Re: [gentoo-project] rfc: separate /usr preparation vote

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Sun, Aug 18, 2013 at 9:08 AM, Anthony G. Basile
<basile@opensource.dyc.edu> wrote:
>
> ditto.  I want this debated in the community, ie, I want to hear the
> community say "all the preperation for dropping support ... are complete".

The community will never say that, just like no community ever said
"hey, we need a source-based linux distro!"

Progress and change gets initiated by individuals or small teams, and
the community always has to play catch up.  That's just how change and
innovation works.

The role of the community is to say why preparations AREN'T complete.
The default needs to be action, not inaction.  If we only change
things when a majority are clamoring for change, then I suggest that
anybody cares about running an interesting distro fork Gentoo now.
This isn't CentOS, and we're not going to backport patches to linux
2.4 until 95% of our customers agree that whatever proprietary blob
they're using is ready for 2.6.

Don't get me wrong - I'd love to see debate.  However, williamh made a
proposal, and if somebody wants to argue that we aren't ready yet then
they need to step up and do it.  That is how every court in the world
works, as far as I know (if you don't show up, you don't get a say).
I'm not really chomping at the bit to see stuff move to /usr, but if
people have a reason to ask for inaction, they need to voice it, and
not just ask everybody else to pass time.  If there is a reason to
hold things up I'll be the first to agree to hold things up, but there
has to be a reason, otherwise I'll probably support WONTFIXing any
separate-/usr regressions on existing packages, not putting any
restrictions on packages that weren't stable more than a year ago, and
allowing large changes to packages older than that if they can be
justified.

Rich