Zynot Foundation Forks Gentoo 455
deque_alpha writes "The Gentoo Linux distribution has been forked by a group of Gentoo developers and community members. This fork is being placed under the control of the non-profit Zynot Foundation, which will "hold the source code, trademarks, and any other intellectual property developed by and for its community." The goals of the fork include improving stability and cross-platform reliability to bring the Gentoo-developed technology to the enterprise and embedded arenas." Another reader points out Zack Welch's long article at Zynot.org on reasons for forking the Gentoo distribution.
Well (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Well (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Well (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry, somebody had to say it
Re:Well (Score:4, Funny)
Could be a great thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Could be a great thing (Score:5, Funny)
Those forkers!
Re:Could be a great thing (Score:3, Funny)
"Fork you!"
-- Shamus
Bleah!
Re:Could be a great thing (Score:2, Funny)
To be executed properly, it would need to be knifed, not forked.
Re:Could be a great thing (Score:3, Funny)
I'm looking forward to the HURD port of Gentoo!
Re:So much for the greatness of Gentoo (Score:5, Insightful)
I posted a Gentoo comment here because the article is about Gentoo! I agree that Gentoo and its community both have shortcomings. And I also believe that Slackware, Debian, RedHat, Mandrake, etc. all have similar shortcomings, both in community and in software. Linux is like that right now, and will be until it stabilizes. No matter what distribution you're a fan of, you can never claim that your favorite is better than the other ones. That won't accomplish a thing.
Re:Could be a great thing (Score:4, Insightful)
Gentoo for embedded systems (Score:5, Insightful)
To me, it seems that the most useful part of Gentoo is their portage system. How can it be modified to support the embedded area without losing the features that make Gentoo Gentoo?
Well, I guess that's why they forked, isn't it?
Re:Gentoo for embedded systems (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Gentoo for embedded systems (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Gentoo for embedded systems (Score:3, Informative)
Apt+dpkg are quite large for PDA's, weighing in at 1.5 megs after pruning out the obvious things like manual pages. Apt is also dependent on libstdc++, which is another 600k. 2.1 megs for package management, not the greatest idea when you are dealing with a device with only 16MB of onboard storage space.
Alternativly you can use ipkg, which is rather buggy, but has the benefit of fitting in 116KB of space. Compiling just frightens me. Some of this stuff takes a while to compile on my desktop.
Re:Gentoo for embedded systems (Score:3, Interesting)
Zach Welch, the founder, has done a lot of work with cross-compiling, so even though it might seem stupid to build something from a handheld, if you connected it up to your beefy desktop things would go quickly. I don't think anyone wants to
Re:Gentoo for embedded systems (Score:3, Interesting)
But maybe that's just a sign that a fork is the
SERIOUS QUESTION (Score:4, Interesting)
I want you to think about how much time has been spent and money and effort invested over the past (let's say) six years on the various Linux distributions. There are, what, half a dozen major ones, and maybe a dozen more niche or fringe ones?
Now think about how much further along Linux would have been if that time, money, and effort had not been squandered on dead ends.
Now think about how much time, money, and effort was spent on Gnome or KDE. Now think about how much further along Gnome or KDE could have been if nobody had wasted their time on the other one.
Now think about Gecko. Gecko, as a browser technology, is essentially dead. KHTML, thanks to Apple, rules the day. How much further along would KHTML be if nobody had wasted their time on Gecko? Or, if you prefer, how much more viable and advanced would Gecko be if nobody had wasted their time on KHTML?
Here we see what, to me, seems to be the ultimate failure of this thing you guys call "open source." What I'm referring to here is the development of large software projects by loose, unorganized confederations of hobbyists, students, and individuals; this is the phenomenon that has come to be known on Slashdot and in a few other places as "open source."
The ultimate failure of "open source" is this: everybody wants to have it his own way. Consequently, we have ten individuals or groups working on their own variations on X, instead of cooperating on X itself.
As a software engineering protocol, "open source" appears to be remarkably ineffective.
How can this be?
Opinions?
Re:SERIOUS QUESTION (Score:3, Interesting)
Your point is a massive troll but well taken. I'm sure that 600,000 users are now going to tear you apart and say it isn't so, but the matter of fact is that 100 hobbyists split between 2 competing open source projects can't compete with 100 paid employees working on one closed source project.
