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

[Greg KH]

On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 04:31:30AM +0000, Kurt Lieber wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 04, 2006 at 07:57:06PM -0800 or thereabouts, Greg KH wrote:
> > > Which is why Gentoo has jumped the shark and is now on a long, slow
> > > decline.
> >
> > Ok, then what should Gentoo do to fix this percieved decline?
>
> Exactly what a lot of folks will have kittens about; appoint a CEO, leader,
> boss, manager, etc.  (you know, all those corporate-type words that raise
> the hackles of nearly everyone on this list.)
>
> Right now, Gentoo is this gigantic, obese amoeba that just sort of sits in
> one place.  Different parts of it try to go in different directions, with
> the net result being that the whole body never goes anywhere.  We haven't
> done anything interesting or innovative over the last...year?  two years?
> We have no effective leadership whatsoever.  We spend far too much time
> arguing amongst ourselves instead of working as a team towards a common
> goal.

Like others have pointed out, I think the problem is you either are:
	- not looking in the proper place
	- have the goals you want to see happen, happen.

The first one can be handled in a variety of different ways, and is
sometimes easily overlooked due to the slow incremental improvements
that happen over time.  One only has to look back over a longer period
of time to see the changes and realize how good they are (as an example,
I _love_ the baselayout stuff that has happened over the past year or
so, it's flexible and works very well, much nicer than any other rc
based system I've seen for a Linux distro.  Huge props out to those
developers.)

The second one can be easily handled by getting out there, stating your
goals, and working to solve them yourself.  Like any opensource project,
people work on what they want to work on, and you can't tell anyone what
to do, without resistance (well, there are ways to do this, but that's
for another time...)

> We should appoint one person to lead the project.  Make sure that person
> knows WTF they're doing, are respected by the right developers, has a good
> vision for Gentoo and then let them make decisions.  Expect people to
> adhere to the decisions and, if they don't, invite them to find other
> opportunities for their creative outlet.

Decisions are one thing.  Results are another.  Decisions are easy to
make, but convincing others to do your bidding is tough :)

> That person should figure out what Gentoo wants to be when it grows up.
> S/he should carefully consult the various stakeholders, look at the
> strengths/weaknesses of Gentoo as it stands currently and then figure out
> where the best direction is for it to proceed.  They should then be
> responsible for making sure everyone (and I mean *everyone*) executes
> according to this direction.  Folks who disagree with the vision will be
> able to go their own direction and start their own projects.  That's the
> beauty of the GPL.

Ok, for example, the "enterprise" stuff for Gentoo?  I think the only
thing holding that back are getting the work done.  All of the
infrastructure is there to do it, it will only take a lot of time and
effort to achieve it.  So, gather the people who want to do it, and go
do it, that too is easily achievable due to the beauty of the GPL :)

But that doesn't require a great "leader" to accomplish.  And I think
our current mis-mash of director board is actually good for us in that
it handles the things we need to have handled (pissing matches between
developers, infrastructure things, etc.) and keeps out of everyone
else's way :)

> Anyway, I have no illusions of this idea ever being implemented in the
> current Gentoo environment.  /shrug.  It was a good ride.

I hear Debian is still looking for developers.  Oh wait, they are having
worse problems for real than people are perceiving we are having :)

Thanks for your comments, hopefully some good will come of this thread.
If not, I'm sure the developers who are actively working on integrating
good things into Gentoo will continue to do so.

thanks,

greg k-h
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