- Sep 14, 2001
- 30,672
- 0
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Gentoo gets forked
- Thread starter Nothinman
- Start date
Pretty interesting. Doesn't exactly shed a good light on Danel Robbins (I read his response too, which was pretty crappy and almost juvenile). But the forker guy seems like a shady character too. I think having business heavily intertwined with an open source project that tries to look like a volunteer job is a very bad thing, I never even really realized that gentoo was a company. Boo gentoo, score +1 for debian 
I personally don't see anything wrong with developing a company using resources (time/money/hardware) you devoted towards the project. I am sure that a lot of Debian developers make going livings based at least in part from the work they do in Debian ...
But like everything their is a right way and a wrong way to do things. Trying to be all shady and close off the credit from people working on your project and then being all freakish about things when they want change...
At least this "forker" is trying to be honest about what and why he is doing what he is. Their is no mistaking his intentions for the new project, all the intellectualy property is going to be credited to the non-profit instead of the gentoo company, while he will be attempting commercial projects on the side. As a developer you get a place and orginization that will try to help you develop by providing services and hardware on the 'net (and probably pay for trips and stuff like that) and the average user will have another flavor of linux to choose from. And if you are a developer or a tester you too will have the same opertunities to capitilize off of the venture as Mr. Welch. Hell you could probably go and form part of the company with him if you are devoted enough....
Maybe you could look at it as a attempt to create a more democratic version of Redhat. As far as it actually working.. I don't know. Although the Gentoo Portage is a great idea to capitolize on the open-source nature and rapid developement of Linux, there is some major room for improvement. If this guy can refine it and make it practical then it could be a "very good thing".
...But like everything their is a right way and a wrong way to do things. Trying to be all shady and close off the credit from people working on your project and then being all freakish about things when they want change...
At least this "forker" is trying to be honest about what and why he is doing what he is. Their is no mistaking his intentions for the new project, all the intellectualy property is going to be credited to the non-profit instead of the gentoo company, while he will be attempting commercial projects on the side. As a developer you get a place and orginization that will try to help you develop by providing services and hardware on the 'net (and probably pay for trips and stuff like that) and the average user will have another flavor of linux to choose from. And if you are a developer or a tester you too will have the same opertunities to capitilize off of the venture as Mr. Welch. Hell you could probably go and form part of the company with him if you are devoted enough....
Maybe you could look at it as a attempt to create a more democratic version of Redhat. As far as it actually working.. I don't know. Although the Gentoo Portage is a great idea to capitolize on the open-source nature and rapid developement of Linux, there is some major room for improvement. If this guy can refine it and make it practical then it could be a "very good thing".
Ya that doesn't paint a pretty picture for gentoo.
(sorry for being so slow for editing my previous post...)
Heh, I believe everyone goes through something at some point in their life that makes you learn about getting things on paper before believing them. It's unfortunate that this all came about the way it did, since I'm sure both parties would have been served by staying as a team and making a more concerted effort to expand into the embedded market.
cleverhandle
Diamond Member
- Dec 17, 2001
- 3,566
- 3
- 81
Like a "fork in the road" - part of the project is splitting off.Originally posted by: GhettoFob
what's it mean to get forked?
Yeah, since the software is free (to an extent ), they can take the existing code base, and start their own project from it. The new project will slowly begin to diverge more and more from the original and you will have a "forked" code lineage.
), they can take the existing code base, and start their own project from it. The new project will slowly begin to diverge more and more from the original and you will have a "forked" code lineage.
no, just some of the developers, will branch off. The vast majority of people involved in gentoo will still be in gentoo well after this is over.
While this is a unfortunate when people get all pissy like this forking a project is not nessicarially a bad thing, but personality clashes and philisophical differences are ineventable in a large amount of volenteer work, and open source.
However forks historicly have been a bad thing in itself. Big Egos can feed compitition and that is good for developement. And ideas developed in isolation may be better then the solutions commonly used. Rarely do situations like this kill of projects. If the project was worthwile in the beginning there will almost always be someone else that would be willing to pick up were others left off. A example:
Emacs vs XEmacs. Emacs is a famous text editor used by a large number of programmers, it is one of the fundamental pieces of software that help fuel the early development of the GNU progect. A guy named Richard Stallman (known as rms) is pretty much the founder of GNU and Emacs if their ever was one. He is, please don't misunderstand me I have a great deal of respect for him, only slightly insane and has a hard time playing with others and tended to rule Emacs like it was his baby. Well their was people that had divergent ideas on what Emacs should use and how it should progress. Like their version of X support amoung otherthings. They got tired of what they precieved as a dimissive and restricted attitude and decided to branch off and create XEmacs. Now there are some fundamental differences between X and regular Emacs design that makes them incompatable, but now they share concepts and code between each other, improving each other's product in return. (Emacs now has support for X now, BTW, if you'd like to try it out.)
While this is a unfortunate when people get all pissy like this forking a project is not nessicarially a bad thing, but personality clashes and philisophical differences are ineventable in a large amount of volenteer work, and open source.