Re:SERIOUS QUESTION (Score:5, Insightful)
There is some truth that competition is not always the best way to get things done. Further, winning should not be confused with being the best. Many mistakes are made, but before anyone is going to believe that competition and free markets are not the practical best way to progress, you will need to show how someone at the top could know in advance the best option. Gecko may be dead as to KHTML as you say, but one could not have guessed this when Mozilla started.
MOD UP PARENT (Score:2)
Re:SERIOUS QUESTION (Score:4, Insightful)
Multiple options are the STRENGTH of Open Source (Score:4, Insightful)
Every Linux distribution was designed to fill a niche, every single one of them has a different take on how things are done. And every single one of them has the opportunity to learn from all the others. In terms of what to do, and what not to do.
I think the best example of this *is* Gnome and KDE. Both of these systems have a very different approach to solving the same problem. Both of them also have learned from and borrowed ideas off of the other one.
I love open source software for one simple reason: The choices I am able make in my computers look, feel, and behaviour. If I don't like KDE, I switch to GNOME. If GNOME is pissing me off, I'll play with Fluxbox.
Without the multiple competing options in the form of all these software projects/distributions, what would we have? We'd end up with ONE option that we'd have to use, whether we liked it or not, and no alternative to go to. Does that sound familiar? It's the situation I was in before I discovered there were other options to Windows.
I'm not going back to those dark days, not if I can help it.
Re:SERIOUS QUESTION (Score:4, Insightful)
That's assuming there wasn't a lot of internal bickering going on as to how things should be done, however. I think internal strife is far more dangerous and inhibiting than forking a project. The only way to make dozens, hundreds, or thousands of developers set their attitudes and egos aside for the sake of reaching a common goal is to offer them loads of cash.
Re:SERIOUS QUESTION (Score:5, Interesting)
A good question, or several, actually. The problem with OpenSource, from a business point of view, is that it is almost impossible to make a big bet with it and gain from the insight that inspired the bet in the first place. Jobs and Wozniak bet on a friendly looking computer and a whimsical company image. Once established, no one could catch up to it for a long time. Gates bet on stripping out the windowing functions of OS/2, leaving the superiority of OS/2 behind in favor of lower cost. Similar big bets were made by Dell, Ellison and others. Now imagine an environment were their ideas were instantly distributed to everyone else, especially before they were completely evolved. I bet none of them would have market gained traction.
As I have mentioned in other posts, there only three promising Linux markets: high end, which Red Hat will likely win, ultra low end, where Lindows is well positioned, and embedded (TiVo). Successful technology strategies have few peers...
An answer to the serious question (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think you're looking at this quite right.
The "failure" of open source is that everybody wants it their own way, perhaps, but you should look more seriously at what that means. They want any piece of software they want to work with whatever hardware they've got as well as possible. There really isn't anything wrong with that. Shouldn't this be the case?
This has been a HUGE problem in the past.
There was no way to make any piece of software work well without hurting some other piece. You want easy installation? Then you won't be able to optimize. You want to optimize? Then configuration will not be easy.
The problem is not choice, it's flexibility. Autoconfig did a lot to ensure that flexibility, and this "fork" is another step in that direction. I put fork in quotation marks because it is quite likely that a lot of the material in the fork will go back to the original. At least, I really, really hope so. Otherwise, there are certainly going to be people switching back and forth between the two distros. Gentoo is designed with flexibility in mind, and it is becoming more flexible as time goes on, so this is quite feasible. Haven't you heard how much Gentoo steals from other distros?
Here's a better question than yours.
How much farther along would your distro be if all open source software was easily accessable to it? How much farther would it be if someone could create packages for your distro that come from a different distro, processor, or even kernel?
That seemed to be ZWelch's concerns when I talked to him on #gentoo-embedded last.
One final note: in case you're thinking that something like this is just another development thing, note that Zachary Welch was the lead embedded group developer. This is going to be a distro with advanced cross-compilation capabilities, an area which is rather undeveloped (anywhere in the open source world) at the moment.
Re:SERIOUS QUESTION (Score:5, Insightful)
It's simple to say that if all the man power poured into all projects solving a certian problem were instead put into just one really good project, then the best possible solution would result. There Mack Truck sized flaw here is that you are assuming that humans are not involved.
As the article notes, it's primarialy a personallity problem which lead to this fork. Misunderstanding happen, people's feelings get hurt, and some people just want different things. These all lead to conflicts which can ultimatly harm a project. Face the facts about human nature: some people just can't work together.
