[gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[Edgar Hucek]

Apeal on extended testing :

Developer, please test things more carefull before you 
release it.
I already found things which does not compile out of
the box.
1.) Use wacom does not compile out of the box. You
have to unmask linuxwacom.
2.) Enable the use flage accessibility gnome cant be
merged. It fails on compile the speech-tools.

It seams that USE flags are not realy tested or how
can it happen that there are already know bugs in the
stable distro ?

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=116030

Festival and the speech-tools are well know not to
compile with gcc >=4.

cu

Edgar (gimli) Hucek
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[Jakub Moc]

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Edgar Hucek wrote:
> Apeal on extended testing :
> 
> Developer, please test things more carefull before you 
> release it.
> I already found things which does not compile out of
> the box.
> 1.) Use wacom does not compile out of the box. You
> have to unmask linuxwacom.

Shrug. Noone even filed a stabilization bug, ask x11-drivers folks why.
There's one now: http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=145891

> 2.) Enable the use flage accessibility gnome cant be
> merged. It fails on compile the speech-tools.
> It seams that USE flags are not realy tested or how
> can it happen that there are already know bugs in the
> stable distro ?
>
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=116030
>
> Festival and the speech-tools are well know not to
> compile with gcc >=4.


Well, you know - if you go to read the speech-tools/festival & co. bug,
and read the ebuild, you'll see that the whole thing and code is one
huge mess, that doesn't compile even w/ gcc-3.3 without patching. You'd
probably prefer to never put out a new release, I guess? How many people
are using this one, and how does it justify delaying the release even more?


-- 
Best regards,

 Jakub Moc
 mailto:jakub@gentoo.org
 GPG signature:
 http://subkeys.pgp.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xCEBA3D9E
 Primary key fingerprint: D2D7 933C 9BA1 C95B 2C95  B30F 8717 D5FD CEBA 3D9E

 ... still no signature   ;)


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[Kevin F. Quinn]

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On Sat, 02 Sep 2006 12:34:38 +0200
Edgar Hucek <gimli@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Apeal on extended testing :
> 
> Developer, please test things more carefull before you 
> release it.

There are over 10,000 packages in the tree (11247 to be exact); each
of which can be built many ways with USE flags.  It is simply not
feasible to test all of the packages in all possible combinations in
all possible USE configurations for all architectures.  The number of
combinations is literally astronomical.

So, we test what we can, but rely on users to raise a bug in bugzilla
when a combination they try, that we haven't, fails.

> I already found things which does not compile out of
> the box.

So raise bugs on bugs.gentoo.org.  Make sure you include data about the
configuration of your system (i.e. the output of 'emerge --info').

> 1.) Use wacom does not compile out of the box. You
> have to unmask linuxwacom.

Raise a bug, if one hasn't already been raised.

> 2.) Enable the use flage accessibility gnome cant be
> merged. It fails on compile the speech-tools.

Raise a bug, if one hasn't already been raised.

> It seams that USE flags are not realy tested or how
> can it happen that there are already know bugs in the
> stable distro ?
> 
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=116030

> Festival and the speech-tools are well know not to
> compile with gcc >=4.

Er, because the bug is not yet fixed.  If we were to hold up the
release of everything until all bugs are fixed, we'd never release
anything.

You have the power to sort out this problem on your own system.  Just
build the relevant packages with gcc-3.4.6 instead of gcc-4.1.1 (see
gcc-config for switching your selected compiler).

-- 
Kevin F. Quinn

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[Edgar Hucek]

Jakub Moc schrieb:
> Edgar Hucek wrote:
>> Apeal on extended testing :
>>
>> Developer, please test things more carefull before you 
>> release it.
>> I already found things which does not compile out of
>> the box.
>> 1.) Use wacom does not compile out of the box. You
>> have to unmask linuxwacom.
> 
> Shrug. Noone even filed a stabilization bug, ask x11-drivers folks why.
> There's one now: http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=145891
> 
>> 2.) Enable the use flage accessibility gnome cant be
>> merged. It fails on compile the speech-tools.
>> It seams that USE flags are not realy tested or how
>> can it happen that there are already know bugs in the
>> stable distro ?
>>
>> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=116030
>>
>> Festival and the speech-tools are well know not to
>> compile with gcc >=4.
> 
> 
> Well, you know - if you go to read the speech-tools/festival & co. bug,
> and read the ebuild, you'll see that the whole thing and code is one
> huge mess, that doesn't compile even w/ gcc-3.3 without patching. You'd
> probably prefer to never put out a new release, I guess? How many people
> are using this one, and how does it justify delaying the release even more?
> 
> 

>From my point of view, should it be garanted that a package and depencies
compiles when all use flags are enabled. If a depency can't be compiled the
use flag and depence should be dissabled/removed from a package.


cu

Edgar (gimli) Hucek
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

The Age of the Universe (was: Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1)

[Danny van Dyk]

Am Samstag, 2. September 2006 13:18 schrieb Edgar Hucek:
> >> 2.) Enable the use flage accessibility gnome cant be
> >> merged. It fails on compile the speech-tools.
> >> It seams that USE flags are not realy tested or how
> >> can it happen that there are already know bugs in the
> >> stable distro ?
> >>
> >> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=116030
> >>
> >> Festival and the speech-tools are well know not to
> >> compile with gcc >=4.
> >
> > Well, you know - if you go to read the speech-tools/festival & co.
> > bug, and read the ebuild, you'll see that the whole thing and code
> > is one huge mess, that doesn't compile even w/ gcc-3.3 without
> > patching. You'd probably prefer to never put out a new release, I
> > guess? How many people are using this one, and how does it justify
> > delaying the release even more?
>
> From my point of view, should it be garanted that a package and
> depencies compiles when all use flags are enabled. If a depency can't
> be compiled the use flag and depence should be dissabled/removed from
> a package.
Please _think_ before you make such a demand. Just a small investigation 
would show this:

dev-lang/php-5.1.4-r6 has _96_ USE flags. That makes 2^96 = 7.9928+28 
combinations. Given the (unreasonable) assumption that each compilation 
would only take 1s and each compilation would actually succeed, you'd 
still have ~8e28 seconds. The age of the universe is approximately 4e17 
seconds.

This hasn't yet investigated allt he possible combinations of packages 
depending on dev-lang/php, or the ~10,000 other packages in the tree.

Danny
-- 
Danny van Dyk <kugelfang@gentoo.org>
Gentoo/AMD64 Project, Gentoo Scientific Project
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Edgar Hucek]

Danny van Dyk schrieb:
> Am Samstag, 2. September 2006 13:18 schrieb Edgar Hucek:
>>>> 2.) Enable the use flage accessibility gnome cant be
>>>> merged. It fails on compile the speech-tools.
>>>> It seams that USE flags are not realy tested or how
>>>> can it happen that there are already know bugs in the
>>>> stable distro ?
>>>>
>>>> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=116030
>>>>
>>>> Festival and the speech-tools are well know not to
>>>> compile with gcc >=4.
>>> Well, you know - if you go to read the speech-tools/festival & co.
>>> bug, and read the ebuild, you'll see that the whole thing and code
>>> is one huge mess, that doesn't compile even w/ gcc-3.3 without
>>> patching. You'd probably prefer to never put out a new release, I
>>> guess? How many people are using this one, and how does it justify
>>> delaying the release even more?
>> From my point of view, should it be garanted that a package and
>> depencies compiles when all use flags are enabled. If a depency can't
>> be compiled the use flag and depence should be dissabled/removed from
>> a package.
> Please _think_ before you make such a demand. Just a small investigation 
> would show this:
> 
> dev-lang/php-5.1.4-r6 has _96_ USE flags. That makes 2^96 = 7.9928+28 
> combinations. Given the (unreasonable) assumption that each compilation 
> would only take 1s and each compilation would actually succeed, you'd 
> still have ~8e28 seconds. The age of the universe is approximately 4e17 
> seconds.
> 
> This hasn't yet investigated allt he possible combinations of packages 
> depending on dev-lang/php, or the ~10,000 other packages in the tree.
> 
> Danny

Just a side hint. Try to enable all flags at the first cimpile time would
reduce trys drasticaly ;)
So you say a developer cant't test all useflags? That is a strange
message from you. How can a developer garantee that his package is correct.
Realy funny, i only hear exuses but no real solution for the problem.
The fact is, that long outstanding bugs are simple ignored. If a useflag
would only apply to one package it could be ok, but not when the same
useflag is in other packages and makes this one useflag for the "normal user"
unusable.

cu

Edgar (gimli) Hucek

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Charlie]

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On 02/09/06, Edgar Hucek <gimli@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Realy funny, i only hear exuses but no real solution for the problem.


 The universe ending before testing is finished is a pretty good excuse.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Simon Stelling]

Edgar Hucek wrote:
> Just a side hint. Try to enable all flags at the first cimpile time would
> reduce trys drasticaly ;)

If you had a look at the php ebuild (just because we took it as example
here), you'd see that it is a bit more complicated than just enabling
everything to have everything tested.

> So you say a developer cant't test all useflags? That is a strange
> message from you. How can a developer garantee that his package is correct.

He can't. That's what we're saying. Nobody said we can, nor do, nor want to.

> Realy funny, i only hear exuses but no real solution for the problem.

You have heard the real solution for the specific problems you pointed
out: File a bug. You have also heard why it is impossible to guarantee
that it simply works.

> The fact is, that long outstanding bugs are simple ignored. If a useflag
> would only apply to one package it could be ok, but not when the same
> useflag is in other packages and makes this one useflag for the "normal user"
> unusable.

man portage:

package.use
  Per-package USE flags.  Useful  for  tracking  local  USE
  flags  or  for  enabling  USE  flags for certain packages
  only.  Perhaps you develop GTK and thus you want documen-
  tation  for  it, but you don't want documentation for QT.
  Easy as pie my friend!

