Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Maurice van der Pot <griffon26@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo?
Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2005 21:13:49
Message-Id: 20050607211304.GC1655@kfk4ever.com
In Reply to: [gentoo-dev] where goes Gentoo? by Aron Griffis
1 On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 07:55:50PM -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
2 > We understand when real life gets in
3 > the way of bug-fixing, because all our developers are volunteers.
4
5 I never ever would have considered becoming a developer if this hadn't
6 been the case. I have my day job to worry about responsibilities and
7 planning.
8
9 > Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
10 > users. I think that is wrong. Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
11 > It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
12 > than switching to an actually sane approach. The users are cool
13 > because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
14 > enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
15 > Sometimes they become developers. But the truth is that Gentoo sees
16 > improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
17 > developers. And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
18 > the users second.
19
20 Back when I was not yet a Gentoo developer but just a developer using
21 Gentoo, whenever I ran into a problem with one tool or other I was
22 quite motivated to try and come up with a fix, because:
23 - it was easy to include the fix in the system because of the ebuild
24 format as well as the PORTAGE_OVERLAY feature
25 - it was easy to submit the fix back to Gentoo in a ready to use format
26 - I didn't have to wait forever for the next official release containing
27 the fix I contributed
28
29 I was also very pleased with all the up-to-date tools/applications at my
30 disposal.
31
32 Now that I am a Gentoo developer I just want to help any development
33 done on a Gentoo platform go as smoothly as possible by trying to keep
34 bug response time and TTP (time-to-portage) of new versions down.
35
36 So in my mind, as someone else already mentioned, Gentoo is from
37 developers for developers.
38
39 Regards,
40 Maurice.
41
42 P.S.: I must say I have not yet taken part in any Gentoo project that
43 isn't purely maintenance. Maybe if I did my view would change...
44 hmmm... /me looks for a list of current projects
45
46 P.P.S.: Oh, and I cannot send this mail without mentioning that since
47 the beginning, when I just started using Gentoo, I've always
48 felt welcome... something I didn't expect to find on the
49 internet.
50
51 --
52 Maurice van der Pot
53
54 Gentoo Linux Developer griffon26@g.o http://www.gentoo.org
55 Creator of BiteMe! griffon26@××××××××.com http://www.kfk4ever.com