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Lance Albertson wrote: [Mon Jan 02 2006, 12:14:05PM CST] |
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> Gentoo has been missing some kind of direction/goal for some time now. |
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> Looking back at the last two years, what are the major |
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> changes/accomplishments that we have done? Granted, I know there has |
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> been great strides in improvement in some things, but I really wonder |
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> about any ground breaking enhancements. |
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|
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Assuming that we can ever get GLEP 42 out the door, I think that will |
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constitute ground-breaking. There has actually been a considerable |
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amount of progress on the Portage front, as well, although not all of |
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the new stuff is out yet. Similarly, the slowly-rolling website |
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redesign is truly on the verge of being released. We also have had |
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excellent modular X11 support for some time now, and it appears that |
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gcc-4.x support is doing quite well, too. |
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|
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Oh, and we've also retired an amazing number of no-longer-active devs, |
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so I don't know if it's actually true that we've added numbers. |
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|
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> I'm not sure of the exact solution. Its just been pretty frustrating |
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> lately hearing folks complain about this and that when I know that we |
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> could do so much better. Maybe we're just happy with being where we're |
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> at. I know I'm not. There's a niche that Gentoo fits really well and I |
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> think we should focus on perfecting that niche instead of trying to be |
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> better than distroA or distroB. |
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|
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Okay, so you're not happy with Gentoo's direction, but what are you |
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actively doing to change it? (Other than starting this discussion, that |
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is?) I don't mean that question as an attack, although it may well |
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appear that way. It's also not directed at you, since others have |
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made similar comments. Instead, I'm suggesting that the reason that Gentoo |
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lacks a leadership position right now is that, at least where Gentoo is |
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concerned, effective leadership generally means an individual who is |
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putting in a _lot_ of hard work writing code and implementing changes. |
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That's one of the reasons that drobbins could be effective--he had the |
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time to extend portage, work on the website to fit his vision, and make |
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sweeping changes to the tree. In that respect, I would argue that |
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Gentoo's most leader-like person right now is vapier, because he's a dev who |
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actively enacts wide-ranging changes. Similarly, flameeyes, ciaranm, |
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and the portage team all deserve credit for having a significant impact |
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on where Gentoo has been going recently. (Yes, I also realize that |
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people may not agree with some of what those devs have been |
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doing, but they have been out there getting their hands dirty, and it |
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makes a huge difference.) |
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|
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*Shrug* My feeling is that Gentoo is not advancing all that quickly |
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right now, but that it's being maintained fairly well. More |
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importantly, we still ensure that people _can_ make sweeping changes, if |
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they want to put in the work to do so. I'm actually fairly confident |
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about Gentoo having a decent future. |
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|
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-g2boojum- |
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-- |
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Grant Goodyear |
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Gentoo Developer |
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g2boojum@g.o |
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http://www.gentoo.org/~g2boojum |
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GPG Fingerprint: D706 9802 1663 DEF5 81B0 9573 A6DC 7152 E0F6 5B76 |
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