  Format:
  - comments begin with #
  - one DEPEND atom per line with space-delimited USE flags

  Example:
  # turn on docs for GTK 2.x
  =x11-libs/gtk+-2* doc
  # disable mysql support for QT
  x11-libs/qt -mysql

Know your tools, man.

-- 
Kind Regards,

Simon Stelling
Gentoo/AMD64 developer
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Mike Doty]

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

Edgar Hucek wrote:
> Danny van Dyk schrieb:
>> Am Samstag, 2. September 2006 13:18 schrieb Edgar Hucek:
>>>>> 2.) Enable the use flage accessibility gnome cant be
>>>>> merged. It fails on compile the speech-tools.
>>>>> It seams that USE flags are not realy tested or how
>>>>> can it happen that there are already know bugs in the
>>>>> stable distro ?
>>>>>
>>>>> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=116030
>>>>>
>>>>> Festival and the speech-tools are well know not to
>>>>> compile with gcc >=4.
>>>> Well, you know - if you go to read the speech-tools/festival & co.
>>>> bug, and read the ebuild, you'll see that the whole thing and code
>>>> is one huge mess, that doesn't compile even w/ gcc-3.3 without
>>>> patching. You'd probably prefer to never put out a new release, I
>>>> guess? How many people are using this one, and how does it justify
>>>> delaying the release even more?
>>> From my point of view, should it be garanted that a package and
>>> depencies compiles when all use flags are enabled. If a depency can't
>>> be compiled the use flag and depence should be dissabled/removed from
>>> a package.
>> Please _think_ before you make such a demand. Just a small investigation 
>> would show this:
>>
>> dev-lang/php-5.1.4-r6 has _96_ USE flags. That makes 2^96 = 7.9928+28 
>> combinations. Given the (unreasonable) assumption that each compilation 
>> would only take 1s and each compilation would actually succeed, you'd 
>> still have ~8e28 seconds. The age of the universe is approximately 4e17 
>> seconds.
>>
>> This hasn't yet investigated allt he possible combinations of packages 
>> depending on dev-lang/php, or the ~10,000 other packages in the tree.
>>
>> Danny
> 
> Just a side hint. Try to enable all flags at the first cimpile time would
> reduce trys drasticaly ;)
> So you say a developer cant't test all useflags? That is a strange
> message from you. How can a developer garantee that his package is correct.
> Realy funny, i only hear exuses but no real solution for the problem.
> The fact is, that long outstanding bugs are simple ignored. If a useflag
> would only apply to one package it could be ok, but not when the same
> useflag is in other packages and makes this one useflag for the "normal user"
> unusable.
> 
> cu
> 
> Edgar (gimli) Hucek
> 
Edgar-

You clearly have absolutely no idea how development and testing happens.
 This is *free* software with no warranty.  Our releases are tested with
the profile defaults provided in the release.  Nothing more.  If that's
not good enough for you, please find a distribution that you have to pay
for like RHEL.  Their testing is no better than ours, but at least
paying something entitles you to bitch at them.

- --
=======================================================
Mike Doty                      kingtaco -at- gentoo.org
Gentoo/AMD64 Strategic Lead
Gentoo Developer Relations
Gentoo Recruitment Lead
Gentoo Infrastructure
GPG: E1A5 1C9C 93FE F430 C1D6  F2AF 806B A2E4 19F4 AE05
=======================================================
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[Alec Warner]

Edgar Hucek wrote:
> 
>>From my point of view, should it be garanted that a package and depencies
> compiles when all use flags are enabled. If a depency can't be compiled the
> use flag and depence should be dissabled/removed from a package.
> 
> 
> cu
> 
> Edgar (gimli) Hucek

Give us about 3000 more developers, and sure* ;)

(*)Gentoo as a community distribution guarantees nothing (excluding a
few contracts with some sponsors) about really anything we do.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Edgar Hucek]

Simon Stelling schrieb:
> Edgar Hucek wrote:
>> Just a side hint. Try to enable all flags at the first cimpile time would
>> reduce trys drasticaly ;)
> 
> If you had a look at the php ebuild (just because we took it as example
> here), you'd see that it is a bit more complicated than just enabling
> everything to have everything tested.
> 
>> So you say a developer cant't test all useflags? That is a strange
>> message from you. How can a developer garantee that his package is correct.
> 
> He can't. That's what we're saying. Nobody said we can, nor do, nor want to.
> 
>> Realy funny, i only hear exuses but no real solution for the problem.
> 
> You have heard the real solution for the specific problems you pointed
> out: File a bug. You have also heard why it is impossible to guarantee
> that it simply works.
> 
>> The fact is, that long outstanding bugs are simple ignored. If a useflag
>> would only apply to one package it could be ok, but not when the same
>> useflag is in other packages and makes this one useflag for the "normal user"
>> unusable.
> 
> man portage:
> 
> package.use
>   Per-package USE flags.  Useful  for  tracking  local  USE
>   flags  or  for  enabling  USE  flags for certain packages
>   only.  Perhaps you develop GTK and thus you want documen-
>   tation  for  it, but you don't want documentation for QT.
>   Easy as pie my friend!
> 
>   Format:
>   - comments begin with #
>   - one DEPEND atom per line with space-delimited USE flags
> 
>   Example:
>   # turn on docs for GTK 2.x
>   =x11-libs/gtk+-2* doc
>   # disable mysql support for QT
>   x11-libs/qt -mysql
> 
> Know your tools, man.
> 

I know my tools but not necessarly the normal user who wanna use gentoo
and is ending frustrated.

cu

Edgar (gimli) Hucek
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Jakub Moc]

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Edgar Hucek wrote:
> Danny van Dyk schrieb:
>> This hasn't yet investigated allt he possible combinations of packages 
>> depending on dev-lang/php, or the ~10,000 other packages in the tree.
>>
>> Danny
> 
> Just a side hint. Try to enable all flags at the first cimpile time would
> reduce trys drasticaly ;)

Yes, it would indeed drastically reduce the time to almost zero due to
use flag collisions... :)

> So you say a developer cant't test all useflags? That is a strange
> message from you. 

No, even PHP devs can't test them all, and definitely not all their
combinations (simple maths, see previous mail). Not to mention that some
of the flags require commercial software installed that's not in
portage, so they are actually unsupported.


-- 
Best regards,

 Jakub Moc
 mailto:jakub@gentoo.org
 GPG signature:
 http://subkeys.pgp.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xCEBA3D9E
 Primary key fingerprint: D2D7 933C 9BA1 C95B 2C95  B30F 8717 D5FD CEBA 3D9E

 ... still no signature   ;)


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Simon Stelling]

Edgar Hucek wrote:
> I know my tools but not necessarly the normal user who wanna use gentoo
> and is ending frustrated.

If the users are too lazy to read the documentation, why should we care
about them?

-- 
Kind Regards,

Simon Stelling
Gentoo/AMD64 developer
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Stephen P. Becker]

> I know my tools but not necessarly the normal user who wanna use gentoo
> and is ending frustrated.
> 
> cu
> 
> Edgar (gimli) Hucek

Enrico?  Is that you in disguise?

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Duncan]

Simon Stelling <blubb@gentoo.org> posted 44F991D7.9060905@gentoo.org,
excerpted below, on  Sat, 02 Sep 2006 16:14:47 +0200:

> Edgar Hucek wrote:
>> I know my tools but not necessarly the normal user who wanna use gentoo
>> and is ending frustrated.
> 
> If the users are too lazy to read the documentation, why should we care
> about them?

Exactly.

To such a "normal user", unwilling to invest the very real time and energy
into learning about Gentoo and how to customize it to his wishes, most if
not all Gentoo devs will be happy to recommend Ubuntu or whatever.  Ubuntu
is by all reports a very respectable distribution, arguably one of the
most user friendly yet powerful out there. (Linspire/Freespire's probably
the most user friendly, disregarding power.)

Let Gentoo do what Gentoo does best, cater to those that /like/ that
customizability, even, perhaps /because/ of, the challenge of mastering
the machine and bending it to our will.  There are plenty of other
distributions out there for those that are more interested in just having
it work, with as little knowledge and effort invested on their part as
possible.

-- 
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

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Paid support

[Donnie Berkholz]

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Robin H. Johnson wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 02, 2006 at 08:55:33AM -0500, Mike Doty wrote:
>> If that's not good enough for you, please find a distribution that you
>> have to pay for like RHEL.  Their testing is no better than ours, but
>> at least paying something entitles you to bitch at them.
> Or consider paying a Gentoo developer [*] as your first level support
> person, and liaison with Gentoo. Thus they consult for you, and tell you
> if your specific combinations are going to work, and do their hardest to
> keep them working.

It might be worth putting together a list of folks interested in doing
this on the Gentoo website, under a Third-party Paid Support section. We
already have a Support link on the top of www.g.o, it could be on that page.

Thanks,
Donnie


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Paid support

[Mike Doty]

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Hash: SHA1

Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> Robin H. Johnson wrote:
>> On Sat, Sep 02, 2006 at 08:55:33AM -0500, Mike Doty wrote:
>>> If that's not good enough for you, please find a distribution that you
>>> have to pay for like RHEL.  Their testing is no better than ours, but
>>> at least paying something entitles you to bitch at them.
>> Or consider paying a Gentoo developer [*] as your first level support
>> person, and liaison with Gentoo. Thus they consult for you, and tell you
>> if your specific combinations are going to work, and do their hardest to
>> keep them working.
> 
> It might be worth putting together a list of folks interested in doing
> this on the Gentoo website, under a Third-party Paid Support section. We
> already have a Support link on the top of www.g.o, it could be on that page.
> 
> Thanks,
> Donnie
> 
I like it.  probably should have it's own thread though...

