intentions are
not quite what you originally implied, so I do apologise for it only
insofar as where I have misrepresented you, but my statements still
stand in all other regards.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò]

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On Thursday 05 January 2006 13:24, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> No, that's censored to only display what certain people want it to say
> rather than the truth of what's going on.
planet.gentoo.org/universe ?
I have yet to see anything, from rants to personal notes, that didn't got 
there (for what I've wrote).

-- 
Diego "Flameeyes" Pettenò - http://dev.gentoo.org/~flameeyes/
Gentoo/ALT lead, Gentoo/FreeBSD, Video, AMD64, Sound, PAM, KDE

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Stuart Herbert]

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On 1/5/06, Kurt Lieber <klieber@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> Maybe you have a different vision for Gentoo.  If so, I respect that, but
> please don't accuse me of trying to hijack anything.  I expressed an
> opinion and you took my words and twisted them against me.  This is a
> perfect example of why Gentoo's never going to go anywhere.  We fight too
> much amongst ourselves.


Hear hear.

I feel that one of the causes of this is that not enough of us know each
other well enough.  We only ever manage to get a handful of developers in
the same place at the same time.

Something useful that the trustees & council could do is to organise an
annual Gentoo developer conference.  Yes it will cost - but surely one
function of a layer of management is to find budgets? :)


Best regards,
Stu

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Stuart Herbert]

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On 1/5/06, Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> So what is Gentoo to you?  Portage?  Gentoo Linux?
>
>From www.gentoo.org:

Page title: "Gentoo Linux - Gentoo Linux News"

"We produce Gentoo Linux, a special flavor of Linux that can be
automatically optimized and customized for just about any application or
need.  Extreme performance, configurability, and a top-notch user and
developer community are all hallmarks of the Gentoo experience."

The "about us" page also calls us "Gentoo Linux" at every term.

We're still claiming to be a Linux distro.

Best regards,
Stu

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Lance Albertson]

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Chris Gianelloni wrote:

> Really, I don't have any vision for Gentoo and I like it that way. 

Amazing words to come from Gentoo's release manager. We might as well
call our releases 'maintenance updates' then if thats the case.

I give up on this whole thread. I was hoping people would see past the
automatic "OMG!! We can't have a leader because it would restrict what I
can do!" mentality. But apparently that isn't the case here. Yes, we
didn't have the best experience with previous attempts at having some
kind of a leader. And automatically thinking that it'll turn into a
corporate bureaucratic mess is also incorrect. If you can open up your
mind and see past those automatic assumptions and see the value it would
be amazing.

Anyways, as I said. I give up on this getting anywhere.

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

---
GPG Public Key:  <http://www.ramereth.net/lance.asc>
Key fingerprint: 0423 92F3 544A 1282 5AB1  4D07 416F A15D 27F4 B742

ramereth/irc.freenode.net

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò]

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On Thursday 05 January 2006 15:59, Stuart Herbert wrote:
> Page title: "Gentoo Linux - Gentoo Linux News"
Yeah ok, let me end up these holidays, and I'll prepare a written request to 
change the Linux part in something else (Land if you want to keep the L, or 
I'll try to find a name we can use)... we deserve it as Gentoo/FreeBSD is at 
a level not so far from Gentoo Linux, and Gentoo for Mac OSX is still going 
on.

-- 
Diego "Flameeyes" Pettenò - http://dev.gentoo.org/~flameeyes/
Gentoo/ALT lead, Gentoo/FreeBSD, Video, AMD64, Sound, PAM, KDE

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Kurt Lieber]

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On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 08:07:14AM -0500 or thereabouts, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> Sounds like you'd rather take Gentoo back a few years to the days before
> Hardened/Embedded/Alt.  I guess we really should just be "Gentoo Linux"
> and ignore all of the progress and work that has been made in all of
> these other areas simply because it doesn't fit with your goals.  

I've never stated any specific goals.  I've simply said we should have
some.  Please stop putting words in my mouth.  

> I'd like to also propose that we drop support for sparc, mips, sh, m68k,
> s390, arm, and alpha, since they detract from our main goals of providing
> amd64/ppc/x86 releases.  After all, who really uses those "other" arches
> anyway but a bunch of guys that never have good ideas or improve quality
> of the distribution as a whole and constantly distract us away from
> getting anything constructive done?

straw man argument. Maybe the best direction for gentoo is focusing on
embedded, maybe it's focusing on x86, maybe it's dropping Linux entirely
and moving over to OpenSolaris and building tools around that.  I never
stated any opinions in this area so why are you trying to state them for
me? 

It's pathetic that we, as a distribution, cannot have a civil discussion of
any kind.

--kurt

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Patrick Lauer]

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On Thu, 2006-01-05 at 09:42 -0600, Lance Albertson wrote:
> Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> 
> > Really, I don't have any vision for Gentoo and I like it that way. 
> Amazing words to come from Gentoo's release manager. We might as well
> call our releases 'maintenance updates' then if thats the case.
I guess we're at a point where many parts "just work" - I still have 
some ideas where Gentoo could be improved, but if Chris doesn't and
prefers to do some cat-herding I support him in his lack of vision ;-)

After all, without some level of QA / "managment" all those visions will
end in half-assed prototypes that almost work, but don't do much.
The mundane tasks of keeping the wheels greased so that others can
experiment around shouldn't be dismissed like that ...

> I give up on this whole thread. I was hoping people would see past the
> automatic "OMG!! We can't have a leader because it would restrict what I
> can do!" mentality. But apparently that isn't the case here.
You know as well as I do that any leader will only have a nominal
position
and most devs will just do what they want, bypassing such a person 
whenever necessary. So for now we should focus on how to coordinate our
goals - if we agree that a "leader" is needed, why not, but we should
find out if that is even needed. 
>  Yes, we
> didn't have the best experience with previous attempts at having some
> kind of a leader. And automatically thinking that it'll turn into a
> corporate bureaucratic mess is also incorrect. If you can open up your
> mind and see past those automatic assumptions and see the value it would
> be amazing.
But it's already getting too bureaucratic ;-)
It's getting more and more difficult to get things done, more and more 
people / groups / herds to wait on to decide "obvious" things.

> Anyways, as I said. I give up on this getting anywhere.
That's the spirit. (just kidding, but it is kinda funny)

I noticed that Gentoo seems to have this cycle where all 3 months or so
the same theme comes up, causes a long discussion and then goes nowhere.
And then stuff does happen - maybe it's not obvious, but we're not yet
Debian ;-)

For example - our baselayout supports UML and vServer (almost fully)
native. Most of you won't see that, but to those that do it's something
that's really nice. 

wkr,
Patrick

-- 
Stand still, and let the rest of the universe move

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Thu, 05 Jan 2006 17:20:09 +0100 Patrick Lauer <patrick@gentoo.org>
wrote:
| It's getting more and more difficult to get things done, more and
| more people / groups / herds to wait on to decide "obvious" things.

Hrm, it is? Seems to me that it's no worse that it used to be. It's
just that the stalling points are in different areas.

As for obvious... For any problem there's at least one solution that is
both obvious and wrong...

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (King of all Londinium)
Mail            : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web             : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On 01 Jan 2006 05:30:01 Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org> wrote:
| If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
| vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
| Gentoo dev list to see.

Could you discuss adopting one of the clauses I proposed in the "RFC:
disallowing multiple votes per person in council meetings" thread?

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=113467833000002&r=1&w=2

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (King of all Londinium)
Mail            : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web             : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Thu, 2006-01-05 at 09:42 -0600, Lance Albertson wrote:
> Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> 
> > Really, I don't have any vision for Gentoo and I like it that way. 
> 
> Amazing words to come from Gentoo's release manager. We might as well
> call our releases 'maintenance updates' then if thats the case.

Why not?  Does it really matter?  They *are* maintenance updates.  That
still doesn't change the fact that it is a "release" of some sort.  Our
release media are simply better versions of past media.  They offer more
hardware support and hopefully fewer bugs, but there isn't exactly a
whole lot else going on with them.

Even the new Installer LiveCD images that we are moving towards is
nothing more than a slow evolution from our current InstallCD/PackageCD
setup.  It is a natural progression more than a huge leap.  Sure, it
makes things much easier on new users, but it isn't exactly
revolutionary.

I also am not so presumptuous to say that what I do within Release
Engineering specifically impacts on what you guys do in infra on a day
to day basis, or what the portage team does, or what hardened does.  We
all have our own directions.  When our paths overlap, we cooperate.
When they do not, we stay the hell out of each other's hair.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Thu, 2006-01-05 at 15:51 +0000, Kurt Lieber wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 08:07:14AM -0500 or thereabouts, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> > Sounds like you'd rather take Gentoo back a few years to the days before
> > Hardened/Embedded/Alt.  I guess we really should just be "Gentoo Linux"
> > and ignore all of the progress and work that has been made in all of
> > these other areas simply because it doesn't fit with your goals.  
> 
> I've never stated any specific goals.  I've simply said we should have
> some.  Please stop putting words in my mouth.

On Thu, 2006-01-05 at 03:58 +0000, Kurt Lieber wrote: 
> On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 01:17:06PM -0500 or thereabouts, Chris Gianelloni
> wrote:
> > Do you want to be a part of a project that doesn't allow you to
> > implement some cool new feature because it might make Gentoo slightly
> > harder to use for some people and that's against the mission statement
> > so not allowed?
> 
> Yes, absolutely.

That says to me exactly what I stated that you said.  Whether that was
your intention or not, I honestly do not know.  However, I am not
putting words into your mouth, I am simply restating what you are saying
after my interpretation of it.

On Thu, 2006-01-05 at 04:31 +0000, Kurt Lieber wrote:
> That person should figure out what Gentoo wants to be when it grows up.
> S/he should carefully consult the various stakeholders, look at the
> strengths/weaknesses of Gentoo as it stands currently and then figure out
> where the best direction is for it to proceed.  They should then be
> responsible for making sure everyone (and I mean *everyone*) executes
> according to this direction.  Folks who disagree with the vision will be
> able to go their own direction and start their own projects.  That's the
> beauty of the GPL.

Right here you are explicitly stating that *everyone* should follow the
party line.  How exactly is what I have said false when your own words
say it?

"Play ball or go home" comes to mind.

