[gentoo-user] Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[gentoo-user] Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[alain.didierjean]

Daniel Robbins offers to take back Gentoo leadership.
What about it ? Read
http://blog.funtoo.org/2008/01/here-my-offer.html

--
~adj~
-- 
gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Alan McKinnon]

On Saturday 12 January 2008, alain.didierjean@free.fr wrote:
> Daniel Robbins offers to take back Gentoo leadership.
> What about it ? Read
> http://blog.funtoo.org/2008/01/here-my-offer.html

I've kept very quiet about Gentoo politics for a long time, but Daniel's 
blog has promoted me to finally open my mouth and express my views.

Daniel is in a tricky position - he is the legal President of the 
Foundation but also has no role in the project in real life.

There is no evidence whatsoever that the Trustees as a group have ever 
done a single thing for Gentoo in three years. The fundamental 
responsibility of Trustees is to ensure that legal paperwork is 
properly filed, they did not even do this. Grant Goodyear is getting 
some things done but he's doing it as one person. Chris is in a similar 
position. But the Trustees, as a body with specific duties, simply does 
not exist in any reasonable definition of Trustees.

I used to read -dev and various council mailing lists a long time ago as 
I wanted to keep up to date with these things as a user. I unsubscribed 
because I couldn't stand the constant bickering going on there. OSS 
projects always have their laundry out in the public eye and some 
conflict is always present but Gentoo management manages to take this 
to a whole new level - from on outsider's point of view, the bickering 
is done for the sake of bickering, and it does not result in decisions 
being made or solutions found.

Ciaran Mcreesh - I am very specifically looking at you here.

The council - I'm not up to date on that aspect so can't comment.

When I read about current Gentoo politics I can't help but constantly 
think of just one word:

Stampede.


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
-- 
gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Jil Larner]

Well, it's like if I am opening my eyes. I never looked at what the
foundation was supposed to do. For a couple of years I've been using
gentoo, I never get any political announcement, maybe because I didn't
look at the right place, or maybe there was no. I mean that except the
Gentoo's Philosophy and the Gentoo's Social Contract, I didn't see
politic, for my eyes were probably closed.
It doesn't mean I didn't enjoyed gentoo, its power, its flexibility, its
community. But I certainly missed something. There are so many ways to
communicate (lists, IRC, boards, wikis, project pages, etc.) that I must
admit I'm sometime lost.

Today, I learn we're in trouble. Good. What trouble ? What's happening ?
Why through the words of Daniel Robbins, I feel some fear ? I feel he
foresees a dead end and offers an opportunity to change before it is too
late. Once more, to quote Matrix, "the problem is choice". In Free
Software, there are often choices where the community can get involved
in and it makes our strength. The problem is, and is not, legal papers.
Because, IMO, legal papers are the visible part of an Iceberg. Could
someone tell me what *really* is the crisis ? If people did not do what
they were supposed to do : what should they have done ?

Thanks.

Alan McKinnon a écrit :
> On Saturday 12 January 2008, alain.didierjean@free.fr wrote:
>> Daniel Robbins offers to take back Gentoo leadership.
>> What about it ? Read
>> http://blog.funtoo.org/2008/01/here-my-offer.html
> 
> I've kept very quiet about Gentoo politics for a long time, but Daniel's 
> blog has promoted me to finally open my mouth and express my views.
> 
> Daniel is in a tricky position - he is the legal President of the 
> Foundation but also has no role in the project in real life.
> 
> There is no evidence whatsoever that the Trustees as a group have ever 
> done a single thing for Gentoo in three years. The fundamental 
> responsibility of Trustees is to ensure that legal paperwork is 
> properly filed, they did not even do this. Grant Goodyear is getting 
> some things done but he's doing it as one person. Chris is in a similar 
> position. But the Trustees, as a body with specific duties, simply does 
> not exist in any reasonable definition of Trustees.
> 
> I used to read -dev and various council mailing lists a long time ago as 
> I wanted to keep up to date with these things as a user. I unsubscribed 
> because I couldn't stand the constant bickering going on there. OSS 
> projects always have their laundry out in the public eye and some 
> conflict is always present but Gentoo management manages to take this 
> to a whole new level - from on outsider's point of view, the bickering 
> is done for the sake of bickering, and it does not result in decisions 
> being made or solutions found.
> 
> Ciaran Mcreesh - I am very specifically looking at you here.
> 
> The council - I'm not up to date on that aspect so can't comment.
> 
> When I read about current Gentoo politics I can't help but constantly 
> think of just one word:
> 
> Stampede.
> 
> 
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Mick]

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On Saturday 12 January 2008, Jil Larner wrote:
> Well, it's like if I am opening my eyes. I never looked at what the
> foundation was supposed to do. For a couple of years I've been using
> gentoo, I never get any political announcement, maybe because I didn't
> look at the right place, or maybe there was no. I mean that except the
> Gentoo's Philosophy and the Gentoo's Social Contract, I didn't see
> politic, for my eyes were probably closed.
> It doesn't mean I didn't enjoyed gentoo, its power, its flexibility, its
> community. But I certainly missed something. There are so many ways to
> communicate (lists, IRC, boards, wikis, project pages, etc.) that I must
> admit I'm sometime lost.
>
> Today, I learn we're in trouble. Good. What trouble ? What's happening ?
> Why through the words of Daniel Robbins, I feel some fear ? I feel he
> foresees a dead end and offers an opportunity to change before it is too
> late. Once more, to quote Matrix, "the problem is choice". In Free
> Software, there are often choices where the community can get involved
> in and it makes our strength. The problem is, and is not, legal papers.
> Because, IMO, legal papers are the visible part of an Iceberg. Could
> someone tell me what *really* is the crisis ? If people did not do what
> they were supposed to do : what should they have done ?
>
> Thanks.

I am equally agnostic of Gentoo management politics, albeit grateful that 
people volunteer their time and effort to keep it going.  From the little 
exposure that I have had to it all it seems to me that Alan's views ring 
depressingly true.  I read Daniel's blog and cannot disagree with what he 
suggests - it makes common sense that users views and desires should 
determine Gentoo's direction, but I have not read between the lines to see 
how might his proposals lead to directions that I would not readily agree 
with.  See this excerpt of his below from OSNews.com in 2002:

"I very much want to find a way to turn the Gentoo Linux project into a 
profitable enterprise. My main motivation in wanting to do this is so I can 
stop living from paycheck to paycheck and focus my professional efforts 
exclusively on Gentoo Linux development. Many of our developers would like to 
do the same thing"

(I am not critising this statement of his; after all I would very much like to 
find myself a sustainable way of being able to do what I like - without 
having to spend the biggest part of my day in my current job.)

Giving a free hand to any single person is not safe in my humble view, 
especially if that person is employed by Microsoft - I will find hard to rest 
assured that there will be no conflict of interest.  On the other hand it 
seems that Gentoo desperately needs *mature* leadership, which can fulfill 
some rather significant responsibilities.  From what I read the current 
Gentoo administration and management setup does not seem to be able to behave 
with the professionalism required to achieve that.  This makes me anxious for 
the future of Gentoo.

Just my 2c's.
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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

[Dale]

Mick wrote:
> On Saturday 12 January 2008, Jil Larner wrote:
>   
>> Well, it's like if I am opening my eyes. I never looked at what the
>> foundation was supposed to do. For a couple of years I've been using
>> gentoo, I never get any political announcement, maybe because I didn't
>> look at the right place, or maybe there was no. I mean that except the
>> Gentoo's Philosophy and the Gentoo's Social Contract, I didn't see
>> politic, for my eyes were probably closed.
>> It doesn't mean I didn't enjoyed gentoo, its power, its flexibility, its
>> community. But I certainly missed something. There are so many ways to
>> communicate (lists, IRC, boards, wikis, project pages, etc.) that I must
>> admit I'm sometime lost.
>>
>> Today, I learn we're in trouble. Good. What trouble ? What's happening ?
>> Why through the words of Daniel Robbins, I feel some fear ? I feel he
>> foresees a dead end and offers an opportunity to change before it is too
>> late. Once more, to quote Matrix, "the problem is choice". In Free
>> Software, there are often choices where the community can get involved
>> in and it makes our strength. The problem is, and is not, legal papers.
>> Because, IMO, legal papers are the visible part of an Iceberg. Could
>> someone tell me what *really* is the crisis ? If people did not do what
>> they were supposed to do : what should they have done ?
>>
>> Thanks.
>>     
>
> I am equally agnostic of Gentoo management politics, albeit grateful that 
> people volunteer their time and effort to keep it going.  From the little 
> exposure that I have had to it all it seems to me that Alan's views ring 
> depressingly true.  I read Daniel's blog and cannot disagree with what he 
> suggests - it makes common sense that users views and desires should 
> determine Gentoo's direction, but I have not read between the lines to see 
> how might his proposals lead to directions that I would not readily agree 
> with.  See this excerpt of his below from OSNews.com in 2002:
>
> "I very much want to find a way to turn the Gentoo Linux project into a 
> profitable enterprise. My main motivation in wanting to do this is so I can 
> stop living from paycheck to paycheck and focus my professional efforts 
> exclusively on Gentoo Linux development. Many of our developers would like to 
> do the same thing"
>
> (I am not critising this statement of his; after all I would very much like to 
> find myself a sustainable way of being able to do what I like - without 
> having to spend the biggest part of my day in my current job.)
>
> Giving a free hand to any single person is not safe in my humble view, 
> especially if that person is employed by Microsoft - I will find hard to rest 
> assured that there will be no conflict of interest.  On the other hand it 
> seems that Gentoo desperately needs *mature* leadership, which can fulfill 
> some rather significant responsibilities.  From what I read the current 
> Gentoo administration and management setup does not seem to be able to behave 
> with the professionalism required to achieve that.  This makes me anxious for 
> the future of Gentoo.
>
> Just my 2c's.
>   

I have been using Gentoo for about 4 or 5 years now.  I to think Gentoo
has well, lost its way.  It seems like a bunch of teenagers is running
it sometimes.  They decide something then go back a few steps when they
don't like the results.  Proctors come to mind on that.  Users seems to
be the last thing on the higher ups mind.  That is not good. 

I love my Gentoo but I would like to see someone step up and get some
things done and some decisions made, even those we may never know about.

I just don't want to see Gentoo fall into the abyss.

Dale

:-)  :-) 
-- 
gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Richard Marzan]

On Sat, 2008-01-12 at 07:34 -0600, Dale wrote:
> Mick wrote:
> > On Saturday 12 January 2008, Jil Larner wrote:
> >   
> >> Well, it's like if I am opening my eyes. I never looked at what the
> >> foundation was supposed to do. For a couple of years I've been using
> >> gentoo, I never get any political announcement, maybe because I didn't
> >> look at the right place, or maybe there was no. I mean that except the
> >> Gentoo's Philosophy and the Gentoo's Social Contract, I didn't see
> >> politic, for my eyes were probably closed.
> >> It doesn't mean I didn't enjoyed gentoo, its power, its flexibility, its
> >> community. But I certainly missed something. There are so many ways to
> >> communicate (lists, IRC, boards, wikis, project pages, etc.) that I must
> >> admit I'm sometime lost.
> >>
> >> Today, I learn we're in trouble. Good. What trouble ? What's happening ?
> >> Why through the words of Daniel Robbins, I feel some fear ? I feel he
> >> foresees a dead end and offers an opportunity to change before it is too
> >> late. Once more, to quote Matrix, "the problem is choice". In Free
> >> Software, there are often choices where the community can get involved
> >> in and it makes our strength. The problem is, and is not, legal papers.
> >> Because, IMO, legal papers are the visible part of an Iceberg. Could
> >> someone tell me what *really* is the crisis ? If people did not do what
> >> they were supposed to do : what should they have done ?
> >>
> >> Thanks.
> >>     
> >
> > I am equally agnostic of Gentoo management politics, albeit grateful that 
> > people volunteer their time and effort to keep it going.  From the little 
> > exposure that I have had to it all it seems to me that Alan's views ring 
> > depressingly true.  I read Daniel's blog and cannot disagree with what he 
> > suggests - it makes common sense that users views and desires should 
> > determine Gentoo's direction, but I have not read between the lines to see 
> > how might his proposals lead to directions that I would not readily agree 
> > with.  See this excerpt of his below from OSNews.com in 2002:
> >
> > "I very much want to find a way to turn the Gentoo Linux project into a 
> > profitable enterprise. My main motivation in wanting to do this is so I can 
> > stop living from paycheck to paycheck and focus my professional efforts 
> > exclusively on Gentoo Linux development. Many of our developers would like to 
> > do the same thing"
> >
> > (I am not critising this statement of his; after all I would very much like to 
> > find myself a sustainable way of being able to do what I like - without 
> > having to spend the biggest part of my day in my current job.)
> >
> > Giving a free hand to any single person is not safe in my humble view, 
> > especially if that person is employed by Microsoft - I will find hard to rest 
> > assured that there will be no conflict of interest.  On the other hand it 
> > seems that Gentoo desperately needs *mature* leadership, which can fulfill 
> > some rather significant responsibilities.  From what I read the current 
> > Gentoo administration and management setup does not seem to be able to behave 
> > with the professionalism required to achieve that.  This makes me anxious for 
> > the future of Gentoo.
> >
> > Just my 2c's.
> >   
> 
> I have been using Gentoo for about 4 or 5 years now.  I to think Gentoo
> has well, lost its way.  It seems like a bunch of teenagers is running
> it sometimes.  They decide something then go back a few steps when they
> don't like the results.  Proctors come to mind on that.  Users seems to
> be the last thing on the higher ups mind.  That is not good. 
> 
> I love my Gentoo but I would like to see someone step up and get some
> things done and some decisions made, even those we may never know about.
> 
> I just don't want to see Gentoo fall into the abyss.
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-) 



 Although he works for Microsoft, Daniel is the one who created this
project. He has been a developer of several operating systems, including
Freebsd. I would, as a user, like for him to come back to the project,
if it means gentoo going back to the old way. On the other hand, his
major decisions with regard to gentoo should be voted on by the
developer/user community. I don't want gentoo to become another SuSE. I
don't want him to insidiously harm gentoo with the immunity of acting
president. Everything should be done in the open. There should be some
sort of constitution which protects gentoo from losing certain
principles or ethics. One of which is that it will always be free of
charge; at least from the gentoo foundation. He has to be, as acting
president, bound to a code of ethics or rules decided by the community.
It is clear that he cares for this project. He wants to come back but,
is he willing to come back as a leader under our conditions?

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

[Renat Golubchyk]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 440 bytes --]

On Sat, 12 Jan 2008 12:07:39 -0500 Richard Marzan
<richardmarzan@optonline.net> wrote:
>  Although he works for Microsoft, Daniel is the one who created this
> project.

He doesn't work for Microsoft any longer. Check Wikipedia or Google for
relevant news.


Cheers,
Renat

-- 
Probleme kann man niemals mit derselben Denkweise loesen,
durch die sie entstanden sind.
                                              (Einstein)

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

[Hal Martin]

He states on his blog that he currently works for E*Trade, a company
specializing in electronic ticker tape services for individuals and
corporations.


-Hal


Renat Golubchyk wrote:
> On Sat, 12 Jan 2008 12:07:39 -0500 Richard Marzan
> <richardmarzan@optonline.net> wrote:
>   
>>  Although he works for Microsoft, Daniel is the one who created this
>> project.
>>     
>
> He doesn't work for Microsoft any longer. Check Wikipedia or Google for
> relevant news.
>
>
> Cheers,
> Renat
>
>   

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

[Richard Marzan]

On Sat, 2008-01-12 at 18:22 +0100, Renat Golubchyk wrote:
> On Sat, 12 Jan 2008 12:07:39 -0500 Richard Marzan
> <richardmarzan@optonline.net> wrote:
> >  Although he works for Microsoft, Daniel is the one who created this
> > project.
> 
> He doesn't work for Microsoft any longer. Check Wikipedia or Google for
> relevant news.
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Renat
> 

Even more of a reason to bring him back!

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

[Hemmann, Volker Armin]

On Samstag, 12. Januar 2008, Richard Marzan wrote:
> On Sat, 2008-01-12 at 18:22 +0100, Renat Golubchyk wrote:
> > On Sat, 12 Jan 2008 12:07:39 -0500 Richard Marzan
> >
> > <richardmarzan@optonline.net> wrote:
> > >  Although he works for Microsoft, Daniel is the one who created this
> > > project.
> >
> > He doesn't work for Microsoft any longer. Check Wikipedia or Google for
> > relevant news.
> >
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Renat
>
> Even more of a reason to bring him back!

no, just another sign that he never pulls through.
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Eddie Mihalow Jr]

Hemmann, Volker Armin wrote:
> On Samstag, 12. Januar 2008, Richard Marzan wrote:
>> On Sat, 2008-01-12 at 18:22 +0100, Renat Golubchyk wrote:
>>> On Sat, 12 Jan 2008 12:07:39 -0500 Richard Marzan
>>>
>>> <richardmarzan@optonline.net> wrote:
>>>>  Although he works for Microsoft, Daniel is the one who created this
>>>> project.
>>> He doesn't work for Microsoft any longer. Check Wikipedia or Google for
>>> relevant news.
>>>
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Renat
>> Even more of a reason to bring him back!
> 
> no, just another sign that he never pulls through.
I guess you don't get the point of being also in a flame war with a 
ex-dev who although very bright lacks in all the social skills. I read 
the thread of these two going at it and hell, I wanted to leave. Who 
needs the grief of listening to that crap from some a**hole who LEFT the 
project. Give me a break.

-- 
Edward A Mihalow Jr
Mudbug Computers and Networks
Gentoo! Linux
Registered Linux User#225662
New Orleans,LA
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Naga Toro]

On Sunday 13 January 2008 15.07.57 Eddie Mihalow Jr wrote:
> I guess you don't get the point of being also in a flame war with a
> ex-dev who although very bright lacks in all the social skills. I read
> the thread of these two going at it and hell, I wanted to leave. Who
> needs the grief of listening to that crap from some a**hole who LEFT the
> project. Give me a break.

That would be two a**holes in that discussion. If you read it you would know 
that may devs tried to correct drobbins but that he couldn't accept the fact 
that he wasn't the chief anymore and that things have changed since he left.

I'm not sure that the best guy to run Gentoo is a guy who wants to be THE 
chief and not one of the community.

-- 
Naga
-- 
gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Eddie Mihalow Jr]

Naga Toro wrote:
> On Sunday 13 January 2008 15.07.57 Eddie Mihalow Jr wrote:
>> I guess you don't get the point of being also in a flame war with a
>> ex-dev who although very bright lacks in all the social skills. I read
>> the thread of these two going at it and hell, I wanted to leave. Who
>> needs the grief of listening to that crap from some a**hole who LEFT the
>> project. Give me a break.
> 
> That would be two a**holes in that discussion. If you read it you would know 
> that may devs tried to correct drobbins but that he couldn't accept the fact 
> that he wasn't the chief anymore and that things have changed since he left.
> 
> I'm not sure that the best guy to run Gentoo is a guy who wants to be THE 
> chief and not one of the community.
> 
First D Robbins created Gentoo. Second what part of ex-dev don't you 
understand.
If you are an ex-dev you shouldn't even be in the discussion period.

-- 
Edward A Mihalow Jr
Mudbug Computers and Networks
Gentoo! Linux
Registered Linux User#225662
New Orleans,LA
-- 
gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Naga Toro]

On Sunday 13 January 2008 15.33.28 Eddie Mihalow Jr wrote:
> Naga Toro wrote:
> > On Sunday 13 January 2008 15.07.57 Eddie Mihalow Jr wrote:
> >> I guess you don't get the point of being also in a flame war with a
> >> ex-dev who although very bright lacks in all the social skills. I read
> >> the thread of these two going at it and hell, I wanted to leave. Who
> >> needs the grief of listening to that crap from some a**hole who LEFT the
> >> project. Give me a break.
> >
> > That would be two a**holes in that discussion. If you read it you would
> > know that may devs tried to correct drobbins but that he couldn't accept
> > the fact that he wasn't the chief anymore and that things have changed
> > since he left.
> >
> > I'm not sure that the best guy to run Gentoo is a guy who wants to be THE
> > chief and not one of the community.
>
> First D Robbins created Gentoo.

