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Daniel Robbins Resigns As Chief Gentoo Architect
bdowne01 writes "Gentoo Linux has experienced rapid growth in the past year--much to the credit of Daniel Robbins, the founder and Chief Architect of the project. Earlier today, he announced his resignation from his role on the gentoo-nfp mailing list."
Tester adds "But before leaving, he has set up a non-profit foundation that will own all of the copyrights to Gentoo. The initial board of trustees will be appointed by Daniel, but next year they will be elected. The membership of the foundation will be open." Reader burnitall points out a note on the Gentoo homepage reading "... 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." Robbins' message also indicates he hopes
to continue working on the release engineering aspect of Gentoo.
... it's still compiling.
To see Daniel go, but at the very least, the copyrights have been entrusted to a nonprofit foundation, which gives me at least some peace of mind.
I can say that Tony Robbins will be sorely missed for his inspirational Linux self-help books.
A free distro?
;-)
What?
A free distro?
Oh right, yeah. But beside that, what has he given us?
Technical support?
Oh yeah, that goes without saying...
Infrastructure?
Yeah, oh yeah it was much worse before...
Ok ok, beside a free distro, technical support and infrastructure what has he given us? That's right, nothing...
The copyrights to the distro?
Oh shut up you!
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I have learned more about how Linux works in the last year with Gentoo than I had in the previous 3 trying RH, Debian and Suse.
That's probably not so far from the truth.
As much as Linux is near and dear to Robbins' heart (and our own), it just doesn't pay like an industry job does, much less what a major player like Microsoft or IBM or Apple could pay.
We'd all like to be doing what we love to do, but sometimes we learn to grow by doing what makes us more money and ultimately more leisure time to spend with friends and family.
I have been pwned because my
1. Open Non-Profit Organization
2. ???
3. Profit!!!!
I think that it goes more like this;
1. Resign from overseeing a linux distibution that requires long hours and thankless mind-numbing work.
2. ???
3. Profit!!!!
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Daniel was an important, driving force behind Gentoo and his absence will undoubtedly be felt on the team. That said, he has laid the groundwork for a Not-for-Profit organization, lead by a Board of Trustees that will continue to ensure that Gentoo Linux remains a vibrant, capable distribution.
For those of you concerned about this change, I remind you that Gentoo is one of the few remaining community-based Linux distributions. We are as successful as our community makes us. Thus, the best thing you can do to ensure the future success of Gentoo is to participate in its development, whether it be through testing ebuilds, writing documentation, fixing bugs on bugzilla or any one of the thousands of myriad tasks that make up Gentoo Linux.
I'm not sure what Daniel's plans are for the future, but I wish him the best in whatever he chooses to pursue.
Gentoo Linux http://gentoo.org/
OSS is dominated by developers, which is a strength when it comes to the quality of the software. But that's not all they need, and we know that developers want to spend their time writing code, not managing growing projects.
Perhaps we should find some zelous people to grow pointy hair and act stupid to be the OSPHBs.
Doubt that. There are many many many people behind the scenes of Gentoo. Specifically each package you see there has at least one maintainer [most maintainers handle a slew of stuff].
Thought yeah some central authority to guide the project is required asap to keep the momentum.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
"Gentoo Linux has experienced rapid growth in the past year--much to the credit of Daniel Robbins, the founder and Chief Architect of the project. Earlier today, he announced his resignation from his role on the gentoo-nfp mailing list.
After 4 years of compilation and rapid disk usage growth, the build was 98% complete when the hard drive became full and the the build failed. Daniel Robbins was then struck by a wave of despair and tendered his resignation. Last we heard of him, he was in a house for the mentally disabled, installing, formatting then reinstalling Mandrake and Debian on a 486 box over and over again, banging his head on the wall, munbling incomprehensible things about "precompiled" this or that...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Should one wear a "tux" to a Linux distro's funeral?
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
Its well enough. It goes to show that talent is something you cannot fake, not even with a committee. When I saw Gentoo three things really stood out for me,
1) It was a truely refreshing outlook on a distribution
2) It is source based
3) I was free from being unwitting pawn in the software binary release freedom debate
When I ran and got to know Gentoo I saw genius was at work, the light nimble free-floating kind of genius unencumbered by committee. Much of that was DRobbins shining through (as shown by his technical writings of frontier Linux applications for IBM.)