At any rate, I had already apologized for the impression that you were
given of me putting words into your mouth, however the continued attacks
afterwards have made me reconsider and decide to go back and quote your
*actual* words to keep from causing any confusion on the matter.

> > I'd like to also propose that we drop support for sparc, mips, sh, m68k,
> > s390, arm, and alpha, since they detract from our main goals of providing
> > amd64/ppc/x86 releases.  After all, who really uses those "other" arches
> > anyway but a bunch of guys that never have good ideas or improve quality
> > of the distribution as a whole and constantly distract us away from
> > getting anything constructive done?
> 
> straw man argument. Maybe the best direction for gentoo is focusing on
> embedded, maybe it's focusing on x86, maybe it's dropping Linux entirely
> and moving over to OpenSolaris and building tools around that.  I never
> stated any opinions in this area so why are you trying to state them for
> me? 

...and at what point in that paragraph did I say that you said any of
it?  Also, I'm finding it hilarious to notice that a fellow native
English-speaking American is unable to recognize good ol' sarcasm in its
simplest form.

> It's pathetic that we, as a distribution, cannot have a civil discussion of
> any kind.

We have them all the time.  We also have flame wars all the time.  It's
simply a matter of doing business with over 300 people with a vested
interest and countless numbers of users, all with differing opinions.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Stuart Herbert]

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On 1/5/06, Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> That says to me exactly what I stated that you said.  Whether that was
> your intention or not, I honestly do not know.  However, I am not
> putting words into your mouth, I am simply restating what you are saying
> after my interpretation of it.


For the life of me, I can't see how that quote of Kurt's you used there
backs up your statement in any way, shape, or form.

If you feel that it does, I believe there's been a major misunderstanding
there.

Best regards,
Stu

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Patrick Lauer]

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On Thu, 2006-01-05 at 16:33 +0000, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Thu, 05 Jan 2006 17:20:09 +0100 Patrick Lauer <patrick@gentoo.org>
> wrote:
> | It's getting more and more difficult to get things done, more and
> | more people / groups / herds to wait on to decide "obvious" things.
> 
> Hrm, it is? Seems to me that it's no worse that it used to be. It's
> just that the stalling points are in different areas.
Hmmm ... I get the impression that there are more stalling points

> As for obvious... For any problem there's at least one solution that is
> both obvious and wrong...
Exactly :-) But I guess many among us have become a bit disillusioned and 
try to stay away from what is perceived as useless trolling and silly 
infights. So things either stall in discussion or get implemented with
the "obvious" flawed approach (early webapp-config and portage are good
examples) and then take a long time to become "fixed". There's still a 
lot of good stuff happening, but as someone else said in this thread,
"we suck at execution" :-(

Patrick
-- 
Stand still, and let the rest of the universe move

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Aron Griffis]

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Hi Lance,

You started this thread by proposing that: (1) Gentoo is lacking
a direction/goal, (2) this is supported by the lack of ground breaking
enhancements in the past couple of years.  Later in the thread you
proposed that (3) the solution may be to appoint a single person to
provide a global goal/direction for the project.

Looking first at 1 and 2, I think your assumption that ground-breaking
enhancements are dependent on direction/goal is false.  IMHO any
single project within Gentoo can bring ground-breaking enhancements to
the distribution without being given prior direction from a higher
authority.  The places where Gentoo needs improvement are generally
well-known, and any developer has the power to bring a design and
implementation to the table.  The problem here isn't a lack of
direction, it's a lack of action, particularly in the areas that *you*
consider ground-breaking.  What in particular would you like to see?

So, keeping in mind that any developer can bring a plan to the table,
my understanding of the council is this: In cases where a plan
requires broader changes, the role of the council is to make sure that
the plan makes sense in the context of Gentoo, where "context" is
defined as history, philosophy, and the collection of goals defined by
the other projects.  It is not the role of the council to cook up the
plan, that can be done by any developer(s), including council members
if they have any brilliant ideas. ;-)

Finally, looking at 3, that statement depends on the relationship
between direction/goal and ground-breaking enhancements.  If that
relationship does not exist, then 3 is moot: Appointing a single
individual to lead the project will not have an effect of generating
ground-breaking enhancements.

Personally, I agree with Grant's and Chris's comments in this thread.
There have been some positive changes in the past couple years, and
there are people working hard to bring more about.  Hopefully we're
cultivating an environment where the next major enhancement is just
around the corner.  What will it be?  I'm in favor of leaving that to
the individual projects to determine.

Regards,
Aron

--
Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Michael Cummings]

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On Thu, 2006-01-05 at 09:42 -0600, Lance Albertson wrote:
> Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> 
> > Really, I don't have any vision for Gentoo and I like it that way. 

I know you meant this as sarcasm - but i'd second that. I originally
favored just calling them snapshots since that's all the iso's were - a
snapshot of the tree on day X.

~mcummings


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Kurt Lieber]

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On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 11:37:32AM -0500 or thereabouts, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> That says to me exactly what I stated that you said.  

Then it's apparent we're not communicating well.  I'll leave it at that,
thank you for sharing your opinions and put this thread to bed.

--kurt

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Michael Cummings]

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On Thu, 2006-01-05 at 16:46 +0100, Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò wrote:
> On Thursday 05 January 2006 15:59, Stuart Herbert wrote:
> > Page title: "Gentoo Linux - Gentoo Linux News"
> Yeah ok, let me end up these holidays, and I'll prepare a written request to 
> change the Linux part in something else (Land if you want to keep the L, or 
> I'll try to find a name we can use)... we deserve it as Gentoo/FreeBSD is at 
> a level not so far from Gentoo Linux, and Gentoo for Mac OSX is still going 
> on.
> 
I ask about the use of the phrase "Gentoo Linux" once upon ago, and I
think it was either grant or doug (heck, maybe it was the elusive
spider ;) that pointed out that there is "Gentoo Linux" - that's where
you install the kernel, baselayout, etc., and that's the part that can
never be dropped, and there's "Gentoo the MetaDistribution" which
includes the linux, but also includes the various ports. But in the end
- we still produce gentoo linux and adapt ourselves to other's os' (or
them to us as the case may be) as we can. i feel like i'm starting to
ramble, but the point is that first and foremost we are a linux distro
(would you put portage on slack? ubuntu? mandriva?) who also wears the
hat of a metadistro - the distinction being in the system built with
gentoo and the system built from gentoo...

~mcummings

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Greg KH]

On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 07:56:30AM -0500, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> 
> You guys are more than welcome to go apply at Red Hat or Novell.

Some of us already work for companies that produce other Linux
distributions or support the companies that do. :)

thanks,

greg k-h
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Carsten Lohrke]

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On Thursday 05 January 2006 11:26, Duncan wrote:
> This man speaks my mind.  That's one of the things I'm worried about with
> the Enterprise Gentoo thing, and why I think it will make a better
> separate project than part of Gentoo itself.

I agree mostly, too. Just that QA has more aspects than "cool nifty package x 
that has bleeding edge dep y, with dep y sitting due to QA concerns", to 
quote Brian. A QA team can work concurrently to other subprojects of Gentoo, 
spot testing ebuild quality, checking e.g. for correct dependencies and 
licenses (I stumpled about four false ones the last few months) and a lot of 
other things without slowing development down. It's a pity, that we don't 
have an proactive QA team.

The complaints about Gentoo having no direction, sound (at least in my ears) 
more like "Gentoo is not heading in the direction I want to have it." - so, 
attract developers who work with you on your goals (We don't have enough devs 
anyways, ~10% unmaintained packages in the tree speak for themselves) within 
Gentoo. I for one can't say we haven't seen a lot of improvements in 
different subprojects, just that it takes time.


> see the  history of the Panama canal for instance, but it takes a *LOT* of 
work

Odd comparison, having in mind how much lives it did cost.


Carsten

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Carsten Lohrke]

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On Thursday 05 January 2006 16:46, Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò wrote:
> Yeah ok, let me end up these holidays, and I'll prepare a written request
> to change the Linux part in something else

You should also contact the folks working on the gentoo.org redesign. While 
there was a bit of fuss about the infinity symbol, I always wondered why no 
one lost a word against the "Linux" below, given that we claim to provide a 
meta-distribution.


Carsten

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Aron Griffis]

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Hi Kurt,

Kurt Lieber wrote:	[Wed Jan 04 2006, 11:31:30PM EST]
> > Ok, then what should Gentoo do to fix this percieved decline?
> 
> Exactly what a lot of folks will have kittens about; appoint a CEO,
> leader, boss, manager, etc.  (you know, all those corporate-type
> words that raise the hackles of nearly everyone on this list.)

I think there is a Post Hoc fallacy happening here: A happened before
B, therefore A must be causing B.  In the case at hand: A = loss of
leader, B = lack of progress.  While A might be the cause of B, it is
dangerous to jump to that conclusion without more than the sequence as
support.

I don't think I can solidly refute the possibility of a relationship,
but here is some food for thought:

First, Gentoo's developers are not going to follow a leader's
direction unless they sincerely agree with it.  Since we're all
volunteers, the only cooperative work we're going to see is when
people agree with a goal.  Therefore it doesn't matter whether you
name somebody "our leader" or if they're just another developer,
either way they're going to have to convince people to play along.
Our current model already allows for centralized leadership via
meritocracy: any developer can step up to the plate and be king for
the day, they just have to have a good idea and convince others to go
along with it.  

Second, I think the factualness of B is in question.  A few people
have brought up examples of progress being made within Gentoo.  The
problem here appears to be that the progress being made is not in the
same areas where some people are looking.  Which brings up the
question: How is Gentoo falling short in your eyes?  Are you certain
that those specific areas are related to the non-existence of a boss?

Regards,
Aron

--
Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Curtis Napier]

Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Thu, 5 Jan 2006 12:09:09 +0000 Tom Martin <slarti@gentoo.org> wrote:
> | > If you'd like to see more interesting or innovative changes, start
> | > by looking into how we can make it easier for developers to
> | > advertise what they've been doing.
> | 
> | planet.g.o?
> 
> No, that's censored to only display what certain people want it to say
> rather than the truth of what's going on.
> 


Censored? Please expand on this, how is it censored? I thought we were 
allowed to put anything Gentoo related we want to in our Gentoo blog?
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Thu, 2006-01-05 at 17:04 -0500, Curtis Napier wrote:
> Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> > On Thu, 5 Jan 2006 12:09:09 +0000 Tom Martin <slarti@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > | > If you'd like to see more interesting or innovative changes, start
> > | > by looking into how we can make it easier for developers to
> > | > advertise what they've been doing.
> > | 
> > | planet.g.o?
> > 
> > No, that's censored to only display what certain people want it to say
> > rather than the truth of what's going on.
> > 
> 
> 
> Censored? Please expand on this, how is it censored? I thought we were 
> allowed to put anything Gentoo related we want to in our Gentoo blog?