Yeah so? He created Gentoo and then moved on. Thus leaving in the same sense 
or more since he didn't keep contributing, as the other dev did.

> Second what part of ex-dev don't you understand.

Point being? 

> If you are an ex-dev you shouldn't even be in the discussion period.

As both of them where.

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

[Eddie Mihalow Jr]

Naga Toro wrote:
> On Sunday 13 January 2008 15.33.28 Eddie Mihalow Jr wrote:
>> Naga Toro wrote:
>>> On Sunday 13 January 2008 15.07.57 Eddie Mihalow Jr wrote:
>>>> I guess you don't get the point of being also in a flame war with a
>>>> ex-dev who although very bright lacks in all the social skills. I read
>>>> the thread of these two going at it and hell, I wanted to leave. Who
>>>> needs the grief of listening to that crap from some a**hole who LEFT the
>>>> project. Give me a break.
>>> That would be two a**holes in that discussion. If you read it you would
>>> know that may devs tried to correct drobbins but that he couldn't accept
>>> the fact that he wasn't the chief anymore and that things have changed
>>> since he left.
>>>
>>> I'm not sure that the best guy to run Gentoo is a guy who wants to be THE
>>> chief and not one of the community.
>> First D Robbins created Gentoo.
> 
> Yeah so? He created Gentoo and then moved on. Thus leaving in the same sense 
> or more since he didn't keep contributing, as the other dev did.
> 
>> Second what part of ex-dev don't you understand.
> 
> Point being? 
> 
>> If you are an ex-dev you shouldn't even be in the discussion period.
> 
> As both of them where.
> 
Evidently you are new to Gentoo. D Robbins was broke after starting 
Gentoo and working on it day and night
and  trying to support a family he needed money. You can't live on 
nothing. Get it now?
He was the dev that created Gentoo not just another dev.

Ciaran is a smart dev, but he was only a dev. He quit of his own 
volition due to the disagreement with other
devs as to the direction of Portage. Fine, but don't come back on 
gentoo-dev and start a bunch of sh**. If you don't like the way things 
are done start your own distro! Don't come back and crap all over 
everyone's hard work.
There I made it clear for you. It is proper behavior and communication 
between intelligent people with respect.

-- 
Edward A Mihalow Jr
Mudbug Computers and Networks
Gentoo! Linux
Registered Linux User#225662
New Orleans,LA
-- 
gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Naga Toro]

On Sunday 13 January 2008 17.31.20 Eddie Mihalow Jr wrote:
> Naga Toro wrote:
> > On Sunday 13 January 2008 15.33.28 Eddie Mihalow Jr wrote:
> >> Naga Toro wrote:
> >>> On Sunday 13 January 2008 15.07.57 Eddie Mihalow Jr wrote:
> >>>> I guess you don't get the point of being also in a flame war with a
> >>>> ex-dev who although very bright lacks in all the social skills. I read
> >>>> the thread of these two going at it and hell, I wanted to leave. Who
> >>>> needs the grief of listening to that crap from some a**hole who LEFT
> >>>> the project. Give me a break.
> >>>
> >>> That would be two a**holes in that discussion. If you read it you would
> >>> know that may devs tried to correct drobbins but that he couldn't
> >>> accept the fact that he wasn't the chief anymore and that things have
> >>> changed since he left.
> >>>
> >>> I'm not sure that the best guy to run Gentoo is a guy who wants to be
> >>> THE chief and not one of the community.
> >>
> >> First D Robbins created Gentoo.
> >
> > Yeah so? He created Gentoo and then moved on. Thus leaving in the same
> > sense or more since he didn't keep contributing, as the other dev did.
> >
> >> Second what part of ex-dev don't you understand.
> >
> > Point being?
> >
> >> If you are an ex-dev you shouldn't even be in the discussion period.
> >
> > As both of them where.
>
> Evidently you are new to Gentoo. D Robbins was broke after starting
> Gentoo and working on it day and night
> and  trying to support a family he needed money. You can't live on
> nothing. Get it now?
> He was the dev that created Gentoo not just another dev.

Back then yes. (and no I'm not new to Gentoo, been using it for years and been 
an official part of since about 3/4 of a year)

>
> Ciaran is a smart dev, but he was only a dev. He quit of his own
> volition due to the disagreement with other
> devs as to the direction of Portage. Fine, but don't come back on
> gentoo-dev and start a bunch of sh**. If you don't like the way things
> are done start your own distro! Don't come back and crap all over
> everyone's hard work.

About Ciarans people skills I agree they are none to slim, but the points he 
makes are valid and since this is an open project he has every right to voice 
his opinion.

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

[Alan McKinnon]

On Sunday 13 January 2008, Naga Toro wrote:
> About Ciarans people skills I agree they are none to slim, but the
> points he makes are valid and since this is an open project he has
> every right to voice his opinion.

But he has no right to waltz around with *destructive*intent* while 
doing it. We should not conflate these two things. I am an external 
observer at a distance and it looks to me like Ciaran likes to troll 
and break stuff. Why should the group at large give him a platform to 
speak on if that truly is his intent?

If you read Daniel's articles about the genesis of Gentoo, he mentions 
Stampede and the underlying problems he observed. I see significant 
parallels between then and now.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Galevsky]

What looks strange -from an external point of view- is that there is
lots of high-skilled people here... with huge Gentoo experience. How
did these people not manage to build some plan ? With all the
engineers, team leaders, project chiefs, and so on... involved in
Gentoo project ?

It looks like you have the abilities to analyse the situation, you are
the ones who can tell "we need that to go ahead", you know how to
plan, you used to live in an open community -that implies that you
have very good notions about smart & productive attitudes in a
not-lucrative environment- and you have the skills to implement and
deploy the solutions.

I don't know Daniel Robbins's previous work so I just have the right
to shut up (and do it with respect). But when I read this thread, I
understand that this man' plans should/will/must? be validated before
by Trustees, but also by the whole committed community (devs mostly
included) because they could not accept major changes without their
agreement (risks of fork).

So -from an external point of view, again- it comes to me that the
devs and really involved people will estimate/evaluate the
proposals... and it sounds good since they are the core of current
Gentoo maintenance and development.

But what about having work plans directly from devs ? I know that you
are very busy... but I am sure that Gentoo future could benefit from
experienced people, like Alan, as an example. Is it possible to get
some public report, written by devs that have something to tell,
explaining the current main issues, what Gentoo should do starting
from now, and the plans for near future ? Maybe with several
propositions....

Because what is sure is that non-devs face difficulties to get a clear
view of Gentoo status...

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

[Eddie Mihalow Jr]

Naga Toro wrote:
> On Sunday 13 January 2008 17.31.20 Eddie Mihalow Jr wrote:
>> Naga Toro wrote:
>>> On Sunday 13 January 2008 15.33.28 Eddie Mihalow Jr wrote:
>>>> Naga Toro wrote:
>>>>> On Sunday 13 January 2008 15.07.57 Eddie Mihalow Jr wrote:
>>>>>> I guess you don't get the point of being also in a flame war with a
>>>>>> ex-dev who although very bright lacks in all the social skills. I read
>>>>>> the thread of these two going at it and hell, I wanted to leave. Who
>>>>>> needs the grief of listening to that crap from some a**hole who LEFT
>>>>>> the project. Give me a break.
>>>>> That would be two a**holes in that discussion. If you read it you would
>>>>> know that may devs tried to correct drobbins but that he couldn't
>>>>> accept the fact that he wasn't the chief anymore and that things have
>>>>> changed since he left.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm not sure that the best guy to run Gentoo is a guy who wants to be
>>>>> THE chief and not one of the community.
>>>> First D Robbins created Gentoo.
>>> Yeah so? He created Gentoo and then moved on. Thus leaving in the same
>>> sense or more since he didn't keep contributing, as the other dev did.
>>>
>>>> Second what part of ex-dev don't you understand.
>>> Point being?
>>>
>>>> If you are an ex-dev you shouldn't even be in the discussion period.
>>> As both of them where.
>> Evidently you are new to Gentoo. D Robbins was broke after starting
>> Gentoo and working on it day and night
>> and  trying to support a family he needed money. You can't live on
>> nothing. Get it now?
>> He was the dev that created Gentoo not just another dev.
> 
> Back then yes. (and no I'm not new to Gentoo, been using it for years and been 
> an official part of since about 3/4 of a year)
> 
>> Ciaran is a smart dev, but he was only a dev. He quit of his own
>> volition due to the disagreement with other
>> devs as to the direction of Portage. Fine, but don't come back on
>> gentoo-dev and start a bunch of sh**. If you don't like the way things
>> are done start your own distro! Don't come back and crap all over
>> everyone's hard work.
> 
> About Ciarans people skills I agree they are none to slim, but the points he 
> makes are valid and since this is an open project he has every right to voice 
> his opinion.
> 
I agree 100% with what you said. I hope that something good will come 
out of this.
I also have been using Gentoo for a long time and would hate to see this 
just
disintegrate to nothing. Gentoo is the best and flexible distro out there.

-- 
Edward A Mihalow Jr
Mudbug Computers and Networks
Gentoo! Linux
Registered Linux User#225662
New Orleans,LA
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Hemmann, Volker Armin]

On Sonntag, 13. Januar 2008, Eddie Mihalow Jr wrote:
> Naga Toro wrote:
> > On Sunday 13 January 2008 15.07.57 Eddie Mihalow Jr wrote:
> >> I guess you don't get the point of being also in a flame war with a
> >> ex-dev who although very bright lacks in all the social skills. I read
> >> the thread of these two going at it and hell, I wanted to leave. Who
> >> needs the grief of listening to that crap from some a**hole who LEFT the
> >> project. Give me a break.
> >
> > That would be two a**holes in that discussion. If you read it you would
> > know that may devs tried to correct drobbins but that he couldn't accept
> > the fact that he wasn't the chief anymore and that things have changed
> > since he left.
> >
> > I'm not sure that the best guy to run Gentoo is a guy who wants to be THE
> > chief and not one of the community.
>
> First D Robbins created Gentoo. Second what part of ex-dev don't you
> understand.
> If you are an ex-dev you shouldn't even be in the discussion period.

that is one of the most stupid things I ever read on this list. So users 
should never be part of discussions? Their needs? Their opinions?

Also, drobbins continued his attacks even after explained SEVERAL times that 
the stuff ciaranm was doing was a) wanted and b) helpfull and c) supervised 
by devs. 

But he couldn't shut up OR accept that things changed since he left.

Somebody who can not deal with changes, is somebody certainly unfit for 
leadership.

Yes, he started gentoo (my first gentoo was 1.0). And compared to the chaotic 
times, gentoo is a heaven of stability today. Back under drobbins leadership 
it was ok, that the tree was broken or some update screwed your system. 
Happened all the time - nobody complained (too loudly). And some day he left. 
Things changed. Gentoo is much more stable today. There is no breakage of the 
week. No large scale surprising 'nothing works anymore'. A lot of things were 
done - without him.

And he comes back and thinks that he can do better? Please - he already has 
shown that he can't. He has shown that he will leave projects after a short 
while (stampede, freebsd, enoch, gentoo, Microsoft). He has never shown that 
he can pull through with a project.
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Dale]

Hemmann, Volker Armin wrote:
> that is one of the most stupid things I ever read on this list. So users 
> should never be part of discussions? Their needs? Their opinions?
>
> Also, drobbins continued his attacks even after explained SEVERAL times that 
> the stuff ciaranm was doing was a) wanted and b) helpfull and c) supervised 
> by devs. 
>
> But he couldn't shut up OR accept that things changed since he left.
>
> Somebody who can not deal with changes, is somebody certainly unfit for 
> leadership.
>
> Yes, he started gentoo (my first gentoo was 1.0). And compared to the chaotic 
> times, gentoo is a heaven of stability today. Back under drobbins leadership 
> it was ok, that the tree was broken or some update screwed your system. 
> Happened all the time - nobody complained (too loudly). And some day he left. 
> Things changed. Gentoo is much more stable today. There is no breakage of the 
> week. No large scale surprising 'nothing works anymore'. A lot of things were 
> done - without him.
>
> And he comes back and thinks that he can do better? Please - he already has 
> shown that he can't. He has shown that he will leave projects after a short 
> while (stampede, freebsd, enoch, gentoo, Microsoft). He has never shown that 
> he can pull through with a project.
>   

With all due respect, the current leadership has not shown they can do
any better either.  The foundation no longer exists legally.  Something
that important ever happen when he was here?

I do agree that users should have say and be able to express their
opinions.  If the devs had better social skills, not all but just a few,
then maybe some users would express that more.  It's just like anything
else, only a few makes the rest look bad. 

As to things breaking in portage, yea, it did happen.  Gentoo was pretty
new back then and it was expected.  I was new back then and I caused
some breakage of my own but it was expected to.  Code wise, Gentoo has
come a VERY VERY LONG ways.  It is not just better but hugely better. 
That doesn't mean that the same would not have happened if he stayed
with Gentoo tho.  Gentoo was a baby then and like all of us it stumbled
until it learned how to walk.  Code wise, right now it can run a
marathon and win in my opinion.  The developers have done their job
pretty well but with little social skills I'm afraid.  Again, just a few
of them tho.

Oh, I been here since 1.4 myself.  I have been subscribed to -dev, -user
and other mailing lists for a long time.  I also read the forums tho I
don't post as much as I used to.  There may be things I don't know but I
got a good "gut feeling" that Gentoo needs better leadership than it
currently has. 

My $0.02 worth.

Dale

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

[reader]

Just butting in here a bit but this discussion has got me somewhat
worried.  This will probably ramble a bit... but at least that will
fit right in in this discussion... hehe.

I probably represent about the lowest level of gentoo user so I
thought maybe it would be good to speak up a bit here.

Its hard to get a handle on what you all are really talking about. I
mean the behind the scenes build up that must have gone on was totally
invisible to people like me.

I started hearing and seeing comments and such on this list about 1 or
maybe 2 mnths ago now, indicating some underlying trouble but I'm not
getting a clear picture here of what that trouble is.

I am a long time linux user and have used gentoo for probably 3 yrs or
so.  I've never contributed a single bit of code or contributed in any
other way than asking lots of question here... and answering a few I
guess but the ratio wouldn't look so good for me.  I've added a 
very small number of bug reports at one time or another.

I like gentoo a lot... and have finally gotten at least slightly
competent in using/installing/trouble shooting and etc.... I'd hate to
switch to something else.

The complex setup of use flags and profiles is very versatile and
eventually people like me start to catch on.  With the counter balance
of the various /etc/portage/package.** files, there are infinite ways
to control ones setup.

>From this discussion I am unable to get an idea what might be coming
in the next few mnths.

I'd like to help in some way... but hard to think of anyway that I
could realistically contribute.

I've used linux pretty exclusively as my main desktop since mid to
late 90s, experimented with freebsd and openbsd a bit. 
The gentoo community... at least the discussion lists is about the
best I've been involved in.

I guess what I'm getting at here is wondering what the collection of
lowlevel users can really do to help the apparent breakdown of
direction.

I can write basic perl and shell script a bit.  But so basic as to
seem pretty useless compared to the kind of talent available here.

I guess I feel kind of helpless about the possibility of gentoo
breaking down and kind of fading on off into oblivion.

Can some of you `in the know' folks layout what the problems seem to
be especially some concrete ways interested parties could have some
impact on the situation.


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

[Alan McKinnon]

On Monday 14 January 2008, reader@newsguy.com wrote:
> Just butting in here a bit but this discussion has got me somewhat
> worried.  This will probably ramble a bit... but at least that will
> fit right in in this discussion... hehe.
>
> I probably represent about the lowest level of gentoo user so I
> thought maybe it would be good to speak up a bit here.

[snip]

> I'd like to help in some way... but hard to think of anyway that I
> could realistically contribute.

An excellent contribution is to help out people on this list and in the 
forums. A lot of them are in the same position you were recently and 
they appreciate the help you can give them just as much as you did.

Don't feel that just because you are a mere foot soldier in the trenches 
that you can't make a difference. 1000 such foot soldiers make a pretty 
formidable force to move forward with!

Regardless of what the future holds for Gentoo it will always need 
users, users willing to help other users, and people willing to improve 
the product. It simply doesn't make much sense for the community at 
large to pay exclusive attention to the management woes and neglect the 
distro itself.

Here's some stuff that needs done (might be a tad out of date though):

http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/staffing-needs/

alan

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Dale]

reader@newsguy.com wrote:
> Just butting in here a bit but this discussion has got me somewhat
> worried.  This will probably ramble a bit... but at least that will
> fit right in in this discussion... hehe.
>
> I probably represent about the lowest level of gentoo user so I
> thought maybe it would be good to speak up a bit here.
>
> Its hard to get a handle on what you all are really talking about. I
> mean the behind the scenes build up that must have gone on was totally
> invisible to people like me.
>
> I started hearing and seeing comments and such on this list about 1 or
> maybe 2 mnths ago now, indicating some underlying trouble but I'm not
> getting a clear picture here of what that trouble is.
>
> I am a long time linux user and have used gentoo for probably 3 yrs or
> so.  I've never contributed a single bit of code or contributed in any
> other way than asking lots of question here... and answering a few I
> guess but the ratio wouldn't look so good for me.  I've added a 
> very small number of bug reports at one time or another.
>
> I like gentoo a lot... and have finally gotten at least slightly
> competent in using/installing/trouble shooting and etc.... I'd hate to
> switch to something else.
>
> The complex setup of use flags and profiles is very versatile and
> eventually people like me start to catch on.  With the counter balance
> of the various /etc/portage/package.** files, there are infinite ways
> to control ones setup.
>
> >From this discussion I am unable to get an idea what might be coming
> in the next few mnths.
>
> I'd like to help in some way... but hard to think of anyway that I
> could realistically contribute.
>
> I've used linux pretty exclusively as my main desktop since mid to
> late 90s, experimented with freebsd and openbsd a bit. 
> The gentoo community... at least the discussion lists is about the
> best I've been involved in.
>
> I guess what I'm getting at here is wondering what the collection of
> lowlevel users can really do to help the apparent breakdown of
> direction.
>
> I can write basic perl and shell script a bit.  But so basic as to
> seem pretty useless compared to the kind of talent available here.
>
> I guess I feel kind of helpless about the possibility of gentoo
> breaking down and kind of fading on off into oblivion.
>
> Can some of you `in the know' folks layout what the problems seem to
> be especially some concrete ways interested parties could have some
> impact on the situation.
>
>
>   

I would usually say let your opinion be heard on where things are
going.  However, go post something on -dev and you will see in short
order that it is not a good idea.  I liken it to poking a stick into a
hornets nest.  It may be fun when you get the stick and first walk up
but after that the good part is gone.

In my opinion Gentoo has been coasting for a long time now.  It has hit
a point in its life where some decisions  have to be made and they are
not easy ones to make and they are far reaching and may not be
correctable if the wrong ones are made.  Problem is, the group of people
that should be making them can't seem to make them.  That means the
people that needs the decisions to be made can't proceed with their work
so it is status quo right now.

Case in point, portage I have read has a lot of hacks that are hurting
development.  In the end it works pretty well but it makes it really
hard to add more "features" without messing up something else.  So,
someone needs to make a decision on what needs to happen with that. 
Some say rewrite portage, some say switch to C** and some say switch to
Plaudus (sp?).  This just seems to be one thing I have read about.

It just seems to me that some things need to change.  Someone or some
group of people need to make some very serious decisions and do so very
soon.  I'm not sure what to say on the foundation part.  It's hard to
say since legally it doesn't exist right now.  I just feel and pretty
much know in my gut that people have dropped the ball and watched it
roll away.

Like you, I wish I could do more.  I would be willing to learn to code
if I felt it was worthwhile.  I am disabled so I have plenty of time to
learn and contribute but after my past experiences on -dev, I won't be
repeating that for a VERY long time and only after some things change. 
The devs complain about not having enough help but when someone wants to
learn and help some they sort of shoot themselves in the foot.  Bad
thing is, I have a lot of time that I could put to use.  I'm at home
most of the time, I do date some but am single, no kids and my biggest
time consumer is changing the water in my 55 gallon fish tank and my
garden in the summer months.   What a waste huh?

