Posted by: Anonymous
[ip: 68.230.96.73]
on August 25, 2007 04:15 PM
Well, you got it sort of right. It wasn't the foundation that pressured him (AFAIK*), but certain folks within and without the foundation. Much of the pressure was from Zach Welch, who eventually lead the Zynot fork. Google his name and Zynot and you'll see an essay
(poorly spelt, but oh, well) I wrote on the subject as a reply to a question on LWN. My opinon on the subject is clear from that, but briefly, while he got Gentoo a lot of hosting support at a critical time, I'm not altogether sure why he was with Gentoo at all, he was such a poor fit for it or anything Open Source in general. There was at least one close to the action that from what he's written since, he kinda got fooled by Zach.
However, keep in mind that regardless of the pressure, it was Daniel's decision to setup the foundation and Daniel that pushed and pushed to finally get it thru. Ultimately, it's that pushing, giving of himself until there simply wasn't any more to give, running himself into debt, sacrificing the well-being of his family at times, that finally caused Daniel to give up. He couldn't go any further. However, as a last sacrifice even after it was clear he was leaving, he stayed around working on setting up the foundation and the non-profit entity so there'd be something there to take the legal end when he left.
Unfortunately, that sort of thing leaves a bad taste in one's mouth, and Daniel understandably has a /lot/ of mixed feelings. I imagine it's much like a father watching his grown son make what dad thinks is a a wreck of a lot of potential, but knowing the son is grown now and must make his own decisions.
So yes, Daniel definitely has reason to be frustrated and peeved. However, it wasn't really the foundation that made it so, but primarily one trouble-maker, who left really even before the foundation was fully formed, and certainly while Daniel was still giving it his all, as he continued to do for some time after it was obvious he would really rather be somewhere, virtually /anywhere/ else (which turned out to be MS for awhile, so yeah, /anywhere/ else), and that he'd leave as soon as he possibly could without leaving Gentoo without a legal base upon which to continue. The other guy I mentioned was part of the pressure at the time, but chose to stay with Gentoo (and the foundation) in the split, and as I said, has now written in hindsight that he realizes how he was taken and how much pressure he ended up putting on Daniel wrongly. He says yes, there were some changes that needed made, and Daniel wasn't perfect by far, but under the circumstances, he did a great job. (Or at least that was my read of his journal entry a few months ago).
Regardless, yes, Gentoo is looking at handing over the legal end of things to the Software Freedom Conservancy, and yes, that's gotta be hard on Daniel, but all things considered, I expect he may have done the same thing if it existed at the time. It certainly would have been easier than trying to setup an independent not-for-profit, which to this day isn't working too well, basically because developers don't tend to make great administrators, having neither the skill nor the interest necessary to do so. Yes, it would have been nice if DRobbins had been notified of the discussions a bit earlier rather than having to stumble on them, but that's basically an error of etiquette and failure to show due respect, than anything else, and it really does illustrate how poorly the developers in charge have been handling the legal and political end, again, because they are simply developers, not administrators. So setting it up so the SFC, a bunch of lawyers and administrators interested in Free software and contributing as they can, can run that end of things, seems a pretty good idea. Let them do what they do best and let the developers do what they do best, and things should work better all around.
(* I came in just a few months before Daniel left, after the Zynot split, and after Daniel was on his way out, but while he was still struggling to get the Foundation setup before he left all the way. So I didn't see it all happen, but I saw the end results, and did enough of my own research to have a decent idea of what was going on previous. See that LWN post I mentioned for more of my at-the-time thoughts and some more detail on the Zynot end in particular Zynot, BTW, basically went nowhere fast, as I expected based on my research at the time, and officially folded some time later, after being inactive for some time. In fact, it was apparently seriously slowing down even by the time I did my research. O don't believe the site changed much after that, altho there was still some activity in CVS and on the dev lists at the time, tho they had already slowed down as I said.)
