Zach Welch annouced a fork of Gentoo Linux in a message to the gentoo-dev mailing list. His reasoning can be found here, FAQ here, while Drobbins replies and announces top-level management restructure.
Gentoo Linux Fork Announced
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
As a long-time Gentoo hardcore user, all i can say is ouch. It hurts me to see the termoil behind the scenes.
Gentoo is by far my fave. OS, next to BeOS (grin). This fork might be more of a bad thing than a good thing… I mean, my computer can only have SO many operating systems installed…
In all seriousness, Gentoo blew me away. It is everything I loved about Slackware and FreeBSD, put together in exactly the right way. I hope to God this fork is not going to ’cause BOTH projects to eventually fizzle. Sigh.
those were my thoughts exactly.
well, i guess this is one of the nice/ugly thig about open source, you can fork a project. can’t beat them? stay away from them.
anyway, good luck!
Great coders and architects usually take a while to learn people skills and management skills.
Daniel Robbins is learning on the job.
I think Gentoo is a great project and for the most part has gone in a very good direction.
Hopefully Daniel and the rest of the crew will get some structure in place, focus on their people skills, and keep making Gentoo better and better.
The more good ideas that get out there, via Gentoo or forked distributions, the better. Cross-pollination is one of the driving forces that gives Linux its high rate of evolution.
That’s interesting. I think I read a long series of articles by D. Robbins about his time on other projects before creating Gentoo, and it seemed poor management structures were one of the big reasons he started his own project. Ironic really, although I haven’t read all the details of this yet.
Seen similar situations like this happen first hand. Difficult to really piece together what is going.
Can you deinstall a package once you install it? I remember playing with gentoo a while back and noticed I was unable to do so, has this been fixed with its ports tree? I still think gentoo is on the right path for both server + client using a linux kernel…. especially server.
As for forks, we shall see. Syllable was forked from AtheOS and has turned into a thing of beauty, maybe it will happen here too – regardless if its gentoo or the fork that really shines in the end.
From what I’ve read, Zach Welch isn’t trying to sink Gentoo. He is putting together a structure which will allow him to create a fork dedicated to embedded devices, because that’s his domain of expertise. He hopes to be able to make a living out of whatever distro he’ll come up with. By the way, this situation can happen in any field of endeavour, not only in open source projects.
its rather easy…
`emerge unmerge packagename`
I always sigh when I see another fork, or another port of something to another marginal architecture etc, because it looks like a dilution of effort once again. In some ways, the diversity of Linux distributions is wonderful, but of course, it doesn’t help Linux overall to succeed when it’s so utterly fragmented.
Having said that, I think Gentoo is a very strong project, and I don’t think this will slow it down a bit. They’ve lost one guy and he’ll go and create something new (aimed at different markets). Gentoo itself will carry on growing and developing as always. It rocks, and long may it live!
Once everyone has broadband and 4GHz Athlon64 machines, there will be no excuses *not* to use Gentoo anyway 😉
In other news, the Debian Project will be ten years old in august.
Right, but it leaves a lot of crap behind, and it doesn’t necessarily remove all useless dependencies. Try to emerge and unmerge Gnome, and you’ll know what I mean. ’emerge –clean’ isn’t really good and ’emerge –depclean’ is broken. I tried it twice and it wanted to remove vital packages from my system! They still have a lot of work to do. Hopefully, I don’t install new packages often…
“Once everyone has broadband and 4GHz Athlon64 machines, there will be no excuses *not* to use Gentoo anyway ;-)”
Um. I like Gentoo (that’s the distro I use) but IMO, it’s *highly* overhyped. The developers still have a lot of work to do. Anyway, other distros will always exist because we all have different needs.
emerge clean works great now, and portage has evolved A LOT since about 6 months ago. It has become quite mature and stable, yet they come up with new features all the time. When you update a package that conflicts with an older package, i believe it does emerge –depclean or clean internally, so they must trust it enough to use it and it has worked for me fine for quite a while now.
actually, be very very very carefull with –depclean because on my machine, it even wants to get rid of some tools i use daily (such as samba, ldap, flux, etc)… i find it easiest to unmerge the exact outdated ebuild anyway because i know whats on my system
Well, if I was a hardcore Gentoo user, I would say “hurrah!” cause it would only be good for me – if Zynot brings out something better than Gentoo – good for me. If Zynot doesn’t – good for me too, I won’t loose anything.
