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Old School
Apprentice
Joined: 20 Nov 2004
Posts: 252
Location: West Bank of the Coast Fork
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 Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 2:44 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | "Gentoo Linux's Chief Architect, Daniel Robbins, announced today that he is resigning from his development responsibilities for Gentoo. Drobbins will be staying with Gentoo until the not-for-profit (NFP) organization is established, at which point the newly-chosen NFP board of directors will take over governance. We are extremely sad to see Daniel Robbins depart, and we both wish him the best in his new endeavors and promise that the door will always be open for his return." |
That is what was said on April 27, 2004.
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Slalomsk8er
Apprentice
Joined: 03 May 2003
Posts: 228
Location: Münchenstein, Switzerland
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 2:52 am Post subject: Re: Users need Gentoo - it's still the best distro going |
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| ps wrote: | | Slalomsk8er wrote: | | I would like to have him back in the lead only if he is just part of say a team of 5 mature people that are bound by clear rules that were created and voted in to function by the developers AND the community together. But who can vote and who can't? That is a problem in it self. |
It looks to me like it would be hard to get 5 people to agree that it's Sunday.
That's why the need for a benevolent dictator. which is better than the tyrannical fascism.........yuk. |
Ok, that with the Sunday could be hard as here at my place on earth it is now Monday.
What is a tyrannical fascism in having rules and 5 people lead the project by this rules that they cant change by them selfs?
Maybe because I am a swiss guy, I don't like the power to be in just 2 hands and one brain and like to vote about every thing but history showed my people it was not a bad choice at all (if you don't measure success of people by territory or world domination that is  ).
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Slalomsk8er
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Joined: 03 May 2003
Posts: 228
Location: Münchenstein, Switzerland
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 3:04 am Post subject: |
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| old school wrote: | | Quote: | | "Gentoo Linux's Chief Architect, Daniel Robbins, announced today that he is resigning from his development responsibilities for Gentoo. Drobbins will be staying with Gentoo until the not-for-profit (NFP) organization is established, at which point the newly-chosen NFP board of directors will take over governance. We are extremely sad to see Daniel Robbins depart, and we both wish him the best in his new endeavors and promise that the door will always be open for his return." |
That is what was said on April 27, 2004. |
Who said this would be important for your point I guess.
This sounds like news speak which makes it a bit mood for me. If I remember things right he was more or less driven out of the project by the developer because of his way to deal with persons that he did not could convince of his vision and the Foundation was a requirement he imposed on the developers to leave them the name and logo and stuff like this.
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Old School
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Joined: 20 Nov 2004
Posts: 252
Location: West Bank of the Coast Fork
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 3:15 am Post subject: |
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| Slalomsk8er wrote: | | Who said this would be important for your point I guess. |
That was the official statement posted on Gentoo dot org.
| Quote: | | If I remember things right he was more or less driven out of the project |
If you're referring to drobbins, the way I remember it, was that he got a job offer (that paid real money ) from Microsoft, and would be unable to continue with both projects.
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d2_racing
Bodhisattva
Joined: 25 Apr 2005
Posts: 13047
Location: Ste-Foy,Canada
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 3:53 am Post subject: |
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| old school wrote: | Let me start off by stating the following is not a criticism of anyone, especially the Dev's. You all have my utmost respect for the work you do.
Gentoo needs leadership. Someone that has the plaque on their desk that states, "The Buck Stops Here." Running an organization like this by committee, ends up as nothing more than a circle jerk. What Gentoo has been lacking is a unity of purpose and direction. I think we know what 90% of the community would like to see happen. In one word: drobbins. |
Yeah I saw that thread, but it was lock before I could vote  |
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d2_racing
Bodhisattva
Joined: 25 Apr 2005
Posts: 13047
Location: Ste-Foy,Canada
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 3:59 am Post subject: |
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| old school wrote: | | If you're referring to drobbins, the way I remember it, was that he got a job offer (that paid real money ) from Microsoft, and would be unable to continue with both projects. |
And after that, he left Microsoft for a Linux/Unix enterprise E Trade financial. |
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massimo
Veteran
Joined: 22 Jun 2003
Posts: 1226
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 6:34 am Post subject: |
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| d2_racing wrote: | | old school wrote: | Let me start off by stating the following is not a criticism of anyone, especially the Dev's. You all have my utmost respect for the work you do.
Gentoo needs leadership. Someone that has the plaque on their desk that states, "The Buck Stops Here." Running an organization like this by committee, ends up as nothing more than a circle jerk. What Gentoo has been lacking is a unity of purpose and direction. I think we know what 90% of the community would like to see happen. In one word: drobbins. |
Yeah I saw that thread, but it was lock before I could vote |
Wonder why...