I dare you to say something about how Genesi sucks and your Pegasos is a
piece of junk... :P

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Carsten Lohrke]

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On Thursday 05 January 2006 23:04, Curtis Napier wrote:
> > No, that's censored to only display what certain people want it to say
> > rather than the truth of what's going on.
>
> Censored? Please expand on this, how is it censored? I thought we were
> allowed to put anything Gentoo related we want to in our Gentoo blog?

It's censored in the sense, that you limit the audience. Blog's are not suited 
for general information/discussion, because no one wants to monitor dozens of 
them and follow multiple threads on different web pages on one and the same 
topic. Weblogs are useful for people who feel it's necessary to have their 
own prominent place to raise their voice - a self-projection thingie, that's 
all. And therefore 99,5% of all the blogs are superfluous. Also a blog owner 
controls the comments and can delete them as he likes (less important, since 
it lets him not look good, but he can).

To make it short: When you really have something important to say, post it to 
the appropriate mailing list - and post the whole text, not a ridiculous link 
to your blog, most people are not interested in and won't read! The same goes 
for our userbase: They're right to expect a single source of general 
information and one for security information, but not being forced to follow 
lots of blogs.


Carsten



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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Greg KH]

On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 04:31:30AM +0000, Kurt Lieber wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 04, 2006 at 07:57:06PM -0800 or thereabouts, Greg KH wrote:
> > > Which is why Gentoo has jumped the shark and is now on a long, slow
> > > decline.
> > 
> > Ok, then what should Gentoo do to fix this percieved decline?
> 
> Exactly what a lot of folks will have kittens about; appoint a CEO, leader,
> boss, manager, etc.  (you know, all those corporate-type words that raise
> the hackles of nearly everyone on this list.)
> 
> Right now, Gentoo is this gigantic, obese amoeba that just sort of sits in
> one place.  Different parts of it try to go in different directions, with
> the net result being that the whole body never goes anywhere.  We haven't
> done anything interesting or innovative over the last...year?  two years?
> We have no effective leadership whatsoever.  We spend far too much time
> arguing amongst ourselves instead of working as a team towards a common
> goal.  

Like others have pointed out, I think the problem is you either are:
	- not looking in the proper place
	- have the goals you want to see happen, happen.

The first one can be handled in a variety of different ways, and is
sometimes easily overlooked due to the slow incremental improvements
that happen over time.  One only has to look back over a longer period
of time to see the changes and realize how good they are (as an example,
I _love_ the baselayout stuff that has happened over the past year or
so, it's flexible and works very well, much nicer than any other rc
based system I've seen for a Linux distro.  Huge props out to those
developers.)

The second one can be easily handled by getting out there, stating your
goals, and working to solve them yourself.  Like any opensource project,
people work on what they want to work on, and you can't tell anyone what
to do, without resistance (well, there are ways to do this, but that's
for another time...)

> We should appoint one person to lead the project.  Make sure that person
> knows WTF they're doing, are respected by the right developers, has a good
> vision for Gentoo and then let them make decisions.  Expect people to
> adhere to the decisions and, if they don't, invite them to find other
> opportunities for their creative outlet.

Decisions are one thing.  Results are another.  Decisions are easy to
make, but convincing others to do your bidding is tough :)

> That person should figure out what Gentoo wants to be when it grows up.
> S/he should carefully consult the various stakeholders, look at the
> strengths/weaknesses of Gentoo as it stands currently and then figure out
> where the best direction is for it to proceed.  They should then be
> responsible for making sure everyone (and I mean *everyone*) executes
> according to this direction.  Folks who disagree with the vision will be
> able to go their own direction and start their own projects.  That's the
> beauty of the GPL. 

Ok, for example, the "enterprise" stuff for Gentoo?  I think the only
thing holding that back are getting the work done.  All of the
infrastructure is there to do it, it will only take a lot of time and
effort to achieve it.  So, gather the people who want to do it, and go
do it, that too is easily achievable due to the beauty of the GPL :)

But that doesn't require a great "leader" to accomplish.  And I think
our current mis-mash of director board is actually good for us in that
it handles the things we need to have handled (pissing matches between
developers, infrastructure things, etc.) and keeps out of everyone
else's way :)

> Anyway, I have no illusions of this idea ever being implemented in the
> current Gentoo environment.  /shrug.  It was a good ride.

I hear Debian is still looking for developers.  Oh wait, they are having
worse problems for real than people are perceiving we are having :)

Thanks for your comments, hopefully some good will come of this thread.
If not, I'm sure the developers who are actively working on integrating
good things into Gentoo will continue to do so.

thanks,

greg k-h
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Curtis Napier]

Carsten Lohrke wrote:
> On Thursday 05 January 2006 16:46, Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò wrote:
> 
>>Yeah ok, let me end up these holidays, and I'll prepare a written request
>>to change the Linux part in something else
> 
> 
> You should also contact the folks working on the gentoo.org redesign. While 
> there was a bit of fuss about the infinity symbol, I always wondered why no 
> one lost a word against the "Linux" below, given that we claim to provide a 
> meta-distribution.
> 
> 
> Carsten

I was thinking the exact same thing when I was reading this thread. 
Removing the "linux" from the logo would only take a few minutes if it's 
decided to drop it. I'll follow this and make the change if/when it's 
necessary.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Philip Webb]

On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 04:31:30AM +0000, Kurt Lieber wrote:
> appoint a CEO, leader, boss, manager, etc. all those corporate-type words
> that raise the hackles of nearly everyone on this list.
> We have no effective leadership whatsoever.  We spend far too much time
> arguing among ourselves instead of working as a team towards a common goal.  
> We should appoint one person to lead the project.  Make sure
> that person knows WTF they're doing, are respected by the right developers,
> has a good vision for Gentoo and then let them make decisions.
> Expect people to adhere to the decisions and, if they don't,
> invite them to find other opportunities for their creative outlet.
> That person should figure out what Gentoo wants to be when it grows up.
> S/he should carefully consult the various stakeholders,
> look at the strengths/weaknesses of Gentoo as it stands currently
> and then figure out where the best direction is for it to proceed.
> They should then be responsible for making sure everyone
> executes according to this direction.  I have no illusions
> of this idea ever being implemented in the current Gentoo environment.
> /shrug.  It was a good ride.

</spectate>

After reading -- quickly -- this thread for a day or two,
to see what Gentoo devs are thinking, I'm surprised
anyone has been taking this rubbish seriously enough to reply at length.
The final line suggests the writer has no serious interest in Gentoo.

A "boss" owns the company or at least has been appointed by its owners
to manage it on their behalf.  He hires & pays employees to do his bidding.
Gentoo is not a company, has no employees & no money to pay them with.

"Appoint one person to lead": the Germans did that back in 1933
-- as did the French in 1799, the Russians in 1917 & the Chinese in 1949 --
& we have had a long time to reflect on the kind of thing which results.
The community which achieved the most with the least in human history
was ancient Athens, which was even less directed than Gentoo.
Democracy ?  Consensus ?  Co-operative efforts ?  Rational discussion ?
Apparently they are of no interest to the OP.

As soon as anyone starts to order Gentoo devs to do anything,
they will leave & not come back & the project really will die a prompt death.
What makes it work is precisely "arguing among ourselves".

All this should be utterly clear to anyone involved in developing Gentoo.
Can we please get back to something important, like the news GLEP ?

<spectate>

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,  Philip Webb : purslow@chass.utoronto.ca
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|  Centre for Urban & Community Studies
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'  University of Toronto
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Kurt Lieber]

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On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 11:23:07PM -0500 or thereabouts, Philip Webb wrote:
> The final line suggests the writer has no serious interest in Gentoo.

Do your research.  You know not of what you speak.

> "Appoint one person to lead": the Germans did that back in 1933

Excellent.  I declare Godwin's law.  Can we please all move on now? 

--kurt

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Mike Frysinger]

On Tuesday 03 January 2006 11:05, Grant Goodyear wrote:
> Henrik Brix Andersen wrote: [Sun Jan 01 2006, 05:35:26PM CST]
> > On Sun, Jan 01, 2006 at 05:30:01AM +0000, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> > > If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
> > > vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
> > > Gentoo dev list to see.
> >
> > I would like GLEP 45 [1] - GLEP date format - to be discussed and
> > voted on.
>
> I doubt that GLEP 45 really needs a vote by the full council.  The lead
> GLEP editor's decision should probably suffice for something this
> trivial.  (Recall that the GLEP process is that the GLEP author let's
> the GLEP editors know when a GLEP is ready to go up for approval, and
> that it is generally the editors who work out precisely who needs to
> approve the thing.)

that's fine by me ... although i doubt anyone on the council would be against 
it and it'd be voted in with little to no discussion ;)
-mike
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-dev] Re: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Duncan]

Carsten Lohrke posted <200601052030.36308.carlo@gentoo.org>, excerpted
below,  on Thu, 05 Jan 2006 20:30:27 +0100:

> On Thursday 05 January 2006 16:46, Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò wrote:
>> Yeah ok, let me end up these holidays, and I'll prepare a written request
>> to change the Linux part in something else
> 
> You should also contact the folks working on the gentoo.org redesign. While 
> there was a bit of fuss about the infinity symbol, I always wondered why no 
> one lost a word against the "Linux" below, given that we claim to provide a 
> meta-distribution.

Well, for that matter, "distribution" is considered at least by my *BSD
friends, to be a peculiarly Linux term.  From their perspective, Linux has
1001 "distributions", but they only have the one *BSD they choose to use. 
They don't consider BSD fragmented, even with multiple "distributions" as
it were, because each BSD is its own thing, yet at the same time, no Linux
is its own thing, it's fragmented into 1001 "distributions".

So, while Gentoo is certainly more than Linux, even maintaining the
"metadistribution" term in the definition, will be the same thing as
keeping the "Linux", from the viewpoint of the many tending toward the BSD
side of the FLOSS community.

