I’m going to do a bit of clarification as there’s a lot of people who I’ve seen replied that don’t get truly what we are talking about here. Surprisingly so actually. As it stands there are two separate divisions in Gentoo Linux, have been for 2-3 years when daniel stepped down/forced down depending on who you talk to. I’ve created a handy little graphic for you

As you can see in the above graph. Gentoo is divided into two distinct sides. Technical which everyone is worried about has almost nothing to do with this. Its only affected by the fact that Daniel could tell us today that we no longer can use Gentoo (new name time) or the G logo (new logo time). He has not done this in the 2-3 years that he’s still held onto these copyrights when we should of been properly incorporated as a foundation and had the transfer that he wanted to happen actually happen.

If you notice…ebuilds will still be here..developers will still be doing portage updates, things will continue on. This is not a death of gentoo technical..nor in anyway relates to them other then a possible name. Now assuming you got that can we please avoid the “we need to give gentoo back to daniel because the trustee’s failed and that means gentoo as a whole failed and its dying. Its simply not…we just have someone who’s very kindly allowing us silently to use his copyrights but at any time he’s able to tell us that we can’t use it anymore and would be changing all the materials that he holds copyright over. Everything that you as a user or a developer would use would be the same…just instead of Gentoo, you’d be using (We_lost_our_name_distro).

Now as far as daniels post, please excuse the bit of sarcasm involved but here is another graph that shows his plan.

As you see this plan brings the Foundation and the Council under the same umbrella. With Daniel as the head of the organization electing the other trustee’s who will oversee both the technical direction as well as the financial/legal aspects…which as I mentioned previously is very hard to find in anyone who would be able to be elected. If you talk to Mike(vapier) for instance. He has no desire to deal with the “foundation” aspects but has done very well as a member of the Council. Diego (flameeyes) I have no doubt would say the same thing. He’d much rather be coding and working to improve Gentoo then having to deal with the potential…oh this person wants to be reimbursed for printing up a banner for the Germany linux symposium that we were represented at.

Now please note that it is a lot of sarcasm in that picture with the “yes men/women” but I’m fairly certain that while Daniel has good intentions at heart, he’d elect/select people who generally agree with his point’s but not be the best for the role. While I don’t follow the Councils actions much, I see them actually making progress. Which you can actually see here in the logs and summary of the meetings. If you want to talk about transparency, there you go meetings are actually posted with what was discussed in both raw and summary format.

Well, just had a bit of a mishap. I just boiled some water to make some green tea in a gallon pitcher. Put a spoon in the container to help with the heat and as I got about halfway full, the picture cracked and split in two. Thus spilling all the green tea out and I don’t have green tea :(. Which also means I get to go on the hunt for a couple of containers for tea.

Remind me next time to make it via sun tea method to avoid breaking things….

You know I continue to be frustrated at the lack of my ability to seem be helpful with anything. Its in my nature to want to help in the way that I know best, and when there is no way that I can do that then I feel even worse. Currently there are a few things that this is most apparent with, that are just driving me a bit bonkers.

The first one is Gentoo related, and the fact that somehow I’ve gotten involved with the proctors somehow. It reminds me entirely of how I came to be a developer in the first place. It just sort of happened one day that I was involved and became a developer as well. What exactly I’m doing with them I’m not sure..but like the vast majority of developers. I bounce around to keep things interesting. Have another project I need to get to as I actually use it but its one of those that have a horrible build system from the former maintainer, so I get to work on it and see what and where things need to go and force them there with an ebuild. Horray!

The second is the fact that I’ve been unable to be of any help to the woman I’m involved with. We all have rough times and there are times where no one can help, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be of help, even if all it means is that I serve as a distraction to what is going on, and give you a bit of an escape. Partially this is also caused by the distance, which has shown its ugly head far more then I want but, that’s part of the trials of it, and I’m not going anywhere so you kind of get stuck with me.

No, I’ve not just had the football pulled away by Marcy again, like she does every time. I’m just really frustrated by the fact that I’m 2400 miles away from where I want to be right at the moment. *grumble* What good is it if you can’t be there when someone needs you the most.

