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Hi again, |
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|
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I want to write some kind of 'a summary answer' addressed to all of |
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you who reacted to my posts - thank you very much for your answers. |
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|
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Obviously there were many things that I was not informed properly |
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about and you have explained many of them to me - thanx. |
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|
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Please forgive me for being so sceptical about those 'formal and |
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instititutionalized' ways of doing things (regular |
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meetings/summaries/named positions). I do realize now that I saw only |
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a small part of a picture when I wrote about it and I hope nobody took |
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it personally (if someone did - I am so sorry about it). |
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BTW - this might be some kind of a cultural issue; seeing your names I |
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guess none of you is from eastern Europe... we used to live in this |
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centrally and formally organized society based on regular meetings, |
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summaries and people assigned to every task possible - and it was not |
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efficient, it sucked and everybody hated it. |
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It might be useful to know about this issue - seeing this |
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(http://www.google.com/trends?q=gentoo) I would guess great deal of |
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people interested in Gentoo are from eastern Europe. |
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|
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My goal is not to criticize, my goal is to get closer to the truth |
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about current state and possible future of Gentoo. |
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|
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As an user I had almost no first-hand experience. I had to rely on |
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second-hand conveyed information: |
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Daniel Robbins claiming that there is a crisis in Gentoo (he is some |
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kind of an authority to many users - when he says something I have to |
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take it seriously). Some of his arguments seem to be very logical and |
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insightful and some things seem to support his opinions: |
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- so many people obviously supporting him |
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(http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-644321-highlight-robbins.html). |
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- Gentoo used to be 'bleeding edge' - it's not anymore. |
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- I remember the last big crisis 'Robbins vs. McCreesh', valuable |
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developers leaving Gentoo as a result... and in my opinion |
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Council/devrel were not able to handle it, the only outcome I noticed |
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was toothless CoC - that didn't seem like viable management to me. |
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- complaining users - I have read so many complaints, many of them are |
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very similar and frequent (let me paraphrase): 'Gendoo developers are |
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arrogant'. 'Gentoo is a club for elitists'. 'They do Gentoo just for |
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yourselves, they don't care about users'. 'I wanted to help Gentoo but |
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it's too difficult to get in'. 'It takes too long for ebuilds to get |
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to the official tree and I miss important apps'. 'Gentoo's structure |
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is not flexible enough - Arch is also great and it's much easier to |
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contibute', 'I sent patch but no one carred', 'dev told me in response |
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to a bug report I filed 'get over it and move on'. |
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|
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On the other end: |
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- developers claiming that technically Gentoo works better then ever. |
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And as for me Gentoo really works well. |
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- my personal experience with Gentoo developers is great - you have |
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been very nice to me. And I have read many posts from people like |
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Grant Goodyear and the others - to me they seem to be very smart, |
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communicative and constructive people. |
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- some of these complaining users seem to me to be just people who |
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like to follow the strong leader no matter where he leads them. |
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- some of these complaining users seem to me to be just whiners who |
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want everything, don't understand anything, don't even bother to do |
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anything and just call developers 'arrogant bastards' when they are |
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not able to give them what they want - of course for free. |
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- many of users (talking about myself right now?) don't understand |
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what is going on, trying to figure it out, confused by inconsistent |
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news, misleading information and sometimes lack of information (some |
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want missing apps but don't know about overlays, some are talking |
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about Arch and it's openness (AUR) but maybe don't know about details |
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of Gentoo's QA and security/quality issues related to the openness, |
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some are talking about bad communication but don't know all the |
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channels of communication, don't have time to follow up...etc. etc.). |
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|
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We all know that communication is crucial. Someone could say users are |
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responsible to find the information they need. But it's useful (for |
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Gentoo, even for developers) to make it as easy as possible for them. |
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I think this "A more "in your face" approach" idea you came up with is |
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great and as an user I can say "yes, that's what I need everywhere |
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where it's possible". |
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|
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Generally... I think that it's better to suppose that the complainers |
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might be right and look into it (and maybe find out that they are |
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not). If they are right you can fix things. If they are not you can |
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explain it to them and you are not going to lose them. That's why I |
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have written those posts - trying to express my actual thoughts and |
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see if they can be helpful or they will be just put right. |
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|
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At least by giving you an opportunity to correct my misperceptions of |
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some things related to Gentoo I also gave you an opportunity to |
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communicate to users who google "gentoo crisis":-) |
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|
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Thanks for all the work you do for us, |
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Jan. |
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P.S. - I am sorry about that formatting issue - my fault. |
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-- |
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gentoo-nfp@l.g.o mailing list |