Aside from personality conflicts, there's also the people of organizing a lot of people. Organization necessarially leads to buracracy. Lot's of people hate buracracy, and lots of people like to root for the underdog. In a large organization, which would be necessary to combine all the little projects, people coming on to the project would find the structure so unwieldly and confusing that they would just prefer to start over with a new organization.
Competition among open source projects lets users choose (where user may denote an end user like your Mom, or a corporate user like Apple) which is right for them. In this way, OpenSource is like capitalism. People get to choose the product which best fullfils their needs. The only difference (generally speaking) is that direct monetary cost for the product is removed from the equation (support, hardware, etc would still have to be considered).
One other point is that a lot of new coders who don't have enough skill to contribute directly to an established project will often release things they did to teach themselves as OpenSource. This doesn't really dilute the marketplace, since often such projects get abandonded quickly as their creators move on to bigger and better things, or are obviously lacking. So while it may sound reasonable to have one really good IRC client instead of a million half finished ones (and a few finished ones), the argument assumes that everyone is capable of contributing the high quality code as soon as the start to learn to program.
SERIOUS ANSWER (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm almost ready to call troll on this one, but I figure I can answer this question yet once again and perhap it will stave off other similar comments.
First off: What is this "open source" you speak of? There is NO centralized, organized open source movement, despite what ESR might claim. There are may individuals and groups creating and producing open source software, yes. But they are widely varied in goals, scope, and success. Many (most?) produce open source software on their own time and on their own terms. That's certainly the case for me. It's a hobby. It's a fun thing to do. And no one is going to tell me I have to cooperate with so and so just to make sure open source software succeeds. I'm doing this for fun, remember? So if I want to create my own Yet Another Linux Distribution (YALD?) or whatever, then it's my choice, particularly since I'm doing this on my own free time!
"Open source" describes a software licensing model and, I suppose, a development model as well (not really) but certainly not a "software engineering protocol." Extreme Programming is a development model. Open source is a licensing model. It is not a grand movement. It is not a single entity bent on taking over software development. Sure there are some open source developers and free software developers with these ideas, but they do not necessarily represent the whole of the "community."
In other words, look at your comment this way:
The ultimate failure of "human society" is this: everybody wants to have it his own way. Consequently we have ten individuals or groups working on their own various on X, instead of cooperating on X itself.
Okay, yeah, so it was a troll, but it's a common misunderstanding too. Hopefully a few
Re:SERIOUS QUESTION (Score:2, Insightful)
One of the reasons why this is the best approach is that all developers have different visions of how things should be an
Re:SERIOUS QUESTION (Score:3, Insightful)
Dead ends and wastage are a part of life. It's not possible to plan everything, tell everybody what to do. It's like saying "just imagine how advanced ours cars would be if everybody had simply bought Ford".
Now think about how much time, money, and effort was spent on Gnome or KDE. Now think about how much further along Gnome or KDE could have been if nobody had wasted their
Re:SERIOUS QUESTION (Score:5, Insightful)
I have dozens, maybe hundreds of "dead" projects. Ones I will probably never complete.
However, the technology I put together to start a "dead" project often comes to life in a completely different form.
For example, work I did in PHP to emulate a mail server relay (for the sheer heck of it) later came back to life in a commercial venue when I needed a method to synchronize data via the Internet. I used a somewhat SMTP-like protocol, added encryption for security, and voila!
It's sorta like being a welder in a wrecking yard - there's lots of raw material to work with to get the paying stuff complete.
That's somewhat like how the open source model works. By working in parallel, various projects that in and of themselves never become #1, still allow for the testing and proving of various ideas.
The ideas are then available for reuse elsewhere.
Think of SourceForge as a wrecking yard for Intellectual Property.
Now, those "failed" projects are ideas that were tried, and for whatever reason, failed. Each failure is actually a success, in that something that didn't work was tried, and now it's known not to work.
If you try to climb a cliff on the 10th of April, and by the 11th, you haven't made it to the top of the cliff, have you failed? Or have you simply tried a method that didn't work, and are free to try again?
The real issue raised by your post is really the black and white, "success/fail" mentality pounded into us by the "pass/fail" school system we all endured while growing up. But "pass/fail" is not how software engineering (or life) works.
A "failure" is simply an attempt that didn't achieve the intended goal. It can be considered a "success" if the information gained in the attempt lead to the achievement of the goal!