I'm sure someone else can add more to this.  That's just all I can
recall at the moment.

Dale

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

[Naga]

> reader@newsguy.com wrote:
> Case in point, portage I have read has a lot of hacks that are hurting
development.  In the end it works pretty well but it makes it really
hard to add more "features" without messing up something else.  So,
someone needs to make a decision on what needs to happen with that. Some
say rewrite portage, some say switch to C** and some say switch to
Plaudus (sp?).  This just seems to be one thing I have read about.

I'm sure Portage (the program) has allot of hacks in it but I'm also sure
that had those who advocate its shortcomings been concerned about
backwards compability with older stable versions they would have been more
humble in there criticism.

> Like you, I wish I could do more.  I would be willing to learn to code
if I felt it was worthwhile.  I am disabled so I have plenty of time to
learn and contribute but after my past experiences on -dev, I won't be
repeating that for a VERY long time and only after some things change.
The devs complain about not having enough help but when someone wants to
learn and help some they sort of shoot themselves in the foot.

The best way to help out is to try and join a team/herd. They are much
friendlier then the -dev list and in much need of help. The easiest way I
think is to join an arch team as an arch tester.



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

[Dale]

Naga wrote:
>> reader@newsguy.com wrote:
>> Case in point, portage I have read has a lot of hacks that are hurting
>>     
> development.  In the end it works pretty well but it makes it really
> hard to add more "features" without messing up something else.  So,
> someone needs to make a decision on what needs to happen with that. Some
> say rewrite portage, some say switch to C** and some say switch to
> Plaudus (sp?).  This just seems to be one thing I have read about.
>
> I'm sure Portage (the program) has allot of hacks in it but I'm also sure
> that had those who advocate its shortcomings been concerned about
> backwards compability with older stable versions they would have been more
> humble in there criticism.
>   

Yep, you are likely dead on there.  Thing is, now, someone needs to
decide what to do next.  I wouldn't mind a change that means you can not
go backwards.  I have said M$ needs to cut that cord myself.  It may
hurt at first but in the long run it will pay off.

>   
>> Like you, I wish I could do more.  I would be willing to learn to code
>>     
> if I felt it was worthwhile.  I am disabled so I have plenty of time to
> learn and contribute but after my past experiences on -dev, I won't be
> repeating that for a VERY long time and only after some things change.
> The devs complain about not having enough help but when someone wants to
> learn and help some they sort of shoot themselves in the foot.
>
> The best way to help out is to try and join a team/herd. They are much
> friendlier then the -dev list and in much need of help. The easiest way I
> think is to join an arch team as an arch tester.
>
>
>
>   

That may be true but the past few times on -dev left a bad taste.  If I
start learning to code and stuff I would want to move up.  Right now,
I'm not even remotely interested in that.  I'll just stay right here
where I am.  Of course, if I get the same here, I'd go away from here too. 

Dale

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

[James]

Dale <dalek1967 <at> bellsouth.net> writes:


> Like you, I wish I could do more.  I would be willing to learn to code
> if I felt it was worthwhile.  I am disabled so I have plenty of time to
> learn and contribute but after my past experiences on -dev, I won't be
> repeating that for a VERY long time and only after some things change. 
> The devs complain about not having enough help but when someone wants to
> learn and help some they sort of shoot themselves in the foot.  Bad
> thing is, I have a lot of time that I could put to use. 

> Dale


Hello Dale,

Things are not that bleak. Have you ever considered learning about embedded
Gentoo? There is a separate list, and you put a stripped down version of
gentoo on a SBC (single board computer). You get to customize your own
mini gentoo, and learn about many of the low level aspects of making
software work with hardware. An SBC can be had for around $200 and you can
get lots of help from the embedded gentoo list. Perhaps once you learn 
in that environment, you can contribute without being part of the
'feeding frenzy'?

There is much freedom and many needs related to embedded gentoo.
Drop me some private email and we can talk more, if you are interested.


James



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

[Eddie Mihalow Jr]

Hemmann, Volker Armin wrote:
> On Sonntag, 13. Januar 2008, Eddie Mihalow Jr wrote:
>> Naga Toro wrote:
>>> On Sunday 13 January 2008 15.07.57 Eddie Mihalow Jr wrote:
>>>> I guess you don't get the point of being also in a flame war with a
>>>> ex-dev who although very bright lacks in all the social skills. I read
>>>> the thread of these two going at it and hell, I wanted to leave. Who
>>>> needs the grief of listening to that crap from some a**hole who LEFT the
>>>> project. Give me a break.
>>> That would be two a**holes in that discussion. If you read it you would
>>> know that may devs tried to correct drobbins but that he couldn't accept
>>> the fact that he wasn't the chief anymore and that things have changed
>>> since he left.
>>>
>>> I'm not sure that the best guy to run Gentoo is a guy who wants to be THE
>>> chief and not one of the community.
>> First D Robbins created Gentoo. Second what part of ex-dev don't you
>> understand.
>> If you are an ex-dev you shouldn't even be in the discussion period.
> 
> that is one of the most stupid things I ever read on this list. So users 
> should never be part of discussions? Their needs? Their opinions?
> 
> Also, drobbins continued his attacks even after explained SEVERAL times that 
> the stuff ciaranm was doing was a) wanted and b) helpfull and c) supervised 
> by devs. 
> 
> But he couldn't shut up OR accept that things changed since he left.
> 
> Somebody who can not deal with changes, is somebody certainly unfit for 
> leadership.
> 
> Yes, he started gentoo (my first gentoo was 1.0). And compared to the chaotic 
> times, gentoo is a heaven of stability today. Back under drobbins leadership 
> it was ok, that the tree was broken or some update screwed your system. 
> Happened all the time - nobody complained (too loudly). And some day he left. 
> Things changed. Gentoo is much more stable today. There is no breakage of the 
> week. No large scale surprising 'nothing works anymore'. A lot of things were 
> done - without him.
> 
> And he comes back and thinks that he can do better? Please - he already has 
> shown that he can't. He has shown that he will leave projects after a short 
> while (stampede, freebsd, enoch, gentoo, Microsoft). He has never shown that 
> he can pull through with a project.
It is not stupid, just a difference of opinion.

-- 
Edward A Mihalow Jr
Mudbug Computers and Networks
Gentoo! Linux
Registered Linux User#225662
New Orleans,LA
-- 
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[gentoo-user] Quo vadis Gentoo [WAS: Daniel Robbins' come back ?]

[Enrico Weigelt]

* Hemmann, Volker Armin <volker.armin.hemmann@tu-clausthal.de> wrote:

Hi,

> that is one of the most stupid things I ever read on this list. So users 
> should never be part of discussions? Their needs? Their opinions?

well, that's what essentially told to me on -dev before I left there ;-O

Maybe it's just an communication problem: devs are usually people who have 
much deeper knowledge of the whole system (or maybe just their packages) 
and also different needs than arbitary users. The tendencies of chasing 
away users might be an kind of self-protection against the "more (end)user 
friendly" points of view found in other distros (eg. SuSE).

> Also, drobbins continued his attacks even after explained SEVERAL times that
> the stuff ciaranm was doing was a) wanted and b) helpfull and c) supervised 
> by devs. 

Without knowing the details, both parties might have their (subjectively)
valid reasons (speaking of the ideas/concepts, not the way they've been
expressed ;-o). Maybe the whole project should be more modularized, so forking 
becomes much easier and still doesn't produce too much duplicate works.

A few ideas:

* bugfixing on individual packages should happen directly in the upstream
  (maybe with OSS-QM as "source overlay"), not in Gentoo itself.
* package's build/install logic should be entirely moved into the package
  (so that ebuilds mostly do nothing more than calling the package's 
  build system)
* the QM process could be split into several parts: 
    a) per-package (distro agnostic)
    b) per ebuild (aka the package w/ portage)
    c) the ebuild within (official) Gentoo
    
On a quick view this looks like a lot more work, but in longer terms it 
would reduce the overall work (including dozens of other distros around
the world).


cu
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---------------------------------------------------------------------
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 Patches / Fixes for a lot dozens of packages in dozens of versions:
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Re: [gentoo-user] Quo vadis Gentoo [WAS: Daniel Robbins' come back ?]

[Hemmann, Volker Armin]

On Samstag, 19. Januar 2008, Enrico Weigelt wrote:
> * Hemmann, Volker Armin <volker.armin.hemmann@tu-clausthal.de> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> > that is one of the most stupid things I ever read on this list. So users
> > should never be part of discussions? Their needs? Their opinions?
>
> well, that's what essentially told to me on -dev before I left there ;-O

was it our great releng 'boss' Chris G.?

There are lots of very nice devs - and then there is this certain person...

but other distros have their abusive people too. Just ask debians ... 
-- 
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[gentoo-user] Re: Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[»Q«]

Naga Toro <nagatoro@gmail.com> wrote:

> That would be two a**holes in that discussion. If you read it you
> would know that may devs tried to correct drobbins but that he
> couldn't accept the fact that he wasn't the chief anymore and that
> things have changed since he left.

On the contrary, he never had trouble accepting the fact that he
wasn't the chief.  And if he hadn't clearly seen how things have
changed, he wouldn't have left again.

> I'm not sure that the best guy to run Gentoo is a guy who wants to be
> THE chief and not one of the community.

The community, with no strong leadership, hasn't done a very good job
of moving Gentoo forward.  I don't know that drobbins is the /best/ guy
to run Gentoo, but I think he's the best one who's stepped forward,
willing to give it a try.

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

[Michael Schmarck]

· Hemmann, Volker Armin <volker.armin.hemmann@tu-clausthal.de>:

> On Samstag, 12. Januar 2008, Richard Marzan wrote:
>> On Sat, 2008-01-12 at 18:22 +0100, Renat Golubchyk wrote:
>> > On Sat, 12 Jan 2008 12:07:39 -0500 Richard Marzan
>> >
>> > <richardmarzan@optonline.net> wrote:
>> > >  Although he works for Microsoft, Daniel is the one who created this
>> > > project.
>> >
>> > He doesn't work for Microsoft any longer. Check Wikipedia or Google for
>> > relevant news.
>> >
>> >
>> > Cheers,
>> > Renat
>>
>> Even more of a reason to bring him back!
> 
> no, just another sign that he never pulls through.

Or a sign, that he has his own "vision" and doesn't want to
bend for it.

Michael Schmarck
-- 
People tend to make rules for others and exceptions for themselves.


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

[Michael Schmarck]

· Richard Marzan <richardmarzan@optonline.net>:

>  Although he works for Microsoft,

Check your facts, please.

<http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39252292,00.htm>.

Michael Schmarck
-- 
printk ("scsi%d : Oh no Mr. Bill!\n", host->host_no);
        linux-2.6.6/drivers/scsi/53c7xx.c


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

[Hemmann, Volker Armin]

On Samstag, 12. Januar 2008, Richard Marzan wrote:
> On Sat, 2008-01-12 at 07:34 -0600, Dale wrote:
> > Mick wrote:
> > > On Saturday 12 January 2008, Jil Larner wrote:
> > >> Well, it's like if I am opening my eyes. I never looked at what the
> > >> foundation was supposed to do. For a couple of years I've been using
> > >> gentoo, I never get any political announcement, maybe because I didn't
> > >> look at the right place, or maybe there was no. I mean that except the
> > >> Gentoo's Philosophy and the Gentoo's Social Contract, I didn't see
> > >> politic, for my eyes were probably closed.
> > >> It doesn't mean I didn't enjoyed gentoo, its power, its flexibility,
> > >> its community. But I certainly missed something. There are so many
> > >> ways to communicate (lists, IRC, boards, wikis, project pages, etc.)
> > >> that I must admit I'm sometime lost.
> > >>
> > >> Today, I learn we're in trouble. Good. What trouble ? What's happening
> > >> ? Why through the words of Daniel Robbins, I feel some fear ? I feel
> > >> he foresees a dead end and offers an opportunity to change before it
> > >> is too late. Once more, to quote Matrix, "the problem is choice". In
> > >> Free Software, there are often choices where the community can get
> > >> involved in and it makes our strength. The problem is, and is not,
> > >> legal papers. Because, IMO, legal papers are the visible part of an
> > >> Iceberg. Could someone tell me what *really* is the crisis ? If people
> > >> did not do what they were supposed to do : what should they have done
> > >> ?
> > >>
> > >> Thanks.
> > >
> > > I am equally agnostic of Gentoo management politics, albeit grateful
> > > that people volunteer their time and effort to keep it going.  From the
> > > little exposure that I have had to it all it seems to me that Alan's
> > > views ring depressingly true.  I read Daniel's blog and cannot disagree
> > > with what he suggests - it makes common sense that users views and
> > > desires should determine Gentoo's direction, but I have not read
> > > between the lines to see how might his proposals lead to directions
> > > that I would not readily agree with.  See this excerpt of his below
> > > from OSNews.com in 2002:
> > >
> > > "I very much want to find a way to turn the Gentoo Linux project into a
> > > profitable enterprise. My main motivation in wanting to do this is so I
> > > can stop living from paycheck to paycheck and focus my professional
> > > efforts exclusively on Gentoo Linux development. Many of our developers
> > > would like to do the same thing"
> > >
> > > (I am not critising this statement of his; after all I would very much
> > > like to find myself a sustainable way of being able to do what I like -
> > > without having to spend the biggest part of my day in my current job.)
> > >
> > > Giving a free hand to any single person is not safe in my humble view,
> > > especially if that person is employed by Microsoft - I will find hard
> > > to rest assured that there will be no conflict of interest.  On the
> > > other hand it seems that Gentoo desperately needs *mature* leadership,
> > > which can fulfill some rather significant responsibilities.  From what
> > > I read the current Gentoo administration and management setup does not
> > > seem to be able to behave with the professionalism required to achieve
> > > that.  This makes me anxious for the future of Gentoo.
> > >
> > > Just my 2c's.
> >
> > I have been using Gentoo for about 4 or 5 years now.  I to think Gentoo
> > has well, lost its way.  It seems like a bunch of teenagers is running
> > it sometimes.  They decide something then go back a few steps when they
> > don't like the results.  Proctors come to mind on that.  Users seems to
> > be the last thing on the higher ups mind.  That is not good.
> >
> > I love my Gentoo but I would like to see someone step up and get some
> > things done and some decisions made, even those we may never know about.
> >
> > I just don't want to see Gentoo fall into the abyss.
> >
> > Dale
> >
> > :-)  :-)
>
>  Although he works for Microsoft,

worked
not works.
>  Daniel is the one who created this project

and then he walked away.

And don't forget his stunt last year, when he came back for 2 days and started 
a big fat flame war.
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Saturday 12 January 2008, Richard Marzan wrote:
>  Although he works for Microsoft, Daniel is the one who created this
> project.

For reference, Daniel *did* work for Microsoft but left about 18 months 
or so ago. Per his web site he is now involved in a web-based financial 
trading concern.

If he has since gone back to Microsoft unannounced then someone will 
correct me on that.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
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Re: [gentoo-user] Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Δημήτριος Ροπόκης]

On Sat, 12 Jan 2008 15:34:47 +0200, Dale <dalek1967@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> Mick wrote:
>> On Saturday 12 January 2008, Jil Larner wrote:
>>
>>> Well, it's like if I am opening my eyes. I never looked at what the
>>> foundation was supposed to do. For a couple of years I've been using
>>> gentoo, I never get any political announcement, maybe because I didn't
>>> look at the right place, or maybe there was no. I mean that except the
>>> Gentoo's Philosophy and the Gentoo's Social Contract, I didn't see
>>> politic, for my eyes were probably closed...... Could
>>> someone tell me what *really* is the crisis ? If people did not do what
>>> they were supposed to do : what should they have done ?


> I love my Gentoo but I would like to see someone step up and get some
> things done and some decisions made, even those we may never know about.
>
> I just don't want to see Gentoo fall into the abyss.
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-)


Dear friends, I 'm Dimitrios Ropokis from Greece, I managed to translate  
fet- timetabling and smplayer
to Greek, I do not know an easy way to put fet on gentoo for download, I  
am not programmer,
smplayer is ok but now it is out of gentoo, my Toshiba laptop had 20 hours  
to compile open-office 2.3.1,
I can not install Option Globetrotter Umts-Data card,even to make Greek  
look good took a week,
but thanks to people like u, I am pleased for what I am doing, I help  
people to use linux,
because its a choice. Choice to communicate,to ask help and give help.
Most of it is knowledge. This is critical. The knowledge base of  
opensource is what next generations need.
And it is to your hands. Gentoo is too strong!!
Thank you!

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

[Enrico Weigelt]

* Dale <dalek1967@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> I have been using Gentoo for about 4 or 5 years now.  I to think Gentoo
> has well, lost its way.  It seems like a bunch of teenagers is running
> it sometimes.  They decide something then go back a few steps when they
> don't like the results.  

ACK. I also have this bad feeling :(
Even w/o looking deeper into the system, just as an "normal user's"
view, it became worse in recent years. Lots of conflicts, breaks,
feature deps/conflicts, etc. The amount of necessary hand-work 
and the need to overlay really increased at my site in recent years.

Part of the problmem might be too many quick+dirty hacks, another
part's the philosophy of taking evrything as it comes from the 
upstream. It's not trivial to get out of this ;-o

One little step out could be the OSS-QM project (http://oss-qm.metux.de/)
It collects fixes for a lot packages and makes them accessible in 100% 
automated ways. So in a way it can be seen as an kind of overlay against 
the upstream. Most of the patches are things that upstream's tend to forget 
but importand for fully automated builds (eg. proper relocation, clean 
feature switching, fixing buildfiles, pkg-config, etc) - they do NOT harm 
the core functionality. So exactly what the vast majority of distro's 
patches do, but in generic (distro agnostic) ways.

In recent years, I've announced this several times, but nobody really
interested in it. Maybe now the right time had come ? ;-o

> Users seems to be the last thing on the higher ups mind.  

Yes, I also had such feelings when I was around @ -dev:
It seemed I was disliked, since I was questioning some common dev
practices and no being an official dev by myself, and I never would
be allowed to become one, since I was disliked ;-O
(So I left -dev and focused on my own overlay - not caring about 
the devs anymore).

> I love my Gentoo but I would like to see someone step up and get some
> things done and some decisions made, even those we may never know about.

Actually, I don't think it's just some "strong leader" missing, but
an lack of discusion culture between devs and "plain users".
I'd see the role of Gentoo leaders more in an diplomatic mission than
actual decision making.


cu
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Enrico Weigelt    ==   metux IT service - http://www.metux.de/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Please visit the OpenSource QM Taskforce:
 	http://wiki.metux.de/public/OpenSource_QM_Taskforce
 Patches / Fixes for a lot dozens of packages in dozens of versions:
	http://patches.metux.de/
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[gentoo-user] Re: Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[reader]

Enrico Weigelt <weigelt@metux.de> writes:

> Part of the problmem might be too many quick+dirty hacks, another
> part's the philosophy of taking evrything as it comes from the 
> upstream. It's not trivial to get out of this ;-o

First off, your comments seem to be some of the more sensible here.
Not that others are senseless just not much actual `what to do'
content has come through.

I'd hazard a guess that you may have hit a bigger problem than your
comment indicates.  I'm pretty sure there would be great pressure to
use `quick and dirty hacks' to get stuff done when devs are nearly
always overworked.

> One little step out could be the OSS-QM project (http://oss-qm.metux.de/)
> It collects fixes for a lot packages and makes them accessible in 100% 
> automated ways. So in a way it can be seen as an kind of overlay against 
> the upstream. Most of the patches are things that upstream's tend to forget 
> but importand for fully automated builds (eg. proper relocation, clean 
> feature switching, fixing buildfiles, pkg-config, etc) - they do NOT harm 
> the core functionality. So exactly what the vast majority of distro's 
> patches do, but in generic (distro agnostic) ways.

The theory sounds very sensible.
After looking at that page and some of the links briefly it wasn't
clear to me where this is being used.  I see a very short list of pkgs
being worked on.. and guessing it is because of being short handed
there. 