Daniel’s response is very calm. I appreciated the fact that he didn’t start wielding flames. If what he says is true, he is being a victim of libel.
I have grown away from Gentoo after dealing with Dan Armak and KDE patches, but I still feel that the entire project is a good one and hope them luck.
Good luck to this new fork as well. Competition is good and if a fork can somehow push Gentoo to become even better, it’s a fantastic event.
Most Forks: They seem to happen because someone isn’t in charge who wants to be. They want to be the next Gates, Jobs, etc. Project manager in charge, pulling on the strings. If that’s the only motivation, it doesn’t seem likely to succeed. Certainly there are forks that work, though. OpenBSD to name an example.
The primary problem I see for this guy? Community. I’m a Gentoo user, and have been for a year. I really dig it, because I came from BSD, and it’s the first distro that I felt comfortable with. However, it has it’s problems. That’s where the community comes in. There’s a ton of people using it, and many are willing to help.
Zynot (sounds like a he should hang out with Kodos and Kang on the Simpsons) can take the code, but can’t take the community.
-b
Some of the most successful distros today started as forks (Mandrake, SuSE, Yellow Dog), and all of the modern day *BSDs did too.
Apache was a fork of the original NCSA httpd.
XEmacs (if you’re into that) forked from Emacs
egcs forked from gcc and then merged its changes back into gcc.
Don’t fear, this should be beneficial to the community at large.
I’m not a Gentoo user, although I have been in the past. The portage system had been just a little too buggy for me to be useful. I’d rather use apt or portinstall (FreeBSD). I have been looking forward to giving it a try again, though. In fact, I downloaded it again last night.
Anyway, about Robbins, in my opinion he seems to be a good guy. Apparantly, he has a vision for Gentoo and welcomes input from other developers, but in the end, he would like to decide which way development goes. He’s done pretty well with Gentoo so far. I can respect that.
Z. Welch went into way too much detail regarding why he wanted to fork. All he had to say was that he had differences of opinion that he would like to fork Gentoo.
I got tired of reading Welch’s story and began skimming. But, I never saw any real good technical reasons for wanting to fork.
Robbins’ response was very controlled (though with obviously angry undertones), in response to what I can only describe as Welch’s pity party. I mean… it was just TOO much sour grapes.
If it takes you two pages of ranting to describe why you want to fork with nary a technical reason, then you really have presented no reason at all for users. “They’re mean guys” is not an acceptable reason to switch platforms. Linux advocates in general have known this for years.
Still, I wish them the best of luck. Linux will not be hurt by this. Variety is always good.
Thanks for the sincere and well-written document of the situation.
Yay! at last!
Funny to see this happen now, almost two years ago, even before Gentoo 1.0 was released, at the FOSDEM I meet with a bunch of hackers to drink some beer(Tea for me, thanks
) the day before the conference started, among us were a very cool guy that used to be one of the main Gentoo developers, but had quit recently; and another hacker that was still trying to get some work done, but was growing tired of dealing with drobbins.
After much ranting about the problems the project was suffering and drobbins complete incompetence, a fork was suggested by someone(can’t recall who), a few names were discussed (“genthree” I think was one
), and someone with a dedicated server for hosting was found…
Sadly the idea never got anywhere, I guess mainly because everyone was too busy with other things, and I lost touch with all them(I was hopping to meet them again in FOSDEM this year, but work got in my way and I couldn’t make it.
)
Still, after the meeting, it was clear that a good percentage of the Gentoo developers were really unhappy with the current leadership, and that it was just matter of time for something like this to happen.
I really wish them good luck, and maybe I will look into switching to the new distro from Debian Sid(that so far has been “Good Enough”(tm), but could use some improvements) and I hope all the 31337 h4x0rs keep using Gentoo, and don’t come to bother the nice people that is forking.
It was sad to see some really good ideas and good quality work wasted because leadership sheer incompetence(anyone remembers drobbins rants about commercial distros “not contributing” “fixes” back to the mainline kernel? no that must have been embarrassing) and a user base that was mainly formed by clueless idiots that thought that Gentoo was the Mandrake of the 21th century(“Hey dude, how cool I am! my box is so super-optimized! muhahaha…”)
To the fork: good luck! to drobbins: have fun crashing in hell!
