Current state of funtoo, roadmap and future?

[zogg]

Hi,

From recent activity it seems like funtoo development (except autogenerated updates mostly) is getting to mostly none, including activity even in on this forum.

Can we get an update on the current state, what is the roadmap and future of the project?

And if I'm correct and funtoo project is declining, is there any plans to provide proper solution to migrate to gentoo without the need to setup everything from scratch.

[nrc]

If you  check the Jira bug tracker or Discord site things are reasonably active.  I think the "roadmap" is "keep making Funtoo more current and more maintainable."  All the work that has gone into kits and now autogen packages has made a big difference in that respect.

@drobbins pondered whether a forum was still necessary and relevant the last time he revamped the site.  I felt at the time it was still important to provide that visible, easy gateway into the community for new people.  But it just doesn't seem to be the kind of center of activity for the project that forums used to be so maybe it doesn't represent the project well.

 

 

[dutch-master]

One more thing to consider: not everyone wants to use Discord.

[zogg]

On 8/15/2021 at 5:28 AM, nrc said:

If you  check the Jira bug tracker or Discord site things are reasonably active.  I think the "roadmap" is "keep making Funtoo more current and more maintainable."  All the work that has gone into kits and now autogen packages has made a big difference in that respect.

@drobbins pondered whether a forum was still necessary and relevant the last time he revamped the site.  I felt at the time it was still important to provide that visible, easy gateway into the community for new people.  But it just doesn't seem to be the kind of center of activity for the project that forums used to be so maybe it doesn't represent the project well.

 

 

 

On 8/5/2021 at 12:56 PM, zogg said:

(except autogenerated updates mostly)

☝️

There are so many packages that are outdated, e.g. xfce4 whole kit is old, a lot of packages are not updated. I am not sure that autogeneration and copying ebuilds from gentoo is "active".

Moreover gentoo has bumped EAPI already and new ebuilds are not compatible with Funtoo

[cuantar]

One problem is Python:  I see a lot of the following, when trying to update Gentoo ebuilds:

The following REQUIRED_USE flag constraints are unsatisfied:
   python? ( exactly-one-of ( python_single_target_python3_8 python_single_target_python3_9
) )

Funtoo's python-3.7 is no longer supported by Gentoo, so we've lost a lot of cross-pollination capacity.

[nrc]

On 8/16/2021 at 3:38 AM, zogg said:

There are so many packages that are outdated, e.g. xfce4 whole kit is old, a lot of packages are not updated. I am not sure that autogeneration and copying ebuilds from gentoo is "active".

Autogeneration of ebuilds only exists because the process and infrastructure to do it are being developed.

Nobody has entered an RFE to update xfce4. Why would they make that a priority if nobody cares enough to request it?  Funtoo doesn't just mirror the Gentoo tree the way they once did.  That was creating too many stability problems.  From the 1.4 release notes:

Quote

Like Funtoo Linux 1.3, all kits are mostly frozen, with security fixes being back-ported, and a select number of important and user-requested updates added after the official release. The goal is to provide a reliable yet capable system that is responsive to the needs of our users. This is a delicate balancing act :) 

https://www.funtoo.org/Release_Notes/1.4-release

If that doesn't sound like the right distro then Gentoo may be a better option for you.  The Gentoo forums are probably a better place for tips on how to migrate to Gentoo.

 

Edited August 18, 2021 by nrc

[zogg]

On 8/18/2021 at 8:39 AM, nrc said:

Autogeneration of ebuilds only exists because the process and infrastructure to do it are being developed.

Nobody has entered an RFE to update xfce4. Why would they make that a priority if nobody cares enough to request it?  Funtoo doesn't just mirror the Gentoo tree the way they once did.  That was creating too many stability problems.  From the 1.4 release notes:

https://www.funtoo.org/Release_Notes/1.4-release

If that doesn't sound like the right distro then Gentoo may be a better option for you.  The Gentoo forums are probably a better place for tips on how to migrate to Gentoo.

 

You are talking about 1.4 which was released at 2019, no new release for 2 years.

Not sure what you mean by infra and autogenerated packages, I mean having basic core generated is one thing and once configured would not require a lot, but maintaining and having own distro is little bit more than that, right?

Regarding XFCE - again, you have official support (otherwise why do you have kit) and making RFE for supported kit to update for release that is out more than a year (last update was same story) seems little bit "hard way" to have basic things in desktop distro (again funtoo states as desktop distro, and official supported DE being outdated, not even mentioning most apps, is not the the way to go)

Anyhow it only proves my original statement and raises the same question, what was developed and done on Funtoo on past year+ except maintaining autogenerated ebuilds?

