[gentoo-project] A proposal to get out of this mess

[gentoo-project] A proposal to get out of this mess

[Dominik Riva]

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Hi Gentoo-Project,

Let me first introduce myself to you.

I am known in the forum as Slalomsk8er and I am the one that started
http://gentoo-wiki.com/Problems_at_Gentoo
because I believe documenting is better then whining. Besides that, I am a
webmaster and server administrator for a living. If you know the Swiss
political system you will soon understand why this proposal comes to you
from Switzerland.

Now to the Problem at hand:

This organisation is not able to do any thing then producing code at the
moment and this is what produced that mess.

The offer from drobbins and the community that wants you by a big 90% to
take him by his offer.

The developers that don't like his offer because of his style to handle
volunteers that don't share his point of view.


So what to do:

Decline his offer!

Forget the Foundation - it is as dead as it can get legal. (how long can
Gentoo wait till the assets get lost?)

Let the community vote on a constitution for the council. (One from the
developers and as much others that have a substancial backing from the
community. In Switzerland we normally can vote for 2 to 3 versions of a "hot
iron" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendum#Switzerland)

A new council of 5 persons gets voted that stands under the rules of the new
Gentoo constitution by the community at large.
(Yes they will vote drobbins in if the likes to accept his nomination in the
light of the new rules)


Why I think this drastic steps are needed:

Gentleman, you screwed big time and the community is pissed!

The Gentoo-Project at large lost a lot of trust and credit in the eyes of
the community.

Hell, I would not even trust a Gentoo-Foundation trustee to feed my pet
snails while I am on a vacation!

The community will backup the drobbins that the active developers and some
forum veterans that spoke at
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-644321.html don't want back in charge
for what sounds like good reasons.

The current situation could, if all goes wrong, lead to a fork. I believe
with my knowledge of Gentoo and considering the nature of the Portage-Tree
at the heart of this distribution, that this could be the doom for both
forks. I have a vivid fantasy and it shows me dropped architectures,
invisibility at distrowatch and a dwindling user count. And I don't share
the opinion of AllenJB that: If the users leave, there's still the
developers and live goes on at Gentoo.
New developers need to come from somewhere and fast, as it looks like most
developers leave after ~2 years.
And the nature of Gentoo's Portage has it that every ebuild wants his
maintainer and they are called developers.


One last thing in my own interest:

Please fill in the gaps at http://gentoo-wiki.com/Problems_at_Gentoo with
your internal knowledge.
The community needs all information's it can get if it has to vote. This
geeks want to know that what they do to there beloved distribution is the
right thing to do.


Regards, Dominik Riva

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Re: [gentoo-project] A proposal to get out of this mess

[George Prowse]

Dominik Riva wrote:
> Hi Gentoo-Project,
> 
> Let me first introduce myself to you.
> 
> I am known in the forum as Slalomsk8er and I am the one that started 
> http://gentoo-wiki.com/Problems_at_Gentoo 
> <http://gentoo-wiki.com/Problems_at_Gentoo>
> because I believe documenting is better then whining. Besides that, I am 
> a webmaster and server administrator for a living. If you know the Swiss 
> political system you will soon understand why this proposal comes to you 
> from Switzerland.
> 
> Now to the Problem at hand:
> 
> This organisation is not able to do any thing then producing code at the 
> moment and this is what produced that mess.
> 
> The offer from drobbins and the community that wants you by a big 90% to 
> take him by his offer.
> 
> The developers that don't like his offer because of his style to handle 
> volunteers that don't share his point of view.
> 
> 
> So what to do:
> 
> Decline his offer!
> 
> Forget the Foundation - it is as dead as it can get legal. (how long can 
> Gentoo wait till the assets get lost?)
> 
> Let the community vote on a constitution for the council. (One from the 
> developers and as much others that have a substancial backing from the 
> community. In Switzerland we normally can vote for 2 to 3 versions of a 
> "hot iron" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendum#Switzerland)
> 
> A new council of 5 persons gets voted that stands under the rules of the 
> new Gentoo constitution by the community at large.
> (Yes they will vote drobbins in if the likes to accept his nomination in 
> the light of the new rules)
> 
> 
> Why I think this drastic steps are needed:
> 
> Gentleman, you screwed big time and the community is pissed!
> 
> The Gentoo-Project at large lost a lot of trust and credit in the eyes 
> of the community.
> 
> Hell, I would not even trust a Gentoo-Foundation trustee to feed my pet 
> snails while I am on a vacation!
> 
> The community will backup the drobbins that the active developers and 
> some forum veterans that spoke at 
> http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-644321.html don't want back in 
> charge for what sounds like good reasons.
> 
> The current situation could, if all goes wrong, lead to a fork. I 
> believe with my knowledge of Gentoo and considering the nature of the 
> Portage-Tree at the heart of this distribution, that this could be the 
> doom for both forks. I have a vivid fantasy and it shows me dropped 
> architectures, invisibility at distrowatch and a dwindling user count. 
> And I don't share the opinion of AllenJB that: If the users leave, 
> there's still the developers and live goes on at Gentoo.
> New developers need to come from somewhere and fast, as it looks like 
> most developers leave after ~2 years.
> And the nature of Gentoo's Portage has it that every ebuild wants his 
> maintainer and they are called developers.
> 
> 
> One last thing in my own interest:
> 
> Please fill in the gaps at http://gentoo-wiki.com/Problems_at_Gentoo 
> with your internal knowledge.
> The community needs all information's it can get if it has to vote. This 
> geeks want to know that what they do to there beloved distribution is 
> the right thing to do.
> 
> 
> Regards, Dominik Riva


I like the idea of a discussion of this kind and I applaud you for 
trying to start a discussion but you are unlikely to start any form of 
discussion here because it is not the forum for it.

Also, Gentoo developers are notoriously quiet when it comes to subjects 
like this which unfortunately leads to rumours which are no good for anyone.

I can understand why 90% of users would like drobbins back but I would 
be willing to say that 0% of the long-term core developers want him back 
and Gentoo has a long history of ignoring it's user base and saying "we 
give our time for free so we're going to develop how we want."

If you really want to see what core /developers/ think or thought about 
Gentoo's internal problems then I suggest you read Spider's and 
plasmaroo's resignation emails, they document some problems pretty well.

At the end of the day you're not likely to change anything though.

George
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[gentoo-project] Re: A proposal to get out of this mess

[Steve Long]

George Prowse wrote:

> Dominik Riva wrote:
>> This organisation is not able to do any thing then producing code at the
>> moment and this is what produced that mess.
>>
Agreed; coders are useless at organisation and administration of anything
but software. That's how it's supposed to be.

>> The offer from drobbins and the community that wants you by a big 90% to
>> take him by his offer.
>> 
>> The developers that don't like his offer because of his style to handle
>> volunteers that don't share his point of view.
>> 
>>
Well whatever their reasons might be, we're not the ones who would have to
work under drobbins, are we? And for all the talk of this only being about
the organisational side, the Trustees were/would be the legal owners of
Gentoo, if Gentoo went back to that form of incorporation. drobbins has
made it clear he wants to institute changes on the developmental side, from
his position as President/Chair of Trustees.

So that's a pretty major change in terms of the structure: the Trustees
would be deciding development policy.

>> So what to do:
>> 
>> Decline his offer!
>> 
>> Forget the Foundation - it is as dead as it can get legal. (how long can
>> Gentoo wait till the assets get lost?)
>>
Well I don't know much about it ofc, but I don't think they do own many
physical assets or money. AFAIK most of the infra (especially network
connectivity) isn't owned by Gentoo. I'm sure there are several machines
(most likely donated to Gentoo) given rack-space at eg osuosl.org. Domains,
brand and IP appear the most significant assets, and the last is debatable
given the lapse of the legal entity.

