[gentoo-dev] Retiring

[gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Kevin F. Quinn]

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Hi all


I'm finally giving in to reality and retiring as a Gentoo Dev.  I've
been effectively inactive since March last year and lack of time
means that isn't going to change any time soon.  I'll still be using
Gentoo of course, so I'll still stick my nose in on bugzilla now and
again :)


There's not much out there that depends on me; packages that have my
name against them as maintainer are:

app-admin/eselect-oodict
app-text/hunspell
app-text/info2html
sys-apps/qtparted

and

app-dicts/myspell-*

There's useful work to be done on the myspell dictionaries (which are
used by hunspell). Currently various applications install their own
copies of dictionaries in various places - something that is just
wasteful and lazy.  I'd always intended to finish an eselect module for
managing myspell dictionaries; got some work done but never finished it
off. eselect-oodict was a quick version for dealing with OOo.org
dictionaries (which uses myspell dictionaries) and you can find my
attempts at a more generic eselect-myspell on bugzilla.  Doing that
needs co-operation from the relevant applications (particularly the
mozilla application set).

qtparted is controversial and may not be worth holding on to; see
bugzilla for details.


Lastly, just to say I've learned a lot from my involvement with Gentoo
over the time I was active and it has been very worthwhile for me;
hopefully I've managed to contribute at least something back to
compensate!


All the best,
Kev.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Donnie Berkholz]

On 21:18 Mon 04 Feb     , Kevin F. Quinn wrote:
> I'm finally giving in to reality and retiring as a Gentoo Dev.  I've
> been effectively inactive since March last year and lack of time
> means that isn't going to change any time soon.  I'll still be using
> Gentoo of course, so I'll still stick my nose in on bugzilla now and
> again :)

Feel free to keep trying to get hardened X working perfectly. =)

Thanks,
Donnie
-- 
gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Peter Faraday Weller]

Hi,

I've enjoyed my time with Gentoo, mostly... But these days I've just got
too demotivated to work on it. I might have stayed if Ken69267 posted me
some Lifesavers, but he didn't. :(

On a more serious note, the problem seems to be the complete lack of
management in the required places, Gentoo is fast becoming (or more
likely, already is) an anarchic organisation, where it's becoming
nigh-on impossible to keep track of things. 

I see a number of issues with Gentoo these days. The lack of a proper
leadership body. Lack of people working together in unison. The tree
needs to be sorted out: we have >16000 packages, and 200-250 developers,
not all of which are ebuild developers) - We're still using CVS, we do
*not* have the manpower to keep all the packages updated properly using
a centralised VCS. If these issues were fixed, I don't know/care how
they do get fixed, but if they were, I might consider coming back.

If you *really* want me to stay/not retire, and attempt to help fix
these issues, then I guess I can do so if enough people request that of
me. But I will do so purely in a "managerial" position, and will do no
ebuild or other such development.

I'll still hang around in various channels and so on and so forth.

Whatever happens, I do apparently maintain a few misc packages, most of
which are low maintenance. Various herds will now need a new lead
(apologies guys), so that will have to be arranged as well. You will
also need to find another slacker to replace me ;)

If there isn't a mass revolt against my retirement, so long, and thanks
for all the fish! Otherwise... We'll see.

Thanks,
welp

Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Markos Chandras]

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On Monday 04 May 2009 00:26:13 Peter Faraday Weller wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've enjoyed my time with Gentoo, mostly... But these days I've just got
> too demotivated to work on it. I might have stayed if Ken69267 posted me
> some Lifesavers, but he didn't. :(
>
> On a more serious note, the problem seems to be the complete lack of
> management in the required places, Gentoo is fast becoming
>[..] 
>I might consider coming back.
>
Indeed Gentoo has several problems. But we should stay together and try to 
deal with them. I 've been around as a dev for 3 months and I think 4-5 devs 
retired since then because of all the 'Gentoo anarchy' etc. So please stay and 
help us all solve those issues. I am pretty sure that you are not the only one 
who's having those thoughts.
-- 
Markos Chandras (hwoarang)
Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sound/Sunrise]
Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Peter Faraday Weller]

On Mon, 2009-05-04 at 11:34 +0300, Markos Chandras wrote:
> On Monday 04 May 2009 00:26:13 Peter Faraday Weller wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've enjoyed my time with Gentoo, mostly... But these days I've just got
> > too demotivated to work on it. I might have stayed if Ken69267 posted me
> > some Lifesavers, but he didn't. :(
> >
> > On a more serious note, the problem seems to be the complete lack of
> > management in the required places, Gentoo is fast becoming
> >[..] 
> >I might consider coming back.
> >
> Indeed Gentoo has several problems. But we should stay together and try to 
> deal with them. I 've been around as a dev for 3 months and I think 4-5 devs 
> retired since then because of all the 'Gentoo anarchy' etc. So please stay and 
> help us all solve those issues. I am pretty sure that you are not the only one 
> who's having those thoughts.

