Some people asked me what I meant with regards to the
Gentoo reference.
Recently some disillusioned developers from the Gentoo Linux project, a Linux distribution, forked the project due to a lack of transparency in the way the leader of the Gentoo project behaved. The result was a new distribution called Zynot Linux.
The reasons for the fork are very severe, and I do not suggest that anyone currently in the community is behaving in these ways. But I think it is very instructive in how a community can eat itself, so I strongly recommend those with opinions about the governance discussion take a look at this document:
Reasons for Forking a Linux Distribution
This is, of course, written from one person's perspective. The fact that this perspective was shared by enough other developers, though, to fork a rather large and popular Linux distribution is quite telling.
Note: I'm not involved in the Gentoo community besides lurking the forums now and again. I don't have an opinion on this event besides curiosity in the potential lesson for the OpenACS and other communities.
talli
