Re: [gentoo-dev] Democracy: No silver bullet

[Grant Goodyear]

Chris Gianelloni wrote: [Fri Aug 25 2006, 01:35:53PM CDT]
> See, you missed that we're talking with the idea of people belonging to
> a project.  If you work on my project and quit, I'll know.  If you go
> AWOL, I'll know.  I can then simply ask Infra to remove your access.  It
> really should be that simple.

Unless I'm missing something, for your vision to pan out we would need 
a comprehensive project structure with every package and every aspect of
Gentoo development being part of a project that has an active and
competent lead.  One of the things that doomed the previous management
system was the fact that project leads who are both competent _and_
active tend to be in short supply.  (It's the _active_ part that really
tends to be the bigger problem.  Real life does tend to interfere, and
at least in the past we have lacked a good way to efficiently replace 
project leads who become less active.)

> If Infra is unable to do so due to being understaffed, then they
> should get more staff.

That's a bit like saying that if you can't afford something, you should
get more money.  It's a true statement, but it somehow ignores the fact
that doing so may be difficult.  *Shrug*  The last time I asked infra
about this, Kurt told me that their retention rate for new folks is
extremely low due.

> There are countless projects out there, many with many more developers
> than Gentoo, that are capable of maintaining themselves quite well.
> Why are we so different?

Perhaps because we compartmentalize rather less than most?  How
many people working on KDE are working on a broad swath of KDE?  Yet
it is common for Gentoo devs to be part of several different projects
while maintaining packages all across the tree.  Moreover, that's the
case not due to historical accident but to design: A gentoo dev w/ CVS
rights has the power to do (almost) anything.  Originally that level
of flexibility was intended to allow a very small number of people to 
reinforce each other, but even now it is something that sets Gentoo
apart.  My guess is that it also makes Gentoo devs less willing
to pigeon-hole themselves into a rigid project structure, but I don't
really have any evidence of that.

-g2boojum-
-- 
Grant Goodyear	
Gentoo Developer
g2boojum@g.o
http://www.gentoo.org/~g2boojum
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