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ps
n00b
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
Posts: 31
Location: /usr/portage
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 7:31 am Post subject: Re: Users need Gentoo - it's still the best distro going |
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| Slalomsk8er wrote: | | Ok, that with the Sunday could be hard as here at my place on earth it is now Monday. |
Ha, now that's funny....LOL
| Slalomsk8er wrote: | What is a tyrannical fascism in having rules and 5 people lead the project by this rules that they cant change by them selfs?
Maybe because I am a swiss guy, I don't like the power to be in just 2 hands and one brain and like to vote about every thing but history showed my people it was not a bad choice at all (if you don't measure success of people by territory or world domination that is ). |
I wasn't refering to your proposal. indeed I agree wholeheartedly with your proposal, except that if it were a doable thing, it would already be being done. It would be great, but alas most likely not possible for the simple reason that there is no desire to agree about anything for all sorts of reasons. And this is exactly why there needs a strong leader and a good house cleaning. Once that is accomplished, I'm sure that reasonable consensus will be achievable.
Best wishes,
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Looking forward -->
Last edited by ps on Mon Jan 14, 2008 7:42 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Ibn al-Hazardous
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 02 Sep 2004
Posts: 133
Location: Somewhere deep in the desert.
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 7:35 am Post subject: |
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| vonr wrote: | | Ibn al-Hazardous wrote: | Problem: Developers are retiring faster than they respawn
Why the problem exists: No definitive answer at this point.
Proposed solution: Greater care taken of potential devs (currently users). More suggestions appreciated.
Explanation: During the last three weeks only two new devs have joined. During the same time 19 devs have retired (according to this bugzilla search for the time period, I counted only the FIXED bugs). That's an outflow of 17 devs, and if it continues at this rate, it's pretty alarming. |
Ehm, have a look at the bugs you posted: most of them are being retired due to inactivity. Every once in a while a bunch of inactive devs is being retired, nothing unusual about that. I still remember the 'mass-exodus' of devs a while back; this is nothing of the sort. |
Yes. The point was that earlier AllenJB was saying that since we welcomed two new developers during the last three weeks, and retired none - there is no problem with developers. This was a, perhaps juvenile, way of saying: "Ooops! We did retire some developers during the last three weeks."
What's more, the rate of new developers joining has been declining with 40% since 2005 (by Berkholz' numbers in LWN), and the mean liftime as a developer is two years. So it's not a question of the last three weeks - it's a question of the last three years. If fewer and fewer developers join, we just may have a problem on our hands.
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Kloeri
Retired Dev
Joined: 02 Sep 2002
Posts: 144
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 9:07 am Post subject: |
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| Ibn al-Hazardous wrote: | | What's more, the rate of new developers joining has been declining with 40% since 2005 (by Berkholz' numbers in LWN), and the mean liftime as a developer is two years. So it's not a question of the last three weeks - it's a question of the last three years. If fewer and fewer developers join, we just may have a problem on our hands. |
That's largely because inactive developers weren't retired before I started doing so in 2005. There was a lot of developers who had done less than 10 commits despite being ebuild developers for 2+ years. Hardly a great loss when looked at that way. |
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slonocode
Apprentice
Joined: 03 Jun 2002
Posts: 273
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 9:27 am Post subject: |
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| Kloeri wrote: | | Ibn al-Hazardous wrote: | | What's more, the rate of new developers joining has been declining with 40% since 2005 (by Berkholz' numbers in LWN), and the mean liftime as a developer is two years. So it's not a question of the last three weeks - it's a question of the last three years. If fewer and fewer developers join, we just may have a problem on our hands. |
That's largely because inactive developers weren't retired before I started doing so in 2005. There was a lot of developers who had done less than 10 commits despite being ebuild developers for 2+ years. Hardly a great loss when looked at that way. |
If you look at it that way don't you also then have to question the number of new developers? If you don't want to subtract at the end because they did very little then it is hardly proper count them as additions in the first place. |
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Kloeri
Retired Dev
Joined: 02 Sep 2002
Posts: 144
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 9:40 am Post subject: |
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| slonocode wrote: | | If you look at it that way don't you also then have to question the number of new developers? If you don't want to subtract at the end because they did very little then it is hardly proper count them as additions in the first place. |
Fortunately new developers are (in general) fairly active. The requirements for becoming a developer are somewhat higher than in the first few years so new developers have to show some interest and persistence at least where as in the old days you (more or less) just had to say Hi! on irc to get commit access. So that's no longer a big factor.