Perhaps not, but I've been thinking these thoughts for a good few months
now.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Ferris McCormick]

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On Mon, 4 May 2009 04:34:20 -0400
Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Monday 04 May 2009 00:26:13 Peter Faraday Weller wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've enjoyed my time with Gentoo, mostly... But these days I've just got
> > too demotivated to work on it. I might have stayed if Ken69267 posted me
> > some Lifesavers, but he didn't. :(
> >
> > On a more serious note, the problem seems to be the complete lack of
> > management in the required places, Gentoo is fast becoming
> >[..] 
> >I might consider coming back.
> >
> Indeed Gentoo has several problems. But we should stay together and try to 
> deal with them. I 've been around as a dev for 3 months and I think 4-5 devs 
> retired since then because of all the 'Gentoo anarchy' etc. So please stay and 
> help us all solve those issues. I am pretty sure that you are not the only one 
> who's having those thoughts.

I've been a developer a bit over 5 years.  We know the problems and are
working to fix them.

> -- 
> Markos Chandras (hwoarang)
> Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sound/Sunrise]
> Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org

Regards,
Ferris
--
Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor@gentoo.org>
Developer, Gentoo Linux (Sparc, Userrel, Trustees)

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Markos Chandras]

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On Monday 04 May 2009 14:50:56 Ferris McCormick wrote:
> On Mon, 4 May 2009 04:34:20 -0400
[..]
> I've been a developer a bit over 5 years.  We know the problems and are
> working to fix them.
>
I am sure that you know them. But those problems are the reasons why more and 
more developers are demotivated and leaving Gentoo. 'Fixing' those problems 
should be a N1 priority on every gentoo council meeting until they are gone. 
There is absolutely no point in trying to introduce new features and stuff when 
we are so understaffed. First we need to bring more people on Gentoo and keep 
the current manpower motivated. When we are done with that, we can focus on 
features :\
-- 
Markos Chandras (hwoarang)
Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sunrise/Sound]
Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.gr

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Vlastimil Babka]

Peter Faraday Weller wrote:
> On a more serious note, the problem seems to be the complete lack of
> management in the required places, Gentoo is fast becoming (or more
> likely, already is) an anarchic organisation, where it's becoming
> nigh-on impossible to keep track of things. 
> 
> I see a number of issues with Gentoo these days. The lack of a proper
> leadership body. Lack of people working together in unison. The tree
> needs to be sorted out: we have >16000 packages, and 200-250 developers,
> not all of which are ebuild developers) - We're still using CVS, we do
> *not* have the manpower to keep all the packages updated properly using
> a centralised VCS. If these issues were fixed, I don't know/care how
> they do get fixed, but if they were, I might consider coming back.

Hi,

am I the only one to see a contradiction here? You criticise a 
centralised VCS and anarchism/lack of unison work at the same time. 
Wouldn't that be even worse with a distributed VCS then? :)
I think it would. Also too much use of overlays seems bad to me (yeah 
the Java team is very guilty here :) and the idea of splitting tree to 
overlays (which pops up from time to time) is just nonsense IMHO.

It seems that some people think distributed VCS (git) is a silver bullet 
that will fix everything? Or pushing more and more EAPI's will?
I'm quite sure it won't fix the lack of focus. Which I somewhat feel 
too, but that may be just from the fact that I currently lack time (not 
motivation though, that seems almost inversely proportional :) ) for Gentoo.

If more people agree on the lack of focus, then we should do something 
about it, instead of hoping that using better tools fixes it themselves.

Vlastimil

Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Markos Chandras]

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On Monday 04 May 2009 18:54:09 Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> Peter Faraday Weller wrote:
> > On a more serious note, the problem seems to be the complete lack of
> > management in the required places, Gentoo is fast becoming (or more
> > likely, already is) an anarchic organisation, where it's becoming
> > nigh-on impossible to keep track of things.
> >
> > I see a number of issues with Gentoo these days. The lack of a proper
> > leadership body. Lack of people working together in unison. The tree
> > needs to be sorted out: we have >16000 packages, and 200-250 developers,
> > not all of which are ebuild developers) - We're still using CVS, we do
> > *not* have the manpower to keep all the packages updated properly using
> > a centralised VCS. If these issues were fixed, I don't know/care how
> > they do get fixed, but if they were, I might consider coming back.
>
> Hi,
>
> am I the only one to see a contradiction here? You criticise a
> centralised VCS and anarchism/lack of unison work at the same time.
> Wouldn't that be even worse with a distributed VCS then? :)
I dont think so. Centralized or distributed VCS does not have to do anything 
about the hierarchical structure of Gentoo.
> I think it would. Also too much use of overlays seems bad to me
Depends of course on how each team/dev uses the overlay. Some of us use the 
overlays as testing places which is much better than pushing ebuilds directly 
to tree without extensive testing :)
> (yeah
> the Java team is very guilty here :) and the idea of splitting tree to
> overlays (which pops up from time to time) is just nonsense IMHO.
+1
>
> It seems that some people think distributed VCS (git) is a silver bullet
> that will fix everything? 
Certainly it will help development a lot. Take a look on git overlays ( qting-
edge,kde-testing etc ). The commit and bugfix rates are incredible because the 
VCS is amazingly fast. Using cvs, you need at least 2' for a simple commit of 
a single ebuild. Using git you can push 300 ebuilds at the same time. Imaging 
the difference... Git is an extra motivation ( at least for me :/ )
> Or pushing more and more EAPI's will?
No... As I said before Gentoo is quite understaffed. First we need people. Then 
we can concentrate on features :)
> If more people agree on the lack of focus, then we should do something
> about it, instead of hoping that using better tools fixes it themselves.
Any ideas?
-- 
Markos Chandras (hwoarang)
Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sunrise/Sound]
Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Mon, 4 May 2009 19:36:04 +0300
Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > Or pushing more and more EAPI's will?
>
> No... As I said before Gentoo is quite understaffed. First we need
> people. Then we can concentrate on features :)