Since there hasn't been a Foundation in all this time, my bet is the
copyright on the code reverted to the authors a while back. Anyone who felt
s/he donated their code to the whole Community could quite justifiably
protest at it going into the control of an individual; after all since
drobbins left, it has been a NFP Foundation they assigned copyright to.
That no longer exists. 

US law is not the only law in the world, either; I am told that in Germany
you can't even assign copyright, only grant a usage license. I am not a
lawyer, nor do I assume drobbins is out for any nefarious purpose: I'm
simply pointing out that if the devs don't all agree to this, there could
be a hell of a situation to deal with which really could lead to the demise
of Gentoo. All because it had to be done in a week with no discussion?

>> Let the community vote on a constitution for the council. (One from the
>> developers and as much others that have a substancial backing from the
>> community. In Switzerland we normally can vote for 2 to 3 versions of a
>> "hot iron" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendum#Switzerland)
>>
OK I think we're mixing terminology here, which could get confusing: there
already is a Council, and it's the ultimate decision-making body on
technical matters. drobbins is proposing to take over the Board of
Trustees, which doesn't technically exist so he'd be starting a new
Foundation only he wants all the devs to hand their work over to that, and
accept him as ultimate authority.

>> A new council of 5 persons gets voted that stands under the rules of the
>> new Gentoo constitution by the community at large.
>> (Yes they will vote drobbins in if the likes to accept his nomination in
>> the light of the new rules)
>>
Er no, drobbins has insisted that the entire Board would *all* be his
appointees, and Gentoo would have *no* say in the matter.

>> 
>> Why I think this drastic steps are needed:
>> 
>> Gentleman, you screwed big time and the community is pissed!
>> 
>> The Gentoo-Project at large lost a lot of trust and credit in the eyes
>> of the community.
>>
Maybe you're right; personally they haven't in my eyes, mainly cos I've seen
how much crap they've had to deal with in the last few months on the m-l.
There's also been the small matter of a release which they've been working
towards, as well as getting the new Gnome stable (which seems to have real
issues, esp wrt policykit.) Then again, I don't much care about legal stuff
so long as it is done; the fact that it hasn't is bad. No doubt about it.

All it says to me is: hurry tf up and join the SFC:
http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/
http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/members/
 ..seems like good company to keep in my eyes, and Gentoo can take itself
out of the SFC whenever it likes. That's vastly different to handing the
lot over to an individual, whoever that might be.

With an individual in charge, you have a single point of failure. Stress
builds up on that person and they turn more and more to their inner-circle,
who will reassure them in the face of "adversaries". The same thing happens
with small cliques. It's not healthy for any organisation, leave alone one
as large and semi-autonomous as the Gentoo dev community.

IOW moving backwards to a BDFL model isn't opening anything up, and isn't a
progression. Having drobbins as say, head of devrel or the like, /would/
make a difference imo. He'd be in the position to act on the issues he sees
with how devs treat users (I mean the "advanced" users they interact with
on a more frequent basis who do come under devrel) as well as inter-dev
bitchiness. Those two groups are the ones who get involved in flames on the
m-l. It would give him much more chance to set the tone for Gentoo
developers, and I believe he would be firm and fair, and act on those
problems in a timely manner to nip them in the bud (once the initial
firefighting had been done ;)

This is not a criticism of current devrel. As I quoted in my forum post:
"Strong leaders are good: strong institutions are better. A strong community
is best of all."

>> Hell, I would not even trust a Gentoo-Foundation trustee to feed my pet
>> snails while I am on a vacation!
>>
Fair enough.

>> One last thing in my own interest:
>> 
>> Please fill in the gaps at http://gentoo-wiki.com/Problems_at_Gentoo
>> with your internal knowledge.
So what's going to be on that page in a year's time? And why can't people
get this information from the quite long posts in the forum threads?

I see it as a temporary internal Community matter, and there's more than
enough info on the forums. Apart from your "own interest" (whatever that
is) whom does it really serve?

>> The community needs all information's it can get if it has to vote. This
>> geeks want to know that what they do to there beloved distribution is
>> the right thing to do.
>>
You're assuming the users get a vote: they don't and personally I'm not at
all fussed about it. It's not my code, and it's not me who'd have to work
under the new regime.

Not saying I'd have any problem with it: I like what drobbins tried to do
last year (stand up to a monstrous troll) and obviously I love the distro
he created, as well as the user community which he inspired. I just don't
have the right to make that decision for someone else, and nor imo do you.

> I like the idea of a discussion of this kind and I applaud you for
> trying to start a discussion but you are unlikely to start any form of
> discussion here because it is not the forum for it.
>
I disagree: it's absolutely the right forum, since it's a non-technical/
organisational issue that concerns all interested parties. Exactly the kind
of thing project was set up for.

You may be right that it won't change anything however; this is one of the
rare occasions (it's the only one I can actually think of tbh ;) where i'm
siding with the devs against the users (since the discussion is framed
along those lines), in that it's their choice to decide how and with whom
they want to work.

drobbins' offer left a nasty taste in my mouth: one week, all his own
appointees, no information (beyond: "expect big changes"), no discussion.

Er, no thanks?

Maybe that's cos he's frustrated and doesn't want to waste time; it's just
not the kind of ultimatum I personally would ever accept. And since we
haven't had a Foundation since last summer, I really don't see the need to
be bullied into accepting.

The software is still improving, and the herds are still feeding ebuilds
into the main tree. I just did a fresh install from 2007.0 and
*GENTOO STILL ROCKS!*


-- 
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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: A proposal to get out of this mess

[George Prowse]

Steve Long wrote:
> George Prowse wrote:
>> I like the idea of a discussion of this kind and I applaud you for
>> trying to start a discussion but you are unlikely to start any form of
>> discussion here because it is not the forum for it.
>>
> I disagree: it's absolutely the right forum, since it's a non-technical/
> organisational issue that concerns all interested parties. Exactly the kind
> of thing project was set up for.

Well of course it's the right place, just not if you want any genuine 
responses from the people who make the decisions.
> 
> You may be right that it won't change anything however; this is one of the
> rare occasions (it's the only one I can actually think of tbh ;) where i'm
> siding with the devs against the users (since the discussion is framed
> along those lines), in that it's their choice to decide how and with whom
> they want to work.
> 
> drobbins' offer left a nasty taste in my mouth: one week, all his own
> appointees, no information (beyond: "expect big changes"), no discussion.
> 
> Er, no thanks?
> 
> Maybe that's cos he's frustrated and doesn't want to waste time; it's just
> not the kind of ultimatum I personally would ever accept. And since we
> haven't had a Foundation since last summer, I really don't see the need to
> be bullied into accepting.
> 
> The software is still improving, and the herds are still feeding ebuilds
> into the main tree. I just did a fresh install from 2007.0 and
> *GENTOO STILL ROCKS!*
> 
I'd never heard about his offer until I got the previous email through 
and it seems very drastic and extremely unlikely that anyone will give 
it the time of day.

I dont see what would really change though, Gentoo needs a president 
type and he seems like the only logical candidate.

I also can't see why people would be worried about taking up his offer, 
I mean I can't see anything radical that would different apart from the 
management structure and that would result in some developers losing 
their ability to exert control over various parts.

At the very least I would only consider his offer when I had some sort 
of information on the offer. Negotiations are whats needed, not an 
instant accept/decline
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[gentoo-project] Re: Re: A proposal to get out of this mess

[Steve Long]

George Prowse wrote:
> Steve Long wrote:
>> drobbins' offer left a nasty taste in my mouth: one week, all his own
>> appointees, no information (beyond: "expect big changes"), no discussion.
>> 
>> Er, no thanks?
>> 
>> Maybe that's cos he's frustrated and doesn't want to waste time; it's
>> just not the kind of ultimatum I personally would ever accept. And since
>> we haven't had a Foundation since last summer, I really don't see the
>> need to be bullied into accepting.
>> 
> I'd never heard about his offer until I got the previous email through
> and it seems very drastic and extremely unlikely that anyone will give
> it the time of day.
>
Exactly: it's too drastic and sudden; all-or-nothing, now-or-never.
 
