datanode.net Where the totally inane meets the totally mundane

ok, maybe not a “republic”

Posted by mcummings

In a reply i left to a comment in my last post on the subject, I tried explaining to rol that "maybe in reading these rambles the pieces will fit together for someone and they will be carried by this wave to the solution." Maybe not. But seemant in his Conti-NEW-ation post actually did by accident. by expressing his desire to be the glue again (my words, not his), and to me this is a good stepping stone to what I was rambling about. Having someone act as glue, as a coordinator of sorts between folks and projects, not for the purpose of telling them what they have to do, but for the purpose of bringing talents together that might not otherwise have done so, that's the kind of thing we need. Every time in the past I thought about addressing this topic, I'd do some research and discover that Gentoo was in fact doing a lot of cool things that I had no idea about, active code projects, the works. But it tends to be small select segments of folks that were already working together on something (spanky is the exception to every rule folks). Having someone act like a human glue stick would go a long way to getting people back to feeling like they're part of something more than just being an ebuild jockey (if that is there wish - hey, to each his own, right?).

a gentoo “leader”? or at least a republic?

Posted by mcummings

Donnie raises a good thread (starting here) that I encourage folks to catch up on (I just did this afternoon - reading my mail in spurts, trying not to mark read patches people have sent me so I don't lose them in the shuffle). This isn't the first time that I've seen this topic come up, but I've noticed that the topic is generally brought up by folks that have actually been with the project for more than a few years. For good or ill, we remember what it was like under drobbins, and to be blunt without a single scapegoat/organizer/spearhead, there does seem to be a lack of focus. Yes, the focus of Gentoo is to be the best from source distro, giving you as close to what the original upstream wanted as possible. But that's not a focus, that's a mission statement (dear god, my time in middle management at work is already catching up with me). Mission statements are broad reaching, long term definitions of what you want. Focus is saying that as a whole we want to achieve X before the next release, and then with a leader role providing that focus, ensure that all the planning and coordination is achieved to meet it. This role shouldn't be confined to a project lead, but be someone that *can* tap the resources from across the board to get it done.

Donnie's right, democracy does suck, and that's why democracy isn't what most governments adhere to (at least not the successful ones). It's a republic that you want kids, not democracy; a republic is where a handful of elected (not necessarily by vote, it could also be by time in the project and agreement from existing leaders, for example) leaders agree on a focus for the project, perhaps with a lead among them (yes, this sounds a lot like a lot of stuff pre-metastructure reform) to provide final arbitration, decisions, and goals. And no, that's not a council - a council by definition is an assembly convened for consultation, deliberation, or advise - not for deciding the course of work and outlining direction for a project.

what would i like to see? well, for one i'd like to see more niche infiltration by gentoo. i'm on the record (openroadtrip) as saying that i think gentoo is where it needs to be, and i still believe that. when i answered that, i was thinking in terms of competition with binary distros, and in that sense we are where we need to be. we are linuxfromscratch on acid and with a package manager to boot. but we could be applying that to other areas - why does knoppix get to be the big daddy of livecd's? because they made one for every reason under the sun. but i wonder what the response would be if gentoo came up and made it a goal to do that and better - to give you a the power to create custom livecd's that meet all your needs and include the packages *you* want them to include, down to whether they have a desktop or not and which manager (catalyst+templates is the thought in my head).

So back where i started this post - i may not agree completely 100% with donnie, but this being the umpteenth time i've seen an 'older' dev make this comments makes me wonder, and it should make you wonder too.