I will be sad to see him go, but to me it looked as if his inspiration was diluted by so many faces long ago. Don't get me wrong Gentoo is still my favorite and I run it exclusively at home. I think its gained much from Seemant and the others. But you just have to admire sometimes what individual talent can do on its own.
I think Daniel made a very wise decision. Gentoo is his child, and it looks like the child is reaching maturity and it's time for Gentoo to move out of the parents' house.
Calculating dependencies
emerge: there are no masked or unmasked ebuilds to satisfy "chief_architect".
!!! Error calculating dependencies. Please correct.
linucks root #
From the article:
Copyright Assignment to Gentoo
Gentoo Technologies Inc. Copyright Assignment Form
Gentoo Documentation Issues
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
We'd all like to be doing what we love to do, but sometimes we learn to grow by doing what makes us more money and ultimately more leisure time to spend with friends and family.
Participation in the dog-eat-dog struggle is almost entirely unnecessary for most people. The poverty level in Western countries exceeds the upper middle class of most other countries.
One could, if one were willing to give up one's lifestyle, live cheaply and have leisure time for friends and family in abundance. A trailer home in Kentucky can be had for $1000, and a diet of ground beef, flour, spices and vegetables can sustain a family for less than $5000 a year.
You are not working for leisure time, don't kid yourself. Almost any working American today could retire and move to a 3rd world country and live comfortably forever. You are working for DSL, the new Radeon, that huge TV, the laptop, your spiffy car, fancy dinners, nice clothes and every other element required to 'keep up with the Joneses'. You find those things more valuable than pursuit of what you love, if you are not doing what you love.
Out of curiosity, has drobbins given any explanation as to why he has made this decision? Too much work? Change in priorities? It's definitely sad to see him go... Gentoo forums don't seem to have an answer yet, and they're usually the first source of any gentoo news..
/.? The time is now!
On another note, is Gentoo ever gonna get it's own icon on
In roughly the same place we were three years ago. :-)
From OS News, Posted on 2002-05-14:
Does Robbins own all of the stock in Gentoo Technologies, Inc.? If so, conversion to non-profit status may be easy (though having the IRS recognize it as non-profit for tax purposes may not.) If others own some of the stock, it conversion may prove problematic as they might have to agree. Otherwise, there might be a shareholders lawsuit for corporate waste (i.e., in this case, making a gift of corporate assets without compensation).
Why was Gentoo Technologies, Inc. initially set up as a for-profit company? It doesn't make sense. Since it was not a 501(c)(3) non-profit, donations to Gentoo Technologies, Inc. were not tax deductible. (Hell, it may have been the case that the donors were legally, albeit technically, responsible to pay gift tax on any donation over the annual limit.)
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Here's a snippit:
I think the number of people using the phrase "Gentoo zealots" has actually now surpassed said group.
Congratulations!
1) Open non-prophit distro 2) Compile 3) Compile 4) Compile 5) ??? 6) Compile
This is from the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter:
"While Daniel Robbins is busy converting Gentoo into a not-for-profit
organisation on his side of the Atlantic, the German Gentoo developers
have finalised all the necessary steps for registering an almost identical
legal entity, called "eingetragener Verein" (registered association) under
the German law. It'll take the commercial courts another four to six weeks
to acknowledge the setup, but the association[11] is already operational,
has opened a bank account, and started raking in bushels of money via
their new online shop[12], whose main advantage over the Gentoo store[13]
in the US lies in its comparatively low-cost deliveries to customers in
Germany."
"A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age." -Robert Frost
More likely...
1) Leader resigns
2) Developers don't agree on future features, etc.
3) Of dozen forks most never launch but 2-3 really shine (perhaps think
- (a) knoppix/gentoo
- (b) a gentoo focused on binary distros
- (c) a gentoo focused on source hacking
)
4) One of those guys leaves, leaving room for newer and cooler forks.
It's "Gen" as in "generator" like you said. It's actually named after the Gentoo penguin, which is reputed to be the fastest swimming species of penguin in the world. And as Gentoo has a reputation of being fast, it's only fitting.
Straight from the FAQ: 'the "g" in "gentoo" is a soft "g", as in "gentle"'. You know, as in the name of the penguin species, or as in Gen(eration) Two?
