Managing Gentoo - a study in quotes [LWN.net]

Managing Gentoo - a study in quotes

Posted Aug 31, 2006 11:55 UTC (Thu) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989)
Parent article: Managing Gentoo - a study in quotes

>Most of these problems could be solved if we had a council that was far less spineless, a council that's prepared to address the *real* issues rather than doing nothing, a council that shows leadership and provides direction where it's needed without screwing things up where it's not.
-- Ciaran McCreesh

I'm reminded of a Margaret Thatcher quote, from a Forrestal Lecture at the US Naval Academy: "Consensus is the absence of leadership."
Not to kiss LBT's bum, but, for all there is plenty of discussion on the LKML, no on questions where the buck stops.
As a Gentoober, my biggest gripe is that there isn't much of a spec. I've read through the variety of ebuild documentation, and it shows fine effort by many people, but I still haven't figured out how the data flows through the system when I emerge --sync.
At the Gentoo BOF at OLS, mention was made of http://paludis.berlios.de/ , but in a "shhh! Top Secret" sort of way. Rather disquieting, that the community seems so intolerant to new ideas. Just sayin'.

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Managing Gentoo - a study in quotes

Posted Aug 31, 2006 14:18 UTC (Thu) by landley (guest, #6789) [Link]

Replacing an individual with a committee seldom results in faster or
better decisions. A wedge with more than one point does not work.

Open source development works on a publishing model: contributors form a
slush pile and an editor goes through it and says "no" to 90% of it to
fight off Sturgeon's Law. If there's time, the editor polishes up
what's left, stitches it together into a magazine, and puts out the next
issue. On larger projects, you have an Executive Editor (Jonathan
Corbet) who can farm chunks of the slush pile out to junior editors
(Rebecca Sobol, Forrest Cook...) who either handle a module themselves or
pass on the best 10% of what they read to the executive editor, who may
still throw some of what's left or polish it some more before stitching
it together into the next issue/release.

The purpose of the editor isn't to write the articles, the purpose of the
editor is to decide what goes in the magazine. And the editor does this
by saying "no" to anything that's not good enough. The main power at the
top is veto power, but it's still extremely important.

And there's a difference between magazines that take submissions from
anybody, and magazines that have no strong editorial vision.
"Peer-reviewed journals" tend not to be very interesting to read
(although individual articles in them might). A good executive editor
exercises taste and judgement to take calculated risks. This is just
about the opposite of the consensus that comes out of a committee.

I've said for years that Gentoo was replacing Debian. I'm sad to see
they're being a bit more thorough about it than I expected. Who is in
charge?

Managing Gentoo - a study in quotes

Posted Aug 31, 2006 14:34 UTC (Thu) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989) [Link]

>Who is in charge?
Why, the dude on first, clearly. ;)

Managing Gentoo - a study in quotes

Posted Aug 31, 2006 17:43 UTC (Thu) by g2boojum (subscriber, #152) [Link]

> The purpose of the editor isn't to write the articles, the purpose of the
> editor is to decide what goes in the magazine. And the editor does this
> by saying "no" to anything that's not good enough. The main power at the
> top is veto power, but it's still extremely important.

Actually, the existing council (committee) actually does a pretty good job
of vetoing bad ideas. What most of the quotes are suggesting, however,
is that veto power isn't really enough. A number of Gentoo developers
strongly feel that the folks at the top of the heirarchy should be setting distribution-wide goals and guiding the rest of the developers in achieving those goals. In the current system the setting and achievement of goals is mostly limited to individual developers and projects.

> I've said for years that Gentoo was replacing Debian. I'm sad to see
> they're being a bit more thorough about it than I expected. Who is in
> charge?

Ultimately, the people who choose to develop the distribution are in charge. That's always the underlying reality of a community distribution. Volunteers will work on what they find interesting, or useful, or necessary, and they will "vote with their feet" if they are not allowed to work on stuff that fits those categories. Leadership under such conditions is therefore an exercise in herding cats. It may be necessary, but it is by no means simple.

Incidentally, although people often scoff at the notion of leadership by committee, the job of leading a distribution is easily a full-time job for a single person. Since our devs aren't paid (by Gentoo, anyway), that isn't a very realistic strategy.