Re: [gentoo-user] Through the looking glass: Reflections on Gentoo
Justin Findlay ha scritto: I don't claim that everybody should contribute the same effort or work or any work at all, but rather that you ought to at least care. Since I am not nor I can be a dev, can you explain me (1)how could I care (2)what kind of effort could I contribute? Contributing no work at all is not caring, is simply being unnecessarily sad for something I can't influence. I'm sorry but it seems plain nonsense to me. Not that, if I could do something, I wouldn't do, but this requires me (1)to understand what's really happening, instead of getting on the side of someone sending me emotion-loaded but zero-informational political spam (2)to understand what can I actively do, if a problem exists indeed. m. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Through the looking glass: Reflections on Gentoo
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Justin Findlay wrote: On AD 2007 January 07 Sunday 11:51:59 PM +0100, Hans-Werner Hilse wrote: But *I*, as a user (this is -user, after all!) don't feel bothered by any kind of bureaucracy. Please explain first why I should take action at all at the moment. And why I shouldn't just go and take the next distro that fits my needs best (b, Slackware :-)? You won't be bothered by bureacuracy untill the day you discover that that package you want has been left months ago to fall into ignominious forgottenness among the thicket of bugzilla ebuild requests or the day you discover your favorite package hasn't been updated in 2 years and the herd responsible won't (or can't?) respond to email inquiries. You will care that day when you realize many things that are wrong with gentoo may be the result of corruption or inefficiency. You should care because not even Free Software or gentoo is free. As in politics apathy will only get you what you want or keep the affairs of state safely insulated in the bureaucracy as long as somebody favorable or benign is in power. You may be satisfied with gentoo now but what will you do when emerge --sync stops working because somebody stopped caring? I don't claim that everybody should contribute the same effort or work or any work at all, but rather that you ought to at least care. Go ahead and pick up a copy of the next distro when gentoo crumbles to the ground but at least reflect then that each distro out there is made great by the work of lots of talented developers, volunteers most of them, because they care because they love hacking software. This isn't meant to chasten anyone into a state of open source piety, but rather is offered as a somewhat incoherent argument for why caring matters, because in the end free software is a human endeavor. Justin Well said, Justin. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFFokwW3Surd6QUhwQRAlcFAJ9ygdwtbhi7RhdAmTavxwjW47TEZACgiHf7 CCPfOAS0URrq9KN50KuB6P0= =BEPU -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Through the looking glass: Reflections on Gentoo
Hi, On Sun, 7 Jan 2007 22:14:26 +0100 Ivan Sakhalin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] Now, you that have read this far may wonder, what is my point? Quite simple, comrades. It is a warning I bring you, and I ask you to stop for a moment and reflect upon the situation we have right now. It seems that a small group of developers have ursurped power, leaving any checks and balances behind them to shape Gentoo in the image they see, not caring for any losses they cause. It can not be in the interest of a community to be ruled by such a group - even among devs equality is hard to find as som just have to be better than others. _I_ am not ruled by that group and you're possibly neither. What might be ruled by those ursurpators, which might or might not exist (names, dude, more facts...), is just Gentoo. [...] Cooperate you must, my friends. [...] Fear is the path to the dark side! Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate - and hate leads to - suffering. (SCNR... That's Yoda, of course) Only when you leave the infighting and bureaucracy behind can you aspire to true greatness. But *I*, as a user (this is -user, after all!) don't feel bothered by any kind of bureaucracy. Please explain first why I should take action at all at the moment. And why I shouldn't just go and take the next distro that fits my needs best (b, Slackware :-)? I don't want to say your points aren't valid. But they are not very substantiated (don't expect me to read back the last few months of gentoo-dev, bring examples!) and not focused on my context as a _user_... -hwh -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Through the looking glass: Reflections on Gentoo
