Re: [gentoo-dev] Democracy: No silver bullet

[Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org>]

> PORTAGE:
> Portage developers are afraid to put anything new in the tree for fear
> of breaking things (and somewhat rightly so).  But as noted, it also
> means you get new stuff very infrequently.
> 
> I think the portage team has either done a poor job of bringing their
> issues to the table; or the community has done a poor job addressing them.
> 

So Brian Harring poked me on irc a bit, and I will expand upon this a bit.

This is not to say that the portage team does nothing (many members do
very little in terms of raw code, myself included which is why I left
the project).  Features get written, bugs get fixed, new versions get
released.  However there are what I would call key requirements that
Gentoo (the community and developers) require.  These requirements are
not getting met by the portage team.

The common point against this is "developers do what we want, we
volunteer"..etc.  I would think at this statement the community would
look for new team members (recruit) those able to complete the features
that are required.  You can't bitch at a team that doesn't implement the
things that are required.  However, you can't depend on a team like that
either.  That would be like me going to the  and making a reasonable
request and then being told that "they can't do that they are only
volunteers, and hell, it doesn't interest me."  The Portage Team should
have a duty to the community in this regard.

In the end I get a realization that a core team is a better idea than I
initially thought.  While in some cases turning down a request based on
"I'm a volunteer" is a reasonable request, there are areas where this is
not a good thing to have happen (Infra, recruiting, PR to some extent,
core-utilities).

I don't really want to criticize the portage team, it's filled with a
bunch of very knowledgeable folks.  However I don't think the team as it
stands now is helping Gentoo as a whole.  It is (as Ciaran mentioned
earlier in this thread) only holding Gentoo back.

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