Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo's future directtion ?

[hasufell <hasufell@gentoo.org>]

On 11/22/2014 07:12 PM, wireless@tampabay.rr.com wrote:
> On 11/22/14 01:20, Rich Freeman wrote:
>> On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 7:13 PM,  <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
>>> On 11/21/14 17:10, Rich Freeman wrote:
> 
>> If you want to work on them, you might consider becoming a dev, or
>> working on them in an overlay (which is a good way to become a dev,
>> actually).
> 
> Exactly, I agree. That is why the idea to have a small core of Gentoo
> elites (the chosen devs) and move everyone else into overlays, is a
> very bad idea.
> 

I don't see the argument here. It depends very much on what that
actually means.

>> You seem to be under the impression that Gentoo devs work on things
>> that the Gentoo leadership tells them to work on.  That is hardly the
>> case, many of our most important packages are also the least
>> maintained, because devs work on what they work on, and not on the
>> stuff the leadership considers important.  If a Gentoo developer
>> wanted to work on Java the leadership wouldn't interfere with that
>> just as they didn't interfere with a couple of devs deciding to fork
>> udev.
> 
>> Rich
> 
> 
> Not really. I think you misss my points and intentions exactly. Java is
> critical and growing. Folks are constantly knocking on the gentoo door
> with technologies, that are java centric. Here is the latest one, just
> posted to gentoo-dev:
> 
> 
> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Android
> 
> 
> I tried to participate with the java herd/project. Few have the
> authority to close old java bugs. The few that do, are apathetic,
> absent or just do not 'give a shit'. I was told to go work
> on java bugs, maybe somebody will notice. Really.
> 
> The first 100 or so I looked at, are deprecated. They just need somebody
> to 'remove them' the BGO java backlog is being artificially used to
> prevent java work on gentoo. Somebody of authority needs to open
> up java for other folks to work on. Close the 100 oldest bugs
> is a no brainer and a good start, yet nobody will do that, and nobody
> else is allowed to close them. *CONVENIENT* if you hate java and are
> in control.
> 
> If this is not true, the the council should open up java bug cleaning.
> Worst case scenario, these hundreds of old bugs will have to be
> re-filed, with updated data from this decade..... (actually a very
> excellent idea in and of itself).
> 
> This policy, whether part of a grand conspiracy, or due to apathetic
> leadership, has the net effect to run off potential new devs to gentoo
> and who like java.
> 
> PS. sorry about forking to new threads, my access is now nntp
> (earlybird) and it just down not follow the thread correctly.
> 
> 
> Rich, I actually appreciate you help. But somebody of authority is going
> to have to step into this java on gentoo mess and clean house,
> provide leadership and encourage (hell, just remove the roadblocks)
> from java on gentoo.
> 
> OK?
> 
> 

Gentoo has a lot of organizational, technical and social problems. Some
of them would just stop existing if we'd move to a more distributed
model, because you'd be able to regroup more easily and work on the
things you care about without stepping on each others toes.

No one would care in such a distributed model if there is one person
blocking progress somewhere. They would just move on, regroup around a
new overlay and start working there and let that guy/project rot forever.

Users would easily be able to pick up what the most community-driven and
collaborative overlays are and would support those instead of some idle,
stubborn or hard-to-work-with overlay maintainers.

In that sense, there wouldn't be a single java ebuild in the core tree.
That would totally be a community effort and you wouldn't have to vent
that much here, but would be working on java ebuilds instead.

Hell, you could even easily fork the WHOLE base-system and toolchain
without forking the whole rest of the distro.

We don't need more authority, we need less... and we need more actual
opensource workflow. Our tools, our organizational model and our
workflow are ALL ancient. And they don't seem to work very well, do they?

Also see: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Distributed_Gentoo