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Several Stampede Developers Depart
palpatine was one of many readers to write with the news that "[m]any of the developers of Stampede Linux have resigned today, putting in doubt the future of the distribution." The link here connects you to a letter signed by 22 people who have declared their separation from Stampede, including former buildmaster Rob Aagaard and former lead Alpha developer J. Daniel Powell. (Read more.)
The letter is written by Jacob Moorman, who had been until yesterday Stampede's assistant head developer. In part, it reads: "Due to a number of reasons based on the current administrative nature of the Stampede Linux distribution, we are unable to continue supporting the efforts of the distribution. As a group, we feel that the needs of the group have not been supported by the current model of operations."
I asked project founder Matt Woods about the resignations and what they mean to Stampede's plans, in particular to tomorrow's scheduled Stampede .90 release.
Matt attributes the resignation of several developers and other folks associated with Stampede Linux to disagreement among project members about how the Stampede project should be managed.
"The resignations have been brewing for quite some time. The major reason for resignation is the current method of leadership. Those who resigned wanted to see a board of directors that handled all matters (BSD style). They were unhappy with the tiers of leadership that exist today (much like the linux kernel development structure). The current leadership method has worked well up until this point, and shows no indications of future failure."
Happily, he writes, "I am still on good terms with most of the developers, to quote one of them: 'Business is business, friendship is friendship,' that is, the two are unrelated."
And what does the sudden change in personnel mean to Stampede Linux?
"The future of Stampede is not in doubt, we're recruiting more and more developers as we speak (The response from the development volunteer community has been tremendous). Development will be hindered in the short term, but we forsee a future explosion in the speed of the development cycle. Unfortunatly, 0.90 will need to be delayed for a short amount of time (exactly how much time is unclear at this juncture), but users can be assured that 0.90 is coming, and it is coming soon."
Stampede developers past and present are invited to contribute their insight into what caused the rift. If you're involved with (or considering) an open-source project with more than one person, you may want to pay attention to what they say.
Jake Moorman: He was the assitant head developer and former lead for 0.90. He developed the SLAB system that stampede currently uses to build the distributions and contributed many packages and much else to the distributions.
J. Daniel Powell: He was the former lead for the Alpha platform port. He had done a lot of research and development for that platform along with being an invaluable member of the team.He also helped a lot with package submissions.
Rob Aagaard: He was the co-founder of Stampede Linux. He had been there from the start with Matt Wood. He was also very vocal about getting the much delayed 0.90 release out the door and did his own build to get the efforts on their way. He is the only reason 0.90 was almost released today.
Gabe Ricard: He worked on many projects and submitted packages. He worked on the Stampede Lite project and on the PowerPC port. He was also very instrumental in getting people interested in Stampede.
David Burley: He spent much time reviewing logs, keeping in touch with the mirrors, and working with end users to resolve issue. He also authored the manual installation instructions which later gained help from Timothy Krell. Not to mention the fact that he submitted packages and other resources the group needed.
Erich Ziggler: He spent many hours helping individuals get Stampede installed and running on thier system. And although not really extremely involved directly with the developmental process, if it were not for him there probably would not be nearly as many Stampede users out there.
Per Linden: A vocal supporter of Stampede both on IRC and on the mailing lists. He put together numerous packages for Stampede and tried to help it become the best it could be.
Michael Gorse: If not for him the 0.90 pre tree that had been used for the past m onth for testing would have never gotten out. He made the first build after the code freeze due to Matt Wood's untimely departure shortly after the code freeze started. This was a horrible time for him to take a vacation.
The list goes on and on. This is a clear description of what the first 8 people listed on the list have done, and the others have helped in many ways also. It is horrible that people are denying them recognition for the work that they have done on the distribution. Also it is of note to mention the reality that there is a reason not all of them have been completely active developers lately. Maybe there is something wrong with the administration. Keep an open mind and read through the letter closely. It just appears that they are unhappy with the way things were run. I am glad they put personal feelings aside.
Is this really so enjoyable that dozens of people spend their time ripping on anyone and everyone? It makes me sad to see so many people enjoy telling other people how stupid they are. Why is there so much destruction?
