On AD 2007 January 07 Sunday 11:51:59 PM +0100, Hans-Werner Hilse wrote: > But *I*, as a user (this is -user, after all!) don't feel bothered by > any kind of bureaucracy. Please explain first why I should take action > at all at the moment. And why I shouldn't just go and take the next > distro that fits my needs best (brrrr, Slackware :-)?
You won't be bothered by bureacuracy untill the day you discover that that package you want has been left months ago to fall into ignominious forgottenness among the thicket of bugzilla ebuild requests or the day you discover your favorite package hasn't been updated in 2 years and the herd responsible won't (or can't?) respond to email inquiries. You will care that day when you realize many things that are wrong with gentoo may be the result of corruption or inefficiency. You should care because not even Free Software or gentoo is free. As in politics apathy will only get you what you want or keep the affairs of state safely insulated in the bureaucracy as long as somebody favorable or benign is in power. You may be satisfied with gentoo now but what will you do when emerge --sync stops working because somebody stopped caring? I don't claim that everybody should contribute the same effort or work or any work at all, but rather that you ought to at least care. Go ahead and pick up a copy of the next distro when gentoo crumbles to the ground but at least reflect then that each distro out there is made great by the work of lots of talented developers, volunteers most of them, because they care because they love hacking software. This isn't meant to chasten anyone into a state of open source piety, but rather is offered as a somewhat incoherent argument for why caring matters, because in the end free software is a human endeavor. Justin -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