As it happens, a lot of the features that go into EAPIs are designed to
help with that. They make it easier to write good ebuilds (and harder
to get away with certain QA abuses by accident), possible to write
ebuilds that are less annoying and possible to write ebuilds that cover
things that could not previously be covered. And, looking at it the
other way, Gentoo has lost a lot of good people because they weren't
prepared to put up with EAPI stagnation.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[George Prowse]

Peter Faraday Weller wrote:
> Hi....
> 
> Thanks,
> welp

Sad to hear it mate.

As the person who did your first install for you (i think) I think you 
will be missed.

I am quite surprised about what you said about the state of things 
because i've got the distinct impression from others that Gentoo has 
been improving in the past 12 months.

About the lack of the developers, something I proposed about 3 years ago 
might be applicable: has Gentoo ever thought about doing a "Dev Day" in 
much the same way as the "Bug Days"? Advertise a day where people can 
come and have a chat with developers and get coached because there is a 
vast amount of people and knowledge out there and I never see anything 
about Gentoo wanting people.

If you book them, they will come.

G

Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Mario Fetka]

On Monday, 4. May 2009 19:06:12 George Prowse wrote:
> Peter Faraday Weller wrote:
> > Hi....
> >
> > Thanks,
> > welp
>
> Sad to hear it mate.
>
> As the person who did your first install for you (i think) I think you
> will be missed.
>
> I am quite surprised about what you said about the state of things
> because i've got the distinct impression from others that Gentoo has
> been improving in the past 12 months.
>
> About the lack of the developers, something I proposed about 3 years ago
> might be applicable: has Gentoo ever thought about doing a "Dev Day" in
> much the same way as the "Bug Days"? Advertise a day where people can
> come and have a chat with developers and get coached because there is a
> vast amount of people and knowledge out there and I never see anything
> about Gentoo wanting people.
>
> If you book them, they will come.
>
> G

and I would be the first to come

Mario

Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Tiziano Müller]

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Am Montag, den 04.05.2009, 15:35 +0300 schrieb Markos Chandras:
> On Monday 04 May 2009 14:50:56 Ferris McCormick wrote:
> > On Mon, 4 May 2009 04:34:20 -0400
> [..]
> > I've been a developer a bit over 5 years.  We know the problems and are
> > working to fix them.
> >
> I am sure that you know them. But those problems are the reasons why more and 
> more developers are demotivated and leaving Gentoo. 'Fixing' those problems 
> should be a N1 priority on every gentoo council meeting until they are gone. 
> There is absolutely no point in trying to introduce new features and stuff when 
> we are so understaffed. First we need to bring more people on Gentoo and keep 
> the current manpower motivated. When we are done with that, we can focus on 
> features :\

The point of most features is to make maintenance easier and reduce
breakages at user-side which hopefully reduces the amount of bugs
reported because of such breakages and keep our users happy and happy
users are more likely to contribute or become devs when they see some
progress.
But you're right, we have to find the balance somehow...


-- 
Tiziano Müller
Gentoo Linux Developer, Council Member
Areas of responsibility:
  Samba, PostgreSQL, CPP, Python, sysadmin, GLEP Editor
E-Mail   : dev-zero@gentoo.org
GnuPG FP : F327 283A E769 2E36 18D5  4DE2 1B05 6A63 AE9C 1E30

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Mario Fetka]

On Monday, 4. May 2009 19:06:12 George Prowse wrote:
> Peter Faraday Weller wrote:
> > Hi....
> >
> > Thanks,
> > welp
>
> Sad to hear it mate.
>
> As the person who did your first install for you (i think) I think you
> will be missed.
>
> I am quite surprised about what you said about the state of things
> because i've got the distinct impression from others that Gentoo has
> been improving in the past 12 months.
>
> About the lack of the developers, something I proposed about 3 years ago
> might be applicable: has Gentoo ever thought about doing a "Dev Day" in
> much the same way as the "Bug Days"? Advertise a day where people can
> come and have a chat with developers and get coached because there is a
> vast amount of people and knowledge out there and I never see anything
> about Gentoo wanting people.
>
> If you book them, they will come.
>
> G

and I would be the first to come

Mario

Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Richard Freeman]

Markos Chandras wrote:
> I am sure that you know them. But those problems are the reasons why more and 
> more developers are demotivated and leaving Gentoo. 'Fixing' those problems 
> should be a N1 priority on every gentoo council meeting until they are gone. 
> There is absolutely no point in trying to introduce new features and stuff when 
> we are so understaffed. First we need to bring more people on Gentoo and keep 
> the current manpower motivated. When we are done with that, we can focus on 
> features :\

While I see where you are coming from, I can't agree with the approach 
of halting all forward movement until all current issues are resolved. 
The problem is that we're a volunteer-driven organization, so we can't 
simply tell people "close STABLEREQ bugs first, work on fun stuff 
later".  We can certainly encourage people to do this, but there will 
ALWAYS be more maintenance items and I think we'll do better to keep 
Gentoo exciting and dynamic and try to attract more help, and then there 
will be more bodies around to take care of the grind of bugs.