I've even caught myself slipping into the pit of unbounded criticism. Just a couple of weeks ago someone made me realize that I had accused them of attitudes that I didn't know they had. I just assumed the worst of them and proceeded accordingly, and unjustly. It scared me to see such a change occur in myself on an online forum. Being rude and self-righteous is contagious.
Is this the inevitable source of destruction for any online communication more interesting than Instant Messenger? Put enough people in one place and give them the ability to interact, and *WHAM* perfectly good and normal people distort their opinions and views just so they can rip on some guy.
Is it just me, or does anyone else long for discussion where the object is to share knowledge and not to gain conversational dominance? Maybe it's distorted hindsight, but I remember being able to do that once upon a time.
Sigh. I'll go crawl back into my hole now. You may now offtopic me into oblivion and pour hot grits down my pants while telling me that I'm a hypocritical, uninformed fool. That's what discussion is about these days, I guess.
You certainly could do that on your own. You'd probably need some form of wrapper script for gcc that would add the necessary options for compiling on your system. You'll also want to add deb-src lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list (see the man page for sources.list for details). Then, a simple:
apt-get -b source
dpkg -i
OTOH, I wouldn't think you'd gain much. Most systems today are I/O-bound, not CPU-bound. You might see some benefits from, say, an optimized libc or an optimized kernel, since those components touch everything on the system, as well as any tasks you run that are indeed CPU-bound.
I doubt Debian would do it, though. -m486 is about the best you can do if you want code that runs on everything from the 386 to the Athlon. And we've got enough work to do with the architectures we do support.
Perhaps, perhaps not.
The free software movement has always had rifts like this. Look at Emacs vs. XEmacs, or the controversy over NET2 when Alan Cox took over networking from Fred van Kampen, or the sound driver situation of a few years ago, or the political stuff in Debian when Bruce Perens quit.
Happily, it all works out in the end. The Emacs and XEmacs people still do their own things, but they at least try to maintain compatibility. Linux networking generally rocks now, and keeps getting better (as opposed to the 1.0 days when the BSD folks kept beating up Linux for crappy networking). Sound support is improving. Debian is still rolling, and Bruce even comes back around on occasion to help out.
Whatever the money does, I think there will always be a core group that values free software, not to mention the many people who have learned the quality lesson (the only way you can guarantee quality results is to have source). Even if Red Hat, VA, LinuxCare, etc. tank, we'll just go back to the gool ol' days before Jesse Berst knew how to spell Linux, and we had to hack our own device drivers.
i used stampede a few years ago on my old pentium166, was a cool distro. i now use debian and was wondering if any effort was going on to make a pentium(pro?) optimized distro.. *should* just be a matter of apt-get source somepackage.. edit the CFLAGS then dpkg-buildpackage. .. would be nice if someone did this and let people use it for their server for people's sources.list. i certainly don't have the bandwidth :)
btw what are the standard 'good' optimization flags?
-O6 -mpentiumpro ??
A bit off-topic (however, see the last paragraph) but this has to be said...
No sector rose at the rate of Linux sector, either. And the Linux companies aren't doing any worse than the others who IPO'd at the same time--most are now trading at a fraction of their initial offer price, Linux or no Linux. That has more to do with overall market behavior than anything specific to Linux. In any case, companies live and die by the balance sheet, not their stock price. Recent IPO's will need to trim their sails and perhaps push toward profitability earlier than they might otherwise have done (thus settling for less growth), but some will undoubtedly thrive no matter how bearish the market turns.
You don't seem to be very familiar with these companies (or with how companies are capitalized and grown, for that matter). None of them propose selling free software as their primary source of income; rather, they sell services (integration, support, value-add, and so on). I don't pretend to know if this will wind up being a successful business model or not-- and I don't see how you could know, either. The stock market certainly doesn't--it doesn't need to be any more rational on the way down as it was on the way up.
