[gentoo-sparc] Sparc status

[Ferris McCormick]

As most of you know, both Weeve and gustavoz have either retired or
announced their retirement from gentoo.  That left sparc with no TLP
lead.  For the moment, I am assuming the position of sparc project lead.
Sparc typically chooses its leads for one year terms starting at the
first of the year.  There is no reason I can see to change this, so
early in 2008 sparc will again establish a lead or leads for the normal
one year term.

The reaction from the user and developer communities has been most
gratifying.  Several developers have asked to help with sparc while we
are sorting outrselves out, at least.  So, It gives ma great pleasure to
welcome jer, jmbsvicetto, jokey, and yoswink to our sparc project.
(This gives us both joker and jokey; I am not sure of the significance
of that.)

Unfortunately, this places us in the majority of architecture teams:  we
currently do not have a release coordinator.  Please bear with us while
we sort that out.

Also please bear with us on another matter.  As you may or may not know,
over the course of a bit under 190 weeks, gustavoz has averaged one
commit every 3.24 hours.  We do not commit to maintain this pace.
However, if you have testing or keywording requests open against sparc
and it seems that nothing is happening, please put a reminder onto the
bug requesting it.  It is quite possible that while we are sorting
things out no one will have noticed the request at all.
 
INFRA:  Jason Wever pointed out to me that up to now, sun spoke directly
with him or with Gustavo when talking about loaner systems for trade
shows or about donating equipment.  Jason suggests that "It might be
worth asking infra to setup either an out of office message indicating
that ppl wanting to talk to us should talk to you for sparc related
stuffs or having them forward our email to you".  I much prefer the
first option:  It is not appropriate to forward either Jason's or
Gustavo's emails to me.

Finally, yes, I know the sparc project page needs updating.  I'll work
on that over the next day or so unless someone wants to come forward and
take care of it. :)

Thanks for all the support.  And especially thanks for all Jason and
Gustavo have given to the project.  Jason was my mentor, and I owe him a
great deal.

Regards,
Ferris
-- 
Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor@g.o>
Developer, Gentoo Linux (Devrel, Sparc)