I’ve been a mere spectator to the recent controversy surrounding the revocation of the Gentoo Foundation’s NFP status and I really wasn’t convinced one way or another. Daniel Robbins’ most recent post though, polarized me.

It’s been said a countless number of times already, but I’ll say it again – whether or not the Gentoo Foundation is legally recognized in the state of New Mexico (a really small part of the world, let me remind you) has no effect whatsoever on the technical functioning of Gentoo as a whole. There’s a lot of activity, people are still committing to the tree and progress is made every second. The users may not be aware of that, presumably because developers don’t “care enough”. Ok, you spoke, we heard, and we’re taking steps to bridge the divide. The newsletter has been resurrected, the PR team has a new lead etc. etc. But that’s an issue completely orthogonal to whether or not the Gentoo Foundation is legal, so please treat it as such.

Let me quote a para from Daniel’s post here:

Also, if what Grant said is correct – that the Foundation is basically stuck with developers and just developers as voting members, then it will be very hard to fix the user/developer disconnect in the Gentoo community via the Foundation as it currently exists. This would mean that the Foundation is pretty much stuck in a rut, unable to fulfill its responsibility of looking out for the health of the entire Gentoo community as a whole.

Again, I fail to understand how the legal status of the foundation affects the “health of the Gentoo community” as a whole. The foundation is simply a figurehead body that allows us to receive donations and have a bank account. If the *council* was left in a rut, now that would be something to be worried about. But it’s not, and things are therefore, goody good on the technical side.

How can you reasonably expect a person who engages in a one-way conversation all the time to “fix communication” between developers and users? How about the manner in which the person announces important things such as an offer to rejoin Gentoo as president – through a blog post? I’ve never seen something so thoroughly unprofessional – could you not even engage in a conversation regarding your concerns on the appropriate mailing list?

Sorry Daniel, but your pessimism is only angering the developers and users further – and you’re doing more harm than good.

To the users: things are beginning to settle down, I believe all the important paperwork has been filed and the foundation will regain its legal status soon (and as a bonus, as if it were never revoked). Things are fine, there’s no need for “drastic changes”. Don’t believe us? Too bad for you then, go use Debian.

No resolutions, they don’t really work for me. But I do have a lot to look forward to!

Here’s wishing everyone a fantabulous new year