I assume there is no much manpower after Oleg and few left project, so would it worth to have latest gcc and toolchain on source based distro on desktop if everything else is pretty outdated if not "RFE" (except apps that I assume used by few devs left), as on server I would not care about latest gcc and not sure would go for source based distro anyhow.

The approach "RFE it" or do it itself doesn't make it user-friendly, right? Otherwise I would use gentoo and RFE there or even just PR backport of Funtoo's ebuilds to update with autogeneration, as seems lately there is no any progress, innovation or benefit of Funtoo over Gentoo if not opposite ?‍♂️

[nrc]

On 8/23/2021 at 11:39 AM, zogg said:

You are talking about 1.4 which was released at 2019, no new release for 2 years.

It seems like you're missing the point.  Yes, 1.4 was a while ago.  The point is that the quoted release notes explained that Funtoo was transitioning from a Gentoo-style rolling release distro to a more curated, kit-based distro.   

The objective of Funtoo is to create reliable software that works for its users.  In a project this size that means keeping change at a manageable level and focusing on fixes and updates that matter to the users.   Prior to 1.4 Funtoo was not reliable because Gentoo was not reliable.  Now Funtoo is very stable and reliable.  If whatever innovation you're looking for is more important to you than that, then Funtoo isn't for you.

Quote

The approach "RFE it" or do it itself doesn't make it user-friendly, right? Otherwise I would use gentoo and RFE there or even just PR backport of Funtoo's ebuilds to update with autogeneration, as seems lately there is no any progress, innovation or benefit of Funtoo over Gentoo if not opposite

It's very friendly to the users who don't want their systems broken by updates that provide no benefit to them.  It helps Funtoo focus their effort in areas where it will most benefit users who care enough to participate.

You keep talking about "innovation" but it sounds like you're really just wanting latest software releases.  Funtoo may not be the best option for that if you're not looking to participate.  If you don't consider Funtoo's change in direction to being a more stable, kit-driven distro to be "innovation" that's fine.  Maybe that's not what you're looking for.  But I'm curious what innovations you're seeing in Gentoo that you feel are lacking in Funtoo?

[zogg]

On 8/26/2021 at 8:04 PM, nrc said:

It seems like you're missing the point.  Yes, 1.4 was a while ago.  The point is that the quoted release notes explained that Funtoo was transitioning from a Gentoo-style rolling release distro to a more curated, kit-based distro.   

The objective of Funtoo is to create reliable software that works for its users.  In a project this size that means keeping change at a manageable level and focusing on fixes and updates that matter to the users.   Prior to 1.4 Funtoo was not reliable because Gentoo was not reliable.  Now Funtoo is very stable and reliable.  If whatever innovation you're looking for is more important to you than that, then Funtoo isn't for you.

It's very friendly to the users who don't want their systems broken by updates that provide no benefit to them.  It helps Funtoo focus their effort in areas where it will most benefit users who care enough to participate.

You keep talking about "innovation" but it sounds like you're really just wanting latest software releases.  Funtoo may not be the best option for that if you're not looking to participate.  If you don't consider Funtoo's change in direction to being a more stable, kit-driven distro to be "innovation" that's fine.  Maybe that's not what you're looking for.  But I'm curious what innovations you're seeing in Gentoo that you feel are lacking in Funtoo?

Wait what?

I am missing the point? Okay, os you basically saying that creating autogenerated ebuilds and not breaking updates is stable? Kit based when same kits have outdated versions is stable?

So year+ old software would never have any vulnerabilities or bugs just because it "aged like wine?", did I get you correctly? Or maybe you also do not include those bugfixes and CVE fixes?

How do you decide what updates are matter for user? 

Stability is not updates that are not breaking, stability is decent versions while the point of distro and  it's maintainers to provide the stability of update. Yes as I said stability of OS != stability of update and it comes from different factors.

And by innovation I do not mean latest software. It seems you hear what you want to hear and just advocating without actually trying to understand.

Making old releases from source based distro you call not stable is not innovation for sure. Let me give you an example of what innovation Funtoo brought -> kits, git based updates instead of rsync and etc. So basically when Gentoo caught up, what you provide except copying ebuilds from there or autogenerating them and "freezing" "stable" releases by not updating anything else is the point?

Btw any non rolling release distro has schedule for releases, they have them at least once a year, they do have unstable branch where people test, iron things and afterwards you have code freeze and etc.

In your case you do not have any of that but just barely any maintainers and few scripts pulling for some ebuild autogeneration.

