Warwick Bruce Chapman wrote:
There is a plethora of potential Gentoo developers out there and this
sort of press does nothing for getting them any closer to joining the
effort.
I consider myself a "potential Gentoo developer", although as I stated
in my first post I simply don't have the time. I'd have to stop doing
something else I love to do this. Most of the packages I'm interested in
are very well maintained anyhow. In any event, the Distrowatch article
did not change either my perception of the quality of Gentoo or rule out
me volunteering as a developer. What it did do is prompt me to reply to
the DistroWatch message board, as I often do. And I said essentially
what I've said here -- I am still a Gentoo loyalist and I haven't seen a
decrease in the day-to-day quality of Gentoo for *any* reason.
Secondly, regarding the DW article, surely if it was as baseless as
many members of this list suggest, and I am not referring to the
specific references in the article, but to the underlying reasons the
author may have decided to write it, then DW should have immediately
been corrected on the issue and made to publish a retraction. I am
not sure this is the case and, while I am only a user and casual
contributor, I have become more and more aware of the grumblings and
(perceived?) increase in turnover of developers.
It isn't just DistroWatch any more. I'm here because there was an
announcement on the Gentoo front page that a code of conduct was being
discussed on the mailing list. Hell, there was even a mailto link to
subscribe! As I mentioned in a previous post, perhaps someone could find
out just how gentoo.org ranks in web page hit statistics compared to
Debian, Fedora, openSuSE and Ubuntu. So -- Gentoo's home page -- the
marketing face of the distro to the world -- invites one and all to join
a discussion on a code of conduct, and most of us, even "advanced"
users, have no idea of the context. That's both good and bad. It's good
-- very good, IMHO -- because it shows that the community is open to
feedback and is willing to announce that. And it's bad because you don't
in general want negativity on your front page.
Thus, with all respect due to current and past developers, could I
suggest that regardless of whether or not the DW article is worth
consideration, the process of adopting the Communication CoC and the
structures required to implement it be followed through in the best
interests of all developers and users of the Gentoo project.
+1, as they say on other lists, with the proviso that the discussion
continue until all have been heard. Processes like this take as long as
they take.
--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, FBG, AB, PTA, PGS, MS, MNLP, NST, ACMC(P)
http://borasky-research.blogspot.com/
If God had meant for carrots to be eaten cooked, He would have given rabbits
fire.
--
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