Recently read about a new release of Sabayon linux (an offshoot of Gentoo to be even more cutting edge then ~arch). Curiosity got me and I went to look around and see what the crew over there was up to. However, I found something that isn’t going to help the community of gentoo based distro’s work together to improve everyones experiences.

Ixnay recently wrote an entry based on a few recently by Daniel Robbins. I’ve personally worked with Ixnay a few times before rr4 appeared, helping him understand some aspects of Gentoo at the time he did not understand. Has managed to unfortunately miss a mark. He talks about the foundation as the governing body for innovation and progress within the distribution. As he goes on further to talk about the fact that the only way to save Gentoo is to give it back to Daniel. This is not honestly possible as the last time Daniel came back it was not a pretty scene and ultimately I don’t think Daniel wants to come back into that role. The foundation is merely the business side of the Gentoo project. Its there to protect the Intellectual Property, support development with the funds that we have, and overseeing the contracts and licenses that we adhere to. This is in no way actually the development of the project as a whole. Its the aspects that no actual real developer wants to deal with. It is partially why a good percentage of the people who’ve been actively involved with the foundation as trustee’s want to go with the Software Freedom Conservancy.

Personally, I’ll admit that I’m not for joining the SFC, but ultimately I am just one person and if I become a trustee, I will proceed down the path that everyone wants to go down. Even if that means joining a group that we in essence sign our Intellectual Property over to in a trust setup for us. Its still ours…and we still have it..but its just not in our name.

Ultimately, the post..is just another Gentoo is dying…however this is in part because of the lack of caring of those who’ve spawned because of Gentoo, and the lack of our ability as a group to come up with a joint effort to guideline some of the various aspects of allowing everyone to work together well. Interestingly enough, that is the cause of the PMS (Package Manager Spec), a distinct effort to bring everyone together and ensure that continued efforts are compatible with each other…led by a former developer, Ciaranm. As ultimately, one of the major issues that ends up with spawning children..is they suddenly become incompatible with everything else. With the package management system that we have currently. There are three distinct package managers in existence to my knowledge. Paludis, Pkgcore, and Portage. All currently work with the packages in the portage tree. This is no small accomplishment in of itself and the developers of all three should be complimented for their ability to work together in a form of harmony.

As well members of Paludis and Pkgcore have pushed on issues that have been long standing issues, that are being resolved slowly. This is the kind of community that ultimately I think we all want to have for Gentoo as the “Meta”Distribution that it defined as.

While I do appreciate the nicely put Death of Gentoo again post, I’d prefer to see the Leader of the Sabayon linux project, assist and attempt to help improve the communication channels by reaching out…when I’m sure a lot of people would say that as a project Gentoo is crying out for that.

P.S Yes this is a call to leaders of Gentoo based projects to come talk to me specifically but I’m sure there are others in the project who are more then willing to talk to you..and see where we can begin to work better in conjunction with each other.

Edit: Total spacing it move from me..thankfully mark_alec caught…right group to join this time.