Well, I worked on my site and realized I did something stupid but now the links that were broken and the non existent email addy has been redirected to something that actually works. So I should get email..if you send mail to me on the contact me icon, it’ll actually go somewhere instead of dropping off into neverland.

Partially this was caused by the recent story on Linux.com. If someone had tried to contact me before going to press..well, they got no response. Oh well. That’s now more or less resolved.

Yes, yet again I did get quoted about Gentoo, and the issue that are going on. This is not the first time..nor do I suspect the last time. Each time its not been good press but that’s the way of it. I am however disappointed in the author, Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier, who seems to be biased towards the main source of the interview in this case. A former developer who was kicked out for his continual bad behavior. Who in this authors opinion bases too much of who he is on Gentoo. I’m sure if you’d like to hear stories about ciaranm, there’s a good number of actual current and retired developers who’d have a story to tell, both positive and negative. It’d of been much better to have talked with the council about it directly and gotten the story directly from the horses mouth. Instead of the hearsay by third parties.

The other interesting thing is the reason behind the quicker pacing of the CoC being implemented, without having the proctors in place..thus making it a document that has no enforcement. Doesn’t that sound like Devrel currently? Chris I will say is a member of pr and can spin things well..which is no doubt why he wrote the following piece. I’ve heard a couple of different things from parties involved with this, and know the council is reactionary, not proactive. So hearing Chris say they were acting before hand, is just silly in my opinion. The council I hope actually were taking a step forward and taking control like they should have when Daniel left in the first place. It’d be nice to see. But I just don’t see it happening, and even vapier who’s voice probably commands some of the most respect in the community..has lately seemed to have his words fall on deaf ears. I don’t know, that really worries me.

Mike Frysinger (vapier) on the other hand, I know well enough and trust as a upstanding guy to have told me the truth about the matter. The concern as suggested was about losing infra members, more then anything else. Infra as an group probably has the slowest turnover of any group out there, but I could understand a concern from an organization that graciously gives us hosting for many boxes.

We’ll just have to wait and see who ends up being the proctors and if they truly are what they need to be to be effective. We don’t need to be your buddies, you don’t need to like us, nor do we need to like you. Just remember that to anyone who becomes one. As any kind of favortism will allow certain people to pull and take that mile when you gave an inch.. remember that well and you’ll do well I think.

Well its that time of the year again where everyone tries to come up with great ideas for things to implement into their open source projects. Again Gentoo has been graciously accepted by Google to be a mentoring organization to get people involved in Open Source Projects. Google I give a lot of credit for giving money to get people involved in the movement, even if it helps them as well.

However, I’m disappointed in Gentoo again. One of the proposals is for a project that is not part of the Gentoo sphere. That one being Paludis. Yes its in the tree, but so is gnome. So should we be doing something for Gnome because its in there? No, that’s not something that is going to help us. The java related ones are different as they are improving a large portion of how an entire section is handled. Its clearly depend what its goal is and how to obtain it. I give credit to the java team for coming up with clear concise objectives…if albeit it maybe not the most realistic for a student to get done. Another that I’m actually looking forward to seeing is the LVM integration into the installer. That’s one that has real benefits for a ton of users, as LVM allows you to grow and shrink your filesystem so easily, while trying that with the actual file system utils can be impossible at times.

I don’t know..I just think it’d be better if we focused on Gentoo official projects then something that is associated with Gentoo because it works with the ebuilds..and some Gentoo developers work on it. Blehness…..

Seemant, has unlike normal been very vocal about the current situation. Its nice to actually see him have some spit and vinegar so to speak about Gentoo still. As as much as we all want to in some ways deny that we consider it our baby..we all do.

I’ve been doing some things lately that are a bit unusual for me. This includes simply deleting all email that I get from the dev and private mailing list. Simply put we have too many dev’s with ego’s that are overly large and basically all need to get knocked off of their pedestal’s. Instead of innovating (which we aren’t doing), we’re spending time talking and yelling about stuff..that will not change. You all know that fact as well.

