Seemant's Entries in Category: History

I hate writing these. What I mean is that I hate having to write them. What I mean by that is that I wish people I care about (not only because they’ve become friends, but also because of the tremendous value they’ve brought to Gentoo during their time here) would stop leaving.

Yesterday, Jon Portnoy (aka avenj) announced his retirement from the project.

Jon came to us via the #gentoo IRC channel. In fact, if there’s a …

So let’s catch up quickly. Daniel started Gentoo, he led it, Gentoo grew and attracted all sorts, including (and especially?) those who would rather see Daniel not in power. I have a theory: some of those people who lobbied for distributed power structures were actually after being in control for themselves. It was certainly true of Zach (he admitted as much). To be honest, it was sort of true with me, as well. There were times when I thought …

This post may piss off a lot of people. I’m publishing what I have seen, that is all. If I’m wrong, I’m happy to be corrected. Daniel started this whole Gentoo thing. And while it was small, he led it. As it happens, Gentoo grew. And it grew quick and fast and beyond all expectations. It grew in size faster than it did in maturity. Yes, I say “it” because I refer to the entity of Gentoo …

As Mike pointed out, Spider is no longer a Gentoo developer. Logically, this makes sense, because he has not done any development for Gentoo in a long time. However, Spider was one of the early pillars of the Gentoo project. He holds an especially poignant place in my heart, because he and I joined Gentoo at about the same time (followed closely by Matt Kennedy). And he and I were the ones responsible for Gentoo’s Great libpng Debacle of …

Well, the lease at the old place was up on the 31st of last month. We were going to move in to this new complex that got built this summer. Unfortunately, the business practices of the management company left a bit to be desired (not least of which falls under deceptive business). Anyway, we found a place in Medford (which everyone tells me is actually pronounced Mefa), and moved in last week. Well, we moved in to the kitchen, anyway …

…the more of an asshole it becomes. Alternatively, the more things change, etc. What I will say is not intended as a remark against Daniel or anyone. It is merely observation. Mistakes were made, and they continue to be made. The sad thing is that they are the same mistakes.

In the days of drobbins (no link, you can google it), there was once an incident where a problem developer was acting up. Well, this problem developer was not malicious …

Brilliant stuff!. Meanwhile, I’m glad to have touched base with an old friend (this is my Rach shoutout), and looking for another friend. Has anyone seen Brandy Westcott about? If so, say hi from me :)

In other news, the whole doc->pdf thing is not going as well as I’d like. I’m going to hack together a solution this week and post that.

I blog so rarely these days. So, in the beginning (100 000 bugs ago) there was Daniel Robbins who got all the incoming bugs and he assigned them. Then Gentoo grew to 15-20 developers and I came along and we created bug-wranglers to handle the majority of incoming bugs (that are not recruiters, devrel or infrastructure related). As of a few weeks ago we created two new aliases: maintainer-wanted and maintainer-needed. The first is to put all the “this is …

But I could be with your vote!! All kidding aside, Gentoo’s organisational structure is undergoing a change. This is the culmination of a lot of proposals from a lot of different people. The old TLP management structure simply did not scale well enough to retain its effectivity. It’s no secret that the Gentoo project has grown: very large very fast. It’s been doing this for about 3 years now, with no real signs of letting up.

Now …

What is it with Gentoo Developers leaving lately? Two people, scandium and chriswhite, have left in the last two weeks. Ordinarily, I’m used to the turn over in Gentoo development, but honestly not being on the -core list since January (until my dev boxes arrive here, don’t get alarmed), I miss out on the news and find out in funny ways. I guess that not being on devrel lists plays into that. Maybe it’s just my ego …