As a user -not a dev, both because I have not the required knowledge nor the sparing time- these are my answers: I apologize for intruding onto your mailinglist, but what I wish to say is of great enough importance to me. You don't intrude onto my mailing list with people for something that's of importance to you. You should intrude for something that's of importance to *us*. This is a mutual help ML, not a confessional. My contributions are not much to speak of, and I've been silent for a long time. So I guess, like many before me, I will be stoned as a heretic instead of being listened to - that, my friends, is your prerogative as freethinking humans, but I must ask you to hear me out and think about what I say, not what I am. I'm not stoning you as heretic or what. I simply think you're writing to the wrong place. 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. This is sad, but Gentoo is a voluntary project, and I figure out people can come and go as freely as they like. So, no news here. 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 nothing about this, nor I care about inner fights between you all. What I care about are sane code, a stable and up-to-date system, and clever planning. I don't mind if you're doing it by biting each other to death in a thunderdome or if you are all holding your hands beneath a rainbow. Not because I'm cynic. Because I can do *plain nothing* to avoid this -I'm not a dev, nor I can be in the near future. So what? Post this to the devel mailing list. While the politics around these cases make rational discussion quite difficult it is obvious even to outsiders that this is not in the spirit of the original Gentoo Metadistribution - it even violates many of those so-called rules that were created to help the interaction between people from wildly divergent backgrounds. So denounce the violation of these rules to competent people. Devrel, as it stands, has always been controversial as everyone saw a different use for the rather unneeded concentration of power in the hands of 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? I don't know. I even don't know what devrel is. I suspect it's some high-level devel committee. Problem is, unilateral decisions AFAIK are needed for almost any sane free software project. Good OSS projects are, often (not always), projects with good Benevolent Dictators For Life: linux kernel = Linus Torvalds. perl = Larry Wall. python = Guido Van Rossum. openbsd = Theo de Raadt. ubuntu = Mark Shuttleworth, etc. Of course it is not always so, and Gentoo was apparently one of the happy exceptions. Problem is, democracy doesn't work so well in many of these cases -see the NetBSD vs OpenBSD forking, or the current sad state of Debian, that literally got on its knees by its intestine political fights. There have been and there are also thriving democratic projects, of course, and there are examples of the opposite (XFree86), but if Gentoo is not one of these, my own €0.02 is: get a benevolent dictator and follow him. So then, while that part is hard to discuss, I point at another issue: Everything that is not official (for certain undefined values of official - objectivity seems to be lost on many humans) is attacked, torn apart and 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 they can't let other people live in peace. It is this meddling in all affairs that crushes the spirit of freedom with a heavy boot - but as you all are volunteers it is hard to understand how you can treat each other like that. Tolerance, my friends, doesn't cost you much and will bring you much good karma. Can you point me at the relevant threads and IRC logs? Despite masked with redundant prose and so on, your talking just looks like plain (masked) bitching to me. However I could
Re: [gentoo-user] Through the looking glass: Reflections on Gentoo
b.n. wrote: As a user -not a dev, both because I have not the required knowledge nor the sparing time- these are my answers: snip 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 nothing about this, nor I care about inner fights between you all. What I care about are sane code, a stable and up-to-date system, and clever planning. I don't mind if you're doing it by biting each other to death in a thunderdome or if you are all holding your hands beneath a rainbow. Not because I'm cynic. Because I can do *plain nothing* to avoid this -I'm not a dev, nor I can be in the near future. So what? Post this to the devel mailing list. He did post this to the dev list. He posted it there first, well, I got it there first. I guess he could have sent it to both at the same time. snip Me too, but I'm really unsure you're really helping. m. Dale :-) :-) :-) -- www.myspace.com/dalek1967 -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Through the looking glass: Reflections on Gentoo
Dale ha scritto: He did post this to the dev list. He posted it there first, well, I got it there first. I guess he could have sent it to both at the same time. snip Yes, but why inflaming us? Me too, but I'm really unsure you're really helping. m. Oh, I just bit the flamebait :) Dale :-) :-) :-) -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Through the looking glass: Reflections on Gentoo
