[gentoo-dev] Gentoo Linux Development Organization

[Daniel Robbins]

Hi All,

As you probably all have noticed, Gentoo Linux development is really starting
to heat up.  To help Gentoo Linux development happen more rapidly, I'm making
changes to the development team structure so that more work can be completed in
parallel rather by a single person or group of people (i.e. achim and me).  To
do this, I'm going to be organizing our current monolithic development team
into several sub-teams:

System Team

The system team is going to focus on creating a stable Gentoo Linux base
system, and will be in charge of the ebuilds in the sys-* categories.  This
team will continually refine the base system, and provide completed, stable
base systems to the other teams to serve as a base for their work.

Tools Team

The tools team will focus on maintaining a stable suite of auxilliary
development tools (those not included in the the base system).  Like the server
team, their work will build on top of the latest stable system snapshot
release.

Server Team

The server team is going to focus on creating a stable, robust and secure suite
of server application ebuilds (everything in net-* categories and a few
others).  They will base their testing on the latest stable system snapshot
provided by the System team and the latest stable snapshot of the tools team.

Desktop Team

The desktop team will focus on desktop apps and environments, such as KDE,
GNOME, X and desktop applications like gimp and mozilla.  Again, they'll build
on the work of the system team and the tools team.

NOTE: The above four teams will be responsible for maintaining a *stable* and
*development* branch of their work.  This means that every team will be able to
provide production-ready suites of ebuilds at any time.

Infrastructure Team

The Infrastructure team is a special-purpose team that will focus their efforts
on upgrading the Web site, improving the dev-wiki, providing mirroring services
and the like.  They will also be responsible for press releases, freshmeat.net
posts, user account maintenance and web documentation.  Additionally, the
Infrastructure Team will develop the boot CD and installer projects.  You can
think of the Infrastucture team as Gentoo Linux IT, community relations,
documentation and ease-of-installation teams rolled into one.

Each team will have a team leader that will direct team development efforts and
will be responsible for the team as a whole.  The team leader will also have the
authority to organize his team as he sees fit; for example, the desktop team
leader can create two special-purpose GNOME and KDE teams if he feels that is 
necessary.  The team leaders will report directly to me and Achim.

Achim and I will supervise the work of all teams, and will help all the teams
as needed.  For the time being, our efforts will be focused on the System Team.

All Gentoo Linux developers should email me privately and let me know what team
they'd like to be on (first and second choice) as well as if they want to be a
Team Leader.  Note that although the team leaders will have additional
authority, they will also have additional responsibilities (since they'll be
responsible for an entire part of Gentoo Linux) and will need to be able to
devote a good chunk of time to Gentoo Linux development.  This also means that
if Achim and aren't satisfied with the progress of a team, we of course may
replace the team leader with someone else.  So anyone volunteering for the
position of team leader should understand that it will be much more demanding
than a normal developer position.

Best Regards,

-- 
Daniel Robbins					<drobbins@g.o>
President/CEO					http://www.gentoo.org 
Gentoo Technologies, Inc.