But what wasn't clear is how work comes in and where it goes when it
goes out.

Are some distros offering these overhauled pkgs or what?
(Please excuse me if I'm missing obvious things on the pages)

PS-The `help' link under `navigation' brings up what appears to be
something it is not intended to, and may even be a hack on those pages
or something.  (The content that comes up may even be sort of off the
wall.)

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

[Enrico Weigelt]

* reader@newsguy.com <reader@newsguy.com> wrote:

> I'd hazard a guess that you may have hit a bigger problem than your
> comment indicates.  I'm pretty sure there would be great pressure to
> use `quick and dirty hacks' to get stuff done when devs are nearly
> always overworked.

Actually, they IMHO *are*. Look at the large amount of patches in the 
tree and the uncountable discussions which are not gentoo specific.
And the same happens also in other distros. An really large amount
of work could be done easily outside specific distros, but in an 
more general way. 

But as long as the devs refuse cooperation with such distro-agnostic
(meta-)projects like OSS-QM, there aren't much changes for it 
becoming better ;-P

> > One little step out could be the OSS-QM project (http://oss-qm.metux.de/)
> > It collects fixes for a lot packages and makes them accessible in 100% 
> > automated ways. So in a way it can be seen as an kind of overlay against 
> > the upstream. Most of the patches are things that upstream's tend to forget 
> > but importand for fully automated builds (eg. proper relocation, clean 
> > feature switching, fixing buildfiles, pkg-config, etc) - they do NOT harm 
> > the core functionality. So exactly what the vast majority of distro's 
> > patches do, but in generic (distro agnostic) ways.
> 
> The theory sounds very sensible.
> After looking at that page and some of the links briefly it wasn't
> clear to me where this is being used.  I see a very short list of pkgs
> being worked on.. and guessing it is because of being short handed
> there. 

There's not documentation yet. Feel free to join the maillist/board and
improve it ;-)
 
> But what wasn't clear is how work comes in and where it goes when it
> goes out.

Well, everyone is free to join the project as an "vendor". 
(vendor = someone who supplies code). Each vendor has it's own namespace,
for patches as well as patchsets (patchset = list of patches for an specific 
version of an specific package). You can see the bunch of patchsets from 
some vendor as an kind of overlay against the upstream. Combined with CSDB 
you can fetch source + patchset for an specific package in an specific 
version completely automatically.

> PS-The `help' link under `navigation' brings up what appears to be
> something it is not intended to, and may even be a hack on those pages
> or something.  (The content that comes up may even be sort of off the
> wall.)

The usual wiki vandalism :(


cu
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Enrico Weigelt    ==   metux IT service - http://www.metux.de/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Please visit the OpenSource QM Taskforce:
 	http://wiki.metux.de/public/OpenSource_QM_Taskforce
 Patches / Fixes for a lot dozens of packages in dozens of versions:
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Hemmann, Volker Armin]

On Mittwoch, 23. Januar 2008, Enrico Weigelt wrote:
> * reader@newsguy.com <reader@newsguy.com> wrote:
> > I'd hazard a guess that you may have hit a bigger problem than your
> > comment indicates.  I'm pretty sure there would be great pressure to
> > use `quick and dirty hacks' to get stuff done when devs are nearly
> > always overworked.
>
> Actually, they IMHO *are*. Look at the large amount of patches in the
> tree and the uncountable discussions which are not gentoo specific.
> And the same happens also in other distros. An really large amount
> of work could be done easily outside specific distros, but in an
> more general way.
>
> But as long as the devs refuse cooperation with such distro-agnostic
> (meta-)projects like OSS-QM, there aren't much changes for it
> becoming better ;-P

so your ranting is nothing but pushing your little pet project?

Distro devs are working together already. When they discuss stuff on the 
upstream mls and send their patches there.

Oh, and have you ever recognized, that a lot of gentoo patches come from other 
distros? No?
-- 
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[gentoo-user] Re: Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[James]

Mick <michaelkintzios <at> gmail.com> writes:


> >  The problem is, and is not, legal papers.
> > Because, IMO, legal papers are the visible part of an Iceberg. Could
> > someone tell me what *really* is the crisis ? If people did not do what
> > they were supposed to do : what should they have done ?

Excellent point. I ask the question. Exactly what is Daniel proposing
that has everyone so opposed to his return. Don't give generalized
bullshit answers, BE PRECISE.....


The current lack of mature, focused leadership, by folks that are
technically and financially successful is apparent if one just reads this
list over a period of time. I say this as a mature Engineer with 
a Master's Degree in Computer Science. I make a good living out of
my garage, and I've owned and sold several business for a nice
profit, over the years......

(pisssst, I'm willing to coach the 'young punks' that make gentoo the wonderful
distro it is, if they are willing to listen to my ideas. Let the community
vote and decide. FUNDING is not a problem. FOCUS is the problem with Gentoo
IMHO. Gentoo has issues with FUNDING, because of how it presents itself.
Not having a clean, well oiled installation semantic is like meeting someone
for the first time with green, rotten teeth and bad breathe that would
stop a train. First impressions only happen once. The installation
process is the first meeting (impression) for gentoo.......



> I am equally agnostic of Gentoo management politics, albeit grateful that 
> people volunteer their time and effort to keep it going.  From the little 
> exposure that I have had to it all it seems to me that Alan's views ring 
> depressingly true.  I read Daniel's blog and cannot disagree with what he 
> suggests - it makes common sense that users views and desires should 
> determine Gentoo's direction, but I have not read between the lines to see 
> how might his proposals lead to directions that I would not readily agree 
> with.  


This is such a simple issue to deal with. Before you (the gentoo community
agree to let him be in charge, you put a group of other folks on the board
of directors (elders). Allowing anyone to be president (in charge of the daily
activities) and CEO, (the long range strategic focus) is a bad idea.  It's
called a balance of power, and that is fundamental to any successful
organization.


> "I very much want to find a way to turn the Gentoo Linux project into a 
> profitable enterprise. My main motivation in wanting to do this is so I can 
> stop living from paycheck to paycheck and focus my professional efforts 
> exclusively on Gentoo Linux development. Many of our developers would like to 
> do the same thing"

The daily (tribal) leaders should be accountable to the elders, when the elders
say they need to be accountable. (PERIOD). It's just like parenting
or running a corporation. Hopefully, as the organization matures, becomes
accomplished and  significant progress is achieved (natural things in the
coarse of becoming successful) the interaction between the elders (Board of
Directors and the tribal (fiefdom/team) leaders become less and less.
As time progresses, elders retire (to successful start up companies and the
tribal leaders migrate to the BOD or directly to successful startup companies
centric to gentoo.......


> (I am not critisizing this statement of his; after all I would 
> very much like to 
> find myself a sustainable way of being able to do what I like - without 
> having to spend the biggest part of my day in my current job.)

How about listening to those who have done this already?

I could self fund a gentoo startup, tonight, with the right group
of focused individuals..... (see my previous postings on 
building a gentoo meta package for ecommerce....... as just one 
example. Or the camera to embedded gentoo device in another thread.
If you want a degree from a university, you have to do it the way
of those (with degrees) that run the university. If you want money
in your pockets (as an entrepreneur) then you have to listen to
those entrepreneurs willing to share there success with you.


> Giving a free hand to any single person is not safe in my humble view, 
> especially if that person is employed by Microsoft - I will find hard to rest 
> assured that there will be no conflict of interest. 


I thinks the revelation that he has left MS and abandoned several 
other ventures means he has also 'matured' to the point of 
looking for a fresh start with at least modest success.

> On the other hand it 
> seems that Gentoo desperately needs *mature* leadership, which can fulfill 
> some rather significant responsibilities.  


No, surely you are pulling my leg here.....?

This is rather simple. Anyone with strong to elite skills send me your resume
and tell me what kind of business you'd like to own. I'll surf through
the desires and ideas and pick one (or use one I like) and fund the
startup and give the key persons stock in a company you help start....

On the otherhand I've posted serveral times about the entrepreneurial
endeavor and few on the list seem interested. If you are not interested
then you are doomed to be a 'wage-slave' the rest of your life. 

Anyone with balls and elite skills? (ps, you and even keep your
pathetic day job).


> From what I read the current 
> Gentoo administration and management setup does not seem to be able 
> to behave with the professionalism required to achieve that. 



This is far simpler. A group of a few can form an idea, get funding (me)
agree on a legal document (so you have proof that I'm  not out to cheat
anyone, including myself) and a viable product idea (done this lots of times)
build a product (my wife's company does this for dozens of companies)
and take it to market.

 
> This makes me anxious for the future of Gentoo.

You and many on this list are anxious, because you have not been financially
successful as an entrepreneur. Once you get your first successful startup
under your belt, life becomes much sweeter.

Don't be a pussy! Be a man!, Be bold and take a few chances....
A successful startup (company) group from the loins of gentoo
is exactly what this distro needs to get it's priorities 'in focus'.


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

My wife is a very successful computer engineer (hundreds of products).
She is vile and very rough on EEs that design hardware. Only the
most competent hardware designers can work with her. Their eggos are
often bruised when their selection of uP/DSP/processor is not 
robust for the product they envision...... Get over it!
The planet is ruled by those with mental fortitude (PERIOD).
Most of her customers come from referrals or from semiconductor
representatives directly.

You don't like this, take it up with the author of the universe
(whomever you believe that is).....

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.


James

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

[Dale]

James wrote:
> Mick <michaelkintzios <at> gmail.com> writes:
>
>
>   
>>>  The problem is, and is not, legal papers.
>>> Because, IMO, legal papers are the visible part of an Iceberg. Could
>>> someone tell me what *really* is the crisis ? If people did not do what
>>> they were supposed to do : what should they have done ?
>>>       
>
> Excellent point. I ask the question. Exactly what is Daniel proposing
> that has everyone so opposed to his return. Don't give generalized
> bullshit answers, BE PRECISE.....
>
>
> The current lack of mature, focused leadership, by folks that are
> technically and financially successful is apparent if one just reads this
> list over a period of time. I say this as a mature Engineer with 
> a Master's Degree in Computer Science. I make a good living out of
> my garage, and I've owned and sold several business for a nice
> profit, over the years......
>
> < SNIP >

I agree.  I saw a post somewhere that some are pretty young and act
their age, if even that much.  It makes Gentoo look bad when even one
person goes off kilter like that. 

> < SNIP >
> 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
>   

I have read a lot of posts on -dev by Ciaran.  I'm not defending how he
says some things but he does have some good points.  I also keep in mind
that he has created a alternative to portage and from what I have read
it works VERY well and is even better than portage.  I don't use it but
I have read where people are talking about their experience with his
program.  He should be given a lot of credit for that and at least have
his ideas heard in a more "respectful" way. 

On that note, at least he has enough balls to say something on -dev.  I
posted a concern a long time ago and got hammered by just one person,
acting like a 3 year old who got his candy took away.  It is very rare,
if I have posted at all now.  It's just not worth it.  It seems to me
that there is a very few people that seem to think they "own" -dev and
Gentoo.  By the way, some others also didn't like the post that was made
to me.  It helped but it is just not worth it.  I'm disabled and 40
years old, feels like about 70 most days, and just to old for that crap.
> My wife is a very successful computer engineer (hundreds of products).
> She is vile and very rough on EEs that design hardware. Only the
> most competent hardware designers can work with her. Their eggos are
> often bruised when their selection of uP/DSP/processor is not 
> robust for the product they envision...... Get over it!
> The planet is ruled by those with mental fortitude (PERIOD).
> Most of her customers come from referrals or from semiconductor
> representatives directly.
>
> You don't like this, take it up with the author of the universe
> (whomever you believe that is).....
>
> 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.
>
>
> James
>
>   

True, even things that are free have to have money.  It never makes it
without it.

Dale

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

[James]

Dale <dalek1967 <at> bellsouth.net> writes:


> >>>  The problem is, and is not, legal papers.

> > 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.

> True, even things that are free have to have money.  It never makes it
> without it.

Dale,
I appreciate your response and sentiments.


On another note:
Sorry about my previous postings && disconnected thoughts and grammar....
Hopefully, most can follow the logic of what I'm trying to say,
whether you agree with me or not.

With 3 Kids, deep in sibling rivalry, and a wife who's pissed because
my priorities do not fall in line with her vision or what I should
work on, it make it difficult to finish a thought, let alone
a comprehensive email.

In my mind I'm an accomplished person. In her mind I'm just another
stupid EE, that does not agree with HER leadership (and you thought
that gentoo  has problems......) Still, I respect her and even
love her. Maybe that's the insanity that make Gentoo work?
When I suggest we separate but stay friendly (like forking Gentoo)
she get's angry and prefers that we stay together for the sake 
of the children (gentoo user community). She has prevailed (so far
but at what costs)?

<real scary analogy>

I'm headed to the Kitchen for a very tall Margarita......

goo_night!

James

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

[Mark Kirkwood]

James wrote:
>
> In my mind I'm an accomplished person. In her mind I'm just another
> stupid EE,

Hey James -

Interesting post - this eludes me tho, what is an EE?

Cheers

Mark

P.s: a beer should cure all women problems....

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

[Alan McKinnon]

On Sunday 13 January 2008, Mark Kirkwood wrote:
> James wrote:
> > In my mind I'm an accomplished person. In her mind I'm just another
> > stupid EE,
>
> Hey James -
>
> Interesting post - this eludes me tho, what is an EE?

Electronic Engineer

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Iain Buchanan]

On Sun, 2008-01-13 at 11:31 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Sunday 13 January 2008, Mark Kirkwood wrote:
> > James wrote:
> > > In my mind I'm an accomplished person. In her mind I'm just another
> > > stupid EE,
> >
> > Hey James -
> >
> > Interesting post - this eludes me tho, what is an EE?
> 
> Electronic Engineer

or Electrical Eng.  Similar, but different.
-- 
Iain Buchanan <iaindb at netspace dot net dot au>

There are probably better ways to do that, but it would make the parser
more complex.  I do, occasionally, struggle feebly against complexity...  :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <7886@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>

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

[Uwe Thiem]

On 13 January 2008, Mark Kirkwood wrote:
> James wrote:
> > In my mind I'm an accomplished person. In her mind I'm just another
> > stupid EE,
>
> Hey James -
>
> Interesting post - this eludes me tho, what is an EE?

Electronic Engineer?

Uwe

-- 
If a man speaks in a forest, and no woman listens to him,
is he still lying?
-- 
gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Alan McKinnon]

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

[fire-eyes]

Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Saturday 12 January 2008, alain.didierjean@free.fr wrote:
>> Daniel Robbins offers to take back Gentoo leadership.
>> What about it ? Read
>> http://blog.funtoo.org/2008/01/here-my-offer.html
> 
> I've kept very quiet about Gentoo politics for a long time, but Daniel's 
> blog has promoted me to finally open my mouth and express my views.
> 
> Daniel is in a tricky position - he is the legal President of the 
> Foundation but also has no role in the project in real life.
> 
> There is no evidence whatsoever that the Trustees as a group have ever 
> done a single thing for Gentoo in three years. The fundamental 
> responsibility of Trustees is to ensure that legal paperwork is 
> properly filed, they did not even do this. Grant Goodyear is getting 
> some things done but he's doing it as one person. Chris is in a similar 
> position. But the Trustees, as a body with specific duties, simply does 
> not exist in any reasonable definition of Trustees.
> 
> I used to read -dev and various council mailing lists a long time ago as 
> I wanted to keep up to date with these things as a user. I unsubscribed 
> because I couldn't stand the constant bickering going on there. OSS 
> projects always have their laundry out in the public eye and some 
> conflict is always present but Gentoo management manages to take this 
> to a whole new level - from on outsider's point of view, the bickering 
> is done for the sake of bickering, and it does not result in decisions 
> being made or solutions found.
> 
> Ciaran Mcreesh - I am very specifically looking at you here.

Very strongly agree with Mr McCreesh (spelling?). While I respect his 
technical abilities and contributions, I believe his horrible attitude, 
clear trolling and ability to pit devs against each other, seemingly for 
fun, is far more harmful. That he wasn't gotten rid of early on is 
actually the biggest sign of problems in my eyes. That he has fans and 
followers is another.
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Saturday 12 January 2008, fire-eyes wrote:
> Alan McKinnon wrote:

> > Ciaran Mcreesh - I am very specifically looking at you here.
>
> Very strongly agree with Mr McCreesh (spelling?). While I respect his
> technical abilities and contributions, I believe his horrible
> attitude, clear trolling and ability to pit devs against each other,
> seemingly for fun, is far more harmful. That he wasn't gotten rid of
> early on is actually the biggest sign of problems in my eyes. That he
> has fans and followers is another.

Ciaran seems to suffer from a horrible affliction that is common amongst 
highly technical people:

A poorly developed sense of how to deal with other people coupled with 
never having realised that people are not machines, do not react like 
machines and need to be handled differently. You maintain machines by 
focusing on what is wrong with them and changing that. You handle 
people by focusing on what they do right and reinforcing that.

I used to do what Ciaran does, and I used to do it a *lot*. Lucky for 
me, one day someone came along with a very big stick and hammered it 
through my thick skull that there is a better way.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Alan E. Davis]

Perhaps a user's perspective.  A clueless user.  Gentoo is the
ass-kickinest distro I have tried.  The docs are the best in the Linux
communities.  Where does that leave me and where does that leave
Gentoo now?  I am impelled to write after seeing numerous posts about
the apparent demise of GWN, and now the usual divisive arguments about
Daniel Robbins's  recent innuendoes to the community of Gentoo.

Once common thread in the former discussion is the "we don't need not
stinkin' install CD" argument.  I beg to differ, for whatever reason,
but I won't discuss the reason(s) at the current time, except to state
that the more recent (2007) installs went a LOT more smoothly than
earlier ones, and my three machines have become so much of a headache
to maintain that I am preparing to install again. Arguments against it
aside.  Unless I decide that Ubuntu is easier and better.  (It IS
easier.  Is it better?  No, but it's more painless for a clueless
user, in some manners).

That being said, one other thing begs to be discussed: Daniel Robbins
is still interested in participating (albeit his demands---the extend,
anyway, that I have read of them, tend to slightly put me off, but
that's beside the point.  I think it is necessary to take up this
issue (surprized as I am that this would even BE an issue) in full
light of the GWN and the install CD discussions.  I want there to be a
gentoo.  I want there to be a well documented and not horribly painful
way to install.  I like the concept.

Gentoo is still working well, but those soft spots that I mentioned
are serious and troubling ones.

When I first came into Gentoo, one thing I noticed was the kindness of
Gentoo experts in the mailing list discussions.  Debian experts often
left clueless users in the lurch, with their readiness to say "RTFM"
and lack of real support in many cases.  Gentoo people have been kind,
I have not been told to RTFM, although I was (thankfully) often told
where to find more information on a subject.

This off-putting "political" undercurrent of the Gentoo community has
me worried.  Is this the beginning of the RTFM choir?  I hope not.
Why would Daniel Robbins's opinions or suggestions not be of interest?
 Why do so many diss him so?  I am looking for positive suggestions.

Sorry for the waste of time,

Alan Davis
Teacher and GNU/Linux enabled independent scholar and scientist.

On Jan 13, 2008 7:37 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Saturday 12 January 2008, fire-eyes wrote:
> > Alan McKinnon wrote:
>
> > > Ciaran Mcreesh - I am very specifically looking at you here.
> >
> > Very strongly agree with Mr McCreesh (spelling?). While I respect his
> > technical abilities and contributions, I believe his horrible
> > attitude, clear trolling and ability to pit devs against each other,
> > seemingly for fun, is far more harmful. That he wasn't gotten rid of
> > early on is actually the biggest sign of problems in my eyes. That he
> > has fans and followers is another.
>
> Ciaran seems to suffer from a horrible affliction that is common amongst
> highly technical people:
>
> A poorly developed sense of how to deal with other people coupled with
> never having realised that people are not machines, do not react like
> machines and need to be handled differently. You maintain machines by
> focusing on what is wrong with them and changing that. You handle
> people by focusing on what they do right and reinforcing that.
>
> I used to do what Ciaran does, and I used to do it a *lot*. Lucky for
> me, one day someone came along with a very big stick and hammered it
> through my thick skull that there is a better way.
>
> --
> Alan McKinnon
> alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
> --
>
> gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
>
>



-- 
Alan Davis, Kagman High School, Saipan  lngndvs@gmail.com

"It's never a matter of liking or disliking ..."
       ---Santa Ynez Chumash Medicine Man
-- 
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[gentoo-user] Re: Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Thufir]

On Sun, 13 Jan 2008 20:05:26 +1000, Alan E. Davis wrote:

> I want there to be a
> gentoo.  I want there to be a well documented and not horribly painful
> way to install.  I like the concept.