I had one of those the other day with hparker..asking me to come into -devrel and explain some of the things I had said in -dev about the organization. I will start with saying that I like kloeri. He’s a decent chap. However, he’s not cut out to be the leader of devrel. He’s just too nice. One of the issues with devrel..was the appointment of Deedra to the position of leader. She was not fit for it..and it showed with the massive backlash against devrel while she was in control of it. It wasn’t her alone but devrel lost all ability at that point. It has since then done nothing in reality. Its not actively trying to handle anything at this point and in my personal opinion filled with people who just want to be “liked and not cause trouble”. Well damnit, you are developer relations. You are literally the arm of the social contract that enforces it. Yes you need the help of other groups like infra to ban someone for being an asshat (yes I said asshat). Personally, I’m a cynical person with Gentoo, and have been for quite a while. Those kind of people are perfect for the position. They don’t care who you are or what you do for the project. You act like an idiot and you’re going to get punished.

As many would say, vapier is nigh immune from anything of the like because of how much he does for the project. He isn’t and shouldn’t be. If he goes off and starts cussing at 12 developers, revoke his access for a few days. The entire project isn’t going to fall down, will some things not get fixed and or updated 5 minutes after its out..yeah, but its not going to result in a massive exodus of users and developers. Devrel, as it stands now..doesn’t have a spine. It doesn’t want to have one..and its a source of a great ability to fix the 600 reply threads we have going on right now. If I was reading it and having the power, I’d of probably locked posting to the mailing lists that this always takes place, both public and private…and then given 20-30 dev’s a vacation.

I’ll also put the shot out the bow that devrel has a leaning preference for being friends with the ciaranm clic. Its not something that I think can easily be denied as most people notice that the clic is nigh invinible and able to say what they want. Ciaranm also has a voice in Gentoo, via the minions that he has. SPB included in that, who many consider to be the “voice” of Ciaranm in the project still. I’m sure the point will be argued, but a lot of things I hear from SPB seem to sound like it came directly from Ciaranm.

The council, while a good attempt at the technical direction for Gentoo. Has to this day not set any technical direction for the project at all. So really guys, what is your point? You above all else should be giving us the direction to innovate…yet…there’s nothing. You don’t have a desire to lead us and innovate continually. Are we as a project going to become irrelevant because no one wants to be that disliked and push for things to change? Well quite frankly I’m tired of it. Make a bloody decision about the technical direction of Gentoo, and give us a bloody direction to move towards. The innovation right now is from projects outside of the development community. Look at paludis and pkgcore. They are implimenting new features into the core uniqueness of what makes Gentoo special. Is there a reason we are slow on new changes. Do we need to audit the code for portage, and rewrite vast stretches of it and remove all the nasty hacks in it?

Can we innovate by sitting on our ass and not having any goals at all. Being a rhetorical question, the answer if of course no. So council get up off your bum’s and do something about it. Set short term goals that are reachable, and farther reaching goals of what Gentoo should be aiming for as a distribution.

Will this fix any and all problems, no. However, a devrel who has a spine and is around 24/7, doesn’t get questioned internally by their own members. Would go a long way to fix a lot of issues, we’re currently having…I would guess so. Devrel, and its members should be allowed to act in the best interest of the project, and hold that “social contract” that we’ve all at some point taken a dump on (don’t even bother denying it, because I’ll have no problem pulling out 2 years of logs and searching for something you’ve done that has violated it). This is a contract that to become a developer you agree’d to follow. Well you haven’t, I haven’t, none of us have to the letter. Should you get a few slaps on the hand before you get worse punishment of course.

However, do you think the poisonous people in the project are going to stick around when they constantly are getting into trouble, getting access revoked to this or that? No, its not worth the hassle. Course you also need to find the people who won’t get on a power trip over it as well. Which is why I mentioned the cynical people…as they are also the ones who probably have the best vision of what Gentoo was, and really should be to continue to move forward. Course you also need someone to lead who has hope that things will get better…which again most of us cynics no longer believe. Its a fine balance.

So in essence, don’t be a tool. Stop acting like an idiot, use your own brain to make your own decisions. Use some bloody common sense. Yes you have the ability to think rationally and calmly…so actually do that. Cause if this was an actual job, we’d all be fired by now. Luckily, for you and for me on a couple of occasions it isn’t. However, bring some of that workplace mentality with you to the project. You might hate the guy across the hall from you, but you still have to work with him, and get along enough to actually accomplish the tasks that you need to. Compromise.

