Let me give a bullet list about ways to contact developers:
– IRC: most developers are present on irc, you may query them, talk to them in the topic channels (e.g: #gentoo-media) or ask for voice in the #gentoo-dev channel. Irc logs may or may not be available for past digging.
– email: again you can either contact the developer privately using the ${nick}@gentoo.org email or using the mailing list (gentoo-dev, gentoo-project, gentoo-$topic), you may also read the archived discussions.
– jabber: we got IM too, you may again use ${nick}@im.gentoo.org to contact them directly.
Those are two way communication routes, you ask and you got replies, most of those let you have a nice log so you can even point past discussions for clarification. If someone disregard about you usually can voice it and it remains.
There are 1 and 1/2 way communication routes like blogs, it’s up to the blog owner let the comment appear or not (so he could make like he got full support by everybody just silencing who isn’t exactly keen on what’s there).
There are even 1 way routes like the GWN and GMN in which the editor can write whatever he wants.
If you wonder why I’m just stating the obvious like this, well, seems that some people got a disconnected perception on how communication works so it’s sorely required even if dead boring.
Please don’t get too enamored with the im.gentoo service. It’s going away in the near future, we’ve been saying that for a while.
I don’t want to communicate with individual developers. I want to be able to read a roadmap for the whole project. I want to know what features to expect in Portage.
I agree that you can find out what’s going on in Gentoo. But it leads to information overload – we need summaries, roadmaps and group organisation.
You just asked a subproject (portage) status. I asked about them some times ago and probably that will appear in the next GMN (it couldn’t make it since the number of items is large and nobody could summarize it in time). The problem is that there isn’t a single roadmap, you have N roadmaps, one for each project and sometimes diversified even for subproject.
You don’t strictly need anything about summaries, roadmaps and group organisation. You’ll receive the best we can do, hopefully when it’s safe to use it and as quick as the previous constraint makes that possible.
IF you want to help you have all the information you need in order to get started, if you are just curious you can just invest more time to satisfy your curiosity.
Anyway you are DEMANDING something giving nothing back and thus you fall in one of the “do not”.
If you want to volunteer helping the Gentoo PR / Gentoo News effort you’ll be more than welcome.