- --
=======================================================
Mike Doty                      kingtaco -at- gentoo.org
Gentoo/AMD64 Strategic Lead
Gentoo Developer Relations
Gentoo Recruitment Lead
Gentoo Infrastructure
GPG: E1A5 1C9C 93FE F430 C1D6  F2AF 806B A2E4 19F4 AE05
=======================================================
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Paid support

[Aaron Kulbe]

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On 9/2/06, Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> Robin H. Johnson wrote:
> > On Sat, Sep 02, 2006 at 08:55:33AM -0500, Mike Doty wrote:
> >> If that's not good enough for you, please find a distribution that you
> >> have to pay for like RHEL.  Their testing is no better than ours, but
> >> at least paying something entitles you to bitch at them.
> > Or consider paying a Gentoo developer [*] as your first level support
> > person, and liaison with Gentoo. Thus they consult for you, and tell you
> > if your specific combinations are going to work, and do their hardest to
> > keep them working.
>
> It might be worth putting together a list of folks interested in doing
> this on the Gentoo website, under a Third-party Paid Support section. We
> already have a Support link on the top of www.g.o, it could be on that
> page.
>
> Thanks,
> Donnie
>
>
>
>

I have done it before, and it's rather rewarding.  Both monetarily, and
otherwise.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[Joshua Jackson]

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

Edgar Hucek wrote:
> Apeal on extended testing :
>
> Developer, please test things more carefull before you
> release it.
> I already found things which does not compile out of
> the box.
> 1.) Use wacom does not compile out of the box. You
> have to unmask linuxwacom.
> 2.) Enable the use flage accessibility gnome cant be
> merged. It fails on compile the speech-tools.
>
> It seams that USE flags are not realy tested or how
> can it happen that there are already know bugs in the
> stable distro ?
>
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=116030
>
> Festival and the speech-tools are well know not to
> compile with gcc >=4.
>
> cu
>
> Edgar (gimli) Hucek

Well, thank you for your concern Edgar, however in the future would
you please at least look at all the work that went into the release of
this. There were months of testing by the releng team in association
with the arch teams to ensure that as much was ready to go. I'd like
to also point out a few people who went above the call on x86 to get
things filed. Ryan Hill (dirtyepic) filed many many many bugs as
blockers for 4.1.1 going stable at my request. The Archtesters for all
teams as well worked very hard testing things to make sure they worked
as w ell. Before it went stable, almost all were stabilized if they
could be. There are a few packages not ported yet in the games
category but we weren't going to let that stop the progress either.

Quite frankly saying that we didn't do enough testing, is a insult to
everyone who worked on this release. No release is going to be perfect
for us as a project, what we have attempted and I believe been
successful with is making the transition as painless as possible.

~Joshua
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Paid support

[Denis Dupeyron]

On 9/2/06, Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@gentoo.org> wrote:
> It might be worth putting together a list of folks interested in doing
> this on the Gentoo website, under a Third-party Paid Support section. We
> already have a Support link on the top of www.g.o, it could be on that page.

I was thinking about something like this a couple of weeks ago.
Similar to the adopt-a-dev project but for those of us who are
students (or superhumans) and have enough time and want to make a buck
or two with gentoo. We could list companies/people needing help either
as a one-time action or on a regular basis (like a few hours a month),
and starving and/or bored devs.

The company I work for, for example, has gentoo servers only, and they
use me as a consultant when they need it (my real job is not about
computers). If they didn't have me they'd need somebody to help them,
and I can hardly imagine it's the only company in the world in that
case.

Plus, that would probably make good PR for Gentoo.

Denis.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[Stuart Herbert]

On 9/2/06, Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Give us about 3000 more developers, and sure* ;)

I don't think that that's good thing to be saying to our users.

We didn't need 3000 more developers ... we just needed to give the
developers we have more reasonable notice.

This is the second time in recent weeks that we've acted like this, by
stabilising a major package with little or no notice.  It's the same
group of folks involved both times.

Best regards,
Stu
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Paid support

[Stuart Herbert]

Hi,

On 9/2/06, Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@gentoo.org> wrote:
> It might be worth putting together a list of folks interested in doing
> this on the Gentoo website, under a Third-party Paid Support section. We
> already have a Support link on the top of www.g.o, it could be on that page.

This is a good idea.

If you do it, it would be a very good idea to also post basic advice
for Gentoo developers who put their name down for this.  Folks'll need
to know about contracts, documenting their work, and insurance.
Per-country advice on independent contracting would also be helpful.

We'll also need to sort out a process for handling complaints against
developers from the folks they help.  Doesn't matter how well we make
it clear that these folks are "independent"; their actions will
reflect on Gentoo as a whole, and unhappy customers _will_ complain to
us sooner or later.  Rather than pretent it won't happen, better we're
pro-active and have something prepared.

Best regards,
Stu
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Carsten Lohrke]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 934 bytes --]

Seems my message got swallowed...

On Saturday 02 September 2006 15:36, Edgar Hucek wrote:
> Just a side hint. Try to enable all flags at the first cimpile time would
> reduce trys drasticaly ;)

There are lots of use flag combinations incompatible with each other within a 
package as well as packages relying on other ones to be build with or without 
use flags of other packages. The number of pssoble combinations would is too 
high, even if we had build servers running around the clock.

In case of point two, you're right, that it doesn't let Gentoo look good. 
Neither Gnome nor KDE (no use flag in this case) accessibiliy stuff builds 
now - and bug 116030 is open since nine months. Partly the problem is that 
we're understaffed, partly - and this is my very personal opinion - the 
problem is that releasing with GCC 4.x has been rushed - speak the notice 
came one or two months too late.


Carsten


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[Dan Meltzer]

On 9/2/06, Stuart Herbert <stuart.herbert@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/2/06, Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > Give us about 3000 more developers, and sure* ;)
>
> I don't think that that's good thing to be saying to our users.

Is it a bad thing to be saying to your developers?
>
> We didn't need 3000 more developers ... we just needed to give the
> developers we have more reasonable notice.
>
> This is the second time in recent weeks that we've acted like this, by
> stabilising a major package with little or no notice.  It's the same
> group of folks involved both times.

The gcc-4.1 stabilization bug has been open for a month and a half.
Thats fairly good notice... Warnings have also appeared on
planet.gentoo.org, and in the GWN.
>
> Best regards,
> Stu
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Paid support

[Ioannis Aslanidis]

Stuart Herbert wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> We'll also need to sort out a process for handling complaints against
> developers from the folks they help.  Doesn't matter how well we make
> it clear that these folks are "independent"; their actions will
> reflect on Gentoo as a whole, and unhappy customers _will_ complain to
> us sooner or later.  Rather than pretent it won't happen, better we're
> pro-active and have something prepared.

That's a very smart thought. Let's do it.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò]

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On Sunday 03 September 2006 00:16, Carsten Lohrke wrote:
> Neither Gnome nor KDE (no use flag in this case) accessibiliy stuff builds
> now - and bug 116030 is open since nine months. 
And waiting other 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 months won't change the thing. Why? Because we 
have _no_ accessibility team right now. If we had one, the problem would have 
been solved. Unfortunately that software is doomed to lag behind the rest of 
Gentoo unless someone maintain it. If it wasn't for the need of that software 
by some users, probably treecleaners would have removed that already.

In _this_ particular case, the notice interval is not important.

-- 
Diego "Flameeyes" Pettenò - http://farragut.flameeyes.is-a-geek.org/
Gentoo/Alt lead, Gentoo/FreeBSD, Video, AMD64, Sound, PAM, KDE

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[Stuart Herbert]

On 9/2/06, Dan Meltzer <parallelgrapefruit@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/2/06, Stuart Herbert <stuart.herbert@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/2/06, Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > > Give us about 3000 more developers, and sure* ;)
> >
> > I don't think that that's good thing to be saying to our users.
>
> Is it a bad thing to be saying to your developers?

It wasn't said to developers, it was said to a user.

> The gcc-4.1 stabilization bug has been open for a month and a half.

That's great, but that's not an announcement.  Folks aren't going to
go digging through bugs to find stuff like this.

> Thats fairly good notice...

Only to the folks who knew about that bug.  For the wider community
... it's not notice.

> Warnings have also appeared on
> planet.gentoo.org, and in the GWN.

Tsunam posted that there was a push on to get gcc-4.1 stable, but
there was no target date, and no firm statement that said it would
definitely be happening.  He posted this on July 19th.  Was there
another warning, with dates and stuff?

The GWN warning was last week.  My apologies if there was an earlier
one that I missed.

My apologies, but I've been unable to find an announcement on -dev.

Best regards,
Stu
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[Dan Meltzer]

On 9/2/06, Stuart Herbert <stuart.herbert@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/2/06, Dan Meltzer <parallelgrapefruit@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/2/06, Stuart Herbert <stuart.herbert@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 9/2/06, Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > > > Give us about 3000 more developers, and sure* ;)
> > >
> > > I don't think that that's good thing to be saying to our users.
> >
> > Is it a bad thing to be saying to your developers?
>
> It wasn't said to developers, it was said to a user.

It was in response to gimli, who unless he stole his @g.o address is a
developer.
>
> > The gcc-4.1 stabilization bug has been open for a month and a half.
>
> That's great, but that's not an announcement.  Folks aren't going to
> go digging through bugs to find stuff like this.
>
> > Thats fairly good notice...
>
> Only to the folks who knew about that bug.  For the wider community
> ... it's not notice.