So again, what is the roadmap? What is the future of funtoo? How often and when we can see releases? What are mechanisms of having stable releases except not updating anything. 

it's just sounds you doesn't want to hear some critics and let's agree with explanation and actual arguments and you just want to point out how I don't understand anything.

You can tell me the most ridiculous answer "Funtoo is not for you" and have barely 5 people active in forums and community and pst autogenerated same as those ebuilds - this is very smart i would tell, no users - no problems ?

[zogg]

And I do not see any innovations in Gentoo, I see they backported some ideas from Funtoo and they as well have newer ebuilds APIs. And let's put aside that they have stable mask and you do copy most from there, but still call them unstable.

So what Funtoo can provide that Gentoo can't as it is based on Gentoo and should at least have something to say it is something new or better in anyway. Otherwise I see a lot of distros from Ubuntu that change wallpapers and call themselves - most stable and user-friendly (i am aware it is not same case here, but it seems you can't understand what I mean so I wanted to make it more understandable for you)

Edited August 28, 2021 by zogg

[zogg]

And just before you are giving unrelated generic answer ?

From official FAQ:

 

 

Quote

 

The Biggest Question -- how does Funtoo relate to Gentoo?

Funtoo Linux 1.4 (see Install, Release Notes) is based on a 21 Jun 2019 snapshot of Gentoo Linux, plus a variety of package updates in selected areas. 

.........

Release Schedule

Our release schedule has historically been about 1-2 times per year, but the plan is to accelerate this to 3-4 times per year. Funtoo Linux 2.0 development will be starting before the end of 2019. Version 1.4 is the recommended release to install.

 

 

[nrc]

I made a good faith effort to answer your questions.  I'm really not interested in arguing about it.

 

[zogg]

1 hour ago, nrc said:

I made a good faith effort to answer your questions.  I'm really not interested in arguing about it.

 

But you obviously didn't ,except mumbling some generic things and trying to make it to "Funtoo is obviously not for you then" and "you do not understand" arguments with "matter for user" on top as I am not a user already, so I do not matter ?

Let's make it easier, so you would not dodge with "I already answered":

I mean all your effort fails to point what is actual roadmap, official Roadmap and FAQ are outdated and have information that is not correct for the past 2 years.

You fail to point out what is "stable" and if Funtoo is not rolling release, where are release cycles for past 2 years. (you can't be neither and say that autogens is your stability and releases)

And Discord that is closed as mentioned above is no help but I can see git commits and do not see much except autogeneration commits in 90% and not that often ?‍♂️

But yes "Much discord, wow autogenerate, so stable" ?‍♂️

 

P.S.

It's when fan advocate has nothing to say but can't give up, right? ?

[drobbins]

@zogg I will answer you.

"From recent activity it seems like funtoo development (except autogenerated updates mostly) is getting to mostly none, including activity even in on this forum."

This is an interesting and funny perspective, because it's actually just the opposite. Funtoo is more active than it has ever been, and we are starting to collaborate with Sabayon on next-gen projects, and we have been growing our Funtoo dev team too.

One thing to realize is that Gentoo has 200+ developers and Funtoo up until recently has had maybe 2-3 developers at most active at a time, but often just one. Think of that. Over the past decade, what was often 'powering' Funtoo, was JUST ONE GUY. Sometimes -- many times -- it was not even me but a more junior developer.

Why? Because I am often busy -- I have a full time job and also a toddler, a wife, two kids in college, and two more kids in elementary and middle school ?

Now we have like 10 actively contributing it seems. So 3x-10x growth in the last few months is actually huge. And we seem to now be getting an influx of people from Gentoo (we don't actively try to recruit users or devs from Gentoo, so this is just an observation and not a 'boast'.)

But I actually DO understand why you have your perspective. It is a PERSPECTIVE, but not reality.

But it's interesting to wonder: why do you have this perspective?

It is probably because you are incorrectly trying to compare the work of 200+ people to what has often been just the work of 1-2 people.

Is that fair? I don't think so. But I am sure you can 'sense' that there is often fewer package updates and general upheaval than in Gentoo. Some people actually LIKE this about Funtoo!

The reality is that actually we are doing many things that Gentoo is not doing, and solving problems that Gentoo is not solving. But these problems are not glamorous, and take time, and we care more about solving these problems than giving you the latest crap to run on your computer.

I'm quite content with our progress. But I don't think that Funtoo is a distro for everyone, and if you feel that Gentoo is more up-to-date or aligns better with what you want, by all means please use it. It doesn't matter to me what you use. No one here is going to try to persuade you to use Funtoo. If you don't see the point in using it, then use something else.