> I dont see what would really change though, Gentoo needs a president
> type and he seems like the only logical candidate.
>
Does it? Seems to me like there are a few Napoleons around ;-) I'd still
love it if he were back on-board ofc, but I really don't understand why
anyone would want to cave in to these demands. Grow a pair, ffs!

> I also can't see why people would be worried about taking up his offer,
> I mean I can't see anything radical that would different apart from the
> management structure and that would result in some developers losing
> their ability to exert control over various parts.
>
Well technically the Foundation used to be legal title-holder to all Gentoo
assets. He's talking about the Trustees exerting control over the
developers, which is something it was explicity set up not to do; the
Council are the ultimate authority for all developers. So in a sense he's
trying to take control over the whole thing (even though it would be a new
legally disjoint entity) in one swoop. Some people will applaud that,
others not. *shrug*

The SFC thing is far more like the old Foundation tbh. Only they have
professional admins, accountants and lawyers. ;)

> At the very least I would only consider his offer when I had some sort
> of information on the offer. Negotiations are whats needed, not an
> instant accept/decline

Yeah, only he explicitly rules out any negotiation and set a very tight
deadline to accept or refuse. I pleaded with him to change only the terms
(no discussion/deadline and all his appointees) believe it or not. meh.
"Railroading" is the only term that seems apt to me.


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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Re: A proposal to get out of this mess

[George Prowse]

Steve Long wrote:
 > Well technically the Foundation used to be legal title-holder to all 
Gentoo
 > assets. He's talking about the Trustees exerting control over the
 > developers, which is something it was explicitly set up not to do; the
 > Council are the ultimate authority for all developers. So in a sense he's
 > trying to take control over the whole thing (even though it would be 
a new
 > legally disjoint entity) in one swoop. Some people will applaud that,
 > others not. *shrug*

Well correct me if I am wrong but if the foundation is no more then 
wouldn't/hasn't everything revert(ed) back to him anyway?
 >
 > The SFC thing is far more like the old Foundation tbh. Only they have
 > professional admins, accountants and lawyers. ;)
 >
 >> At the very least I would only consider his offer when I had some sort
 >> of information on the offer. Negotiations are whats needed, not an
 >> instant accept/decline
 >
 > Yeah, only he explicitly rules out any negotiation and set a very tight
 > deadline to accept or refuse. I pleaded with him to change only the terms
 > (no discussion/deadline and all his appointees) believe it or not. meh.
 > "Railroading" is the only term that seems apt to me.
 >
That is just a negotiation manoeuvre, forcing Gentoo to act
-- 
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[gentoo-project] Re: Re: Re: A proposal to get out of this mess

[Steve Long]

George Prowse wrote:
> Steve Long wrote:
>  > Well technically the Foundation used to be legal title-holder to all
> Gentoo
>  > assets. He's talking about the Trustees exerting control over the
>  > developers, which is something it was explicitly set up not to do; the
>  > Council are the ultimate authority for all developers. So in a sense
>  > he's trying to take control over the whole thing (even though it would
>  > be
> a new
>  > legally disjoint entity) in one swoop. Some people will applaud that,
>  > others not. *shrug*
> 
> Well correct me if I am wrong but if the foundation is no more then
> wouldn't/hasn't everything revert(ed) back to him anyway?

Only the copyright on any trademarks as I understand it, and the copyright
to any of his code which might still be in portage or elsewere (which was
made available under GPL2, so there'd be no breach in <Gentoo>, or anyone
else, continuing to use it.) Copyright on others' work was never his.

>  > The SFC thing is far more like the old Foundation tbh. Only they have
>  > professional admins, accountants and lawyers. ;)
>  >
>  >> At the very least I would only consider his offer when I had some sort
>  >> of information on the offer. Negotiations are whats needed, not an
>  >> instant accept/decline
>  >
>  > Yeah, only he explicitly rules out any negotiation and set a very tight
>  > deadline to accept or refuse. I pleaded with him to change only the
>  > terms (no discussion/deadline and all his appointees) believe it or
>  > not. meh. "Railroading" is the only term that seems apt to me.
>  >
> That is just a negotiation manoeuvre, forcing Gentoo to act

Well it just feels like strongarm tactics, is all. Then again, it's not my
problem, as long as the devs keep doing what they been with the software.
It's their work we're discussing handing over to this new entity after all.
It's also the community's of course, due to the patches supplied over the
years; I guess it'd be fine if he was just talking about representing that
group (which he has done) but this is about much more: the whole kit and
caboodle, and there's no room for negotiation. I still can't see the
attraction.


-- 
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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: A proposal to get out of this mess

[Donnie Berkholz]

On 10:27 Tue 15 Jan     , George Prowse wrote:
> Steve Long wrote:
>> George Prowse wrote:
>>> I like the idea of a discussion of this kind and I applaud you for
>>> trying to start a discussion but you are unlikely to start any form of
>>> discussion here because it is not the forum for it.
>>>
>> I disagree: it's absolutely the right forum, since it's a non-technical/
>> organisational issue that concerns all interested parties. Exactly the 
>> kind
>> of thing project was set up for.
>
> Well of course it's the right place, just not if you want any genuine 
> responses from the people who make the decisions.

I read this list, and at least two other council members do, since 
they've both posted to it. Rest assured, your input is seen, even if 
sometimes it doesn't get a visible response.

Thanks,
Donnie
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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: A proposal to get out of this mess

[Dominik Riva]

On Jan 15, 2008 11:02 AM, Steve Long <slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
> George Prowse wrote:
>
> > Dominik Riva wrote:

> >> Let the community vote on a constitution for the council. (One from the
> >> developers and as much others that have a substancial backing from the
> >> community. In Switzerland we normally can vote for 2 to 3 versions of a
> >> "hot iron" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendum#Switzerland)
> >>
> OK I think we're mixing terminology here, which could get confusing: there
> already is a Council, and it's the ultimate decision-making body on
> technical matters.

I was referring to exactly that Council. I would like to see it
rebuild stronger then ever by being voted by the community at large
(including developers).
But it will in its new incarnation handling all matters Gentoo, that
needs a decision made by some sort of a lead.

> >> A new council of 5 persons gets voted that stands under the rules of the
> >> new Gentoo constitution by the community at large.
> >> (Yes they will vote drobbins in if the likes to accept his nomination in
> >> the light of the new rules)
> >>
> Er no, drobbins has insisted that the entire Board would *all* be his
> appointees, and Gentoo would have *no* say in the matter.

drobbins would have no say as Gentoo declined politely his offer.

> All it says to me is: hurry tf up and join the SFC:
> http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/
> http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/members/
>  ..seems like good company to keep in my eyes, and Gentoo can take itself
> out of the SFC whenever it likes.

>From all I know about the SFC, I welcome this step.

> With an individual in charge, you have a single point of failure. Stress
> builds up on that person and they turn more and more to their inner-circle,
> who will reassure them in the face of "adversaries". The same thing happens
> with small cliques. It's not healthy for any organisation, leave alone one
> as large and semi-autonomous as the Gentoo dev community.
>
> IOW moving backwards to a BDFL model isn't opening anything up, and isn't a
> progression.

That is why I would like to see the Council do the job.

> >> One last thing in my own interest:
> >>
> >> Please fill in the gaps at http://gentoo-wiki.com/Problems_at_Gentoo
> >> with your internal knowledge.
> So what's going to be on that page in a year's time? And why can't people
> get this information from the quite long posts in the forum threads?

