Re: [gentoo-project] Discontinuing the support for GitHub pull requests

[Gregory Woodbury]

TL;DR: A screed about the infighting and politics that limits, IMO, the reach
and acceptance of Gentoo in the Open Source community.

I would like to suggest that, perhaps, Gentoo has a problem with the
high barriers
required to become a "developer" (and thus a "member") of the project.

I understand the concerns that Gentoo wants to guarantee that the project
provides high-quality software. However, quite a number of people I know have
taken a look at the requirements documents and decided that the hoops are
too messy and unnecessary for them to show that they are competent. Many of them
are already familiar with the methods and tools, and it is insulting
that they would
have to go through an "apprenticeship" before they are allowed to even
submit patches.

I wonder if there are any of the current developers that would go
through the whole
process if it was required to renew their membership in the project.

Andreas himself said:
| And, yes I freely admit I stopped looking at github notifications some time
| ago. Right now I have 193 unread notifications from gentoo/gentoo.

Michal said in the opening post:
| We have maybe a dozen developers who are actually looking through their
| own pull requests. Everything else is usually reviewed by the few active
| proxy-maint team members who are simply overwhelmed with work. What's
| even worse, they are regularly attacked by other developers which
| doesn't really encourage further work.

These "attacks" (strong complaints and abusive language) do not improve
the reputation of Gentoo out in the world. The other week I did a brief report
on the Gentoo project and an update on the status of the repositories with
regards to the latest software packages. The 'lightning talk' was appreciated
but a few comments were made that several folks used and liked Gentoo,
but were discouraged about the future of the project due to the politics.

I discovered Gentoo about 2009, and have moved all my use of Linux
to the Gentoo platform. I quit another project (think of a rouge chappeau)
because I didn't agree with the direction they were taking, and have been
filing bug reports and reading lots of mailing lists ever since. I tried
hanging out on the IRC channels, but found it not worth the effort because
of some hostility over giving answers that were not "proper procedure"
and other piddling put-downs.

I have actually been programming since 1958, after learning FORTRAN
by keypunching programs for my Father on weekends and evenings. In
High School (circa 1970) i elected to go for a B.S. in Computer Science
with a strong elective set in genetics. Working at Duke in 1978, I was
somewhat involved in the development and administration of a system
that was in the same room and the CS machine that was used to develop
NetNews/USENET. A null modem and serial cables allowed for testing
much of the development without needing to use slow modem connections.
The systems were, of course, running UNIX. In 1980, I tried my hand
at being a 'consultant' in the NYC Metro area, mostly at Bell Labs and
NY Telephone. When I had to take a short gig on Wall Street, I couldn't
deal any longer with the commercial scene, and went back to Duke, and
spent another 25 years working as a system admin, programmer, and
on-campus consultant, jumping on the Linux bandwagon very early.
With such a background, I find the "required" hoops of the Gentoo
developer admission process very insulting, especially in light of the
politics I have observed; and I have no patience or inclination to deal
with it just to become a member of the "inner circle" and get a chance
to obtain commit access and to vote for the inbred council.

After 59 years of programming, admining (excuse me - DevOps), testing,
on a wide variety of platforms, I can be cranky and fussy. The thing is:
       I do care about Gentoo.

I can see the politics (which is the art of dealing with groups of people),
and even occasionally contribute to it; and I can ignore it when necessary.
I will continue to use Gentoo, and make bug reports, submit patches
via bugzilla and just carry on until my body no longer can function. I would
like to see Gentoo become more open and much less political. But I won't
bet the farm on that happening.


P.S: Just a thought: make every developer an automatic member of a
QA project, with a goal of getting proposed patches reviewed within
90 days of being submitted. A kit of patches will be one or few lines that
make updates of minor corrections, and some may take a lot
of effort to review.  Any developer can review any patch, and then commit
good minor ones,and make a recommendation on good major patches
to the maintainer. Rejected patches get sent back to the submitter with
a note about why it was rejected [such as 'unnecessary feature',
'moot with new version', 'please revise in light of _____', etc.] Web tools
to support this workflow should not be too hard to make. (I am actually
surprised that there is not more automations to support development, but I
suspect each developer would prefer to use the toolsets they are most
comfortable with when working.) The possessiveness of (some/many/most)
developers is one of the wort aspects of Open Source programming these
days, and Gentoo is rife with it (but not as bad as some other well-known
Linux projects.)

Please think about this, and thanks for reading this far.

-- 
G.Wolfe Woodbury, aka Redwolfe
et cetera....