[gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Duncan]

Christopher O'Neill posted
<9445dc2b0604070151t68e184fdo3601938bb52d0871@××××××××××.com>, excerpted
below,  on Fri, 07 Apr 2006 09:51:58 +0100:

> some examples:
>
> . A few days ago someone posted on the dev list asking about KDE3.5.x and
> it's current masked status.  As a KDE user myself I was also interested in
> the answer to his question, but to my dismay his first response was less
> than helpful! Although he did eventually get a satisfactory response,
> wouldn't it have been better if he hadn't had to ask at all?

As a user and booster of my favorite meta-distribution =8^), that
disturbed me, too, both the one sort of (non)-response, and the fact that
the OP response indicated my own response might not have been as helpful
as intended.
 
> . I notice certain other popular distros are now running GCC4 (and have
> been for some time), yet we are still running 3.4.6 (on ~x86). [snip]
>
> . How's portage 2.1 getting along? I notice it gets frequent updates.
>
> I am not asking for answers for those questions, they are merely
> examples (I could think of many more, so please don't single these out).

I have a fair knowledge of the status of all three of those (tho not so
much on when something's going stable, or x86 in particular, as I run
~amd64 exclusively), because I have all three merged and running,
unmasking where necessary to do it.  (Xorg-7.0/modular is another example,
again, unmasked and merged early, here, after following the developments
on it here.)  However, getting bogged down in the examples won't further
the discussion, as you say.

>  The point I am making is how we (the users) are in the dark on how
> Gentoo is progressing. This is the main reason I have subscribed to this
> mailing list (as well as Gentoo-Users) in an attempt to keep track of
> what's happening, but without much success).

I've had a bit more success here, as I use this list as an pointer finder,
then follow those pointers to the appropriate lists and/or unmaskings
and/or status bugs to try for myself, if it looks interesting.

> Ideally, what I'd like is for the various dev teams to compile a weekly
> status report, which could then be compiled into the weekly newsletter
> (which currently seems to be lacking much useful information).  It would
> be great if we (the users) could find out what's going on behind the
> scenes of our favourite distribution.

I like the idea, but practically speaking, once a week is way to often, as
it will both increase the work load (thereby cutting the actual work done
on the project in question) and the noise factor.

I'd suggest (and maybe it's what you had in mind, but it just didn't come
out that way) a status report from one or two /feature/ projects each
week, not /all/ of them each week.  Rotate them such that all the
interesting ones (and ones with devs that want to participate) get covered
once every month or quarter.

I'd also point out the Gentoo Planet developer blogsite
( http://planet.gentoo.org ). Many devs have blogs that cover the stuff
their doing that users may find interesting, in more or less detail. 
Actually, /this/ needs to be covered a bit better or more frequently in
GWN, and that would pretty much eliminate the need for independent feature
coverage.

Note that GWN does cover it occasionally, but due to a rather nasty
incident some months ago where a dev thought the GWN article
misrepresented the situation from his blog (and not rehashing that or
pointing the blame at any party), the GWN folks likely avoid it to some
extent.  I don't think that's necessary, however, provided the snafus that
evidently happened there as far as notifying the dev in a timely manner
that his blog was going to be covered, could be avoided.

Thus, perhaps my suggestion should be to find someone that could dedicate
a bit of time each week (or once or twice a month in any case, it doesn't
have to be /every/ week) to such a feature.  Having someone routinely
responsible for it will take the pressure off the regular GWN editors, and
should encourage the necessary research and pre-feature dev contact, to
ensure things go smoothly and there's not a repeat of that earlier
unpleasant incident.

-- 
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 in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


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