I hope some some new problems are on that page in a year.
Because the forum posts and topics are quite long and the information
is all over the place and even most of it is in the mailing lists.

> I see it as a temporary internal Community matter, and there's more than
> enough info on the forums. Apart from your "own interest" (whatever that
> is) whom does it really serve?

I like to give Gentoo a tool to measure what in the eyes of community
needs to be done at large - where the shoe is pressing if you will.
And It addresses not only this matter. I hope I can move this problem
soon to a sister page with the title "Past Problems at Gentoo"
and mark the solution that was taken.

> >> The community needs all information's it can get if it has to vote. This
> >> geeks want to know that what they do to there beloved distribution is
> >> the right thing to do.
> >>
> You're assuming the users get a vote: they don't and personally I'm not at
> all fussed about it. It's not my code, and it's not me who'd have to work
> under the new regime.

Rebuilding a leadership by voting is a common way of rebuilding lost
trust and gives the community the feeling it is not ignored.

You don't care enough about Gentoo to vote?

> You may be right that it won't change anything however; this is one of the
> rare occasions (it's the only one I can actually think of tbh ;) where i'm
> siding with the devs against the users (since the discussion is framed
> along those lines), in that it's their choice to decide how and with whom
> they want to work.
>
> drobbins' offer left a nasty taste in my mouth: one week, all his own
> appointees, no information (beyond: "expect big changes"), no discussion.
>
> Er, no thanks?

I can understand drobbin's ultimatum but I too don't like the taste of it.

> The software is still improving, and the herds are still feeding ebuilds
> into the main tree. I just did a fresh install from 2007.0 and
> *GENTOO STILL ROCKS!*

But for how long if some big problems don't get addressed because they
are not technical by nature?


Regards, Dominik Riva
-- 
gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-project] Re: A proposal to get out of this mess

[Dale]

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Dominik Riva wrote:
> SNIP
>
> drobbins would have no say as Gentoo declined politely his offer.
>
> SNIP 
>   
>
> Regards, Dominik Riva
>   

Is that officially posted somewhere?  Just curious.

Dale

:-)  :-)

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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: A proposal to get out of this mess

[Dominik Riva]

On Jan 15, 2008 1:55 PM, Dale <dalek1967@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>  Dominik Riva wrote:
> SNIP
>  drobbins would have no say as Gentoo declined politely his offer.
>
> SNIP
>
>
> Regards, Dominik Riva
>
>
>  Is that officially posted somewhere?  Just curious.
>
>  Dale
>
>  :-)  :-)
>

> > So what to do:
> >
> >Decline his offer!

It is the first point of my proposal.


Regards, Dominik Riva
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gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-project] Re: Re: A proposal to get out of this mess

[Steve Long]

Dominik Riva wrote:
> On Jan 15, 2008 11:02 AM, Steve Long <slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
>> George Prowse wrote:
>> > Dominik Riva wrote:
>> >> Let the community vote on a constitution for the council. (One from
>> >> the developers and as much others that have a substancial backing from
>> >> the community. In Switzerland we normally can vote for 2 to 3 versions
>> >> of a "hot iron" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendum#Switzerland)
>> >>
>> OK I think we're mixing terminology here, which could get confusing:
>> there already is a Council, and it's the ultimate decision-making body on
>> technical matters.
> 
> I was referring to exactly that Council. I would like to see it
> rebuild stronger then ever by being voted by the community at large
> (including developers).
Oh man, so we've gone from discussing the composition of the trustees to how
the Dev Council is elected? That's nuts imo. Keeping the technical and
support stuff separate is vital: it's like a company[1] focussing on it's
core duties (via the Executives) and ancillary services (other Directors,
eg Finance or Legal.) The separation of concerns allows both to focus
effectively without having to worry about the other side of it.

Yes that other side hasn't happened, since all the trustees were devs. (And
this was discussed and acknowledged *openly* on the nfp list.) The devs
appreciate that, and aren't about to volunteer to become trustees: they're
just 1) calming down from the shock I imagine, since most of them paid as
little attention to that list as the average user, and 2) taking some time
to think over the options.

There's zero benefit in users voting for technical leads: the devs wouldn't
buy it and I hope nor would most of the users (when they think about it.)
It would just be a popularity contest. While there's always an element of
that, these guys know each other on a day-in, day-out basis,
personality-wise and technically. Let them make their own minds up about
who they want to lead them. We don't need politicians.

We had userreps: I'm all for that idea, and for giving them some kind of
influence, however that's best achieved (be it voice in #gentoo-foo, a
gentoo.org address, assign ability on bugzilla or w/e I don't care: it's
something we can discuss since we're not rushing to meet some artificial
deadline.) They withered simply because they were seen as toothless.

Yes there needs to be a new understanding between users and devs; hopefully
the devs are seeing they can't just run everything on their own, and maybe
they'll be a little less arrogant in the future (we can dream, eh? ;) They
might even start to listen to some of their users who work in the
real-world and use computers to make a living, not just at Uni, and see
that massive, loyal and committed user base has a wealth of talent in all
kinds of areas they know nothing about.

PR, Legal & Admin spring to mind ;-)

[1] OFC Gentoo is not a company: I'm just trying to make an analogy to show
the separation; call it executive, legislature and judiciary if you prefer.
> But it will in its new incarnation handling all matters Gentoo, that
> needs a decision made by some sort of a lead.
>
I don't agree with merging the legal/admin side with the technical Council.
It's a complete dead-end. Maybe having some sort of overall community
meeting of Council, user-reps and staff/infra would be good. But at no
point should that *ever* encroach on the technical decisions. That's what
people go through the training for, and why we trust them to install our
software: because they make the best technical decisions, irrespective of
other concerns.

Lose that and you lose what makes Gentoo so special, for me at least.

<snip> 
>> *GENTOO STILL ROCKS!*
> 
> But for how long if some big problems don't get addressed because they
> are not technical by nature?
> 
Well the main bugbear has been the dev m-l. NotTheProctors will be dealing
with that at some point: watch the gentoo-council m-l for detailed
proposals (not for a week or two at least, I'd imagine, given all this
hullabaloo.) But that's been ongoing for at least 3 years afaict.

Apart from that, loads of devs are working away on the software which is why
it still rocks. Imagine how much quicker it would go if we could lose all
the dramas/flamewars/noise and just get on with enjoying our software and
our community.


-- 
gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-project] A proposal to get out of this mess

[Dominik Riva]

On Jan 15, 2008 9:35 AM, George Prowse <cokehabit@gmail.com> wrote:
> I like the idea of a discussion of this kind and I applaud you for
> trying to start a discussion but you are unlikely to start any form of
> discussion here because it is not the forum for it.
>
> Also, Gentoo developers are notoriously quiet when it comes to subjects
> like this which unfortunately leads to rumours which are no good for anyone.
>
> I can understand why 90% of users would like drobbins back but I would
> be willing to say that 0% of the long-term core developers want him back
> and Gentoo has a long history of ignoring it's user base and saying "we
> give our time for free so we're going to develop how we want."
>
> If you really want to see what core /developers/ think or thought about
> Gentoo's internal problems then I suggest you read Spider's and
> plasmaroo's resignation emails, they document some problems pretty well.
>
> At the end of the day you're not likely to change anything though.
>
> George
>
I am posting here on NeddySeagoon advice as I had a private
conversation about this stuff with him.

If you have a better idea for a forum to post this in, I am all ears.