The wider community will not be effected until they manually make the
switch to 4.1, just like any other gcc upgrade.  Before doing this one
would assume they would do a little research.
>
> > Warnings have also appeared on
> > planet.gentoo.org, and in the GWN.
>
> Tsunam posted that there was a push on to get gcc-4.1 stable, but
> there was no target date, and no firm statement that said it would
> definitely be happening.  He posted this on July 19th.  Was there
> another warning, with dates and stuff?
>
> The GWN warning was last week.  My apologies if there was an earlier
> one that I missed.
>
> My apologies, but I've been unable to find an announcement on -dev.

I do not know if there was on on -dev, I remember hearing for a little
while now that 2006.1 was going to be gcc-4.1.1, but I don't remember
if I read that or heard it in the -x86 irc channel, it may have been
there which doesn't really count :)  Beyond the stabilization warnings
however, I would think that gcc-4.1.1 entering unstable (which had a
number of announcements IIRC) should be warning to all users that it
was now on track to be stable, and to be prepared.

I really do not see what kind of further warning was necessary or even
possible... maybe I'm missing something. (Other than the
yet-to-be-implemented GLEP42 of course)

Dan,
>
> Best regards,
> Stu
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Robin H. Johnson]

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On Sat, Sep 02, 2006 at 08:55:33AM -0500, Mike Doty wrote:
> If that's not good enough for you, please find a distribution that you
> have to pay for like RHEL.  Their testing is no better than ours, but
> at least paying something entitles you to bitch at them.
Or consider paying a Gentoo developer [*] as your first level support
person, and liaison with Gentoo. Thus they consult for you, and tell you
if your specific combinations are going to work, and do their hardest to
keep them working.

But don't forget to heed their warnings of what you should and shouldn't
do.

I believe there are several developers that are unemployed, and would
like more work of this nature.

* I'm aware that myself and several other developers do this in various
  ways, most commonly by having our regular employer task us with making
  sure that changes in Gentoo won't break what we do. However I'm not
  taking any new consulting clients presently.

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
E-Mail     : robbat2@gentoo.org
GnuPG FP   : 11AC BA4F 4778 E3F6 E4ED  F38E B27B 944E 3488 4E85

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[gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Ryan Hill]

Carsten Lohrke wrote:

> we're understaffed, partly - and this is my very personal opinion - the 
> problem is that releasing with GCC 4.x has been rushed

I'd have to agree with you on that.  I understand the appeal of exciting 
press releases but there were over 75 GCC 4.1 bugs still open for 
problems in *~arch* when the decision was made to go stable.  Even now 
there's more than 50 left, with an equal and growing number of stable bugs.

On the other hand, the (misinformed?) perception that Gentoo was 
trailing further and further behind the other distros in terms of 
version numbers had been raised more than a couple times in the last six 
months, so i can see the reasoning behind wanting to make a statement.

--de.


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[gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Wiktor Wandachowicz]

Simon Stelling wrote:

> Edgar Hucek wrote:
> > I know my tools but not necessarly the normal user who wanna use gentoo
> > and is ending frustrated.
> 
> If the users are too lazy to read the documentation, why should we care
> about them?

Because we risk that Gentoo may receive the "user-UN-friendly" label and
become irrelevant in the long run? I know it ain't gonna happen, but still.

Both Edgar and you have some valid points. He refers mostly to the out-of-box
experience, which includes compiling GNOME and its dependencies at the install
time. With USE="accessibility" enabled, which makes perfect sense for people
with disabilities. And then the first-ever Gentoo installation breaks on the
speech-tools and festival.

How would *you* feel in such case?

You OTOH bring to the table a fact that developers shouldn't be that much
concerned with the stabilization/testing of packages before new release of
installation media. But new releases *ARE* targeted specifically at new users
and it's them who suffer the most. Next to it is the reputation of Gentoo and
its developers. Edgar's call was targeted mostly at releng and QA teams, who
should poke developers to decrease number of similar problems.

I maintain a bunch of Debian/sparc, Debian/i386, Gentoo/amd64, Gentoo/x86,
Solaris/sparc, Ubuntu/i686 boxes and mind you, out-of-box experience at
install time means A LOT.

More respect to the users => more respect to Gentoo.

Regards,
Wiktor Wandachowicz

PS. I'm already on the CC list of bug #116030 for the same reasons, but
I've been mostly quiet because I do know my tools ;) But OTOH I've been
already running Gentoo for a while....

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Carsten Lohrke]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1361 bytes --]

On Sunday 03 September 2006 00:42, Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò wrote:
> And waiting other 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 months won't change the thing. Why? Because
> we have _no_ accessibility team right now. 

Well, the bug is assigned to williamh, who is not /completely/ inactive. I 
wonder, if only 37 commits in more than two years suffices for cvs access, 
though.

> If we had one, the problem would 
> have been solved. Unfortunately that software is doomed to lag behind the
> rest of Gentoo unless someone maintain it. If it wasn't for the need of
> that software by some users, probably treecleaners would have removed that
> already.
>
> In _this_ particular case, the notice interval is not important.

You're wrong here. What I'm inclined about is that we had (leastwise) a 
fourteen day short notice to when the releaase snapshot would be taken. To 
the end of this time frame there was another one that we'd release with GCC 
4.x. Even if we had enough people to deal with everything thrown at us,it 
would have been impossible to fix and stabilize the relevant packages on all 
architectures. 

If I had known this as estimated goal two months earlier, I'd had switched to 
GCC 4.x a while before and noticed the bug, instead when it is too late. I 
consider this part of what is broken within Gentoo communication-wise.


Carsten


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Luis Francisco Araujo]

Wiktor Wandachowicz wrote:
> Simon Stelling wrote:
> 
>> Edgar Hucek wrote:
>>> I know my tools but not necessarly the normal user who wanna use gentoo
>>> and is ending frustrated.
>> If the users are too lazy to read the documentation, why should we care
>> about them?
> 
> Because we risk that Gentoo may receive the "user-UN-friendly" label and
> become irrelevant in the long run? I know it ain't gonna happen, but still.
> 
> Both Edgar and you have some valid points. He refers mostly to the out-of-box
> experience, which includes compiling GNOME and its dependencies at the install
> time. With USE="accessibility" enabled, which makes perfect sense for people
> with disabilities. And then the first-ever Gentoo installation breaks on the
> speech-tools and festival.
> 
> How would *you* feel in such case?
> 
> You OTOH bring to the table a fact that developers shouldn't be that much
> concerned with the stabilization/testing of packages before new release of
> installation media. But new releases *ARE* targeted specifically at new users
> and it's them who suffer the most. Next to it is the reputation of Gentoo and
> its developers. Edgar's call was targeted mostly at releng and QA teams, who
> should poke developers to decrease number of similar problems.
> 
> I maintain a bunch of Debian/sparc, Debian/i386, Gentoo/amd64, Gentoo/x86,
> Solaris/sparc, Ubuntu/i686 boxes and mind you, out-of-box experience at
> install time means A LOT.
> 
> More respect to the users => more respect to Gentoo.
>

Let's see...

Several points (misunderstandings) need to be clarified.

1) Gentoo is not intended to be an out-of-the-box distro, but instead, a 
customizable distro. Can see the difference?.. There are many, one of 
them is that users should 'make' the process of using Gentoo _friendly_ 
partially by themselves through reading documentation and tutorial when 
needed (and sometimes going through a list of bugs to know what it is 
going on).

2) Gentoo releases are "very".touppercase different to most of the other 
distros. Gentoo releases are mainly intended to be used as a tool to get 
you started building your _own_ system in an automatic way through 
scripts/metadata, this being very different to other distros, where they 
simply force you to use version 6.6.6 as a bunch of dead packages that 
won't likely suffer any major changes within the next 6 months until 
upgrading (which can be a very painful process) to the next 6.6.7 release.

This is precisely why i say Gentoo is an incremental meta-distro.

3) Considering the two points above, i therefore think , there is no 
point (and actually makes no sense) to bitch at our releng team (which 
did a great job) because two packages don't currently compile.

4) Gentoo is more a community than anything else. So we indeed all 
deserve respect. Some developers put into this project (the releng team 
being one of them) a lot of effort, so making comments like this thread 
might be very insulting for many people; apart of making false claims 
that could lead to a bunch of misconceptions. Now who is being 
disrespectful?

If neither of those points are convincing enough, then remember free 
software comes with *NO-WARRANTY*

Thanks,

My 0.2bs



-- 


Luis F. Araujo "araujo at gentoo.org"
Gentoo Linux


-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Luca Barbato]

Luis Francisco Araujo wrote:
> 
> If neither of those points are convincing enough, then remember free
> software comes with *NO-WARRANTY*

s/free//

Even payware is w/out warranties.

lu

-- 

Luca Barbato

Gentoo/linux Gentoo/PPC
http://dev.gentoo.org/~lu_zero

-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Simon Stelling]

Wiktor Wandachowicz wrote:
>> If the users are too lazy to read the documentation, why should we care
>> about them?
> 
> Because we risk that Gentoo may receive the "user-UN-friendly" label and
> become irrelevant in the long run? I know it ain't gonna happen, but still.

Well, that might be the case, but then, do we really care? I'm more than
glad if people who are too lazy to read the docs don't bugger me with
their issues which they could easily avoid if they'd have read the docs.

> You OTOH bring to the table a fact that developers shouldn't be that much
> concerned with the stabilization/testing of packages before new release of
> installation media. But new releases *ARE* targeted specifically at new users
> and it's them who suffer the most. Next to it is the reputation of Gentoo and
> its developers. Edgar's call was targeted mostly at releng and QA teams, who
> should poke developers to decrease number of similar problems.