The quality of work isn't nearly at the level I would like however but that's not directly related to the number of devs joining or leaving or their activity level. |
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slonocode
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Joined: 03 Jun 2002
Posts: 273
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 9:56 am Post subject: |
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| Kloeri wrote: | | slonocode wrote: | | If you look at it that way don't you also then have to question the number of new developers? If you don't want to subtract at the end because they did very little then it is hardly proper count them as additions in the first place. |
Fortunately new developers are (in general) fairly active. The requirements for becoming a developer are somewhat higher than in the first few years so new developers have to show some interest and persistence at least where as in the old days you (more or less) just had to say Hi! on irc to get commit access. So that's no longer a big factor.
The quality of work isn't nearly at the level I would like however but that's not directly related to the number of devs joining or leaving or their activity level. |
But you were refuting or downplaying the statistics. The point is that if one looks at them the way you describe they would have to alter the addition stats to match which would still make them show the same trends. |
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alexandervdm
n00b
Joined: 04 Jan 2007
Posts: 72
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 10:06 am Post subject: Re: Users need Gentoo - it's still the best distro going |
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| dilbot wrote: | | Daniel - if you're reading this - please remember that the devs you disagree with the most are still people who are honestly interested in moving Gentoo forward - even if it's not "forward" in the sense that you expect. The challenge of good management is to convince rather than coerce. You'll get a lot more recognition for a job well done if you keep the road kill count to a minimum. |
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Kloeri
Retired Dev
Joined: 02 Sep 2002
Posts: 144
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 10:20 am Post subject: |
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| slonocode wrote: | | But you were refuting or downplaying the statistics. The point is that if one looks at them the way you describe they would have to alter the addition stats to match which would still make them show the same trends. |
No, I'm saying that the statistics don't have the significance that you claim. Open Source projects needs active people - people with commit access that have never done any work doesn't matter so it doesn't matter that their commit access is removed either.
Or would you claim that the important thing is just in the number of committers and not their (lack of) activity? |
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slonocode
Apprentice
Joined: 03 Jun 2002
Posts: 273
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 10:35 am Post subject: |
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| Kloeri wrote: | | slonocode wrote: | | But you were refuting or downplaying the statistics. The point is that if one looks at them the way you describe they would have to alter the addition stats to match which would still make them show the same trends. |
No, I'm saying that the statistics don't have the significance that you claim. Open Source projects needs active people - people with commit access that have never done any work doesn't matter so it doesn't matter that their commit access is removed either. |
Then they don't matter as additions either.
Which leaves the relative percentages still showing a decline.
What I claim is that what you have offered may show that the stats could be wrong from an absolute numbers perspective but you haven't shown that the trend they describe is wrong. |
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Kloeri
Retired Dev
Joined: 02 Sep 2002
Posts: 144
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 10:41 am Post subject: |
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| slonocode wrote: | | What I claim is that what you have offered may show that the stats could be wrong from an absolute numbers perspective but you haven't shown that the trend they describe is wrong. |
No, this is really easy to understand. Almost all the developers being retired/otherwise leaving the project are completely inactive. Almost all the developers joining the project shows lots of activity. |
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slonocode
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Joined: 03 Jun 2002
Posts: 273
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 10:54 am Post subject: |
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| Kloeri wrote: | | slonocode wrote: | | What I claim is that what you have offered may show that the stats could be wrong from an absolute numbers perspective but you haven't shown that the trend they describe is wrong. |
No, this is really easy to understand. Almost all the developers being retired/otherwise leaving the project are completely inactive. Almost all the developers joining the project shows lots of activity. |
Uh I understand your claim. You offer no proof of it though. Do you have any stats to back that up?
Meanwhile the stats provided show a decline even in the face of your inactive theory. Do you really not understand my point? |
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Kloeri
Retired Dev
Joined: 02 Sep 2002
Posts: 144
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:03 am Post subject: |
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| slonocode wrote: | Uh I understand your claim. You offer no proof of it though. Do you have any stats to back that up?
Meanwhile the stats provided show a decline even in the face of your inactive theory. Do you really not understand my point? |
I don't understand why you completely refuse any kind of logic. Or why you refuse to listen to the guy that 1. started the retirement project (it's wider than just retiring inactive developers but that's not important to this discussion) and 2. have probably been behind at least half the retirements in the history of Gentoo.
That said, you completely confirm my suspicion that many forum users don't understand wtf they're talking about and don't want to listen to people who actually do. That being the case there's no way you'll ever believe what's really happening so I'm not going to waste any more time trying to explain it to you. |
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Maedhros
Bodhisattva
Joined: 14 Apr 2004
Posts: 5511
Location: Durham, UK
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:13 am Post subject: |
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Please keep the replies courteous and polite, everyone, and don't let this thread degenerate into flaming, or we'll end up having to lock it. Thanks.