Simply put…after Gentoo, I’m no doubt done with the open source movement. I won’t want to help another project in any active way. I’ll submit patches no doubt..but won’t be part of a project. Its simply not worth the pain in the ass it really is.

This has been your quota for the year for tsunam’s asshatness

edit: Thinking about it…I think the main problem is that we’re all just a bunch of spoiled little brats who never learned to play nice with each other and instead of sharing toys like you were taught in preschool. you walk over, smack them on the nose (causing it to bleed) and then take their toy. Rinse and repeat…because you want that toy back.

As many have mentioned previously Diego (Flameeyes) has left the gentoo project. Unknown to many people is that he was probably one of the few who I talked to quite often about everything from technical to just frustration with the project. As we both had some of the same issues. He also talked me into taking a break to avoid burning out which I never really took…just sort of slowed down unintentionally when the dev box died.

This is a loss of a friend and developer that I’ve felt quite heavily, and makes me really consider what is going wrong with the Gentoo project currently. If some of the best developers are leaving, then what is the root cause of it. It’d be nice to have the easy answer but that is never the case. Its not the users who ultimately, even with good intentions piss developers off (and they really do at times). Its something within the developer knit community that is the issue. There is some hostility of course but…there is more to it. I guess I just don’t really know and in some ways don’t want to know the root cause of it. Like most people, we’d rather stick our head in the sand then poke around to find the cause.

Well, its been a horrible day all around. At work a raid array with a good portion of our data was destroyed more or less, and I find out that the backup is over a month old. A major ouch for anyone who’s had that happen. As I took over the it admin related tasks fairly recently its a bit of a bad foot to start on.

The other news was of course related to my laptop that is still missing after nearly four months. At this point I don’t think I’ll actually be getting a machine back to be put simply. When one is told that you are going to get a new machine, a natural assumption is that you will get the same exact machine as you have currently, or a model that is comparative in features. This of course does not happen with me and Adamant. In my call with Tom today I find out that they the Asus Z81K machine is no longer in production and that I was going to be upgraded to the Z81L, they were just waiting on the processor to come in. Some chief difference between the machines…

Z81K (This is the machine I purchased)
1680×1050 resolution
Athlon64 4200+ processor
built in wireless g
ATI 9700 video card
gigabit ethernet
base price $1299

Z81L (This is the machine that it’s to be replaced by)
1280×800 resolution
Pentium 4 (supposedly) 3.2 ghz
built in wireless b
SiS based video card with shared memory.
10/100 ethernet
base price $1049

I don’t think I really need to say more then that.

Well, I have yet another reason to talk badly about Adamant computers as well about Asus now as well.

Asus, is getting the bad rep this time because, they not only took supposedly a month and a half to fix a simple motherboard problem, but they couldn’t even get that right. That is correct people. I’ve waited over two months to get a laptop back that is indeed still broken in the same exact way that it was those many months ago now. How do you like those apples? Want to trade places with me and the fact that I’m just laughing about the machine being fixed…

The fixed machine was directly from what Adamant has said, and it would appear that they didn’t even bother to open the machine and see if it was indeed fixed. So I get to call them tomorrow and attempt to get a hold of Dima, the ceo, and see what options he has for me. I’m sure he’ll tell me that it was fixed and that I need to send it in again for repairs. Which will take another two full months. One can guess what my general response to that will be…

At this point I almost want to think that Adamant held onto the machine and never sent it to Asus, and instead just kept me waiting, to send me back the broken machine. I certainly have no way to prove that they sent it off currently and I’m sure they will refuse to show me proof that they sent it off to Asus for repair.

Now, tell me do you want to shop at Adamant Computers or with Asus again….’

Anyone happen to have the Public Relations email address for Asus?

Update #1: Called Adamant at 9:20 am, got dima and told him calmly that my machine was still in fact broken. He said he’d talk with the tech who worked on the issue, and then go and give Asus a piece of his mind. He also said that he’d give me a call in a couple of hours. However, he did say that we’ll have to do something about the issue..so that’s a good sign at least.