Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Plan, then communicate

[Joanet]

A Dilluns 21 Gener 2008, John Lawles va escriure:
>      I love Gentoo and I am very grateful for all the very
> impressive that Gentoo developers have done.  As a mere end-user, I
> make no claim to have expertise or answers, only questions that
> other end-users likely have.
>      As background, Gentoo users, like me, are happy spending a lot
> of time configuring/upgrading if the end-result is a system
> configured exactly as we want it.  Thus, for example, unlike users
> of other distributions, we are happy configuring/compiling our own
> kernels.

I am also an end-user, and I have been in Gentoo for about a year. I must 
completely agree that I love Gentoo and I believe it is a great distribution 
(if not the best for people wanting to learn linux). 

>      The central issue that Gentoo end-users have, as I gather it,
> is that running Gentoo takes a lot of time that does not seem to
> fall into the above category.

This very much depends on how often do you upgrade. When I started I used to 
upgrade each week. Nowadays, I upgrade when I am on holidays ;-)

> For instance, every portage tree
> seems to have various issues like blockers and faulty or circular
> dependencies.  The work-arounds get hashed out over time in the
> forums.  It is productive for the first, say, ten people to find
> the problem and test a work-around.  It is a waste to have a
> hundred or a thousand people repeat that process starting from
> scratch.

I do not have much knowledge of computing (I am myself a social psychology) 
and currently I am able to maintain 4 computers running gentoo with different 
architectures. In my case, being able to apply the solutions has given me a 
very good knowledge of linux. 

>      A possible solution is Daniel Robbins' proposal to have
> separate "developer-facing" and "user-facing" portage trees.
> Developers working on the developer-facing side would be freed to
> experiment, hopefully improving their productivity.  Only the
> tested and successful ideas would be ported to the user-facing
> tree, improving end-user satisfaction.

I must say I do not have much knowledge of the organisation of Gentoo and its 
history. All I know is from I have read lately in the forums and I very much 
appreciate Dominik Riva effort in gathering information all in one place. 
From this very naive perspective, I very much dislike the messianic aura 
given to Daniel Robbins in some of the posts, and I find that the discussion 
is sometimes a reaction to his proposals instead of coming from a community 
reflection.

With respect to the thread "Should the Gentoo trustees accept Daniel Robbins 
offer?", I have been unable to vote on that thread as it was closed when I 
noticed it. Nevertheless, I believe that 696 votes and 346 posts in three 
days speak more of the strength and involvement of the community than of a 
deep crisis in the gentoo project. If we look at the posts in the gentoo 
forums, there is plenty of activity and it does not look like we (users) are 
flying away.

I am also concerned with the stereotyping and division between devs/users that 
the discussion is somehow assuming. I believe that many people are involved 
in the Gentoo project in different ways, with more or less involvement, and 
with more or less responsibilities. Being a "community" does not mean that 
everybody has the same "rights and duties", and I am not sure how the 
discussion on "democracy" is helping here ("should I have a vote on the menu 
when I am having guests at dinner when I am the one who is cooking?"). At the 
same time, stressing the differences between users/devs leads to the 
attribution of "idealised" characteristics and interests to those groups 
like "devs are such and want such", "users are such and want such". An 
interesting example of this kind of social processes can be seen in the 
documentary "A class divided" 
(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/). I feel the 
discussion on "what the users want" and "what the devs want" promotes this 
differentiation, and we might end up with a book tilted somehow like "devs 
are from mars, users from venus". 

I believe there is space for improvement in the gentoo community (there is 
always room for improvement ;-)). Nevertheless, I do not see (as a gentoo 
user) any urge for drastic measures, and the present discussion does not seem 
to be the adequate atmosphere to make such moves. 

I would like to take to opportunity to enthusiastically thank to all the 
people involved in the gentoo community, and I am very much proud of being 
part of it. 

-- 
Joanet
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