Essentially features are what keeps a significant portion of the current 
manpower motivated.

Now, there are lots of people around who actually like doing maintenance 
and caring for specific packages, and we should certainly try to find 
more people like this.  However, those who would rather be implementing 
new EAPIs in Portage/Paludis/Pkgcore/whatever won't necessarily work on 
arch bugs just because there is a need for this.

I think the best we can do is try to highlight the issues so that those 
who are interested are aware of them and can sign up to help.

I'd also love to see the council and trustees actively looking for 
solutions to these problems, but it can't be the only issue on the agenda.

I've never been big on the whole "Gentoo is dying" meme.  All people and 
organizations are dying - we're all born dying.  Death is just the 
natural state of the universe in the absence of life.  Even if Gentoo 
were perfect and full of activity we would have people leaving for 
various reasons - the key is to have people coming in to replace and 
even surpass those who leave.  Gentoo has a LOT to offer the linux 
community - and if anything I'd say the level of innovation in Gentoo 
(and related projects) has been trending upwards in recent months.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Markos Chandras]

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On Monday 04 May 2009 21:24:11 Richard Freeman wrote:
> Markos Chandras wrote:
> > I am sure that you know them. But those problems are the reasons why more
> > and more developers are demotivated and leaving Gentoo. 'Fixing' those
> > problems should be a N1 priority on every gentoo council meeting until
> > they are gone. There is absolutely no point in trying to introduce new
> > features and stuff when we are so understaffed. First we need to bring
> > more people on Gentoo and keep the current manpower motivated. When we
> > are done with that, we can focus on features :\
>
> While I see where you are coming from, I can't agree with the approach
> of halting all forward movement until all current issues are resolved.
> The problem is that we're a volunteer-driven organization, so we can't
> simply tell people "close STABLEREQ bugs first, work on fun stuff
> later".  
Even a "volunteer-driven" organization needs some "standard" rules in order to 
survive. From time to time this "volunteer" moto is what some people consider 
as "anarchy"


-- 
Markos Chandras (hwoarang)
Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sound/Sunrise]
Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Markos Chandras]

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On Monday 04 May 2009 20:06:12 George Prowse wrote:
> Peter Faraday Weller wrote:
> > Hi....
> >
> > Thanks,
> > welp
>
> Sad to hear it mate.
>
> As the person who did your first install for you (i think) I think you
> will be missed.
>
> I am quite surprised about what you said about the state of things
> because i've got the distinct impression from others that Gentoo has
> been improving in the past 12 months.
>
> About the lack of the developers, something I proposed about 3 years ago
> might be applicable: has Gentoo ever thought about doing a "Dev Day" in
> much the same way as the "Bug Days"? 
This is actually a very interesting idea

-- 
Markos Chandras (hwoarang)
Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sound/Sunrise]
Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Richard Freeman]

Markos Chandras wrote:
> Even a "volunteer-driven" organization needs some "standard" rules in order to 
> survive. From time to time this "volunteer" moto is what some people consider 
> as "anarchy"
> 

As far as survival goes - I think the rumors of Gentoo's death are 
greatly exaggerated.  I certainly agree that we need standards, but as 
far as I can tell those exist.

I'm not exactly sure what the actual problem is.  What resolvable issue 
is directly impacting the Gentoo community, and how would things 
actually be better if that issue didn't exist?  What is the itch that 
needs scratching?

I don't see developers putting QA violations into the portage tree left 
and right.  For the most part I'd say the level of abuse in bugzilla is 
down and continues to trend down.  Sure, manpower is limited, but the 
solution to that isn't to tell the people who are here to "work harder 
or quit" (which means quit) but instead to recruit more help.  Arch 
teams seem to be generally doing a good job keeping up with STABLEREQs 
on the major archs - if you use a minor arch that isn't as well 
supported I'm sure we'd be happy to have more help.

Is the issue anarchy, or the bazaar model in general?  You can't always 
have it both ways...

Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Markos Chandras]

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On Tuesday 05 May 2009 16:50:47 Richard Freeman wrote:
> Markos Chandras wrote:
> > Even a "volunteer-driven" organization needs some "standard" rules in
> > order to survive. From time to time this "volunteer" moto is what some
> > people consider as "anarchy"
>
> As far as survival goes - I think the rumors of Gentoo's death are
> greatly exaggerated.  I certainly agree that we need standards, but as
> far as I can tell those exist.
>
> I don't see developers putting QA violations into the portage tree left
> and right.  For the most part I'd say the level of abuse in bugzilla is
> down and continues to trend down.  Sure, manpower is limited, but the
> solution to that isn't to tell the people who are here to "work harder
> or quit" (which means quit) but instead to recruit more help. 
When,how,and who is going to write down a list of possible "recruitment 
hunting" actions? There is too much chit-chatting around but nobody ( 
including me of course) is daring to propose actual solutions and proposals
> Arch
> teams seem to be generally doing a good job keeping up with STABLEREQs
> on the major archs - if you use a minor arch that isn't as well
> supported I'm sure we'd be happy to have more help.
Arch teams, according to their project pages, are in a good shape. Major 
arches have enough people ( assuming that the project pages are up2date )

-- 
Markos Chandras (hwoarang)
Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sunrise/Sound]
Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Tobias Klausmann]

Hi! 

