[gentoo-dev] Re: Removal of articles.xml from website

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

Donnie Berkholz posted <42A884F9.7010006@gentoo.org>, excerpted below,  on
Thu, 09 Jun 2005 11:05:45 -0700:

> Olivier Crete wrote:
>> I still fail to see why everything done by Gentoo devs belongs on the
>> Gentoo page. The only article that belongs on the Gentoo page is the one
>> about the Enoch and how it became Gentoo.
> 
> Because it's something relevant to Linux done by a member of our
> community. And of course we care what people in our community are doing,
> don't we? Well, I guess some of us don't.

I'll second DB, here.

Several years ago, when 2.4 was still fairly fresh, and I was switching to
Linux (Mandrake at the time) because eXPrivacy crossed a line I could not
and would not cross, as I was getting ready to switch and doing my
research, it came time to decide what file system I was going to use. 
Googling, I quickly came across /just/ the article (series) I was looking
for, on IBM DeveloperWorks, by someone I knew not from Adam, at the time.

Imagine my surprise, some years later, when I began doing the research
that ultimately lead to my switching to Gentoo, to find that the guy that
wrote that series of articles, was the SAME Daniel Robbins, founder of
what was now Gentoo!

To me, that's a valid link, one that Gentoo should be proud of.  In
deleting that page, it's as if we are trying to wash away some part of our
past, "the bad old days", that we are somehow ashamed of.  To me, that
just doesn't seem right.  Politics is politics and people come and go, but
even if that's NOT the intended message, it will seem to some folks
(myself included) that Gentoo is trying to somehow hide its past, erase a
history that they SHOULD be proud of and continuing to point to, not
helping the tides of time erase.

The same of course goes for other works listed there, by other authors. 
If they were Gentoo contributors and wrote something of value to the FLOSS
community, we should be PROUD to list their works.

....

That said, there remains the practical issue of keeping links updated.  I
see a couple possibilities.

One, there's the idea others floated -- note on the page the problem of
keeping links updated as to why links aren't provided, and suggest
searching on the titles listed, possibly with IBM DeveloperWorks listed
specifically, or otherwise with publisher or original source acknowledged,
to ease the search.

Two, keep the links, but again, specifically acknowledge some of them move
from time to time, list them as last verified links, and display a
feedback mechanism (email, or web form based to prevent email harvesting,
or whatever) prominently asking for reader link update submissions.  If a
reader says a link doesn't work and it's verified, with no new link
immediately available, simply note that it has been verified dead and ask
for updates.  The idea here is to leave the links as well as acknowledging
they may be outdated, but leave the work of providing updates to the
readers.

When I saw the reference to the file systems series, I recognized it but
had to verify for myself it was the same one, which I quickly did.  I
don't recall if I used the on-site link or not, but I would have gladly
done a bit of googling to find it again and provided an updated link if
the site link was bad and the site had asked for updates if necessary.

-- 
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 in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


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