The reason why you did not understand @nrc is because you don't get an important point. You are assuming that Funtoo and Gentoo are trying to do the same thing, and be the same thing, and trying to get you to pick one over the other.

This is actually not true.

That is why you do not understand.

So now that I have addressed the 2/3 of your post that was a troll, I can address your legitimate question -- update on the current state, and roadmap/future of the project.

The current state is that the project is rapidly growing and we are working on getting our growing team to work well together. So we are recently moving beyond 1-2 devs into the 5-10 active devs range.

Autogens will continue to be added to the tree by users. Thanks to user contributions we now have MATE stage3's available for download as well as updated Enlightenment.

As far as I am aware, financially, Funtoo has more funding/resources available to it than the entire Gentoo project despite our small size, is fully independent of any external influences regarding our future, and I expect this to continue to be the reality. I have been regularly sending cryptocurrency to our most active volunteers as a 'thank you' from the Funtoo community for their contributions.

We will continue to prioritize new and interesting ways of solving complex technical challenges rather than expending huge amounts of manual effort to maintain tens of thousands of packages.

While we do this, we also hope that you will find Funtoo to be a useful tool for desktop workstation, laptop as well as dev and production servers for amd64 and arm(64) architectures, as well as riscv, which is being worked on.

For everything else, you will find out about it when it is announced ?

As always, Funtoo is a user-centric project so if there is something you want, you are encouraged to not be shy and explain why you personally want it on the bug tracker and if it is reasonable, the issue will be approved and a PR can then be submitted.

Best,

Daniel

 

 

[lego12239]

On 9/10/2021 at 9:46 AM, drobbins said:

I have a full time job and also a toddler, a wife, two kids in college, and two more kids in elementary and middle school ?

? Daniel, i have only 2 kids and no free time at all. I want to send a few patches for funtoo network scripts infrastructure duringabout several month, but  I stupidly do not have enough time for this :-D. How do you manage all this :-D?

Edited September 15, 2021 by lego12239

[drobbins]

9 hours ago, lego12239 said:

? Daniel, i have only 2 kids and no free time at all. I want to send a few patches for funtoo network scripts infrastructure duringabout several month, but  I stupidly do not have enough time for this :-D. How do you manage all this :-D?

I try to do a little every day. For example, the new 'next' release, which has been in planning for over a year, is now live and ready for contributions... This will be of interest to @zogg and others who want to be part of updating Funtoo without breaking stuff for 1.4-release users. See: 

 

[zogg]

On 9/10/2021 at 9:46 AM, drobbins said:

@zogg I will answer you.

"From recent activity it seems like funtoo development (except autogenerated updates mostly) is getting to mostly none, including activity even in on this forum."

This is an interesting and funny perspective, because it's actually just the opposite. Funtoo is more active than it has ever been, and we are starting to collaborate with Sabayon on next-gen projects, and we have been growing our Funtoo dev team too.

One thing to realize is that Gentoo has 200+ developers and Funtoo up until recently has had maybe 2-3 developers at most active at a time, but often just one. Think of that. Over the past decade, what was often 'powering' Funtoo, was JUST ONE GUY. Sometimes -- many times -- it was not even me but a more junior developer.

Why? Because I am often busy -- I have a full time job and also a toddler, a wife, two kids in college, and two more kids in elementary and middle school ?

Now we have like 10 actively contributing it seems. So 3x-10x growth in the last few months is actually huge. And we seem to now be getting an influx of people from Gentoo (we don't actively try to recruit users or devs from Gentoo, so this is just an observation and not a 'boast'.)

But I actually DO understand why you have your perspective. It is a PERSPECTIVE, but not reality.

But it's interesting to wonder: why do you have this perspective?

It is probably because you are incorrectly trying to compare the work of 200+ people to what has often been just the work of 1-2 people.

Is that fair? I don't think so. But I am sure you can 'sense' that there is often fewer package updates and general upheaval than in Gentoo. Some people actually LIKE this about Funtoo!

The reality is that actually we are doing many things that Gentoo is not doing, and solving problems that Gentoo is not solving. But these problems are not glamorous, and take time, and we care more about solving these problems than giving you the latest crap to run on your computer.

I'm quite content with our progress. But I don't think that Funtoo is a distro for everyone, and if you feel that Gentoo is more up-to-date or aligns better with what you want, by all means please use it. It doesn't matter to me what you use. No one here is going to try to persuade you to use Funtoo. If you don't see the point in using it, then use something else.

The reason why you did not understand @nrc is because you don't get an important point. You are assuming that Funtoo and Gentoo are trying to do the same thing, and be the same thing, and trying to get you to pick one over the other.