I completely agree.  What's wrong with appropriating the Fedora (or 
other) install?  The arguments against that don't seem to be technical...


-Thufir

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

[Uwe Thiem]

On 13 January 2008, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> A poorly developed sense of how to deal with other people coupled with
> never having realised that people are not machines, do not react like
> machines and need to be handled differently. You maintain machines by
> focusing on what is wrong with them and changing that. You handle
> people by focusing on what they do right and reinforcing that.
>
> I used to do what Ciaran does, and I used to do it a *lot*. Lucky for
> me, one day someone came along with a very big stick and hammered it
> through my thick skull that there is a better way.

And thus focused on what you were doing wrong. <grin>

Uwe

-- 
If a man speaks in a forest, and no woman listens to him,
is he still lying?
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Sunday 13 January 2008, Uwe Thiem wrote:
> On 13 January 2008, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > A poorly developed sense of how to deal with other people coupled
> > with never having realised that people are not machines, do not
> > react like machines and need to be handled differently. You
> > maintain machines by focusing on what is wrong with them and
> > changing that. You handle people by focusing on what they do right
> > and reinforcing that.
> >
> > I used to do what Ciaran does, and I used to do it a *lot*. Lucky
> > for me, one day someone came along with a very big stick and
> > hammered it through my thick skull that there is a better way.
>
> And thus focused on what you were doing wrong. <grin>

hehehe, spoken like a true African - direct, blunt and to the point :-)

The technique worked though!

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
-- 
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[gentoo-user] Re: Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[James]

Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon <at> gmail.com> writes:


> > http://blog.funtoo.org/2008/01/here-my-offer.html

> I've kept very quiet about Gentoo politics for a long time, but Daniel's 
> blog has promoted me to finally open my mouth and express my views.

> Daniel is in a tricky position - he is the legal President of the 
> Foundation but also has no role in the project in real life.

This can be corrected quite easily. If one is to believe his
posting, (I have no evidence to believe otherwise) that he
wants to be removed from gentoo completely, or return and offer
a vision for leadership in a autocratic environment...


> There is no evidence whatsoever that the Trustees as a group have ever 
> done a single thing for Gentoo in three years. The fundamental 
> responsibility of Trustees is to ensure that legal paperwork is 
> properly filed, they did not even do this. Grant Goodyear is getting 
> some things done but he's doing it as one person. Chris is in a similar 
> position. But the Trustees, as a body with specific duties, simply does 
> not exist in any reasonable definition of Trustees.

This is not difficult to fix either. Getting the legal issues handled
is not difficult, especially if those trustees what to leave. If they
are non-performers, they either want to kill gentoo or they do not
see viable replacements for trustees, or mediocrity is acceptable
to them.

The bulk of the devs and the community of the users, should decide
who is a on the BOD. One person, one vote, with a required registration
as to actually who people are. The potential BOD folks could be elected?
If  the current trustees do not like this then it only takes a core group
to create a fork. (It seems to me Daniel has some well concealed plans
for Gentoo, and my bet is that he is either going to regain autocratic
control or fork). 

As a successful business man (Engineer), with a Lawyer in 
my family and dozens of lawyers that owe me favors, It its not difficult
to solve these leagalise problem, given either a quorum or a motivated group
of technical folks.  In fact, since I seen the charaterization that gentoo
is really just LFS + portage, it would seem that Mr. McCreesh has indeed 
created his own (gentoo) distro. Also, there are other forks of Gentoo
and they do not seem to require legions of devs to maintain a fork. 


I turn down most opportunities to be on a BOD
with many organizations, but, I care about Gentoo quite a lot. If Gentoo
is truely in crisis, why have the devs not discuss this with the wider
user community? This simple fact make the whole state of affairs
suspicious to say the least.

Potential BOD members should each create a vision document, publish it
and let's elect the BOD (trustees). If the current Trustees do not 
agree with this, then fork the distro and let's all move on. It's not
like this has never happened before.


After reading the aforementioned Blog (by Daniel), I have strong 
reservations about Daniels 'vision'.

First, let him publish his vision, including who he wants to name to the
board of trustees and the governing bylaws (or changes) he is proposing.

Second if he wants to be the day bay (tribal chief) then he should
have only a vote as to the makeup of the BOD. Allowing him to return
with the sole responsibility to select a BOD, is a recipe for doom,
IMHO. You can describe DOOM as you wish, but, giving carte-blanche 
control to him, or anyone, is foolish, at best. Doing so with no
published data, nor restrictive covenants, nor by-laws, nor mission
statement, nor accountability mechanisms.... is unwise, IMHO.


> I used to read -dev and various council mailing lists a long time ago as 
> I wanted to keep up to date with these things as a user. I unsubscribed 
> because I couldn't stand the constant bickering going on there. OSS 
> projects always have their laundry out in the public eye and some 
> conflict is always present but Gentoo management manages to take this 
> to a whole new level - from on outsider's point of view, the bickering 
> is done for the sake of bickering, and it does not result in decisions 
> being made or solutions found.


I'm not certain that these discussion should be held on the -dev list.
After all, if the 'devs' where the managerial geniuses they claim to be
(evident by their choice of -dev as the proper place to discuss the future
of Gentoo) then we would not be in this mess (YMMV)... Like many readers 
on this list, I've have noticed some increase in the dysfunctionality 
of gentoo over the recent months, but, was unaware of an imminent melt down
in the distro's 'chain of authority'. 

It also sounds to me as though Daniel, is trying to trick or provoke
the trustees into allowing him to decide the future of the distro
without first telling us what that future is to be.  But then again
why the trustees have become apathetic and have not sought out
replacement for themselves, is inexcusible if indeed this is the case. 
Daniel probably understands the inherent value in an established distro, 
such as gentoo, and might just be looking to use it (gentoo) more as a private 
fiefdom than an engine for the future benefit of the greater gentoo community.
Dunno.....

As such here are a few tenants I'd like to see in the article of incorporation,
bylaws, or where ever the focus of Gentoo is publish. Like wise
you could also view this as my vision of  Gentoo's future. Needless to
say, I'm what out in front of those that want gentoo to become something
they use to make a living with, if not reach some measure of significant
financial success.


1. Keep Gentoo open and free for all to use and exploit to earn a living,
create a business, become an entrepreneur, educate and use as the
individual determines is in the best interest of the individual.

2. Keep licensing more in line with the BSD license for Gentoo centric
technology (thus encouraging entrepreneurship as defined by the individual
while simultaneously respecting GPLv2 and maintaining compliance with 
GPLv2.   GPLv3 is a poor idea, IMHO. GPLv3 can be made easily available
and leave GPLv3 compliance/responsibility up to the individual. In fact
software licensing and compliance should always be up to the
INDIVIDUAL, IMHO.

Digression
I love conspriracy theories:  Here one that makes you think. Greenpeace
receives it's largest contributions from those that what to keep the
energy markets closed to all but the largest corporations.....

Here's another:  GPLv3 is the work of The Son of Satan, who sits
atop a mountain in Redmond......

/end Digression


3. Devise a formal sematic to install of all gentoo's instantiations
that is open and flexible so various groups can easily create their
own installation semantics  and share their installation semantics
with the wider public communities. (competition is the best
way to solve the current gentoo installation quagmire, methinks.

4. Formalize a process where others (non devs) can build, store and 
maintain ebuilds that are not blessed by the devs, so individuals
can easily share their work with the larger Gentoo community. If one
choses such and ebuild there on their own. The gentoo devs should 
develop a semantic where folks not officially part of the devs can
maintain a package or two, rather than making ebuilds for obsolescence,
unilaterally.


5. Trustees can be elected to one year terms. If trustees disagree
on the direction of the majority of the other BOD members, they
should be encouraged to aggregate with small bands of devs
and build alternatives (such as Mr. McCreesh's alternative to
portage)...... Forking of Gentoo is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Deal with it. If you do not want forks, then, allow for flexibility.
Be willing to integrate forks back into Gentoo, if feasible
and the majority of users vote for it. Discussions of
all issues should occur on Gentoo-politics or some such group.
Not spread around the groups. Discussion of Gentoo's future
exlusive by the devs reflects very poorly on gentoo and is 
ample evidence of exactly what's wrong with Gentoo.
 

6. Provide resources to the gentoo-embedded group to assist them
in their efforts to assimilate embedded-gentoo into gentoo
so that lots of ordinary users can build and experiment with
embedded gentoo. Provide resources for  a seemless integration
between gentoo-embedded and gentoo workstations and user
to encourage the commercial creations of lots of devices that
small companies can build, sell, support and make a living.

7. Provide direction and methodologies so both users and 
technical folks, can integrate Gentoo into the normal business
practices in small and mid-size (service oriented) companies.

8. Provide wikis for those requisite areas where folks can use
gentoo technologies to incubate, start, build and run business
centric to gentoo, such as legalese, accounting pricipals,
basic marketing, how to build a gentoo E commerce server, etc. etc.

9. Provide a clear migration path for novices to wanna-bee to techie to
entrepreneur to persons with a successful financial status to
a state of being self determinant. Mentoring, wikis and advise: a place for
entrepreneurs and techies to meet, hang out (on-line) and
aggregate into startup companies.

10. Celebrate the uniqueness that we all have  and respect the choices
that the individual uses gentoo for, for what the individual determines
Gentoo should be used for. Loose the attitude that if you use Gentoo
to make money, you are creating some form of evil. Quite the opposite
is true; IMHO.




James




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

[Mick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 8646 bytes --]

On Sunday 13 January 2008, James wrote:

> I turn down most opportunities to be on a BOD
> with many organizations, but, I care about Gentoo quite a lot. If Gentoo
> is truely in crisis, why have the devs not discuss this with the wider
> user community? This simple fact make the whole state of affairs
> suspicious to say the least.

It could just be managerial ineptitude though, combined with emotional 
immaturity of certain persons (if Alan's previous critique re.treating 
persons as machines holds true).

> After reading the aforementioned Blog (by Daniel), I have strong
> reservations about Daniels 'vision'.
>
> First, let him publish his vision, including who he wants to name to the
> board of trustees and the governing bylaws (or changes) he is proposing.
>
> Second if he wants to be the day bay (tribal chief) then he should
> have only a vote as to the makeup of the BOD. Allowing him to return
> with the sole responsibility to select a BOD, is a recipe for doom,
> IMHO. You can describe DOOM as you wish, but, giving carte-blanche
> control to him, or anyone, is foolish, at best. Doing so with no
> published data, nor restrictive covenants, nor by-laws, nor mission
> statement, nor accountability mechanisms.... is unwise, IMHO.

Hear, hear!  You echo my reservations very well, in case they didn't come 
through clear enough in my previous post.

> It also sounds to me as though Daniel, is trying to trick or provoke
> the trustees into allowing him to decide the future of the distro
> without first telling us what that future is to be.  

Exactly.  But this may have to do with his (and others) disagreement with 
Ciaran?  

> But then again 
> why the trustees have become apathetic and have not sought out
> replacement for themselves, is inexcusible if indeed this is the case.
> Daniel probably understands the inherent value in an established distro,
> such as gentoo, and might just be looking to use it (gentoo) more as a
> private fiefdom than an engine for the future benefit of the greater gentoo
> community. Dunno.....

I don't know either, but as you have suggested in your previous message and 
also propose below there are ways of putting checks and balances in place to 
ensure that:

1. Strategic direction is decided by the wider community in a democratic way, 
while preserving the Gentoo principles (i.e. the majority of *future* users 
may want a Ubuntu like distro, but that's not what Gentoo is about).

2. Tactical decisions on what coding should be used, are taken by devs, so 
that they enable the strategic direction and objectives to be achieved.

3. An administrative body with responsible and professional individuals is 
elected to undertake the necessary tasks required to keep Gentoo operating 
and moving forwards, without putting at risk its e.g. legal status.

I see the above three as distinctly different areas of endeavour which tend to 
attract different skillsets and personality profiles.  So it makes sense to 
define them separately, especially as it will offer a focus for succinct 
deliverables and responsibilities.  The boundaries of decision making are 
clear and if life changing moments arrive the the whole Gentoo community is 
asked to participate to the decision making.

> As such here are a few tenants I'd like to see in the article of
> incorporation, bylaws, or where ever the focus of Gentoo is publish. Like
> wise
> you could also view this as my vision of  Gentoo's future. Needless to
> say, I'm what out in front of those that want gentoo to become something
> they use to make a living with, if not reach some measure of significant
> financial success.
>
>
> 1. Keep Gentoo open and free for all to use and exploit to earn a living,
> create a business, become an entrepreneur, educate and use as the
> individual determines is in the best interest of the individual.
>
> 2. Keep licensing more in line with the BSD license for Gentoo centric
> technology (thus encouraging entrepreneurship as defined by the individual
> while simultaneously respecting GPLv2 and maintaining compliance with
> GPLv2.   GPLv3 is a poor idea, IMHO. GPLv3 can be made easily available
> and leave GPLv3 compliance/responsibility up to the individual. In fact
> software licensing and compliance should always be up to the
> INDIVIDUAL, IMHO.
>
> Digression
> I love conspriracy theories:  Here one that makes you think. Greenpeace
> receives it's largest contributions from those that what to keep the
> energy markets closed to all but the largest corporations.....

Ha!  Is that true!??  Who are the largest contributors?

> Here's another:  GPLv3 is the work of The Son of Satan, who sits
> atop a mountain in Redmond......
>
> /end Digression
>
>
> 3. Devise a formal sematic to install of all gentoo's instantiations
> that is open and flexible so various groups can easily create their
> own installation semantics  and share their installation semantics
> with the wider public communities. (competition is the best
> way to solve the current gentoo installation quagmire, methinks.
>
> 4. Formalize a process where others (non devs) can build, store and
> maintain ebuilds that are not blessed by the devs, so individuals
> can easily share their work with the larger Gentoo community. If one
> choses such and ebuild there on their own. The gentoo devs should
> develop a semantic where folks not officially part of the devs can
> maintain a package or two, rather than making ebuilds for obsolescence,
> unilaterally.
>
>
> 5. Trustees can be elected to one year terms. If trustees disagree
> on the direction of the majority of the other BOD members, they
> should be encouraged to aggregate with small bands of devs
> and build alternatives (such as Mr. McCreesh's alternative to
> portage)...... Forking of Gentoo is a good thing, not a bad thing.
> Deal with it. If you do not want forks, then, allow for flexibility.
> Be willing to integrate forks back into Gentoo, if feasible
> and the majority of users vote for it. Discussions of
> all issues should occur on Gentoo-politics or some such group.
> Not spread around the groups. Discussion of Gentoo's future
> exlusive by the devs reflects very poorly on gentoo and is
> ample evidence of exactly what's wrong with Gentoo.
>
>
> 6. Provide resources to the gentoo-embedded group to assist them
> in their efforts to assimilate embedded-gentoo into gentoo
> so that lots of ordinary users can build and experiment with
> embedded gentoo. Provide resources for  a seemless integration
> between gentoo-embedded and gentoo workstations and user
> to encourage the commercial creations of lots of devices that
> small companies can build, sell, support and make a living.
>
> 7. Provide direction and methodologies so both users and
> technical folks, can integrate Gentoo into the normal business
> practices in small and mid-size (service oriented) companies.
>
> 8. Provide wikis for those requisite areas where folks can use
> gentoo technologies to incubate, start, build and run business
> centric to gentoo, such as legalese, accounting pricipals,
> basic marketing, how to build a gentoo E commerce server, etc. etc.

The above three suggestions are probably the most important in establishing a 
viable business model for Gentoo, ensuring its growth (on a 
societal/commercial pull, rather than a technocratic, elitist push basis).  
If developed enough it has the potential to threaten Redmond in a real way!

> 9. Provide a clear migration path for novices to wanna-bee to techie to
> entrepreneur to persons with a successful financial status to
> a state of being self determinant. Mentoring, wikis and advise: a place for
> entrepreneurs and techies to meet, hang out (on-line) and
> aggregate into startup companies.
>
> 10. Celebrate the uniqueness that we all have  and respect the choices
> that the individual uses gentoo for, for what the individual determines
> Gentoo should be used for. Loose the attitude that if you use Gentoo
> to make money, you are creating some form of evil. Quite the opposite
> is true; IMHO.

I don't think many people believe that using Gentoo to earn a living is evil.  
I believe the model of open software development is well proven and charging 
for offering a service is not in contrast to it.

Let's hope that such proposals are discussed and developed adequately to 
secure Gentoo's survival and push it in a path of growth.  What do we need to 
do next?
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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

[Alan McKinnon]

On Sunday 13 January 2008, Mick wrote:
> > I turn down most opportunities to be on a BOD
> > with many organizations, but, I care about Gentoo quite a lot. If
> > Gentoo is truely in crisis, why have the devs not discuss this with
> > the wider user community? This simple fact make the whole state of
> > affairs suspicious to say the least.
>
> It could just be managerial ineptitude though, combined with
> emotional immaturity of certain persons (if Alan's previous critique
> re.treating persons as machines holds true).

Odds are that this is the real explanation. Gentoo management is full of 
people who are good devs but simply do not know how to run a group. To 
see this, just read over minutes of meeting etc held on IRC. There's 
little evidence of a meeting being chaired by someone who keeps things 
on track and on agenda, and meetings usually devolve into discussions 
of technical matters.

It's entirely reasonable to assume that these same people will just 
ignore things outside their expertise that they don't understand and 
hope the problem will go away if they ignore it.

Just as the solution to having a maintainer of a project that can't code 
is to replace him with someone who can, the solution to gentoo's 
current woes seems to be to appoint bodies to management who do know 
how to do it and have a track record of doing it.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
-- 
gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

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

[James]

Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon <at> gmail.com> writes:


> > It could just be managerial ineptitude though, combined with
> > emotional immaturity of certain persons (if Alan's previous critique
> > re.treating persons as machines holds true).

> Odds are that this is the real explanation. Gentoo management is full of 
> people who are good devs but simply do not know how to run a group. To 
> see this, just read over minutes of meeting etc held on IRC. There's 
> little evidence of a meeting being chaired by someone who keeps things 
> on track and on agenda, and meetings usually devolve into discussions 
> of technical matters.

> It's entirely reasonable to assume that these same people will just 
> ignore things outside their expertise that they don't understand and 
> hope the problem will go away if they ignore it.

> Just as the solution to having a maintainer of a project that can't code 
> is to replace him with someone who can, the solution to gentoo's 
> current woes seems to be to appoint bodies to management who do know 
> how to do it and have a track record of doing it.


OK, let assume you are correct, and the majority of users support these
consensus  beliefs. How do we go about doing this (fixing gentoo with
some documents that define the organization and lines of authority?  
I know how to do it mechanically and legally but how to we get devs to 
agree with being managed by anyone? After all, there are no paychecks here.

My alluding to the tribal system is because technical folks will follow
a technically strong leader. Are enough of those tribal (elites) willing
to be managed? If so, surely they will want quite a lot of say in 
how a new structure to manage Gentoo is structured and organized. The
fact they are discussing this seems like the majority of devs will
make a decision and let us know?   Surely they will want a person that
is mature and calm, yet very saavy with technology and Gentoo. 

We can put together a very good guidance document, borrowing from other 
projects and non profits, and add some interesting language, but if the
majority, or at least a handful of tribal leader do not agree, we are dead, 
or starting our own fork.....

It's more likely the user community will rally behind a group of devs,
that decide to fork, or the bickering will just continue until everyone
leaves?   I have not read any of their posts (the devs) nor any of the 
infighting. If they want help, they have to reach out. If they are determined
to intellectually bludgeon one another, all we can do is prepare our ideas,
here in this forum into a document, and humbly submit it to of those
tribal leaders that might be receptive?