On Tue, 05 May 2009, Markos Chandras wrote:
> Arch teams, according to their project pages, are in a good shape. Major 
> arches have enough people ( assuming that the project pages are up2date )

If I keel over and armin76 is stuck in work/'versity, the alpha
dev count is 0. Not exactly good, but we manage. I'm in the
process of recruiting an archtester and he may become a dev one
day.

That said, more feedback from /users/ regarding alpha would be
appreciated, but I doubt -dev@ is the best place to look for it
;)


Regards,
Tobias
(aka Blackb|rd on IRC)

-- 
panic("smp_callin() AAAAaaaaahhhh....\n");
        linux-2.6.6/arch/parisc/kernel/smp.c

Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Thomas Anderson]

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On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 05:06:43PM +0300, Markos Chandras wrote:
> On Tuesday 05 May 2009 16:50:47 Richard Freeman wrote:
> > Arch
> > teams seem to be generally doing a good job keeping up with STABLEREQs
> > on the major archs - if you use a minor arch that isn't as well
> > supported I'm sure we'd be happy to have more help.
> Arch teams, according to their project pages, are in a good shape. Major 
> arches have enough people ( assuming that the project pages are up2date )

The amd64 project page at least is definitely not. We have a ton of
slackers. I'd venture to say most in the project don't actively work on
amd64 at all. We are handling the load fairly well though.

Thomas
-- 
---------
Thomas Anderson
Gentoo Developer
/////////
Areas of responsibility:
AMD64, Secretary to the Gentoo Council
---------

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Sergio D. Rodríguez Inclan]

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Could be a good idea publish a status of each Gentoo project and see what is
needed, so the users/devs can offer some help.

-- 
Sergio D. Rodríguez Inclan
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://srinclan.wordpress.com
Linux User #446728 --> http://counter.li.org/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Markos Chandras]

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On Tuesday 05 May 2009 19:26:00 Thomas Anderson wrote:
> On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 05:06:43PM +0300, Markos Chandras wrote:
> > On Tuesday 05 May 2009 16:50:47 Richard Freeman wrote:
> > > Arch
> > > teams seem to be generally doing a good job keeping up with STABLEREQs
> > > on the major archs - if you use a minor arch that isn't as well
> > > supported I'm sure we'd be happy to have more help.
> >
> > Arch teams, according to their project pages, are in a good shape. Major
> > arches have enough people ( assuming that the project pages are up2date )
>
> The amd64 project page at least is definitely not. We have a ton of
> slackers. I'd venture to say most in the project don't actively work on
> amd64 at all. We are handling the load fairly well though.
>
> Thomas
/me is listing all the reported issues

Really? I was thinking about joining amd64 project but when I visited the 
project page , I saw like 25 people listed as developers. So I thought that 
"Woow,there are plenty of dudes here, so there is no urgent need for new 
developers right now"

This is a major issue as well. If the project pages are way out of date, how 
do we expect people to understand our real needs on manpower etc. Cleaning and 
updating the project pages once a while is not that difficult. It takes about 
15' ( and a couple of e-mails to inform the slackers ).

If we really (?) want  to run a "recruitment" campaign, our "web presence" but 
be quite active and responsible.

-- 
Markos Chandras (hwoarang)
Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sunrise/Sound]
Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Markos Chandras]

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On Tuesday 05 May 2009 19:26:23 Sergio D. Rodríguez Inclan wrote:
> Could be a good idea publish a status of each Gentoo project and see what
> is needed, so the users/devs can offer some help.
Publish where? Blogs? mailing list? Forums? we dont have a centralized way to 
inform users about such issues so the publishing should be done in multiple 
places

*planet
*universe
*forum
*mailing list
*...

It is not that handy, is it?

Some one could say "Post it on gentoo.org homepage". I wonder if users ever 
visit that page to read gentoo news :\
-- 
Markos Chandras (hwoarang)
Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sunrise/Sound]
Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Robert Bridge]

Markos Chandras wrote:
> Some one could say "Post it on gentoo.org homepage". I wonder if users ever 
> visit that page to read gentoo news :\

I can safely say that some never do...