This is actually not true.

That is why you do not understand.

So now that I have addressed the 2/3 of your post that was a troll, I can address your legitimate question -- update on the current state, and roadmap/future of the project.

The current state is that the project is rapidly growing and we are working on getting our growing team to work well together. So we are recently moving beyond 1-2 devs into the 5-10 active devs range.

Autogens will continue to be added to the tree by users. Thanks to user contributions we now have MATE stage3's available for download as well as updated Enlightenment.

As far as I am aware, financially, Funtoo has more funding/resources available to it than the entire Gentoo project despite our small size, is fully independent of any external influences regarding our future, and I expect this to continue to be the reality. I have been regularly sending cryptocurrency to our most active volunteers as a 'thank you' from the Funtoo community for their contributions.

We will continue to prioritize new and interesting ways of solving complex technical challenges rather than expending huge amounts of manual effort to maintain tens of thousands of packages.

While we do this, we also hope that you will find Funtoo to be a useful tool for desktop workstation, laptop as well as dev and production servers for amd64 and arm(64) architectures, as well as riscv, which is being worked on.

For everything else, you will find out about it when it is announced ?

As always, Funtoo is a user-centric project so if there is something you want, you are encouraged to not be shy and explain why you personally want it on the bug tracker and if it is reasonable, the issue will be approved and a PR can then be submitted.

Best,

Daniel

 

 

Hi, first of all thanks for answer.

First of all it is interesting that you go on offense as defense and state that my questions are trolling :)

I mean common, did I blame you that manpower of the project is much smaller than gentoo? I do not think in any way that you or anyone here own me anything, all of all I'm trying to understand the state and if I (maybe others who share same feeling) need to worry or re-calculate path if Funtoo is for them.

Moreover I am the one who stated the shortage of developers in the first place, but somehow your answer is still that offense that I'm trolling and not just asking legit question to understand the state.  

And it is not like you do not understand where it come from as you are saying yourself that despite that you do not agree but you do understand where this "perspective" comes from.

Funtoo was always smaller project that Gentoo, and despite it I used at both home desktop and work laptop for quite few years already and I do feel as part of community (despite of me contributing or not) I have all right to raise those questions.

Common, I do remember the activity on git, forums, IRC and other channels back when Oleg was one of core developers and suddenly for over year (again I do understand not simple time in general with Covid around) there is no visible activity, no roadmap (outdated page) or anything that I can see where Funtoo is going(not on discord so no idea what is going on there). It is natural that I would worry, or maybe the transparency is not the same as it was and it is much harder now to understand/follow. So why not just help users to understand. Btw I might be not one of the most active ones, but I've been around this project for a looooooong time, so if I fail to see it, maybe there are much more people like me who just don't raise their voice (so they would not be called trolls, right?)

 

You do state that you want to encourage users to get involved, but on same breath you are saying that "maybe Funtoo" is not for me instead of just maybe to clear things that I can't see/understand for some reasons.

E.g. you stated about Sabayon collaboration and I saw it on here and few other resources some time ago, but personally, maybe I'm missing something - but I fail to understand where/how/what for it is happening and how it is influencing future of Funtoo (today and the moment it was announced).

So are you still thinking I'm trolling or it is just emotional and it is easier to blame on trolling rather to answer actual questions, as an example I tried to raise what is the purpose, difference and roadmap of Funtoo and as I mentioned above you stated "use Gentoo" "maybe Funtoo is not for you" instead of simply taking into account that some users might fail to see the actual difference or purpose and you as Leader of project and developer can simply point it out and not say "use latest crap" Or you are saying that there is no actual vision and you just going with the flow, because it is hard for me to understand how it is possible to state it is different, but fail to explain actual difference or purpose.

 

I didn't understand @nrc as he didn't answer any question, he used the approach "you do not understand" ," you can't see" and offense as defense instead of actually trying to explain and not using generic statements "create reliable distor that works for users" as I think any maintainer of any distro will tell you the same, but I think most of them would be able to explain on how they are going to achieve it and not use just "Funtoo is the best" "so stable" and etc. Because if there is vision or roadmap on how to achieve it (as any project should have, even when it can be changed as they go) it should not be hard to state this vision/roadmap and connect those dots.

 

I am glad for team growing and as you say more active, collaboration and finally new release. Yes "finally" as end user this is the point that I actually can see and interact with, so do not take as something negative, as I do really appreciate any contribution to any project even if I do not use it and I value when any person gives his own free time for others.

I did try to check git sometimes, check forums, telegram (though I saw mostly people are using language that not everyone can understand) and I didn't see any activity, so maybe some transparency, roadmap or more updates where project/community can help and avoid this kind of post in future.