[posted anonymously to protect the identity of the confabulators
]
\K
P.S.: DISCLAIMERS: I’m a Debian (l)user, and ex-BSD-zealot(still have a few BSD boxes around), and over time I have got really tired of solving the problems of clueless Gentoo (l)users in IRC, not to mention listening to their stupid rants about how ‘optimized’ their distro is, while they can’t even use vi to edit a fucking file.
“If it takes you two pages of ranting to describe why you want to fork with nary a technical reason, then you really have presented no reason at all for users. “They’re mean guys” is not an acceptable reason to switch platforms. Linux advocates in general have known this for years.”
Why is management not a decent reason? Because it has nothing to do with code? Most of the people I talk to who hate MS usually don’t even bring up code first. It’s usually business practices first. Something that seemed quite obvious from reading that story is that a lot of it is management. However, scalability and project management ARE technical issues. Bugtracking, infrastructure, and all that is a technical issue. Are you saying it’s because it has no direct impact on the end user? If it makes things easier to track and scales better, the user only benefits.
The other story about the Portage 2 project is full of technical reasons in terms of language choices and such, as well as management issues. Isn’t this pretty much why OpenBSD came about? Some technical issues and LOTS of interpersonal stuff?
The final issue is that you end up with a project that has taken some prodding to actually form up a board of directors. This might bring some accountability. It might not. Ultimately, you are left to decide on the difference between that management style, or one that is more like Debian. Choose one.
This fork is intended for the embedded market. For the most part, it won’t have anything to do with the average user. I don’t see why this is an issue.
“Once everyone has broadband and 4GHz Athlon64 machines,
there will be no excuses *not* to use Gentoo anyway ;-)”
Wasnt the point of gentoo for many users the fact that you can compile all of it with optimization for your cpu?
With a 4ghz machine I see even less of a point about that
Daniel’s response is very calm. I appreciated the fact that he didn’t start wielding flames. If what he says is true, he is being a victim of libel.
What the hell are you smoking? His reply is one of the most prepotent, condescending, and plain insulting I have ever read.
It never ceases to amaze me how such a complete moron can have such a legion of braindead fanboys… I have lost count already of the number of really good developers that have quit that project because they can’t stand drobbins manipulations, control freak and plain megalomaniac personality.
As for being victim of libel, yea, sure, like all the other people he has screwed up over the time, they also were lying…
I guess this is also ‘libel’:
http://uwyn.com/resources/gentoo_departure.html
And that he took credit(and money) for articles in IBM DeveloperWorks that were written by somebody else, it’s also false… yea, whatever.
Keep digging your head in the sand.
\k
“K” kontakta mig via epost. (contact me via email for you non swedish readers.)
“I guess this is also ‘libel’:
http://uwyn.com/resources/gentoo_departure.html
And that he took credit(and money) for articles in IBM DeveloperWorks that were written by somebody else, it’s also false… yea, whatever. ”
That was a good read, both articles. Drobbins sounds like a blow hole?? I used Gentoo in the past but stick with RH & Debian(libranet) now. Gentoo is cool, but not that cool.
I hope Gentoo & the Fork work out for both party’s maybe drobs will read some of this and realize he can’t be such a dictator. If everyone leaves him because of his practices, he can’t do it alone. Of course not everyone will leave, some people liking being the yes man/women for others.
It is sad to see such intelligent man act so immaturely and stupid. If Welch had any decency, he would keep all the “abuse” he received from Daniel to himself, and just talk about the technical reasons why he is creating his own distro (different visions, purposes, etc.) If Daniel had any decency, he wouldn’t have responded with “Welch is a liar and a spinmaster, but I won’t give any evidence of this because that will put me on his level, but he is a liar, trust me.” It is quite clear why they had trouble getting along with each other.
Welch’s new project will be enterprise and embedded systems. Those who may be thinking about switching their desktops from Gentoo to Zynot may be disappointed.
Anonymous’s (attbi.com) comments above taken into due consideration, I still believe I have not been presented with a viable reason for switching my distribution.
For one thing, Welch has yet to demonstrate that he can do better. I’m not saying he can’t I’m saying that I have to be shown. He may very well. I’ll take a wait-and-see attitude, and continue to use Gentoo in the meantime.