Maybe someone that reads this solicit from the devs a list of grievances and we
can begin drafting documents that the devs can comment on and we continue
the process until 'the beast is soothed' ?

Does anyone think they can get cooler heads among the devs to participate 
in a process like this, or something similar?  I do not know any of the 
devs enough to know who to approach..... 


???

James




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

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

[Alan McKinnon]

On Monday 14 January 2008, James wrote:
> Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon <at> gmail.com> writes:
> > > It could just be managerial ineptitude though, combined with
> > > emotional immaturity of certain persons (if Alan's previous
> > > critique re.treating persons as machines holds true).
> >
> > Odds are that this is the real explanation. Gentoo management is
> > full of people who are good devs but simply do not know how to run
> > a group. To see this, just read over minutes of meeting etc held on
> > IRC. There's little evidence of a meeting being chaired by someone
> > who keeps things on track and on agenda, and meetings usually
> > devolve into discussions of technical matters.
> >
> > It's entirely reasonable to assume that these same people will just
> > ignore things outside their expertise that they don't understand
> > and hope the problem will go away if they ignore it.
> >
> > Just as the solution to having a maintainer of a project that can't
> > code is to replace him with someone who can, the solution to
> > gentoo's current woes seems to be to appoint bodies to management
> > who do know how to do it and have a track record of doing it.
>
> OK, let assume you are correct, and the majority of users support
> these consensus  beliefs. How do we go about doing this (fixing
> gentoo with some documents that define the organization and lines of
> authority? I know how to do it mechanically and legally but how to we
> get devs to agree with being managed by anyone? After all, there are
> no paychecks here.

I think you have answered your own question actually.

It's a common human failing to assume that their own situation is 
somehow unique and completely different from every other situation that 
has ever been. Gentooites might well want to debate this ad nauseam but 
the situation will resolve that same way these things have always been 
resolved, by one of these or a combination:

a. a strong leader emerges with a vision and takes over
b. a strong leader emerges with a vision and forks
c. common sense prevails and everyone comes to their senses
d. a hidden bad egg goes away or dies and suddenly everything calms down
e. the project dies and nothing replaces it

There might be more options. In any event, to progress someone has to 
step up to the plate with a plan and put it into motion, and the 
mechanics will fall into place behind that. Daniel has a plan. It might 
be a good one or a bad one. He might be The Ultimate Enlightened One or 
he might be Evil Spawn Of Satan, I have no idea.

But he does have a plan, and thus far seems to be the only one 
*with*a*plan*. Let's hear what he has to say and respond accordingly.

alan




>
> My alluding to the tribal system is because technical folks will
> follow a technically strong leader. Are enough of those tribal
> (elites) willing to be managed? If so, surely they will want quite a
> lot of say in how a new structure to manage Gentoo is structured and
> organized. The fact they are discussing this seems like the majority
> of devs will make a decision and let us know?   Surely they will want
> a person that is mature and calm, yet very saavy with technology and
> Gentoo.
>
> We can put together a very good guidance document, borrowing from
> other projects and non profits, and add some interesting language,
> but if the majority, or at least a handful of tribal leader do not
> agree, we are dead, or starting our own fork.....
>
> It's more likely the user community will rally behind a group of
> devs, that decide to fork, or the bickering will just continue until
> everyone leaves?   I have not read any of their posts (the devs) nor
> any of the infighting. If they want help, they have to reach out. If
> they are determined to intellectually bludgeon one another, all we
> can do is prepare our ideas, here in this forum into a document, and
> humbly submit it to of those tribal leaders that might be receptive?
>
> Maybe someone that reads this solicit from the devs a list of
> grievances and we can begin drafting documents that the devs can
> comment on and we continue the process until 'the beast is soothed' ?
>
> Does anyone think they can get cooler heads among the devs to
> participate in a process like this, or something similar?  I do not
> know any of the devs enough to know who to approach.....
>
>
> ???
>
> James



-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
-- 
gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

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

[Iain Buchanan]

On Mon, 2008-01-14 at 07:35 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> the situation will resolve that same way these things have always been 
> resolved, by one of these or a combination:
> 
> a. a strong leader emerges with a vision and takes over
> b. a strong leader emerges with a vision and forks
> c. common sense prevails and everyone comes to their senses
> d. a hidden bad egg goes away or dies and suddenly everything calms down
> e. the project dies and nothing replaces it

I think you just foretold the end of the universe too...

[snip]
> But he does have a plan, and thus far seems to be the only one 
> *with*a*plan*. Let's hear what he has to say and respond accordingly.

Baldrick had a plan, and look where that got him.  But then he wasn't
exactly the visionary leader...

Anyway, from what it seems from Slashdot, DRobbins' blog, and f.g.o
there is overwhelming user support for him to return (of course there
are some users against the idea).  But what about the "devs"?  The
support for DR seems to be less enthusiastic as you rise further up the
gentoo hierarchy. But then if he is blocked at the critical trustee
level, then either b. will happen, or he'll just return to the
background...
-- 
Iain Buchanan <iaindb at netspace dot net dot au>

Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.
        -- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

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

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

[Mick]

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On Monday 14 January 2008, Iain Buchanan wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-01-14 at 07:35 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > the situation will resolve that same way these things have always been
> > resolved, by one of these or a combination:
> >
> > a. a strong leader emerges with a vision and takes over
> > b. a strong leader emerges with a vision and forks
> > c. common sense prevails and everyone comes to their senses
> > d. a hidden bad egg goes away or dies and suddenly everything calms down
> > e. the project dies and nothing replaces it
>
> I think you just foretold the end of the universe too...
>
> [snip]
>
> > But he does have a plan, and thus far seems to be the only one
> > *with*a*plan*. Let's hear what he has to say and respond accordingly.

I thought that he outlined his plan in his blog and involves him being given 
carte blanche to choose who stays, who goes and which way the Gentoo 
Foundation moves ahead?  I guess this is the reason that some of us have 
expressed concern at this coming back (under these conditions).

> Baldrick had a plan, and look where that got him.  But then he wasn't
> exactly the visionary leader...

Yes, but his was "a cunning plan my lord!"  (for the non-UK readers, Baldrick 
was a comedy character from a BBC series).  I am not sure that a "visionary 
leader" is required on the case of Gentoo, in its current lifecycle stage.  
Visionary leadership is absolutely needed when overwhelming, fast change 
needs take place.  We're not talking of a start up here, or a significantly 
diverging fork, or scrapping MS Windows and starting afresh.  We have a 
maturing product which needs some (relatively small) developmental change so 
that it continues to improve.  What we also need (I humbly suggest) is to 
develop strategic direction of the Gentoo product(s) within a business use 
case context.  I believe that Gentoo has the potential to rival most 
commercial Linux distros out there, but has failed so far to do so.  In 
addition, we have a breakdown of organisational governance because persons 
with the wrong skillset were appointed in Strategic and Administrative 
positions.  It seems to me that people with the correct skillset were 
appointed in Technical positions, and the increasing stability of Gentoo over 
the last few years is an indication of this.

In conclusion, what we need is leadership in Strategic and Administrative 
activities, not by default (i.e. through the current devs and trustees), but 
through a new organisational design.  Devs & the failed organisational body 
of the trustees (or its replacement) should of course contribute in all 
decisions made, but their voice must not be absolute and at the exclusion of 
the user base.

> Anyway, from what it seems from Slashdot, DRobbins' blog, and f.g.o
> there is overwhelming user support for him to return (of course there
> are some users against the idea).  But what about the "devs"?  The
> support for DR seems to be less enthusiastic as you rise further up the
> gentoo hierarchy. But then if he is blocked at the critical trustee
> level, then either b. will happen, or he'll just return to the
> background...

I am happy to contribute to the governance and organisational design of a new 
Gentoo setup and as James suggested put this forward to the users, devs, 
trustees.  What do you think?  Is there mileage in this?
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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

[Thufir]

On Sun, 13 Jan 2008 01:12:09 +0000, James wrote:


> 2. Keep licensing more in line with the BSD license for Gentoo centric
> technology (thus encouraging entrepreneurship as defined by the
> individual while simultaneously respecting GPLv2 and maintaining
> compliance with GPLv2.   GPLv3 is a poor idea, IMHO. GPLv3 can be made
> easily available and leave GPLv3 compliance/responsibility up to the
> individual. In fact software licensing and compliance should always be
> up to the INDIVIDUAL, IMHO.


Absolutely not -- For BSD licensing please use BSD.  I see no reason why 
everything Gentoo related can't be GPL v2 -- after all, the kernel 
certainly is.

I wouldn't want to see entrepreneurs take Gentoo, *improve* it, and then 
not contribute those improvements back to Gentoo itself.  That's what the 
GPL versus BSD is about, to my knowledge.

That being said, it would be fantastic if the Gentoo Foundation found 
ways to make money :)



-Thufir

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

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

[James]

Thufir <hawat.thufir <at> gmail.com> writes:


> > 2. Keep licensing more in line with the BSD license for Gentoo centric
> > technology (thus encouraging entrepreneurship as defined by the
> > individual while simultaneously respecting GPLv2 and maintaining
> > compliance with GPLv2.   GPLv3 is a poor idea, IMHO. GPLv3 can be made
> > easily available and leave GPLv3 compliance/responsibility up to the
> > individual. In fact software licensing and compliance should always be
> > up to the INDIVIDUAL, IMHO.

> Absolutely not -- For BSD licensing please use BSD.  I see no reason why 
> everything Gentoo related can't be GPL v2 -- after all, the kernel 
> certainly is.

It runs a little deeper than this, particularly when you look at how is doing
what. For example

There are Dozens of corporations willing to sell 'embedded linux' to you.
Yet the core of their offering is the same linux you used (with some tweaks
at the kernel, HAL and a few other places). How does Monta Vista get 
to sell embedded linux without being sued?

I really don't think this is the place to discuss licensing but the BSD
vs GPLv(2/3) is a hugely complicated issue. Lots of small companies are
being quietly sued for building products related to embedded linux.
But, none of the large corporations that do the same or worse are being
sued....?

And, oh, just so you know, Monta Vistas original RTOS was a rip off
of BSD.


(Do your own research)

> I wouldn't want to see entrepreneurs take Gentoo, *improve* it, and then 
> not contribute those improvements back to Gentoo itself.  That's what the 
> GPL versus BSD is about, to my knowledge.

Again you miss the point. If some small company builds a product, they
are not going to want to stray very far from the linux kernel tree. The
most they do is write a device driver. If they have some real 'magic' you
just put a second sub $1 micro processor on the circuit board and locate
your "magic" therein. It's as easy as eating pie. Publish your gpl code
on the big micro and hide your magic in a small proccessor/DSP/FPGA/PAL.
There are many other schemes to get around GPL, including writing your
own boot loader. (not as difficult as it sounds).


What the GPLv3 is doing is effectively keeping the little guys from building
products ~100% based on linux and open source. They have not stopped a single
well funded company (or an entire country like China) from using linux
and open source as they choose.   This is a very huge reason for the
current state of affairs for failed technology companies (particularly in
the USA), at the present time.  The Linux Journal has a big campaign to
locate "linux inside" of products, basically asking folks to 'rat out'
companies using linux to make a buck.  <insert your own conspiracy theory
here>

You still believe gplv3 is a good thing? I think *GPLv3* is the spawn of
Satan, and that's the reason most of the kernel devs did not go for that
*horse hockey*!

> That being said, it would be fantastic if the Gentoo Foundation found 
> ways to make money :)

It will never happen as longs as "myths" such as the ones you espouse
reign supreme, IMHO. The reason that Gentoo and all of those souls that
develop and support it is floundering on near financial failure, is the 
tenants (goals) that others have brain washed onto the masses, IMHO.

The very best way (IMHO) to promote democracy and freedom is for
the people to have a way to make money as entrepreneurs and small
business people. Keeping Linux bottled up, via the GPL is just
plain nuts! Besides that, Linux only bottled up for the little guys,
HP, IBM, and thousands of other companies used linux every day in 
products or high end services, such as phone/networking gear.
Who is suing them?

Hell, the US DOD uses Linux like crazy...  Who are we kidding with
the entire GPL schrade?  (Keep the serfs where they belong, methinks).



James








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

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

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

On Monday 14 January 2008, James wrote:

> > Absolutely not -- For BSD licensing please use BSD.  I see no reason
> > why everything Gentoo related can't be GPL v2 -- after all, the
> > kernel certainly is.
>
> It runs a little deeper than this, particularly when you look at how
> is doing what. For example
>
> There are Dozens of corporations willing to sell 'embedded linux' to
> you. Yet the core of their offering is the same linux you used (with
> some tweaks at the kernel, HAL and a few other places). How does Monta
> Vista get to sell embedded linux without being sued?

The GPL does allow to sell your product (as opposite to giving it away 
for free). Why should Montavista be sued if they respect the GPL? As 
long as they distribute the source code with their products (which 
admittedly I don't know), they are fine. Just because the sources are 
not downloadable from their site, does not mean that they should be 
sued.

> I really don't think this is the place to discuss licensing but the
> BSD vs GPLv(2/3) is a hugely complicated issue. Lots of small
> companies are being quietly sued for building products related to
> embedded linux. But, none of the large corporations that do the same
> or worse are being sued....?

It seems to me that the difference is not between small or big companies, 
but rather between those who obey the GPL and those who do not.
Recently, someone noticed that ASUS (not exactly a small company) had not 
published the full sources for their eee pc OS on their site; they were 
notified, and subsequently they added that code. Read the full story:

http://cliffhacks.blogspot.com/2007/11/asus-eeepc-first-impressions-and-gpl.html
http://cliffhacks.blogspot.com/2007/11/asus-eeepc-some-sources-posted.html

Other companies have been sued or notified, but not just because they 
were big or small, but because they failed to obey the GPL (xterasys, 
monsoon, fortinet, d-link...you can find tons of cases just by googling 
a bit), someone even admitted their faults, 
In some cases, the companies were declared guilty.

> Again you miss the point. If some small company builds a product, they
> are not going to want to stray very far from the linux kernel tree.
> The most they do is write a device driver. If they have some real
> 'magic' you just put a second sub $1 micro processor on the circuit
> board and locate your "magic" therein. It's as easy as eating pie.
> Publish your gpl code on the big micro and hide your magic in a small
> proccessor/DSP/FPGA/PAL. There are many other schemes to get around
> GPL, including writing your own boot loader. (not as difficult as it
> sounds).
>
> What the GPLv3 is doing is effectively keeping the little guys from
> building products ~100% based on linux and open source. They have not
> stopped a single well funded company (or an entire country like China)
> from using linux and open source as they choose.   

Why should they have been stopped?

> This is a very huge reason for the current state of affairs for failed
> technology companies (particularly in the USA), at the present time. 
> The Linux Journal has a big campaign to locate "linux inside" of
> products, basically asking folks to 'rat out' companies using linux to
> make a buck.  <insert your own conspiracy theory here>

Making money, even lots of money, with linux is not prohibited. What is 
wrong is when someone does not obey the GPL, and that's what LJ wants to 
do: to discover companies that try to benefit from the work of the linux 
community without giving anything back (I think you are referring to 
the "linux incognito" initiative here).

> You still believe gplv3 is a good thing? I think *GPLv3* is the spawn
> of Satan, and that's the reason most of the kernel devs did not go for
> that *horse hockey*!
>
> > That being said, it would be fantastic if the Gentoo Foundation
> > found ways to make money :)
>
> It will never happen as longs as "myths" such as the ones you espouse
> reign supreme, IMHO. The reason that Gentoo and all of those souls
> that develop and support it is floundering on near financial failure,
> is the tenants (goals) that others have brain washed onto the masses,
> IMHO.
>
> The very best way (IMHO) to promote democracy and freedom is for
> the people to have a way to make money as entrepreneurs and small
> business people. Keeping Linux bottled up, via the GPL is just
> plain nuts! Besides that, Linux only bottled up for the little guys,
> HP, IBM, and thousands of other companies used linux every day in
> products or high end services, such as phone/networking gear.
> Who is suing them?

Nobody, because they obey the GPL. Or should they be sued only because 
they are big companies?

> Hell, the US DOD uses Linux like crazy...  Who are we kidding with
> the entire GPL schrade?  (Keep the serfs where they belong, methinks).

They are just *using* linux. What laws are they breaking? Why should they 
be sued?
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Jil Larner]

May I suggest you split the discussion if you continue about licensing,
so we can keep a clear topic on Daniel's come back ?

Thanks

Etaoin Shrdlu a écrit :
> On Monday 14 January 2008, James wrote:
> 
>>> Absolutely not -- For BSD licensing please use BSD.  I see no reason
>>> why everything Gentoo related can't be GPL v2 -- after all, the
>>> kernel certainly is.
>> It runs a little deeper than this, particularly when you look at how
>> is doing what. For example
>>
>> There are Dozens of corporations willing to sell 'embedded linux' to
>> you. Yet the core of their offering is the same linux you used (with
>> some tweaks at the kernel, HAL and a few other places). How does Monta
>> Vista get to sell embedded linux without being sued?
> 
> The GPL does allow to sell your product (as opposite to giving it away 
> for free). Why should Montavista be sued if they respect the GPL? As 
> long as they distribute the source code with their products (which 
> admittedly I don't know), they are fine. Just because the sources are 
> not downloadable from their site, does not mean that they should be 
> sued.
> 
>> I really don't think this is the place to discuss licensing but the
>> BSD vs GPLv(2/3) is a hugely complicated issue. Lots of small
>> companies are being quietly sued for building products related to
>> embedded linux. But, none of the large corporations that do the same
>> or worse are being sued....?
> 
> It seems to me that the difference is not between small or big companies, 
> but rather between those who obey the GPL and those who do not.
> Recently, someone noticed that ASUS (not exactly a small company) had not 
> published the full sources for their eee pc OS on their site; they were 
> notified, and subsequently they added that code. Read the full story:
> 
> http://cliffhacks.blogspot.com/2007/11/asus-eeepc-first-impressions-and-gpl.html
> http://cliffhacks.blogspot.com/2007/11/asus-eeepc-some-sources-posted.html
> 
> Other companies have been sued or notified, but not just because they 
> were big or small, but because they failed to obey the GPL (xterasys, 
> monsoon, fortinet, d-link...you can find tons of cases just by googling 
> a bit), someone even admitted their faults, 
> In some cases, the companies were declared guilty.
> 
>> Again you miss the point. If some small company builds a product, they
>> are not going to want to stray very far from the linux kernel tree.
>> The most they do is write a device driver. If they have some real
>> 'magic' you just put a second sub $1 micro processor on the circuit
>> board and locate your "magic" therein. It's as easy as eating pie.
>> Publish your gpl code on the big micro and hide your magic in a small
>> proccessor/DSP/FPGA/PAL. There are many other schemes to get around
>> GPL, including writing your own boot loader. (not as difficult as it
>> sounds).
>>
>> What the GPLv3 is doing is effectively keeping the little guys from
>> building products ~100% based on linux and open source. They have not
>> stopped a single well funded company (or an entire country like China)
>> from using linux and open source as they choose.   
> 
> Why should they have been stopped?
> 
>> This is a very huge reason for the current state of affairs for failed
>> technology companies (particularly in the USA), at the present time. 
>> The Linux Journal has a big campaign to locate "linux inside" of
>> products, basically asking folks to 'rat out' companies using linux to
>> make a buck.  <insert your own conspiracy theory here>
> 
> Making money, even lots of money, with linux is not prohibited. What is 
> wrong is when someone does not obey the GPL, and that's what LJ wants to 
> do: to discover companies that try to benefit from the work of the linux 
> community without giving anything back (I think you are referring to 
> the "linux incognito" initiative here).
> 
>> You still believe gplv3 is a good thing? I think *GPLv3* is the spawn
>> of Satan, and that's the reason most of the kernel devs did not go for
>> that *horse hockey*!
>>
>>> That being said, it would be fantastic if the Gentoo Foundation
>>> found ways to make money :)
>> It will never happen as longs as "myths" such as the ones you espouse
>> reign supreme, IMHO. The reason that Gentoo and all of those souls
>> that develop and support it is floundering on near financial failure,
>> is the tenants (goals) that others have brain washed onto the masses,
>> IMHO.
>>
>> The very best way (IMHO) to promote democracy and freedom is for
>> the people to have a way to make money as entrepreneurs and small
>> business people. Keeping Linux bottled up, via the GPL is just
>> plain nuts! Besides that, Linux only bottled up for the little guys,
>> HP, IBM, and thousands of other companies used linux every day in
>> products or high end services, such as phone/networking gear.
>> Who is suing them?
> 
> Nobody, because they obey the GPL. Or should they be sued only because 
> they are big companies?
> 
>> Hell, the US DOD uses Linux like crazy...  Who are we kidding with
>> the entire GPL schrade?  (Keep the serfs where they belong, methinks).
> 
> They are just *using* linux. What laws are they breaking? Why should they 
> be sued?
-- 
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[gentoo-user] Re: Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[James]

Jil Larner <jil <at> gnoo.eu> writes:


> May I suggest you split the discussion if you continue about licensing,
> so we can keep a clear topic on Daniel's come back ?

