[gentoo-project] the History of Gentoo (was: Portage QOS)

Dear Duncan,

(I am going to reply with my personal feelings. Therefore it goes to
gentoo-project)

Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@×××.net> writes:

> From what I understand, this guy /had/ been effectively drobbins'
> right- hand-man for a time.  He had business connections and had been
> instrumental in parlaying some of them into gentoo sponsorships at a
> time when it was much younger and needed them, and he was a good PR
> guy.  The gentoo dev community was smaller and closer knit at the
> time, and many had considered this guy and the devs that ultimately
> left with him personal friends.  That made the hurt /much/ worse. =:^(
>
> What I've always wondered is what the devs who went with him thought;
> how he persuaded them, /their/ side of the story.  I knew /his/ side
> of the story from reading his essays attacking gentoo and drobbins,
> and I knew at least enough about the gentoo side to be convinced that
> the gentoo side was where I should be, but coming in shortly after as
> I did, I never had any contact with or read anything from any of the
> devs that left with him, and I obviously didn't know them previously,
> so their side of the story, why he convinced them to go zynot (other
> than the obvious, that any persuasive argument must have /some/
> element of truth), I'll never know.  Meanwhile, I'm /quite/ aware that
> my own view and recounting of the history I know is quite colored by
> my own position, and definitely /must/ suffer to some degree from the
> "victor rewriting history" phenomenon.  I'm sure if I had a better
> view of the picture as the devs who left for zynot saw it, that
> "people who left" view would be rather different, and regardless of
> whether I agreed with it or not, it would certainly color my own view
> and thus recounting of the facts as I am aware of them.  Worth keeping
> in mind...
>
> Meanwhile, that /some/ bit of truth, AFAIK, revolved around the fact
> that while gentoo had settled on the GPLv2 for code and similarly free
> general documentation licenses, drobbins was apparently asking for
> copyright rights, with a policy of copyright everything gentoo, which
> drobbins held the rights to, with the ownership rights becoming the
> core of the fight.  There had been some talk of some sort of a gaming
> distro (I'm fuzzy on the details), apparently drobbins' big idea, and
> as a base for embedded, this guy's big idea and ultimately zynot's
> target for funding, etc.  This guy accused drobbins of intending to do
> the gaming thing then take everything private.  As I wasn't there and
> am not drobbins, I can't say for sure what drobbins ultimate idea and
> motives were, but as I read this guy's essays, I kept shouting at the
> monitor, "But if he intended to go private and deprive other
> contributors of their just due, why GPLv2, not MIT/BSD, which would
> make that so much easier?"  Of course as we know from the
> MySQL/Sun/Oracle events, with all rights a company can still go
> private, using the GPL to maintain an unfair advantage over others who
> can't take it private because they don't have the copyrights, only the
> GPL version.  But even so, again as the MySQL/Oracle/MariaDB events,
> and the Sun/Oracle/OpenOffice/LibreOffice events as well demonstrate,
> if that's against the wishes of an already active and developed
> community, that community can and will take the free version it still
> has rights to use and run with it!
>
> Meanwhile, from all I could see then and to the extent that I know
> anything of zynot to this day, that's EXACTLY what zynot tried to do,
> take advantage of the free-licensed gentoo work and extend it with
> their proprietary product.  Clear as anything else I've ever seen, it
> was the soot-covered pot looking in the mirror and believing it sees a
> kettle to call black!

I read every single word in the winter sunshine next to my oven. Thank
you, Duncan. A flood of peacefulness washed through my body.

I really want to see a more refined and detailed stories like
this. Shall we launch a cooperative history writing project to educate
young generations of gentooers? Or someone with a bond to free software
journalist launching a project interviewing people and make a
documentory? Not sure which works... Or better suggestions?

