Re: [gentoo-server] net-www/apache-1* masked.

[Mark Rudholm]

Andrew Gaffney wrote:
> A. Khattri wrote:
>> I have no problem with change as long as there is an easy way to keep
>> what
>> we have. After all, Gentoo is about having a choice and removing the
>> apache flag from PHP without providing some other mechanism to keep it is
>> simply removing choice.
>
> I see this type of argument used all the time. Some people just don't
> seem to get the fact that all Gentoo devs are volunteers, and we will do
> whatever makes it easier on *us*. If you don't like it, don't bitch
> about choice. You have the *choice* to learn how to maintain the stuff
> yourself and not complain. You don't pay for Gentoo, so you don't have
> the right to tell any Gentoo dev what to do with their volunteer
> time.</rant>

If people are using this argument all the time, it might be
worth considering why they are.

Gentoo tends to remove packages or change them in a way that
is not rearward-compatible more readily than other distributions.
I understand that the labor is all volunteer, however, other,
more stable/mature distributions are also all-volunteer, but yes,
that's the way it is.  People spend their volunteer time as they
see fit, I understand this completely.

The result, however, is that Gentoo becomes an inappropriate
choice for a production server deployment.  I haven't suggested
Gentoo for production servers to anyone (especially my employers)
since somewhere around 2003 for this reason.

At work, my team of a few dozen people support tens of thousands
of Linux servers.  We wrote our own tools for installation,
distribution, and maintenance of OSes and package sets.  There was
a time when I considered that we could use Gentoo.  Our own custom
Portage repositories could be maintained, and the portage tools
would cover a lot of the things we need to do very nicely.  It'd
be great to build on the work of other Gentoo contributors, and
we'd no doubt join the larger community of contributors.  But I
simply can't recommend this.  The Gentoo developers and packagers
in general seem more interested in the latest shiny thing rather
than stability, reliability, and predictability.  Fine for a desktop,
but antithetical to the needs of people running mission-critical
server farms.  As you point out, it's entirely the prerogative of
the developers and packagers to set their own priorities, and I
agree of course, but do be aware of the results of the choices of
Gentoo packagers and developers and how they collectively create
the personality of the distro and how that personality effects the
choices of other potential contributors and users of Gentoo Linux.

-Mark (who uses Gentoo on his personal systems these days)
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