Stampede isn't a company, but the fate befalling it is a lot like what often happens with small companies: fragmentation due to differences or difficulties in leadership and vision. Although it won't die when it runs out of cash like a company does-- in some ways cashless collaborations such as this are more resiliant-- even if it fails (and it remains to be seen if it will) it hardly reflects on other efforts involving Linux. As for whether RMS, ESR, and the like are visionaries or fools--well, at least they are willing to sign what they believe, unlike trolls and astroturfers such as yourself. And if you think the success or failure of a company or the collapsing of a bubble market has anything to do with the viability of free software-- well, I think we know who the fool is, here.
The fact that Stampede is currently having a few top-level disputes isn't really the main problem here..The fact that another crack has developed in the Linux foundation, however, is.
I think we're in the middle of an interesting time, really. It used to be, a few years ago, that we were all doing this for fun...We didn't care about getting rich. Now, we all wake up and realize that money is starting to get in the way of ideas. The free exchange of ideas and been limited by the fear of getting screwed. Consequently, people are getting pissed off. After all, why should they work for free, when someone else is profiting from what they do?
While I don't think this will eventually spell out an epitaph for the whole Linux movement, it still remains true that a minority of people with less than pure intentions are driving the majority of people apart rather than uniting them under a common umbrella.
Instead of developers doing what they do for fun, now there are nameless people at the top raking in money off their work, and making alot of people very, very sour in the process..It breeds distrust and resentment in a community that bases its whole existance on mutual trust and cooperation.
Stampede's issues are an indicator of a much bigger problem that supercedes what distribution you run, or what platform you use. It comes down to an issue of people, and how they work together. We all have to agree to play one game, not two. We either continue as we have traditionally, or we become suspicious of eachother and suffer the consequences of doing so.
Time to make up our minds, I say.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
Bowie J. Poag
--
Index of Alternative Operating Systems
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Index of Alternative Operating Systems
www.indexos.com
Linux stocks are disproportionately down, because they were disproportionately UP to begin with. Come on, no serious investor ever believed that VA Linux actually deserved a market cap of $8 billion, or that Red Hat should be worth more than Apple. Traders were buying on momentum, hoping to ride out the move to its real peak. The danger of this momentum-based pricing is its incredible volatility, and we've definitely seen that in the past few months.
Once Linux stocks hit a true fair value (which, in my opinion, they are approaching, but they still haven't hit), they can start to fluctuate based on real changes in the market, real earnings reports, and other "real world" phenomena. That will be a great development for the Linux business community, because it'll prompt these companies to think in terms of real, sustainable business plans, rather than making blind, trendy acquisitions (ahem, Andover!).
Red Hat and VA need to figure out how to build serious, profitable businesses to guarantee that they won't be a couple of flashes in the pan. As long as the market was rewarding them based solely on hype, that was never going to happen.
So, as a Linux user, I'm glad to see the stocks fall to real values today, rather than seeing them fall into bankruptcy a few years down the line.
--JEZ
John,
Although I am no lawyer either, there are plenty of people who seem to agree with my point. Check out the following URL's which say that so long as I am not being paid and I am not working outside of my job description and what I do isn't done with malice or with the intent to harm, then I cannot be held liable. This comes from the Federal Volunteer Protection Act signed by President Clinton in 1997. Here are some URLs to info:
L iability.html
http://www.njnonprofits.org/vol_pr otect_act.html
http://www.ptialaska.net/~jdewitt/vlh/Law/VLHTort
http://www.nonprofitlaw.com/quicktipsv ol.htm
--David Burley
"Stampede developers past and present are invited to contribute their insight into what caused the rift." As stated in the resignation letter the reason why we left is based on the current administration model of Stampede GNU/Linux. I cannot comment for others beyond that as they all have different feelings and reasons which make them feel the way they do. So the rest of this comment is from my point of view and my feelings. Despite how it may be worded.
For one to be involved in such a project you expect several things. Some of them are legal protection, financial support and a say in how decisions are made. Each one of those issues will be addressed separately in the following:
Legal Protection: Being involved in an Operating System distribution there are concerns that your advice to persons on IRC and elsewhere could damage someones data or files. Although never the goal, it does happen and is inevitable. The user types in the command wrong or misinterperates the advice or suggestion given. I have a brain fart and am not thinking straight and miss a step. . . These are just a few examples of what could happen.