I empathize. I started a Linux based company in late 1999. We got VC, hired people, tried to get the business going, expand it, realized that Linux was not going to peak any time soon in our geographical area, had to lay off people, went almost entirely broke... well, you know the deal. It's been over 4 years now, but we're still hanging in there, and now the Linux landscape is starting to look better, things are picking up, and who knows?
I understand the dilemma of a new family and a lot of debt. Been there, done that. But I think we're just on the cusp of something grand. I hope Daniel doesn't get so far out that he can't come back and reap some of the rewards when this thing pays off. I know it will! Gentoo and Linux are just too great to write off. And I hope that once a lot of the bottom feeders (myself included) making a living off X free distro, start taking responsibility, and budget R&D funds, maybe then we'll see some joy. We at least are looking ahead to make it part of our budget, a percentage of each sale.
Good luck, Daniel, hang in there.
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
The story of Daniel Robbins and Gentoo Linux seems to me to be an example of software as art and Daniel as a starving artist. And yes, I realize that many other people were involved in the Gentoo project. But one of the leading forces behind Gentoo seems to be leaving because he can't afford to take part in the project anymore.
The world does not owe artists, writers or software engineers working on open source/ Free Software a living. But what is interesting to me is that if, for the sake of argument, some commercial entity, like Red Hat, were to come along and start selling Gentoo at some point in the future, Daniel Robbins and the rest of the Gentoo developers would get as much as the Linux developers got from Red Hat going public (e.g., very little).
If software engineering jobs were not moving overseas and our income was not under constant downward pressure this might not be such a big deal. There is a lot to be said for doing something you love. For many people money can't replace this. But when it gets to the point where you can't pay your bills or are unemplyed, survival becomes the important issue.
Speaking for myself, the current state of our industry throws into question any open source project that can be picked up by slick marketeers and resold to end users. Since I'm not independently wealthy, why should I work for free? I have to wonder if Daniel Robbins is not asking himself similar questions as he looks at the state of his finances.
For more on this see my essay Freedom Can be Slavery
You can take your personal criticisms of Dan and politely ram them up your ass.
Let me make something clear here. I don't know Dan. Never met him, never talked with him. What I do know, however, is that he fits a mold i've seen over and over again in the past 10 years. There's a certain spirit of selflessness and altruism that underpins pretty much everything "major" going on in the Linux community. People like Dan give hours upon hours of their time, building, creating, fixing, and helping people they can't even see, and know they will never meet. They do it because it's fun, and they do it because it makes them feel good to know they're helping someone else. That's all there is to it.
Just incase you weren't in school the day they taught this, here's basically how it works: Criticizing the character or works of someone who shows charity, thoughtfulness, and selflessness makes you a royal fucking asshole. Infact, ANY form of criticism of people like Dan aught to be promptly rejected, returned, then rammed tightly up the ass of it's issuer.
You, the beneficiary of the hard work of people like Daniel Robbins and the Gentoo development community, have absolutely no right to complain, question, or laugh at any decision he happens to make in regard to his own life. Looking back at the Linux community landscape over the past 5 years, we can see what happened to people who continually gave blindly, and asked for essentially nothing in return. Dan's decision to pull back from the front lines is one of the smartest moves he could possibly make at this point of the game. Criticisms about software are one thing. Commentary on someone's financial status are something entirely different, and something you have no fucking right to criticize..Especially from someone who did nothing but give you shit for free.
And even if that weren't the case here....that he's turning the reins over for a totally different reason...WTF have you done that gives you the right to criticize him, or anyone who in his position?
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
From this post, it looks like Daniel built up quite a hefty debt working on Gentoo.
How 'bout some support? Visit the Gentoo homepage and click the donation button in the upper left corner.
The man's got to feed his family after all.
WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
See now, you just killed off a humorous hypothreadical skit entitled "The Four Yorkshiremen Get Their Gentoo On."
I hope you inadvertantly enter the door marked "Abuse" when searching for the Argument Clinic and never find your way out, you insensitive clod!
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
right. i'm not sure which 3rd world country you're dreaming about, but the $20,000 debt daniel robbins has isn't going to let him live comfortably anywhere forever. how do you live off of negative money?
not to mention he has a wife and kids. i don't think you can support a wife and kids for less than $5000 a year.
