Gentoo after DRobbins

While the initial reaction of users is understandable, there is little need to panic. Let's look at the situation through a similar event in the history of another Linux distribution - Debian GNU/Linux. Debian's founder Ian Murdock created the project in 1993, and left the project some three years later, even before the first official Debian release, version 1.1, hit the FTP servers in June 1996. But despite the sudden absence of the project's founder, Debian did not collapse; instead it went on to become one of the most widely-used Linux distributions, with hundreds of developers and thousands of users in all corners of the world. Ironically, it was Murdock's second attempt at creating a Linux distribution that proved to be a failure: Progeny Linux, a commercial offspring of Debian, launched in early 2000, was discontinued 6 months later (although there is an ongoing effort to revive the product, thanks to Murdock's new development initiatives of grouping individual software packages into logical components).

Like Murdock, Daniel Robbins is one of the greatest contributors to the success of Linux that we are witnessing today. He first came into contact with Linux while working as a system administrator at the University of New Mexico, and it wasn't long before he was confident enough to join the development team of Stampede Linux, his preferred distribution at the time. This experience was later transposed into Daniel's own distribution, originally called Enoch Linux. Unfortunately, its development encountered a number of early setbacks and it wasn't until after a lengthy foray into the world of FreeBSD that this new project, now renamed to Gentoo Linux, began to take shape. Little by little, Gentoo was turning out to be a huge success. One of the main reasons for it was the fact that it incorporated several ideas from FreeBSD, notably the FreeBSD ports system (called "portage" in Gentoo) which provided users with sophisticated tools to compile all applications from source code, instead of installing precompiled binary packages. This gave Gentoo the innovative edge over most mainstream distributions, attracting many users who found Gentoo's ease of software installation and instant package availability highly appealing.

Up until recently, the development of Gentoo Linux was largely determined by its fearless leader, but this model is about to change. The work will be taken over by Gentoo Foundation, Inc, a new Not For Profit (NFP) organization, or more precisely, by the foundation's Board of Trustees: "The purpose of this foundation is to hold the intellectual property of the Gentoo free software project. It will have a Board of Trustees. This not-for-profit will be an open membership trade association." Originally Daniel Robbins intended to become a member of the Board of Trustees, at least during the initial period, but changed his mind later. The board will have around 20 members.

The resignation of Gentoo's founder wasn't the only news coming out from Albuquerque this week, as the Gentoo project also announced a new release of Gentoo Linux, version 2004.1. To many, this was far more reassuring news, especially since unlike most previous Gentoo releases, this one came out on schedule. What's new in the latest version? Besides the usual package updates, security and bug fixes, some of the more visible changes include newly introduced GPG signatures for online listing of packages, availability of "LiveCD" and "PackageCD" sets for every architecture, and substantial improvements in Catalyst, the Gentoo tool for generating stage installation tarballs and LiveCDs. Gentoo Linux is now fully compatible with kernel 2.6, version 2.6.5 of which is included as an option on the Universal LiveCD, together with kernel 2.4.26.

The events this week prompted some users to revisit Zynot, a high-profile attempt of an unsatisfied Gentoo developer to fork Gentoo Linux in June 2003. Long on idealistic writing reminiscent of naïve revolutionaries of yesteryear, the founder of Zynot went on explaining how the new fork would soon become the best thing since sliced bread. Unfortunately, 10 months later the project has little to show for its work. With a poorly designed web site, inactive user forums and a broken Wiki, Zynot has a long way to go before it starts delivering on those ideals, let alone becomes a viable alternative to Gentoo Linux.

The current changes within the management structure of Gentoo Linux represent a natural evolution of a highly successful project and won't have any major impact on the users of the distribution. With 200 active developers and a well-defined development framework firmly in place, there is no reason to believe that the project will suddenly disappear. Instead, Gentoo Linux will become a more democratic institution, perhaps with some inevitable political bickering on occasions, but definitely a better place to further advance the already excellent product.