-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Aron Griffis wrote: > In my humble opinion, Gentoo is missing too many points to be an > enterprise Linux. We commit to a live tree. We don't have true QA, > testing or tinderbox. We don't have paid staff, alpha/beta/rc cycles. > We don't really have product lifecycles, since we don't generally > backport fixes to older versions, requiring instead for people to > update to a more recent release. We don't have, and probably will > never be able to offer, support contracts. We support as wide a range > of hardware as the upstream kernel, plus hardware that requires > external drivers; we don't have access to a great deal of the hardware > for which we provide drivers. We understand when real life gets in > the way of bug-fixing, because all our developers are volunteers.
Using your list there would be two types of enterprise 'requirements': process requirements and support requirements. Improving and working towards the process requirements (sane commits, better QA, etc.) doesn't mean that Gentoo would have to be any less fun. And just because the Gentoo Foundation isn't in a position to provide the support requirements (paid staff, support contracts, etc.) doesn't mean that someone else couldn't provide those (or that Gentoo would make it particularly hard to do so). > Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the > users. I think that is wrong. Gentoo exists for the *developers*. > It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather > than switching to an actually sane approach. The users are cool > because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest > enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates. > Sometimes they become developers. But the truth is that Gentoo sees > improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the > developers. And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first, > the users second. I would suggest that: 1) this is a pretty common belief in any software developement project, commercial, community led, or otherwise 2) its a bit wrong headed for various reasons, IMHO (see below) and 3) I personally find it amusing. ;) What developers seem to forget, is that they too are end-users. For instance, a particular developer's responsibilities may be Baselayout, Epm, Gentoo/Alpha, Gentoo/IA64, Keychain, Mozilla, Mutt, Vim, and such. That makes him/her an end-user for everything else thats installed on their system. In other words, developers are just a subset of the user base. Secondly, polishing things for developer's sake doesn't preclude polishing things for user's sake, and visa-versa. So if it were up to me, it would be users first , which would encompass everyone, including the developers! Nathan -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFCp2bZ2QTTR4CNEQARAqTcAKCOa/cBOlWV7z7f7UOB6lr5uCVpbACglB3/ 4Fm35UBwetXvSY7jFy8276I= =w0yb -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
