Re: [gentoo-user] Through the looking glass: Reflections on Gentoo

[Justin Findlay <justin@jfindlay.us>]

On AD 2007 January 07 Sunday 11:51:59 PM +0100, Hans-Werner Hilse wrote:
> But *I*, as a user (this is -user, after all!) don't feel bothered by
> any kind of bureaucracy. Please explain first why I should take action
> at all at the moment. And why I shouldn't just go and take the next
> distro that fits my needs best (brrrr, Slackware :-)?

You won't be bothered by bureacuracy untill the day you discover that
that package you want has been left months ago to fall into ignominious
forgottenness among the thicket of bugzilla ebuild requests or the day
you discover your favorite package hasn't been updated in 2 years and
the herd responsible won't (or can't?) respond to email inquiries.  You
will care that day when you realize many things that are wrong with
gentoo may be the result of corruption or inefficiency.

You should care because not even Free Software or gentoo is free.  As in
politics apathy will only get you what you want or keep the affairs of
state safely insulated in the bureaucracy as long as somebody favorable
or benign is in power.  You may be satisfied with gentoo now but what
will you do when emerge --sync stops working because somebody stopped
caring?  I don't claim that everybody should contribute the same effort
or work or any work at all, but rather that you ought to at least care.

Go ahead and pick up a copy of the next distro when gentoo crumbles to
the ground but at least reflect then that each distro out there is made
great by the work of lots of talented developers, volunteers most of
them, because they care because they love hacking software.

This isn't meant to chasten anyone into a state of open source piety,
but rather is offered as a somewhat incoherent argument for why caring
matters, because in the end free software is a human endeavor.


Justin
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