I am not 100% certain about my legal protections if a user damages their system while following my advice. The Stampede Linux Foundation is indeed a Non-Profit Organization in Utah, but I was never shown any proof that it was a Federally recognized non-profit (I believe the technical name is 401-C3 status). Thus I have no legal blanket protecting me from a lawsuit. Although I am a poor college student and they would not get much from doing so (besides a few computers... which would hinder my Free Software development projects) it is still not something I want to see happen to myself or others.
Financial Support: Being so involved in the Stampede GNU/Linux Distribution and other efforts I have been traveling to the Linux World COnference and Expo's in both NYC and SJC (the past 2 anyways) and was also at The Bazaar. My trip to The Bazaar was partially funded by Earthweb, but my trips to LWCE were not funded by anyone but me.
The issue of funding trips for core developers had come up and was never addressed. It is in my opinion that at least some of the cost should have been deferred off onto the distribution. Stampede does have some money (not a lot but enough to do that a few times for several people). Also being the college student I am there is only so much money to go around. I get a lot out of meeting those who use what I work on. I also learn a lot about up-and-coming projects from other groups.
Although I see nothing wrong with the development model we used for a long time for other groups, it did not work for ours. The above issues and others could have been easily resolved in what would seem to be a more 'fair' manner if there was a group of individuals who could vote on such issues.
On April 6 Rob Aagaard attempted to switch Stampede over to a Board of Directors from its current model. Matt Wood was disagreeable to doing such and I didn't like his response. Not to mention the fact that he refused to be at the meeting. This is not to say that I agree with the manner the meeting was conducted, but Matt should have been present to diffuse the situation and discuss the issues with us openly like he says he will. At any rate this situation led me to believe that there would be no change and that action must be taken. Voila, the resignation.
Although I was not the developer to say "Business is Business, Friendship is Friendship", those sentiments are mine exactly. And even more than that I will continue development on tools, utilities and new specifications for which Stampede was working only under a different group which aims towards supporting my efforts. The Marble Horse Free Software Group (MHFSG) is working on a new revision of the Stampede Linux Package format, specifically version 5a. Not to mention a few other projects I am working on. The projects are less Stampede centric as they should be useful to all distributions and homebrewed systems alike. None-the-less Stampede is free to use them and their input will be regarded at the same level as others.
Lastly I would like to thank Stampede for the good times I had with them. I have no hard feelings and would like to continue a good relationship with the people involved. Those who need to contact me know where to find me (IRC: openprojects.net NICK: khemicals).
Regards,
David Burley
former Stampede jack-of-all-trades
I'm greatly saddened that many don't understand this breakup. I'm also mad that Matt decided to write off the people that left as insignificant. Nobody on that list was insignificant, otherwise they would have never considered themselves a part of the community.
Dan Knoepfle
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-DeadMonkey-
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Everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey...
www.stampede.org
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Everybody's got something to hi
"Former supporter" is probably the best way to describe the people on the list, but it may be misleading. Many of these individuals were so integral in helping others needing problems, providing input during meetings, and just overall being there. By signing the letter, they've shown that they might not be there in the future. Now, having chatted with all of these people at sometime in the past, I must say that it is quite a loss to the Stampede community. Now, I can't comment on what's been happening lately, as I have been trying to stay out of the loop to let the situation sort itself out. I didn't resign because of Matt, I resigned because the Stampede community slowly became less positive of a community to be in. I sincerely hope that Stampede will survive and grow stronger through this and that my fellow developers can find a new home in which to thrive. All I know is that with all the friends I've made and the experiences I've had, without Stampede my life would be very different. I still use Stampede .89 on all my Linux boxen, and I see no reason you shouldn't too.
Dan Knoepfle- ----------------------------
-DeadMonkey-
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Everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey...
www.stampede.org
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Everybody's got something to hi
I use an AMD 486/133 w/Caldera OpenLinux 1.3 as a router/firewall to the ISDN at home. It does exactly what I need it for. Oooops, almost forgot: I also have an old Compaq Prosignia VP/486/66. Could not install Linux on that one, the onboard SCSI adapter doesn't seem to be suported. Anyone tried this?