"Opinions" (Score:2)
2) Look at KDE, and how bloated it is (I know it's an opinion, but there is truth based on it). Think of how hard it would be to satisfy low-end-system users, minimalists, people who run mission-critical systems that need a GUI, but can't be bothered with fancy... anything. Think of how hard it would be to combine the
Re:SERIOUS QUESTION (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, I see similar failures all the time.
I go to the book store and there's hundreds of books. Different plots and different stories and different covers. Wouldn't it be better if there was just One Book!
I go to the movie theatre and there's a new movie every week! Different plots and differe
Re:SERIOUS QUESTION (Score:4, Insightful)
The failure of capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do we need Apple, Novell, and Sun when they could just work for Microsoft?
Why don't all the computer manufacturers just merge with Dell?
Why did MS make their own database when they could've just used Oracle?
Why do we have a Barnes and Nobles and Borders book stores when we already had a Waldenbooks?
Why a Wendy's and Burger King when they could've just gone with McDonalds?
Why do we have different brands of milk, eggs, b
Sean Connery says: "Just like a Mick (Score:3, Funny)
Oh god. That's really bad.
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Hear, hear! (Score:4, Insightful)
Sheesh. Some people...
Re:Hear, hear! (Score:4, Interesting)
(why they couldnt have worked together, I have no idea. Could have been a nice contractual partnership)
I love gentoo. I haven't installed another linux distro since the early betas. But when it comes to linux and politics, nothign would suprise me anymore. Certainly not when it comes to finding a buisness model to supporta GPL project.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
How can you write code, contribute it to a major GPL project, then not realize that your contribution is one of thousands, and that there is no major plan to reward individual contributors?
When your 'contributions' include managing the entire ARM and Embedded projects, loaning 5 machines to the infrastructure, then practically thrown out of the loop once the founder figures out there could be good money involved.
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Misrepresentation.
He was thrown out of nothing, he attempted to make arrangements that may or may not have agreed with the founder's intentions for his project.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow (Score:2, Informative)
He's back! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:He's back! (Score:3, Interesting)
Robbins's post manages to be scathing, retortful, immature and yet hold no valuble information, all at the same time.
In regards to "getting both sides of the story", I was in #gentoo on freenode until 4 AM last night talking with the folks there, including one Gentoo developer (still on the project) whom I happen to share a day job with. I'm quite familiar with an "insider's" point of view.
Go back to your bri
As a Gentoo user... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As a Gentoo user... (Score:5, Insightful)
Debian (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Debian (Score:3, Informative)
Re:As a Gentoo user... (Score:5, Insightful)
I lean towards agreement with this statement. It's not as if Gentoo does not have a Social Contract [gentoo.org] and is closed in any way. Sure, a few private mail lists may exist, as they do in other projects [xfree.org], and there may be business motives behind key Gentoo developers. But at the end of the day the project is GPL, top to bottom, (hence it is forkable) and it will not go in a direction that disatisfies the non-core developers and user community, otherwise it will lose those two precious commodities and cease to exist.
And at the end of the day, people have to put bread on the table. If they find a way to do that through a GPL project, good luck to them. I say good luck to both Gentoo and Zynot, and given my excellent experiences in using Gentoo (never will I go back to something rpm based) I'll be using the best one of the two for the forseeable future.
Who knows, maybe the fork will be good and any co-operation - intentional or through GPL'd code swapping - will probably benefit both distros. (Yes, projects can co-operate in when the leads hate each other, that's the GPL for you.)
Re:As a Gentoo user... (Score:2)
Re:As a Gentoo user... (Score:2)
Re:As a Gentoo user... (Score:2, Informative)
It's only tyranny when someone else is in charge (Score:5, Insightful)
Then, on the very next page, he says this:
Whaaaa?
Re:It's only tyranny when someone else is in charg (Score:5, Informative)
and so on. This document implies that he himself could be removed from the board of directors once it is run completely by the community, although I doubt that would happen.
Re:It's only tyranny when someone else is in charg (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll believe it when I see it.
Re:It's only tyranny when someone else is in charg (Score:2, Funny)
Re:It's only tyranny when someone else is in charg (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder how Patrick Volkerding [slackware.com] feels about that comment since slackware comes out way ahead of Gentoo in every poll of how many people are using what distributions.
Well, this is just great... (Score:5, Insightful)
At the risk of generalizing the situation, I'll say that more often than not egos get in the way of something really freaking cool, and ain't that a pisser...
*sigh*
Re:Well, this is just great... (Score:5, Insightful)
The primary focus of Zachary's complaints center around...