Regards, Dominik Riva
-- 
gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-project] A proposal to get out of this mess

[Dale]

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Dominik Riva wrote:
> On Jan 15, 2008 9:35 AM, George Prowse <cokehabit@gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> I like the idea of a discussion of this kind and I applaud you for
>> trying to start a discussion but you are unlikely to start any form of
>> discussion here because it is not the forum for it.
>>
>> Also, Gentoo developers are notoriously quiet when it comes to subjects
>> like this which unfortunately leads to rumours which are no good for anyone.
>>
>> I can understand why 90% of users would like drobbins back but I would
>> be willing to say that 0% of the long-term core developers want him back
>> and Gentoo has a long history of ignoring it's user base and saying "we
>> give our time for free so we're going to develop how we want."
>>
>> If you really want to see what core /developers/ think or thought about
>> Gentoo's internal problems then I suggest you read Spider's and
>> plasmaroo's resignation emails, they document some problems pretty well.
>>
>> At the end of the day you're not likely to change anything though.
>>
>> George
>>
>>     
> I am posting here on NeddySeagoon advice as I had a private
> conversation about this stuff with him.
>
> If you have a better idea for a forum to post this in, I am all ears.
>
> Regards, Dominik Riva
>   

I saw one on -user and there is one on the forums, sort of. 

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-4721366.html#4721366

Take your pick I guess.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

/rant

I do wish they would fix this stinking "reply to" thing!!!!!!!

rant/

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Re: [gentoo-project] A proposal to get out of this mess

[Jim Ramsay]

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Dale <dalek1967@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> I do wish they would fix this stinking "reply to" thing!!!!!!!

* Waves hands convincingly *

There is nothing wrong with the reply-to header that a decent email
client (or procmail if you can't find one of those) can't fix...

-- 
Jim Ramsay
Gentoo/Linux Developer (rox,gkrellm)

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Re: [gentoo-project] A proposal to get out of this mess

[Dale]

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Jim Ramsay wrote:
> Dale <dalek1967@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>   
>> I do wish they would fix this stinking "reply to" thing!!!!!!!
>>     
>
> * Waves hands convincingly *
>
> There is nothing wrong with the reply-to header that a decent email
> client (or procmail if you can't find one of those) can't fix...
>
>   

Or they can just make it do like all the others, -dev. -users etc etc etc.

Maybe you like dups?  LOL

Dale

:-)  :-) 

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Re: [gentoo-project] A proposal to get out of this mess

[George Prowse]

Dominik Riva wrote:
> If you have a better idea for a forum to post this in, I am all ears.
> 
> Regards, Dominik Riva
> 
Depends what you want to see. If you want to see your thread locked and 
no developers answering then post it on the forum, if you want to be 
told you're stupid and to post it somewhere else then post to gentoo-dev.

You're a bit out of luck because most developers (not all) only tend to 
read their own herd/package/arch lists, -core and sometimes -dev, not 
for any reason but they want to develop and not get mixed up in this 
type of mess, that is why Gentoo has the trustees/council/devrel - to 
deal with this.

-- 
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Re: [gentoo-project] A proposal to get out of this mess

[Dominik Riva]

On Jan 15, 2008 11:06 AM, George Prowse <cokehabit@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dominik Riva wrote:
> > If you have a better idea for a forum to post this in, I am all ears.
> >
> > Regards, Dominik Riva
> >
> Depends what you want to see. If you want to see your thread locked and
> no developers answering then post it on the forum, if you want to be
> told you're stupid and to post it somewhere else then post to gentoo-dev.
>
> You're a bit out of luck because most developers (not all) only tend to
> read their own herd/package/arch lists, -core and sometimes -dev, not
> for any reason but they want to develop and not get mixed up in this
> type of mess, that is why Gentoo has the trustees/council/devrel - to
> deal with this.
>
>
In that light, I would like to see a dev forwarding my mail to -core.

And a Invitee to all devs to join the discussion in -core but I hope
this was done long ago.

Regards, Dominik Riva
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-project] A proposal to get out of this mess

[Wulf C. Krueger]

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> And a Invitee to all devs to join the discussion in -core but I hope
> this was done long ago.

Rest assured that the discussion has been lively there.


I don't get all the fuss about this, though. So the Foundation is in  
trouble, so what? It's basically holding the Gentoo trademark in the  
USA (in Europe, it does *not*, another legal entity does here) and it  
is the copyright holder of the ebuilds.

The ebuilds are licensed under the GPL v2 and if the original  
copyright holder ceases to exist, the rights to the creative work  
falls back to its original owners - the developers. Nothing lost.

The ebuilds keep coming, we're basically doing "business" as usual and  
that should be enough, I'd say.

-- 
Best regards, Wulf


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Re: [gentoo-project] A proposal to get out of this mess

[Dominik Riva]

On Jan 15, 2008 12:51 PM, Wulf C. Krueger <philantrop@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > And a Invitee to all devs to join the discussion in -core but I hope
> > this was done long ago.
>
> Rest assured that the discussion has been lively there.
>

Thant is a very good thing to hear.

> I don't get all the fuss about this, though. So the Foundation is in
> trouble, so what? It's basically holding the Gentoo trademark in the
> USA (in Europe, it does *not*, another legal entity does here) and it
> is the copyright holder of the ebuilds.

Maybe it is all about the "so what?" mentality of the core that led to
this mess in the first place?
I can understand that this angers the community and drobbins, as it
angers me too.

I am not the person to jump blindly on drobbins ultimatum bandwagon
with a lot of angry users on it.
But I think that some drastic actions must be taken, maybe exactly
because the bandwagon with the angry mob on it.

> The ebuilds keep coming, we're basically doing "business" as usual and
> that should be enough, I'd say.

Sure, all is fine in the land of Gentoo - problems are for people that
have nothing better to do :(


Regards, Dominik Riva
-- 
gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-project] A proposal to get out of this mess

[Wulf C. Krueger]

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>> I don't get all the fuss about this, though. So the Foundation is in
>> trouble, so what? It's basically holding the Gentoo trademark in the
>> USA (in Europe, it does *not*, another legal entity does here) and it
>> is the copyright holder of the ebuilds.
> Maybe it is all about the "so what?" mentality of the core that led to
> this mess in the first place?

Please explain why I should care about the Gentoo Foundation in your opinion.

> I can understand that this angers the community and drobbins, as it
> angers me too.

I don't. I *do* care about our users, about my ebuilds and the  
technical side of things. I do *not* care about a foundation that's  
supposed to be an IP container.

> But I think that some drastic actions must be taken,

Why? To appease the mob? What horrible, catastrophic thing has  
happened? Please explain that. I honestly don't see it.

> maybe exactly because the bandwagon with the angry mob on it.

Drastic measures because some people loudly claim the end of the world  
is coming? No, thank you.

>> The ebuilds keep coming, we're basically doing "business" as usual and
>> that should be enough, I'd say.
> Sure, all is fine in the land of Gentoo - problems are for people that
> have nothing better to do :(

Name those problem, please. I'll gladly try to address them if I can.

-- 
Best regards, Wulf

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Re: [gentoo-project] A proposal to get out of this mess

[Dominik Riva]

On Jan 15, 2008 2:15 PM, Wulf C. Krueger <philantrop@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Please explain why I should care about the Gentoo Foundation in your opinion.

Maybe because it is a the part of Gentoo was designed to holds Gentoo's assets?
Things like the logo, servers, name, ... oh and don't forget the money
- all rather unimportant things, right?

> > I can understand that this angers the community and drobbins, as it
> > angers me too.
>
> I don't. I *do* care about our users, about my ebuilds and the
> technical side of things. I do *not* care about a foundation that's
> supposed to be an IP container.

Why do you not care about the assets of Gentoo?

> > But I think that some drastic actions must be taken,
>
> Why? To appease the mob? What horrible, catastrophic thing has
> happened? Please explain that. I honestly don't see it.
>
> > maybe exactly because the bandwagon with the angry mob on it.
>
> Drastic measures because some people loudly claim the end of the world
> is coming? No, thank you.