 

And though questions I raised maybe are not the most pleasant for some I do not see any reason to attack me back and call me troll or act @nrc did. I do not think it is something you want in your community. That kind of community that is based on "if you like anything you get" we give you "+" in forum and system, but if you raise any questions you are "traitor of Soviet Union" and you would be punished with "-" and called troll. I hope this example can show it more clearly about another "perspective" I'm talking about. And maybe it is not Funtoo but the way the community/leadership is communicating is the problem for me after all.

 

P.S. Kuddos for new release 

[zogg]

See my original post (mostly questions that was marked as "trolling") and see the first answer to be more clear of what I mean

Edited September 16, 2021 by zogg

[drobbins]

@zoggI think you are not looking in the right places to see the activity. The obvious place to look is code.funtoo.org and the bug tracker, not forums. The forums are not a 'central' part of the work. This is why, I think, your comments were taken as trolling. Instead of drawing conclusions that maybe Funtoo is dead (which no project wants to hear) and that we should provide a way to migrate to Gentoo (which is somewhat offensive to many), maybe it would have been better to ask "am I looking in the right places". Requesting a roadmap is maybe a lazy person's way -- putting the burden on us -- to show you where we are going -- where if you were looking in the right places you would already have much more knowledge.

So I think a lot of the trolling response is also due to how you asked, and tried to draw conclusions before being sure you were looking in the correct places. So there is some contribution to this by your conversational style.

All that being said, I am very glad to hear you are not trolling and are wanting Funtoo to succeed. Me too ?

[dutch-master]

1 hour ago, drobbins said:

conversational style

Linux, and Funtoo, are international. His (her?) native language (very likely) may not be English. Nor is mine ?  It also means (s)he may not be aware of 'social rules' that govern (online) conversation in English. And even so, discussions on the web always miss a vital component in human interaction: non-verbal communication. Body-language. Smileys, and by extension emoticons, are a way to circumvent this, but generally do a poor job, TBH.

 

To be frank, there is a valid point in his comments: not every Funtoo user is a coder. Not every Funtoo user wants to use Discord, let alone be online on it for 24/7, just to get the latest on the project. Not every Funtoo user tracks the latest issues on bugs filed on the bug-tracker. This forum is also a communication platform for the Funtoo project, as you obviously understand, but I notice it's not really treated as such as updates are not very frequent. Now, I understand you'd prefer working on patching code to improve Funtoo over posting updates here, but too little updates here ultimately leads to the above conversation.

 

Just me tuppence ?

[drobbins]

36 minutes ago, dutch-master said:

Linux, and Funtoo, are international. His (her?) native language (very likely) may not be English. Nor is mine ?  It also means (s)he may not be aware of 'social rules' that govern (online) conversation in English. And even so, discussions on the web always miss a vital component in human interaction: non-verbal communication. Body-language. Smileys, and by extension emoticons, are a way to circumvent this, but generally do a poor job, TBH.?

Also, frankly, I think that distros are now treated as commodities where somehow it is expected that we are supposed to 'prove to users' that they should use us instead of some other distro. Really, this is the attitude these days. And I don't really like this attitude. Asking for a roadmap is a perfect example of this attitude -- it asks very much of Funtoo, while offering very little -- nothing, really -- of personal opinion of what the individual is actually wanting. Like we should just wave our hands and promise random impressive things because we are trying to win your loyalty. If you look at our bug tracker, and our wiki, you will understand that this distro is run by users. We don't have a formal development team. Issues are opened by users. Any feature can be asked for, as long as justification is provided which can even be as minimal as that you are personally interested in this feature. (and this is explained on our bug tracker if you go to open a bug) So I have worked hard to create a model that empowers users -- but also gives users responsibility -- to move improvements forward by getting involved. I feel like expecting a roadmap is the inverse. It implies a model of development that is the opposite of this. We are not here to serve you, but to create a fun, collaborative environment that you can participate in, if you choose. Having a roadmap means you are not involved, and you are just being served. And this is a model for pure commercial software where you are paying money to have something delivered to you. That is not what we are doing here. It is a total shift in thinking --  from a "what can you do for me mentality" to a "you are part of a dynamic community" mindset.

There is a lot to unpack here, even beyond this specific annoyance, regarding how Open Source works in 2021 as compared to a decade or even 20 years ago. A lot of open source is happening under a corporate umbrella. Pure community projects simply have a smaller pool of true volunteer contributors. This isn't an issue with Funtoo but an issue with how for-profit startups and tech companies are pulling talent into their web of for-profit activities. Some of these companies have questionable value to society, even though they are making money. But if you ask the typical person, they are busy. Too busy. And we can unpack this more and look at how in the US and other countries, we have less leisure time and it is more expensive to provide for a family. Which means we are driven to work more, not less. It's all a recipe to steal personal time that used to be used for contributing to your favorite community project in your spare time. And I think that's sad.

