On Wed, 2006-09-20 at 18:42 -0400, Alec Warner wrote: > This whole thread is quite disappointing to me. Someone comes up with a > new way to use Gentoo; to make it a viable tool for a job; to make it > USEFUL. This is what we are about here (or were?). > > "Put another way, the Gentoo philosophy is to create better tools." > > -Daniel Robbins > Previous Chief Architect > > So unless that has changed and no one has updated the webpages...
Here is my take on the issue, it's something I saw happen when Gentoo on Mac OSX was announced, again with Sunrise, and now with Seeds (also note I'm not making a value judgment about any of the aforementioned projects, I just note a similar progression of events). There are those among us (myself often included, and mostly because I had a hand in the way the OSX port was handled at the outset) that believe that you shouldn't announce things in the manner of "Gentoo is doing XYZ now." in public fora (lists, gwn whataveyou) without first talking internally to verify the viability of the project, it's impacts on other projects, potential points of collaboration etc. This also coming up with a rational reference implementation and a list of tools that you will need. Now I realize that this means that there is less public visibility for projects in their larval stage, which can mean less (new) hands helping to figure out the above, but it also means an informed set of peers and no surprises. I believe that what Ciaran (and others) have been trying to say with suggesting that a GLEP might have been worthwhile isn't so much the statement that this (or any of the other projects) necessarily *need* a GLEP per se, but the GLEP process itself can act as a method to hash out any issues *and* inform your peers. Maybe we just need something along the lines of a GLPP (Gentoo Linux Project Proposal) mechanism wherein the Council specifically does *not* need to approve the project, or for that matter be involved at all, but can, at their discretion, deny the project existence. The format of the proposal could follow that of the current GLEP structure, and it's entire purpose would be to foster peer review and to spread information. Once a general level of consensus, and not I specifically did not say a full consensus, is reached then the project can officially be "born". Hell we just recently went through the whole process of coming up with a good GLEP to disseminate news to our users and it seems that we have the same problem internally... A lot of it comes down to wording in my mind, and granted it is a bunch of semantic bull but words matter. For instance in Stuart's original e-mail (and I'm sorry to pick on you, just happens to be the topic at hand) the subject was "New project: Gentoo Seeds" and the first paragraph read "I've created a new project, called Gentoo Seeds [1]. The aim of the project is to create stage4 tarballs which can be used to 'seed' new boxes with ready-built Gentoo solutions." A simple change to Subject: "New Project Proposal: Gentoo Seeds" with the first paragraph being "I'd like to create a new project, called Gentoo Seeds [1]. The aim of the project would be to create stage4 tarballs which can be used to 'seed' new boxes with ready-built Gentoo solutions. If you are interested in working on this type of project come by #foo or discuss it here. I will be sending all online discussions to the list so that the community can stay informed. Once we get a finalized plan we'll create an official project." It really comes down to understanding that once it is called a project it should already be known to be a good idea, and the whole community should have had time to think about it. In the court of public opinion there is a huge difference between saying "Gentoo has a project providing XYZ service." and "Gentoo is looking into the viability of providing XYZ service." Especially when it comes to the potential failure of that service. It looks *way* better to say "We found out that the project would not have been viable." or "We had to modify our idea in this way to make it viable." then causing what happened today. I'd also say that the *first* discussion of any new projects should happen on internal lists with the *first* round of comments coming from within the dev ranks. That way, if a project is particularly untenable mention of it won't ever have to be made public. If it is clear that the project just needs some shake out time then discussion could move to a public list for further scrutiny and community involvement. Again...all semantics...and a load of bull...but bull matters. --Dan
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