This is all about politics and it is a shame the developers have to
care at all about it.
It is about opinions, actions, the missing actions and there consequences.

And even worst it is about what could happen if. Some thing that you
can NOT code, test and trow away if it leads to some outcome that is
bad, ugly, catastrophic - it is to late by then.

> >> The ebuilds keep coming, we're basically doing "business" as usual and
> >> that should be enough, I'd say.
> > Sure, all is fine in the land of Gentoo - problems are for people that
> > have nothing better to do :(
>
> Name those problem, please. I'll gladly try to address them if I can.

That is exactly why I started the wiki page - to name the problems,
give info about them and even give you a head start by offering some
possible fixes.

Regards, Dominik Riva
-- 
gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-project] Re: A proposal to get out of this mess

[Steve Long]

Dominik Riva wrote:

> On Jan 15, 2008 2:15 PM, Wulf C. Krueger <philantrop@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
>> Please explain why I should care about the Gentoo Foundation in your
>> opinion.
> 
> Maybe because it is a the part of Gentoo was designed to holds Gentoo's
> assets? Things like the logo, servers, name, ... oh and don't forget the
> money - all rather unimportant things, right?
>
Well I for one would like the option of never reincorporating to be
discussed. The only thing that would matter is the trademark/brand. Infra
seems to be owned by others in any case, people and organisations who use
Gentoo as part of their work and thus have a vested interest in it
continuing.

>> > I can understand that this angers the community and drobbins, as it
>> > angers me too.
>>
>> I don't. I *do* care about our users, about my ebuilds and the
>> technical side of things. I do *not* care about a foundation that's
>> supposed to be an IP container.
> 
> Why do you not care about the assets of Gentoo?
>
As I said I don't think there's anything significant besides the trademark.
That's hardly been used to make any sort of money.

>> > But I think that some drastic actions must be taken,
>>
>> Why? To appease the mob? What horrible, catastrophic thing has
>> happened? Please explain that. I honestly don't see it.
>>
>> > maybe exactly because the bandwagon with the angry mob on it.
>>
>> Drastic measures because some people loudly claim the end of the world
>> is coming? No, thank you.
> 
> This is all about politics and it is a shame the developers have to
> care at all about it.
> It is about opinions, actions, the missing actions and there consequences.
>
I haven't seen any consequences since the Foundation lapsed last summer.

As for opinions those appear to have been stirred up by Mr Robbins in a
political move to gain control of everyone's work and copyright. Attesting
motivation for that is speculation.

> And even worst it is about what could happen if. Some thing that you
> can NOT code, test and trow away if it leads to some outcome that is
> bad, ugly, catastrophic - it is to late by then.
>
Yeah, like what? We haven't had a Foundation for months and nothing bad has
happened.
 
>> >> The ebuilds keep coming, we're basically doing "business" as usual and
>> >> that should be enough, I'd say.
>> > Sure, all is fine in the land of Gentoo - problems are for people that
>> > have nothing better to do :(
>>
>> Name those problem, please. I'll gladly try to address them if I can.
> 
> That is exactly why I started the wiki page - to name the problems,
> give info about them and even give you a head start by offering some
> possible fixes.
> 
It'd be more persuasive if you specify them here to back up your argument.
I've openly stated that I think user involvement and conduct on the dev m-l
are the biggest problems I see. Users used to feel just as excluded when
drobbins was in charge, and Gentoo was not some mythically easy thing to
run back in those days. It's a hell of a lot easier to maintain now.

As for the dev m-l, let's see how the Council's new team manages. I don't
think they need a BDFL to sort that out, just some political will to
enforce the CoC. OFC I believe this should be as transparent and impartial
as possible, but I'm sure anyone who feels they haven't been dealt with
fairly will blog or post to the forums about it.

For the record: I'd still like drobbins involved, but I don't think his
terms were at all reasonable, and the way he went about it was
reprehensible imo. It was designed to cause the furore it did, and only
makes me give credence to the argument that much of the negative press on
distrowatch has come from an associate of his. It was a totally political
move, and not at all motivated by concern for Gentoo afaic. If he cared
that much, he'd have approached Mr Goodyear privately or on the nfp list if
he wanted to be "open". Not put everyone through all this stress.


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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: A proposal to get out of this mess

[Alec Warner]

Gah, wrong sender address...why can't gmail just noticed that my
gentoo.org address was in the thread before; I have no idea...

On 1/19/08, Alec Warner <antarus@scriptkitty.com> wrote:
> On 1/19/08, Steve Long <slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
> > Dominik Riva wrote:
> >
> > > On Jan 15, 2008 2:15 PM, Wulf C. Krueger <philantrop@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > >
> > >> Please explain why I should care about the Gentoo Foundation in your
> > >> opinion.
> > >
> > > Maybe because it is a the part of Gentoo was designed to holds Gentoo's
> > > assets? Things like the logo, servers, name, ... oh and don't forget the
> > > money - all rather unimportant things, right?
> > >
> > Well I for one would like the option of never reincorporating to be
> > discussed. The only thing that would matter is the trademark/brand. Infra
> > seems to be owned by others in any case, people and organisations who use
> > Gentoo as part of their work and thus have a vested interest in it
> > continuing.
>
> We have existing relationships we would like to maintain and that
> requires having a legal entity to maintian them.  Having that entity
> be a single individual leads us with a SPOF; hence the time currently
> being spent to re-instate the foundation.
>
> -Alec
>
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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: A proposal to get out of this mess

[Daniel Butzu]

On 1/19/08, Steve Long <slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:

> For the record: I'd still like drobbins involved, but I don't think his
> terms were at all reasonable, and the way he went about it was
> reprehensible imo. It was designed to cause the furore it did, and only
> makes me give credence to the argument that much of the negative press on
> distrowatch has come from an associate of his. It was a totally political
> move, and not at all motivated by concern for Gentoo afaic. If he cared
> that much, he'd have approached Mr Goodyear privately or on the nfp list if
> he wanted to be "open". Not put everyone through all this stress.
>
>

Maybe. However, since it caused the furore it did it seems that a lot
of users were unsatisfied. You can't stir up something when there is
nothing to stir up. So maybe we should focus more on our problems
today, since we were unable of doing it yesterday.
-- 
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[gentoo-project] Re: Re: A proposal to get out of this mess

[Steve Long]

Daniel Butzu wrote:

> On 1/19/08, Steve Long <slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
> 
>> For the record: I'd still like drobbins involved, but I don't think his
>> terms were at all reasonable, and the way he went about it was
>> reprehensible imo. It was designed to cause the furore it did, and only
>> makes me give credence to the argument that much of the negative press on
>> distrowatch has come from an associate of his. It was a totally political
>> move, and not at all motivated by concern for Gentoo afaic. If he cared
>> that much, he'd have approached Mr Goodyear privately or on the nfp list
>> if he wanted to be "open". Not put everyone through all this stress.
>>
> Maybe. However, since it caused the furore it did it seems that a lot
> of users were unsatisfied.

>> Users used to feel just as excluded when drobbins was in charge
There appears to be some myth going round that everything was sweetness and
light back in those days; it's not true, and further the distro was an
absolute pig to maintain:
<long time user> "I used Gentoo when it was version 0.7, which was omg
broken. Packages were added to portage and this would be stable, that would
not compile at all. Then you had to re-sync to compile it, so in a day, you
would need to re-sync portage 3 or 4 times to get everything to compile. :P
..Even still back in the 1.4 days, people really had no idea what to do."

> You can't stir up something when there is nothing to stir up.

Actually I think this whole drama shows that you can, or at least you can
draw attention to one thing (lack of paperwork) and pretend it means
something else (Gentoo is dying! Again!) People like drama.

> So maybe we should focus more on our problems today, since we were unable 
> of doing it yesterday. 

