On Wed, 2007-04-11 at 00:05 +0300, Alon Bar-Lev wrote: > I don't think this is the reason people are leaving.
Agreed. > I think people are leaving because a lack of direction. I also agree here, but only to an extent. > I am not aware of any goal Gentoo distribution wish to acquire. For > example: Do we wish to use a mainstream distribution? Do we aim to a > specific user community? Or Do we develop distribution for our use? Currently, we do not have any real global goals set out. > If you wish to be (And I think we should be) mainstream distribution, > we should derive targets, such as QA level, response times and > content. I agree that we should definitely have some measurable goals. > Being more modular is one technical feature to achieve better > stability. But we should discuss the basics first. Being modular in the sense of being able to easily replace code, sure. Being modular in the sense stated by Alexandre, I'm not sure. I just don't see how making everybody entirely independent will help us work together. It just seems so counter-productive to the idea of cooperation to artificially separate people off into smaller territories. > I hear a lot that open source project with unpaid developers cannot be > committed to deadlines or requirements from its developers, but I > disagree. There can be an open source project with high quality > products and dead lines, if these properly defined. Agreed. It works quite well within our own ranks, even, with Release Engineering. The only time we really miss deadlines are due to technical reasons (security, things being broken, etc) that are unforeseen. > I must disclose that in my view whenever a large group of people are > doing something together, some kind of hierarchy must be in place. And > I am not talking about current council, it seems that current council > does not LEAD Gentoo anywhere. I agree that we need a formal hierarchy, but must protest that the current Council doesn't lead. The problem is that every time we *try* to lead, we get a ton of developer backlash, which leads to things like this proposal to try to reduce the Council's ability to lead. So which is it? Do people want the Council to lead or not? If the answer is no, then why do we even *have* a Council? > I read that sometime in history there was an effort to impose > structural format on the community, but then Daniel Robbins left? It was the structure that we had between Daniel leaving and the current Council, and it was pretty much a disaster. The ineffectual nature of that structure is what led us to the current structure. > If we wish to be a major distribution, we must grow. If we to grow we > must organize our-self better, and work toward a common goal. Common > goal forces decision making. Decision making forces leadership. > Leadership forces vision. I tend to think that a "common goal" isn't necessarily something that we need. We do need direction, but I don't think that everyone needs to be working towards the same goals, especially when we have projects that are "at odds" with each other. If we focus on being the best desktop distribution, what happens to embedded? Instead, we need several directions, based on functional differences. Via this sort of breakdown I could see the following: Core system Desktop Server/Hardened Embedded Documentation Release Engineering Even these are not static. They could be changed fairly easily. These groupings are done entirely by function. If we were to think of this as a client/provider relationship, there would be certain functional dependencies. Everybody would depend on the Core system group. Everybody would depend on documentation. Release Engineering would depend on everyone else. Each of these different groups would easily be able to have their own goals and visions, just like divisional units within a company can have different goals. Core system would be interested in solidifying and stabilizing the core of Gentoo. Desktop would be working towards making Gentoo more friendly to desktop users. While the goals aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, they're different. The same could be said for any of the other groups. > Is there any vision? Of course there is some vision. The Council has plenty of ideas and lots of ways where we can lead Gentoo. Why don't we? Because, quite frankly, we're sick of the miles of bullshit attached to every single minor decision made. I'm speaking not for every member of the Council, but from my own perceptions and from the grumblings I've heard from many other Council members during conversations. > Now, for your idea. > When I written something similar in the past, someone told me that it > was already suggested... I don't know why it wasn't accepted. I still think it's a fairly good idea for how Gentoo should be organized. I just don't see how changing our organization will solve our most pressing current issues. I'd rather clean the house up a bit before we decide to try to remodel it. <snip> The ideas of having differing metrics for different packages is really a good one. It doesn't require overlays to accomplish, either. The only real problem I see with it is determining how to rate the packages. > But I believe we should first discuss the community goals, then derive > a technical solution. Agreed. -- Chris Gianelloni Release Engineering Strategic Lead Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee Gentoo Foundation
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