1. Gentoo is a for-profit.
2. Managed by a single person.
3. Portage is cool.
4. He wants to profit from using in embedded devices.
To each of these points FreeBSD sounds like where he really wanted to be rather than with Gentoo. FreeBSD is most definitely a non-profit project. He would be dealing with an established, community based management team with tasks heavily delegated. It has a port system (that portage was based on). He could even use the kernel in embedded devices without GPL related concerns.
If you followed the link to Geert Belvin's parting shot I'm left wondering the exact same thing. The FreeBSD community would love to see more advanced work done on its ports system. A seperate project had been spawned off to do just this very thing a while back, then floundered in lack of progress.
To each of these folks I'd be curious why they didn't look beyond the Linux world and into FreeBSD, or perhaps one of the other BSD's.
-1, Flamebait (Score:5, Interesting)
Did I mention how arrogant the developers are? People who don't want to install 1.4 until it is final are looked down upon and told "it's just the installer, it's good enough." Well then, why not call 1.4 RCx "1.4 final" then, if it is "good enough?" People who suggest that new features shouldn't be added to a release candidate build are ignored. And this is not the first developer that has cried foul of Daniel Robbins. I don't know him personally so I can't say with authority, but I smell a rat.
The sad thing is, despite the horrendous developer beauracracy, it's still the best source-based distro out there. Hopefully this Zynot project will overtake it eventually. If there is more to it than spite towards DR, I think it will succeed.
Chris
Re:-1, Flamebait (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:-1, Flamebait (Score:3, Funny)
(Disclaimer: this is a joke. I like openbsd)
Some of us expect those attitude problems (Score:3, Interesting)
Gentoo was probably going to follow in the footsteps
of FreeBSD. So now they have their Guido. Big
surprise. It's kinda like how The Smashing Pumpkins
did/do/whatever nothing but fight nonstop, but put
out goodness. Same thing goes for The Pixies until
they broke up in 91. You need those premadonna's
though. They fire up everyone else enough by either
inspiration or plain pissing them off to get to the
really interesting aspects of people. People end up
doing things
Re:Some of us expect those attitude problems (Score:5, Funny)
the bea-
uty of
HTML
is the
way you
don't
have to
have
strict
format-
ting so
things
can be
rendered
in a
non-
annoying
way on
many
differ-
rent
machines
.
Re:-1, Flamebait (Score:3, Informative)
When Source Mage was first being formed (which itself was after a series of ugly fork-related situations) everyone made sure to put a lot of effort into creating strong Debian-like guide
Re:-1, Flamebait (Score:4, Funny)
You mostly come across as some little kid who got a mean response on one of their forums and has a bone to pick. The only reason I can see for you to be moderated "Funny" is because there is no "Sad" modifier.
Re:-1, Flamebait (Score:2)
I bet you dollars to doughnuts every "f1r5t p0s7" troll is some god damn hippy prepubescent script kiddie with his limp dick in one hand and a Gentoo CD in the other. Until Gentoo can learn to FUCKING GROW UP they will not get any respect from the Linux community.
You can't blame "Gentoo" for the actions of their users - that seems a little unfair.
Reasons for forking are personal. (Score:5, Insightful)
Zynot has forked ... (Score:4, Funny)
a group of disgrunted Zynot users decided to
fork Zynot to Yznge platform. The users welcomed
this fork as it closes us to the ultimate
Wholy Grail of the Linux movement known as
"Linux distribution for everybody" meaning that
each person will have his/her own Linux distro.
Linux made another important step on the way
to the total world domination
"Ein Mann, Ein PC, Ein Linux distro" !!!
Here are my posts (Score:3, Insightful)
On forums.gentoo.org
----
I have read most of Zach's rant and it disturbs me. Much of what Zach is complaining about seems to be dealt with by the Gentoo top-level management structure proposal. However, the most important part of his claims, the "business" part, are not. I of course will hear D. Robbins out as well.
Regardless, I think the Gentoo project needs to CLEARLY establish what is bussiness and what is not. This should, hopefully, prevent these claims frum being made in the future.
The way I see it this whole affair is nothing but bad news. I hope and pray it all works out.
----
and on forums.zynot.org
----
I have read most of Zach's rant and it disturbs me. Much of what Zach is complaining about seems to be dealt with by the Gentoo top-level management structure proposal. However, the most important part of his claims, the "business" part, are not. I of course will hear D. Robbins out as well.