What word to use in place of "distribution", when one wants to include the
BSDs and other "non-distributions" as well, other than
Linux/BSD[/*ix]][/OSX], or simply *ix... *IS* there such a term?

-- 
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: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Jon Portnoy]

On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 01:37:45AM -0700, Duncan wrote:
> 
> What word to use in place of "distribution", when one wants to include the
> BSDs and other "non-distributions" as well, other than
> Linux/BSD[/*ix]][/OSX], or simply *ix... *IS* there such a term?
> 

Well we could say "meta operating system" if we wanted to be really 
stupid, or we could just admit that we don't have to make a bunch of 
anal terminology nerds happy and continue on using sane naming

-- 
Jon Portnoy
avenj/irc.freenode.net
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Patrick Lauer]

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On Thu, 2006-01-05 at 23:23 -0500, Philip Webb wrote:
> After reading -- quickly -- this thread for a day or two,
> to see what Gentoo devs are thinking, I'm surprised
> anyone has been taking this rubbish seriously enough to reply at length.
> The final line suggests the writer has no serious interest in Gentoo.
I'd say the writer has an interest in Gentoo that does not fully overlap
with what has happened lately and wants to see things move
differently ...

> "Appoint one person to lead": the Germans did that back in 1933
> -- as did the French in 1799, the Russians in 1917 & the Chinese in 1949 --
dude ... like ... y'know ... the americans have one of those, too?
That was a really unneeded comment.

> & we have had a long time to reflect on the kind of thing which results.
... but still haven't learned much yet I think

> The community which achieved the most with the least in human history
> was ancient Athens, which was even less directed than Gentoo.
How about the Mongols or Turks? Atlantis? 

> Democracy ?  Consensus ?  Co-operative efforts ?  Rational discussion ?
> Apparently they are of no interest to the OP.
hmmm?
> As soon as anyone starts to order Gentoo devs to do anything,
> they will leave & not come back & the project really will die a prompt death.
> What makes it work is precisely "arguing among ourselves".
Inefficient. The collective demands to assimilate your individuality.


-- 
Stand still, and let the rest of the universe move

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò]

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On Friday 06 January 2006 09:37, Duncan wrote:
> Well, for that matter, "distribution" is considered at least by my *BSD
> friends, to be a peculiarly Linux term.  From their perspective, Linux has
> 1001 "distributions", but they only have the one *BSD they choose to use.
That's what we started changing. Gentoo/FreeBSD is by all means a FreeBSD 
distribution (actually, PC-BSD started this a bit before of us).
We didn't fork it to change the base system, we use FreeBSD basesystem and 
portage, so it's not like others BSD.

-- 
Diego "Flameeyes" Pettenò - http://dev.gentoo.org/~flameeyes/
Gentoo/ALT lead, Gentoo/FreeBSD, Video, AMD64, Sound, PAM, KDE

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[gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Duncan]

Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò posted
<200601061223.57432@enterprise.flameeyes.is-a-geek.org>, excerpted below, 
on Fri, 06 Jan 2006 12:23:52 +0100:

> On Friday 06 January 2006 09:37, Duncan wrote:
>> Well, for that matter, "distribution" is considered at least by my *BSD
>> friends, to be a peculiarly Linux term.  From their perspective, Linux has
>> 1001 "distributions", but they only have the one *BSD they choose to use.
> That's what we started changing. Gentoo/FreeBSD is by all means a FreeBSD 
> distribution (actually, PC-BSD started this a bit before of us).
> We didn't fork it to change the base system, we use FreeBSD basesystem and 
> portage, so it's not like others BSD.

And I definitely wish you well in your G/FBSD efforts, but when I
mentioned them on my local ISP's unix (*ix) group, the FBSD groupies
reaction was  "Yuck!"

Tell me, from someone who obviously has some FBSD experience, what
advantages does Gentoo/FreeBSD have over the normal FreeBSD?  Why would
someone use it who is currently using regular FreeBSD, and why are you
spending the time?  There are obviously reasons, as you're a very
talented person spending quite a bit of time on the project, but equally
obviously, I'm not familiar enough with them to make a good G/FBSD
representative, at this point.

(If you like and don't consider this topical for the list or thread, mail
me.  If I have the question, however, it's possible others do as well,
and just haven't asked, so maybe it is worth keeping to the list. 
Whatever.  /I'm/ interested, anyway.)

TIA

-- 
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: Re: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò]

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On Friday 06 January 2006 16:15, Duncan wrote:
> And I definitely wish you well in your G/FBSD efforts, but when I
> mentioned them on my local ISP's unix (*ix) group, the FBSD groupies
> reaction was  "Yuck!"
Same for FreeBSD devs that tries to hinder us. But why? They think to be the 
keeper of The Only Truth? Well the "bsd is dying" joke born for that reason.
Check on my blog if you want to know why I continue working on this and I 
continue thinking it's a good way to _improve_ software. Might not have, 
right now, any appeal to sysadmins, but it has some advantages (and some 
drawbacks, as everything), and I like the improvements.
But this is not the place to discute this.

-- 
Diego "Flameeyes" Pettenò - http://dev.gentoo.org/~flameeyes/
Gentoo/ALT lead, Gentoo/FreeBSD, Video, AMD64, Sound, PAM, KDE

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Grobian]

You better bring this up on the gentoo-alt mailing list.  Please
consider posting it there instead of going in a private discussion.

On 06-01-2006 08:15:42 -0700, Duncan wrote:
> And I definitely wish you well in your G/FBSD efforts, but when I
> mentioned them on my local ISP's unix (*ix) group, the FBSD groupies
> reaction was  "Yuck!"
> 
> Tell me, from someone who obviously has some FBSD experience, what
> advantages does Gentoo/FreeBSD have over the normal FreeBSD?  Why would
> someone use it who is currently using regular FreeBSD, and why are you
> spending the time?  There are obviously reasons, as you're a very
> talented person spending quite a bit of time on the project, but equally
> obviously, I'm not familiar enough with them to make a good G/FBSD
> representative, at this point.
> 
> (If you like and don't consider this topical for the list or thread, mail
> me.  If I have the question, however, it's possible others do as well,
> and just haven't asked, so maybe it is worth keeping to the list. 
> Whatever.  /I'm/ interested, anyway.)
> 
> TIA

-- 
Fabian Groffen
Gentoo/Alt
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Jon Portnoy]

On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 08:15:42AM -0700, Duncan wrote:
> 
> Tell me, from someone who obviously has some FBSD experience, what
> advantages does Gentoo/FreeBSD have over the normal FreeBSD?  Why would
> someone use it who is currently using regular FreeBSD, and why are you
> spending the time?  There are obviously reasons, as you're a very
> talented person spending quite a bit of time on the project, but equally
> obviously, I'm not familiar enough with them to make a good G/FBSD
> representative, at this point.
> 

I'll probably be using it sometime soon because ports is archaic at best

-- 
Jon Portnoy
avenj/irc.freenode.net
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[gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Re: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Duncan]

Grobian posted <20060106153346.GC4882@gentoo.org>, excerpted below,  on
Fri, 06 Jan 2006 16:33:46 +0100:

[reply to my question on the purpose of G/FBSD]

> You better bring this up on the gentoo-alt mailing list.  Please
> consider posting it there instead of going in a private discussion.

You sure you want my "disruption" there as well? =8^)

It's now on my todo list to subscribe and come up to speed with current
messages, before posting my own.  That and reading up on Flameeyes' blog,
as he suggested.

Does gmane happen to carry gentoo-alt?  It doesn't seem to, by any name I
could recognize as such, anyway.  If I ask for it to be added, should I
ask for address encryption (gentoo.devel isn't address encrypted on gmane,
but some lists, like the PAN lists I'm a member of, are)?  Is there an
archive anywhere that I can point to, to be added (and to read myself
before posting)?

Hmm..  as I'm looking... looks like the documentation list, which I've
been meaning to join, is on gmane.  Subscribing while I'm thinking about
it...

-- 
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


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Grant Goodyear]

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Duncan wrote: [Fri Jan 06 2006, 09:15:42AM CST]
> Tell me, from someone who obviously has some FBSD experience, what
> advantages does Gentoo/FreeBSD have over the normal FreeBSD?  Why would
> someone use it who is currently using regular FreeBSD, and why are you
> spending the time?  There are obviously reasons, as you're a very
> talented person spending quite a bit of time on the project, but equally
> obviously, I'm not familiar enough with them to make a good G/FBSD
> representative, at this point.

Most of the things that people like about Gentoo have little to do with
the underlying C library, kernel, and userland.  Instead, it's portage,
sane configuration files, and dependency-based start-up scripts that
tend to attract people, and as such it's not surprising that people
would like to have all of that on a nominally *BSD-based system (for
those people who actually do care about the underlying C library,
kernel, and userland).

That's the practical reason.  A slightly more idealistic reason is that
part of the Gentoo philosophy is that packages should work as portably
as possible, and we should be a member-in-good-standing of the
community.  The native *BSD teams have been known to patch their ports
to work on their systems without sending their patches upstream.  We
have a single portage tree that handles packages for all archs (and
OSs), and our Alt teams work hard to generate patches that are (a)
applied independent of arch/os/whatever and (b) sent upstream.  Consequently, 
work on non-Linux actually does a fair bit to improve the entire
community.

-g2boojum-
-- 
Grant Goodyear	
Gentoo Developer
g2boojum@gentoo.org
http://www.gentoo.org/~g2boojum
GPG Fingerprint: D706 9802 1663 DEF5 81B0  9573 A6DC 7152 E0F6 5B76

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Marius Mauch]

Lance Albertson wrote:
> I never meant that each subproject can't have their own goals. They need
> to have those of course! I was more directed that there isn't a person
> in charge of all the subprojects just to keep track of them (Not
> governing them). i.e. if subproject foo is working on adding feature X
> to portage, then this person could make sure the portage people know
> that these folks are wanting to add that feature instead of blind siding
> them. Of course, if we lived in a perfect world, they would go ahead and
> work together like that.

Can you give examples where this has actually been a problem?

