Alon Bl has left the project (the mail hasn’t hit archives.gentoo.org or I’d link you). In his resignation he stated that he had problems with other developers and that was a big part of his leaving. He talks about a lack of leadership, of goals, and of user experience; of good developers leaving, and many other things.

First off, sorry to see you go Alon and I appreciate the work you did for Gentoo.

I empathize with your views that you expressed in your mail. These are difficult problems and it is not a quick change to fix them and you (nor I) may not agree with the solution. I think Gentoo has many goals; however they are poorly expressed and because of that there is no way to essentially ‘meet’ them.

The problem we previously had was that ‘everyone thought they had a say’ and that appeared to not work. The council is attempting to modify that view somewhat and it is a slow process. You can’t just elect some dictator guy to make arbitrary choices and set arbitrary goals and metrics. You need a critical mass of folks who are willing to dedicate time to meet those goals. You must also be willing to accept losses of developers who disagree with this new vision.

I know many developers who left because they thought change was impossible. I used to think that way. One of the things that getting a real job has taught me is that changes like these are not impossible, they are just not easy. You need folks dedicated to actually solving them and not just talking about it. People to set goals and actually sell them to the community as worthwhile and convince others to work towards them.

Maybe we used to have that calibur of person; maybe we never did; maybe we never will. But you are correct in one thing. Someone has to try. If everyone fears making the necessary changes than Gentoo will stagnate and probably die.