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

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Thu, 2006-01-05 at 06:00 +0000, Kurt Lieber wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 12:39:05AM -0500 or thereabouts, 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.
>
> That's the problem.  Lots of folks have great ideas.  Our execution sucks,
> though.  We also have projects working against each other (or, at least,
> not in step with each other)

Cite examples.

> > 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 agree, but it's been "in development" for...I dunno..almost two years now
> I think and it's still not released.  I'm not slamming the -installer team
> -- I think they're a great bunch of guys, but it does point to our
> inability to execute.

Really?  I seem to remember a nice news story with 2005.1's release
about an Installer LiveCD for x86.  I also remember one for 2005.1-r1
for both x86 and amd64.  For 2006.0, the Installer will be considered
the default method for installing Gentoo on x86, and possibly even amd64
(if they want).  I also was planning on producing at least one more
LiveCD for another architecture for 2006.0...

> > 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.
>
> Again, lots of talk, some code, but nothing we can point to and say, "look!
> see that?  We did that!!" and be proud of it.

Funny.  I can.  --newuse.  That alone has been one of the best features
in portage in a long, long time.  I find it absolutely amazing, as
before it was a nightmare to maintain Gentoo.  Of course, this
"nightmare" was during your glory period of innovation.

> > You can't really say "well your interest is useless so work on something
> > else instead" and expect them to comply.
>
> No, but you can say, "this is the direction we've decided to go in.  We'd
> love to have you as part of the team, but if you want to go a different
> direction, please take a copy of the source code, along with our blessings
> and we wish you the best of luck."

Sounds like you'd rather take Gentoo back a few years to the days before
Hardened/Embedded/Alt.  I guess we really should just be "Gentoo Linux"
and ignore all of the progress and work that has been made in all of
these other areas simply because it doesn't fit with your goals.  I'd
like to also propose that we drop support for sparc, mips, sh, m68k,
s390, arm, and alpha, since they detract from our main goals of
providing amd64/ppc/x86 releases.  After all, who really uses those
"other" arches anyway but a bunch of guys that never have good ideas or
improve quality of the distribution as a whole and constantly distract
us away from getting anything constructive done?

> It's great to tinker and experiment with new things, but at some point,
> those tinkerings will have interdependencies on other parts of the project.

So what?

> People will need/want features added to <foo> in order for them to be able
> to continue.  If those features don't adhere to the overall direction that
> has been chosen for the project, then they're taking time and resources
> away from that direction, regardless of who does the actual coding.

So if I were to add some great new whiz-bang feature to portage that
would only be used in building releases for Hardened, it is a waste of
time even if I do all of the coding myself simply because that might not
be the overall direction where we are heading?

Dude, pass the pipe.  I want some of what you're smoking.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

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