Marius
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Donnie Berkholz]

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Hash: SHA1

Jon Portnoy wrote:
| On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 01:37:45AM -0700, Duncan wrote:
|
|>What word to use in place of "distribution", when one wants to include the
|>BSDs and other "non-distributions" as well, other than
|>Linux/BSD[/*ix]][/OSX], or simply *ix... *IS* there such a term?
|>
|
|
| Well we could say "meta operating system" if we wanted to be really
| stupid, or we could just admit that we don't have to make a bunch of
| anal terminology nerds happy and continue on using sane naming

Hey, we could be like Yoper and call ourselves GentooOS!

Donnie
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[gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Re: Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Duncan]

Grant Goodyear posted <20060106171011.GD5051@bmb24.uth.tmc.edu>, excerpted
below,  on Fri, 06 Jan 2006 11:10:11 -0600:

> Most of the things that people like about Gentoo have little to do with
> the underlying C library, kernel, and userland.  Instead, it's portage,
> sane configuration files, and dependency-based start-up scripts that
> tend to attract people, and as such it's not surprising that people
> would like to have all of that on a nominally *BSD-based system (for
> those people who actually do care about the underlying C library,
> kernel, and userland).
> 
> That's the practical reason.  A slightly more idealistic reason is that
> part of the Gentoo philosophy is that packages should work as portably
> as possible, and we should be a member-in-good-standing of the
> community.  The native *BSD teams have been known to patch their ports
> to work on their systems without sending their patches upstream.  We
> have a single portage tree that handles packages for all archs (and
> OSs), and our Alt teams work hard to generate patches that are (a)
> applied independent of arch/os/whatever and (b) sent upstream.  Consequently, 
> work on non-Linux actually does a fair bit to improve the entire
> community.

Clear, short, and simple.  Thanks.

I like the "good citizen" thing, but obviously, that's hardly enough to do
it, because there are so many possible "good citizen" things out there to
do, and too little time to do them all, so there has to be another reason.

You gave one, the stuff that makes Gentoo Gentoo, independent of the
underlying kernel and userland flavor.  That stimulated me to think of
another.  Testing our packages (and the stuff from upstream) on another
base system will by definition catch bugs unseen on a single
kernel/userland, thus making both Gentoo and the upstream packages (since
we submit patches upstream)  more robust.  That's /always/ going to be a
good thing!

Thanks again.  I don't believe I would have seen that particular angle on
my own, or at least not made the connection right away.  Your explanation
made it easy!

-- 
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] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Carsten Lohrke]

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On Sunday 01 January 2006 06:30, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> Keep in mind that every resubmission to the council for review must
> first be sent to the gentoo-dev mailing list 7 days (minimum) before
> being submitted as an agenda item which itself occurs 7 days before the
> meeting.  Simply put, the gentoo-dev mailing list must be notified at
> least 14 days before the meeting itself.

I think I'm too late for this month, but want to put it on the table before I 
forget about it. I'd appreciate a three months moratorium, disallowing 
everyone to add new packages to the tree (despite new dependencies of 
existing packages), so everyone is forced/asked to put his energy in existing 
ebuilds, especially unmaintained ones. Sort of spring-cleaning, because parts 
of the tree look like a dump.


Carsten

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Stuart Herbert]

On 1/8/06, Carsten Lohrke <carlo@gentoo.org> wrote:
> I think I'm too late for this month, but want to put it on the table before I
> forget about it. I'd appreciate a three months moratorium, disallowing
> everyone to add new packages to the tree (despite new dependencies of
> existing packages), so everyone is forced/asked to put his energy in existing
> ebuilds, especially unmaintained ones. Sort of spring-cleaning, because parts
> of the tree look like a dump.

I agree that some cleaning is needed (and some of my packages are
desperate for it!), but I'm totally opposed to this idea.  I think the
idea of shutting up shop for three months (presumably with a "closed
for refurbishment" sign on the door) would let down our users who rely
on us for regular package updates, and would be a massive PR disaster.
 Cleaning is something that has to happen all the time; it needs to be
a natural and sustainable part of what we do every day.

If you feel so strongly about this, why not setup a "cleaning crew"
project that goes around doing exactly this?

Best regards,
Stu

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Brian Harring]

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On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 01:15:22AM +0100, Carsten Lohrke wrote:
> On Sunday 01 January 2006 06:30, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> > Keep in mind that every resubmission to the council for review must
> > first be sent to the gentoo-dev mailing list 7 days (minimum) before
> > being submitted as an agenda item which itself occurs 7 days before the
> > meeting.  Simply put, the gentoo-dev mailing list must be notified at
> > least 14 days before the meeting itself.
> 
> I think I'm too late for this month, but want to put it on the table before I 
> forget about it. I'd appreciate a three months moratorium, disallowing 
> everyone to add new packages to the tree (despite new dependencies of 
> existing packages), so everyone is forced/asked to put his energy in existing 
> ebuilds, especially unmaintained ones. Sort of spring-cleaning, because parts 
> of the tree look like a dump.

-1
Asking people to focus on cleaning the tree?  Sure.  Generate a list 
of candidates would help.  Blocking new packages?  No...

~harring

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Donnie Berkholz]

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Hash: SHA1

Stuart Herbert wrote:
| I agree that some cleaning is needed (and some of my packages are
| desperate for it!), but I'm totally opposed to this idea.  I think the
| idea of shutting up shop for three months (presumably with a "closed
| for refurbishment" sign on the door) would let down our users who rely
| on us for regular package updates, and would be a massive PR disaster.
|  Cleaning is something that has to happen all the time; it needs to be
| a natural and sustainable part of what we do every day.

I inferred "new packages" to be actual new packages and not updates to
existing packages already in the tree.

That's considerably less dramatic than what you're saying.

Thanks,
Donnie
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Stephen Bennett]

On Sun, 8 Jan 2006 01:15:22 +0100
Carsten Lohrke <carlo@gentoo.org> wrote:

> I think I'm too late for this month, but want to put it on the table
> before I forget about it. I'd appreciate a three months moratorium,
> disallowing everyone to add new packages to the tree (despite new
> dependencies of existing packages), so everyone is forced/asked to
> put his energy in existing ebuilds, especially unmaintained ones.
> Sort of spring-cleaning, because parts of the tree look like a dump.

And I'd like to propose disallowing everyone from proposing the wrong
solution to the wrong problem for the next three months.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Carsten Lohrke]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 444 bytes --]

On Sunday 08 January 2006 01:38, Brian Harring wrote:
> Asking people to focus on cleaning the tree?  Sure.  Generate a list
> of candidates would help.  Blocking new packages?  No...

I can't say I did not expect negative replies and "generating a list of 
candidates" is at least a suggestion. But a very weak one if you think about 
it; It would presume that most devs are too dumb to use bugzilla or to grep 
the tree.


Carsten

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Carsten Lohrke]

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On Sunday 08 January 2006 01:35, Stuart Herbert wrote:
> I agree that some cleaning is needed (and some of my packages are
> desperate for it!), but I'm totally opposed to this idea.  I think the
> idea of shutting up shop for three months (presumably with a "closed
> for refurbishment" sign on the door) would let down our users who rely
> on us for regular package updates, and would be a massive PR disaster.
>  Cleaning is something that has to happen all the time; it needs to be
> a natural and sustainable part of what we do every day.

As Donnie already pointed out, I did not mean version bumps, but only new 
packages. How about this idea: Everyone who adds a new package, has to check 
and fix an unmaintained package before. This should be a non-issue for 
seasoned developers, but would slowdown those, who continually add new 
packages without caring for what they should maintain as well as those who 
become new devs, add a bunch of packages and hide again, leaving the 
maintenance to others. This would also have the benefit of continuous QA of 
unmaintained stuff.

Regarding PR: The quality of parts of the tree is more than enough bad PR.

> If you feel so strongly about this, why not setup a "cleaning crew"
> project that goes around doing exactly this?

Don't you think that it is pretty much barefaced to let a small group do the 
dirty, boring and annoying work, while those who don't care a bit can 
continue to do so?!


Carsten

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Brian Harring]

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On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 02:40:47PM +0100, Carsten Lohrke wrote:
> On Sunday 08 January 2006 01:35, Stuart Herbert wrote:
> > I agree that some cleaning is needed (and some of my packages are
> > desperate for it!), but I'm totally opposed to this idea.  I think the
> > idea of shutting up shop for three months (presumably with a "closed
> > for refurbishment" sign on the door) would let down our users who rely
> > on us for regular package updates, and would be a massive PR disaster.
> >  Cleaning is something that has to happen all the time; it needs to be
> > a natural and sustainable part of what we do every day.
> 
> As Donnie already pointed out, I did not mean version bumps, but only new 
> packages. 

> How about this idea: Everyone who adds a new package, has to check 
> and fix an unmaintained package before.

Guessing you missed the previous flame war about how trying to force 
people to do something doesn't actually work?


> This should be a non-issue for 
> seasoned developers, 

You're assuming seasoned devs don't occasionally go MIA on 
QA/maintenance?  It's not the case...


> but would slowdown those who continually add new 
> packages [ snip vitriolic opinions ]

If you've got an issue with devs adding stuff and abandoning/not 
supporting their stuff, hey that's fine, bitch at QA.

Don't go freezing the whole tree just because you're after slapping at 
a couple of devs over perceived wrongs.


> Don't you think that it is pretty much barefaced to let a small group do the 
> dirty, boring and annoying work, while those who don't care a bit can 
> continue to do so?!

If you've got an issue with certain devs (seems to be the case from 
your statement), take it up with QA/ombudsman, not the loop 
around attempt you're doing here.

If you're after trying to decrease the unmaintained packages, like I 
said, generate a list _from the tree_, compare it to bugs, etc.  Do 
the legwork, kick off the effort to cover the gap.

Basically, you want to decrease bugs for unmaintained, decrease the 
gap of maintained vs unmaintained, work on _that_ rather then trying 
to force everyone to drop what they're doing and fix an issue they're 
already working on at their own pace.

Folks *are* handling retirement of unmaintained packages, and taking 
on maintainance of packages already- just watch -dev for the 
occasional announcements if you think otherwise.

~harring

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Paweł Madej]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Carsten Lohrke wrote:
> On Sunday 08 January 2006 01:35, Stuart Herbert wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> As Donnie already pointed out, I did not mean version bumps, but only new 
> packages. How about this idea: Everyone who adds a new package, has to check 
> and fix an unmaintained package before. This should be a non-issue for 
> seasoned developers, but would slowdown those, who continually add new 
> packages without caring for what they should maintain as well as those who 
> become new devs, add a bunch of packages and hide again, leaving the 
> maintenance to others. This would also have the benefit of continuous QA of 
> unmaintained stuff.
> 

In my opinion such prohibition will kill gentoo portage as there were no
new apps and dev's will be sitting with old toys like in a closed room
without windows and doors. If some package is unmaintained it's surely
because users and devs forgotten it, upstream is dead and noone cares if
its actual or not.