> That's enough old wounds I'm sure I've torn open for some, sorry.  But
> knowing that history explains QUITE A BIT of gentoo's internal
> politics to this day, so it's VERY worth knowing about for new devs
> who had no idea that was in gentoo's history.  Among other things,
> that definitely plays a part in why people are now encouraged to mark
> their work copyright gentoo if they have no strong feelings about it,
> but gentoo doesn't DEMAND it.  (Another factor is as greg-kh points
> out, due to employment contracts a lot of gentoo devs wouldn't be able
> to contribute and would have to resign, were a firm copyright rights
> assignment policy established.
>
> It plays and even *STRONGER* role in gentoo's governing structure,
> both because drobbins took quite some care and personal legal expense
> to ensure a separate gentoo foundation with the assets, but *NOT*
> technical control, and in the very loose government structure, with
> little central control and individual devs having lots of rights that
> are rather difficult to strip, except by what ultimately amounts to
> overwhelming (but not necessarily unanimous) agreement (which does and
> has occurred when necessary, as some former devs who still follow this
> list can surely attest), should a case be appealed all the way thru
> council, etc.
>
> And even tho there has been enough turnover that I don't believe the
> original devs have anything like enough power to directly maintain
> those rules, the original themes were strong enough to have set in
> motion a VERY strong culture of little central power and lots of
> individual dev independence, such that succeeding generations have
> continued to inherit that from their mentors and other devs that came
> before them.  Those original devs tended to attract others of like
> mind, and train them in the way, and that generation in turn did the
> same, such that while few newer devs really understand the history
> behind it, that comparatively weak central power and strong individual
> dev rights continue to this day.
>
> And of course that same theme is playing in this thread.  Gentoo
> culture has an extremely strong emphasis on individual rights,
> including the right to choose one's own distribution, such that most
> gentoo devs (and users) will find the very idea of somehow
> deliberately closing off avenues of choice, restricting distro choice
> and the ability of users to leave if they feel so inclined, EXTREMELY
> repulsive.  Yes, to some extent the majority of the FLOSS community
> has a similar culture, but self- evidently the typical dev in a
> typical corporate-sponsored distro isn't as likely to have the
> extreme, gut-level revulsion to centralized or corporate control of
> the distro, or to dev and user choice, that your typical gentooer dev
> is likely to have.

After reading I become more resonated with the policies practiced by the
Gentoo community.

In the broader community, the level of difficulty (and power) can be
ordered as followed, taking Debian to represent the binary distros, and
Gentoo for the source ones:

    Debian user < Gentoo user < Gentoo developer < Debian developer

In Gentoo, in fact the user/developer distinction is quite blurred. As
Rich Cook put:

    Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to
    build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe
    trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is
    winning.

In Gentoo, the idiots are programmers and the programmers are
idiots. Well, 'idiots' sounds foolish. Let's define "idiot programmers"
as "the programmers who only do minimal work so as to save their life
from pleasing (true) idiots in order to do more things beyond mere
progamming".

One could argue that by pleasing idiot users you make money, and by
seducing the users to depend on you you make a lot of money. Fine, go
for it, but not me. One could also argue that idiot and programmer is a
demonstration of social division of labor. Fine, I can understand that,
while I myself fits between a Gentoo user and a Gentoo developer.

Gentoo came to my life during a stage of me developing my own style of
social/political skills. The community educated me how to balance one's
ambition and energy, how to cooperate with people to make this universe
a ultimately friendly place to live. This style of work and life feels
natural to me. By learning the history behind it will not only sharpen
my understanding of the community but also myself.

BTW, I was quite surprised when someone stepped into Debian ITP bug of
OpenRC[1] telling me "don't do it, you are going nowhere and wasting
your time." and the Debian's debate on init systems in order to reach a
consensus, or rather, a centralized decision. Now I understand, the
independent culture as Duncan stated is not universal: It's a special
gift from Gentoo.

Thank you Gentoo, the community. I am appreciating it.

My life will be my message.

Cheers,
Benda

1. http://bugs.debian.org/684396