For another thing, even with the organizational and QA problems, the fact remains: Gentoo is the best Linux distribution in existence. By “best”, I mean most up-to-date, and the easiest to update. Easiest to install? Heck no. But then, I’m a Linux user, ease of installation does not figure into “best.”
Now, if the organizational problems led to a crappy distro, THAT would be a viable reason to urge me to switch. As it is, I fail to see how the organizational problems affect me or my desktop. What, is it delaying the 1.4 release? As far as I can understand, 1.4 will not magically add version points to all my packages. They’re already up-to-date.
If Robbins is running Gentoo as a megalomaniacal tyrant, the he is doing a *dang* good job. Keep it up.
I hope Zach can see how his reasons for leaving make him look very upset and not particularly rational. I read all the way through it and there is a distinct lack of hard facts as to the ‘why’ of the fork except for the registering of the gentooembedded.{org,net,com} domain names. That’s not to say emotions can’t be a good fuel, but I’m not so sure they’re good for long term things like projects of this magnitude.
I was also struck by certain points in the justifications of the fork.
Business Reasons: what does “Every contribution made to Gentoo builds the brand of the distribution, value that is not being fairly shared with those members of the commnity that have helped build it.” mean? Gentoo is a project that thrives on volunteer labor. That’s just how it works, and it’s certainly not the first to do so. Because it(and the Gentoo company) can thrive should be a reason not to fork Gentoo Linux, since, by its very nature, it is being a successful entity.
Technical Reasons: It would seem that fixing the Gentoo/Python problem would be as easy as creating a fork of emerge based something else. It doesn’t even have to be official release.
And what is the problem with quality assurance? Builds are masked until they are made the official versions, and CVS logs are inundated with patches and fixes for various issues, including documentation. As a user, I’ve found Gentoo to be extremely stable.
Cultural Reasons: What is the problem with having a “benevolent dictator”? If a culture can thrive around it, as it does with Python, or even Linux(or FreeBSD, they both seem to have benevolent dictator/commitees) itself, why bother disturbing it?
The article mentions starting Gentoo Games as a reason for distrust, but how? It’s a company decision, there is absolutely no reason it needs to tell the public it’s creating a new product before the product is released, and especially not before the product is planned out.
It’s clear that Zach and Daniel don’t see eye to eye on issues, but forking the gentoo project like this doesn’t seem to be in the best interest of the Gentoo Community. It would seem that Zach and the Community would be better served if Zach would look further to find ways to be part of the common Gentoo project while also pursuing his personal business goals.
Well, after reading all that, a few things struck me:
1) Zach’s *extensive* focus on his entire history as a Gentoo developer. While I realize that he’s dealing with personal issues and felt the need to explain, I do agree with Robbins that it seems a bit too much like e! celebrity profiles. Especially with the names for each section. Somehow I doubt that his experiences can be marketed as “Titanic Redux”.
2) Robbins’ reply was anything but calm. He’s clearly pissed, with pretty good reason. At the same time, though, he’d better be able to back up his claims that the allegations are lies. Gentoo’s future depends on it, because this is likely to start a lot of people asking questions.
3) Zynot as ‘Gentoo for Enterprise’ – has Gentoo ever seemed like a good idea for enterprise users? Building a full system with standard enterprise software takes days. My PC with Gentoo is an Athlon XP 2200+; even at double speed my entire system would still take at least 24 hours to compile. What business is willing to put its operations on hold to build a fleet of machines from source code, with additional downtime whenever new source becomes available? It seems like Zach wants to take an idea that works well for individuals and move it to a new arena that it’s unsuited for. Leave enterprise solutions to binary-based, ‘instant uptime’ providers like Red Hat who already have the extensive support networks that businesses want.
Just my opinions…some of Zach’s proposed changes look good, so this should be interesting to watch.
I *just* wanted to comment on #3. What’s the feasability of having each box chug away on a package and ship it to the other boxes? Perhaps work in this area (for Gentoo or Zynot, makes no difference to me) would be to facillitate mutliple machines building each other.
3) Zynot as ‘Gentoo for Enterprise’ – has Gentoo ever seemed like a good idea for enterprise users? Building a full system with standard enterprise software takes days. My PC with Gentoo is an Athlon XP 2200+; even at double speed my entire system would still take at least 24 hours to compile. What business is willing to put its operations on hold to build a fleet of machines from source code, with additional downtime whenever new source becomes available? It seems like Zach wants to take an idea that works well for individuals and move it to a new arena that it’s unsuited for. Leave enterprise solutions to binary-based, ‘instant uptime’ providers like Red Hat who already have the extensive support networks that businesses want.