- --
Paweł Madej aka Nysander
http://quanteam.info          | http://forum-farmaceutyczne.org
http://nysander.quanteam.info | http://wiki.quanteam.info
GPG key: 5861680B             | keyserver: http://pgp.mit.edu
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Sun, 2006-01-08 at 14:40 +0100, Carsten Lohrke wrote:
> > If you feel so strongly about this, why not setup a "cleaning crew"
> > project that goes around doing exactly this?
> 
> Don't you think that it is pretty much barefaced to let a small group do the 
> dirty, boring and annoying work, while those who don't care a bit can 
> continue to do so?!

Not really...  We already have a QA project.  Join it.  If certain
developers are constantly breaking QA, inform them.  If they continue to
do it after being warned, go to devrel.  While the QA team can go and
clean up some things, it should only really do so *once* and inform the
developer.  Otherwise, the developer might not honestly know that he is
doing something incorrectly, or that anyone is even paying attention.
Doing this allows for a cleanup of the tree, without putting
restrictions arbitrarily on the entire developer pool.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Carsten Lohrke]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1823 bytes --]

On Sunday 08 January 2006 15:01, Brian Harring wrote:
> Guessing you missed the previous flame war about how trying to force
> people to do something doesn't actually work?

When it's not common sense, that every dev is supposed to do a minimal on 
general QA, Gentoo has a problem.

> You're assuming seasoned devs don't occasionally go MIA on
> QA/maintenance?  It's not the case...

I did not assume anything, I propose better QA.

> > but would slowdown those who continually add new
> > packages [ snip vitriolic opinions ]

Thanks for calling something a vitriolic opinion, I did notice a few times, so 
it's a description of what's happening, but does not imply the majority of 
devs do so.

> If you've got an issue with certain devs (seems to be the case from
> your statement), take it up with QA/ombudsman, not the loop
> around attempt you're doing here.
>
> If you're after trying to decrease the unmaintained packages, like I
> said, generate a list _from the tree_, compare it to bugs, etc.  Do
> the legwork, kick off the effort to cover the gap.
>
> Basically, you want to decrease bugs for unmaintained, decrease the
> gap of maintained vs unmaintained, work on _that_ rather then trying
> to force everyone to drop what they're doing and fix an issue they're
> already working on at their own pace.
>
> Folks *are* handling retirement of unmaintained packages, and taking
> on maintainance of packages already- just watch -dev for the
> occasional announcements if you think otherwise.

To answer this paragraph in a short sentence: No, it doesn't work at the 
moment, and yes I'd like everyone would be urged to care a bit more, not 
leaving the legwork to a single person or small group, accepting that devs 
can feel as irresponsible as they like.


Carsten

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Mike Frysinger]

On Thursday 05 January 2006 13:42, Greg KH wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 07:56:30AM -0500, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> > You guys are more than welcome to go apply at Red Hat or Novell.
>
> Some of us already work for companies that produce other Linux
> distributions or support the companies that do. :)

i know i would if i could get hired ;)
-mike
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Thursday 05 January 2006 07:49, Brian Harring wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 04, 2006 at 10:05:52PM -0800, Corey Shields wrote:
> > Where is the centralized vision that everyone is working together
> > here that people not directly related to each project will buy in to
> > and therefore do what they can to see it succeed?
>
> We've had centralized visions for a long while.  Recall use/slot deps?
>
> See them available anywhere?

Those requirements have been there since before 1.0. When the team was 
still smaller.

>
> Vision ofr an installer?  Yes, underway now, but the centralized vision
> really didn't do jack for actually acquring folk to work on it, did
> it (feel free to chime in agaffney since it's effectively yours now a
> days).

Actually we put a lot of effort into starting it off, along with other 
prospective improvement projects. This stuff however stands and falls 
with people being willing to do the work. While I have been instrumental 
in starting it up, I never had time to do the work myself.

> > Portage team is running in one direction,
> > webapps another, GLI a third direction (while kicking anyone who
> > wishes to run with them in the nuts).
>
> Examples would be lovely.
>
Look at gentoo-dev@gentoo.org archives for the last years. I'm not saying 
that this is wrong, or unnatural. It is something that could be expected. 
A group of 300 people is not similar to a team of 40. The big amount of 
developers creates subgroups. That includes communication problems.

> > Gentoo won't fail..  I don't believe that is what Kurt or Lance are
> > saying.  I think the point was that Gentoo is not moving at the
> > typical pace of OSS development, and we believe that it is the
> > organizational structure that is holding it back.
>
> Actually, here's where I'm going to get lynched- (both for bringing up
> anon* after pissing y'all off by asking about it less then 24 hours
> previously, and stepping on other toes).

Organizational structure doesn't mean bureaucracy. We already saw that 
didn't work. Open source organizations are different from normal ones 
though. This includes chronic lack of time for many participants.

> Typical foss project is optimized for one thing, and one thing alone-
> maximal usage of available resources.  It has to be *easy* for folks
> to contribute whatever time they have- this means eliminating as much
> menial/manual work as possible.

Gentoo is not a typical OSS project either. Developing a distribution is 
fundamentally different from developing one application.

> Further, foss has something of a rapid release cycle.  We're actively
> trying to move in the opposite direction if you consider the actual
> implication of trying to widen the unstable keywording gap- I'm not
> stating QA is bad, what I'm stating is that QA explicitly requires
> delays built in (whether via multiple reviews by devs, or letting the
> changes sit for a while).

We try to make a better gentoo. This does not mean do what every other 
foss project does. No matter how applicable.

> Why has gentoo gotten slower as it's gotten larger?  Because the lone
> wolf developer has less bullshit to deal with, they can just hammer
> towards their goal.  Introduce more folk into it, waste more of their
> time syncing up with each other, more time of those who see their
> goal, know how to get their, having to run it past everyone who wants
> to be know what's afoot.

Also remember the lack of stability at that time. And the fact there were 
less packages. And the fact that we had Daniel, who often just said "Yes" 
or "No", shortcutting any decision.

> > Thanks for your comments..   As for management, anyone who reads
> > "Five Dysfunctions of a Team" by Patrick Lencioni[1] will see all of
> > the problems that Gentoo has, as well as the potential Gentoo has if
> > it worked well.
>
> Not trying to stick it to you, but I think what you're pointing at as
> good is fundamentally the issue here- more process tagged into gentoo
> isn't going to help anything, just push us further towards
> debianization (something that's bugged me for the last 18 months I
> might add).

What I think people are arguing about is how to prevent this.

>
> What I've seen with gentoo is bluntly, wasted resources (bit
> intentional in some cases).  We've been progressing more towards
> keeping everyone in the loop rather then letting folks spring on ahead
> and get things done (sometimes with a bit of a mess in the process).
>
> Note I said 'intentional'; seems like people have been pushing for
> gentoo as a whole to slow down (note the enterprise
> concerns/complaints that hit the ml every 6 months for example).

There you've got it wrong in my opinion. Enterprise does not mean slow the 
project down. It means create subproject that at some point takes a 
snapshot of the distribution and makes a stable fork from that that only 
changes for security issues. It should not limit the progress of the 
project itself.

> Dunno.  Maybe it's all a ramble, maybe you think I'm a loon, but final
> point I'm going to make is that pushing for a global solution (whether
> a BDFL or board or committee) totally is missing the actual issue-
> that individuals get things done, the larger the # of folks involved
> in progressing towards something the slower they're going to move.

So you want to solve the problem of making gentoo go forward 300 times. 
Once for each developer. Good luck, I'll put my money on an approach that 
looks at all developers at once. To try to solve things for all (probably 
not once ;-) )

> Central vision, mission statements, etc, that crap, doesn't
> actually accomplish anything; if someone is working towards something,
> someone is working towards it.  Extra beuracray/cruft doesn't
> translate to code however, nor does it really enable faster production
> of code.

What I see as the problem is that gentoo has become quite stable in 
nature. Of course packages get updated, some new features get added to 
portage, and things improve a bit gradually. However in general the idea 
is that the gentoo distribution 1 year from now is not fundamentally 
different / improved from the distribution today. This means that others 
are making innovations and will be getting better than gentoo. I would 
like to keep gentoo the best distribution (for me) around, and as such 
would like gentoo to be more innovative.

There are currently some issues that limit this innovation. First of all, 
there is currently no overall vision of where gentoo will be in say 2 
years. Second, we lack leadership. The council is there to make 
decisions, as was the management team before. The council is intended to 
be an improvement to the non-functioning hierarchy of projects. The 
council should however not be a limiting factor to the improvement of 
gentoo.

If we take that reducing the number of developers to 30 is not going to be 
the solution, we need to find another solution to improve innovation in 
gentoo. Part of that is in infrastructure, like project overlays that 
allow for testing out stuff. Another part is in the organization of 
gentoo. Innovation should be encouraged, while effort should also not go 
wasted on dead projects. Perhaps a single lead would be a way to 
encourage innovation, perhaps not. If enough people think it will, we 
might want to try it out.

Paul

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Friday 06 January 2006 00:17, Carsten Lohrke wrote:
>
> To make it short: When you really have something important to say, post
> it to the appropriate mailing list - and post the whole text, not a
> ridiculous link to your blog, most people are not interested in and
> won't read! The same goes for our userbase: They're right to expect a
> single source of general information and one for security information,
> but not being forced to follow lots of blogs.

Even better,

send a mail to Ulrich, or to the gwn-feedback address, and propose a nice 
article in the GWN, and possibly on the homepage. That's why we have 
them.

Paul

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Thursday 05 January 2006 17:20, Patrick Lauer wrote:
>
> But it's already getting too bureaucratic ;-)
> It's getting more and more difficult to get things done, more and more
> people / groups / herds to wait on to decide "obvious" things.
>
They shouldn't. If there is anything I learned is that a mailing list 
never comes to a "decision". At some point the principal stakeholder (the 
person waiting for the decision) must make a conclusion, and get to work. 
It works. The support was there, people will follow, end else there is 
repoman to force them to ;-).