So I actually have strong opinions on these things that align with @zogg in many ways, but these problems are bigger than Funtoo. Funtoo is doing quite well considering. I am very focused on these modern challenges, but they are non-trivial to solve. But we are making good progress.

And this goes back to my point about prioritizing working on solutions to the bigger problems.

[zogg]

11 hours ago, drobbins said:

Also, frankly, I think that distros are now treated as commodities where somehow it is expected that we are supposed to 'prove to users' that they should use us instead of some other distro. Really, this is the attitude these days. And I don't really like this attitude. Asking for a roadmap is a perfect example of this attitude -- it asks very much of Funtoo, while offering very little -- nothing, really -- of personal opinion of what the individual is actually wanting. Like we should just wave our hands and promise random impressive things because we are trying to win your loyalty. If you look at our bug tracker, and our wiki, you will understand that this distro is run by users. We don't have a formal development team. Issues are opened by users. Any feature can be asked for, as long as justification is provided which can even be as minimal as that you are personally interested in this feature. (and this is explained on our bug tracker if you go to open a bug) So I have worked hard to create a model that empowers users -- but also gives users responsibility -- to move improvements forward by getting involved. I feel like expecting a roadmap is the inverse. It implies a model of development that is the opposite of this. We are not here to serve you, but to create a fun, collaborative environment that you can participate in, if you choose. Having a roadmap means you are not involved, and you are just being served. And this is a model for pure commercial software where you are paying money to have something delivered to you. That is not what we are doing here. It is a total shift in thinking --  from a "what can you do for me mentality" to a "you are part of a dynamic community" mindset.

There is a lot to unpack here, even beyond this specific annoyance, regarding how Open Source works in 2021 as compared to a decade or even 20 years ago. A lot of open source is happening under a corporate umbrella. Pure community projects simply have a smaller pool of true volunteer contributors. This isn't an issue with Funtoo but an issue with how for-profit startups and tech companies are pulling talent into their web of for-profit activities. Some of these companies have questionable value to society, even though they are making money. But if you ask the typical person, they are busy. Too busy. And we can unpack this more and look at how in the US and other countries, we have less leisure time and it is more expensive to provide for a family. Which means we are driven to work more, not less. It's all a recipe to steal personal time that used to be used for contributing to your favorite community project in your spare time. And I think that's sad.

So I actually have strong opinions on these things that align with @zogg in many ways, but these problems are bigger than Funtoo. Funtoo is doing quite well considering. I am very focused on these modern challenges, but they are non-trivial to solve. But we are making good progress.

And this goes back to my point about prioritizing working on solutions to the bigger problems.

Again, I am not coming with attitude of someone owning anything to me. I do not ask anyone to prove me anything as well. I think you are taking it as white&black situation here, but community is more of co-existing dynamic thing and communication and interaction is one of the keys of it to evolve.

I did check code.funtoo.org and I did see a lot of autogenerated commits, thus btw I stated that most activity I saw was autogenerated. I even checked few branches and most "human based" commits were back from Oleg. (that raised the red alarm for me)

So regarding roadmap and being part of the community:

1. You do have roadmap page on main site (the link was removed now but you still can get there) - and it has information from 2019 and even "Lorem ipsun" entries ?‍♂️

2. AFAIR you did provide funtoo hosting as paid service and I think it would be fair for people who do pay for it to understand where project is going so they do not find their own project depend on it and they need to migrate as as some point it goes different direction.

3. No one asks to provide exactly "what I want" but it is fair that any user would be able at least at rough scale understand where it is going. For example as I told I was using Funtoo on my work laptop and was depending on it, so it is not only was a "nice project I take part of" but something that I depend on to be productive at my work place. Again you do not own me anything, but I think it the choice of using something that can be that critical is the question if I know where the project goes and if I can do it (you embraced  it yourself above to use it as workstation). 

4. Roadmap not always means exact dates and exact "promises" what would be achieved, but it is where you see your project is going, I mean you are talking about Jira and tasks as way to see it, but from what I know Jira usially have stories, epics and etc which actually show big picture and not tasks themselves. Moreover I am pretty sure you do not wake up one morning and decide to add something, rather than you have some vision on where you want to get. It is fair it is changing and this can be adjusted, but i think ability communicate it is not less important than code itself. 