Regardless, I think the Gentoo project needs to CLEARLY establish what is bussiness and what is not. This should, hopefully, prevent these claims frum being made in the future.
The way I see it this whole affair is nothing but bad news. I hope and pray it all works out.
----
I will not sleep well tonight.
Zynot fork?? (Score:2, Funny)
All I can say is wow (Score:3, Interesting)
One thing I was not certian of; did he loan or donate those servers he mentioned. If he loaned them I could see it being the nice thing to do to return them if he no longer feels comfortable lending them out.
We'll see how this all turns out a year or two from now. I doubt any useful information will come out of either side for a good couple of months. The sanatized reports are all we will get for a while, until later on enough secondary evidence tricles out for people to make their own decisions.
Daniel Robbins' Reply: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Daniel Robbins' Reply: (Score:2, Interesting)
What was that about not correcting his account?
Because, frankly, life is too short for this kind
of stuff. I don't want to waste it by launching personal attacks on people.
OK...
I could easily "win" the argument by e
Party at Daniel Robbins' house!!! (Score:2)
He's invited us all round to his house! Let's all go together - bring your own beer. This friday, 8pm. Does anyone have his address?
Re:Daniel Robbins' Reply: (Score:2)
If he's going to go there, I think he needs to put up or shut up. Other than that, I'm glad he responded the way he did. You're right, eventually it would just become a dick measuring contest.
(Of course, it seems to have started pretty close to that state.)
If the man's story is true (Score:5, Insightful)
In truth this is not particular to the merits of GNU. Any project run with a public source repository allowing use to the public benefits from this. What is truely interesting is the general lack of forks, and of those forks that do exist, the frequency that they "consolidate." I've said it before but observing OSS projects often seems like watching Communist Russia. The software is liberated, but control is wrest over the 'common' source code. This code repository was referred to by ESR as a form of cathedral, where design is king, but I see it as more of a beuocracy, where people are sent in recursive loops to submit patches for application. Marx suggested the idea of the proletariot dictatorship, but in practice Stalin felt that the proletariot required a Leader. Such is the role of the Maintainer. But Orson Wells probably did a better job with Animal farm than I can do with OSS. I do not mean to disparaige the GNU liscence by calling it Communistic, but simply that often large projects like Gentoo (and BSD) suffer from this wrest for control.
In conclusion I wish the Zynot group luck in this quirky fork, and hope that he can find a solid niche outside of x86 and PPC as he claims.
Orson Wells' Animal Farm was good... (Score:2, Funny)
"Rosebud..."
joke (Score:2, Funny)
Ex-Gentoo Devel Guy: Zynot?
it will work itself out (Score:3, Interesting)
As for all the personal stuff, well, people need to think about ahead of time what they are investing their time in and what they are going to get out of it. In the business world, all you get is what is guaranteed to you contractually in writing (or by law). So, don't spend time developing open source software expecting that some profit or job will magically materialize. Either develop open source software under contract, or do it for fun or as a volunteer.
Obvious Monty Python Reference (Score:5, Funny)
P.F.J.: Yeah...
JUDITH: Splitters.
P.F.J.: Splitters...
FRANCIS: And the Judean Popular People's Front.
P.F.J.: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Splitters. Splitters...
LORETTA: And the People's Front of Judea.
P.F.J.: Yeah. Splitters. Splitters...
REG: What?
LORETTA: The People's Front of Judea. Splitters.
REG: We're the People's Front of Judea!
LORETTA: Oh. I thought we were the Popular Front.
REG: People's Front! C-huh.
FRANCIS: Whatever happened to the Popular Front, Reg?
REG: He's over there.
P.F.J.: Splitter!
Yep, just what we need. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a really great strategy. While the rest of the industry consolidates, we Linux'ers will start forking and flood the market with too much choice!
Seriously though, this is my greatest concern about Linux. Are we just recreating unix wars? Already, there is *significant* variance amongst different linux distros, even ignoring forking those. Argue against this all you want. The fact of the matter is that anyone writing to Linux needs to do a lot of testing/QA to have any confidence that their software will work on distro X version Y. Unless like 99.9% of our community, you want to just throw some source up and hope that an *end user* can 'make' it.
Major distros have a competitive reason for having other distros fork. Divide and conquer is a sound principle. The more distros there are, the more it forces you to pick the top X.
Not to mention that Microsoft must love this kind of behaviour: "Man, here we were worrying about them, and they fscked themselves!".