> For example - our baselayout supports UML and vServer (almost fully)
> native. Most of you won't see that, but to those that do it's something
> that's really nice.

One of the reasons that gentoo is still my favourite distro.

Paul

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Thursday 05 January 2006 18:03, Patrick Lauer wrote:
> Exactly :-) But I guess many among us have become a bit disillusioned
> and try to stay away from what is perceived as useless trolling and
> silly infights. So things either stall in discussion or get implemented
> with the "obvious" flawed approach (early webapp-config and portage are
> good examples) and then take a long time to become "fixed". There's
> still a lot of good stuff happening, but as someone else said in this
> thread, "we suck at execution" :-(

I guess, the council should be more brave, and make decisions like 
rejecting flawed approaches. Even when discussions have not been thrown 
up and re-eaten again.

Paul

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Thursday 05 January 2006 21:09, Aron Griffis wrote:
> I think there is a Post Hoc fallacy happening here: A happened before
> B, therefore A must be causing B.  In the case at hand: A = loss of
> leader, B = lack of progress.  While A might be the cause of B, it is
> dangerous to jump to that conclusion without more than the sequence as
> support.

From what I remember from talking with Daniel, the oposite is more 
through. Daniel felt that things were getting nowhere, he was overloaded 
and brickwalled at the same time, and to make worse had financial 
problems. So indeed rather a fallacy.

> First, Gentoo's developers are not going to follow a leader's
> direction unless they sincerely agree with it.  Since we're all
> volunteers, the only cooperative work we're going to see is when
> people agree with a goal.  Therefore it doesn't matter whether you
> name somebody "our leader" or if they're just another developer,
> either way they're going to have to convince people to play along.
> Our current model already allows for centralized leadership via
> meritocracy: any developer can step up to the plate and be king for
> the day, they just have to have a good idea and convince others to go
> along with it.

People should also notice the difference between leader and boss.

> Second, I think the factualness of B is in question.  A few people
> have brought up examples of progress being made within Gentoo.  The
> problem here appears to be that the progress being made is not in the
> same areas where some people are looking.  Which brings up the
> question: How is Gentoo falling short in your eyes?  Are you certain
> that those specific areas are related to the non-existence of a boss?

Part of it is portage, and that is getting somewhere now. The "boss" 
stepped down, so that others than him can work on it too.

Paul

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net

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[gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Mike Frysinger]

This is your monthly friendly reminder !  Same bat time (typically the
2nd Thursday at 2000 UTC), same bat channel (#gentoo-council @
irc.freenode.net) !

If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
Gentoo dev list to see.

Keep in mind that every GLEP *re*submission to the council for review
must first be sent to the gentoo-dev mailing list 7 days (minimum)
before being submitted as an agenda item which itself occurs 7 days
before the meeting.  Simply put, the gentoo-dev mailing list must be
notified at least 14 days before the meeting itself.

For more info on the Gentoo Council, feel free to browse our homepage:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Mike Frysinger]

This is your monthly friendly reminder !  Same bat time (typically
the 2nd Thursday at 2000 UTC / 1600 EST), same bat channel
(#gentoo-council @ irc.freenode.net) !

If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
Gentoo dev list to see.

Keep in mind that every GLEP *re*submission to the council for review
must first be sent to the gentoo-dev mailing list 7 days (minimum)
before being submitted as an agenda item which itself occurs 7 days
before the meeting.  Simply put, the gentoo-dev mailing list must be
notified at least 14 days before the meeting itself.

For more info on the Gentoo Council, feel free to browse our homepage:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Piotr Jaroszyński]

On Tuesday 01 of January 2008 06:30:01 Mike Frysinger wrote:
> If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
> vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
> Gentoo dev list to see.

I would like council to discuss GLEP 54 and 55.

-- 
Best Regards,
Piotr Jaroszyński
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Caleb Tennis]

> If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
> vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
> Gentoo dev list to see.

I would like to request the council discuss, though not necessarily take action or
vote on, the idea of "slacker arches" and what ebuild maintainers are allowed/can do
to a package versions that are languishing due to not getting stable keywords on
those arches.

I'm not trying to pick on any specific case, but I am hoping to find out if there's
an allowable/acceptable period of time to which if an arch team is unable to
stabilize a package to a newer version, for non-technical reasons, that it's okay to
drop older unstable ebuilds.

I realize this is open to lots of debate and dicussion, and I'm just trying to have
a dialogue as to what is acceptable and hopefully get concensus as to some kind of
guidance that could be added to the devmanual.

Thanks,
Caleb

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Luca Barbato]

Caleb Tennis wrote:
>> If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
>> vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
>> Gentoo dev list to see.
> 
> I would like to request the council discuss, though not necessarily take action or
> vote on, the idea of "slacker arches" and what ebuild maintainers are allowed/can do
> to a package versions that are languishing due to not getting stable keywords on
> those arches.
>

I'd suggest something like "if nobody could test your update in a timely
way you should ask and possibly get an account on an arch box in order
to test it and bump if the minimal test pass"

sounds fair?

lu

-- 

Luca Barbato
Gentoo Council Member
Gentoo/linux Gentoo/PPC
http://dev.gentoo.org/~lu_zero

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Fri, 04 Jan 2008 00:54:50 +0100
Luca Barbato <lu_zero@gentoo.org> wrote:
> I'd suggest something like "if nobody could test your update in a
> timely way you should ask and possibly get an account on an arch box
> in order to test it and bump if the minimal test pass"
> 
> sounds fair?

Sounds like a great way to get more broken packages, which means more
work for arch teams fixing them, which means less time available for
fixing important bugs.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Fernando J. Pereda]

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On Thu, Jan 03, 2008 at 08:02:39AM -0500, Caleb Tennis wrote:
> > If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
> > vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
> > Gentoo dev list to see.
> 
> I would like to request the council discuss, though not necessarily take action or
> vote on, the idea of "slacker arches" and what ebuild maintainers are allowed/can do
> to a package versions that are languishing due to not getting stable keywords on
> those arches.
> 
> I'm not trying to pick on any specific case, but I am hoping to find out if there's
> an allowable/acceptable period of time to which if an arch team is unable to
> stabilize a package to a newer version, for non-technical reasons, that it's okay to
> drop older unstable ebuilds.

Why taking it against arch teams? How is that different from "certain
maintainer not taking care of a bug that holds stabilization of certain
package by some time measured in months" ? I'll tell you my answer: 'no
difference at all'.

Note that I'm probably responsible for some real situations related to
what I said both as an ebuild maintainer and as an arch developer. So
nobody should take this as slacker-calling since we are all VOLUNTEERS
and we do what we want. However, a fine example of that is:
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=181275

- ferdy

-- 
Fernando J. Pereda Garcimartín
20BB BDC3 761A 4781 E6ED  ED0B 0A48 5B0C 60BD 28D4

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Caleb Tennis]

> Why taking it against arch teams? How is that different from "certain
> maintainer not taking care of a bug that holds stabilization of certain
> package by some time measured in months" ? I'll tell you my answer: 'no
> difference at all'.

You are right, there's not much difference.  However, I brought up the topic because
I felt like this particular situation was a bit of a problem that needed to be
addressed.  Yours is also one that can/should potentially be addressed, and I advise
you to recommend the council discuss it as well.

My goal wasn't to point fingers or to call anyone lazy.  My goal was to address that
if development in this certain area has stagnated, how can those of us who it
affects continue to move forward?  This is simply an area that is "gray" and needs
to be discussed.  There are many other gray areas that need to be discussed too.

I understand we all have real lives and are volunteers.  But if there are areas that
we are responsible for and we aren't able to meet the needs/demands of the other
developers in those areas, it's only fair to let them continue moving forward.

I never even mentioned any specific arch in my original request, nor did I call any
developer out.  So please, nobody needs to take this personally.

Caleb

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

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Fernando J. Pereda]

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On Wed, Jan 09, 2008 at 09:25:11AM -0500, Caleb Tennis wrote:
> > Why taking it against arch teams? How is that different from
> > "certain maintainer not taking care of a bug that holds
> > stabilization of certain package by some time measured in months" ?
> > I'll tell you my answer: 'no difference at all'.
>
> You are right, there's not much difference.  However, I brought up the
> topic because I felt like this particular situation was a bit of a
> problem that needed to be addressed.  Yours is also one that
> can/should potentially be addressed, and I advise you to recommend the
> council discuss it as well.

Well, while discussing what you brought up, they should _also_ consider
what I said as part of the same (so-called) problem.

> My goal wasn't to point fingers or to call anyone lazy.  My goal was
> to address that if development in this certain area has stagnated, how
> can those of us who it affects continue to move forward?  This is
> simply an area that is "gray" and needs to be discussed.  There are
> many other gray areas that need to be discussed too.
>
> I understand we all have real lives and are volunteers.  But if there
> are areas that we are responsible for and we aren't able to meet the
> needs/demands of the other developers in those areas, it's only fair
> to let them continue moving forward.
>
> I never even mentioned any specific arch in my original request, nor
> did I call any developer out.  So please, nobody needs to take this
> personally.

I didn't take it personally myself, honestly, I couldn't care less.

Wonder why there is almost no non-mainstream arch team people
contributing to this thread?

- ferdy

-- 
Fernando J. Pereda Garcimartín
20BB BDC3 761A 4781 E6ED  ED0B 0A48 5B0C 60BD 28D4

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Richard Freeman]

I wanted to take this thread in a slightly different direction so that 
the council has a little more to work with tomorrow.  Obviously there 
are multiple opinions on whether a problem currently exists - and the 
council will need to decide on this.  If no problem currently exists 
they will likely take no action.  However, if a problem does exist, what 
would be a reasonable solution?

Here's a proposal.  Maybe not a great one - feel free to come up with 
others (other than just do nothing - if we are going to do nothing we 
don't need to work out what that will be).  I think it gives arch teams 
a fair amount of time to keep up with stable requests, but also allows 
package maintainers to eventually get rid of cruft.  The exact 
timeframes are of course the easiest and most obvious things to modify.

My hope is that this will give everybody something to think about so 
that if a decision to enact policy is made tomorrow the policy is a good 
one...


