[gentoo-dev] Re: Current unavoidable use of xz utils in Gentoo

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

Kévin GASPARD DE RENEFORT posted on Wed, 3 Apr 2024 14:22:18 +0200 as
excerpted:

> Fork Gentoo, or any other distros, start a LFS…

In fact, Gentoo has been forked in this way at least three times.  The 
first time was over 20 years ago, before 2004 as I remember researching it 
before I switched to Gentoo myself.  IDR what it was called but it had 
already by then pretty much fizzled out.

#2 and #3 are I believe still around and there's still some healthy 
interaction between them and Gentoo.  Funtoo is one, created by Gentoo's 
original founder.  It still uses portage and some of portage's features 
are primarily used there.  As a result, their contributions back to 
portage have continued to make it better for all users.  The other IDR the 
name (maybe Herb...?, with paludis as the package-manager) but PMS, the 
package-management-specification, that defines a portage- and package--
manager independent spec and the EAPI that packages use, is one of the 
major efforts to come of it as they split off.  And while most gentooers 
still use portage, pms is the reason other package managers can really 
work at all, and the thing much of the automated CI testing uses now, 
making it a BIG benefit to Gentoo.

So forking is a legitimate and respected if not necessarily pleasant while 
it's happening route to go, and often, some contributions from the process 
continue to be useful to and benefit both forks for many years after the 
fork.  While forks do generally mean duplication of effort in some areas 
and are often unpleasant to go through, the results aren't necessarily all 
bad, particularly when viewed with an appreciation that people often 
aren't paid for their work and could simply quite contributing entirely, 
which means the duplication of effort isn't all negative if it still means 
more contributions to the community than would happen if they just quit.

So if Gentoo's not doing it for you, in addition to the option of creating 
your own fork being a not necessarily entirely bad option, there's two 
other existing forks you might wish to look into, in case they're a better 
fit for you than Gentoo.

-- 
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