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

[Rich Freeman]

On Tue, Oct 31, 2017 at 12:26 PM, Gregory Woodbury <redwolfe@×××××.com> wrote:
>
> by putting their stuff on /usr/... so that root now has
> to be merged with /usr,

Actually, the argument for merging root with /usr was more because it
would make it possible to mount it read-only and ensure its integrity.

As I understand it the historical reasons for separating them was a
lack of disk space on one of the early development systems.  That did
of course evolve into the boot-essential stuff on /.

A lot of the reason that this broke was because as systems became more
complex it became harder to identify everything needed during early
boot.  The example everybody drags out is bluetooth keyboards.

And with initramfs there really isn't much of a need to keep things
separate.  While it is nice that you can boot without an initramfs, it
doesn't really provide any benefit to do so.

> Yes, I *could* write it myself if I had
> the ability to devote my full time to producing a competing system.

You don't need to do this at all.  Just download a linux iso from Y2K
or so and it will probably behave exactly as you want it to.  :)

> The old UNIX philosophy of a
> 'program should do one thing - and do it well' with the ability to
> "pipe" the output of one program to another and another...  has gone
> right out of the window.

I guess it isn't a good time to point out this article:
http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/something-rotten-in-the-core/

While I love pipes and awd and sed and all that, there are a lot of
problems that they don't solve.

Plan 9 tried to abstract things like network connections and X11
windows into the filesystem.  That was a great concept, but when you
look at a modern window manager it seems like a losing battle to try
to either turn everything programs do into pipes, or limit what
programs "ought to do" to what can be done with pipes.

> I will admit to having a bias much in favor of the OpenRC methods.

I'm not really sure what OpenRC vs systemd and all that has to do with
this discussion.  Gentoo essentially supports both at this point, and
doesn't require any individual developer/contributor to support
either.

> I apologize for calling the Council inbred. But it would be a sign of
> respect and/or honor to be able to be called something like an
> associate developer with a voting privilege (maybe) and thus be able
> to join teams to contribute more actively. I probably would not
> require anything more than a relay @gentoo.org address, no blogs, no
> personal directory trees or webpages, maybe a directory space for
> uploading large bits of code when needed. Is it worth considering?

IMO the Council exists to help developers to create stuff and deal
with the resulting conflicts.  Having the developers who are actually
doing this work vote for the Council helps ensure that the Council is
aligned to this mission.  For the most part the Council tends to deal
with issues by trying to let everybody go forward with the projects
they are interested in and it tries to avoid picking winners.

It seems like having others voting for the Council would serve more to
use the Council as a tool to push developers to conform to some kind
of externally-imposed ideological purity.

If others don't disagree with what the developers are already voting
for, then there is no real value to having them also vote.  If they do
disagree, then do we really want a situation where the people who
contribute are being frustrated by a governance structure that isn't
responsive to their wishes, because it is in part elected by
non-developers who have different priorities?

As far as joining teams/etc go - you're generally welcome to do this
as a non-dev already.  Just contact the team lead and tell them how
you want to contribute.

-- 
Rich