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On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 12:43 PM, Alexey Lapitsky <lex.public@×××××.com> wrote: |
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> |
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> 1. Volunteer work. |
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> Anthony, I'm glad that you brought up volunteer work. |
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> I'm pretty sure Gentoo Infra team is extremely busy with all kinds of |
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> problems. The volunteers' time is arguably the most valuable resource |
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> Gentoo has. |
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> In my opinion we should do everything possible in order to save |
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> volunteers' time, especially when it comes to baseline work (such as |
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> maintaining and upgrading the infra services). |
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> |
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> From this perspective, It would be unreasonable to ask Gentoo Infra |
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> team to support an open-source solution because GitHub might change |
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> policy. |
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> GitHub policy change would only affect Gentoo short term. GitHub usage |
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> will bring a lot of value and will save volunteers' time long-term. |
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|
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In my experience you actually have to approach volunteer work in the |
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opposite way. |
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|
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Ask whatever you want, just don't expect it to happen unless you're |
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the volunteer. |
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|
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There is nothing wrong with pointing out that using a proprietary |
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solution like Github is problematic, and calling for somebody to |
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deploy something free instead. |
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|
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It is even better if you go ahead and step up and deploy something |
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free yourself. You don't need anybody's permission to set up Gitlab |
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for Gentoo. Heck, I'm betting the Council/Trustees would even be |
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willing to let you have a gentoo.org subdomain for it. |
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|
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Volunteers are often motivated by perceived benefit of their work. If |
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they feel like the thing they're working on is really worthwhile and |
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sought after, they're probably more likely to put in time working on |
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it. However, that isn't a guarantee - something vital to Gentoo could |
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easily go years without any volunteer contributions at all. |
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I do think it would be beneficial to make our infra more portable for |
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this reason. I think having official Gentoo infra makes a lot of |
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sense, but ideally it should be possible for anybody with a stack of |
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VMs/containers to be able to spin up their own Gentoo infra such that |
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if they just pointed their DNS server at it, then all the Gentoo tools |
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work just fine. That will make it easier for everybody to contribute |
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to infra, and make everything that much more portable when inevitably |
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one of our sponsors has to drop us (we have incredibly generous |
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sponsors, but not every arrangement can last forever). |
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|
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-- |
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Rich |