Re: [gentoo-science] Re: Scientific herd leadership

[Marcus D. Hanwell]

On Thursday 18 August 2005 10:52, George Shapovalov wrote:
> Hi guys.
>
> Sorry that I did not reply yesterday, I had a presentation to prepare for
> today :).
>
> I actually moved to a new place already. I am in Switzerland at the moment
> (Geneva/Lausanne, anybody around?), starting a new postdoc position
> (somebody might remember my email to -core or -dev some time ago). I am
> getting back up to speed, however I am still in much flux and everything
> official takes soo long in Swiss :(. Pluss the stress of starting new work
> (and getting all the equipment together :))...

It is great to hear that from you, and that you are still active. I heard you 
were moving around and we figured that may be you didn't have time right now. 
I hope the new position goes well.
>
> There are a few points to address, so I'll structure my reply:
>
> 1.
> Anyway, as far as the leadership goes, I have been a lead of the sci herd
> ever since I created it (few eyars already, was that really that long ago?
> :)). Unfortunately things were rather quiet lately and, as I am not
> completely "on" yet, I am willing to give the leadership off to somebody
> who will have enough time on his hands. That, or at least I think we should
> have an active co-lead or may be even some more involved structure. Well,
> lets start with a co-lead first, so that we get at least somehting done :).

If you are still around and still want to be involved with the scientific herd 
then I for one think you should maintain leadership of the herd, but I would 
be glad to help out as co-lead or whatever people feel is appropriate to try 
and get things moving a little faster in the scientific herd. We have closed 
out quite a few bugs over the last few days already :)
>
> 2.
> It would be good to have more devs involved in Scientific Gentoo. I can
> honestly say, that it surpassed my original expectations (it started out as
> a single category with a herd attached) and seems to have attained a status
> of an important project at the intersection of science and Linux. Looks
> like we have people recommending others to run Gentoo because of science
> apps we carry. Well, at least I saw few reports to that effect some time
> ago :).
>
> I used to put out calls for new/interested devs to help Scientific Gentoo,
> when I was more active, and the responce was rather positive. However
> recently I did not have enough time to devote to training of new devs, so
> that slipped by. I think it would be usefull to reinstate that initiative,
> but first we need to get a head-count of who feels like doing the training.
> Should we have a 1 year as a dev  requirement for the trainers? (not the
> trainees of course! They are even better picked up from science than from
> Linux althogether :)) I would think so, given complexity of Gentoo nowadays
> and that last thing we want to do is to screw our comprehension by
> scientific community :).

I agree with Olivier that 6 months in line with official policy seems 
adequate, and see no reason for us to impose additional limits. I should have 
time to mentor a suitable candidate unless you want to place the 12 month 
requirement (in which case I have only been an official dev for 9 months or 
so).
>
> 4.
> I am for the regular meetings. It is probably good to try to settle on some
> time (may be easier if we go through with the "more involved
> unfrastructure", but the real need for it will only be there if we get 2x
> more devs than we have now (I mean in Scientific Gentoo)). However I agree,
> that reviving gentoo-science@l.g.o mailing list is a more
> realistic (and less stressful) option. In fact, everything is setup, lets
> just use it! (To give an example, I am CC'ng this message to that list.
> Sorry for dups, if you receive it twice).

We could try and figure a time, announce it on here and open the 
#gentoo-science channel up to all interested developers and users for 
discussion. These discussions could also take place on the lists, and if 
enough people turn up IRC logs could be posted here too.
>
> 5.
> Anything else?

I think you covered everything - it is good to hear you are still around! I 
hope everything is going well.

Sincerely,

Marcus
-- 
Gentoo Linux Developer
Scientific Applications | AMD64 | KDE | net-proxy