From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from lists.gentoo.org (pigeon.gentoo.org [208.92.234.80]) by finch.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1BC53138A1A for ; Wed, 21 Jan 2015 04:00:20 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 4EF43E08F8; Wed, 21 Jan 2015 04:00:18 +0000 (UTC) Received: from smtp.gentoo.org (smtp.gentoo.org [140.211.166.183]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher AECDH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 82FAEE08EA for ; Wed, 21 Jan 2015 04:00:17 +0000 (UTC) Received: from 127.0.0.1 (exit-01b.noisetor.net [173.254.216.67]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) (Authenticated sender: hasufell) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 7A28D340687; Wed, 21 Jan 2015 04:00:14 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: <54BF2444.20106@gentoo.org> Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 04:00:04 +0000 From: hasufell Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Project discussion list X-BeenThere: gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org Reply-To: gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 To: dberkholz@gentoo.org CC: gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-project] Some focus for Gentoo References: <20150114034323.GA22358@comet.hsd1.mn.comcast.net> <54B7D189.1000108@gentoo.org> <20150115191001.GD22358@comet.hsd1.mn.comcast.net> In-Reply-To: <20150115191001.GD22358@comet.hsd1.mn.comcast.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Archives-Salt: ec0a33cf-6f32-4953-9b36-32146030f864 X-Archives-Hash: 7e126f7e475f668d09e9114abd49e172 Donnie Berkholz: > On 14:41 Thu 15 Jan , hasufell wrote: >> How do you want to _ensure_ focus with 263 developers having direct >> push access without any strict review policies? >> >> How do you want to ensure focus if the council and GLEP 39 say that we >> may have conflicting ideas in ONE single repository and that we may >> voluntarily break tree consistency (can give examples)? > > I discussed some of this, in terms of what specifically "focus" would > look like, in my response to Daniel. > >> You are tackling the wrong problem. The problem is not lack of ideas and >> people having focus on these ideas. > > Instead, it is...? > Sorry to answer so late. I didn't have the time yet. The main problem in my opinion is that our organizational concept as a whole doesn't work so well... or at least not any more. With concept I don't just mean focus on technical stuff, but the question where does that focus come from and how do we process ideas? As I said... we have a lot of people with ideas and some are very focussed. Ofc we can discuss a technical focus and you/we might even be lucky and the majority agrees with you... now. And in 3 months? Afais gentoo is a very loose group of devs with optional communication, but everyone having access to one repository. Conflicting ideas and inconsistencies are allowed, unless it's about EAPI. Maybe this has worked for some time, but I think that was rather coincidence. And this has lead to several problems: 1. very high bus factor in some areas (as in: lets not hope mgorny, vapier or jer quit gentoo... commit rate will go down a lot or bugzilla just die) 2. point 1 also resulted into some devs getting special privileges which sometimes amplifies point 7 3. low QA 4. difficult collaboration model 5. major conflicting ideas not being properly mediated: e.g. multilib vs portage-multilib, because portage-multilib wasn't in-tree anyway and multilib was an eclass concept 6. allowing inconsistencies that may break user experience: e.g. we have games.eclass, but the council says... well, you may or may not use it (instead of saying we wipe it out completely or we follow the concept of special permissions consistently) 7. a lot of organizational problems these days and a high burn-out rate for people who come up with new ideas I think there are only two ways out of it: 1. Make gentoo more centralized to ensure focus. One possibility would be to give a lot more power to the council and make it the main hive for new ideas (already proposed that a year or more ago during council election, afair). 2. Make gentoo more decentralized and reduce the number of core-devs to allow conflicting ideas which is one of the main points of GLEP 39, IMO. But now make this idea actually possible on the technical and methodology level. This would imply a major restructuring of the organizational model and a redefinition of "core development", which would also ensure focus of that core development. (already proposed this a few weeks/months ago) I think we are currently a hybrid of both concepts and I think that is a problem. It's not enough to come up with ideas to focus on. You also have to come up with a way to ensure focus... or a way that doesn't need to ensure focus, at least for some areas.