[LWN.net]

Gentoo forks

[This article was contributed by Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

The Gentoo project is experiencing a few growing pains. The Gentoo project announced some major management changes for the project itself last week, while Zachary Welch has announced his intention to form a non-profit called the Zynot Foundation and a plan to fork the Gentoo distribution.

Why the "Zynot Foundation?" Apparently, because it was available. The project's FAQ says the new name was chosen because the domains were available, and because it's a name that can easily be spoken and spelled. The name of the actual distribution is still up in the air, according to the Zynot FAQ, and will be chosen by the community. Welch's "Reasons for Forking A Linux Distribution" details his reasons to break off from Gentoo and to form a new project. It's a lengthy read, but to put it succinctly, Welch had a number of issues with Gentoo lead Daniel Robbins and the way that the project was being managed -- both from a business perspective, and from a developer's perspective. Welch had hoped to further Gentoo in the embedded market, and eventually decided that it was too risky to move forward using the Gentoo name.

...the current situation that appears to place the Gentoo Linux distribution and brand arguably in the sole possession of Gentoo Technologies, Inc., and any sane business that contributes to the project should be very careful about balancing their expectations with the possibilities that such a monopoly entails... Every contribution made to Gentoo builds the brand of the distribution, value that is not being fairly shared with those members of the community that have helped build it.

Welch isn't the only developer to express dissatisfaction with Robbins' leadership of the project. Last April, Geert Bevin left the project and wrote up a summary of his reasons for doing so. According to Welch's "Welcome to Zynot" e-mail, the Zynot Foundation will be putting out some kind of release in time for LinuxWorld Expo in August, as well as having a booth at the show.

While the Zynot Foundation is getting started, the Gentoo project will be busy implementing a formalized management structure. The proposal, put forth by Robbins, seems to be fairly straightforward. It establishes a formal management hierarchy and responsibilities, channels of communication and so forth. The document doesn't address process by which one would become a project manager, so it seems they will be granted their position by the "Chief Architect," which would be Robbins himself.

Welch's departure also means that Gentoo will need to find some new hardware and hosting. Apparently, much of Gentoo's infrastructure, including CVS, their Web server, Wiki and Gentoo Bugzilla are hosted on machines owned by Welch and co-located at Oregon State University.

Regardless of Welch's reasons for doing so, it remains to be seen whether many in the Gentoo community will be willing to follow Welch's fork of the project. Gentoo has a fairly devoted user community as well as a fair number of core developers. According to Welch's estimate, Gentoo currently has a user base of about 150,000 people. It will take some doing to achieve the same kind of success with a new project.

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Gentoo will rock on

Posted Jul 3, 2003 9:22 UTC (Thu) by alspnost (subscriber, #2763) [Link]

I always feel disappointed when I see forking going on, because I instinctively see it as yet another dilution of effort and talent in our community. We need to see mergers, not forks! Having said that, perhaps this particular fork will lead to a BSD situation, whereby Gentoo and Zynot will end up competing on a friendly basis, and folding in each other's improvements from time to time. Could it happen, or is that too optimistic?

It's also sad that this has slightly tarnished Gentoo's unblemished image as a friendly, happy and healthy project. I guess I'm naive; these sort of flare-ups will always happen when human beings are involved. But wherever Zynot goes, Gentoo will rock on, and rightly so. It's an excellent technology platform that already provides many benefits, and hopefully those are only a glimpse of what's to come.

Good luck to both groups, and may healthy competition work its magic as always.

Read what he actually says

Posted Jul 3, 2003 23:11 UTC (Thu) by bgilbert (subscriber, #4738) [Link]

Folks, it's worth reading what Zachary Welch and Geert Bevin actually have to say. IMHO the LWN summary doesn't quite capture their argument, which seems to be that Gentoo publicly claims to be an open, developer-run organization, while in fact being a for-profit corporation managed by a small, closed group of people on semi-secret mailing lists. (Note that it's gentoo.org, not gentoo.com, and their website actively solicits donations.) They further argue that this ruling cabal often makes decisions for political or personal, rather than technical, reasons.

As a recent (partial) convert from Debian, I find this possibility rather disturbing indeed. A quick skim of the announcements released by both sides leaves me reminded of the recent XFree86 incident, except more clear-cut. If Gentoo's controlling body is undercutting its developers (as they claim) and if a fork is the only way to solve the problem, then a fork should happen, so that (a version of) Gentoo can be developed in a properly open setting.