Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for January

[Corey Shields]

On Wednesday 04 January 2006 21:39, Alec Warner wrote:
>  I think some people have attempted things that are interesting or
> innovative, although they may not have gotten off of the ground quite
> yet.  I think for instance, that Stuart's webapp-config project is a
> good idea, and while I also think his first attempt sucked, that perhaps
> in the future it could be a great tool, especially for large virtual
> host places.  I think it sucks that he has gotten the flack from it here.
>
> The Gentoo Installer is an interesting project, not only for the
> graphical frontend, but for the Distro-sponsored Network installer that
> is being worked on.  I think many distributions lack tools in this area
> and we can be interesting and helpful here.
>
> The Portage project has some cool stuff coming up.  I realize that the
> 2.X codebase scares a lot of people away due to it's nature but recently
> there has been a lot more active development in features and planning.
> Plus there is code in the savior branch to do some "interesting" things :)

Bingo.  Bingo. Bingo.

Where is the centralized vision that everyone is working together here that 
people not directly related to each project will buy in to and therefore do 
what they can to see it succeed?  Where is the collaboration between groups 
to make it happen?  I think this has already been hashed out enough, but your 
points can be drawn back to that.  Portage team is running in one direction, 
webapps another, GLI a third direction (while kicking anyone who wishes to 
run with them in the nuts).  In any structured environment I have worked in, 
you have a heirarchy where everyone, down to the grunts, know where they are 
heading as an organization, why they are heading that way, and what they can 
do to help.  Even though groups work on differing things, they know how those 
things are directly affecting the end goal (mission statement, whatever)

Right now, Gentoo has it's cliques that come up with their own things, and to 
get assistance from another clique you're gonna have to have some ties or 
work real hard to sell your idea to them.  It's too flat of a model to work 
for any real innovation, else, as Kurt pointed out, we would have seen some 
cool stuff in the past couple of years.

> If this Gentoo project fails/falters (like you seem to think it is
> heading) you are free to do the same, form your own project with it's
> own set of rules and leader if you so choose.

Gentoo won't fail..  I don't believe that is what Kurt or Lance are saying.  I 
think the point was that Gentoo is not moving at the typical pace of OSS 
development, and we believe that it is the organizational structure that is 
holding it back.

> Partially I ( as currently still a user at this point ) would like to
> see a bit more project management.  I see that webapps posted a monthly
> meeting reminder to -dev, but how many projects really have meetings
> that often?  Do they accomplish anything?  Should we have someone that
> tries to attend most meetings to make sure things are going smoothly, or
> going at all?  Do we need to have slacking projects that get killed off
> by the council as well as "slacker" council members?

Thanks for your comments..   As for management, anyone who reads "Five 
Dysfunctions of a Team" by Patrick Lencioni[1] will see all of the problems 
that Gentoo has, as well as the potential Gentoo has if it worked well.

Cheers,

-C

[1] - 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0787960756/104-9660666-9133512?v=glance&n=283155
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