Er yeah, maybe you'd like to discuss those then? That was what the rest of
my mail was about.

>> I've openly stated that I think user involvement and conduct on the dev
>> m-l are the biggest problems I see. 

As in, how do we constructively change those? Or do you believe that can
only be done by drobbins taking exclusive ownership of everyone's code?



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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Re: A proposal to get out of this mess

[Daniel Butzu]

On 1/20/08, Steve Long <slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
> Daniel Butzu wrote:
>
> > On 1/19/08, Steve Long <slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >> For the record: I'd still like drobbins involved, but I don't think his
> >> terms were at all reasonable, and the way he went about it was
> >> reprehensible imo. It was designed to cause the furore it did, and only
> >> makes me give credence to the argument that much of the negative press on
> >> distrowatch has come from an associate of his. It was a totally political
> >> move, and not at all motivated by concern for Gentoo afaic. If he cared
> >> that much, he'd have approached Mr Goodyear privately or on the nfp list
> >> if he wanted to be "open". Not put everyone through all this stress.
> >>
> > Maybe. However, since it caused the furore it did it seems that a lot
> > of users were unsatisfied.
>
> >> Users used to feel just as excluded when drobbins was in charge
> There appears to be some myth going round that everything was sweetness and
> light back in those days; it's not true, and further the distro was an
> absolute pig to maintain:
> <long time user> "I used Gentoo when it was version 0.7, which was omg
> broken. Packages were added to portage and this would be stable, that would
> not compile at all. Then you had to re-sync to compile it, so in a day, you
> would need to re-sync portage 3 or 4 times to get everything to compile. :P
> ..Even still back in the 1.4 days, people really had no idea what to do."
>
> > You can't stir up something when there is nothing to stir up.
>
> Actually I think this whole drama shows that you can, or at least you can
> draw attention to one thing (lack of paperwork) and pretend it means
> something else (Gentoo is dying! Again!) People like drama.
>
> > So maybe we should focus more on our problems today, since we were unable
> > of doing it yesterday.
>
> Er yeah, maybe you'd like to discuss those then? That was what the rest of
> my mail was about.
>
> >> I've openly stated that I think user involvement and conduct on the dev
> >> m-l are the biggest problems I see.
>
> As in, how do we constructively change those? Or do you believe that can
> only be done by drobbins taking exclusive ownership of everyone's code?
>
>
>
> --
> gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

I think there is something wrong with your knode since it is putting
into my mouth some words that I didn't say. When writing a mixed reply
is not enough to mention the name of only one initial sender.
-- 
gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-project] Re: Re: Re: A proposal to get out of this mess

[Steve Long]

Daniel Butzu wrote:
> 
> I think there is something wrong with your knode since it is putting
> into my mouth some words that I didn't say. When writing a mixed reply
> is not enough to mention the name of only one initial sender.
Oh I'm sorry I thought you'd read the previous message. Here this should
make it clearer:

>>> > On 1/19/08, Steve Long <slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk>
>> Daniel Butzu wrote:
>> > On 1/19/08, Steve Long <slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
>> >
>> >> For the record: I'd still like drobbins involved, but I don't think
>> >> his terms were at all reasonable, and the way he went about it was
>> >> reprehensible imo. It was designed to cause the furore it did, and
>> >> only makes me give credence to the argument that much of the negative
>> >> press on distrowatch has come from an associate of his. It was a
>> >> totally political move, and not at all motivated by concern for Gentoo
>> >> afaic. If he cared that much, he'd have approached Mr Goodyear
>> >> privately or on the nfp list if he wanted to be "open". Not put
>> >> everyone through all this stress.
>> >>
>> > Maybe. However, since it caused the furore it did it seems that a lot
>> > of users were unsatisfied.
>>
Since you ignored what "the rest of my mail was about", I included some of
it, and expanded on it to explain what I meant. Sorry for your confusion.

In this mail anything starting >> or '>> >>' is mine.

>> > On 1/19/08, Steve Long <slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk>>>
>> > Users used to feel just as excluded when drobbins was in charge 
>> There appears to be some myth going round that everything was sweetness
>> and light back in those days; it's not true, and further the distro was
>> an absolute pig to maintain:
>> <long time user> "I used Gentoo when it was version 0.7, which was omg
>> broken. Packages were added to portage and this would be stable, that
>> would not compile at all. Then you had to re-sync to compile it, so in a
>> day, you would need to re-sync portage 3 or 4 times to get everything to
>> compile. :P ..Even still back in the 1.4 days, people really had no idea
>> what to do."
>>

>> Daniel Butzu wrote:
>> > You can't stir up something when there is nothing to stir up.
>>
>> Actually I think this whole drama shows that you can, or at least you can
>> draw attention to one thing (lack of paperwork) and pretend it means
>> something else (Gentoo is dying! Again!) People like drama.
>>
>> Daniel Butzu wrote:
>> > So maybe we should focus more on our problems today, since we were
>> > unable of doing it yesterday.
>>
>> Er yeah, maybe you'd like to discuss those then? That was what the rest
>> of my mail was about.
>>
As in:
>> > On 1/19/08, Steve Long <slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk>
>> >> I've openly stated that I think user involvement and conduct on the
>> >> dev m-l are the biggest problems I see.
>>
>> As in, how do we constructively change those? Or do you believe that can
>> only be done by drobbins taking exclusive ownership of everyone's code?
>>

HTH,
steveL: looking forward to your points.


-- 
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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: A proposal to get out of this mess

[Roy Bamford]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 2008.01.19 23:07, Daniel Butzu wrote:
> On 1/19/08, Steve Long <slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> > For the record: I'd still like drobbins involved, but I don't think
> > his terms were at all reasonable, and the way he went about it was
> > reprehensible imo. It was designed to cause the furore it did, and
> > only makes me give credence to the argument that much of the 
> > negative press on distrowatch has come from an associate of his. It 
> > was a totally political move, and not at all motivated by concern  
> > for Gentoo afaic. If he cared that much, he'd have approached Mr  
> > Goodyear privately or on the nfplist if he wanted to be "open". Not 
> > put everyone through all this stress.
> >
> >
> 
> Maybe. However, since it caused the furore it did it seems that a lot
> of users were unsatisfied. You can't stir up something when there is
> nothing to stir up. So maybe we should focus more on our problems
> today, since we were unable of doing it yesterday.
> -- 
> gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
> 
> 
> 

Daniel,

If you research the time line you will find posts on -nfp that indicate 
that the foundation problem was being raised within Gentoo before 
drobbins infamous blog post. 

As some/all of the assets that were supposed to transfer to the 
foundation were still owned by drobbins, its likely (this is 
speculation on my part) that someone was talking to him about 
completing the transfer. It follows that he knew what was going on with 
respect to resolving the gentoo foundation issue *before* he made his 
blog post.

That backs up what Steve Long is saying.

Incidently, the Foundation is a peculiarly USA legal device. So its 
important in the USA only. Its existence (or not) only changes the way 
Gentoos assets are owned. It does not affect the way the technical part 
of Gentoo operates. Indeed, as a part of his leaving Gentoo, drobbins 
set up the council and foundation as separate bodies. Its a bit of a 
mystery why he needs control of both bodies to resolve what is purely a 
foundation issue. 
 
