RE: [gentoo-dev] Larry the Cow

["Todd Wright" <wylie@geekasylum.org>]

Dave Lee Wrote:
> Alastair Nicol wrote:
> > >
> > > BUT, cast dispersions on Larry the Cow's sexuality, 
> > >
> > nothing wrong with a little fun......
> > 
> > and IMHO the amount of work Daniel churns out he might be a little busy!
> > 
> > total respect to Daniel. 
> > 
> > (and i dont know the guy)
> 
> I dont know Daniel or Todd but I think the statement wasn't meant to knock
> anybody, I believe it was meant to bring out into the open a discussion
> of some of the problems gentoo is facing as it grows (in userbase and
> developers).  I think we all want the same thing, a stable gentoo with a
> strong base for continued growth.

Yes. This is what I intended. Im not knocking Daniel personally. I agree with Alastair - Daniel has done a marvelous job in concieving and bringing Gentoo to the point it is today. From what I have read he does seem to be very busy.

With Gentoo constantly changing (also understandable given its recent release) it is difficult to nail anything down. Things such as virtuals are not documented, and many of the ebuilds depend on them. I had to figure out the broken "virtual" stuff in the old (now fixed) php 4.1.2 ebuilds (pre -r7). I also had to figure out how to get squirrelmail to not want to install courier-imap given that uw-imap was already installed (this was due uw-imap having previously set virtual/imapUW instead of virtual/imapd).

As an end user, (despite my experience with Linux) I should not have to fix the internal workings on my own - especially for such a major problem (Im sure im not the only one who uses php), yet I got no response from anyone in the development team when I sought help. (other than a prior bug report from Jared, and his obvious work behind the scenes on the php ebuild) Yes, I know they're all busy, but when you need help with something that other end users (ie, the user mailing list) are not knoweledgable on, then you mail the developers.

I am concerned about the future of Gentoo Linux, especially with the goings on behind the scenes - Geert's departure from the development team, and other rumblings I have heard. Gentoo Linux is too good to lose, and the developers need to show that they are here, ready to answer the tough questions, and fix major problems.

Thankfully at least portage is GPL'ed so if the development team do tear temselves apart, someone can continue to maintain it, because portage is the heart of Gentoo Linux.

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