[gentoo-dev] Re: Portage QOS

[Duncan]

heroxbd posted on Sat, 11 Jan 2014 07:36:57 +0900 as excerpted:

> Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@×××.net> writes:
>
>> Meanwhile, you might try googling Zynot.  That was one early, perhaps
>> the first, Gentoo fork.
>>
>> I remember back in early 2004
>
> Wow... What a history! I am educated. Thanks for sharing.
>
> I've always been interested in my distro's history. The information
> scatters here and there. It'll be nice if some senior/retired developers
> write up a Gentoo history on wiki.g.o :)

FWIW, I did my research and ended up on gentoo after the split was 
basically done, tho zynot was still around at the time.  As such, I don't 
have a lot of personal experience with it, but it was still close enough 
that most of the gentoo devs of the time did have personal experience.

What I do know is that it was a very bitter experience for many, and most 
that lived thru it, like many survivors of a lot of particularly man-made 
tragedies, considered the experience something that they and gentoo had 
survived, and were /extremely/ glad it was over, but weren't much for 
talking about it.

At a safe historic distance of a decade in the past, perhaps some might 
talk about it now, but I'd guess for many, it's just not worth reliving, 
except, $deity forbid, should there be a danger of something similar 
occurring again.  Too many bitter recriminations.  Too many previous 
friends lost to the split...

But I was close enough time-wise to appreciate the seriousness and 
tragedy of the event, while not being part of it myself, so I don't have 
those old wounds to rip back open by talking about it.  Apologies to the 
long-time devs still here for whom I'm doing just that, but it /is/ 
history now, and as the saying goes, those who don't know history are 
bound to repeat it, something I'm absolutely sure NOBODY involved would 
want, so...

From what I understand, this guy /had/ been effectively drobbins' right-
hand-man for a time.  He had business connections and had been 
instrumental in parlaying some of them into gentoo sponsorships at a time 
when it was much younger and needed them, and he was a good PR guy.  The 
gentoo dev community was smaller and closer knit at the time, and many 
had considered this guy and the devs that ultimately left with him 
personal friends.  That made the hurt /much/ worse. =:^(

What I've always wondered is what the devs who went with him thought; how 
he persuaded them, /their/ side of the story.  I knew /his/ side of the 
story from reading his essays attacking gentoo and drobbins, and I knew 
at least enough about the gentoo side to be convinced that the gentoo 
side was where I should be, but coming in shortly after as I did, I never 
had any contact with or read anything from any of the devs that left with 
him, and I obviously didn't know them previously, so their side of the 
story, why he convinced them to go zynot (other than the obvious, that 
any persuasive argument must have /some/ element of truth), I'll never 
know.  Meanwhile, I'm /quite/ aware that my own view and recounting of 
the history I know is quite colored by my own position, and definitely 
/must/ suffer to some degree from the "victor rewriting history" 
phenomenon.  I'm sure if I had a better view of the picture as the devs 
who left for zynot saw it, that "people who left" view would be rather 
different, and regardless of whether I agreed with it or not, it would 
certainly color my own view and thus recounting of the facts as I am 
aware of them.  Worth keeping in mind...

Meanwhile, that /some/ bit of truth, AFAIK, revolved around the fact that 
while gentoo had settled on the GPLv2 for code and similarly free general 
documentation licenses, drobbins was apparently asking for copyright 
rights, with a policy of copyright everything gentoo, which drobbins held 
the rights to, with the ownership rights becoming the core of the fight.  
There had been some talk of some sort of a gaming distro (I'm fuzzy on 
the details), apparently drobbins' big idea, and as a base for embedded, 
this guy's big idea and ultimately zynot's target for funding, etc.  This 
guy accused drobbins of intending to do the gaming thing then take 
everything private.  As I wasn't there and am not drobbins, I can't say 
for sure what drobbins ultimate idea and motives were, but as I read this 
guy's essays, I kept shouting at the monitor, "But if he intended to go 
private and deprive other contributors of their just due, why GPLv2, not 
MIT/BSD, which would make that so much easier?"  Of course as we know 
from the MySQL/Sun/Oracle events, with all rights a company can still go 
private, using the GPL to maintain an unfair advantage over others who 
can't take it private because they don't have the copyrights, only the GPL 
version.  But even so, again as the MySQL/Oracle/MariaDB events, and the 
Sun/Oracle/OpenOffice/LibreOffice events as well demonstrate, if that's 
against the wishes of an already active and developed community, that 
community can and will take the free version it still has rights to use 
and run with it!

Meanwhile, from all I could see then and to the extent that I know 
anything of zynot to this day, that's EXACTLY what zynot tried to do, 
take advantage of the free-licensed gentoo work and extend it with their 
proprietary product.  Clear as anything else I've ever seen, it was the 
soot-covered pot looking in the mirror and believing it sees a kettle to 
call black!

That's enough old wounds I'm sure I've torn open for some, sorry.  But 
knowing that history explains QUITE A BIT of gentoo's internal politics 
to this day, so it's VERY worth knowing about for new devs who had no 
idea that was in gentoo's history.  Among other things, that definitely 
plays a part in why people are now encouraged to mark their work 
copyright gentoo if they have no strong feelings about it, but gentoo 
doesn't DEMAND it.  (Another factor is as greg-kh points out, due to 
employment contracts a lot of gentoo devs wouldn't be able to contribute 
and would have to resign, were a firm copyright rights assignment policy 
established.

It plays and even *STRONGER* role in gentoo's governing structure, both 
because drobbins took quite some care and personal legal expense to 
ensure a separate gentoo foundation with the assets, but *NOT* technical 
control, and in the very loose government structure, with little central 
control and individual devs having lots of rights that are rather 
difficult to strip, except by what ultimately amounts to overwhelming 
(but not necessarily unanimous) agreement (which does and has occurred 
when necessary, as some former devs who still follow this list can surely 
attest), should a case be appealed all the way thru council, etc.

And even tho there has been enough turnover that I don't believe the 
original devs have anything like enough power to directly maintain those 
rules, the original themes were strong enough to have set in motion a 
VERY strong culture of little central power and lots of individual dev 
independence, such that succeeding generations have continued to inherit 
that from their mentors and other devs that came before them.  Those 
original devs tended to attract others of like mind, and train them in 
the way, and that generation in turn did the same, such that while few 
newer devs really understand the history behind it, that comparatively 
weak central power and strong individual dev rights continue to this day.

And of course that same theme is playing in this thread.  Gentoo culture 
has an extremely strong emphasis on individual rights, including the 
right to choose one's own distribution, such that most gentoo devs (and 
users) will find the very idea of somehow deliberately closing off 
avenues of choice, restricting distro choice and the ability of users to 
leave if they feel so inclined, EXTREMELY repulsive.  Yes, to some extent 
the majority of the FLOSS community has a similar culture, but self-
evidently the typical dev in a typical corporate-sponsored distro isn't 
as likely to have the extreme, gut-level revulsion to centralized or 
corporate control of the distro, or to dev and user choice, that your 
typical gentooer dev is likely to have.

And actually, I'm glad this discussion has come up, since writing about 
it has given me new insights into things as well.  I obviously had all 
the factoids and history available before, but this has forced me to 
realize connections that I hadn't previously considered.

Wow!  I had thought that was just the way gentoo's culture was.  Now I 
understand a bit more about how its history shapes that, and /why/ 
gentoo's culture is the way it is.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman