Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Portage QOS

[Chris Reffett <creffett@gentoo.org>]

On 01/09/2014 03:42 PM, Igor wrote:
> Hello Duncan,
> 
> Thursday, January 9, 2014, 9:59:50 PM, you wrote:
> 
> Thank you for the reply. I started to comment first... but it was more
> philosophy a mature and grown up, experienced man and I don't think
> I have right to comment it.
> 
> Statistically if you have more users the probability of the system
> survival of any architecture, philosophy or type is higher. People
> learn, they're not fixed and if they at the beginning do not share
> the philosophy of the system but they can use it - they may like it,
> understand it and follow it and support later. Many people I asked
> are not minding to help Gentoo getting better by turning on
> feedback. If you remember - feedback worked well for Perl once and
> many used it and Perl is very traditional.
> 
> It's like a chess game. You have the system in it's prime. There is
> already one fork from Gentoo. There will be more. It's inevitable. You
> have to understand that not all the developers share the same
> philosophy - and it OK.
> And they may fork Gentoo with time and pull half of the team to their
> side.
> 
> When there is a competition between systems with equal philosophy the
> only thing that stands between who is going to live and who is going
> to die is the number of users.
> The fight will focus not around philosophy or system but around gaining
> user support. The competitor can build a better, more friendly system
> sharing basically the same design and he will win it over.
> 
> To keep in power it's in your deepest interest to close the open gates that
> invite competition while the power is in your hands. This is a failure
> many grown up companies made they belive they're forever and gods. I could
> share with you privately with several examples that prove that concept
> wrong.
> 
> Your competitors will build basically the same system targeting the
> same philosophy but more user oriented, friendly. User oriented - means
> each user opinion matters.
> 
> There might be millions of users but each is treated like he is the only one.
> 
> 
> PortageQOS is small step, it's not everything or main part of the
> system, it's a just small contribution. But it will close the door and
> you'll have another peaceful 8 years to rule.
> 
Right here is the big problem: you're not looking at this from the
perspective of the average Gentoo developer. We don't care about market
share. We don't care whether we're on top for another few years. There
are several forks of Gentoo. I doubt most devs care about them. I
personally know that we're not going to compete with Debian, which has a
huge contributor, or Ubuntu or Red Hat, which have whole companies
behind them. You're selling this as if you're selling to a company which
wants to be on the top of the market and beating out competitors, and
that's not what we are. We are a source-based distro that requires some
effort from users, and people want that or they don't want it.
> What we need is a vote YES or NO. If you against it - vote NO. It's
> perfectly normal, if there would be no NO there would be no need voting.
> 
> 
>> Actually, in that regard it's very possible that gentoo's long planned
>> and worked toward cvs-to-git conversion will help finally bust that 
>> barrier for gentoo as well.  Time will tell I guess, but that's one more
>> reason to try to help make it happen.
> 
> 
> 
> 
Chris Reffett