I only use licensing as an example (that I'm willing to defend
as long as it takes) to support the notion of vehicles to
generate revenue around the 'gentoo engine'.  After all, if
you look at Daniel's recent past, he's been searching for ways
to use Gentoo, to *make money*.  Several folks have pointed out
that the majority of people believe that using (gentoo) linux to 
make money is a good idea. Daniel has been with lots of ventures
in the recent past. Gentoo is his next 'bidness'.

(ok that's settled?)

Many folks suspect that Daniel wants control of Gentoo, to make money
the way he envisions. He has not said why he would go to all of this
trouble to be the technical, spiritual and financial leader of 
Gentoo (this makes the devs and others nervous).  If fact it
has been suggested in some of these discussion threads (particularly
on the forums) that turning gentoo towards a profitable business
model is exactly what's on Daniel's mind. Exactly what this entails
is unclear.

If Gentoo is to turn "commercial" then the relevance of licensing
is paramount, IMHO. I only get my digs in, to get the serfs thinking
about their financial future, related to Gentoo and it's future licensing
issues. That the reason for the examples and the "FOTITUDE" to wake up the
serfs that the GPL is hurting them the most. The GPL does not hurt 
large corporations. Maybe, just maybe, the GPL needs a financial test
before it affects a company?  (Just one idea for thought). After
all, a company that grosses less than one million dollars, most
likely does not have anything (code) that anyone else cannot
easily generate.

Gentoo is in play, do you understand this? Ever heard of T Boone Pickens?
Daniel realizes that Gentoo has value. That's why he wants to 
return and rule in an autocratic fashion. He has not asked to
be the technical guru (leader of the tribes) and hand the
financial decision making to others (something a benevolent benefactor
would do). He wants *CONTROL of EVERYTHING* He has insulted the 
devs that get in his way. Go read the 14 pages on the forum and you
get a pretty clear picture, that he is not this *benevolent benefactor*
that the masses believe he is. If he was, he would return, humble
get on 'the team' and let folks who have experience and connections
run the financial affairs of Gentoo, to the benefit of the all devs
and the user alike. 

Why else would Daniel let the foundation sink?  I sure anyone in the know
could have sent in the few hundred bucks to keetp gentoo legally established.
This crisis has been "orchestrated" to force a decision, plain and simple.
It's going to become the fiefdom of somebody and my vote (voice) is that the
serfs (users) and the devs take this puppy and decide how to make
money with it (Plain and simple). If you give it back to daniel, he has
greater rights legally that if the thing just dies. If it dies lots of folks
can pick up the code, rename it and start a fork that can be GPL or
commercial, IMHO.   The GPL get's in the way, IMHO. Handing it over to 
Daniel with ~100% non publish control is a recipe for the serfs  and 
the majority of the serfs to get the privilege of remaining on 
massa's farm, IMHO.


Why else do you think the real discussions are going on behind
closed doors?

come on, use your brain here......
(or at least go read the 14 pages on the forum and then come back with a 
clue).


God, I sure hope I'm wrong..............


James






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

[reader]

James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> writes:

> (or at least go read the 14 pages on the forum and then come back
> with a clue).

Maybe this has already been posted here... but:
What 14 pages on what forum?

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

[Jil Larner]

Possibly this one :D

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-644321.html

reader@newsguy.com a écrit :
> James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> writes:
> 
>> (or at least go read the 14 pages on the forum and then come back
>> with a clue).
> 
> Maybe this has already been posted here... but:
> What 14 pages on what forum?
> 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Monday 14 January 2008, James wrote:
> If it dies lots of folks
> can pick up the code, rename it and start a fork that can be GPL or
> commercial, IMHO.   The GPL get's in the way, IMHO. Handing it over
> to Daniel with ~100% non publish control is a recipe for the serfs
>  and the majority of the serfs to get the privilege of remaining on
> massa's farm, IMHO.
>
>
> Why else do you think the real discussions are going on behind
> closed doors?

Even if Daniel does wrest control of Gentoo from the non-existant 
Foundation and change the license on Gentoo's copyright works, very 
little actually changes.

He can't prohibit anyone from using what they already have under GPL, 
and each one of us already has a complete copy of portage on our 
machines. If he does turn Gentoo into some evil empire, the rest of us 
always have the choice to say "So long, it was nice knowing you", fork 
and create a new distro. A new gentoo might be able to tell us that we 
can't use any portage code published after tomorrow, but so what? How 
much code is that actually going to be?

Same with the docs, that was published under CC Attribution/Share-Alike. 
I can rip all of http://www.gentoo.org/doc/ right now with wget, remove 
the Gentoo logo and stick it up on any web site I feel like as long as 
I clearly say (preferably on every page) that the original was written 
for and copyrighted by the Gentoo Foundation. Nothing anyone does now 
or in the future can legally prevent me from doing that.

Trying to undo the GPL on Gentoo's creative works will be distro 
suicide, as no distro has ever managed it, and Gentoo is in no position 
to try. Red Hat is the most business-savvy Linux out there and they are 
very very careful to GPL every last keystroke. SuSE tried to keep Yast 
proprietary but when Novell bought them, the community forced their 
hand and now Yast is open source and we have OpenSuSE a la Fedora. 
Ubuntu is moving toward GLPing Launchpad last I heard (I can't fathom 
why it's taking so long...)

No distro has ever managed to succeed in the Linux market with anything 
other than the GPL, fully and completely complied with.

I don't doubt that Daniel has financial goals for Gentoo. The original 
reason he left, amongst others, was because he couldn't get this past 
the other leaders at the time, and he had pressing financial needs. 
It's not unusual to negotiate these things behind closed doors. I sure 
as hell wouldn't do it in public right now. Heck, I'd have to contend 
with people like myself who factually couldn't add much to the 
negotiations but certainly have an opinion. No thanks, I wouldn't do it 
that way.

I don't see much of a downside overall. If worst comes to worst then 
Daniel kills Gentoo and we fork.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
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[gentoo-user] Re: Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[reader]

After looking at some of the discusion at:
 http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-644321.html
I saw there that gentoo's charter had been pulled.

What does that actually mean?  And who is such a charter with?

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

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tuesday 15 January 2008, reader@newsguy.com wrote:
> After looking at some of the discusion at:
>  http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-644321.html
> I saw there that gentoo's charter had been pulled.
>
> What does that actually mean?  And who is such a charter with?

The charter is a legal document filed with the State of New Mexico, it's 
the document that permits the Gentoo Foundation to exist as a legal 
entity. Because of unfiled paperwork etc etc the charter is no longer 
current and valid, and the Gentoo Foundation does not exist as a legal 
entity. On a code basis, it means that the Gentoo "G" logo, all ebuilds 
in the tree and portage itself now are not owned by anyone. Of course 
this is a dangerous position for those copyrights and logos to be in.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Iain Buchanan]

On Tue, 2008-01-15 at 07:42 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Tuesday 15 January 2008, reader@newsguy.com wrote:
> > After looking at some of the discusion at:
> >  http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-644321.html
> > I saw there that gentoo's charter had been pulled.
> >
> > What does that actually mean?  And who is such a charter with?
> 
> The charter is a legal document filed with the State of New Mexico, it's 
> the document that permits the Gentoo Foundation to exist as a legal 
> entity. Because of unfiled paperwork etc etc the charter is no longer 
> current and valid, and the Gentoo Foundation does not exist as a legal 
> entity. On a code basis, it means that the Gentoo "G" logo, all ebuilds 
> in the tree and portage itself now are not owned by anyone. Of course 
> this is a dangerous position for those copyrights and logos to be in.

I thought it was only the legal document that allowed "Gentoo
Technologies" to be a not-for-profit organisation?

The logo's, domain name, etc. were transferred to Gentoo Technologies
before they applied for 501(c)(6) Not-For-Profit status, which required
a Board of Trustees.  IANAL but can't you exist without a legal paper?
-- 
Iain Buchanan <iaindb at netspace dot net dot au>

How many QA engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

3: 1 to screw it in and 2 to say "I told you so" when it doesn't work.

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

[Mick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1279 bytes --]

On Tuesday 15 January 2008, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Tuesday 15 January 2008, reader@newsguy.com wrote:
> > After looking at some of the discusion at:
> >  http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-644321.html
> > I saw there that gentoo's charter had been pulled.
> >
> > What does that actually mean?  And who is such a charter with?
>
> The charter is a legal document filed with the State of New Mexico, it's
> the document that permits the Gentoo Foundation to exist as a legal
> entity. Because of unfiled paperwork etc etc the charter is no longer
> current and valid, and the Gentoo Foundation does not exist as a legal
> entity. On a code basis, it means that the Gentoo "G" logo, all ebuilds
> in the tree and portage itself now are not owned by anyone. Of course
> this is a dangerous position for those copyrights and logos to be in.

I don't want to sound like a European who's been through two world wars (I 
haven't of course, although at times I can feel as if I have), but the people 
who allowed that to happen would normally be taken out (not to make a mess on 
the floor) and shot!

Is there a legit way to recover from this position, without take overs, 
juntas, curfews and summary executions?  Who needs to do what?
-- 
Regards,
Mick

[-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part. --]
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Jil Larner]

James a écrit :
> Jil Larner <jil <at> gnoo.eu> writes:
> 
> 
>> May I suggest you split the discussion if you continue about licensing,
>> so we can keep a clear topic on Daniel's come back ?
> 
> I only use licensing as an example (that I'm willing to defend
> as long as it takes) to support the notion of vehicles to
> generate revenue around the 'gentoo engine'.  

I understood your first message, I am for BSD licenses everywhere (but I
haven't all arguments you gave, just faith). But it turned to a flame
war on BSD vs GPL v2 (v3 is no match) and, as you say, deeply focusing
on a example.


> After all, if
> you look at Daniel's recent past, he's been searching for ways
> to use Gentoo, to *make money*.  Several folks have pointed out
> that the majority of people believe that using (gentoo) linux to 
> make money is a good idea. Daniel has been with lots of ventures
> in the recent past. Gentoo is his next 'bidness'.
> 
> (ok that's settled?)
Settled.


> [...] Go read the 14 pages on the forum and you
> get a pretty clear picture, that he is not this *benevolent benefactor*
> that the masses believe he is. If he was, he would return, humble
> get on 'the team' and let folks who have experience and connections
> run the financial affairs of Gentoo, to the benefit of the all devs
> and the user alike. 

Well, I attempted to read the forum, but I quickly left the page. The
current Gentoo case is very interesting for the student that I am, but I
don't want to take too much time to read the whole topic, I am already
overwhelmed, alas. Messages on the list gave me the image of what he
wants and a part of what he did. That's why I think this list is great :o

> 
> Why else would Daniel let the foundation sink?  I sure anyone in the know
> could have sent in the few hundred bucks to keetp gentoo legally established.
> This crisis has been "orchestrated" to force a decision, plain and simple.

Yeah, that's obvious since the beginning. When I asked what the crisis
was, the problem and non problem of legal papers, I saw it. Now, I may
say that Gentoo is at a mature point, is a valuable distro, and choices
must be made for its future. Somewhere, politics that I never heard
about "let the ball run away" (quote from a previous mail, I think) and
lead to the current crisis that allows (or not) the come back of Daniel.
Then, the question looks like "will people allow Gentoo to become
commercial under the leadership of Daniel without measure of control ?"

I'm not sure it's a good sum up. If you don't think, help me to be right.

I don't say commercial is evil. I agree that having a business around
gentoo may have it stronger. But I believe he aims to access power the
same way as Palpatine in Star Wars, and the story could be the same,
then it would be hard to find a Jedi to rescue ! :D
Discussions hold in the darkness and open the way for speculation. I
understand the need to discuss without the noise of the community. But
communication in an Open Source project, to say what is really in game,
seems to me fundamental. Are they talking about licensing, trying to
arrange some counter power to reach an agreement, do they already
accepted and try to figure out how to convince involved people (I mean
not basic users like me) ? I don't know. Only one thing is certain : we
are facing trouble times and what we watch coming seems very, very
dangerous. Power allows fast acting, but doesn't necessarily make the
act wise.


> come on, use your brain here......
I attempt, but the choice is not ours.

> God, I sure hope I'm wrong..............
So do I.

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

[Iain Buchanan]

On Mon, 2008-01-14 at 19:47 +0000, James wrote:
> Jil Larner <jil <at> gnoo.eu> writes:
> 
> 
> > May I suggest you split the discussion if you continue about licensing,
> > so we can keep a clear topic on Daniel's come back ?
> 
> I only use licensing as an example (that I'm willing to defend
> as long as it takes) to support the notion of vehicles to
> generate revenue around the 'gentoo engine'.  After all, if
> you look at Daniel's recent past, he's been searching for ways
> to use Gentoo, to *make money*.  Several folks have pointed out
> that the majority of people believe that using (gentoo) linux to 
> make money is a good idea. Daniel has been with lots of ventures
> in the recent past. Gentoo is his next 'bidness'.

By friday (or saturday) we will know whether or not DRobbins has been
accepted, and shortly after you will know if it is his plan to
commercialise Gentoo (which I personally don't think he is about to do).
If he does (there are a lot of if's leading up to this) then surely you
can apply to work on the project.  And just like Fedora, there will be a
"free" split.

If this doesn't happen, you can of course start your own commercial
Gentoo project.  Write an installer that can handle multiple PC's
easily, polish some business aspects (printer admin, domain control,
security), and write some scripts to share the compile amongst multiple
business machines and install from packages, and away you go.

I don't see a problem with the RedHat / Fedora model, but it doesn't
suit Gentoo in it's current form.  Firstly, Fedora is the spin off, and
I can't see Gentoo agreeing to accept direction from a commercial
parent. Secondly if the current team were to become the commercial
entity and spin off a free child, I can see from the attitudes of the
current devs that they are not focused on a highly polished and business
attractive product.  They're not interested in a flashy installer for
example (which is fine) or binary packages.

In fact, given the "love" that the collective devs have for DRobbins, I
can see them either say "no", or nothing at all.  Which means either
DRobbins, or someone else, will take Gentoo and fork it.  The two
distributions will probably grow to hate each other, although they may
occasionally share problems and fixes, but certainly neither will have
control or direction over the other.

-- 
Iain Buchanan <iaindb at netspace dot net dot au>

Got a complaint about the Internal Revenue Service?  
Call the convenient toll-free "IRS Taxpayer Complaint Hot Line Number":

	1-800-AUDITME

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

[James]

Etaoin Shrdlu <shrdlu <at> unlimitedmail.org> writes:


> The GPL does allow to sell your product (as opposite to giving it away 
> for free). Why should Montavista be sued if they respect the GPL? As 
> long as they distribute the source code with their products (which 
> admittedly I don't know), they are fine. Just because the sources are 
> not downloadable from their site, does not mean that they should be 
> sued.


Ummm, I guess you are new to a space that I have worked in for a very
long time.  Let's make this simple. Why don't you just pose as
a company that need MV's EL (embedded linux) and ask for a listing of
all of the wonderful thing you can do with MV EL that are superior
to the public offerings  of EL. Then ask them from their sourcecode
to these 'enhancements'. They are not alone, they are just
one of the companies selling a RTOS based on EL.....




> It seems to me that the difference is not between small or big companies, 
> but rather between those who obey the GPL and those who do not.

Naive, you are!  Big companies have lawyer, lobyist and often politicians
in their pocket. Over the years most people, at least in countries that
pretend to have democracy, have seen this.  Remember how the Democratic
politicians and state where going after MS and then most of the issues
got settled by republican. Yet the EU still slapped MS with lawsuits
and punitive damages?  If you think small companies are treated just
like big one, you are very naive and no amount of evidence will change
your mind..... Just ask most anyone that's been in small business before.



> Recently, someone noticed that ASUS (not exactly a small company) had not 
> published the full sources for their eee pc OS on their site; they were 
> notified, and subsequently they added that code. Read the full story:

>http://cliffhacks.blogspot.com/2007/11/asus-eeepc-first-impressions-and-gpl.html
>http://cliffhacks.blogspot.com/2007/11/asus-eeepc-some-sources-posted.html

You are talking about device drivers here, not products that have  a hidxden
OS and use linux as the RTOS inside the product. Verifying what is acutally
inside of a close (RTOS) system is difficult, at best, and often impossible
it the firmware engineer wants to make it difficult for other to analyze.

There is a group of firmware engineers that have publically stated that
they write for free any device driver for any company using EL. To paraphrase
that person, <the problem is not finding coders to write device drivers,
it's convincing companies to open source their drivers or allow their products
to inter-operate with OS drivers>

> Other companies have been sued or notified, but not just because they 
> were big or small, but because they failed to obey the GPL (xterasys, 
> monsoon, fortinet, d-link...you can find tons of cases just by googling 
> a bit), someone even admitted their faults, 
> In some cases, the companies were declared guilty.

true, but it does not affect the point I'm trying to make. What you are
talking about is a drop of rain, in an ocean.


> > Again you miss the point. If some small company builds a product, they
> > are not going to want to stray very far from the linux kernel tree.
> > The most they do is write a device driver. If they have some real
> > 'magic' you just put a second sub $1 micro processor on the circuit
> > board and locate your "magic" therein. It's as easy as eating pie.
> > Publish your gpl code on the big micro and hide your magic in a small
> > proccessor/DSP/FPGA/PAL. There are many other schemes to get around
> > GPL, including writing your own boot loader. (not as difficult as it
> > sounds).

> > What the GPLv3 is doing is effectively keeping the little guys from
> > building products ~100% based on linux and open source. They have not
> > stopped a single well funded company (or an entire country like China)
> > from using linux and open source as they choose.   

> Why should they have been stopped?


I'd just like the charade to end. GPL keeps the serfs on 'massa farm'
It does not stop billion dollar entities from doing whatever they want
with EL or any other OS (open source) software.


> > This is a very huge reason for the current state of affairs for failed
> > technology companies (particularly in the USA), at the present time. 
> > The Linux Journal has a big campaign to locate "linux inside" of
> > products, basically asking folks to 'rat out' companies using linux to
> > make a buck.  <insert your own conspiracy theory here>

> Making money, even lots of money, with linux is not prohibited. What is 
> wrong is when someone does not obey the GPL, and that's what LJ wants to 
> do: to discover companies that try to benefit from the work of the linux 
> community without giving anything back (I think you are referring to 
> the "linux incognito" initiative here).


OK, then why does the GPL not make a simple rule change. If you have grossed
over 1 million dollars on your linux product or service, then you have to
open source your code. 

That way the little guys can make some money on an idea and a little bit
of code before having to publish their work. Beside how much useful code
do you think a small entrepreneur really has?  The kernel is full of
expert coder that are pushing to get their code into the kernel. There is
not a shortage of code or coding experts. What the GPL has effectively
done is keep the serfs on the farm shoveling manure, IMHO.

Remember I espouse this opinion as one who has had financial success, works
out of his garage, and picks his next business ventures, as I please. 
I'm not some unemployed college kid looking for my first job......



> > You still believe gplv3 is a good thing? I think *GPLv3* is the spawn
> > of Satan, and that's the reason most of the kernel devs did not go for
> > that *horse hockey*!

