[Sussex] Gentoo forked...

[Geoff Teale]

Gentoo on the whole, like Debian, utilises it's community to deliver 
more value than the likes of Red Hat.  Red Hat are very good at things 
like documentation and support (on a commercial basis) but they cannot 
match Gentoo or Debian's packaging system because people won't commit to 
do that kind of work for someone elses commercial benefit and Red Hat 
couldn't afford the level of staffing required to do it privately. 

Whilst Zachary talked a lot about commercialisation, he also implied 
that Gentoo was in some way a "commercial distribution" which simply 
isn't true, nor will it be true of Gentoo or Zynot in the future - 
neither project could operate in that manner and neither intends to.

Zachary is bringing up the subject of commercial interest and his 
companies investment in Gentoo to try and shift the emphasis away from 
what this is really about towards something people in the community will 
get angry about.

The long and short of it is this:

* Zachary had some (good) ideas about embedded development platforms and 
the portage system.
* Daniel Robbins and others felt that these ideas were not the best for 
the future of a _general_ purpose distro.
* Zachary has left the Gentoo developers group to pusue his ideas in his 
own distro.
* Daniel Robbins and a few associates do run a for profit organisation 
than incorporates Gentoo Games and a commercial support operation.
* Zachary runs a support company and is looking to get involved in 
selling Gentoo based Linux solutions to the embedded market.
* The Gentoo project itself does not run on a profit making basis and 
will be formally incorporated as a "not-for-profit" entity very shortly.

I, and all of the Gentoo developers remaining, including Daniel Robbins 
accept this and wish him well.  Where people involved in Gentoo 
development get upset is when Zachary resorts to bad mouthing the 
project and it's contributers (principally Daniel Robbins, without whom 
Gentoo would not exist at all) and lying about what did and did not 
happen in order to generate a lot of attention for himself and his project.

In terms of forking the Gentoo project : You might call it a fork, but I 
wouldn't,  it's only the same as if I started building a distro based on 
Debian - to my knowledge there are least 10 such distros, but I've never 
heard of Debian being a forked distribution.

This, like almost all the challenges Gentoo faces right now, is a result 
of massive growth in the user base in the last 12 months.  Right now the 
number of registered Gentoo users doubles ever 6 weeks!

Dominic Clay wrote:

>I would agree that the web-site you mention is unbiased.  There
>certianly is an entertaining one-sided tirade.  It did however appear to
>me to be spoken by someone who knew they were somewhat over-reacting,
>and who repeatedly pointed out that they were talking from their own
>specialised point of view.  
>
>The discourse was filled with references to his wishes to make a
>commercial success of a service / product based upon this technology.
>In my ignorance, I suspect tha these are probably very similar issues to
>many that faced the likes of Red-Hat in the early stages.  In Redhat's
>case the commercial environment seemed to create more success.  Will
>this be the future of the Gentoo build?
>
>Dominic
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: sussex-admin at mailman.lug.org.uk
>[mailto:sussex-admin at mailman.lug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Geoff Teale
>Sent: 26 June 2003 14:00
>To: sussex at mailman.lug.org.uk
>Subject: Re: [Sussex] Gentoo forked...
>
>
>Well Paul,
>
>You see the trouble with slashdot is that anybody can get anything up 
>there... you shouldn't take Zachary's words as gospel.
>
>Having seen this thing played out on the gentoo developer list my 
>(somewhat) unbiased opinion is this:
>
>One pissed off developer has left Gentoo and wants to start a new 
>project based on Gentoo code.  His web site contains a tirade that is 
>deeply one-sided, massively exaggerated and contains blatant lies.  
>
>
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