I see the desire to give users choice leading to fragmentation. This is quite different from seeing one or the other.
The Macintosh platform is my preferred choice. However, this has nothing to do with configurability, and everything to do with ease-of-use. In fact, I take exception to Apple forcing me to use the Aqua interface. Sure, it's pretty to look at, but there are certain aspects about it that drive me nuts. The Dock sucks. Menulettes suck. Why they couldn't just stick the OS 7/8/9 Platinum interface on Unix, like they did with AUX, I'll never know. And there are asects that are inconsistent within the interface itself. It definately needs more work. But if I go sit down at any other Mac with OS X, I'll know how to find my way around and get work done. The same can't necessarily be said of the different Linux desktop environments.
I agree. But will someone who just got up from the Xandros desktop be able to sit down at a Linspire desktop and be just as productive? This is what I think should be the goal; unity for the masses, with choice available for those who desire it.
Thanks for the response. It's nice to get a reasoned response to such a hot-button topic.
(tig)
Ignorance and prejudice and fear
Walk hand in hand
Personally, I couldn't really care about the installer (and Gentoo doesn't actually have one). I value the performance, access to current releases, and freedom of configuration above all else. Gentoo excels at all three of those.
A trailer home in Kentucky can be had for $1000, and a diet of ground beef, flour, spices and vegetables can sustain a family for less than $5000 a year.
Your ideas intrigue me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Stuff that is released under the GPL is still copyrighted. If it weren't, authors wouldn't be able to license it under the GPL or any other license. The whole point of the GPL is to say "you can license this copyrighted code, but under these conditions..." (where "these conditions" include an agreement to license any distributed contributions to the code under the GPL too)
That said, other non-GPL'd stuff regarding Gentoo might also be copyrighted. Like original documentation or scripts, configuration program, help files, etc..
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I installed Gentoo for the first time this weekend. It has an issue with my hardware (NIC drops net connection sometimes) but other than that they were by far the most enjoyable hours that I spent using Linux since 1999 when I first gave Red Hat a try.
I used to be a just-get-RPMs-that-work guy, and hadn't even compiled a kernel until 2 days ago. Now I enjoy every bit of each kernel compilation and emerge. I think I've learnt more about Linux in the past 2 days than I did the 4 years before.
The community behind Gentoo is as strong as I've seen (both in IRC and the Gentoo forums). It's been great to have joined the Gentoo bandwagon.
I didn't even know who Robbins was until I read this article, but now that I know just let me say this: Thanks, thanks, thanks.
While he certainly was the driving force behind Gentoo, it wasn't all good.
To put it bluntly, Mr. Robbins is an utter PITA to work with. Many of the same things that have been said about Theo de Raadt (true or not) could be said about drobbins. This has alread caused a fork in Gentoo. My very limited exposure to dealing with Mr. Robbins left me with such a bad taste in my mouth I just decided to drop it rather than put up with it.
Gentoo is a wonderful distribution, which I still use. But like several other open source projects (*cough*xfree86*cough*thebsds*cough*), those running the project were operating disconnected from their user/developer base. It isn't that central control is bad (Linus keeps control of final say) but that a central control that doesn't play nice with others is going to spell trouble.
I hope that Gentoo will end up better for it.
No no, you got it all wrong. It's the penguin species with the longest incubation time. Gentoo penguins breed their eggs for up to thirteen months while their babies compil^w mature.
j/k, using gentoo myself.
Free as in mason.
Man I am going to miss him, I first learned about D Robbins when he was writing for IBM, and he really had some great ideas on how linux should function. He then surprised me by building one of the best distros I have ever used. He has even gone as far as helping me personally in the irc chat rooms, and I even helped him once with a DECSS issue he was having with xine and dvdnav. I truly think he was a great person, I have even donated to gentoo linux just because I wanted to help D Robbins idea grow and for him to find gentoo worthwhile. I am sad to see him go and he will be well missed, but Im sure we will see him in the #gentoo-dev forums when he is bored. :-) I love you drobbins!
keanmarine.com
Well, I've never tried Gentoo, but my understanding is that it does NOT have a real installer. But it's still easier to install than Debian!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.