Donnie Berkholz posted <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, excerpted below, on Thu, 09 Jun 2005 11:05:45 -0700:
> Olivier Crete wrote: >> I still fail to see why everything done by Gentoo devs belongs on the >> Gentoo page. The only article that belongs on the Gentoo page is the one >> about the Enoch and how it became Gentoo. > > Because it's something relevant to Linux done by a member of our > community. And of course we care what people in our community are doing, > don't we? Well, I guess some of us don't. I'll second DB, here. Several years ago, when 2.4 was still fairly fresh, and I was switching to Linux (Mandrake at the time) because eXPrivacy crossed a line I could not and would not cross, as I was getting ready to switch and doing my research, it came time to decide what file system I was going to use. Googling, I quickly came across /just/ the article (series) I was looking for, on IBM DeveloperWorks, by someone I knew not from Adam, at the time. Imagine my surprise, some years later, when I began doing the research that ultimately lead to my switching to Gentoo, to find that the guy that wrote that series of articles, was the SAME Daniel Robbins, founder of what was now Gentoo! To me, that's a valid link, one that Gentoo should be proud of. In deleting that page, it's as if we are trying to wash away some part of our past, "the bad old days", that we are somehow ashamed of. To me, that just doesn't seem right. Politics is politics and people come and go, but even if that's NOT the intended message, it will seem to some folks (myself included) that Gentoo is trying to somehow hide its past, erase a history that they SHOULD be proud of and continuing to point to, not helping the tides of time erase. The same of course goes for other works listed there, by other authors. If they were Gentoo contributors and wrote something of value to the FLOSS community, we should be PROUD to list their works. .... That said, there remains the practical issue of keeping links updated. I see a couple possibilities. One, there's the idea others floated -- note on the page the problem of keeping links updated as to why links aren't provided, and suggest searching on the titles listed, possibly with IBM DeveloperWorks listed specifically, or otherwise with publisher or original source acknowledged, to ease the search. Two, keep the links, but again, specifically acknowledge some of them move from time to time, list them as last verified links, and display a feedback mechanism (email, or web form based to prevent email harvesting, or whatever) prominently asking for reader link update submissions. If a reader says a link doesn't work and it's verified, with no new link immediately available, simply note that it has been verified dead and ask for updates. The idea here is to leave the links as well as acknowledging they may be outdated, but leave the work of providing updates to the readers. When I saw the reference to the file systems series, I recognized it but had to verify for myself it was the same one, which I quickly did. I don't recall if I used the on-site link or not, but I would have gladly done a bit of googling to find it again and provided an updated link if the site link was bad and the site had asked for updates if necessary. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman in http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
