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

["b.n." <brullonulla@gmail.com>]

As a user -not a dev, both because I have not the required knowledge nor 
the sparing time- these are my answers:

>     I apologize for intruding onto your mailinglist, but what I wish to 
> say is of
> great enough importance to me. 

You don't "intrude onto my mailing list" with people for something 
that's of importance to you. You should intrude for something that's of 
importance to *us*.
This is a mutual help ML, not a confessional.

> My contributions are not much to speak 
> of, and
> I've been silent for a long time. So I guess, like many before me, I 
> will be
> stoned as a heretic instead of being listened to - that, my friends, is 
> your
> prerogative as freethinking humans, but I must ask you to hear me out and
> think about what I say, not what I am.

I'm not stoning you as heretic or what. I simply think you're writing to 
the wrong place.

>     Many good people, having all attained the rank of full developer, have
> retired, with a noticeable increase in the last trimester or so. Some have
> retired to avoid all the political tomfoolery that kept them from enjoying
> their work, some left as they found something else to fill that special 
> place
> in their heart. Some, sadly, did not feel they could contribute enough as
> real life took its toll - may they find some time in the future. And a very
> selected few, regrettably, were retired against their will.

This is sad, but Gentoo is a voluntary project, and I figure out people 
can come and go as freely as they like. So, no news here.

>     These removals even went outside the ranks of developers - the hostile
> takeover of some IRC channels has caused unneeded tension between groups 
> that
> should cooperate. It is a sad day when the appearance of a gentoo developer
> may be the first sign that your channel will now be censored and people
> removed that have dissenting opinions.

I don't know nothing about this, nor I care about inner fights between 
you all. What I care about are sane code, a stable and up-to-date 
system, and clever planning. I don't mind if you're doing it by biting 
each other to death in a thunderdome or if you are all holding your 
hands beneath a rainbow.

Not because I'm cynic. Because I can do *plain nothing* to avoid this 
-I'm not a dev, nor I can be in the near future. So what? Post this to 
the devel mailing list.

>     While the politics around these cases make rational discussion quite 
> difficult
>     it is obvious even to outsiders that this is not in the spirit of the
> original Gentoo Metadistribution - it even violates many of those so-called
> rules that were created to help the interaction between people from wildly
> divergent backgrounds.

So denounce the violation of these rules to competent people.

>     Devrel, as it stands, has always been controversial as everyone saw a
> different use for the rather unneeded concentration of power in the 
> hands of
> a few people. But when people are denied an appeal and devrel unilaterally
> decides, ignoring policies and common sense, what is one supposed to think?

I don't know. I even don't know what devrel is. I suspect it's some 
high-level devel committee.
Problem is, unilateral decisions AFAIK are needed for almost any sane 
free software project. Good OSS projects are, often (not always), 
projects with good Benevolent Dictators For Life: linux kernel = Linus 
Torvalds. perl = Larry Wall. python = Guido Van Rossum. openbsd = Theo 
de Raadt. ubuntu = Mark Shuttleworth, etc.

Of course it is not always so, and Gentoo was apparently one of the 
happy exceptions. Problem is, democracy doesn't work so well in many of 
these cases -see the NetBSD vs OpenBSD forking, or the current sad state 
of Debian, that literally got on its knees by its intestine political 
fights.

There have been and there are also thriving democratic projects, of 
course, and there are examples of the opposite (XFree86), but if Gentoo 
is not one of these, my own €0.02 is: get a benevolent dictator and 
follow him.

>     So then, while that part is hard to discuss, I point at another issue:
> Everything that is not official (for certain undefined values of official -
> objectivity seems to be lost on many humans) is attacked, torn apart and
> insulted. A great example of that is the Sunrise Overlay, which has become
> quite a success, with a few of the community members becoming devs - at the
> same time I see with sadness that at least one dev has retired because of
> Sunrise. What madness there is when people leave such a great project 
> because
> they can't let other people live in peace. It is this meddling in all 
> affairs
> that crushes the spirit of freedom with a heavy boot - but as you all are
> volunteers it is hard to understand how you can treat each other like that.
> Tolerance, my friends, doesn't cost you much and will bring you much good
> karma.

