Re: [gentoo-dev] Project Sunrise -- Proposal

[Henrik Brix Andersen]

On Sun, Jun 11, 2006 at 06:53:51PM +0100, Stuart Herbert wrote:
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> Henrik Brix Andersen wrote:
> | However, as has been pointed out several times in this thread already,
> | back when the devloper community agreed to the overlays project it was
> | also agreed that projects similar to what is now known as Project
> | Sunrise was not be present on overlays.gentoo.org.
>
> Can you provide a reference to this, please?  I've been through my -dev M/L
> archive several times, and cannot find an email where I agreed to this.

Perhaps not in those exact words, I admit. But the general consensus
in my eyes, and I'm not alone with this view according to other
replies to this thread, was that the purpose of overlays.gentoo.org
would be to provide a common place to host project and developer
overlays - not a place to host Joe User's ebuild contributions (except
for users regularly contributing to specific teams/herds and
devs-in-spee). [1] [2] [3]

You could argue that Project Sunrise *is* a specific project. Fact is
that nobody at that time could predict that a small group of
developers would go ahead and create a project with the single goal of
providing Joe User's bugzilla-contributed ebuilds to end-users through
overlays.gentoo.org.

In my opinion, creating a new project with this purpose should not
have been allowed. I fear that perhaps creating the project was just
an attempt to circumvent the policy of overlays.gentoo.org, which
states that only project teams and individual Gentoo developers can
have an overlay on overlays.gentoo.org. It seems that the developers
who started Project Sunrise already planed to use overlays.gentoo.org
as a "free-for-all" overlay with no QA and policy checks back when the
idea of an official overlays project was discussed. [4] [5]

The security issues of having an official overlay of unsupported
ebuilds was also raised back then. [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] As was the
concerns about potential damage to the reputation of Gentoo as a
whole. [11] [12]

On the other hand, having team/herd specific overlays with commit
access from a select few end-users (as was written in the original
proposal) was seen as a good idea. [13] [14]

I've spent tonight reading through the entire thread that let to the
creation of the overlays project, and I still come out in the end with
the feeling that a consensus of having overlays.gentoo.org for hosting
the already existing developer and herd/team overlays in a central
place was reached. It also looks to me like the idea of having a
"free-for-all" or a user-contrib overlay hosted there would not be
acceptable due to security issues and risk of damaging the reputation
of Gentoo as a whole.

I know this doesn't provide solid evidence that this is how it was,
but truth is - we hardly ever see an email on the developers list
stating "This is what we agreed on". Due to the nature of the media we
tend to have a lot of input and discussion back and forth after which
a general consensus is found. This consensus, as I see it, is
reflected in the policy for overlays.gentoo.org. [15]

I urge people to read through the initial thread that fostered
overlays.gentoo.org as well - if only to refresh peoples memory on the
stuff that was discussed back then. You can start at
http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-dev@l.g.o/msg09877.html

Sincerely,
Brix

[1]: http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-dev@l.g.o/msg09913.html
[2]: http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-dev@l.g.o/msg09921.html
[3]: http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-dev@l.g.o/msg09983.html

[4]: http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-dev@l.g.o/msg09962.html
[5]: http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-dev@l.g.o/msg09966.html

[6]: http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-dev@l.g.o/msg09918.html
[7]: http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-dev@l.g.o/msg09959.html
[8]: http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-dev@l.g.o/msg09884.html
[9]: http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-dev@l.g.o/msg09964.html
[10]: http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-dev@l.g.o/msg09963.html
[11]: http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-dev@l.g.o/msg09910.html
[12]: http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-dev@l.g.o/msg09946.html

[13]: http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-dev@l.g.o/msg09948.html
[14]: http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-dev@l.g.o/msg09972.html

[15]: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/overlays/policy.xml
-- 
Henrik Brix Andersen <brix@g.o>
Gentoo Metadistribution | Mobile computing herd