Re: [gentoo-dev] flamewars@gentoo-dev

[Ciaran McCreesh]

On Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:17:56 +0400
Ivan Chernyavsky <camposer@××××××.ru> wrote:
> Recently I've subscribed to this list because I thought this is the
> right way to start being involved in Gentoo development process --- I
> thought technical discussions are of most importance here.

You are sadly mistaken. Gentoo hasn't been able to deliver technical
progress for a long time, and anyone attempting to get anywhere will be
met with constant attacks from people who are unable to admit to
themselves that some fairly major changes are needed to allow Gentoo to
keep up with the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, Gentoo is now more concerned about pandering to its
'community' (in reality a small number of prolific forums posters who
run Ubuntu) and stroking the egos of certain old-time staffers who
haven't actually done anything for years. Getting anything done
requires wasting large amounts of time dealing with people who:

* do nothing but post links to that 'poisonous people' talk at random
intervals and accuse people of being useless trolls, thus exhibiting all
the hallmarks of being poisonous useless trolls themselves.

* dismiss any technical criticism as being a 'corner case'.

* think that their opinion is important despite them not understanding
what's under discussion.

* immediately claim that any thread with more than five posts is a
flamewar.

* deliberately disguise any point they may or not be making in horridly
broken English (despite being a native speaker) just to wind people up.

* yell about how projects 'aren't sufficiently inclusive' without ever
bothering to either contribute themselves. or check whether anyone else
has tried to contribute.

* refuse to get involved in technical discussions on mailing lists or
irc where people can disagree with them, instead keeping all their
development discussion on their blog where they can delete any comment
questioning their decisions.

* pull silly emo tactics like posting "I'm not posting to this list any
more" or "I'm telling everyone I'm killfileing you" or "I'm going to
get my employer to end hosting Gentoo hardware unless you do
everything I say" in an attempt to disrupt progress even further.

* consider being in an uninformed majority more important than being
correct.

* have some insane paranoid conviction that Freenode staff are the ones
busy spying on everything they say, whilst conveniently forgetting to
notice that Gentoo's own infra team and current Council nomination group
includes the person who abused root powers to sniff out lilo's password
and give it to the GNAA.

* use every given opportunity to disrupt things by saying "Why haven't
the Portage people contributed to this?", knowing full well that the
Portage person is busy doing other things.

* conveniently forget that Portage is the thing holding Gentoo back.

* will reply to any post suggesting that things are less than perfect
with "well go away and fork Gentoo then".

* think that any unanswered posts from people doing any of the above is
sufficient reason for progress to be blocked until all the above are
satisfied, which of course they won't ever be.

And in amongst all of this, if you fight really really hard, you might,
after several months and a whole lot of people trying to kill you,
eventually get agreement upon some very minor technical point that's
necessary to start getting somewhere. Which is a shame, because Gentoo
could quite easily become a lot better than it is.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh