Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Public Relations, was: Re: [gentoo-core] proposal: make gentoo-core publicly read-only

[Stewart Honsberger]

Paul wrote:

> 	Ever since Ive been reading this list, Ive seen this as a
> perenial point of contention. I think that this is a touchy issue
> because some people _do_ feel there is lack of transparancy, and
> a wall between developers and users. I know this feeling because
> I have been conditioned to not submit ebuilds anymore, after
> having submitted them regularly for some time; (I touch upon this
> in bug 6808)

Reading over that bug, I find myself rather dissapointed. The system 
seems to have failed you, and that sucks. I also disagree with many of 
the sentiments expressed in the comments and feel that an application 
such as that could/would be used by a nontrivial number of people; 
certainly enough to warrant inclusion in the tree.

When I have time, I peruse the new bugs and try to work on as many bugs 
and ebuild updates/submissions as I possibly can, and I know there are 
other developers out there who do the same. I hope you'll have better 
experience in the future, especially if you're as experienced at writing 
ebuilds as you appear to be. We don't need to turn away quality 
contributions.

> 	Instead of tortured analogies, just say it the way it
> is; "we want core closed, and if you dont like it, you are free
> to choose another distribution, or fork..."

I greatly dislike arguing by analogy. Arguing by analogy is like ... ;)

But basically, yes, -core is a list that has many reasons to remain 
closed. As I said in a previous message; if -core is opened up and 
developers really want to talk in private they'll find another venue to 
do so. (I'm sure I could get Majordomo whipped into shape inside of an 
afternoon.)

I'm not saying this is a justified course of action, but merely that it 
is a fact of human nature. The Internet happens to be great for enabling 
people to discuss openly and/or privately.

Remember, too, that we've got people like Josh Brindle, head of Gentoo 
Hardened. Consulting on encrypting the contents of this uber-secret 
meeting place would be a snap. ;>

As for finding another distribution, well, I'm afraid you'll find 
yourself much in the same boat there. Gentoo operates almost entirely 
via electronic communication. The likes of SuSE, RedHat et al. have 
physical space in which to hold meetings of the board and the core 
developers. I'd be willing to bet a week's worth of socks that they 
don't transcribe those meetings and make them available to their 
userbase. Because of the nature of those distributions, I'm sure it's 
also never really occurred to the users to ask either.

As to whether or not you (in the general sense) really want to read 
-core, well, that's up in the air but I doubt it. Most people who do 
likely wouldn't do so for very long. Frankly, it's not THAT interesting, 
and certainly not earth shattering. Anything important or developmental 
in nature is forwarded/CC'ed to -dev anyways.

> 	There is a certain amount of FUD associated with Gentoos
> recent fork, and issues regarding its incorporation, and internal
> organisation. (Ive seen it on my local LUG list-- people saying
> 'Ive heard this and that and this; maybe youd better think twice
> before commiting to Gentoo...')  That is to say, these feelings
> and doubts are very real, and I hope that even though core
> members find them baseless, that they find a way to communicate
> that without seeming so condescending.

I've known a lot of developers in a lot of open source projects who've 
become very condescending of their userbase. One developer went so far 
as to say; "${PROJECT} developers shouldn't waste their time hunting 
down bugs, we're too busy developing new features."

Except that it's quite a major project, I'd have left over an unchecked 
comment like that.

Sometimes developers forget that they're users too, and at one point 
they were users who didn't have cvs commit access. I think a lot of them 
forget just how powerless you can feel at times. Hopefully if more 
people come forward and explain their feelings as eloquently as you 
have, more developers will stop and think about what they're saying 
before they hit 'send'. Of course, hopefully Gentoo developers will grow 
to be better than that in the first place. We can hope. :>

Stick with it. Gentoo is a great distribution, and so long as the future 
is planned for and the right changes are made, it'll become even better 
in times to come, but we can't do it if we alienate our userbase.

-- 
Stewart Honsberger
Gentoo Developer
http://www.snerk.org/


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