Hi,

Ivan Sakhalin wrote:
Now, our memories of the past are not always as thruthful as we would like
them to be, selective memory is what makes some large things small and some
small things large. So let us not idealize the past as if it had no problems,
but let us try to keep a perspective on how things have changed, evolved
maybe, into what they are now and what they may become.

Let us also not forget that a very vocal minority doesn't make a majority.

    Many good people, having all attained the rank of full developer, have
retired, with a noticeable increase in the last trimester or so. Some have
retired to avoid all the political tomfoolery that kept them from enjoying
their work, some left as they found something else to fill that special place
in their heart. Some, sadly, did not feel they could contribute enough as
real life took its toll - may they find some time in the future. And a very
selected few, regrettably, were retired against their will.

Depends on your point of view. Some of these "regrettable" cases weren't that regrettable to me.

    These removals even went outside the ranks of developers - the hostile
takeover of some IRC channels has caused unneeded tension between groups that
should cooperate. It is a sad day when the appearance of a gentoo developer
may be the first sign that your channel will now be censored and people
removed that have dissenting opinions.

I don't know what you're talking about here. Can you elaborate?

a few people. But when people are denied an appeal and devrel unilaterally
decides, ignoring policies and common sense, what is one supposed to think?

Same here.

Everything that is not official (for certain undefined values of official -
objectivity seems to be lost on many humans) is attacked, torn apart and

By the very vocal minority. Be reminded that the large majority of the devs doesn't give a damn, to be clear.

insulted. A great example of that is the Sunrise Overlay, which has become
quite a success, with a few of the community members becoming devs - at the
same time I see with sadness that at least one dev has retired because of
Sunrise. What madness there is when people leave such a great project because

One. It was his own choice, so I don't think that incident is too dramatic.

    I ask you not to redo the errors of the past and remember the lessons
learned - there is so much that needs to be done, but no single person has
the strength to do them. Cooperate you must, my friends. Only when you leave
the infighting and bureaucracy behind can you aspire to true greatness.

You're not the first one to figure this out. It looks quite simple, and everybody will agree with your statement above, because it is not practical at all. As soon as you get into implementation of above wisdom, things get complicated. So, if you seriously want to help Gentoo, do it in a concrete manner.

       - Reduce the rules so that things can be done without a week of
discussion for every small idea

This is a very interesting idea. Do you genuinely think that less rules will result in less discussion? Quite the contrary, my friend. If there is no rule for an action, there will be a discussion whether said action was good or not.

We don't need more or less rules, we need better rules.

       - how can the environment be improved so that people can enjoy their
work and not care about silly problems?

Shut up the people that cause silly problems. We've done it before, it works.

So, with that being said, I hope that things change for the better.

I doubt so, to be honest.

--
Kind Regards,

Simon Stelling
Gentoo/AMD64 Developer
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Reply via email to