Submitted by In November 2007, we reported on the GNOME Board Elections of 2007, where Jeff Waugh was getting serious slack flack from some people in the GNOME community. One of the complaints centred around Waugh’s apparent inability to properly take care of requests to be syndicated on Planet GNOME, or other maintenance issues related to PGO. Six months later, this complaint is still valid, according to Rodney Dawes.On his blog, Dawes states that Planet GNOME is more or less “quasi-maintained” and that it is quite difficult to change anything on PGO “due to the lack of responsiveness from Jeff”. Dawes goes on to say that PGO is a GNOME site and service, “for the community and by the community”, and that as such, it is rather peculiar that it is apparently impossible for GNOME developers to fix the site if the need arises. According to Dawes, Waugh stated six months ago that a solution to the problems was in the works, which would be in place “in a couple of weeks”. “Now that it’s April, I’m very much wondering where that solution is, as I’m sure plenty of others are as well.”
To illustrate the severity of the problem, ITWire dug up several other cases where requests concerning Planet GNOME have been ignored over the past 18 months. The issue seems to stretch beyond the scope of PGO itself, as getting an account on svn seems to be just as troublesome for some people. Many people in the GNOME community seem to take issue with the fact that PGO is maintained by only one person, and that the process of getting added on PGO is not exactly what you’d call transparent. Waugh’s defence seems to revolve around him not getting the emails in question or his emails not arriving.
The most sensible evaluation seems to come from Bjorn Lindqvist (thanks to ITWire for pointing this one out):
One could speculate why one doesn’t
receive any reply:1. Jeff gets so many mail each day that he forgot about it.
2. The mail got lost in the spam filter.
3. Jeff doesn’t like you.
4. Jeff doesn’t like your blog.
5. Jeff doesn’t like your politics.
6. Neither you nor your blog is elite enough.
7. planet.gnome.org in an old boys club.Of those, only 1 and 2 are really plausible. But there is *no way to
know that*. Which is why you people resort to speculations which is
why this whole thread started.Which is why a transparent process is really really important.
A common suggestion has been to process requests via the GNOME Bugzilla, which would provide a lasting record of all requests and replies, adding transparency to the process. Another suggestion, coming from Waugh himself, was to draw up guidelines and maybe adding some co-maintainers to the mix, but none of this has happened. As ITWire concludes:
Since [December 2007] there has been no discussion about the administration of the Planet on this mailing list. After 15 months, there are no guidelines for the Planet. There is a list of do’s and dont’s for the hackergotchis, period.
Having your blog published on Planet GNOME can be quite important for the project you are working on. PGO is read by many people interested in GNOME (really?), so it is a potential pool for finding new developers and users, and as such, writing about your GNOME project on PGO can be quite beneficial. In other words, PGO is not just a “my cat just threw up” kind of planet; it’s a way of getting new developers on board on your project. In addition, it is a community forum where new ideas for the GNOME project can be discussed, where people can propose new directions and plans, and where users interested in the development of GNOME (like myself) can go for getting the latest scoop on the next GNOME release.
It’s a shame that such an important part of the GNOME community receives so little love.
I read about this on another site. It all seems rather petty to me.
If it is truly a “community” site maintained by the “community” why doesn’t someone, or a group of people (a community maybe) just take over the roll of maintainer… why all the dancing around?
If the job isn’t getting done someone else needs to do it and stop waiting. Or else it makes everyone, the community, look inept.
Mainly because jdub, the crappy current “maintainer” is on the gnome foundation board. Because of his super 37337 ness, no one dares to forcefully remove him from his current throne.
It is an all around bad situation for the gnome community. Jdub uses his gnome power to pimp his consultancy while leaving gnome in the dust.
Edit, adding link to his about page that shows what I’m talking about:
http://bethesignal.org/about/
“””By night, he is an active participant in the GNOME project”””
Proof has came up on multiple occassions he isn’t very active.
Edited 2008-05-01 23:30 UTC
Unless of course it is that particular guy’s job and he has the keys and isn’t handing them over.
I don’t know, frankly.
Anyway, there’s one golden rule in any volunteer project like [Planet] Gnome: if you don’t do anything – that’s fine. But don’t ever prevent other people from doing something – for example, by being stuck in whatever function where people are expecting you to do things you’re not going to do.
There’s also a third rule: if someone else is not doing what you want, you do it yourself.
Couldn’t we just ‘fork’ it? As i understand it, a planet is merely an aggregation of blogs, and nothing is stopping other people from installing the planet software on their servers and adding all the gnome developers from p.g.o on it. Maybe then it would finally become clear to jdub that the shit he’s pulling ain’t cool, and reflects negatively on the (otherwise awesome) gnome project as a whole.
“Slack” isn’t the right work here — I think you want “flak”.
Planet gnome is really not so much worse off than other planets out there. It is definitely not an essential service to the development of Gnome (after all, they have irc, mailing lists, Guadec, etc. for the real work).
So the fact that it exists at all is simply out of convenience to the users who would like a little insight into the workings of gnome without having to dig through all the mailing lists. I mean, isn’t that why all planets exist?
Anyway, you guys are making a big deal about a service that is neither essential, nor particularly important. If it was the development mailing lists or the source repo, then there’d be cause for concern.
(Posted by an unhappy KDE contributor – unhappy to see his friends at gnome attacked this way, that is, even if jdub really is an arse…)
Granted, planet.gnome.org isn’t that important, but it does lend credibility to the openness and activity of GNOME.
Comparing to KDE isn’t quite the same. dot.kde.org is always active. An outsider can see what’s happening in the KDE world with little effort, so KDE Planet isn’t as important.
In GNOME, http://gnomedesktop.org is rarely updated, so Planet GNOME is a lot more significant if an outsider wants to keep track of GNOME. IRC, mailing lists, Guadec, etc are good for development, but aren’t good for outsiders or casual interested but potentially new contributors to GNOME.
Having experienced Jeff’s highly individual approach to Open Software on linux.conf.au 06 to 08, I am surprised that he is still involved in any actual coding.
I always thought of him to be the more or less hilarious stick figure for linux south of the equator, a sort of Steve Ballmer of Linux.