[gentoo-dev] My turn to wear the cursed medalion of retirement

[Alexandre Buisse]

Hi,

I think the time has come for me to retire as a gentoo dev. There are
multiple reasons to that, but mainly, it has stopped being fun a good
while ago, and I don't like where I see the project heading. 

One of the main reasons that I am involved in free software in the first
place is because of I value things like freedom or openness, and not
only for code. I don't see gentoo caring very much for those today, and
worst, I can only see the situation getting worse on those matters. I am
also worried about power in gentoo, since it seems there are no
boundaries to the council, which doesn't even feel like it needs to
listen to what the community thinks, as was illustrated by the stupidly
fast adoption of the Code of Conduct. And the endless fights about who
gets a tiny bit more of power over ${media} are also starting to really
tire me.

I'm also worried of how more and more things get done secretly, be it
because "we don't want bad PR" or because "feedback at this stage would
only slow things down". We shouldn't consider users as idiots or people
from whom we need to hide. This is free software, remember?

Another thing that I dislike are the rules that get added everywhere.
There is a growing layer of bureaucracy, and I really don't think we
want to go in this direction. It restricts freedom, it takes time and
energy and it encourages playing "by the rule book" which I thought was
opposed to the very spirit of free software. More rules won't help us
solving whatever problems we may have, but it will certainly make the
project less fun to work on.

I see a general trend, sometimes wished for, of becoming a business-like
environment. Including a proper hierarchy and a "rule enforcement"
department. Well, I'll tell you what: I don't want a boss, especially on
a voluntary project. And, though I perfectly understand that this is not
shared by everyone else, I couldn't care less about being a business or
not.

To end my list of griefs, I really dislike the fact that people with a
gentoo.org address think of themselves as somehow better than users (I
don't throw the stone to anyone, I certainly did indulge in this as
well). I feel that gentoo is not enough about users, and that they don't
get even the respect everyone deserves. Unfortunately, projects like
userrel can only do so much when the real problem is in everyone's
mindset. And I don't really see a solution to this problem being found
anytime soon, since the said problem isn't even acknowledged.


I'm aware that in a perfect world, I would stay on board and try to
steer the project in a direction that I would like. I tried that for a
bit and it was quite obvious that I wouldn't be supported by a
significant part of the community. And I don't have the time nor energy
to lobby this properly. I had some ideas for a metastructure proposal
that would perhaps have helped some of the issues I talked about, but I
honestly don't think it would have stood any chance of being accepted,
especially since it would have meant suppressing the council power *and*
would have needed to be voted by the same council.
So I can only hope that things will change for the better in the future,
perhaps with a fork, which, if done properly, would imho help a lot with
the currently perceived issues.



Now, for some technical points about packages I used to maintain:
- ml is left in good hands since aballier actively takes care of it
- tex is basically unmaintained. Perhaps ehmsen can be talked out of
  MIA, though I guess he's pretty busy at the moment, and Opfer also
  seemed quite interested. I've received a couple offers from users who
  would like to get more involved but so far no one really helped much
  with bugs. The new tex guy will also have the big task of preparing
  the switch from tetex to texlive.
- math-proof didn't work as well as expected, mainly because I didn't
  have enough time to populate it properly. coq can probably go back to
  ml but agda is maintainer-needed. If someone is willing to proxy me, I
  can continue doing it (should be very low volume).
- misc packages, can probably go back into respective herds:
    - media-gfx/llgal
    - media-gfx/ufraw
    - media-sound/lltag
    - media-libs/exiftool

There are drafts for a LaTeX documentation, untouched in a year or so on
my devspace, I saved a copy if needed. The current stable tetex release
has in SRC_URI a tarball located in my home, I didn't know how to handle
this properly so please poke me before erasing the whole thing (I have a
local copy as well). Everything else is unimportant. I trust devrel to
wipe me out on every other medium :)

I can still be reached at the email address 

alexandre DOT buisse AT ens-lyon DOT org

and chances are I'll still hang around irc.


As a final word (sorry, this got a bit longer than planned), let me say
that if I sounded bitter in the beginning of this email, it's only
because I care a lot about gentoo, and I hope that this email, in its
modest way, will help making it a little bit better. And I would like to
thank everyone involved for the great time I had during this year and a
half of devship!

See you on the other side,
/Alexandre
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