Re: [gentoo-project] Clarify language of GLEP 39

[Rich Freeman]

On Sun, Jan 15, 2017 at 8:18 AM, Aaron Bauman <bman@g.o> wrote:
>
> I am not really sure what all the fluff is about, but I simply asked a yes
> or no question.  More plainly, do you really think the council has
> jurisdiction over GLEP39?
>

Honestly, I think my answer to that one is that it isn't really clear,
and as a result I think it is something best steered clear of.  I
won't argue that it doesn't have jurisdiction, but I wouldn't act as
if it does at least as far as the Council's own role is concerned.
That's just my opinion.  The Council might have a different one, and
if GLEP39 wants to post his own opinion on the matter I'm certainly
interested in it.  :)

I just wanted to use this as an opportunity to just point something
out: there aren't a lot of us.

Ultimately what brings us together as part of Gentoo is an interest in
source-based distros and the choices that they afford us, and the way
Gentoo in particular makes it practical to exercise our choices.
Unfortunately just this simple focus makes Gentoo a very small
community to start with.  Some question whether it is even
sustainable, though I might point out that we probably support more
arch choices than virtually any other distro out there.  How many
support mips, ia64, sparc, and alpha still?  :)

Now, if you want to make the other choice, having a binary distro,
that still leaves you with about 50 other choices you can make and
still have a sustainable distro that meets your particular niche.  You
can have the binary distro that is FOSS-only.  You can have the binary
distro that puts pragmatism above all.  You can have the binary distro
that will run the same ELF for 10+ years with security updates.  You
can have the binary distro built around your favorite DE.  You can
have the binary distro that sticks to upstream.  You can have the
binary distro where everybody loves systemd, or the binary distro
where everybody hates systemd.

Long ago there weren't so many distros out there.  Most of them forked
because the community became split on some specific detail, or enough
people realized that a bunch of people had a particular need and it
was viable to make a distro to cater to it.

So, it isn't surprising to me that we end up having a lot of internal
debates over all this stuff.  If we were a popular binary distro we'd
probably just split up and form two popular binary distros over many
of these debates, and people would choose their side, and everybody
would probably be happier as a result.  Unfortunately the number of
people who want to run a source-based distro and are strict
constitutional constructionists probably isn't enough to be a viable
distro.  The number of people who want a source-based distro and are
SJWs on the side probably isn't enough to be viable.  The number of
people who want a source-based distro and don't want to have any kind
of CoC probably aren't viable.  And so on.

And thus we muddle on, trying to find the middle road as best we can,
not so much pleasing everybody, but trying not to displease everybody.
We're forced to be a "big tent" so sometimes you just need to wear
your deodorant...

-- 
Rich