Ivan Sakhalin wrote: I apologize for intruding onto your mailinglist, but what I wish to say is of great enough importance to me. Just my thoughts: if you think you have something important to say, why don't you simply say it but instead start with thoughts about life, universe and everything? After reading the first 237 words of your post, I still had no idea what the heck you are talking about. Regards mks -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Through the looking glass: Reflections on Gentoo
b.n. wrote: Dale ha scritto: He did post this to the dev list. He posted it there first, well, I got it there first. I guess he could have sent it to both at the same time. snip Yes, but why inflaming us? Me too, but I'm really unsure you're really helping. m. Oh, I just bit the flamebait :) Dale :-) :-) :-) I dunno. Maybe he will explain that to us later on. Maybe he is seeing something that the rest of us are missing. Lots of possibilities I guess. I to have seen some people leave instead of continuing with the way things are. Gentoo is not perfect, nothing is really, but it is as close as it gets to me. It sure beats windoze. ;-) I'd like to help myself but I find it hard to do research and do much of anything because of this crappy dial-up I am on. Add in that I can't sit at this thing for very long because of arthritis and it sort of messes me up with what I would like to do. I need to get me a laptop. Maybe when I get this divorce behind me and get my finances back in order I can get one. She sort of did a number on my credit. Tried to do more but I'm disabled, not stupid. Maybe he will reply in a bit when he checks the replies he has gotten so far, if he doesn't feel he is jumping in a huge flame pit. Let's be nice now. :D Dale :-) :-) :-) -- www.myspace.com/dalek1967 -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Through the looking glass: Reflections on Gentoo
On AD 2007 January 07 Sunday 11:51:59 PM +0100, Hans-Werner Hilse wrote: But *I*, as a user (this is -user, after all!) don't feel bothered by any kind of bureaucracy. Please explain first why I should take action at all at the moment. And why I shouldn't just go and take the next distro that fits my needs best (b, Slackware :-)? You won't be bothered by bureacuracy untill the day you discover that that package you want has been left months ago to fall into ignominious forgottenness among the thicket of bugzilla ebuild requests or the day you discover your favorite package hasn't been updated in 2 years and the herd responsible won't (or can't?) respond to email inquiries. You will care that day when you realize many things that are wrong with gentoo may be the result of corruption or inefficiency. You should care because not even Free Software or gentoo is free. As in politics apathy will only get you what you want or keep the affairs of state safely insulated in the bureaucracy as long as somebody favorable or benign is in power. You may be satisfied with gentoo now but what will you do when emerge --sync stops working because somebody stopped caring? I don't claim that everybody should contribute the same effort or work or any work at all, but rather that you ought to at least care. Go ahead and pick up a copy of the next distro when gentoo crumbles to the ground but at least reflect then that each distro out there is made great by the work of lots of talented developers, volunteers most of them, because they care because they love hacking software. This isn't meant to chasten anyone into a state of open source piety, but rather is offered as a somewhat incoherent argument for why caring matters, because in the end free software is a human endeavor. Justin -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Through the looking glass: Reflections on Gentoo
On Sun, 7 Jan 2007 17:15:43 -0700, Justin Findlay wrote: You won't be bothered by bureacuracy untill the day you discover that that package you want has been left months ago to fall into ignominious forgottenness among the thicket of bugzilla ebuild requests or the day you discover your favorite package hasn't been updated in 2 years and the herd responsible won't (or can't?) respond to email inquiries. That's not bureaucracy, it's lack of interest or time. Gentoo devs are all volunteers, they work on whatever they have the desire and time to work on. If they don't have time or inclination to work on your favourite project, help them. -- Neil Bothwick There are some micro-organisms that exhibit characteristics of both plants and animals. When exposed to light they undergo photosynthesis; and when the lights go out, they turn into animals. But then again, don't we all? signature.asc Description: PGP signature