I believe imaging would be a solution to these issues…you make a single, highly optimized/customized reference machine and then you blast an image across all of your machines. In this way one could potentially save time and money. However it’d be just as easy to use RedHat kickstart instead.
“I believe imaging would be a solution to these issues…you make a single, highly optimized/customized reference machine and then you blast an image across all of your machines. In this way one could potentially save time and money. However it’d be just as easy to use RedHat kickstart instead.”
Great! Given that you’ve got 100% identical machines that is. I work with the very issue and cloning is no fun when it comes to heterogenous environments. If all or at least a significant part of the computers are of the same model cloning can do wonders, alas, this is far from always being the case.
Excellent article by Zach. He looks like a smart cookie with good morals and a head for business. I expect much success for Zynot.
Also,.. good choice of name. Easy to spell, and I can type it into google and not get inundated with a million unrelated hits (like, as with a name like syllable or walter
or whatever 
)
Also, interesting that they managed to form a non-profit in so short a time. [ducks]
Anytime you want to stop slamming people, you’re welcomed to, ok?
Seriously, I believe I said I didn’t use Gentoo anymore.
Honestly, Zach flung shit all over the place…Daniel responded in a calm manner. You on the other hand are a anti-gentoo fanboy.
Get YOUR head out of the sand. I don’t even use linux.
I admit I have only skimmed through the massive amounts of text posted today by Zynot and Gentoo, but I keep hearing that Gentoo is for-profit and that is a complaint…
But where is the “profit”? Besides advertising on the website and maybe a coffee mug, what can you buy from Gentoo?? There’s a donate button, but you can’t really buy a CD with it…where is the money coming from? I can’t imagine the costs associated with bandwith of Gentoo…I just don’t see a source of money to complain about…
I don’t see how not being included in whatever the latest project is a good reason to fork Gentoo, nor do I understand why projects OSS or otherwise need to be made public to the Gentoo community. I believe that this fork won’t last long simply because of the poor attitude by its leader. That’s not to say that I don’t wish it luck, I think that a fork or two for stable distributions of Gentoo would be good.
If drobbins is a bad person or runs Gentoo the ‘wrong way’, he’s doing a really good job of it. Come to think about it Linux itself is run in the same fason. Everybody ultimatelly reports the TheMan and TheMan has people to handle whatever he doesn’t want to handle. In that fashon the development direction is led by one person. Solid decisions can NEVER come out of a board of directors, there are just too many opinions. With one leader a project can keep going on in unity instead of falling apart.
GO DANIEL ROBBINS!
There isn’t much of a profit margin now, but there will be sometime in the future.
Side note: A lot of people have had issues with Daniel; he has a very grating personality. (My beef: one point long long ago, he would have members of the team do whitebox implementations of donated code _just_ so he could maintain the copyright). I applaud Zach for finally bringing what a lot of people have experienced out into the open.
I read the response “letter” from Dobbins.
It reads like it was written by a self-righteous 15 year old kid who does nothing but sit in the basement on his Linux box building kernels all day, drinking Mtn. Dew, and eating pizza after pizza.
A lot of the mailing lists I read with respect to Linux development and other tech related issues seem to be littered with people of the same mindset as this Dobbins fellow.
I guess I just don’t understand why people who are interested and involved with technology have to be… well… geeks I guess?
Oh well the culture is what it is.
The technical reason that this dude mentions makes no sense. First, Python is much more lightweight than something like J2SE. Second, ff an embedded platform can handle running running gcc, to do all the compiling, it can certainly handle Python. Python is ideal for this sort of thing. Its ridiculously fast to develop in, compared to something like C++ (or Java for that matter).
Second, ff an embedded platform can handle running running gcc, to do all the compiling, it can certainly handle Python
Rayiner, I got the impression that you’d be compiling the Zynot binaries on the desktop host to be run on the embedded target, no?
Foreshadow of things to come? (or not to come?)
Hrm, if this is any indication of the relationship Zynot is extending to the community, count me out…
“Copyright (C) 2003 by The Zynot Foundation. All Right Reserved.
