[illumos-Discuss] gdamore wishes he knew what would motivate more developers to work on illumos bugs....

[Garrett D'Amore]

On Thu, 2010-12-02 at 16:45 +0100, Gleb Kursou wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 4:32 PM, Bryan Cantrill <bryancantrill at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Bryan, I am not interested in a flame war.
> >
> > Your tone suggests otherwise.
> 
> No, my tone is required because I don't think Garrett will ever change
> without someone banging the truth at his head.

(I've removed opensolaris-discuss, because this topic has no bearing on
opensolaris, whatsoever.)

So far I hear from Gleb that I'm abrasive and destructive to the
community.  If the admin- and developer- councils agree, I'll happily
step down.  I do hope that they don't do that without another suitably
strong leader to replace me, though.

>From my perspective, illumos *needs* a strong hand at the helm.  Because
without strong leadership, it will wither and die while still in its
infancy -- mostly because other people are simply not doing the work.
Remember, until I created illumos, there was no real hope for a truly
open source release of anything based on illumos technology.

There is a lot of work in the background that still needs to be done,
and that I'm driving -- critically important work to the future of the
project.  Frankly its work I *wish* someone else would have picked up
and completed.  (Little things like legal details surrounding the
creation of a non-profit, organization of infrastructure, and so forth.)
I'd rather be able to just focus on engineering work rather than dealing
with these various "management headaches", honestly.

I'll also say this: illumos is a meritocracy.  Merit is judged by
contribution -- i.e. doing stuff and not just talking about it.  I think
the few folks who have *contributed* stuff here have learned that the
process is not unduly burdensome, nor is it unfair.  (One individual
excepted, who's version of reality is so skewed that I don't think its
reasonable to consider his opinion on this matter.)

So concretely, what decisions have I made that have been "dictatorial"?
I've occasionally asked *questions* where I wanted to make a change --
and when I've gotten feedback that the change was reasonably
controversial I've backed down, rather than forcing my will upon the
project.  You might not like my personality, but are there changes that
I have unilaterally forced on the project?  Please provide specific
examples if you're going to pursue this thread.

Anyway, I apologize for adding to this thread, but I felt that I should
at least try to answer to the accusations leveled against me, and as
they were done in public, I felt that my reply should be done publicly
as well.

That said, if perhaps I can try to be a "kindler, and gentler" leader,
and doing so will help the project, then I'm happy to do so.  I'll at
least try to keep some of my frustrations a bit more private.... 

	- Garrett