I see dead people...

... they are all around me.

This is the sentence (one of the more politically correct ones) that comes to my mind when i see the current press campaigns on the usual websites going on. Some people are actually trying to do "professional" online journalism and look at and compare Gentoo as if it were

a) an overfinanced silly Debian ripoff with no future but playing nice to the hustle and bustle that's called shareholder value

b) an underfinanced monolithic cult of moonshiners with no future either

c) the next big thing and we owe it to the public that we are the coolest and fantastic hippie shit on earth

None of this is true.

As long as i have been a Gentoo developer, i have learned one important thing about the real people bringing this distribution forward: they are doing it no matter what you do to them. You can put technical problems in their way, you can make their hardware break, you can curse at them, you can insult them, you can talk bad about them in blogs, emails, in google search results and phony news portals. You can cram their inboxes with 500+ spam mails each day cuz their bloody address shows up in changelogs. But i have yet to see one of those Gentoo developers give up. I won't talk about names here but those people know who they are and why they are.

During time, various Gentoo developers retire or suspend their activities for a multitude of reasons, the most common reason i have seen being a change in real life (new woman, new wife, new dog, new kids, finishing university with a degree, new job with less time for open source fun stuff, ...). Draw your own conclusions but there is also some people who carry their disappointments and unsuccessful careers like a stigma and who later will tell you how bad and lowly we the normal mortal developers deal with offensive behaviour in here. It takes two, one to piss you off and one to be actually pissed off. No offense intented. I'm not promoting offensive behaviour. I'm just saying that it takes two people to go that route.
I am not talking about politics or control or entities like devrel or userrel or council here. I'm talking about my impressions and experiences as a normal Gentoo dev who is sometimes pissing people off and sometimes getting pissed off by other people.

If you are asking some of the developers i am forced to daily work with, they just keep their mouth shut on several occasions where they actually _could_ and would say stfu to the words spreaded by some of our less, well, comfortable fellows, including myself. However, they prefer to let the other one have the last word, knowing that they (and the other one) give a fuck either way.

For two reasons. I elaborate at one's own risk.

First reason being time.

Some people just don't care because they got better things to do than worry about your or my rants. Yeah, it's true. Even this blog post could never have been written without daylight saving time making my biorhythm go nuts all over the place.

Second reason being pride.

For some people it's unbearable to let someone have the last word over their own because it's the fucking false pride that's getting in the way.

If some people would let things be. And they would realize the internet is 80% noobs with low profile bullshit mass media information generators and 20% porn. The whole internet consists of and lives by the ways of deception, misinformation, simply incorrect technical documentation and descriptions and other atrocities. This is just how it is. We are not living in a perfect little soap bubble at Gentoo. However, and this is a lesson i have learned, you are not making it better by dropping a thermonuclear bomb of bullheaded vigilantism on it. You are just spreading it out and make yourself long-term inveterate foes.

You cannot fuck for virginity. And you cannot make war for peace. The same holds true for winning an argument against people who are as retarded as you when it comes to defending your bollocks. You are not winning the argument. You were just having the last word. There ya pride goez!

It's fun though, i have to admit. Not the foes. The bullshit and the buzzing i mean.

However, sooner or later, you wake up one day and you will realize it was not worth it. Not a single bit of it. You could have swallowed your pride. You could have just let things be, for an hour or a day. Or a week or a month. Or a couple of months. Or a couple of years. We are getting older and some of us become wise and eventually wind down to a moderate and temperate character. Call it school of life or learning by doing or whatever you want to call it. I have been taught by many people i'm the most immature and uneducated piece of white shit they have come across in their life. Nonetheless those are the people who also like me somehow. Cuz i may be retarded and rampant, but i'm trying to be in a naive nonhazardous way without harming people all the way. Like wet explosives or a dog without teeth or something like that.

However, back to what this post is about...

If you like ranting and spreading incoherently reflected half-truths: just hit it, it's a free internet and everybody is supposed to fill the heap with bullshit bullshit bullshit as good as you can! If you think Gentoo sucks and you can do it better: do it better.

Gentoo Linux is still the most versatile, barebone, extensible, secure, configurable, top-notch source meta distribution that is

a) available
b) successful
c) useful
and
d) sexy

Call me a fanboy now or whatever you want but time will show and i will learn that your articles are neither helping nor harming. The good and the bad thing about the current problems is that the community of Gentoo developers cannot be described as a single unit nor can it be handled as such one. You can tell some common things about all Ubuntu developers and all Debian developers: like all Ubuntu developers love to be pricks and copycats while all Debian developers love to pretend it's cool to adhere to their "just in time" releases of three year old software as "stable".

I think that's like mummy is dancing to Vanilla Ice (Vanilla Ice getting jiggy with it!) and doing audition at American Idol: just in time.

Comments for this post are not welcome and i'll not discuss it.
If you don't get the message: swallow your pride and resist hacking a wily reply into your mail client, forum entry, blog post or whatever your anarchy friendly information society attack vector is. I will not jump on it.

If you don't like what you have read: don't read it again and try to get over it. Maybe tomorrow you will not be angry or upset any more.

If you are a Ubuntu developer reading this: sorry for offending you on the internet, we all know you are just gorgeous looking role models with too much free time.

If you are a Debian developer reading this: sorry for offending you on the internet, we love you and we love to work with you and share your "experience".

There is a bad thing about Gentoo: the lack of sustainability.
There is a good thing about Gentoo: the lack of sustainability.

Think about that and make up your own mind about the two sentences.

-Alex

PS: You had it coming.