RobbieAB

Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[George Prowse]

Markos Chandras wrote:
> On Tuesday 05 May 2009 19:26:00 Thomas Anderson wrote:
>> On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 05:06:43PM +0300, Markos Chandras wrote:
>>> On Tuesday 05 May 2009 16:50:47 Richard Freeman wrote:
>>>> Arch
>>>> teams seem to be generally doing a good job keeping up with STABLEREQs
>>>> on the major archs - if you use a minor arch that isn't as well
>>>> supported I'm sure we'd be happy to have more help.
>>> Arch teams, according to their project pages, are in a good shape. Major
>>> arches have enough people ( assuming that the project pages are up2date )
>> The amd64 project page at least is definitely not. We have a ton of
>> slackers. I'd venture to say most in the project don't actively work on
>> amd64 at all. We are handling the load fairly well though.
>>
>> Thomas
> /me is listing all the reported issues
> 
> Really? I was thinking about joining amd64 project but when I visited the 
> project page , I saw like 25 people listed as developers. So I thought that 
> "Woow,there are plenty of dudes here, so there is no urgent need for new 
> developers right now"
> 
> This is a major issue as well. If the project pages are way out of date, how 
> do we expect people to understand our real needs on manpower etc. Cleaning and 
> updating the project pages once a while is not that difficult. It takes about 
> 15' ( and a couple of e-mails to inform the slackers ).
> 
> If we really (?) want  to run a "recruitment" campaign, our "web presence" but 
> be quite active and responsible.
> 
Is all this "help needed" stuff that ordinary users can help out with? 
If so dont people go and ask for help in the forums?

Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Mounir Lamouri]

Markos Chandras wrote:
> On Tuesday 05 May 2009 19:26:23 Sergio D. Rodríguez Inclan wrote:
>   
>> Could be a good idea publish a status of each Gentoo project and see what
>> is needed, so the users/devs can offer some help.
>>     
> [snip]
>
> Some one could say "Post it on gentoo.org homepage". I wonder if users ever 
> visit that page to read gentoo news :\
>   
There is already such a place [1] but I think not so much people knows
about it.

[1] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/staffing-needs/

Mounir

Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Markos Chandras]

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On Tuesday 05 May 2009 19:52:34 George Prowse wrote:

> Is all this "help needed" stuff that ordinary users can help out with?
> If so dont people go and ask for help in the forums?

I assume that this recruitment process does not address to every single gentoo 
user but to those who actually have technical knowledge and time to spare for 
their beloved distro :P. We have plenty of them on forums.gentoo.org ( and not 
only )
-- 
Markos Chandras (hwoarang)
Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sunrise/Sound]
Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Markos Chandras]

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On Tuesday 05 May 2009 20:03:58 Mounir Lamouri wrote:
> Markos Chandras wrote:
> > On Tuesday 05 May 2009 19:26:23 Sergio D. Rodríguez Inclan wrote:
> >> Could be a good idea publish a status of each Gentoo project and see
> >> what is needed, so the users/devs can offer some help.
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > Some one could say "Post it on gentoo.org homepage". I wonder if users
> > ever visit that page to read gentoo news :\
>
> There is already such a place [1] but I think not so much people knows
> about it.
>
> [1] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/staffing-needs/
>
> Mounir
Indeed there is. But I think that neither users nor developers are really 
using it
-- 
Markos Chandras (hwoarang)
Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sunrise/Sound]
Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Sergio D. Rodríguez Inclan]

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>
> There is already such a place [1] but I think not so much people knows
> about it.
>
> [1] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/staffing-needs/
>
> Mounir
>
>
None of the problems mentioned here are present on that page, the
information that could be useful is: how many developers are active, which
are the short/long term objectives of the project, what are the actual
problems/needs, news, etc. Each project could have this information on it's
project page but it need to be easily accessed by the users and constantly
updated, I'm sure there are people who doesn't have developer blood but can
do that kind of informational work.

-- 
Sergio D. Rodríguez Inclan
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://srinclan.wordpress.com
Linux User #446728 --> http://counter.li.org/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[AllenJB]

George Prowse wrote:
> Peter Faraday Weller wrote:
>> Hi....
>>
>> Thanks,
>> welp
> 
> Sad to hear it mate.
> 
> As the person who did your first install for you (i think) I think you 
> will be missed.
> 
> I am quite surprised about what you said about the state of things 
> because i've got the distinct impression from others that Gentoo has 
> been improving in the past 12 months.
> 
> About the lack of the developers, something I proposed about 3 years ago 
> might be applicable: has Gentoo ever thought about doing a "Dev Day" in 
> much the same way as the "Bug Days"? Advertise a day where people can 
> come and have a chat with developers and get coached because there is a 
> vast amount of people and knowledge out there and I never see anything 
> about Gentoo wanting people.
> 
> If you book them, they will come.
> 
> G
> 

In my opinion, such a drive wouldn't work. I've said it before in 
previous posts to the Gentoo -devel and -project lists, as well as my 
blog posts[0]: I think Gentoo needs to improve the organisation of the 
projects. I know it takes developer time to update project pages and do 
things like maintaining the "developers wanted" pages, but I think that 
Gentoo would see this returned in a higher number of competent 
developers. One of the biggest problems I have as someone considering 
becoming a developer is following what's going on and working out where 
I could make contributions that are both something I would enjoy doing 
and would be useful for current milestones (eg. autobuilds handbooks or 
improving / stabilizing KDE4) that are being worked on.