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slonocode
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Joined: 03 Jun 2002
Posts: 273
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:14 am Post subject: |
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| Kloeri wrote: | | slonocode wrote: | Uh I understand your claim. You offer no proof of it though. Do you have any stats to back that up?
Meanwhile the stats provided show a decline even in the face of your inactive theory. Do you really not understand my point? |
I don't understand why you completely refuse any kind of logic. Or why you refuse to listen to the guy that 1. started the retirement project (it's wider than just retiring inactive developers but that's not important to this discussion) and 2. have probably been behind at least half the retirements in the history of Gentoo.
That said, you completely confirm my suspicion that many forum users don't understand wtf they're talking about and don't want to listen to people who actually do. That being the case there's no way you'll ever believe what's really happening so I'm not going to waste any more time trying to explain it to you. |
My point is completely logical. The statistics provided show a decline. You attempt to refute them by saying that you can't count the retires because they never did anything. But logically if they never did anything then you can't count them as additions either. Which, accounting for these still leaves the statistics originally presented still showing a decline. Show me the error in that logic.
If your point is "take my word for it" then ok i guess. But nothing you have said actually refutes the statistics provided other than "take my word for it". |
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bmichaelsen
Veteran
Joined: 17 Nov 2002
Posts: 1277
Location: Hamburg, Germany
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:16 am Post subject: |
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Those numbers are not good to show the growth of gentoo developers. But there is an indication slonocode might be right.
40% of all-time commits come from 18 devs.
40% of 2007 commits come from 12 devs.
So the "core" of commiters shrinked. Of cause this is flawed - a real comparision would be 2007 commits against 2004 commits (same timeframe). But even as is, that number does not look too good if you consider the tree in 2007 is bigger than ever before.
Last edited by bmichaelsen on Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:38 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Kloeri
Retired Dev
Joined: 02 Sep 2002
Posts: 144
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:19 am Post subject: |
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| slonocode wrote: |
My point is completely logical. The statistics provided show a decline. You attempt to refute them by saying that you can't count the retires because they never did anything. But logically if they never did anything then you can't count them as additions either. Which, accounting for these still leaves the statistics originally presented still showing a decline. Show me the error in that logic.
If your point is "take my word for it" then ok i guess. But nothing you have said actually refutes the statistics provided other than "take my word for it". |
Except that the "decline" happened after 2005 and most of those inactive developers was added before 2005. So you're not counting those as adds. |
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slonocode
Apprentice
Joined: 03 Jun 2002
Posts: 273
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:46 am Post subject: |
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| Kloeri wrote: | | slonocode wrote: |
My point is completely logical. The statistics provided show a decline. You attempt to refute them by saying that you can't count the retires because they never did anything. But logically if they never did anything then you can't count them as additions either. Which, accounting for these still leaves the statistics originally presented still showing a decline. Show me the error in that logic.
If your point is "take my word for it" then ok i guess. But nothing you have said actually refutes the statistics provided other than "take my word for it". |
Except that the "decline" happened after 2005 and most of those inactive developers was added before 2005. So you're not counting those as adds. |
Sheesh I made the point about 5 times you could have said that to begin with. I agree that that is evidence that the percentage or relative percentage may be lower. I don't think it wipes away all the decline but it would lower it.
Thanks for actually providing some sort of answer that addressed the question. Although the insults and incorrect characterization about logic were not needed. |
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Ibn al-Hazardous
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 02 Sep 2004
Posts: 133
Location: Somewhere deep in the desert.
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| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:53 am Post subject: |
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| slonocode wrote: | | Kloeri wrote: | | Ibn al-Hazardous wrote: | | What's more, the rate of new developers joining has been declining with 40% since 2005 (by Berkholz' numbers in LWN), and the mean liftime as a developer is two years. So it's not a question of the last three weeks - it's a question of the last three years. If fewer and fewer developers join, we just may have a problem on our hands. |
That's largely because inactive developers weren't retired before I started doing so in 2005. There was a lot of developers who had done less than 10 commits despite being ebuild developers for 2+ years. Hardly a great loss when looked at that way. |
If you look at it that way don't you also then have to question the number of new developers? If you don't want to subtract at the end because they did very little then it is hardly proper count them as additions in the first place. |
This is where you completely lose me. Fewer and fewer developers have been joining since 2005. The rate of joining is 60% of what it was at the beginning of 2005. What has this to do with retiring old devs?
The figures for how long a developer is active have actually been climbing since 2005, but the mean has only reached 2 years. So your counter argument does not hold water.
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