Personally, I think there may be some funky logic behind using some of the principles behind JCP. You specify a version of Linux* like J2EE that's made up of a particular version of common component technologies. 'Scuse my ignorance if United linux is doing/trying to do the same.
Differentiation and innovation is cool, but it is happening at the very core of Linux* itself, forcing people who write software to make choices that are as good as proprietary (I write to distro X). Man, flame me and pick this apart all you want, but I'm *really* trying here.
*Correct, I incorrectly use teminology to talk about not 'Linux the kernel' but 'Linux the kernel + other things'.
Re:Yep, just what we need. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oracle targetting RedHat only is a big problem, and not a solution for anything whatsoever. It doesn't help anybody but RedHat. They should support their product on any LSB-compliant linux.
Fragmentation will help there, because it makes standards not just a nice-to-have, but a
Re:Yep, just what we need. (Score:2)
Oh, I would argue that it's not so bad. Distros are normally entirely source code compatible and mostly binary compatible if you know what you're doing as well.
So yes, you cannot test on every distro out there. But if iD put up a Linux binary of Enemy Territory and say "only tested on Red Hat", do you honestly think a Slackware user is going to give a damn? If he downloads it and it runs, he'll be hap
How goes Gentoo? (Score:2, Interesting)
This highlights one problem with OSS (Score:3, Insightful)
Disclaimer; I'm not a Gentoo user, or even a daily user of any Linux-distro. Partly this is because I 'grew up' on Windows, partly because I've mostly been more interested in what I do on my PC than with what OS is on the bottom. However, I've been playing a lot with Knoppix lately, and are considering moving to Linux when I upgrade my computer later this year.
Reading the articles posted, and the 'reply' that was posted slightly higher up in the comments, I feel that this is but a reflection of what is the largest problem, and yet one of the great strenghts, of open source operating systems: They are dependant of the 'personal chemistry' between the various contributers. If they fall out, as it has clearly happened in this cause, the distrebution can suffer near fatal wounds (if he pulls all the hardware he says he has loaned to the project, I think things can get messy for a while). On the other hand, we might see two good (or even great) distributions where there only was one before.
The articles also raises a number of valid points which should be taken to heart by all who contribute to open source software; unclear roadmaps, unclear lines of command, hard to get a descission made, lack of communications. While these issues are found in closed source operations as well, it is easier to combat them in that area as they are traditionaly more hirarcical in their organisation.
Oh well, one more distro to consider when I take the leap into using Linux as my main OS
this guy (Score:2)
Its a shame this even ended up on slashdot, but people who know about Gentoo and Daniel Robbins nature won't be influenced by this crap. If you read Daniel's response, you'll know what I mean. He
Gentoo is perfect for me (Score:3, Insightful)
As for Mr. Welsh's comments, they seemed very personal to me, and I would suggest this isn't the best way to kick things off. I hope he can leave his personal issues aside and concentrate on the fork if that is what he believes is the best solution for him. Good luck to him.
Zynot? (Score:2)
How old is this Daniel Robbins guy anyway? He acts like an obnoxious brat. Well, typical geek.
Psst Zaurus Users (Score:4, Funny)
Me: What're you doing buddy ?
Zaurus chap: Umm nothing... I "emerge"ed a calendar app yesterday... just 5 more files to compile
Not the first time someone have thought of forking (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny to see this happen now, almost two years ago, even before Gentoo 1.0 was released, at the FOSDEM I meet with a bunch of hackers to drink some beer(Tea for me, thanks
After much ranting about the problems the project was suffering and drobbins complete incompetence, a fork was suggested by someone(can't recall who), a few names were discussed ("genthree" I think was one
Sadly the idea never got anywhere, I guess mainly because everyone was too busy with other things, and I lost touch with all them(I was hopping to meet them again in FOSDEM this year, but work got in my way and I couldn't make it.
Still, after the meeting, it was clear that a good percentage of the Gentoo developers were really unhappy with the current leadership, and that it was just matter of time for something like this to happen.
I really wish them good luck, and maybe I will look into switching to the new distro from Debian Sid(that so far has been "Good Enough"(tm), but could use some improvements) and I hope all the 31337 h4x0rs keep using Gentoo, and don't come to bother the nice people that is forking.
