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This is kinda bloggish, because it's basically a transcription of an |
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IRC monologue. My apologies if it's hard to follow... Nonetheless, |
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I'm interested in how other developers feel on the topics I bring up |
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below. |
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|
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There have been some really interesting points brought up recently |
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about "where is Gentoo going?" I have been wondering that myself. |
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Some people seem to think that Gentoo has the potential to be an |
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enterprise player. I have not responded directly to those people, but |
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I wonder if they know what they mean. I have worked in the enterprise |
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UNIX market for 6 years. My code is running in places like NASA |
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mission control, 9-1-1 call centers, and most of the telephone |
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carriers. I've produced patches on weekends to close $800m deals. |
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I now work in hp's Open Source and Linux Organization, mostly on RHEL |
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and SLES, so I have a good idea of what it takes to be an enterprise |
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player. |
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|
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In my humble opinion, Gentoo is missing too many points to be an |
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enterprise Linux. We commit to a live tree. We don't have true QA, |
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testing or tinderbox. We don't have paid staff, alpha/beta/rc cycles. |
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We don't really have product lifecycles, since we don't generally |
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backport fixes to older versions, requiring instead for people to |
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update to a more recent release. We don't have, and probably will |
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never be able to offer, support contracts. We support as wide a range |
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of hardware as the upstream kernel, plus hardware that requires |
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external drivers; we don't have access to a great deal of the hardware |
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for which we provide drivers. We understand when real life gets in |
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the way of bug-fixing, because all our developers are volunteers. |
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|
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I think that attempting to take Gentoo in the "enterprise" direction |
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is a mistake. I think that we are a hobbyist distribution. This |
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doesn't mean that we should not strive to meet some of the enterprise |
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goals. Those things can be important to hobbyists too. But I don't |
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think we should be aiming for corporate America. |
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|
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I don't even understand why that goal appeals to people. Let other |
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distros go there! I want Gentoo to run in people's homes, in student |
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dorm rooms, etc. Places where people want a fun distribution that |
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they can tailor and work on easily. |
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|
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I like the idea of Gentoo on alternative arches and in embedded |
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environments. Not because I want Sony to start using Gentoo on |
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walkmans, but purely because the idea of running Linux on a PDA is |
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cool. I'd like Gentoo to be a place where neat things are developed. |
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If RH or SuSE (or another for-profit Linux vendor) wants to take some |
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of those developments and use them to make a profit, that's fine with |
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me. We're over here having fun. |
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|
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Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the |
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users. I think that is wrong. Gentoo exists for the *developers*. |
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It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather |
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than switching to an actually sane approach. The users are cool |
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because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest |
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enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates. |
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Sometimes they become developers. But the truth is that Gentoo sees |
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improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the |
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developers. And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first, |
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the users second. |
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|
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Regards, |
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Aron |
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|
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-- |
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Aron Griffis |
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Gentoo Linux Developer |