Sigged!
I find this statement very interesting and hard to justify. Leaders are responsible for seeing things get done, and ensuring people stay focussed and positive. Having 20 people, in unison, withdraw their support indicates a deep seated failure of the leadership.
Good leaders focus the talents of their charges. They keep them in high spirits when all seems lost and know how to manage each person to achieve their personal best. All of this while still getting the result the company wants.
Having 20 people go all at once is significant in any group.
It doesn't necessarily mean the end of stampede. Perhaps it will improve things in the long run because a large group of dissenters have left and the moral of the remaining people can be lifted and focused. Conversely, Maybe stampede will die because the heart has been removed.
Alert leaders would have either:
a) been able to fix moral to keep things going, or
b) given the boot to the main dissenters early on
A split is not necessarily a bad thing - look at Emacs and Xemacs, a common goal but a fundamental difference of opinion, neither one right nor wrong, just different.
The split shows the strength of open source rather than its weakness - the dissenters can now go and do things their way, and those who believe the dissenters are wrong can band with stampede, unhindered by the non-believers.
Before I go any further, let me mention that I have zero inside knowledge, of this situation. I can, however, pass along a "suit's" perspective on why this happened. This is how this case would be analyzed in a business school strategy class.
Take a look at About Stampede. The most useful/workable definition of "marketing" is "meeting customer needs". What customer needs does Stampede address? I don't see one. They may have one, but they have not communicated it.
What they do communicate is a laundry list of features. Common mistake techies make: customers do not want features; customers want benefits. So, for example "optimized for Pentium." Who cares? "Ten percent faster"? OK, that would be something... but they only make that claim buried deep inside a bullet point, and the reader is tempted not to believe it. If the benefit of this system is that it is 10-30% faster (not faster than unoptimized, but faster than RedHat), put that at the top of the front page, and demonstrate significant support for the claim. Customers look for a reason to download, and to convince them you have to demonstrate that you believe it. And believe me, if it's really 10-30% faster, people would download it. So, I could go on in detail about all of the other features, but that would be another techie mistake... :) Gotta stay on-message.
RedHat is the de facto linux, and linux is the de facto "free-nix". I'm not defending the wisdom of that, just observing it. Take note, BSD, Stampede, et al: This situation will never change till your platform/technology/distribution-channel convinces customers that it offers benefits that overwhelm the benefit of using the one that everybody else does. And saying, for example a la OpenBSD, "we're more security conscious and therefore more secure" is not enough. Because RedHat+linux+GNU is pretty darn secure anyway. There are tons of em out there, and they're not all hacked every day: they're secure enough. A "customer benefit" must be something (a) unique to a product and (b) that fills a "customer need", i.e. in the case of security, customers need to need more security in order for the feature to be a benefit.
Then, the rest is just noise. Open/free source developers work for the psychic benefit. Where's the fun in working on something that nobody's using? In this atmosphere, normal disagreements are going to explode into "I quit" disagreements because there is nothing else holding the team together. Except the friendship that they've vowed to keep.
Meeting customer needs, this is key. Everything else revolves around marketing.
It should be noted that all of the people listed on the resignation letter were not active developers, only 5 have actually contributed recently to the project, and at least 1 has never actually used Stampede Linux, but rather is affiliated to another developer through personal relations.
Sounds to me like this changes the story at least somewhat.
The new developers will have to learn the design,the documentation, the code the style and approach. This is not going to be a 'short period of time'. For them to restart a product, it may take a while, say 3 month (in the best case.) I am working on a project that has being around for almost 10 month, and during that time we had new developers come into play, well, if it is a very good developer, it takes about 1.5-2 months for him/her to really understand the architecture, the structure and be productive. For a less than a perfect developer, this time can be doubled. The more experienced a developer is the less time it takes him/her to adopt.
I hope these managers can find some one really good, or they may loose this product.
You can't handle the truth.
What is the significance of these developers resigning from Stampede?
Poll Mastah