Can you point me at the relevant threads and IRC logs? Despite masked 
with redundant prose and so on, your talking just looks like plain 
(masked) bitching to me. However I could be wrong. So, threads and IRC 
logs, please.

>     Now, you that have read this far may wonder, what is my point? Quite 
> simple,
> comrades. It is a warning I bring you, and I ask you to stop for a 
> moment and
> reflect upon the situation we have right now. It seems that a small 
> group of
> developers have ursurped power, leaving any checks and balances behind them
> to shape Gentoo in the image they see, not caring for any losses they 
> cause.

OMG THE GENTOO PINOCHETS ARE ARRIVING LOL!!!1!!111!!!sen(90)!!!

Well, so it's time to fork? To change distro? My god! What horror! But, 
wasn't free software beautiful for just these reasons? So that each one 
could build on his own philosophy?
Of course it's sad to see forks and the like, and it harms community (at 
least in the short term, but it depends on the fork. Forking xfree86 to 
have xorg, or debian to have ubuntu, have both been wonderful decisions 
IMHO). But it is something you have to solve yourself -or, if you want 
users support, just show damn FACTS. Logs. Mails on public mailing 
lists. Blog posts. Written documents that agree with your claims.

Otherwise you're just doing mischievous "hey we're in danger I'm the 
messiah to save ya all" blah-blah. You're trolling to have manpower in 
your own political fight. Not good, for someone that wants tolerance and 
"karma".

Note that I don't f***ing care for "usurpation of power", as long as it 
builds on a good, free operating system. Ubuntu has enormous power 
concentration, both political and economical, in the hands of a single 
individual, but it's a damn good product for its niche.

> It can not be in the interest of a community to be ruled by such a group -
> even among devs equality is hard to find as som just have to be better than
> others.

Why is equality needed? People are *not* equal -face it.

>     I ask you not to redo the errors of the past and remember the lessons
> learned - there is so much that needs to be done, but no single person has
> the strength to do them. Cooperate you must, my friends. Only when you 
> leave
> the infighting and bureaucracy behind can you aspire to true greatness.

So, stop bitching and work. Really. Squash some bug, and greatness will 
arrive.

> Beware though, as I do not claim to have all the answers you want. Not a
> single person, but only a group can find a solution to such a comples
> interwoven technical, social and political problem.

As I've pointed out before, often it's quite the contrary.
Not that I want some kind of totalitarian dictatorship. Just someone 
having a direction and ideas, with the help of the community, but 
actually deciding instead on crystallize on endless discussions.

>        - Reduce the rules so that things can be done without a week of
> discussion for every small idea

Maybe good, maybe bad. Rules are needed, otherwise open the repositories 
to anonymous access and let everyone patch the portage tree -who cares, 
it's free software after all, isn't it?
However, I understand that too much rules are a problem too. So, 
remembering that I'm just talking to you because I'm curious, but not 
because I can or want to do something (it's NOT my work/hobby) about it, 
can you give us FACTS that support your hypothesis? I'm sorry, but I'm a 
scientist in my real life. I want to see facts, usually.

>        - When a group can decide arbitrarily without needing the support of
> any democratic counterweight, what is the point of any voting? Make sure 
> that
> noone has too much power.

So that things get to a grinding halt when there's no consensus. 
Wonderful...

>     - Analyse the fluctuations in developers
>        - how many retire because of political reasons?
>        - how many are recruited?
>        - how can the environment be improved so that people can enjoy their
> work and not care about silly problems?

This is a good thing to do, sure. Self-analysis cannot harm.

> - Ignore the existing problems, fork and pray that you can do better

Maybe.

>     It is here that I must interject with another problem - some groups 
> complain
> that they are understaffed, but reject candidates just because; some groups
> obviously can't manage on their own but deceive themselves into believing
> they are doing fine and refuse any help. Some groups are not doing what 
> their
> group should be and attack people that try to do what they refuse to do.

Huh? First you want less rules and more democray, then you attack groups 
that "are not doing what their group should be"?
You're a very confused fellow.


> So, with that being said, I hope that things change for the better.

Me too, but I'm really unsure you're really helping.

m.
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