[0] http://allenjb.me.uk/category/linux/gentoo


On a related note, I thought the recent email from the Prefix project to 
the -devel list was excellent - it's exactly the sort of thing I would 
hope to find on a projects page on gentoo.org. It contains a detailed 
explanation of the project, its purpose, current state and aims and 
includes a roadmap so that (potential) contributors can easily see where 
they can help out in a way that will be considered useful by the 
development team.


I would also like to see some less secrecy for things that are going on. 
For example, I know that the newsletter team are currently working on a 
new setup for the newsletter. While I somewhat understand some of the 
reasons that the developers involved have chosen to not give out 
information on this project, I question the overall value in keeping 
such projects secret in this manner. A project page with the current 
progress and a roadmap of the project on would not only keep everyone 
informed, but might encourage contributions (in the form of solving any 
specific problems the developers are having, for example, or in the case 
of the newsletter, preparing content to contribute).

I've also spoken before on the "bus factor", which I believe comes into 
play here. As far as I know only one or two developers are working on 
the project and if they were to disappear for a length of time for any 
reason, (virtually) all current knowledge of the project, its progress 
and its code / setup would be lost.


This leads me on to another issue I have with Gentoo development, which 
I believe is related, and that is the organisation of the source code 
repositories. As far as I can see there appears to be no formal 
organisational scheme to this at all, which can make it really hard to 
find things. Ideally, I would like to see a scheme that generally goes 
something like: /project/subproject/task. So, for example, you could 
find all the docs under /documentation and all the newsletter content 
under /pr/newsletter. (On a sidenote, the SVN repos seem a little better 
on this than the CVS repos layout, but it's still not as clear as I 
think it could be)

As always, I realize this would take time to change, but I (again) think 
there's a good chance that it would improve contributions (on the basis 
that potential contributors are more likely to actually contribute if 
they can find what they want to work on easily).


AllenJB

Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Markos Chandras]

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On Tuesday 05 May 2009 23:45:14 AllenJB wrote:
> George Prowse wrote:
> > Peter Faraday Weller wrote:
> >> Hi....
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> welp
> >
> > Sad to hear it mate.
> >
> > As the person who did your first install for you (i think) I think you
> > will be missed.
> >
> > I am quite surprised about what you said about the state of things
> > because i've got the distinct impression from others that Gentoo has
> > been improving in the past 12 months.
> >
> > About the lack of the developers, something I proposed about 3 years ago
> > might be applicable: has Gentoo ever thought about doing a "Dev Day" in
> > much the same way as the "Bug Days"? Advertise a day where people can
> > come and have a chat with developers and get coached because there is a
> > vast amount of people and knowledge out there and I never see anything
> > about Gentoo wanting people.
> >
> > If you book them, they will come.
> >
> > G
>
> In my opinion, such a drive wouldn't work. 
>[..]
> As always, I realize this would take time to change, but I (again) think
> there's a good chance that it would improve contributions (on the basis
> that potential contributors are more likely to actually contribute if
> they can find what they want to work on easily).
>
>
> AllenJB
I am sure there are some developers which can offer a great amount of time to 
help/revibe slacking or dead projects ( e.g. userrel, newsletters etc ). The 
thing is that leadership on several projects is inactive hence users or devs 
who are willing to help are getting demotivated. It would be really nice each 
individual project to perform a clean up like:

1) have an internal discussion about its goals and future
2) Remove dead members and elect a new leader if necessary
3) Update the page
4) Publish its status
5) Assist for help is necessary

Looking 'active' is very important to attract new people to project. 

Is this so hard? 
-- 
Markos Chandras (hwoarang)
Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sound/Sunrise]
Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Peter Faraday Weller]

On Wed, 2009-05-06 at 01:45 +0300, Markos Chandras wrote:
> On Tuesday 05 May 2009 23:45:14 AllenJB wrote:
[..snip..]
> I am sure there are some developers which can offer a great amount of time to 
> help/revibe slacking or dead projects ( e.g. userrel, newsletters etc ). The 
> thing is that leadership on several projects is inactive hence users or devs 
> who are willing to help are getting demotivated. It would be really nice each 
> individual project to perform a clean up like:
> 
> 1) have an internal discussion about its goals and future
> 2) Remove dead members and elect a new leader if necessary
> 3) Update the page
> 4) Publish its status
> 5) Assist for help is necessary
> 
> Looking 'active' is very important to attract new people to project. 
> 
> Is this so hard?

This is a really good idea, and I think that such an operation should be
performed (and perhaps even enforced as a yearly or twice-yearly thing).
The only issue I have with the idea is that projects with dead members
and slacking leaders are unlikely to perform such a task, so you'll
never get any updates from them, so devs will be demotivated to work on
$project, and thus we enter the vicious cycle again...

welp

Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Roy Bamford]

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Hash: SHA1

On 2009.05.06 19:32, Peter Faraday Weller wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-05-06 at 01:45 +0300, Markos Chandras wrote:
> > On Tuesday 05 May 2009 23:45:14 AllenJB wrote:
> [..snip..]
> > I am sure there are some developers which can offer a great amount
> of time to 
> > help/revibe slacking or dead projects ( e.g. userrel, newsletters
> etc ). The 
> > thing is that leadership on several projects is inactive hence 
> users
> or devs 
> > who are willing to help are getting demotivated. It would be really
> nice each 
> > individual project to perform a clean up like:
[snip]
> > 
> > Looking 'active' is very important to attract new people to 
> project.
> 
> > 
> > Is this so hard?