I never said that, and I don't mean it either. We are concerned about
testing, but we can only do as much as human can do. Gentoo gives you
much flexibility. We can workaround the issue by masking the
accessibility flag for example, but that wouldn't be all that great,
because it only hides the problem, and it doesn't help those disabled
people either.

> I maintain a bunch of Debian/sparc, Debian/i386, Gentoo/amd64, Gentoo/x86,
> Solaris/sparc, Ubuntu/i686 boxes and mind you, out-of-box experience at
> install time means A LOT.

I know that. The first Gentoo CD I threw away just after booting it
because I couldn't figure out how to launch the setup app. "Wow, what a
crappy shit." I thought. Seriously, I don't want such people to use the
distro. It's not the right one for them.

(On a sidenote, should be quite obvious that in a second try I did
figure out how to install Gentoo and kind of changed my mind ;))

> More respect to the users => more respect to Gentoo.

I'm not sure how to parse that, but in case you mean that Gentoo gets
more popular when we make the out-of-the-box-experience better, then I
agree. I do not agree that this is something I want, though, because to
achieve that you either need a) much more resources or b) drop some of
the flexibility we offer. a) is hard to get and b) sucks. I'd rather
have other people think Gentoo is a bad distro but be happy with it
myself. Yes, I am a selfish pig.

-- 
Kind Regards,

Simon Stelling
Gentoo/AMD64 developer
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Carsten Lohrke]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1438 bytes --]

Either MTA or MUA brokeness. Another email I have to send a second time. :(

On Sunday 03 September 2006 00:42, Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò wrote:
> And waiting other 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 months won't change the thing. Why? Because
> we have _no_ accessibility team right now. 

Well, the bug is assigned to williamh, who is not /completely/ inactive. I 
wonder, if only 37 commits in more than two years suffices for cvs access, 
though.

> If we had one, the problem would 
> have been solved. Unfortunately that software is doomed to lag behind the
> rest of Gentoo unless someone maintain it. If it wasn't for the need of
> that software by some users, probably treecleaners would have removed that
> already.
>
> In _this_ particular case, the notice interval is not important.

You're wrong here. What I'm inclined about is that we had (leastwise) a 
fourteen day short notice to when the releaase snapshot would be taken. To 
the end of this time frame there was another one that we'd release with GCC 
4.x. Even if we had enough people to deal with everything thrown at us,it 
would have been impossible to fix and stabilize the relevant packages on all 
architectures. 

If I had known this as estimated goal two months earlier, I'd had switched to 
GCC 4.x a while before and noticed the bug, instead when it is too late. I 
consider this part of what is broken within Gentoo communication-wise.


Carsten

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 880 bytes --]

On Sunday 03 September 2006 15:02, Carsten Lohrke wrote:
> You're wrong here. What I'm inclined about is that we had (leastwise) a
> fourteen day short notice to when the releaase snapshot would be taken. To
> the end of this time frame there was another one that we'd release with GCC
> 4.x. Even if we had enough people to deal with everything thrown at us,it
> would have been impossible to fix and stabilize the relevant packages on
> all architectures.
Read me well please, I mean that in the case of the accessibility packages 
here brought to our attention, the interval is irrelevant.

I never said that it wouldn't have helped to have it longer for many other 
little things, of course, and in that I agree with you.

-- 
Diego "Flameeyes" Pettenò - http://farragut.flameeyes.is-a-geek.org/
Gentoo/Alt lead, Gentoo/FreeBSD, Video, AMD64, Sound, PAM, KDE

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[gentoo-dev] Re: Gentoo 2006.1

[Duncan]

"Dan Meltzer" <parallelgrapefruit@gmail.com> posted
46059ce10609021623p629ff47ye2842718d0829529@mail.gmail.com, excerpted
below, on  Sat, 02 Sep 2006 19:23:31 -0400:

>> > The gcc-4.1 stabilization bug has been open for a month and a half.
>>
>> > Thats fairly good notice...
>>
>> Only to the folks who knew about that bug.  For the wider community
>> ... it's not notice.
> 
> The wider community will not be effected until they manually make the
> switch to 4.1, just like any other gcc upgrade.  Before doing this one
> would assume they would do a little research.

What about the fresh install community?  I remember having a /terrible/
time with my first install, 2004.0.  At that point I didn't know how much
was me and how much was Gentoo so I didn't feel free to file bugs and
didn't know how to look for them either.

Eventually, it became apparent that 2004.1 was coming soon (quarterly
releases that year), so I stuck things on hold for a couple weeks or a
month and tried the (still pre-release IIRC) 2004.1, which finally worked.
To date, I'm still not sure whether it was me learning more about Gentoo
or a better release, but I had spend quite a bit of time on the various
lists even before trying 2004.0, enough time to know to avoid things like
etc-updating fstab (thankfully, a problem no longer with us), well more
time than the regular user can/will/does spend.

At install time, it's only logical to go with the newest stable (or
~arch if you are like me) gcc, and Gentoo newbies, rightly or wrongly,
will expect it to compile the latest stable version of whatever they want
to install.  The point about the wider Gentoo community not being affected
until they manually switch to the new compiler is certainly valid for the
pre-existing community, 100% agree there, but it's the newbies, those
least equipped to deal with problems, that get it in the head with what to
them may be the ton of bricks that means they fail at their one and only
ever attempt at installing Gentoo, and badmouth it from then on, as
something only uber-elite hackers can use.  (Not that a /bit/ of that from
time to time wouldn't be a good thing, in terms of getting only those
willing to put the time and energy into learning the system, but that only
the uber-elite can do it is false, as long as one is willing to invest the
time in learning the system.)

>> > Warnings have also appeared on
>> > planet.gentoo.org, and in the GWN.
>>
>> Tsunam posted that there was a push on to get gcc-4.1 stable, but
>> there was no target date, and no firm statement that said it would
>> definitely be happening.  He posted this on July 19th.
>>
>> The GWN warning was last week.
>>
>> My apologies, but I've been unable to find an announcement on -dev.
> 
> I do not know if there was on on -dev, I remember hearing for a little
> while now that 2006.1 was going to be gcc-4.1.1, but I don't remember
> if I read that or heard it in the -x86 irc channel, it may have been
> there which doesn't really count :)  Beyond the stabilization warnings
> however, I would think that gcc-4.1.1 entering unstable (which had a
> number of announcements IIRC) should be warning to all users that it
> was now on track to be stable, and to be prepared.
> 
> I really do not see what kind of further warning was necessary or even
> possible... maybe I'm missing something. (Other than the
> yet-to-be-implemented GLEP42 of course)

Agreed.  IMO, the unmasking to unstable, given the 30-day policy, should
have served notice of intent to stabilize.  However, for whatever reason
and the finger can be pointed several different ways but it doesn't matter
as it was the Gentoo /team/ that failed, there remained a rather larger
than one would hope number of packages whose last stable version wouldn't
compile with the last stable version of gcc, leaving the first-time Gentoo
installer with little hint as to what was going on.  Having been there
myself, that's a bit bewildering and overwhelming!

Now, I'm normally pushing the leading/bleeding edge myself, and was
routinely eselect compiler setting between the still masked gcc-4.0 and
the supported gcc-3.x when necessary, as soon as 4.0 was out.  I know how
to do that stuff now and take advantage of it, so I'd be (and am) very
happy that gcc 4.1.1 stabilized.

Realistically, however, I'd suggest that if we had to, to make that newbie
install a bit smoother with the new release, we should have delayed the
2006.1 release a few weeks.  Pre-release, whether delayed or ideally given
the warning time we had since the move to unstable, at minimum, packages
whose last stable version was known not to compile with gcc4, should have
had an eerror to that effect inserted in the ebuild.  An example that
came up on the amd64 list would be timidity++,
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=145669 . 

There's a changelog entry adding a gcc4 patch, but it's to the -r2 version
in unstable, where the latest stable is the -r0 version.  New user or
experienced user, if they try to merge the latest stable timidity++ with
the latest stable gcc, it won't work, and it's a known issue.  Preferably,
the -r2 should have stabilized.  I know I have it merged on a ~amd64
system but don't know if it works on a stable system, and suggested to the
OP on the amd64 list, that they add it to package.keyword and add a
comment on the above bug if it worked for them on an otherwise stable
system.

If it's not possible to stabilize the -r2 version, however, an eerror
displayed in the stable -r0 version when an attempt to compile it with
gcc-4 would at least give the user a clue.

Now for the practical suggestion.  How hard would it be to implement an
eclass (or add it to eutils or whatever) that took the last version of gcc
(or make it generic enough to work with binutils and the like too, if
desired) known to work as a parameter, tested what gcc was being used, and
(by second parameter) issued an ewarn or eerror if the presently
configured gcc either wasn't tested (ewarn) or was known to fail (eerror)?
Perhaps as an optional third parameter would trigger a mention of
package.keyword to try an unstable version known to work.  Maybe
it's partly already implemented?

With a standardized eclass solution, it could then be routine to inherit
the eclass and do the test, normally at the ewarn level, if a newer than
tested gcc was in use. Users, including new first-time-install users would
then at least have a clue what went wrong, and what to do to fix it.

In a situation such as we just had, then, when a release is coming just
after a big gcc upgrade stabilization, it could be accepted practice to
allow other than the maintaining dev to do at least the minimum necessary,
flip on the eerror trigger with the gcc version set accordingly.  Various
arch teams or QA or even the toolchain team could then do this if they
weren't comfortable keywording the new version ahead of the maintaining
arch, and it wouldn't affect the rest of the ebuild so wouldn't be
considered trampling on the maintaining dev's territory.  Cooperation with
the maintaining dev would of course be encouraged, with courtesy
notification an accepted minimum if cooperation isn't happening.

