Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] New metastructure proposal

[Alexandre Buisse]

On Tue, Apr 10, 2007 at 22:32:20 +0200, Chris Gianelloni wrote:

> On Tue, 2007-04-10 at 21:32 +0200, Alexandre Buisse wrote:
> > work. Stage 4's were going in this direction, but they were too isolated and, as
> > far as I know, they are dead now.
>
> Wow.  I'm glad to see that yet another thing I spend so much time
> working on is marginalized or otherwise discounted because someone
> couldn't take 3 seconds to check their facts before making a post.  The
> stage4 concept is alive and kicking.  It is one of the targets made by
> catalyst, and likely something we will be utilizing much more in later
> releases.

Sorry about that, I should have taken the time to look it up. Since I
didn't hear about it after Stuart leaved, I assumed no one was working
on it anymore.

 
> If anyone has further questions about the stage4 target or how it's
> utilized in catalyst, feel free to drop onto the gentoo-catalyst mailing
> list and ask.
>
> Now, just to stay on topic with this posting, I have some simple (yeah
> right) questions.
>
> Will this actually resolve any of the recent problems?

Yes, as I tried to explain in the proposal.

 
> Will this stop flame wars?

Probably not, but it can help reduce the volume, hopefully. Indirectly,
of course, but I believe it would help a lot to reduce the tensions.

 
> Will this cause people be nicer to each other?

Definitely, yes. Because everyone will work on a smaller scale.

 
> Will this give us more qualified developers?

Will depend on how each team will do its recruitment. And of course, to
get official status, some kind of council would ensure some minimal
qualifications (along the current guidelines would be my guess).

 
> Will this increase the quality of the tree?

Hard to tell. Having people leave the project out of disgust certainly
doesn't improve it.

 
> Restructuring the project isn't going to solve these problems.

Not all of them, of course. And I never pretended it would. But I
believe that it would definitely help.


> At best,
> it will mask them during the time that we've wasted restructuring only
> to find that we are back with the same set of problems, though now
> without any form of centralized management to have even the glimmer of
> hope of being able to resolve them.

I don't see how not having a centralized management would make it
impossible to solve problems. Or are people really that stupid that they
can't manage to get together and reach a decision, in some way or
another (I gave some ideas in the last part of the email as well). Just
giving all your power of decision to a big boss is a very crude and
unefficient way of solving problems.


> It will take us to a complete mess
> of incompatible overlays and trees.

If we do it carelessly, certainly. But free software has solved much more
complex problems in the past.


> It also places the projects in a
> hierarchy that doesn't match the actual power structure.

Power structure? I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean here.

 
> If the parent project doesn't govern the sub-project, then why is it a
> sub-project, at all?

To ease coordination and make obvious relationships clearer, I guess.
Can also help overlay management with hints like "you've pulled the
audio overlay, you probably also want the multimedia one" and stuff like
that. But it isn't really important, and the name "subproject" is
probably misleading.

 
> What exactly are all of us supposed to actually *do* while we're waiting
> for the SCM conversion and for the package managers to get the support
> necessary and all of the changes are made to the tree?

Keep working on the current version? I don't know, I would classify that
as an implementation detail to be sorted if we actually decide to go
forward.


> Do we simply
> stop developing the distribution for days?  Weeks?  Months?

I'm sure we can find a better solution than that. But do we want to
discuss such tiny details before the big plan itself?

 
> I think that the clique-like nature of many projects is part of the
> problem.  We already have too much of a "us versus them" mentality.

I'm not sure what you mean. Which projects are you speaking about? It
sounds like a silly accusation to me, but perhaps I'm unaware of some
other case.

 
> How will moving to having lots of independent projects with no central
> authority make Gentoo better?

I have said this in the proposal. If you don't agree on specific points,
please provide arguments to back up your position.

 
> Will it make the distribution better for our users?

Because gentoo won't be dead in a couple months? Because people will
think again that it's a fun project and want to be part of it?

 
> Reading back over your proposal with my questions in mind leaves me with
> exactly one last question.
>
> What, exactly, is your proposal supposed to actually accomplish?

What I *want* to do is to make gentoo fun again. And I believe that
decentralising and giving more autonomy to people will achieve exactly
that, for reasons explained in the proposal.

/Alexandre 
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