Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo? Where went Fido?

[Jim Northrup]

Aron Griffis wrote:

>This is kinda bloggish, because it's basically a transcription of an
>IRC monologue.  My apologies if it's hard to follow...
>
This thread started out garnering cheers of elitest developer
sentiment.  There was even some mention of  "if they don't like it they
can run something else".

Then, that notion was reeled in, the developers are part of the user
community.

There is an open debate as to the meaning of support for 'enterprise',
'cluster', and 'hobbyist';

does gentoo mean any of these?

In this thread I posted a suggested hack which must surely have been
suggested before my reading/perusal of gentoo-dev, but also addresses a
tangible element, growth. 

-- Portage's power is too great in one place, it should be forged in the
hottest fires into the form of many rings for the leaders among gentoo,
with one ring to bind them.

Gentoo portage is growing, gentoo's communication network is growing in
complexity, and gentoo's organization is growing.

I saw it interesting that this is what describes the rise and fade of
FIDO net. 

First there were hobbyist, later came zealots, some with bad attitudes,
and eventually a full fledged organization devoted to handling the
politics, which grew large enough for division into zones.  There were
online businesses thriving from its value as well as the very
resourceful and isolated folks who had no other means of communicating
among the world at large.

One of fido's most interesting feature was its initial recognition that
its growth needed structure, and that structure was formed.   fido's own
politiks from around the world failed to vote for survival of the
IFNA(International FidoNet Association).  So fido dissolved its official
entity, and continuted to grow.  Fido became a concept which spun off
saplings and intertwined with the net, but in majority  of years it was
run by the folks with the biggest toys.

I mention fido because of one similarity which is uncannily familiar. 
"only" 26% of the potential voters recently cast a vote for the gentoo
metastructure.  we saw some puzzlement, bordering on grumbling, and some
amusement: "eeeyup that must be us!".

sooo. back to growth...

does the portage design foretell a single monolithic repo growing ad
infinitum?  this is the common watering hole which draws every single
participant to the same well.

 it's gotta work, 'emerge world' has gotta fly.   does tinderbox
indicate this is a predictable outcome with a stable margin of error, as
t approaches infinity?

if not, where goes gentoo?


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