> > > That being said, it would be fantastic if the Gentoo Foundation
> > > found ways to make money :)

> > It will never happen as longs as "myths" such as the ones you espouse
> > reign supreme, IMHO. The reason that Gentoo and all of those souls
> > that develop and support it is floundering on near financial failure,
> > is the tenants (goals) that others have brain washed onto the masses,
> > IMHO.

> > The very best way (IMHO) to promote democracy and freedom is for
> > the people to have a way to make money as entrepreneurs and small
> > business people. Keeping Linux bottled up, via the GPL is just
> > plain nuts! Besides that, Linux only bottled up for the little guys,
> > HP, IBM, and thousands of other companies used linux every day in
> > products or high end services, such as phone/networking gear.
> > Who is suing them?

> Nobody, because they obey the GPL. 

*(WRONG)*

> > Hell, the US DOD uses Linux like crazy...  Who are we kidding with
> > the entire GPL schrade?  (Keep the serfs where they belong, methinks).


>They are just *using* linux. What laws are they breaking? Why should they 
be sued?


Your naive to the point of being astounding.  If you think that the Industrial
Military Complex has not modified you precious GPL code, then we are all in 
Deep Doo. You might want to find some old farts that have been around the track
a few times and have some private conversations with folks that
have experienced technology in a deeper environment that you obviously
have not experienced.

Beside how do you think the US government is dealing with the 'informational
security threat' posed by the internet? Here's one piece of code the
US government did publish (and fund)  SELINUX. Ever heard of that?
Common, use your imagination and connect the dots......



James



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

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

On Monday 14 January 2008, James wrote:

> Etaoin Shrdlu <shrdlu <at> unlimitedmail.org> writes:
> > The GPL does allow to sell your product (as opposite to giving it
> > away for free). Why should Montavista be sued if they respect the
> > GPL? As long as they distribute the source code with their products
> > (which admittedly I don't know), they are fine. Just because the
> > sources are not downloadable from their site, does not mean that
> > they should be sued.
>
> Ummm, I guess you are new to a space that I have worked in for a very
> long time.  Let's make this simple. Why don't you just pose as
> a company that need MV's EL (embedded linux) and ask for a listing of
> all of the wonderful thing you can do with MV EL that are superior
> to the public offerings  of EL. Then ask them from their sourcecode
> to these 'enhancements'. They are not alone, they are just
> one of the companies selling a RTOS based on EL.....

Have you ever used their products? Do you know for sure they don't give 
you the code? (I'm just curious here, I don't want to be unnecessarily 
polemic) I'm asking because in their site they say that they also give 
you some development modules (for eclipse) and tools for rebuilding the 
system, so this would seem to imply they also give you the source code.

> > It seems to me that the difference is not between small or big
> > companies, but rather between those who obey the GPL and those who
> > do not.
>
> Naive, you are!  Big companies have lawyer, lobyist and often
> politicians in their pocket. Over the years most people, at least in
> countries that pretend to have democracy, have seen this.  Remember
> how the Democratic politicians and state where going after MS and then
> most of the issues got settled by republican. Yet the EU still slapped
> MS with lawsuits and punitive damages?  If you think small companies
> are treated just like big one, you are very naive and no amount of
> evidence will change your mind..... Just ask most anyone that's been
> in small business before.

What I know is that big companies have had their defeats too, and if that 
has happened some times in the past it might happen again. This does not 
mean, of course, that it will actually happen (I'm not *that* naive).
And, IMHO, carrying on with bad practices just because the world around 
you behaves that way does not make you a trustworthy company (but it's 
true that it does let you make lots of money).

> You are talking about device drivers here, not products that have  a
> hidxden OS and use linux as the RTOS inside the product. Verifying
> what is acutally inside of a close (RTOS) system is difficult, at
> best, and often impossible it the firmware engineer wants to make it
> difficult for other to analyze.

I don't have enough knowledge of the embedded world to speak here, so you 
might very well be correct about this.

> There is a group of firmware engineers that have publically stated
> that they write for free any device driver for any company using EL.
> To paraphrase that person, <the problem is not finding coders to write
> device drivers, it's convincing companies to open source their drivers
> or allow their products to inter-operate with OS drivers>

Agreed. But a closed source driver can be released either by a big 
company or by a small one. 
And if linux gains popularity, refusing to open source a driver might 
actually turn out to be a bad thing for the company, since they will 
lose interoperability (read: customers) more and more (at least for 
general-purpose hardware modules; for embedded or specialized hardware 
things might be different).

> > Other companies have been sued or notified, but not just because
> > they were big or small, but because they failed to obey the GPL
> > (xterasys, monsoon, fortinet, d-link...you can find tons of cases
> > just by googling a bit), someone even admitted their faults,
> > In some cases, the companies were declared guilty.
>
> true, but it does not affect the point I'm trying to make. What you
> are talking about is a drop of rain, in an ocean.

Maybe.

> > > What the GPLv3 is doing is effectively keeping the little guys
> > > from building products ~100% based on linux and open source. They
> > > have not stopped a single well funded company (or an entire
> > > country like China) from using linux and open source as they
> > > choose.
> >
> > Why should they have been stopped?
>
> I'd just like the charade to end. GPL keeps the serfs on 'massa farm'
> It does not stop billion dollar entities from doing whatever they want
> with EL or any other OS (open source) software.

Again...why should these billion dollars be forbidden to circulate, or do 
whatever, as long as the open source software rules are respected?
You seem to imply that a (free) software license is a way to stop people 
from investing or making money.

> > Making money, even lots of money, with linux is not prohibited. What
> > is wrong is when someone does not obey the GPL, and that's what LJ
> > wants to do: to discover companies that try to benefit from the work
> > of the linux community without giving anything back (I think you are
> > referring to the "linux incognito" initiative here).
>
> OK, then why does the GPL not make a simple rule change. If you have
> grossed over 1 million dollars on your linux product or service, then
> you have to open source your code.

The GPL states that you must open source your code (more exactly: you 
have to provide access to the sources along with the binaries, which 
does NOT mean that the source code must be opened to the general 
public), no matter if you grossed 1 dollar, 100 dollars, 1 million, or 
gave it away for free.

> That way the little guys can make some money on an idea and a little
> bit of code before having to publish their work. Beside how much 
> useful code do you think a small entrepreneur really has? 

That's the point. The small entrepreneur who focuses only on the code is 
doomed to failure. As you noted, there are lots of hungry coders out 
there that can code the same things better and in less time, even 
without looking at your code. Code needs maintenance and upgrading, and 
for the small entrepreneur with little resources that is all wasted 
time. It's better IMHO to let the community do the dirty work (thus 
opening the code and letting the coders play), and focus on the value 
added services that can be offered for that piece of software (for 
example, customization, training, technical support, etc.). For a small 
entrepreneur, this is (IMHO) a way to stand out from the crowd, rise 
above the others and give a brighter image of himself, rather than just 
writing some code and keeping it secret, hoping that nobody else steals 
your "idea".

> The kernel is full of expert coder that are pushing to get their code
> into the kernel. There is not a shortage of code or coding experts.
> What the GPL has effectively done is keep the serfs on the farm
> shoveling manure, IMHO.

Many (albeit not all) of those "serfs" actually work for big companies 
which make big money with open source.

> Remember I espouse this opinion as one who has had financial success,
> works out of his garage, and picks his next business ventures, as I
> please. I'm not some unemployed college kid looking for my first
> job......

Neither am I. Neither are all the people who have studied the topic and 
have written articles or books about the economy of open source. Neither 
are all the people who work for companies that make money with open 
source (redhat, novell, and, more and more, sun, ibm, intel...).

> > > The very best way (IMHO) to promote democracy and freedom is for
> > > the people to have a way to make money as entrepreneurs and small
> > > business people. Keeping Linux bottled up, via the GPL is just
> > > plain nuts! Besides that, Linux only bottled up for the little
> > > guys, HP, IBM, and thousands of other companies used linux every
> > > day in products or high end services, such as phone/networking
> > > gear. Who is suing them?
> >
> > Nobody, because they obey the GPL.
>
> *(WRONG)*

Can you elaborate?
Among the biggest player today in the linux world are ibm, intel, and 
sun. They are increasingly migrating towards opening their code (see eg 
java). Although not always GPL, they are releasing a lot of their code 
under OSI approved licenses.

> Your naive to the point of being astounding.  If you think that the
> Industrial Military Complex has not modified you precious GPL code,
> then we are all in Deep Doo. You might want to find some old farts
> that have been around the track a few times and have some private
> conversations with folks that have experienced technology in a deeper
> environment that you obviously have not experienced.
>
> Beside how do you think the US government is dealing with the
> 'informational security threat' posed by the internet? Here's one
> piece of code the US government did publish (and fund)  SELINUX. Ever
> heard of that? Common, use your imagination and connect the dots......

What you're saying here is not a secret, in fact these are all more or 
less well-known facts. Yes, they probably did violate some open source 
license. However, I don't see how having had closed source products 
would have prevented them from doing what they wanted to do anyway.
And furthermore, what does all this have to do with "making money with 
open source"?
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[gentoo-user] Re: License issues [was:Daniel Robbins' come back ?]

[James]

Etaoin Shrdlu <shrdlu <at> unlimitedmail.org> writes:


> What you're saying here is not a secret, in fact these are all more or 
> less well-known facts. Yes, they probably did violate some open source 
> license. However, I don't see how having had closed source products 
> would have prevented them from doing what they wanted to do anyway.
> And furthermore, what does all this have to do with "making money with 
> open source"?


I just do not see the harm in letting a small (sub 1 million dollar company)
build a product and not provide any details or what they did or
how they did it. In the end, their success is more likely related
to how slick their marketing campaign is  or how well conceived the
product/service is or how good their support is or some other twist.

The GPL goes a long way to discouraging/preventing many of the serfs 
from ever trying.... IMHO. I believe that the GPL is the spawn of satan.
I think the 'serfs' (the greater gentoo community) would be better
off with a BSD style license related to Gentoo technologies and 
still use GPL software, as the individual chooses. After all, most
of the BSD variants and derivatives (except those RTOS that large
corporations use in some of their products)  Still manage to use
GPL software.

Obviously, you think that GPL is a panacea. OK we agree to disagree.


seeya


James




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

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

On Monday 14 January 2008, James wrote:

> I just do not see the harm in letting a small (sub 1 million dollar
> company) build a product and not provide any details or what they did
> or how they did it. In the end, their success is more likely related
> to how slick their marketing campaign is  or how well conceived the
> product/service is or how good their support is or some other twist.

Well, there is nothing wrong and no harm at all. They can surely write 
their product from scratch and choose to not release any detail about 
it. In fact, many companies do this all the time.
What is wrong is when a company or individual, to save time and money, 
decides to pick (or usurp, depending on one's point of view) an already 
existing piece of code and adapt it to their needs, without respecting 
the rules set by the author of such code (remember that the original 
author(s) of a GPLed code still retains their copyrights on the code). 

> The GPL goes a long way to discouraging/preventing many of the serfs
> from ever trying.... IMHO. I believe that the GPL is the spawn of
> satan. I think the 'serfs' (the greater gentoo community) would be
> better off with a BSD style license related to Gentoo technologies and
> still use GPL software, as the individual chooses. After all, most of
> the BSD variants and derivatives (except those RTOS that large
> corporations use in some of their products)  Still manage to use GPL
> software.
>
> Obviously, you think that GPL is a panacea. OK we agree to disagree.

Not exactly a panacea. But I do think that the ideas in the GPL are not 
in contrast with the possibility of making money, both for small 
companies and big ones alike (and there are real-world examples to 
confirm this). Of course, all of this IMHO. Your views do have their 
good points, and I respect them.
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[gentoo-user] Re: License issues [was:Daniel Robbins' come back ?]

[Michael Schmarck]

James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:

> Etaoin Shrdlu <shrdlu <at> unlimitedmail.org> writes:
> 
> 
>> What you're saying here is not a secret, in fact these are all more or
>> less well-known facts. Yes, they probably did violate some open source
>> license. However, I don't see how having had closed source products
>> would have prevented them from doing what they wanted to do anyway.
>> And furthermore, what does all this have to do with "making money with
>> open source"?
> 
> 
> I just do not see the harm in letting a small (sub 1 million dollar
> company) build a product and not provide any details or what they did or
> how they did it.

Why should they be allowed to gain a profit from something, that the
FLOSS community made, without giving anything back at all (and if it
is just source code in an uncommented/undocumented fashion)?

> In the end, their success is more likely related 

Why should somebody care, if they are successful?

> The GPL goes a long way to discouraging/preventing many of the serfs
> from ever trying.... IMHO. I believe that the GPL is the spawn of satan.

Absolutely disagree. I think the GPL is good the way it is.

> I think the 'serfs' (the greater gentoo community) would be better
> off with a BSD style license related to Gentoo technologies and
> still use GPL software, as the individual chooses. 

I don't think so.

Michael

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

[Alan McKinnon]

On Monday 14 January 2008, James wrote:
> OK, then why does the GPL not make a simple rule change. If you have
> grossed over 1 million dollars on your linux product or service, then
> you have to open source your code.

Because it *already* says that if you redistribute your code you already 
*have* to open source it. 

I suppose by implication you mean that companies grossing less than 1 
million dollars are not required to open source their stuff. Well, that 
flies in the face of the 4 freedoms that the GPL is built on.

A change like that is incompatible with GPL2 so we come back to the same 
mess we currently have with GPL3. The Linux kernel is licensed GPL2 
ONLY (Linus removed the "or later" clause) and that can't be 
realistically changed. The only known way to do it would be to get the 
agreement of a large group of kernel code copyright holders, take all 
their code currently in the kernel, strip out everything else, rewrite 
the now missing bits and re-license the result. Note that this will 
involve huge amounts of developer work, for no discernible benefit to 
the developer.

Seeing as Linus himself has stated that he has absolutely no intention 
of changing the license on the kernel, your idea is unworkable.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
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[gentoo-user] Re: Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[James]

Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon <at> gmail.com> writes:


> Seeing as Linus himself has stated that he has absolutely no intention 
> of changing the license on the kernel, your idea is unworkable.


My idea is not to mess with either the GPL2/3 applications nor the 
gplv2 kernel. What ever is under the "Gentoo" umbrella could conceivably
be changed to a BSD style license. In those areas where it cannot then
just leave it GPLed or code around the GPL until it is minimized.
I could easily see a FPGA partioned into a multi processor system,
with published GPL code on one core and code under a new, Entrepreneurial
license on a different part of the FPGA cores. In fact, one could network
two x86 machines, one running as a GPL linux system and the other
running Entrepreneurial code from a different license, as a development
platform.

In my opinion we are on the verge of truly distributed computing where
Open Source GPL(ed) systems and devices will integrate with old fashion
(closed source) products, in a rapid fashion. The Gentoo devs could get out 
in front of the revolution, and spawn lots of Entrepreneurs, or they
can follow MS and leave the GPL shackles around their necks. (I sure
hope they do not try to cross the river)....

The point I was trying to may (and not really a hard sell but just to 
illuminate moving gentoo into more of an "Entrepreneur distro")
would be to build the future of Gentoo (or a fork) on a better license
model than GPL. GPL has worked reasonable well, but things have changed
quit a lot. It's time for folks to leverage Open Source to make money.
You want to live on Massa's Farm, that's your choice. I have tasted 
(economic) freedom and it drives me mad how the masses of folks just
'get in line' with what they hear over the loud speakers......

Oh well, I'm done with this issue. I don't think I can help, lifting the
(Gentoo) devs nor the greater Gentoo user base out of economic despair , if
folks do not agree with moving to a different licensing scheme, for the unique
work that characterizes and surrounds Gentoo.

GPL is a vow of poverty, IMHO. It sure will be interesting to see where 
Daniel and the trustees take/leave the distro........ My guess is
Daniel has seen, smelled and maybe lightly tasted the flavors of 
economic success, and some influential folks and poked him in the
ribs and said (pissst, isn't gentoo your prodigy?  take that puppy
public and cash in.....)

just a hunch,


James




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

[Michael Schmarck]

James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:

> The point I was trying to may (and not really a hard sell but just to
> illuminate moving gentoo into more of an "Entrepreneur distro")
> would be to build the future of Gentoo (or a fork) on a better license
> model than GPL.

Uhm, thanks, but no thanks. Why should GPL be dropped? Just to allow
someone to make a quick € or two?

No, the GPL is fine as it is. Gentoo should not be rewritten to write
around GPL stuff.

Michael

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

[Michael Schmarck]

James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:

> If you think that the Industrial
> Military Complex has not modified you precious GPL code, then we are all
> in Deep Doo.

I don't get you. They'll surely have modified the GPL code. But that's
not a problem. If they were going to sell something, they must provide
access to the source code.

But as they won't be selling anything, they can keep the source code
hidden. Nobody, but the "Industrial Military Complex", has a right to
the source code.

Michael

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

[Thufir]

On Mon, 14 Jan 2008 16:51:33 +0000, James wrote:

> You still believe gplv3 is a good thing? I think *GPLv3* is the spawn of
> Satan, and that's the reason most of the kernel devs did not go for that
> *horse hockey*!

I don't think that I was advocating gplv3, certainly that wasn't my 
intent, just that (as a user) I wouldn't want Gentoo to use a BSD (or 
Apache) license.

I think I'll try to refrain from further participation in this thread.  
Sometimes I like to stir things up, but this isn't one of them :(



-Thufir

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[gentoo-user] Quo vadis Gentoo [WAS: Daniel Robbins' come back ?]

[Enrico Weigelt]

* James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:

Hi,

> 4. Formalize a process where others (non devs) can build, store and 
> maintain ebuilds that are not blessed by the devs, so individuals
> can easily share their work with the larger Gentoo community.

Isn't this what several overlay projects (eg. Sunrise) are meant for ?
IMHO, Sunrise suffers from it's size - lot's of smaller overlays 
could be the way to go. Maybe differenciate between bleeding-edge
and production overlays ?

AFAIK, the current overlay technique could be improved to make
using *dozens* of overlays much easier. Some points I'm missing:
per-overlay masking direct overlay selection when emerging.

I'm using several overlays and I'd like to have exact control
where specific ebuilds come from on updates. For example I have
to change a few ebuilds from the main tree and take care that
nothing get mixed up - updates from the main tree should not 
override older versions from my overlay, but I need to be 
informed about them.

> If one choses such and ebuild there on their own. The gentoo devs 
> should develop a semantic where folks not officially part of the 
> devs can maintain a package or two, rather than making ebuilds for 
> obsolescence, unilaterally.

Maybe a combination of overlays and proxy maintenance ?

> 6. Provide resources to the gentoo-embedded group to assist them
> in their efforts to assimilate embedded-gentoo into gentoo
> so that lots of ordinary users can build and experiment with
> embedded gentoo. 

Actually, as an embedded guy, I don't think that Gentoo (with it's
current models) is really suitable for embedded systems (-> small 
devices, exotic platforms, ...). The concepts are fundamental 
opposite. For example, if you're not always crosscompiling within
sysroot, you're seriously wrong for embedded systems ;-P

I really doubt that it's really worth trying to make (current)
Gentoo suitable for embedded systems, as major concepts are 
opposite and it would cause us big headache. 

BUT: I really think that an major distro like Gentoo should 
cooperate with embedded folks in an meta project like OSS-QM.
For example, most of the collected patches could be a bit more
generalized and then go to OSS-QM, while Gentoo could get it's
directly from there.


cu
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Enrico Weigelt    ==   metux IT service - http://www.metux.de/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Please visit the OpenSource QM Taskforce:
 	http://wiki.metux.de/public/OpenSource_QM_Taskforce
 Patches / Fixes for a lot dozens of packages in dozens of versions:
	http://patches.metux.de/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
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[gentoo-user] Re: Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Thufir]

On Sat, 12 Jan 2008 10:11:11 +0100, alain.didierjean wrote:

> Daniel Robbins offers to take back Gentoo leadership. What about it ?
> Read
> http://blog.funtoo.org/2008/01/here-my-offer.html
> 
> --
> ~adj~


I find it unfortunate that he doesn't simply post his ideas to this list, 
but I suppose from his perspective that doing so would open a can of 
worms :(



-Thufir

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