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

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 22:05 -0800, Corey Shields wrote:
> 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)

Here's what I find funny.  I work on a project whose main goal is to
work with the other projects to get our releases out the door.  We
coordinate with *every* arch team, along with hardened, embedded, and
infrastructure.  We coordinate with many herds and the portage team.
What exactly would adding some level of indirection via "middle
management" or even some "CEO" add us?  Not a thing.  All it would do is
add one giant bottleneck to our work, reducing productivity.

> 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.

...or just ask nicely.  It's amazing how people really downplay the
powerful nature of civility.

> > 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.

Who exactly are you comparing us to here?  Mozilla?  Gnome?  KDE?

I see tons of claims but no examples.  Show me the numbers.

Not to mention we *just* reorganized.  The Council has had how many
meetings now?  How exactly can you tell the capability of a structure
that hasn't even been in existence long enough to have any valid data to
compare against?

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