This document may not be reproduced, in part or in whole, without express written consent of the foundation; however, please feel free to link to this page.”
http://www.zynot.org/info/faq.html
He is pretty much the dicatator of gentoo.. he has final decisions on almost everything. and as such, as managed to tick a lot of people off through the years.
Of course, has the right to do this, but it may not be good for gentoo overall.
g/l with the fork!
I think he’s also planning to extend portage into the binary package realm (read his stuff on page 4..)
Perhaps gcc may not be used much on embedded platforms after all.
sour grapes is a real cop out of a term and should never be used in an analysis of a situation.
if you are looking for explanations or trying to understand motivations, “sour grapes” doesn’t mean jack shit.
it’s like stepping outside on a rainy day and saying “it’s wet”.
no duh.
Hi guys,
I read all the replies here and just wanted to chime in. I agree that my initial response to Zach was a bit harsh. It was the best I could do at the time.
Also, I agree with comments that if I say that he’s lying, I have an obligation to share the truth. This came out strangely in my email. What I was trying to say is that there are the facts (which our users should know) and then there is the option of writing a personal “response tirade” about Zach the person, which benefits no one except Jerry Springer fans (you know who you are.) The facts will be shared as I am able to write them up.
Also, I have seen some lies about me and/or Gentoo in this comment section that I’d like to address:
1) I write my own articles for IBM developerWorks. I don’t “steal” stuff from other people. The person who is saying this should back up his allegations with facts. I’ve written with Aron Griffis, Chris Houser, Mikael Hallendal, and most recently John Davis, and have no problem giving credit. They are listed as authors for things they wrote, and co-authors things they co-wrote. Go to http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/articles.xml and see that credits are given. Everything listed as written by Daniel Robbins was written by me alone. If anyone thinks otherwise, please ask them for the specific articles and the name of the person who actually “wrote” them. In other words, verify your facts and don’t believe everything you are told.
2) Bevin’s uwyn.com “Why I left Gentoo” stuff is a very one-sided account of events, similar in theme to Zach’s write-up. I never publicly replied to Bevin’s write-up. Bevin wrote it primarily to justify his actions and give the reader a certain impression of what happened that was significantly different than what actually occurred. When people leave projects, they often want to justify their actions, particularly if they have an axe to grind. The best way to do this is to demonize the project lead as to make it appear that they had *no other choice* but do what they did.
3) Contrary to someone’s claim, I have never done or asked
other people to do “whitebox” implementations of someone’s
contribution to maintain the copyright. However, we have done plenty of full reimplementations of contributed ebuilds because they had significant errors.
This user may be upset because he submitted something that was copyrighted to himself. We saw the ebuild, but it had problems so could not use it, but wanted to add it to the tree for the user, so we totally rewrote it from scratch.
We kindly re-wrote a non-broken version of the ebuild from the ground up *for* the user, so he could have his favorite app in the tree even though the original submission would have been rejected.
Most people would consider this to be a nice thing rather than some evil plot.
Sincerely,
Daniel Robbins
Funny how everyone shuts up after Drobbins shows up.
Kind of like little girls bitching.
All you people that dislike Gentoo so much, sure spend alot of time bitching about it.
Later
Adam P
PS: I don’t run gentoo. I used to. I do like it. NetBSD just suits my needs better these days.
Keep up the work dr.
Hehehehe…who’s talking crap now?
I am an avid gentoo user, but I have an open mind. I read all the accounts, and the comments here and the /. comments, and to be honest, I was most worried about the future of my favorite distro. I have had nothing but bliss from my gentoo boxes, and my gut fears the changes that may shake my stability.
Then I jumped on IRC and joined #gentoo and #gentoo-dev, and also #zynot and #zynot-dev. I expected to see squabbling and opinion dumps. Here’s what I say: in both gentoo channels, business was usual, the way I always see things in there: everyone helping people out in #gentoo, and dev’ers getting work done in #gentoo-dev. Here’s what I say in zynot: #zynot was a boasting den of opinions and justifications. #zynot-dev was dead silent.
I feel the community behind gentoo spoke for itself here, and I am no longer worried. If drobbins is such a baddie, maybe it’s because it’s not easy to lead others. If zynot proves to be amazing, I’ll switch, I’m no lemming. But for now I’ll stand behind gentoo.