For example person who can contribute but is not familiar with Funtoo will not be able to do so just by watching videos on how to make ebuilds and so on, he needs to see a bigger picture to make a bigger contributions, no?

5. Any community doesn't matter how dynamic it is has it's direction(s) and though they might change they do hold it together and not that everyone "pulling it in own direction, so at the end it stays still as directions are opposite"

6. It is harder to contribute where you fail to see where project is going

 

Yes, it is not the pleasant thing to hear that "your project is dead" but again as an end user I didn't see any activity, e.g. I remember announcements of releases, I remember that we had newest chain tools, video related improvements (mesa, nvidia, gnome without systemd) and suddenly they were stalled, so this raised this flag, it doesn't come from nowhere.

The question is if to use Gentoo or Funtoo shouldn't be offensive, it is simply practical one, I do understand how you can feel when you give your own free time while you do not have much, but you do it not for yourself, after all you have a site, you want to have community, you want it to be used and you want to build community. So you need to be practical and understand this kind of question would be raised, you need to understand that there is basis behind it and you actually trying to do something different from Gentoo (otherwise you would re-join back to Gentoo, no?) - so it is legitimate question. Moreover I think you do have something in mind and it would be more profitable for both sides if you communicate this.

The important thing of any opensource project is transparency and direction. As you gave an example of corporation backed up projects, they usually had own internal tracker and they threw code from over this fence, where community was not able to see where it goes and though code was open - people left those communities or forked projects, and it some point it killed those projects.

 

As personal opinion - I saw and took part in a lot of opensource communities including ones that backed up by corporations or not and most of them (especially those that proceed) do have guidelines, documentations, transparency, roadmap, vision, what they are trying to achieve. This provides strong community, this helps end-users to became contributors and developers.

 

So after all it is mostly an egg and a chicken situation where you state that Funtoo team is small and there is problem with time, on other hand you in some way make it more difficult for people to join and expand it. At least that's how I see it.

 

 

[drobbins]

@zogg do not take my rantings personally... it is not a response to you.... more like some sadness regarding open source in 2021 and some unpleasant attitudes, which you have stumbled into by accident, and these attitudes tend to 'trigger' me due to chronic irritation regarding some of these issues you have touched on. I do think of course your opinions are valid, if maybe not accurate, but as an 'outsider' I will factor them into account and see what we can do to communicate better.

In the mean time, I encourage you to get involved and try to submit a PR for something you care about, and see how it goes... then you will be on the 'inside' making Funtoo better and I assure you it's better on the inside. Take the red pill ? ?

 

[drobbins]

@zoggalso, I should say that I do appreciate you connecting and communicating your thoughts. For someone who is not as involved, perception is the reality. So I will look at what I can do to improve this, and welcome your involvement as well to try to address these things.

For roadmap, a lot of this has come down to LACK OF TRUST. On freenode, I had people actually doing 'silent forks' of Funtoo and ripping off my ideas. I have had people who I have told about future plans start to try to do them -- but leave me out! So many people are trying to 'make a splash' in software, and are not necessarily ethical about how they do it. So I am bitter about this. I am bitter because I actually LIKE to share my future ideas, but I have been REPEATEDLY BURNED by doing this. So now I am cautious. A lot of this relates to why we left freenode even before it self-imploded. There was too much 'sniping' of ideas and 'fake friends' who were just trying to get some ideas that they lacked themselves. But without any collaborative spirit. And even some outright nastiness. I got sick of it. I decided we'll move to discord, and have more of an independent space. And it will piss off some people -- but fortunately some of the people I pissed off (not all for sure) were those I wanted to get away from!

So yes, there is a lot of bitterness about this. And then being asked to share more -- you can imagine how this triggers a lot of unpleasant feelings. Damned if I do, damned, if I don't. You probably had no idea you were touching such a nerve when you made your original post. So much to unpack here. This will at least be an interesting thread for people to read.

[stilzchen]

Hi,

 

I think you are right in general @drobbins and @nrc if you say here is many approach and many development in the background.

 

Lets have a quick look at nrc's words compared to reality to understand an bit more what @zogg said:

Quote

I think the "roadmap" is "keep making Funtoo more current and more maintainable." 

Ok, cool.

But Funtoo is still using python2.7 as a standard python interpreter. Python2.7 is outdated and since 2020-01-01 unmaintained. That is not compatible with "more current". I can't find any announcement regarding this issue and what Funtoo plan in the future to mitigate the python issue. Dropping Python2.7 should be a roadmap task.

And maybe this is one point for the things zogg meant.

 

 

Stilzchen