Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

On Sunday 13 January 2008, James wrote:
> I read one poster that blasted Ciaran McCreesh....
> Also recently, I read a thread where he created an alternative
> to portage, and that many respected techies on this list actually
> use his replacement for portage. The poster that blasted Ciaran,
> misses a simple point. (Machiavellian aside). You have break some
> eggs to create an omlette.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli

That poster was me. Ciaran McCreesh is involved with the development of 
Paludis, and it IS superior to portage in many respects. One of it's 
strengths is that he didn't consider himself bound by portage's 
constraints.

I didn't miss the eggs and omelettes point and I don't appreciate the 
Machiavelli reference. Ciaran is probably very convinced of his 
rightness and reading his postings you might think he's making a lot of 
sense. but read deeper and analyse the *results* of his postings, 
especially on places like -dev. In three years I've come across lots of 
threads he participates in, and I have yet to see a single one where he 
correctly stated at the end that someone else was right and he was 
wrong.

Just because he writes good C++ code doesn't make him a good visionary 
for Gentoo, in much the same way that just because Bill Gates and 
friends built the most financially successful OS ever makes their 
business model right.

Other than that I find your post to be lucid, well thought out and 
obviously written by someone with some (many?) miles under his feet. 
Others reading this thread would do well to read it in it's entirety 
and have a good long quiet think about it. I'll quote the last 
paragraph here for reference as it sums things up nicely (for me at 
least):

> Gentoo needs leadership that is accountable to the user community
> but also bound to a set of bylaws that we agree with. Keeping the
> distro free is paramount, but, creating avenues for financial success
> for products and services centric to gentoo is a necessary
> requisite too, IMHO.


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
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