[gentoo-dev] Retiring
Hi, I've enjoyed my time with Gentoo, mostly... But these days I've just got too demotivated to work on it. I might have stayed if Ken69267 posted me some Lifesavers, but he didn't. :( On a more serious note, the problem seems to be the complete lack of management in the required places, Gentoo is fast becoming (or more likely, already is) an anarchic organisation, where it's becoming nigh-on impossible to keep track of things. I see a number of issues with Gentoo these days. The lack of a proper leadership body. Lack of people working together in unison. The tree needs to be sorted out: we have 16000 packages, and 200-250 developers, not all of which are ebuild developers) - We're still using CVS, we do *not* have the manpower to keep all the packages updated properly using a centralised VCS. If these issues were fixed, I don't know/care how they do get fixed, but if they were, I might consider coming back. If you *really* want me to stay/not retire, and attempt to help fix these issues, then I guess I can do so if enough people request that of me. But I will do so purely in a managerial position, and will do no ebuild or other such development. I'll still hang around in various channels and so on and so forth. Whatever happens, I do apparently maintain a few misc packages, most of which are low maintenance. Various herds will now need a new lead (apologies guys), so that will have to be arranged as well. You will also need to find another slacker to replace me ;) If there isn't a mass revolt against my retirement, so long, and thanks for all the fish! Otherwise... We'll see. Thanks, welp
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
On Wed, 2009-05-06 at 01:45 +0300, Markos Chandras wrote: On Tuesday 05 May 2009 23:45:14 AllenJB wrote: [..snip..] I am sure there are some developers which can offer a great amount of time to help/revibe slacking or dead projects ( e.g. userrel, newsletters etc ). The thing is that leadership on several projects is inactive hence users or devs who are willing to help are getting demotivated. It would be really nice each individual project to perform a clean up like: 1) have an internal discussion about its goals and future 2) Remove dead members and elect a new leader if necessary 3) Update the page 4) Publish its status 5) Assist for help is necessary Looking 'active' is very important to attract new people to project. Is this so hard? This is a really good idea, and I think that such an operation should be performed (and perhaps even enforced as a yearly or twice-yearly thing). The only issue I have with the idea is that projects with dead members and slacking leaders are unlikely to perform such a task, so you'll never get any updates from them, so devs will be demotivated to work on $project, and thus we enter the vicious cycle again... welp
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
On Wed, 2009-05-06 at 19:40 +0100, Roy Bamford wrote: [..snip..] [snip] The only issue I have with the idea is that projects with dead members and slacking leaders are unlikely to perform such a task, so you'll never get any updates from them, so devs will be demotivated to work on $project, and thus we enter the vicious cycle again... welp Welp, Not so. These projects would be delegated upwards to the council and either scrapped offically, or some recruitment process started to breath new life into them. Maybe dead projects are cleaned like treecleaners ? This actually sounds like a pretty good idea, and one that I might actually be interested in. Someone working within such a project would have to be in close communication with most/all of the team leads within Gentoo. I feel that this would be a better solution than asking for (semi-)regular updates from the teams - having someone to have a chat with the team lead is much less formal and more relaxed way of ensuring that things are well. If it seems that the project is having problems staying alive, a call for help could be put out. If there is no improvement, the project could be referred to the Gentoo Council to see if it should be removed/abolished, otherwise... Opinions/ideas welpcome! welp