The effect of the above would be that all the packages for those remaining
open bugs connected to the gcc-4.1.1 stabilization would have at minimum
an eerror explaining the problem to anyone trying to merge them, and the
Hobson's choice between holding up the gcc stabilization and release, and
stabilization/release with open bugs and the resulting bewildered new users
with no clue whether it was them or Gentoo or what, wouldn't occur.  (And
yes, I know I gave an alternative, meaning it's not an absolute Hobson's
choice, but the implication is that the second one shouldn't happen or be
a choice at all.)

-- 
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

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Paid support

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Sun, 2006-09-03 at 00:31 +0200, Ioannis Aslanidis wrote:
> Stuart Herbert wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > We'll also need to sort out a process for handling complaints against
> > developers from the folks they help.  Doesn't matter how well we make
> > it clear that these folks are "independent"; their actions will
> > reflect on Gentoo as a whole, and unhappy customers _will_ complain to
> > us sooner or later.  Rather than pretent it won't happen, better we're
> > pro-active and have something prepared.
> 
> That's a very smart thought. Let's do it.

+1


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[Stuart Herbert]

On 9/3/06, Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote:
> And no one has implemented any kind of solution.

You need someone to implement a solution?  Surely what we need is for
folks to actually make an announcement in the first place?

I asked for what has become GLEP 42 because we do have a problem
reaching folks with announcements.  But you know what?  GLEP 42
wouldn't help in cases like this, where there's either no announcement
at all, or the announcement comes at the last minute.

Technology is just a tool.  A technical solution needs something fed into it.

Best regards,
Stu
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[Alec Warner]

Stuart Herbert wrote:
> On 9/3/06, Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> And no one has implemented any kind of solution.
> 
> You need someone to implement a solution?  Surely what we need is for
> folks to actually make an announcement in the first place?
> 
> I asked for what has become GLEP 42 because we do have a problem
> reaching folks with announcements.  But you know what?  GLEP 42
> wouldn't help in cases like this, where there's either no announcement
> at all, or the announcement comes at the last minute.
> 
> Technology is just a tool.  A technical solution needs something fed
> into it.

I never specified that the solution had to be technical in nature ;)

We have the Gentoo Status project, but it's been rather dead lately.  We
have PR, but they are more concerned with the release; in the end
GCC-4.1 going stable is up to releng and arch teams (heck it doesn't
technically have to go stable on all arches).  So who "screwed up" in
this case?

> 
> Best regards,
> Stu

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[Jeff Rollin]

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It seams that USE flags are not realy tested or how
can it happen that there are already know bugs in the
stable distro ?

Just like to make the point that if something requires a dependency in ~arch
(unstable), then it isn't/shouldn't be in arch (stable).

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Sun, 2006-09-03 at 10:36 -0400, Alec Warner wrote:
> Stuart Herbert wrote:
> > On 9/3/06, Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote:
> >> And no one has implemented any kind of solution.
> > 
> > You need someone to implement a solution?  Surely what we need is for
> > folks to actually make an announcement in the first place?
> > 
> > I asked for what has become GLEP 42 because we do have a problem
> > reaching folks with announcements.  But you know what?  GLEP 42
> > wouldn't help in cases like this, where there's either no announcement
> > at all, or the announcement comes at the last minute.
> > 
> > Technology is just a tool.  A technical solution needs something fed
> > into it.
> 
> I never specified that the solution had to be technical in nature ;)
> 
> We have the Gentoo Status project, but it's been rather dead lately.  We
> have PR, but they are more concerned with the release; in the end
> GCC-4.1 going stable is up to releng and arch teams (heck it doesn't
> technically have to go stable on all arches).  So who "screwed up" in
> this case?

Actually, we spent a fair amount of time talking about Gentoo Status in
yesterdays meeting and how to move forwards with that. As for PR, after
the Userrel + PR merge we have more manpower, and we're not concerned
with just the release. Hell, as far as the release goes, PR for that is
done by the Releng team and their PR coordinator. Don't assume that PR
isn't interested, but we can't read minds and if people don't keep us in
the loop then chances are we miss stuff that could be news worthy. 


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[Alec Warner]

Jeff Rollin wrote:
> 
> It seams that USE flags are not realy tested or how
> can it happen that there are already know bugs in the
> stable distro ?
> 
> Just like to make the point that if something requires a dependency in
> ~arch (unstable), then it isn't/shouldn't be in arch (stable).
> 

Because the thought that stable is always "stable" or that because we
released things are "stable" is incorrect ;)

Stable is more or less stable; almost all of the packages work out of
the box (at least for me) and things generally go well.

In some cases, a weird USE combination or an odd package breaks things;
there are forums, mailing lists, and irc, as well as bugs.gentoo.org to
help you find and report problems/fixes.  I don't know where these
magical expectations come from?

If you want everything to always work; thats just not possible (in any
endeavor, let alone this one.)
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[Stuart Herbert]

On 9/3/06, Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote:
> in the end
> GCC-4.1 going stable is up to releng and arch teams (heck it doesn't
> technically have to go stable on all arches).  So who "screwed up" in
> this case?

Well, for a package like PHP, the package maintainers take
responsibility for ensuring that there are useful and adequate
announcements up front.

GCC I suspect is surrounded by more confusion.  Either the package
maintainers or the arch teams could have made an announcement giving
fair warning; alas, neither did.

Best regards,
Stu
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[Stuart Herbert]

On 9/3/06, Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Because the thought that stable is always "stable" or that because we
> released things are "stable" is incorrect ;)

You're not supposed to break the stable tree; that surely must include
stabilising a compiler (which is the _default_ for new installs) that
can't compile all the packages marked stable for your arch.

<grumble>Feels like one rule for one group (the package maintainers)
and another for another group (releng / x86 arch team) to
me.</grumble>

Best regards,
Stu
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[Kevin F. Quinn]

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On Sun, 3 Sep 2006 17:44:32 +0100
"Stuart Herbert" <stuart.herbert@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 9/3/06, Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > Because the thought that stable is always "stable" or that because
> > we released things are "stable" is incorrect ;)
> 
> You're not supposed to break the stable tree; that surely must include
> stabilising a compiler (which is the _default_ for new installs) that
> can't compile all the packages marked stable for your arch.

That's just not feasible, as we've identified before.  You can't expect
sys-devel/gcc to take responsibility for every package in the tree in
all configurations.

-- 
Kevin F. Quinn

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Sat, 2006-09-02 at 12:34 +0200, Edgar Hucek wrote:
> Apeal on extended testing :
> 
> Developer, please test things more carefull before you 
> release it.

I hear this (pardon my "French") BULLSHIT all the time from our
developers.  Look, people, I asked multiple times for assistance with
testing.  Guess what?  Very few developers did any testing.  We started
a Release Tester program to try to improve testing.  It helped somewhat,
bust most of the release testers never bothered doing installations.
Some of them were very helpful, but most didn't do much of anything.

Release Engineering can not, and WILL not, be responsible for the state
of all 10,000+ packages and all of their possible USE combinations.
That is the individual ebuild maintainer job.  Our job is to make sure
that the *media* works with the *default* set of USE as we have laid
out.  If something other than what is provided by us does not work, it
is *not* our fault, nor our responsibility.

Remember that our releases are a snapshot of the state of the tree.  If
the tree is messed up, then it will be reflected in the tree.  If you
want better releases, quit trying to lay blame on other people and get
off your ASS and HELP fix the problems.  Seriously, if you want to see
improved releases, then help out.  Quit your bitching, as it doesn't
accomplish *anything* to improve the releases.

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

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Sat, 2006-09-02 at 22:55 +0100, Stuart Herbert wrote:
> On 9/2/06, Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > Give us about 3000 more developers, and sure* ;)
> 
> I don't think that that's good thing to be saying to our users.
> 
> We didn't need 3000 more developers ... we just needed to give the
> developers we have more reasonable notice.
> 
> This is the second time in recent weeks that we've acted like this, by
> stabilising a major package with little or no notice.  It's the same
> group of folks involved both times.

Excuse me?  TWO GWN articles wasn't enough notice?

Maybe you should do your homework before you go about pointing fingers?

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

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Sat, 2006-09-02 at 23:11 -0600, Ryan Hill wrote:
> Carsten Lohrke wrote:
> 
> > we're understaffed, partly - and this is my very personal opinion - the 
> > problem is that releasing with GCC 4.x has been rushed
> 
> I'd have to agree with you on that.  I understand the appeal of exciting 
> press releases but there were over 75 GCC 4.1 bugs still open for 
> problems in *~arch* when the decision was made to go stable.  Even now 
> there's more than 50 left, with an equal and growing number of stable bugs.

It had nothing to do with press releases and more to do with the fact
that 50 or even 75 out of > 10,000 is beans.  Also, most of that stuff
is in packages that are either unmaintained, or the maintainers are
focusing efforts in other places.  Having a bug report open for 2 months
*should* be *plenty* of time for maintainers to fix their packages.

Here's the thing, there are certain points when you just have to say
that you're not waiting on a few people who aren't keeping up anymore.
Would you rather us lower the standards (just like the US education
system) for the few that are a bit slow?

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

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Sun, 2006-09-03 at 07:41 +0000, Wiktor Wandachowicz wrote:
> its developers. Edgar's call was targeted mostly at releng and QA teams, who
> should poke developers to decrease number of similar problems.

Sorry, but Release Engineering has no wishes to become the "Gentoo
Developer Babysitting Project" at this time.  We would much prefer work
on our release media.  If some project, for any reason, is not up to
snuff, it is *not* our job to fix it.  There are simply too many
projects out there.  Would you rather we switch to a Debian model where
everything has to be perfect, but we don't release for 5 years?