Ebuild Stabilization Time

Arch teams will normally have until the LATER of the following two dates 
to stabilize ebuilds for non-security-related issues:
1.  60 days from the day the last substantial change was made to the 
ebuild (clock resets if a non-trivial change is made to the ebuild). 
That's 30 days to allow the package to be proven stable, and 30 days to 
do something about it.
2.  30 days from the day a bug was filed and keyworded STABLEREQ and the 
arch was CCed and the maintainer either filed the bug or commented that 
it was OK to stabilize (clock starts when all of these conditions are met).

Perhaps the guideline should be one week on both time periods for 
security bugs.


Technical Problems With Ebuild Revisions

If an arch team finds a technical problem with an ebuild preventing 
stabilization a bug will be logged as a blocker for the stable keyword 
request.  The bug being resolved counts as a substantial change for the 
purpose of #1 above.


Removing Stable Ebuilds.

If an ebuild meets the time criteria above and there are no technical 
issues preventing stabilization, then the maintainer MAY choose to 
delete an older version even if it is the most recent stable version for 
a particular arch.

If an ebuild meets the time criteria and there IS a technical problem 
preventing stabilization, but the package is subject to security issues, 
the maintainer MAY choose to mask the vulnerable versions in package.mask.

If an ebuild does not meet the time criteria or there is a technical 
problem preventing stabilization and there isn't an outstanding security 
issue, then the maintainer must not remove the highest-versioned stable 
ebuild for any given arch.


Spirit of Cooperation

Ebuild maintainers and arch teams are encouraged to work together for 
the sake of each other and end users in facilitating the testing and 
maintenance of ebuilds on obscure hardware or where obscure expertise is 
needed.  Package maintainers are encouraged to use discretion when 
removing ebuilds in accordance with this policy.
-- 
gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Fernando J. Pereda]

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On Wed, Jan 09, 2008 at 12:11:47PM -0500, Richard Freeman wrote:
> snip

Simply put: No, thank you.

- ferdy

-- 
Fernando J. Pereda Garcimartín
20BB BDC3 761A 4781 E6ED  ED0B 0A48 5B0C 60BD 28D4

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Wed, 09 Jan 2008 12:11:47 -0500
Richard Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
> If an ebuild meets the time criteria above and there are no technical 
> issues preventing stabilization, then the maintainer MAY choose to 
> delete an older version even if it is the most recent stable version
> for a particular arch.

...and as soon as they do, everyone gets hit by pages and pages of
repoman output, and users get royally humped. Developers doing this
is by far the most common cause for people getting hit by the repoman
thing.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Wed, 2008-01-09 at 09:25 -0500, Caleb Tennis wrote:
> I never even mentioned any specific arch in my original request, nor
> did I call any developer out.  So please, nobody needs to take this
> personally.

Correct, you did not.  What I find absolutely *damning* is the fact that
as soon as any arches *were* mentioned, everybody was talking about the
same one.  It's rather funny that everybody seems to have the exact same
impression of what architecture might be a slacker and would be affected
by this.  I wonder why that is?

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Peter Volkov]

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В Срд, 09/01/2008 в 13:13 +0100, Fernando J. Pereda пишет:
> Why taking it against arch teams? How is that different from "certain
> maintainer not taking care of a bug that holds stabilization of certain
> package by some time measured in months" ? I'll tell you my answer: 'no
> difference at all'.

No. There is difference. If you see maintainer does not care, you can
ask him and fix bug by yourself. In case of arch teams bugs, you must
have access to hardware.

-- 
Peter.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Caleb Tennis]

> Correct, you did not.  What I find absolutely *damning* is the fact that
> as soon as any arches *were* mentioned, everybody was talking about the
> same one.  It's rather funny that everybody seems to have the exact same
> impression of what architecture might be a slacker and would be affected
> by this.  I wonder why that is?

Righto.  I also have specific mips related issues, and while I'm certain all of the
mips conversation will play on lots of people's minds, I think it also is helpful
from the council point of view to address this generically as it may be a problem
for a different arch in the future.

In other words, if people want to use mips as an example, then so be it, but
whatever resolution eventually comes to play shouldn't be mips specific.



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

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Wed, 09 Jan 2008 11:54:47 -0800
Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-01-09 at 09:25 -0500, Caleb Tennis wrote:
> > I never even mentioned any specific arch in my original request, nor
> > did I call any developer out.  So please, nobody needs to take this
> > personally.
> 
> Correct, you did not.  What I find absolutely *damning* is the fact
> that as soon as any arches *were* mentioned, everybody was talking
> about the same one.  It's rather funny that everybody seems to have
> the exact same impression of what architecture might be a slacker and
> would be affected by this.  I wonder why that is?

Because we all know it's a euphemism, like "state rights".

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

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[gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Mike Frysinger]

This is your monthly friendly reminder !  Same bat time (typically
the 2nd Thursday at 2000 UTC / 1600 EST), same bat channel
(#gentoo-council @ irc.freenode.net) !

If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
Gentoo dev list to see.

Keep in mind that every GLEP *re*submission to the council for review
must first be sent to the gentoo-dev mailing list 7 days (minimum)
before being submitted as an agenda item which itself occurs 7 days
before the meeting.  Simply put, the gentoo-dev mailing list must be
notified at least 14 days before the meeting itself.

For more info on the Gentoo Council, feel free to browse our homepage:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/

[gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Mike Frysinger]

This is your monthly friendly reminder !  Same bat time (typically
the 3rd Thursday at 1800 UTC / 2000 CET / 1400 EST), same bat channel
(#gentoo-council @ irc.freenode.net) !

If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
Gentoo dev list to see.

Keep in mind that every GLEP *re*submission to the council for review
must first be sent to the gentoo-dev mailing list 7 days (minimum)
before being submitted as an agenda item which itself occurs 7 days
before the meeting.  Simply put, the gentoo-dev mailing list must be
notified at least 14 days before the meeting itself.

For more info on the Gentoo Council, feel free to browse our homepage:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Brian Harring]

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On Fri, Jan 01, 2010 at 01:31:44PM +0000, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> This is your monthly friendly reminder !  Same bat time (typically
> the 3rd Thursday at 1800 UTC / 2000 CET / 1400 EST), same bat channel
> (#gentoo-council @ irc.freenode.net) !
> 
> If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
> vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
> Gentoo dev list to see.

Kindly put VDB modification timestamp on the schedule-
http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/msg_6b3e00049a1bf35fbf7a5e66d1449553.xml

~harring

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Pacho Ramos]

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El vie, 01-01-2010 a las 13:31 +0000, Mike Frysinger escribió:
> This is your monthly friendly reminder !  Same bat time (typically
> the 3rd Thursday at 1800 UTC / 2000 CET / 1400 EST), same bat channel
> (#gentoo-council @ irc.freenode.net) !
> 
> If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
> vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
> Gentoo dev list to see.
> 
> Keep in mind that every GLEP *re*submission to the council for review
> must first be sent to the gentoo-dev mailing list 7 days (minimum)
> before being submitted as an agenda item which itself occurs 7 days
> before the meeting.  Simply put, the gentoo-dev mailing list must be
> notified at least 14 days before the meeting itself.
> 
> For more info on the Gentoo Council, feel free to browse our homepage:
> http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/
> 

Hello 

I would like to know what was finally decided about "Adding real
multilib features from current multilib-portage to currently hardmasked
and testing portage-2.2*", as I failed to see if, finally, an approval
from the council is needed for merging it to portage-2.2 or not and, if
needed, if it will be discussed finally on this meeting.

Thanks a lot for the info :-)

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Denis Dupeyron]

2010/1/2 Pacho Ramos <pacho@condmat1.ciencias.uniovi.es>:
> [...] I failed to see if, finally, an approval
> from the council is needed for merging [multilib] to portage-2.2 or not

The only approval that's required to merge anything to an official
portage branch is Zac's (zmedico). He may have to follow some rules
and wait for some vote from the council when for example EAPIs are
concerned but whether to merge code or not is his decision and
responsibility. That said I've never seen him refusing to merge
anything that was worth it.

> if [multilib] will be discussed finally on this meeting.

Technically we don't need to (I'll explain that in another email) but
we may. I'm just starting to work on the agenda for the 18th and I
don't have everything in place yet.

Denis.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Mike Frysinger]

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On Saturday 02 January 2010 13:21:05 Pacho Ramos wrote:
> El vie, 01-01-2010 a las 13:31 +0000, Mike Frysinger escribió:
> > This is your monthly friendly reminder !  Same bat time (typically
> > the 3rd Thursday at 1800 UTC / 2000 CET / 1400 EST), same bat channel
> > (#gentoo-council @ irc.freenode.net) !
> >
> > If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
> > vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
> > Gentoo dev list to see.
> >
> > Keep in mind that every GLEP *re*submission to the council for review
> > must first be sent to the gentoo-dev mailing list 7 days (minimum)
> > before being submitted as an agenda item which itself occurs 7 days
> > before the meeting.  Simply put, the gentoo-dev mailing list must be
> > notified at least 14 days before the meeting itself.
> >
> > For more info on the Gentoo Council, feel free to browse our homepage:
> > http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/
> 
> I would like to know what was finally decided about "Adding real
> multilib features from current multilib-portage to currently hardmasked
> and testing portage-2.2*", as I failed to see if, finally, an approval
> from the council is needed for merging it to portage-2.2 or not and, if
> needed, if it will be discussed finally on this meeting.

the multilib discussion hasnt moved past the development stages yet, so 
there's nothing to be discussed by the council or merged by the portage team.
-mike

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Pacho Ramos]

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El jue, 07-01-2010 a las 15:59 -0700, Denis Dupeyron escribió:
> 2010/1/2 Pacho Ramos <pacho@condmat1.ciencias.uniovi.es>:
> > [...] I failed to see if, finally, an approval
> > from the council is needed for merging [multilib] to portage-2.2 or not
> 
> The only approval that's required to merge anything to an official
> portage branch is Zac's (zmedico). He may have to follow some rules
> and wait for some vote from the council when for example EAPIs are
> concerned but whether to merge code or not is his decision and
> responsibility. That said I've never seen him refusing to merge
> anything that was worth it.
> 
> > if [multilib] will be discussed finally on this meeting.
> 
> Technically we don't need to (I'll explain that in another email) but
> we may. I'm just starting to work on the agenda for the 18th and I
> don't have everything in place yet.
> 
> Denis.
> 

OK, thanks a lot for the information :-)

Best regards

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