Reading through the replies to this post i see several things, some good and some not so good. First, The majority of people agree that forks push competition and enhance the evolution of linux technology. Second, some ppl seem to think there isn’t a valid reason for a fork, to them i ask why not? does there always have to be a technical reason to fork an emerging distribution? Perhaps the person in question like the bases of a distribution but wants to “branch” it into another direction, in this case to embeded devices. Third, This is my opinion, but if Zachary T Welch’s account is true, then why would Robbins register gentooembeded.org/.net/.com if he had no supposed interest in embedded branch? Seems like there is a bit of cock fighting on both ends, but i don’t really understand the relevence to anything past the fact that this is a simple fork, there really isn’t a need for a heavy problem with gentoo for this fork in question to be “valid”?
D. R wrote:
This came out strangely in my email.
Not so strangly Daniel… I just thought that your strong words needed so back up. While you try to make us believe otherwise, your initial response did come off as a personal attack. To be fair, Zack’s piece did seem more personal but he DID back up his points with some information that the reader may or may not take at face value. Your response was infinately more venomous. Such angry words do require some sort of backup.
I am satisfied that you will offer backup as you are able to write it, and I will eagerly await hearing from you.
Once again, let me convey my gratitude for the fine work you and the Devs have done for the Gentoo community and reassure you that Gentoo is still the only distro I’ll be running for the forseeable future
Best regards, Ernie Schroder
Maybe I got some details wrong, as this was some years ago, and I’m not really that interested in this subject(just checked, and at least one of the missing credits seem to be correct now, I have to wonder if the money for it also has been returned to the actual author(s)… but after all, it isn’t my work, so rather leave the issue alone, the author(s) seemed too tired of the issue to argue the time, and I doubt they want to get into stupid arguments now)
As for Bevin’s “Why I left Gentoo”, I had the pleasure of talking with him some time before he left, and his comments not only seem justified, but are an understatement of all he had to go thru, all the work he put into the project, and all the trouble he got from it, not to mention he was way over-polite. But of course you can dismiss them as “one-sided account of events, similar in theme to Zach’s write-up.”, funny how many of those “on-sided” accounts of events I have heard, and all them from the same side, because from your side all we get is prepotent condescending vague allegation to ‘libel’ and ‘manipulation’, but little more.
It should be quite obvious, that when so many good developers quit one project, something isn’t like it seems(not that the masses of clueless Gentoo 31337 lusers and other drobbins fanboys and groupies(hi Euge!) will ever care…)
But I have wasted too much of my time with this already…
\k
I think you’re judging things a little too quickly here dude. Relax. A fork will take a bit to get going and get more developers on board. Judging a project popularity within a day or so of it’s release based on the amount of dev chatter in IRC forums is pretty ridiculous. Gentoo will be more popular for quite a while simply based on its momentum and current installed user base, but that has nothing to do with the merits of the fork project or of the Gentoo project.
From what I have heard, many developers have had gripes with DR and many have not… That’s the way the world turns… I personally believe anytime “one” person dictates a path to the followers, there will always be disagreements along the way, some louder than others. Most times this is best for the whole. Hopefully this will cause DR and Zack to look deep into themselves, focus on what matters and find the best paths to take. I think it can be left at that…
I am sure the sudden re-organization would never have taken place without the fork happening. This is a good thing for Gentoo. I hope the fork takes off… And I hope Gentoo does as well. It might have a chance if the technology isn’t driven by a single persons ideas and ideals. A group of minds will always solve more problems than a single one especially if they are chosen by the community. I agree with many of the developers that have had their ideas and proposals put off by DR, some of which would have put Gentoo miles further than it is now…
I always hated the base and portage changes happening for what seems like daily and always breaking. Gentoo seems to be a gaming/desktop distribution, not build for stability but for speed. I hope both distributions take the hint and create something that could be considered for a production machine. I know people have put Gentoo in production, but they “always” pay the piper when the base system or portage break from some careless error. Its like stabbing at a moving target – like a windows update
This part of Robbins’ reply:
“As always, if any developer has questions about *anything* related to Gentoo, including how money is spent, please feel free to ask me.”
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/9606
is indicative of a deep problem at Gentoo’s.
Nobody should have to refer to the boss for any “insider view” on accounting. Open source accounting should be open to any and everyone, just as the code is.
Otherwise, not for profit organisations are just a stinkin’ joke.
GP