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

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo 2006.1

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Sun, 2006-09-03 at 17:40 +0100, Stuart Herbert wrote:
> On 9/3/06, Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > in the end
> > GCC-4.1 going stable is up to releng and arch teams (heck it doesn't
> > technically have to go stable on all arches).  So who "screwed up" in
> > this case?
> 
> Well, for a package like PHP, the package maintainers take
> responsibility for ensuring that there are useful and adequate
> announcements up front.
> 
> GCC I suspect is surrounded by more confusion.  Either the package
> maintainers or the arch teams could have made an announcement giving
> fair warning; alas, neither did.

It was in the GWN.  Twice.

Funny enough, Donnie complained that I put the same information in two
GWN's and I explained that no matter, what, there would be people
bitching.  You've proven it.  There's only so many times you can tell
someone the *exact* same thing before it gets redundant.  If you missed
the announcement, I'm sorry to hear it, but I'm not apologizing for your
perception that we didn't get the word out.  We did.

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

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Luca Barbato]

Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-09-03 at 07:41 +0000, Wiktor Wandachowicz wrote:
>> its developers. Edgar's call was targeted mostly at releng and QA teams, who
>> should poke developers to decrease number of similar problems.
> 
> Sorry, but Release Engineering has no wishes to become the "Gentoo
> Developer Babysitting Project" at this time.  We would much prefer work
> on our release media.  If some project, for any reason, is not up to
> snuff, it is *not* our job to fix it.  There are simply too many
> projects out there.  Would you rather we switch to a Debian model where
> everything has to be perfect, but we don't release for 5 years?
> 

I'd rather have people ignore trolls (hi Enrico in disguise)

If something is broken and _NOBODY_ noticed it before either:
- it isn't a showstopper for most of the devs and we hadn't got the
complaints from our users
- it should be p.masked or updated with medium priority.

if our favourite cu-troll wants to point that some programs written by a
dog are ugly he could use the same time to fill a proper bug and or
provide patches.

that said releng has the duty to just provide a livecd that works and
stages that could be used to start getting a working system and I think
they succeeded as usual.

There are some known issue pointed already but nothing could be perfect.

"Release quickly & release often" maybe isn't really THE solution, but
"make it to the deadline decently well and plan a -r1 to address some of
the known issues that could hit more people in the future(eg new hw
support)" looks good enough.

that said I hope that the sales on trollfood will end ...

-- 

Luca Barbato

Gentoo/linux Gentoo/PPC
http://dev.gentoo.org/~lu_zero

-- 
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[gentoo-dev] Re: Gentoo 2006.1

[Ryan Hill]

Stuart Herbert wrote:

> GCC I suspect is surrounded by more confusion.  Either the package
> maintainers or the arch teams could have made an announcement giving
> fair warning; alas, neither did.

It was announced on June 27th and was in more than one issue of the GWN 
since then.

--de.

-- 
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[gentoo-dev] Re: The Age of the Universe

[Ryan Hill]

Chris Gianelloni wrote:
 > On Sat, 2006-09-02 at 23:11 -0600, Ryan Hill wrote:
 >> I'd have to agree with you on that.  I understand the appeal of 
exciting press releases but there were over 75 GCC 4.1 bugs still open 
for problems in *~arch* when the decision was made to go stable.  Even 
now there's more than 50 left, with an equal and growing number of 
stable bugs.
 >
 > It had nothing to do with press releases and more to do with the fact
 > that 50 or even 75 out of > 10,000 is beans.  Also, most of that stuff
 > is in packages that are either unmaintained, or the maintainers are
 > focusing efforts in other places.  Having a bug report open for 2 months
 > *should* be *plenty* of time for maintainers to fix their packages.

Great to hear that.  I'll be with the rest of the x86 team working this 
afternoon and most of tonight fixing those beans.  We actually need a 
games maintainer, considering about half the bugs fall under that 
category.  See you there. :)

--de.

-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Paid support

[Alastair Tse]

On Sat, 2006-09-02 at 23:00 +0100, Stuart Herbert wrote:
> On 9/2/06, Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > It might be worth putting together a list of folks interested in doing
> > this on the Gentoo website, under a Third-party Paid Support section. We
> > already have a Support link on the top of www.g.o, it could be on that page.
> 
> We'll also need to sort out a process for handling complaints against
> developers from the folks they help.  Doesn't matter how well we make
> it clear that these folks are "independent"; their actions will
> reflect on Gentoo as a whole, and unhappy customers _will_ complain to
> us sooner or later.  Rather than pretent it won't happen, better we're
> pro-active and have something prepared.

I think this is a great idea. If not for paid support, but just a list
of names of developers who are willing to do some freelance consulting
on setting up machines with Gentoo or to debug a problem, etc. I'm sure
there are people who have ended up with a Gentoo machine, but can't hire
a full time dev and would just like to pay someone to handle certain
issues.

I landed some freelancing where one of the reasons I was found was
because I did work for Gentoo, and they have some gentoo servers that
needed to be setup properly and securely.

I'm putting my hand up to help set this up if it is more effort than
putting up a single page on the web site :)

Cheers,

Alastair

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Paid support

[Curtis Napier]

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Hash: MD5

I'm in support of having a list of devs who want to do paid support.
Anything that helps people eat is OK in my book. ;)

On the other hand, I think we need to have the foundation run this past
our lawyer(s) and make sure we have our i's dotted and out t's crossed.
I would hate for something good like this to cause us problems down the
road.

I know christel is consulting with an accountant about adpot-a-dev,
maybe she can throw this in as well?


- --Curtis


ps. I didn't read every message in the thread, sorry if I'm repeating
stuff that's already been covered.
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Paid support

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Wed, 2006-09-06 at 23:50 -0400, Curtis Napier wrote:
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> I'm in support of having a list of devs who want to do paid support.
> Anything that helps people eat is OK in my book. ;)
> 
> On the other hand, I think we need to have the foundation run this past
> our lawyer(s) and make sure we have our i's dotted and out t's crossed.
> I would hate for something good like this to cause us problems down the
> road.

Umm... The Foundation has zero to do with a contract between two third
parties.  Let me give you an example.  I am currently doing paid "Gentoo
work" for a company, who will remain nameless.  I filled out paperwork
with the company.  My being a member of the Gentoo Foundation, a
Trustee, or anything else, has exactly zero bearing on my being
contracted, as an individual, to a company.

> I know christel is consulting with an accountant about adpot-a-dev,
> maybe she can throw this in as well?

Do we have to do some special law-abiding dance to have sponsors listed
on the site?  What about advertisers?

What Christel is researching is the tax law related to individuals
receiving gifts.  It has no bearing on the Foundation itself.

Let's look at this another way.  We have advertisers that sell Gentoo
servers and Gentoo-based services.  How exactly is this any different?
Is it because they're developers?  How does that matter?  In the end,
the contract is entirely between two third-party entities, the
developer, and whomever contracts him.  It isn't like the Foundation is
offering services.  It isn't.  The individual developers are offering
services.  The Foundation is not any of our employer.  We are not bound
by any legal contract to the Foundation, and it has no ties to us.

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

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Paid support

[Curtis Napier]

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Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-09-06 at 23:50 -0400, Curtis Napier wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: MD5
>>
>> I'm in support of having a list of devs who want to do paid support.
>> Anything that helps people eat is OK in my book. ;)
>>
>> On the other hand, I think we need to have the foundation run this past
>> our lawyer(s) and make sure we have our i's dotted and out t's crossed.
>> I would hate for something good like this to cause us problems down the
>> road.
> 
> Umm... The Foundation has zero to do with a contract between two third
> parties.  Let me give you an example.  I am currently doing paid "Gentoo
> work" for a company, who will remain nameless.  I filled out paperwork
> with the company.  My being a member of the Gentoo Foundation, a
> Trustee, or anything else, has exactly zero bearing on my being
> contracted, as an individual, to a company.
> 
>> I know christel is consulting with an accountant about adpot-a-dev,
>> maybe she can throw this in as well?
> 
> Do we have to do some special law-abiding dance to have sponsors listed
> on the site?  What about advertisers?
> 
> What Christel is researching is the tax law related to individuals
> receiving gifts.  It has no bearing on the Foundation itself.
> 
> Let's look at this another way.  We have advertisers that sell Gentoo
> servers and Gentoo-based services.  How exactly is this any different?
> Is it because they're developers?  How does that matter?  In the end,
> the contract is entirely between two third-party entities, the
> developer, and whomever contracts him.  It isn't like the Foundation is
> offering services.  It isn't.  The individual developers are offering
> services.  The Foundation is not any of our employer.  We are not bound
> by any legal contract to the Foundation, and it has no ties to us.
> 

Giving ad space to our sponsors is legal for us to do as a Not For
Profit because they are donating goods and/or services to us.
Technically we are not giving them "ads", we are acknowledging the
donated goods and/or services. Just like PBS does at the beginning of
it's shows, they aren't ads but acknowledgments of donations.

Basically I just want to make sure that we are not breaking any of the
rules of being a Not For Profit foundation. The IRS doesn't accept "We
didn't know any better" as an excuse when they come knocking on our door
to re-evaluate our Not For Profit status because we are giving free
advertising to people who *ARE* being paid in a For Profit manner.

And if the IRS changes our status we *may* be liable for back taxes.

I know I'm the only one who ever says anything about the legality of
what we do and always brings the Foundation into it but let's face
facts: The Gentoo web properties are owned and operated by the Gentoo
Foundation which means that those web properties MUST follow the law
concerning Not For Profit.

