| 1 |
> The newest member of Gentoo can have more power to direct the course |
| 2 |
> of the distro than every oldtimer or council member there is, if they |
| 3 |
> just contribute more than them. |
| 4 |
|
| 5 |
> If the maintainer of package A or provider of service B is a pain to |
| 6 |
> work with, all it takes is for somebody else who is easier to work |
| 7 |
> with to maintain package A or provide service B. |
| 8 |
|
| 9 |
Rich, I fully agree with the overall sentiment of the rest of your e-mail, but |
| 10 |
I think above statements are just not true. For both appropriate and |
| 11 |
inappropriate reasons. |
| 12 |
|
| 13 |
On one hand, if you are new to the project, nobody knows (and trusts) you yet. |
| 14 |
So, it's definitely not the best idea to immediately propose big plans to |
| 15 |
reform everything. You talk to people, show that you can handle things, earn |
| 16 |
trust, and one day some time later noone will complain if you alone properly |
| 17 |
and carefully handle restructuring the profile tree. |
| 18 |
|
| 19 |
On the other hand, except for peaceful and cooperative places (kde team comes |
| 20 |
to my mind since that's where I "grew up" as a Gentoo dev, but I'm sure there |
| 21 |
are more examples), if as a newbie you pick the wrong things to work on you |
| 22 |
might as well immediately retire again- you'll get blocked out by |
| 23 |
territoriality. If you try to push things, well there's always someone who has |
| 24 |
the idea to invoke QA or comrel. ["Let's retire him, (he might be making sense |
| 25 |
but) he's making way too much noise." Luckily, that usually just does't |
| 26 |
happen.] |
| 27 |
|
| 28 |
This has become much better in the recent past, but it's not ideal yet. |
| 29 |
|
| 30 |
I would be very glad if all our technical geniuses working deep on the insides |
| 31 |
of Gentoo were to adopt new devs and teach them the intricacies. I would also |
| 32 |
be very glad if all our technical geniuses were to participate in IRC and |
| 33 |
mailing list discussions, so we can learn from them and understand why they do |
| 34 |
things. Yes I know it is occasionally a waste of time and I can well |
| 35 |
understand that after X years in Gentoo your enthusiasm for it disappears. No, |
| 36 |
that does not make it unnecessary. |
| 37 |
|
| 38 |
Yes, in my opinion we are scaring off people. |
| 39 |
No, adapting to all misbehaviour of current contributors is not an option. |
| 40 |
Noone is irreplaceable. |
| 41 |
|
| 42 |
-- |
| 43 |
|
| 44 |
Andreas K. Huettel |
| 45 |
Gentoo Linux developer |
| 46 |
dilfridge@g.o |
| 47 |
http://www.akhuettel.de/ |
Archives