It was sad to see some really good ideas and good quality work wasted because leadership sheer incompetence(anyone remembers drobbins rants about commercial distros "not contributing" "fixes" back to the mainline kernel? no that must have been embarrassing) and a user base that was mainly formed by clueless idiots that thought that Gentoo was the Mandrake of the 21th century("Hey dude, how cool I am! my box is so super-optimized! muhahaha...")
To the fork: good luck! to drobbins: have fun crashing in hell!
[posted anonymously to protect the identity of the confabulators
\\K
P.S.: DISCLAIMERS: I'm a Debian (l)user, and ex-BSD-zealot(still have a few BSD boxes around), and over time I have got really tired of solving the problems of clueless Gentoo (l)users in IRC, not to mention listening to their stupid rants about how 'optimized' their distro is, while they can't even use vi to edit a fucking file.
Community is Community -- Business is Business (Score:5, Interesting)
This story is a cautionary tale for anyone looking to exploit commercial opportunities in open source: always remember that community is community, and business is business.
The Zynot founder made a mistake: he expected the community leadership to support his efforts "to capitalize from my significant sweat equity contributions to the project". In the absence of a business contract, all open source contributions are volunteer work -- that's why they're called "communities" and not "start-ups" or "incubators". This holds true whether the contributor is a major organization (like IBM) or an individual volunteer.
This is not to say that the Zynot founder is behaving badly by forking Gentoo. In fact, forking is the ultimate right granted by open source.
In an ideal world, perhaps, there would have been a way for the Gentoo leadership and for the Zynot group to work off the same codebase in a symbiotic relationship. It appears that MySQL AB is able to acheive that to some degree. But, as the JBoss group split demonstrates, sometimes business interests do not fit well within a community framework.
I suppose two lessons come from this:
wait a sec (Score:3, Interesting)
i.e. Yes, he may have donated several machines to the project, and some specific coding related tot eh ARM branch, but what about the parts that really make gentoo what it is, like, say portage, the boatloads of prepatched kernels for things like grsecurity, selinux, vanilla, etc. I could check again, but I don't remember seeing his name anywhere.
Seems to me it went like this:
-drobbins- Wanna help?
-zach- sure, but I want financial compensation for everything I do
-drobbins- Well, this gentoo thing makes money, but let's face it, it's a linux distro, and it's not a whole lot of money.
-zach- *GASP*! Fine, I'm taking all my stuff and forking your distro!
Am I missing anything? (flame away)
Knee-jerk reactions (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, by the end of the article, I had started wondering whether my "investment" in Gentoo was mislead; I contribute ebuilds, and not an insignificant amount of time submitting bug reports, and so on. What if the leaders of Gentoo were sitting in a dark, smoky room somewhere, secretly making hoards of cash off my labors and contributions?? Yegods! I could be being ripped off!
After the initial wave of panic, I got to thinking about it: I don't really care what people are doing with Gentoo. I use Gentoo because I believe it is the best distribution; they keep my most important packages up-to-date, Gentoo is easy to administer, and they have at least the illusion of being an open community. Nothing they're doing is hurting me, I'm running Gentoo on three or four machines, and I don't pay anything to use it. In fact, I consider my contributions to the project to be my "payment". If "they" can figure out a way of making money off their efforts, and it doesn't impact my use of Gentoo, then more power to them.
Now, if I were Zach, and I'd contributed that much time and effort, I'd probably be pissed too. At some level of contribution, you sort of expect to be included in the reaping of whatever nebulous profits are being gleaned. I think it is probable that Daniel, et al, are acting unethically -- being unwilling to acknowledge someone else's significant contributions is bad form (old chap) -- so at this point I wouldn't trust Daniel as far as I could throw him, but ultimately, it has little bearing on my use of Gentoo.
Personally, I think commercial software is doomed; software engineering will still be profitable, but it'll be more as service/support/specialized solutions providers. That's not very germane to the discussion, except that in my hypothetical future, throwing away the talent of a willing, and proven, contributor is like throwing away money.
I wish Zach luck.
Re:Hardneded Gentoo (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, try their demo machine here [gentoo.org]. It's been mentioned as an article here before. It lets you log in as root and do almost nothing, which is pretty cool.
Re:Hardneded Gentoo (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Where is a fork going to get the bandwidth? (Score:4, Informative)
If you read the article he claims that much of their existing infrastructure is either directly or indirectly on loan from him...
Re:Where is a fork going to get the bandwidth? (Score:2)
Is there a reason not to use BitTorrent technology to offset (some of) the bandwidth requirements for Gentoo?
Re:Gentoo sucks (Score:2, Insightful)