If no one else is concerned about it then I'll drop it but when the day
comes and the IRS is a knockin'.... don't look at me. Besides, what can
it hurt to have one of the Foundation Trustees ask one of our lawyers
about it?

- --Curtis
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Paid support

[Donnie Berkholz]

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Curtis Napier wrote:
> Giving ad space to our sponsors is legal for us to do as a Not For
> Profit because they are donating goods and/or services to us.
> Technically we are not giving them "ads", we are acknowledging the
> donated goods and/or services. Just like PBS does at the beginning of
> it's shows, they aren't ads but acknowledgments of donations.
> 
> Basically I just want to make sure that we are not breaking any of the
> rules of being a Not For Profit foundation. The IRS doesn't accept "We
> didn't know any better" as an excuse when they come knocking on our door
> to re-evaluate our Not For Profit status because we are giving free
> advertising to people who *ARE* being paid in a For Profit manner.

You just made my point. THEY are being paid, not Gentoo. Gentoo receives
no financial support from this, and Gentoo is not offering goods or
services in return for money.

Thanks,
Donnie


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[gentoo-dev] Re: Paid support

[Duncan]

Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@gentoo.org> posted 4502320A.2070402@gentoo.org,
excerpted below, on  Fri, 08 Sep 2006 20:16:26 -0700:

> Curtis Napier wrote:
>> Giving ad space to our sponsors is legal for us to do as a Not For
>> Profit because they are donating goods and/or services to us.
>> Technically we are not giving them "ads", we are acknowledging the
>> donated goods and/or services. Just like PBS does at the beginning of
>> it's shows, they aren't ads but acknowledgments of donations.
>> 
>> Basically I just want to make sure that we are not breaking any of the
>> rules of being a Not For Profit foundation. The IRS doesn't accept "We
>> didn't know any better" as an excuse when they come knocking on our door
>> to re-evaluate our Not For Profit status because we are giving free
>> advertising to people who *ARE* being paid in a For Profit manner.
> 
> You just made my point. THEY are being paid, not Gentoo. Gentoo receives
> no financial support from this, and Gentoo is not offering goods or
> services in return for money.

I see (and appreciate) his point tho.  As you say, we /should/ be in the
clear.  However, if we use the wrong language on the paid support setup
page, then the IRS /could/ find that the corporations are hiring Gentoo
developers in a quid-pro-quo of some sort, and that the Gentoo NFP is only
an attempt at an illegal tax shelter arrangement whereby Gentoo is just a
convenient way to arrange to pay someone more without them having to pay
taxes on it.

Consider this scenario.  A company donates some equipment thru the
adopt-a-dev program, that ends up in the possession of someone they end up
contracting thru the paid support program as well.  Depending on how it's
arranged, the sequence and timing, etc, it could look like the equipment
donation was payment in kind in ordered to hide the real value paid to
that developer, thus lowering his taxes.  It could appear to be a tax
dodge.

As long as we get it right, no problem, but when the risk is loss of NFP
status and back taxes plus fines for non-payment, plus possible criminal
charges...  Let's just say it's in everyone's interest to get it right the
first time around!  It might cost a few hundred to get a professional
opinion on paper, but come an audit a couple years down the road, that
paper could save our ass!

-- 
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

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Paid support

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Sat, 2006-09-09 at 05:06 +0000, Duncan wrote:
> I see (and appreciate) his point tho.  As you say, we /should/ be in the
> clear.  However, if we use the wrong language on the paid support setup
> page, then the IRS /could/ find that the corporations are hiring Gentoo
> developers in a quid-pro-quo of some sort, and that the Gentoo NFP is only
> an attempt at an illegal tax shelter arrangement whereby Gentoo is just a
> convenient way to arrange to pay someone more without them having to pay
> taxes on it.

There's no point in reading *anything* else below here, because you've
made one BIG assumption.  We *do* pay taxes.

When $company hires me to do work for them, I fill out a W-9.  This
means that *I* am an independent contractor and *I* am responsible for
paying the taxes on my income.

Gentoo has nothing to do with it.  All liabilities are on the individual
and the company.

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

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Paid support

[Ioannis Aslanidis]

I am just wondering, how does this affect European developers? Does this 
make us financially active in the US even if we work for a European 
company due to the fact that we are bound to Gentoo Foundation which 
*is* registered as a NFP Organization in the US? What are our 
responsibilities from the juridic point of view in the US and in the EU?


Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-09-09 at 05:06 +0000, Duncan wrote:
>> I see (and appreciate) his point tho.  As you say, we /should/ be in the
>> clear.  However, if we use the wrong language on the paid support setup
>> page, then the IRS /could/ find that the corporations are hiring Gentoo
>> developers in a quid-pro-quo of some sort, and that the Gentoo NFP is only
>> an attempt at an illegal tax shelter arrangement whereby Gentoo is just a
>> convenient way to arrange to pay someone more without them having to pay
>> taxes on it.
> 
> There's no point in reading *anything* else below here, because you've
> made one BIG assumption.  We *do* pay taxes.
> 
> When $company hires me to do work for them, I fill out a W-9.  This
> means that *I* am an independent contractor and *I* am responsible for
> paying the taxes on my income.
> 
> Gentoo has nothing to do with it.  All liabilities are on the individual
> and the company.
> 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Paid support

[Jakub Moc]

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Ioannis Aslanidis wrote:
> I am just wondering, how does this affect European developers? Does this
> make us financially active in the US even if we work for a European
> company due to the fact that we are bound to Gentoo Foundation which
> *is* registered as a NFP Organization in the US?

Well, see below...

Chris Gianelloni wrote:
>> Gentoo has nothing to do with it.  All liabilities are on the individual
>> and the company

Again, this has nothing to do w/ Gentoo foundation, they don't hire you
for anything.

-- 
Best regards,

 Jakub Moc
 mailto:jakub@gentoo.org
 GPG signature:
 http://subkeys.pgp.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xCEBA3D9E
 Primary key fingerprint: D2D7 933C 9BA1 C95B 2C95  B30F 8717 D5FD CEBA 3D9E

 ... still no signature   ;)


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Paid support

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Sat, 2006-09-09 at 18:49 +0200, Ioannis Aslanidis wrote:
> I am just wondering, how does this affect European developers? Does this 
> make us financially active in the US even if we work for a European 
> company due to the fact that we are bound to Gentoo Foundation which 
> *is* registered as a NFP Organization in the US? What are our 
> responsibilities from the juridic point of view in the US and in the EU?

If you are not working for a US company, then US law does not apply.
This is exactly the point that I am trying to get across.  This is no
different than someone contracting you now.  You would be required to
follow the laws that govern a normal contract.  If it is within the same
country, then the laws of that country.  If it is across international
borders, then you would be required to do whatever is necessary
according to the laws of both countries.  The only reason that US law
would be used is if you either live in the US or are working for a
company in the US.

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

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[gentoo-dev] Re: Paid support

[Ryan Hill]

Curtis Napier wrote:
> I know christel is consulting with an accountant about adpot-a-dev,

Now there's a project we can get behind.  QA might fall a bit though.


--de.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Paid support

[Daniel Ostrow]

On Sat, 2006-09-09 at 15:03 -0400, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-09-09 at 18:49 +0200, Ioannis Aslanidis wrote:
> > I am just wondering, how does this affect European developers? Does this 
> > make us financially active in the US even if we work for a European 
> > company due to the fact that we are bound to Gentoo Foundation which 
> > *is* registered as a NFP Organization in the US? What are our 
> > responsibilities from the juridic point of view in the US and in the EU?
> 
> If you are not working for a US company, then US law does not apply.
> This is exactly the point that I am trying to get across.  This is no
> different than someone contracting you now.  You would be required to
> follow the laws that govern a normal contract.  If it is within the same
> country, then the laws of that country.  If it is across international
> borders, then you would be required to do whatever is necessary
> according to the laws of both countries.  The only reason that US law
> would be used is if you either live in the US or are working for a
> company in the US.

That and it is all an entirely moot point as the Foundation would not be
making money in any way shape manner or form it is no different from
HotJobs, Monster, or the Penny Saver...we would be connecting people
with jobs...NetBSD already does this
btw...http://www.netbsd.org/gallery/consultants.html and they are a
*more* restrictive 501(c)3.

--Dan

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Paid support

[Daniel Ostrow]

On Sat, 2006-09-09 at 21:23 -0700, Daniel Ostrow wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-09-09 at 15:03 -0400, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> > On Sat, 2006-09-09 at 18:49 +0200, Ioannis Aslanidis wrote:
> > > I am just wondering, how does this affect European developers? Does this 
> > > make us financially active in the US even if we work for a European 
> > > company due to the fact that we are bound to Gentoo Foundation which 
> > > *is* registered as a NFP Organization in the US? What are our 
> > > responsibilities from the juridic point of view in the US and in the EU?
> > 
> > If you are not working for a US company, then US law does not apply.
> > This is exactly the point that I am trying to get across.  This is no
> > different than someone contracting you now.  You would be required to
> > follow the laws that govern a normal contract.  If it is within the same
> > country, then the laws of that country.  If it is across international
> > borders, then you would be required to do whatever is necessary
> > according to the laws of both countries.  The only reason that US law
> > would be used is if you either live in the US or are working for a
> > company in the US.
> 
> That and it is all an entirely moot point as the Foundation would not be
> making money in any way shape manner or form it is no different from
> HotJobs, Monster, or the Penny Saver...we would be connecting people
> with jobs...NetBSD already does this
> btw...http://www.netbsd.org/gallery/consultants.html and they are a
> *more* restrictive 501(c)3.

Oh and to forestall the argument ... those three companies charge for
their service...we would not...so again, moot point.

--Dan

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