Things are afoot in Gentoo, and its not a foot in the mouth.
March 23rd, 2006There’s been some interesting things going on in gentoo as of late. One of which seems to be a sudden…we need to be nicer to each other. This naturally makes me think of this,
“C’mon people, now
smile on your brother,
ev’ry-body get together,
try to love one another right now”
and subsequently of the movie Pump up the Volume. For the ladies and curtis, you can join #gentoo-x86, there’s enough love there that its spilling over to yaoi(man man love for you people who are going what the heck is yaoi)! In part, I think its a sudden injection of woman into the project (which is always a nice addition to any project). However, its one of the things that I hope to see in action not just in talk. Its far easier to say sure I’ll be nicer to other developers but something that to people who you don’t get along with much harder to actually do.
It has also highlighted problems with how we’ve grown. I won’t make it a secret, and could very well be bonked for it, that the infrastructure has kept up with development, however relations between the various area’s of the project has not kept up. There are no defined rules for the various major area’s of responsibility, just someone fluid guidelines. Devrel, is developers relations..however what does that really mean? Christel, want to say that you did a very nice job with the email you sent out to the -bugs alias, and hope that you are able to act on what you asked and said in that email. Infra would seem to be simple but it isn’t that simple. Security, well the question can be when should a package be masked for security. Quality Assurance seems to currently be one that is trying to define their responsibilities now and limit what they can and can not do so that there won’t be any issues cropping up.
It’s all part of a transition in the project, one that has been building a while, but I think especially since Daniel stepped down as the guiding light of the project. In some ways I think it’d be a good thing for someone that everyone was to respect, doesn’t mean you have to like them, to step up and take a figurehead type role. The Council was to be a replacement of sorts however, with situations waiting till the monthly meetings, issues tend to spiral out and away from them before they can contain and handle it.
Oh, and cshields you arn’t allowed to go anywhere.
March 23rd, 2006 at 8:37 pm
Joshua,
Two things: congrats on your new job. The possibility of international travel is definitely exciting. And linux to boot, that’s just fantastic.
The second thing is: I don’t think the new “be nice” message that I sent out is actually all that sudden. As in, I don’t think it was a shift in my thinking when I sent that message. It was me reaching a certain breaking point, and going “ok, I’ve watched this sh*t going on for long enough, and if I don’t say/do anything to try and change it, I need to get out of here.” Sadly, I think Corey did reach that point, and he’s drained and exhausted enough to just get out of here. I can not, in all honesty, blame him for it.
You’re unfortunate to have arrived into gentoo at a time when the culture shift had already begun — if memory serves about your introduction as a gentoo developer. For old timers like Corey and myself and a few others: we remember the days when people were civil to each other
My first memory of Gentoo was g2boojum giving me a “trinitAX: language!” (trinitAX was my /nick before I became a gentoo developer) because I said the S-word. I was taken aback a bit, but I respected it, and I came to realise that it wasn’t just that the language was rude — it was that rude language and rude behaviour generally go hand in hand. So where, #gentoo is actually mostly civil, the #gentoo-dev tends to degenerate very very quickly. I guess people have forgotten the spirit of the “language!” rule while maybe sticking to the letter of it.
I’ve certainly talked a lot so I’ll stop here