Gentoo Archives: gentoo-nfp

From: Jan Bilek <clonolu@×××××.com>
To: Christian Faulhammer <opfer@g.o>
Cc: gentoo-nfp@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-nfp] Re: How to improve the trustees
Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2008 01:20:11
Message-Id: ce281f210802031719la91aa56vb939f0280280451f@mail.gmail.com
In Reply to: [gentoo-nfp] Re: How to improve the trustees by Christian Faulhammer
1 Hi again,
2
3 I want to write some kind of 'a summary answer' addressed to all of
4 you who reacted to my posts - thank you very much for your answers.
5
6 Obviously there were many things that I was not informed properly
7 about and you have explained many of them to me - thanx.
8
9 Please forgive me for being so sceptical about those 'formal and
10 instititutionalized' ways of doing things (regular
11 meetings/summaries/named positions). I do realize now that I saw only
12 a small part of a picture when I wrote about it and I hope nobody took
13 it personally (if someone did - I am so sorry about it).
14 BTW - this might be some kind of a cultural issue; seeing your names I
15 guess none of you is from eastern Europe... we used to live in this
16 centrally and formally organized society based on regular meetings,
17 summaries and people assigned to every task possible - and it was not
18 efficient, it sucked and everybody hated it.
19 It might be useful to know about this issue - seeing this
20 (http://www.google.com/trends?q=gentoo) I would guess great deal of
21 people interested in Gentoo are from eastern Europe.
22
23 My goal is not to criticize, my goal is to get closer to the truth
24 about current state and possible future of Gentoo.
25
26 As an user I had almost no first-hand experience. I had to rely on
27 second-hand conveyed information:
28 Daniel Robbins claiming that there is a crisis in Gentoo (he is some
29 kind of an authority to many users - when he says something I have to
30 take it seriously). Some of his arguments seem to be very logical and
31 insightful and some things seem to support his opinions:
32 - so many people obviously supporting him
33 (http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-644321-highlight-robbins.html).
34 - Gentoo used to be 'bleeding edge' - it's not anymore.
35 - I remember the last big crisis 'Robbins vs. McCreesh', valuable
36 developers leaving Gentoo as a result... and in my opinion
37 Council/devrel were not able to handle it, the only outcome I noticed
38 was toothless CoC - that didn't seem like viable management to me.
39 - complaining users - I have read so many complaints, many of them are
40 very similar and frequent (let me paraphrase): 'Gendoo developers are
41 arrogant'. 'Gentoo is a club for elitists'. 'They do Gentoo just for
42 yourselves, they don't care about users'. 'I wanted to help Gentoo but
43 it's too difficult to get in'. 'It takes too long for ebuilds to get
44 to the official tree and I miss important apps'. 'Gentoo's structure
45 is not flexible enough - Arch is also great and it's much easier to
46 contibute', 'I sent patch but no one carred', 'dev told me in response
47 to a bug report I filed 'get over it and move on'.
48
49 On the other end:
50 - developers claiming that technically Gentoo works better then ever.
51 And as for me Gentoo really works well.
52 - my personal experience with Gentoo developers is great - you have
53 been very nice to me. And I have read many posts from people like
54 Grant Goodyear and the others - to me they seem to be very smart,
55 communicative and constructive people.
56 - some of these complaining users seem to me to be just people who
57 like to follow the strong leader no matter where he leads them.
58 - some of these complaining users seem to me to be just whiners who
59 want everything, don't understand anything, don't even bother to do
60 anything and just call developers 'arrogant bastards' when they are
61 not able to give them what they want - of course for free.
62 - many of users (talking about myself right now?) don't understand
63 what is going on, trying to figure it out, confused by inconsistent
64 news, misleading information and sometimes lack of information (some
65 want missing apps but don't know about overlays, some are talking
66 about Arch and it's openness (AUR) but maybe don't know about details
67 of Gentoo's QA and security/quality issues related to the openness,
68 some are talking about bad communication but don't know all the
69 channels of communication, don't have time to follow up...etc. etc.).
70
71 We all know that communication is crucial. Someone could say users are
72 responsible to find the information they need. But it's useful (for
73 Gentoo, even for developers) to make it as easy as possible for them.
74 I think this "A more "in your face" approach" idea you came up with is
75 great and as an user I can say "yes, that's what I need everywhere
76 where it's possible".
77
78 Generally... I think that it's better to suppose that the complainers
79 might be right and look into it (and maybe find out that they are
80 not). If they are right you can fix things. If they are not you can
81 explain it to them and you are not going to lose them. That's why I
82 have written those posts - trying to express my actual thoughts and
83 see if they can be helpful or they will be just put right.
84
85 At least by giving you an opportunity to correct my misperceptions of
86 some things related to Gentoo I also gave you an opportunity to
87 communicate to users who google "gentoo crisis":-)
88
89 Thanks for all the work you do for us,
90 Jan.
91
92
93 P.S. - I am sorry about that formatting issue - my fault.
94 --
95 gentoo-nfp@l.g.o mailing list

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-nfp] Re: How to improve the trustees Alec Warner <antarus@g.o>
[gentoo-nfp] Re: How to improve the trustees Christian Faulhammer <opfer@g.o>
Re: [gentoo-nfp] Re: How to improve the trustees Roy Bamford <neddyseagoon@g.o>