- -- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(NeddySeagoon) a member of
gentoo-ops
forum-mods
treecleaners

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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: A proposal to get out of this mess

[Daniel Butzu]

On 1/20/08, Roy Bamford <neddyseagoon@gentoo.org> wrote:

>
> Daniel,
>
> If you research the time line you will find posts on -nfp that indicate
> that the foundation problem was being raised within Gentoo before
> drobbins infamous blog post.
>
> As some/all of the assets that were supposed to transfer to the
> foundation were still owned by drobbins, its likely (this is
> speculation on my part) that someone was talking to him about
> completing the transfer. It follows that he knew what was going on with
> respect to resolving the gentoo foundation issue *before* he made his
> blog post.
>
> That backs up what Steve Long is saying.
>
> Incidently, the Foundation is a peculiarly USA legal device. So its
> important in the USA only. Its existence (or not) only changes the way
> Gentoos assets are owned. It does not affect the way the technical part
> of Gentoo operates. Indeed, as a part of his leaving Gentoo, drobbins
> set up the council and foundation as separate bodies. Its a bit of a
> mystery why he needs control of both bodies to resolve what is purely a
> foundation issue.
>
> - --


Roy,

Thank you for these details. However, I think there is a need for a
clarification, especially coming from my side. I wasn't targeting with
what I said the legal status of the Foundation, and not even D.
Robbins who is the central character of this story. It's too bad that
some people jump into a fight position but maybe this is
understandable too, given the conditions. I was refering to the fact
that, judging by what I saw happening especially on the forums these
days, there may be some real feeling of unsatisfaction into the
community, or at least into a part of it. Maybe we are looking into a
wrong direction. The paperwork "drama" might not be the most important
issue here, even though it may be the one that triggered all the
thing. Looking at what the users posted, some of them seem to be
disappointed by the technical matters they encountered over years, and
some other by the social climate into the community and they way it
evolved. Now I find it unlikely that this feeling was caused entirely
by a blog post, or at least not to that extent. Maybe I'm wrong. I
hope I am.


Regards,

Daniel
-- 
gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-project] Re: A proposal to get out of this mess

[Roy Bamford]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 2008.01.20 15:54, Daniel Butzu wrote:

> Roy,
> 
> Thank you for these details. However, I think there is a need for a
> clarification, especially coming from my side. I wasn't targeting 
> with
> what I said the legal status of the Foundation, and not even D.
> Robbins who is the central character of this story. It's too bad that
> some people jump into a fight position but maybe this is
> understandable too, given the conditions. I was refering to the fact
> that, judging by what I saw happening especially on the forums these
> days, there may be some real feeling of unsatisfaction into the
> community, or at least into a part of it. Maybe we are looking into a
> wrong direction. The paperwork "drama" might not be the most 
> important
> issue here, even though it may be the one that triggered all the
> thing. Looking at what the users posted, some of them seem to be
> disappointed by the technical matters they encountered over years, 
> and
> some other by the social climate into the community and they way it
> evolved. Now I find it unlikely that this feeling was caused entirely
> by a blog post, or at least not to that extent. Maybe I'm wrong. I
> hope I am.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Daniel
> -- 
> gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
> 

Daniel,

I am in a fairly unique position in that I spend a lot of time on the 
forums and in #gentoo, interacting with users and I am able to see what 
happens inside Gentoo too.

What I see from looking at both sides is that the first that users 
noticed of the foundation issue was drobbins blog post offering to 'fix 
everything'. Due to poor communications between Gentoo and users (e.g. 
the GWN, gentoo.org front page, PR announcements for users) many users 
had formed the opinion from that post that Gentoo is/was having 
technical problems and that drobbins was somehow in a position to fix 
everything.

A few moments thought shows that is nonsense. Maybe he could lead 
others to do the work but what is required is well beyond what a single 
individual could achieve. When drobbins was leading Gentoo, he was not 
noted for his people skills, nor his ability to listen and take 
account of the views and ideas of others.

drobbins blog post was certainly the trigger that made what was 
happening inside Gentoo visible to users but moves were already being 
made to fix the recognized issues, so while the blog entry got a lot of 
publicity and caused a lot of discussion throughout the Gentoo 
community, it didn't actually do anything useful beyond highlight the 
lack of communications between users and developers.

If drobbins wants to help out, that's ok by me but it needs to be on the

same terms as any other contributor, not the "give me total control and 
I'll fix it" terms as offered on his blog. 

In my 5 years using and contributing to Gentoo I would say that 
overall, its improved. Of course, my skills have improved too, so its 
very difficult for me to be objective. I will qualify that by saying 
that not every single step has been an improvement but that's true of 
all aspects of life.
 
** The views above are my own, I am not writing on behalf of Gentoo **

- -- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(NeddySeagoon) a member of
gentoo-ops
forum-mods
treecleaners

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Re: [gentoo-project] A proposal to get out of this mess

[Dale]

Wulf C. Krueger wrote:
> SNIP
>> Sure, all is fine in the land of Gentoo - problems are for people that
>> have nothing better to do :(
>
> Name those problem, please. I'll gladly try to address them if I can.
>

Herein lies the problem.  It seems us users see the problems.  I
subscribe to -dev.  I have talked to some devs and former devs about
some things that go on.  It seems the only people that see it are the
users and some former devs. 

Maybe that is what the problem is.  Sort of reminds me of a pair of
glasses.  They are so close you can't see them but everyone else sees
them plain as day.

Dale

:-)  :-)
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[gentoo-project] Re: A proposal to get out of this mess

[Steve Long]

Dominik Riva wrote:
> On Jan 15, 2008 11:06 AM, George Prowse <cokehabit@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Dominik Riva wrote:
>> > If you have a better idea for a forum to post this in, I am all ears.
>> >
>> > Regards, Dominik Riva
>> >
>> Depends what you want to see. If you want to see your thread locked and
>> no developers answering then post it on the forum, if you want to be
>> told you're stupid and to post it somewhere else then post to gentoo-dev.
>>
>> You're a bit out of luck because most developers (not all) only tend to
>> read their own herd/package/arch lists, -core and sometimes -dev, not
>> for any reason but they want to develop and not get mixed up in this
>> type of mess, that is why Gentoo has the trustees/council/devrel - to
>> deal with this.
>>
>>
> In that light, I would like to see a dev forwarding my mail to -core.
> 
> And a Invitee to all devs to join the discussion in -core but I hope
> this was done long ago.
> 
You should be posting to gentoo-nfp which was the old trustees list, as
well. This has nothing to do with devrel. Given there is no Foundation I'm
sure the Council will be dealing with this atm in their capacity as lead
devs, if nothing else. But the nfp list is for discussion about Gentoo as a
not-for-profit entity.


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Re: [gentoo-project] A proposal to get out of this mess

[Wernfried Haas]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1855 bytes --]

Hi,
just a few things that i would like to add to all the current ongoing
discussions:

There seems to be a lot of confusion with many people not knowing what
exactly the foundation and what the council does.

The foundation cares about the legal, financial and other worldly
stuff. For all i know (and i'm still behind on reading hundreds of
emails), there are some problems with that. Also, people are
discussing how to solve them.
Since i'm not really involved with all that, i really don't want to
comment on that any further as i'm not perfectly qualified to do so at
the moment.

The council on the other hand takes care of development related
issues. If you think there are problems the council should address, it
is really quite simple: Contact the council about it. You may do so
via the council mailing list or by adding some topic to the monthly
council meeting thread on the mailing list, or drop by in
#gentoo-council on freenode (though we may just all be idle there, so
email may be better).

In any case, both council as well as trustees can use your help and
input. Personally i don't see any use in making up a completely new
structure because i don't see any indication that the proposed one
will work any better than the current one. In fact, having to seperate
entities just proved to be quite useful, as currently we still have a
council while the trustees are missing.
So please folks, consider these facts before jumping on any quick
conclusions that seem to be great at first thought.
Finally, also a word on Daniel Robbins: Just like anyone else, he can
become developer and become a council member/trustee like anyone else.

cheers,
	Wernfried

-- 
Wernfried Haas (amne) - amne (at) gentoo.org
Gentoo Forums - http://forums.gentoo.org
forum-mods (at) gentoo.org
#gentoo-forums (freenode)

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