[gentoo-user] Re: Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[James]

Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon <at> gmail.com> writes:


> > It could just be managerial ineptitude though, combined with
> > emotional immaturity of certain persons (if Alan's previous critique
> > re.treating persons as machines holds true).

> Odds are that this is the real explanation. Gentoo management is full of
> people who are good devs but simply do not know how to run a group. To
> see this, just read over minutes of meeting etc held on IRC. There's
> little evidence of a meeting being chaired by someone who keeps things
> on track and on agenda, and meetings usually devolve into discussions
> of technical matters.

> It's entirely reasonable to assume that these same people will just
> ignore things outside their expertise that they don't understand and
> hope the problem will go away if they ignore it.

> Just as the solution to having a maintainer of a project that can't code
> is to replace him with someone who can, the solution to gentoo's
> current woes seems to be to appoint bodies to management who do know
> how to do it and have a track record of doing it.


OK, let assume you are correct, and the majority of users support these
consensus  beliefs. How do we go about doing this (fixing gentoo with
some documents that define the organization and lines of authority?  
I know how to do it mechanically and legally but how to we get devs to 
agree with being managed by anyone? After all, there are no paychecks here.

My alluding to the tribal system is because technical folks will follow
a technically strong leader. Are enough of those tribal (elites) willing
to be managed? If so, surely they will want quite a lot of say in 
how a new structure to manage Gentoo is structured and organized. The
fact they are discussing this seems like the majority of devs will
make a decision and let us know?   Surely they will want a person that
is mature and calm, yet very saavy with technology and Gentoo. 

We can put together a very good guidance document, borrowing from other 
projects and non profits, and add some interesting language, but if the
majority, or at least a handful of tribal leader do not agree, we are dead, 
or starting our own fork.....

It's more likely the user community will rally behind a group of devs,
that decide to fork, or the bickering will just continue until everyone
leaves?   I have not read any of their posts (the devs) nor any of the 
infighting. If they want help, they have to reach out. If they are determined
to intellectually bludgeon one another, all we can do is prepare our ideas,
here in this forum into a document, and humbly submit it to of those
tribal leaders that might be receptive?

Maybe someone that reads this solicit from the devs a list of grievances and we
can begin drafting documents that the devs can comment on and we continue
the process until 'the beast is soothed' ?

Does anyone think they can get cooler heads among the devs to participate 
in a process like this, or something similar?  I do not know any of the 
devs enough to know who to approach..... 


???

James




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