Daniel Robbins Resigns As Chief Gentoo Architect 361
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.
Re:Offer from MS? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:It's A Shame.. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Gentoo's future (Score:1, Interesting)
1) Leader signs over copyrights currently owned by his company to nonprofit organization.
2) Leader resigns position in non-profit organization, to avoid a conflict of interest.
3) Other companies see that they can now work on project without signing rights over to their competitor.
4) Other companies (esp. VARs) and people join project.
7) Daniel: Profit! Daniel's competitors: Profit! Developers: Develop!
Has any reason been given? (Score:2, Interesting)
On another note, is Gentoo ever gonna get it's own icon on
Gentoo corporation news. (Score:5, Interesting)
From OS News, Posted on 2002-05-14 [osnews.com]:
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.)
Re:Gentoo (Score:5, Interesting)
That old hat is a refreshing outlook on a distribution? Surely you jest. Its a good outlook, don't get me wrong. But I don't know that I'd call it refreshing.
So? my apps will go 5% faster if I bother to wait 5000% more during the install?
You get some kick out of spending good money on hardware, and then running software on it that uses nothing more than what could have been done with a 386?
Its true that one will probably never recover the clock-cycles used to compile a distro with the spead that the optomization brings. But then again, just how many spare clock cycles does your computer have? Chances are even while typing your post into IE your computer is using only 2% of its clock cycles. Think of all the clock cycles you wasted while sleeping last night.
Those times you really need speed (games, heavy computation, etc...), it really pays for itself.
Re:Offer from BS (Score:1, Interesting)
On top of that your "diet" including ground beef is for rich Americans. I'm not sure if you really know what poor people eat.
Ground beef is extremely expensive, out here it's $3-$4 per pound (california). But you can get some tougher meats for $2-$3 and you can get tofu or whole chickens from the asian grocery store for $2 . Sometimes I can get steaks when they are on sale for the same price as ground beef, and they have less water and fat in them to cook off than ground beef so you end up with more cooked meat for every pound of raw meat.
As somone who had to live on a tiny amount of money with no job I can tell you that buying raw ingredients isn't usually the cheapest way to go.
I really enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables. But to save money I often bought frozen or canned veggies and things like macaroni and cheese. Turns out you can get fiber and vitamins from fruit roll-ups for a fraction of the price of fresh apples or oranges.
Canned fruit can sometimes be a good deal if you go with a generic brand. And you can save the syrup and make a sweet sauce to put over pancakes. pancake mix is really cheap, maple syrup or cane syrup is not cheap. boil some syrup from canned peachs and/or pears and it's like a treat over maple syrup and you can pretend you aren't actually poor.
If you are living without electricty because you bounced too many checks you can get fast food cheaper. Often fast food is cheaper than buying the ingrediants and making it. McDonalds sells double cheese burgers for $1 each. (regular cheeseburger is $0.99, so spring for the double and just buy half as many as you normally would) If you get a double cheese burger, and split a biggie fries and a bottle of Shasta with a friend you can have a hot meal for under $3. The trick of fast food is never pay the $1.50+ for the drink. And beware of menu items that have advertisements.
Taco bell is also quite cheap. KFC is not that cheap unless you only buy sides or you buy a large bucket and split it with a few people.
Frozen pizza is another option, often you can find the generic brands for under $3. Sometimes they will go on sale for only $1. If you still have electricity you can pick up 8 of these, and when you find some fresh veggies on sale you can slice them up and add them.
But the all time best way to save money is beans. not canned beans, those are expensive. But go to a mexican store and they will sell bulk beans, rice and other things. You can get a 10lb bag of beans for couple dollars, and it will end up making 20lbs+ of food. I'd beware of beans in a little plastic bag they sell at most stores. They are generally 4x-5x the price of buying them 10lbs at a time. The only problem with beans is you have to soak them for a few hours before cooking them and you have to clean the stones out of them.
Another helpful hint to living on the cheap is to simply eat less food. you can live fine on 1200 calories, and it's easy to get that many with hardly any food at all. Generally energy dense foods. fats and carbs are the cheapest food. And many things are vitamin enriched now so children don't get rickets or scurvy because thier parents are too poor to buy them healthy food. (that's not to say rich/normal people bother buying healthy food).
Re:D Robbins (Score:2, Interesting)
If something was wrong with RH, google had the answer. Gentoo, on the otherhand, requires you to configure almost everything by hand. I knew where to start looking on my system to tweak it. That's how I learned.
I am not saying it's the best way either but LFS was overkill. Gentoo kept me interested in Linux to the point I am now comfortable with it and feel confident I could 'get my hands dirty' in any distro. Before, I was afraid to make many changes since any failure would leave me in the dark since I really didn't have any idea how things were put together.
I have dealt with a LFS install...I don't want to have to assemble an engine from scratch. Buying a crate motor works for me. While buying a car wasn't what I wanted (I am not going to get exactly what I want), neither was buying 2500 diffrent parts to assemble (too much time).
Re:D Robbins (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally I learned a lot about my system when I installed Gentoo. My next step is probably going to be along the lines you suggested, but if I'd tried that before Gentoo I would have hit a brick wall. There isn't an active LUG in Amarillo, so I don't have any people I can turn to for help, which means smaller steps like Gentoo are necessary for my learning.
Re:Purely Personal (Score:2, Interesting)
And the executives of Red Hat are rich... (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [bearcave.com]
all compiling jokes aside (Score:0, Interesting)
At work we have a shared drive where compiled binaries go so if your the first to emerge a giant world update, binary packages are made available for the whole office. Nothing like coming back from vacation to a fresh set of Athlon-64 KDE 3.2.2 packages.
$20,000 in debt (Score:3, Interesting)
How 'bout some support? Visit the Gentoo homepage [gentoo.org] and click the donation button in the upper left corner.
The man's got to feed his family after all.
Re:It's A Shame.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Some senators need to make a 100k dollars a day to be able to stay in the senate, think about it.
Re:More Gentoo Instability (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:A different spin (Score:2, Interesting)
First, I am not commenting on the Why of drobbins' departure. I saw many posts complementing Mr. Robbins on his work (complements which he does deserve), and making statements to the effect of "this will be bad for gentoo". I felt the need to respond to the second half of these posts.
By disconnected, I don't mean unresponsive to day-to-day issues. Two examples of disconnect that come most readily to mind are the xfree86 license snafu and the legendary tightness by which core *BSD source trees are controlled. The first is ignoring the needs/wants of your support base, the second is ignoring the partipation of your support base.
Supposing you are right, and that drobbins is walking away because his is burnt out, then I applaud that. The trouble comes in that the "pissing people off" part started some time ago. It hasn't cause major damage to the project (like xfree86's self-immolation), but there was a non-negligable negative effect. His departure would have been better 9 months ago (prior to the Zynot fork). On the other hand, hindsight is 20/20--it is quite likely that staying on was the best decision given the information available at the time.
Really, I'm just trying to put a different light on the end effect of the departure. Whatever the reasons, drobbins is leaving, and that will have an effect. As an administrator, drobbins had his faults, and they were starting to wear on the project. While a committee is not as focused as an individual, committees scale better. It isn't the end of the line for gentoo, just another step.
D Robbins (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If Any Of You Have The Gaul.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Thinking of Slashdot as a representative Linux Community is like thinking of Al Quada as a representative Islam Community.