On Thu, 2006-08-24 at 14:00 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote: > A distribution is more than just an entity that packages upstream > tarballs. I agree with your point, but it misses a large chunk of what > we do.
We also have releases. Another thing that we do is fix bugs, even in upstream packages, and submit them to the upstream. In this regard, we are a valuable member of the community as a whole. How many patches have come out of Gentoo to fix bugs/vulnerabilities? > If this is the Gentoo vision, then why are we even doing anything else? > We've already reached our only goal, which is packaging stuff, and all > we need to do is bump it. I surely hope this isn't the vision, or I've been wasting an awful lot of time. > > Except ... even today, folks simply aren't empowered to vote on every > > decision (other than by voting with their feet). Your hypothesis > > seems to be based on a flawed model of how Gentoo works, I'm afraid. > > "Official" votes, sure. But what about GLEP discussions on -dev? That's > the only way anything major ever happens, and it might as well be a > requirement for a unanimous vote among all ~350 developers. The only > time I can recall even a single dissenter before a GLEP moved on to the > council was brix on Sunrise. I was there, too. Of course, I also prove some of your points. I got tired of giving the same arguments ad nauseum. I eventually gave up fighting it to move on to other things. I will admit that many of my concerns were resolved. > > The basic cause always comes down to weak or non-existent management. > > Yes, and that's exactly my point. We need stronger management. Indeed. > >> All in all, the vocal minority has done a splendid job of becoming more > >> influential, crippling Gentoo's ability to do anything at all about its > >> members, their flames, their outstanding work at ruining people's fun > >> and enjoyment of Gentoo, and their waste of everyone else's time. > > > > Can you back this up with three examples in the last twelve months > > where this has happened? Sunrise (twice) Pretty much anything dealing with portage features (or lack thereof) > Any long debate where more than 25% of the posts came from a single person. I know that I've been a participant in at least one of these. I've also noticed it an started to "dial back" my responses to try to stay more on-topic and technical. Having a nice release helps to curb the free time for replying to emails, too. ;] > > Our problem is that we have a critical mass of groups who do not share > > a culture to bind them together, and drive them to overcome their > > differences. > > I'll agree with that. As would I. > I know this is partially changing, but I'm unsure that any group outside > of the council will ever be trusted to suspend or kick people out. I agree with this pretty strongly, if only because the council is an elected group. > > Folks don't vote on stuff. To pick a recent example, none of the > > folks who opposed Sunrise actually had any means to vote to prevent it > > happening. What they had to do was to lobby the council, who were the > > only folks with a vote. > > Oh, gimme a break. Screaming about it on -dev for hundreds of posts > isn't just equivalent to a vote, it's better. It makes people think > there's more than 2 developers opposed to it. Really? Even you didn't remember that *I* was opposed to Sunrise and probably accounted for at least a good 50 responses. Yes, good came from it. Yes, it could have been done much, much better. > I'd rather get rid of devrel altogether (at least its conflict > resolution role) and have the council deal with this. Agreed. > > I'm not standing for election, but maybe someone who is would be > > interested in investigating some ideas Sejo discussed with me when he > > left us. The summary is my own; hopefully I've captured Sejo's ideas > > accurately. > > > > * Every staff member has to belong to a team. You join a team by > > being voted onto the team by the other members of the team. They > > don't vote you in, you can't join. I don't think his ideas included anything explicit. Only more that the team (or even just the lead) could give a thumbs down to you joining. > > * If you're not part of any team, your rights and privileges as a > > staff member are automatically terminated. There's no place to go to > > appeal. I think the intention was for the council to be the appellate body. > > * You can be voted off the team at any time. The teams are self-managing. I'm sure a vote wasn't necessary. > The goal? Hopefully, to streamline processes and give power back to individual projects to govern themselves in internal matters and let people get back to doing development. That's a goal I would love to see us strive to achieve in the next year. -- Chris Gianelloni Release Engineering - Strategic Lead x86 Architecture Team Games - Developer Gentoo Linux
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