[snip]
> The only issue I have with the idea is that projects with dead 
> members
> and slacking leaders are unlikely to perform such a task, so you'll
> never get any updates from them, so devs will be demotivated to work
> on
> $project, and thus we enter the vicious cycle again...
> 
> welp
> 
Welp,

Not so.

These projects would be delegated upwards to the council and either 
scrapped offically, or some recruitment process started to breath new 
life into them.

Maybe dead projects are cleaned like treecleaners ?

- -- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(NeddySeagoon) a member of
gentoo-ops
forum-mods
treecleaners
trustees
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Peter Faraday Weller]

On Wed, 2009-05-06 at 19:40 +0100, Roy Bamford wrote:
[..snip..]
> 
> [snip]
> > The only issue I have with the idea is that projects with dead 
> > members
> > and slacking leaders are unlikely to perform such a task, so you'll
> > never get any updates from them, so devs will be demotivated to work
> > on
> > $project, and thus we enter the vicious cycle again...
> > 
> > welp
> > 
> Welp,
> 
> Not so.
> 
> These projects would be delegated upwards to the council and either 
> scrapped offically, or some recruitment process started to breath new 
> life into them.
> 
> Maybe dead projects are cleaned like treecleaners ?

This actually sounds like a pretty good idea, and one that I might
actually be interested in.

Someone working within such a project would have to be in close
communication with most/all of the team leads within Gentoo. I feel that
this would be a better solution than asking for (semi-)regular updates
from the teams - having someone to have a chat with the team lead is
much less formal and more relaxed way of ensuring that things are well.
If it seems that the project is having problems staying alive, a call
for help could be put out. If there is no improvement, the project could
be referred to the Gentoo Council to see if it should be
removed/abolished, otherwise...

Opinions/ideas welpcome!

welp

Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Markos Chandras]

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On Wednesday 06 May 2009 21:40:51 Roy Bamford wrote:
> On 2009.05.06 19:32, Peter Faraday Weller wrote:
> > On Wed, 2009-05-06 at 01:45 +0300, Markos Chandras wrote:
> > > On Tuesday 05 May 2009 23:45:14 AllenJB wrote:
> >
> > [..snip..]
> >
> > > I am sure there are some developers which can offer a great amount
> >
> > of time to
> >
> > > help/revibe slacking or dead projects ( e.g. userrel, newsletters
> >
> > etc ). The
> >
> > > thing is that leadership on several projects is inactive hence
> >
> > users
> > or devs
> >
> > > who are willing to help are getting demotivated. It would be really
> >
> > nice each
> >
> > > individual project to perform a clean up like:
>
> [snip]
>
> > > Looking 'active' is very important to attract new people to
> >
> > project.
> >
> > > Is this so hard?
>
> [snip]
>
> > The only issue I have with the idea is that projects with dead
> > members
> > and slacking leaders are unlikely to perform such a task, so you'll
> > never get any updates from them, so devs will be demotivated to work
> > on
> > $project, and thus we enter the vicious cycle again...
> >
> > welp
>
> Welp,
>
> Not so.
>
> These projects would be delegated upwards to the council and either
> scrapped offically, or some recruitment process started to breath new
> life into them.
>
> Maybe dead projects are cleaned like treecleaners ?
Indeed. No need to have 100 projects while 80 of them are considered dead. 
Cleaning them should be another assignment for treecleaners or a new group of 
developers who are willing to do this. I think treecleaners have enough to do 
with all the dead packages on the tree :P 
-- 
Markos Chandras (hwoarang)
Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sound/Sunrise]
Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org

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[gentoo-dev] Retiring

[Maurice van der Pot]

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Hi guys,

Since I have not been active for a long time and I have no motivation at
the moment to spend more time on Gentoo, I'll be retiring as a Gentoo
dev. This is just for personal reasons; it's not because of Gentoo.

There are only a few packages I was maintaining, so if anyone would like
to take over maintenance feel free to change the metadata.

The packages are:
  dev-util/valgrind
  net-im/pyaim-t
  net-im/pyicq-t
  net-im/pymsn-t
  net-mail/tpop3d
  net-proxy/http-replicator

Regards,
Maurice.

-- 
Maurice van der Pot

Gentoo Linux Developer   griffon26@gentoo.org    http://www.gentoo.org
Gnome Planner Developer  griffon26@kfk4ever.com  http://live.gnome.org/Planner


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[gentoo-dev] retiring

[Chris Brannon]

Hi all,

I've been here for a couple years now, and I've lost interest to the
point that I'm not doing a very good job of keeping my own system up to
date, much less maintaining ebuilds.  That isn't fair to anyone at all.
It's time for me to move on.
Gentoo is a great distro.  I've met plenty of awesome, smart people
around here, and I've learned a lot from my Gentoo experience.
Thanks, and so long.
Best wishes to the Gentoo community for 2015 and beyond.

-- Chris