However forks historicly have been a bad thing in itself. Big Egos can feed compitition and that is good for developement. And ideas developed in isolation may be better then the solutions commonly used. Rarely do situations like this kill of projects. If the project was worthwile in the beginning there will almost always be someone else that would be willing to pick up were others left off. A example:
Emacs vs XEmacs. Emacs is a famous text editor used by a large number of programmers, it is one of the fundamental pieces of software that help fuel the early development of the GNU progect. A guy named Richard Stallman (known as rms) is pretty much the founder of GNU and Emacs if their ever was one. He is, please don't misunderstand me I have a great deal of respect for him, only slightly insane and has a hard time playing with others and tended to rule Emacs like it was his baby. Well their was people that had divergent ideas on what Emacs should use and how it should progress. Like their version of X support amoung otherthings. They got tired of what they precieved as a dimissive and restricted attitude and decided to branch off and create XEmacs. Now there are some fundamental differences between X and regular Emacs design that makes them incompatable, but now they share concepts and code between each other, improving each other's product in return. (Emacs now has support for X now, BTW, if you'd like to try it out.)
When people invest a lot of time and efforts on a project and do not get financial compensation for it, ego clashes can get to very ugly proportions.
There are a few motivations to work on an open-source / free software project :
1 - Learning / Research : This one is very strong in academia (obviously) and among junior / hobby programmers. Experienced programmers also tend to join projects to learn specific ways of doing something or to develop new techniques. Unfortunately, it is not enough to drive a big project very far as big parts of it wil not be cutting edge nor particularly interesting.
2 - Attachment to the project / community : The people that stay with a project after the learning / research phase usually fall into this category. They have learned a lot and often matured a lot with the project and can now produce great work with minimal ego problems.
3 - Financial compensation : Your employer pays you to implement something that will be integrated into an open source project. Lots of very good code comes from this, as paid coders are usually very high grade and tend to check their ego at the door and concentrate on getting the job done. A company will often hire one of the top develloppers of a project and allocate them specific amount of time each month to work on it. Red Hat is known for doing this, surely there are others but I can't remember any specific.
4 - Pursuit of fame : Some people dream of being the next Bill Gates for obvious reasons. Other people dream of being the next Stallman, Wall, Knuth or Torvalds for equally obvious reasons. They join interesting projects, do a lot of work and take a lot of space inside the community. When 2 or more of these types meets, ego clashes can occur. They also tend to polarize opinions and often divide the community into clans of supporters. This is the kind of situation that usually leads to forks.
It is important to note that altough Forks can lead to very interesting and beneficial technical development, they almost never occur for technical reasons. Sometimes after a fork, both projects enjoy prolonged "anarchy" or deorganisation period and notwithstanding the time and efforts lost, can lead to the demise of both projects.
In this particular case, both protagonist look a bit shady, especially Robbins as this is not the first time something like this happens.
Registering the domain names for something you have shown zero interest for when you are aware one of your long time collaborator has views on this market is a jerky move at best.
Technologically, we loose nothing and have a lot to gain, especially in the GCC cross-compilation development.
So long live both projects and shame on you people for having such big egos and poor social skills.
EDIT : typos
There are a few motivations to work on an open-source / free software project :
1 - Learning / Research : This one is very strong in academia (obviously) and among junior / hobby programmers. Experienced programmers also tend to join projects to learn specific ways of doing something or to develop new techniques. Unfortunately, it is not enough to drive a big project very far as big parts of it wil not be cutting edge nor particularly interesting.
2 - Attachment to the project / community : The people that stay with a project after the learning / research phase usually fall into this category. They have learned a lot and often matured a lot with the project and can now produce great work with minimal ego problems.
3 - Financial compensation : Your employer pays you to implement something that will be integrated into an open source project. Lots of very good code comes from this, as paid coders are usually very high grade and tend to check their ego at the door and concentrate on getting the job done. A company will often hire one of the top develloppers of a project and allocate them specific amount of time each month to work on it. Red Hat is known for doing this, surely there are others but I can't remember any specific.
4 - Pursuit of fame : Some people dream of being the next Bill Gates for obvious reasons. Other people dream of being the next Stallman, Wall, Knuth or Torvalds for equally obvious reasons. They join interesting projects, do a lot of work and take a lot of space inside the community. When 2 or more of these types meets, ego clashes can occur. They also tend to polarize opinions and often divide the community into clans of supporters. This is the kind of situation that usually leads to forks.
It is important to note that altough Forks can lead to very interesting and beneficial technical development, they almost never occur for technical reasons. Sometimes after a fork, both projects enjoy prolonged "anarchy" or deorganisation period and notwithstanding the time and efforts lost, can lead to the demise of both projects.
In this particular case, both protagonist look a bit shady, especially Robbins as this is not the first time something like this happens.
Registering the domain names for something you have shown zero interest for when you are aware one of your long time collaborator has views on this market is a jerky move at best.
Technologically, we loose nothing and have a lot to gain, especially in the GCC cross-compilation development.
So long live both projects and shame on you people for having such big egos and poor social skills.
EDIT : typos
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