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I freely admit that this is an incremental update from last year. (I haven't |
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swapped out my brain in the meantime either). Text also available here: |
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https://dev.gentoo.org/~dilfridge/Manifest-2021.txt |
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|
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=================== |
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|
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So it's election time again... |
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|
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I'm from Regensburg, Germany and by profession an experimental physicist |
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leading a university research group. Outside physics and Gentoo I'm interested |
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in a wide range of topics all the way from art and cultural history to scifi, |
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traveling, and cocktail mixing. (Doesn't necessarily mean that I have time for |
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all that though.) |
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|
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I'm a Gentoo developer since 2010; I decided at some point that if I'm |
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tinkering with the computer in my free time anyway I might as well do it |
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productively. Today I mostly work on keeping toolchain stuff like glibc and |
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binutils and also Perl running. In addition, I recently founded the RISC-V |
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team and joined Release Engineering, where I take care of building the |
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RISC-V and 32bit ARM stages via QEMU. |
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|
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Council business and QA are other things I'm busy with. At some point I got |
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interested in Gentoo history, and started assembling the council decisions |
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index [1] and updating the Gentoo ecosystem poster [2]. Both badly need an |
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update again. |
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|
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Gentoo runs on our university PCs and is controlling our measurements. So, I |
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see a solid stable set and clean upgrade paths as very important. Conversely, |
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~arch gives us the unique opportunity to provide our users with the bleeding |
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edge of code, and that's something we should use, value and advertise too! |
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Gentoo is about providing choice, not locking anyone into a single solution |
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- so a wide range of projects is great - but on the other hand projects should |
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ideally be structured in a way that they don't block each others' progress. |
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|
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What Gentoo needs is *one* democratically elected steering body, the |
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Gentoo Council, that listens to the developer community, is familiar with |
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daily affairs, and makes policy decisions based on that. Electing people means |
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you trust them to represent your interests for a year, not just by reacting to |
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crises, but also by taking proactive decisions. An election is the most |
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reliable way that we have so far to find out what the developer community |
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actually wants. From this background I stand for a proactive council that |
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takes responsibility for all aspects of Gentoo. |
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|
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We need to build on the strengths of Gentoo and emphasize its coolness. |
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Infinite adaptibility, combination of cutting edge testing and solid stable, |
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wide arch support, ideal for software developers. This means generic public |
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relations work (see e.g. FOSDEM, which hopefully will return to its |
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well-proven in-person format next year), but also initiatives of developers |
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to "do something cool", supporting and publicising that. |
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|
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We need to at least try to go with the times. Yes I see the ideological and |
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practical disadvantages of, e.g., Github, but if we want to attract a large |
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base of contributors, we need to seriously think about having modern, |
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comparable ways to contribute! And not get stuck in eternal yesterday... just |
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because things were done successfully in one way when you joined Gentoo |
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10 years ago, that doesnt mean they have to be done that way for all |
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eternity; this attitude does not help! |
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|
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We need to stand for the free software community, and cooperate with other |
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open source / free software projects in a mutually beneficial way. Let us |
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not forget that free software is to a large extent driven by volunteers and |
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enthusiasts. It's great if big enterprise is contributing and also |
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profiting from our efforts - but let us remember, this is our playing field! |
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|
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That's it for now. Cheers! |
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|
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[1] https://dev.gentoo.org/~dilfridge/decisions.pdf |
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[2] https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo-ecosystem |
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|
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|
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-- |
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Andreas K. Hüttel |
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dilfridge@g.o |
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Gentoo Linux developer |
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(council, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice) |