Re: [gentoo-project] A proposal to get out of this mess

[George Prowse]

Dominik Riva wrote:
> Hi Gentoo-Project,
>
> Let me first introduce myself to you.
>
> I am known in the forum as Slalomsk8er and I am the one that started
> http://gentoo-wiki.com/Problems_at_Gentoo
> <http://gentoo-wiki.com/Problems_at_Gentoo>
> because I believe documenting is better then whining. Besides that, I am
> a webmaster and server administrator for a living. If you know the Swiss
> political system you will soon understand why this proposal comes to you
> from Switzerland.
>
> Now to the Problem at hand:
>
> This organisation is not able to do any thing then producing code at the
> moment and this is what produced that mess.
>
> The offer from drobbins and the community that wants you by a big 90% to
> take him by his offer.
>
> The developers that don't like his offer because of his style to handle
> volunteers that don't share his point of view.
>
>
> So what to do:
>
> Decline his offer!
>
> Forget the Foundation - it is as dead as it can get legal. (how long can
> Gentoo wait till the assets get lost?)
>
> Let the community vote on a constitution for the council. (One from the
> developers and as much others that have a substancial backing from the
> community. In Switzerland we normally can vote for 2 to 3 versions of a
> "hot iron" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendum#Switzerland)
>
> A new council of 5 persons gets voted that stands under the rules of the
> new Gentoo constitution by the community at large.
> (Yes they will vote drobbins in if the likes to accept his nomination in
> the light of the new rules)
>
>
> Why I think this drastic steps are needed:
>
> Gentleman, you screwed big time and the community is pissed!
>
> The Gentoo-Project at large lost a lot of trust and credit in the eyes
> of the community.
>
> Hell, I would not even trust a Gentoo-Foundation trustee to feed my pet
> snails while I am on a vacation!
>
> The community will backup the drobbins that the active developers and
> some forum veterans that spoke at
> http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-644321.html don't want back in
> charge for what sounds like good reasons.
>
> The current situation could, if all goes wrong, lead to a fork. I
> believe with my knowledge of Gentoo and considering the nature of the
> Portage-Tree at the heart of this distribution, that this could be the
> doom for both forks. I have a vivid fantasy and it shows me dropped
> architectures, invisibility at distrowatch and a dwindling user count.
> And I don't share the opinion of AllenJB that: If the users leave,
> there's still the developers and live goes on at Gentoo.
> New developers need to come from somewhere and fast, as it looks like
> most developers leave after ~2 years.
> And the nature of Gentoo's Portage has it that every ebuild wants his
> maintainer and they are called developers.
>
>
> One last thing in my own interest:
>
> Please fill in the gaps at http://gentoo-wiki.com/Problems_at_Gentoo
> with your internal knowledge.
> The community needs all information's it can get if it has to vote. This
> geeks want to know that what they do to there beloved distribution is
> the right thing to do.
>
>
> Regards, Dominik Riva


I like the idea of a discussion of this kind and I applaud you for 
trying to start a discussion but you are unlikely to start any form of 
discussion here because it is not the forum for it.

Also, Gentoo developers are notoriously quiet when it comes to subjects 
like this which unfortunately leads to rumours which are no good for anyone.

I can understand why 90% of users would like drobbins back but I would 
be willing to say that 0% of the long-term core developers want him back 
and Gentoo has a long history of ignoring it's user base and saying "we 
give our time for free so we're going to develop how we want."

If you really want to see what core /developers/ think or thought about 
Gentoo's internal problems then I suggest you read Spider's and 
plasmaroo's resignation emails, they document some problems pretty well.

At the end of the day you're not likely to change anything though.

George
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