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 33552138A1A for ; Sat, 17 Jan 2015 05:15:57 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id E92C4E08B2; Sat, 17 Jan 2015 05:15:54 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-pa0-f50.google.com (mail-pa0-f50.google.com [209.85.220.50]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 1567AE0897 for ; Sat, 17 Jan 2015 05:15:53 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-pa0-f50.google.com with SMTP id bj1so28214797pad.9 for ; Fri, 16 Jan 2015 21:15:53 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:sender:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject :from:to:content-type; bh=2GsoWfvOCeKumXe/z9DYRbJm6zpfhAFcgGR52fuGrqE=; b=qP8bnJXsMhuAJ1dBf5qnuMmP4zaYVN5t96RfBm21xXXjKE1wThLOCG5hnxwqTy0vDn Y41maCO+EHJm9WPaVF4gu5JrcTInX7eq5517SYApKR/O6i8iNa41SGQi4Z6Ziqg66Tb4 L9fV/M3nCGp/oH9zo+btpboAIvfwUs1VelRMnHOi6YcNeEUUTl1fXZ4px0fE9BdlnKY5 HMNewsOgqD058juJGXkMDS0Yze+6xubKYNrebIuaVwhuXfeipQM3Vgqe2Vbhs+1Yzczp 6Bv/tULrY3flxCl4b+U/iVXPnb+wZbjBEv2Wmi1TmFy8Gp6E2T9Ll7jPtcq4JVvuN74j +tpg== 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 X-Received: by 10.70.134.197 with SMTP id pm5mr18001785pdb.147.1421471753023; Fri, 16 Jan 2015 21:15:53 -0800 (PST) Sender: freemanrich@gmail.com Received: by 10.70.1.103 with HTTP; Fri, 16 Jan 2015 21:15:52 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <20150114034323.GA22358@comet.hsd1.mn.comcast.net> References: <20150114034323.GA22358@comet.hsd1.mn.comcast.net> Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 00:15:52 -0500 X-Google-Sender-Auth: xUthmOA_k_1J-1lb8R8rbxrQBbA Message-ID: Subject: Re: [gentoo-project] Some focus for Gentoo From: Rich Freeman To: gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 X-Archives-Salt: ded69d64-c6e8-43f7-8016-67bc36bd9e2f X-Archives-Hash: e18228ed2e34f47982e1a3c700c0bb6d On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 10:43 PM, Donnie Berkholz wrote: > Wanted to share my thoughts on where I think Gentoo should go, in terms > of direction. Would love to hear your thoughts. So, I think that remaining viable doesn't necessarily require focusing on some goals to the exclusion of all others. I certainly agree that Gentoo is a great choice for users who need extreme flexibility. However, isn't that just "blathering" about Gentoo being about choice? The very thing that makes Gentoo so suitable for people who want to depart from the beaten path is that we DON'T try to focus on any one thing. I may or may not be a "typical" Gentoo user, but I think the thing that really keeps me around here is that I'm a tinkerer, and Gentoo seems to be full of tinkerers. This fits into your "people who want to learn how Linux works" and "people who need extreme flexibility" categories, but I think it goes well beyond that. If I wanted to run a specific configuration in a production setting there is almost certainly some other distro more tailored to it than Gentoo. However, if I want to dabble in this for a few months, and that for a few months, and generally dabble in those things before it is popular to do so, then there is a pretty good chance that somebody is already doing it with Gentoo, and if not chances are that if I am the first others will be interested in using my contributions. Sure, having a working toolchain is very helpful when you're blazing ground, but if all I wanted to do is build abc I could easily set up a container/VM/whatever following the guidelines of the folks who work on abc (whether that is a project/language/platform/whatever). Linux makes it pretty easy to run things in specialized environments when you need to, and without worrying about dumping garbage in /usr when every language wants to bundle its own package manager. I guess I just have trouble envisioning what a "more focused Gentoo" looks like other than what it looks like right now. I guess we can start saying no to stuff that is outside our area of focus, but is that what we really want to be? This isn't really a zero-sum game - we don't have to exclude contributions for the sake of being focused. I'd certainly value the perspective of those who have been contributing longer. For most of my early years I didn't really follow -dev all that closely, so I don't really have a sense for how Gentoo's focus at that time made it more successful. I couldn't really tell you what Gentoo's focus was back when I first started using it. I just was interested in trying out a source-based distro. I would love to see more bleeding-edge work in Gentoo, but to be fair we do actually get a fair bit of that. We had systemd available very early on, we are probably the only distro that ever supported X32, our prefix capabilities are fairly unparalleled (other than on OSX, and I'm not sure how well the alternatives there actually compare), and even though my sense is that Gentoo hardened isn't quite as active I think we provide a lot of unique capabilities there as well. It is pretty rare that somebody who wants to do something new is unable to do it. Sure, there can be resistance, but I think we manage it when it happens as long as there is perseverance. >From my observation the only thing Gentoo really needs to make a certain use case work is continued advocacy. Typically a few devs form a project to support some use case, and they advocate for it, do work to get packages to support it, educate other maintainers as to how to best help them out, and so on. Not every Gentoo dev is going to join up on it, but most will at the very least stay out of their way, and most are going to do what they can to facilitate things. I apologize for this being a bit disorganized/random. I just want to get my thoughts out there. This isn't an area I feel particularly strongly about. However, I do want to make sure that we don't declare some kinds of innovation as unwelcome. -- Rich