Duncan
[Modified by: Anonymous on December 10, 2007 09:06 PM]
[Modified by: Joe Barr on March 10, 2008 10:09 AM]
Learn about Linux
Download Linux
Get Linux help
Re: Can developers reclaim donated IP?
Posted by: Anonymous [ip: 68.230.96.73] on August 25, 2007 04:15 PM(poorly spelt, but oh, well) I wrote on the subject as a reply to a question on LWN. My opinon on the subject is clear from that, but briefly, while he got Gentoo a lot of hosting support at a critical time, I'm not altogether sure why he was with Gentoo at all, he was such a poor fit for it or anything Open Source in general. There was at least one close to the action that from what he's written since, he kinda got fooled by Zach.
However, keep in mind that regardless of the pressure, it was Daniel's decision to setup the foundation and Daniel that pushed and pushed to finally get it thru. Ultimately, it's that pushing, giving of himself until there simply wasn't any more to give, running himself into debt, sacrificing the well-being of his family at times, that finally caused Daniel to give up. He couldn't go any further. However, as a last sacrifice even after it was clear he was leaving, he stayed around working on setting up the foundation and the non-profit entity so there'd be something there to take the legal end when he left.
Unfortunately, that sort of thing leaves a bad taste in one's mouth, and Daniel understandably has a /lot/ of mixed feelings. I imagine it's much like a father watching his grown son make what dad thinks is a a wreck of a lot of potential, but knowing the son is grown now and must make his own decisions.
So yes, Daniel definitely has reason to be frustrated and peeved. However, it wasn't really the foundation that made it so, but primarily one trouble-maker, who left really even before the foundation was fully formed, and certainly while Daniel was still giving it his all, as he continued to do for some time after it was obvious he would really rather be somewhere, virtually /anywhere/ else (which turned out to be MS for awhile, so yeah, /anywhere/ else), and that he'd leave as soon as he possibly could without leaving Gentoo without a legal base upon which to continue. The other guy I mentioned was part of the pressure at the time, but chose to stay with Gentoo (and the foundation) in the split, and as I said, has now written in hindsight that he realizes how he was taken and how much pressure he ended up putting on Daniel wrongly. He says yes, there were some changes that needed made, and Daniel wasn't perfect by far, but under the circumstances, he did a great job. (Or at least that was my read of his journal entry a few months ago).
Regardless, yes, Gentoo is looking at handing over the legal end of things to the Software Freedom Conservancy, and yes, that's gotta be hard on Daniel, but all things considered, I expect he may have done the same thing if it existed at the time. It certainly would have been easier than trying to setup an independent not-for-profit, which to this day isn't working too well, basically because developers don't tend to make great administrators, having neither the skill nor the interest necessary to do so. Yes, it would have been nice if DRobbins had been notified of the discussions a bit earlier rather than having to stumble on them, but that's basically an error of etiquette and failure to show due respect, than anything else, and it really does illustrate how poorly the developers in charge have been handling the legal and political end, again, because they are simply developers, not administrators. So setting it up so the SFC, a bunch of lawyers and administrators interested in Free software and contributing as they can, can run that end of things, seems a pretty good idea. Let them do what they do best and let the developers do what they do best, and things should work better all around.
(* I came in just a few months before Daniel left, after the Zynot split, and after Daniel was on his way out, but while he was still struggling to get the Foundation setup before he left all the way. So I didn't see it all happen, but I saw the end results, and did enough of my own research to have a decent idea of what was going on previous. See that LWN post I mentioned for more of my at-the-time thoughts and some more detail on the Zynot end in particular Zynot, BTW, basically went nowhere fast, as I expected based on my research at the time, and officially folded some time later, after being inactive for some time. In fact, it was apparently seriously slowing down even by the time I did my research. O don't believe the site changed much after that, altho there was still some activity in CVS and on the dev lists at the time, tho they had already slowed down as I said.)
Duncan
[Modified by: Anonymous on December 10, 2007 09:06 PM]
[Modified by: Joe Barr on March 10, 2008 10:09 AM]
#