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

[Sven Vermeulen]

On Mon, Jan 02, 2006 at 12:14:05PM -0600, Lance Albertson wrote:
> Since the council is the closest representation to a leader we have, I'd
> like to ask if they can come up with some kind of global goals for 2006
> and beyond.

I couldn't agree more, yet I'm afraid Gentoo has grown too large to do this
efficiently. Many ideas are easily marked as WONTFIX (due to resource
restrictions), CANTFIX (since it would mean a rewrite of Portage) or
WORKSFORME (when /your/ way works). And when a proposal makes it to the
mailinglist, only a small number of developers is interested in
participating. The majority doesn't care, and a vocal minority tries
everything in its power to prevent the project from succeeding.

What could Gentoo bring out as a global goal for 2006 which isn't part of a
single Gentoo project? Things like "Have an automated installer" (Installer
Project), "Document enterprise usage of Gentoo" (Documentation Team), "Port
Gentoo to ReactOS" (Gentoo/ALT), "Introduce signing of all Portage Tree
files" (Portage Team), ... are all great accomplishments if they succeed
(note: some of the above are hypothetical, in case you are wondering :) but
only span one project.

In my opinion, all projects should bring out global goals for themselves.
The Gentoo Global Goals for 2006 would then be an overview of those goals.
Yet the Gentoo Council doesn't bring any input here.

There are some interesting ideas on the Gentoo Forums that aren't situated
in any of the current projects, such as "Top-100 Feature Requests" [1], "Gentoo
Binary profile" [2], "Gentoo Knowledge Base" [3], "USE-flag triggered
software installation" [4], etc.

Wkr,
      Sven Vermeulen

[1] A site where the community can vote (one vote per bugzilla account?) on
    feature requests (or bugs), could be integrated in bugzilla if that's
    possible, but can also be a separate site where the feature request is
    formed dynamically (wiki?) or by discussion (forum).
[2] A profile that freezes CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS/CHOST/USE/... and uses a build
    server to build binary packages for that binary-package profile. The
    project should not focus on the end result itself but rather on how all
    this is accomplished using Gentoo and how companies and organisations
    can easily implement a similar environment
[3] Something like Microsoft's KB where common issues are well explained,
    resolutions documented and where a good search mechanism is in place to
    help find the right solution. Would require moderation so that solutions
    are correct. Could provide dual solutions: one community-written (open
    wiki), one developers accepted (moderated wiki).
[4] Setting a USE flag triggers the installation of some recommended
    software so that novices don't need to search for the right software.
    Fex: USE="kde cdr" -> kde-meta + k3b 

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