The proposed 4.2 team

I am very uncomfortable that I am forced into the role of assessing people for roles in the future 4.2 team.

I have posted some thoughts in the previous blog post, and Lobster has reflected some of this in the wiki:
http://www.puppylinux.org/wiki/archives/old-wikka-wikki/categorycommunity/puppy-42-deep-thought

However, I am not the one to decide who leads the team, as I am supposed to have stepped back from any leadership role. So, I have made some preliminary recommendations only.

The list of interested parties can firm up over the next week, perhaps even those concerned can have some private dialog and come to a consensus. Then a forum thread can be started to seek a consensus from the wider Puppy community.

Regarding building a Slackware-based 4.3, or anything else for that matter, it is the kind of thing that someone can "just do". Perhaps check that two people aren't going to do the same thing first though. If someone just presented it completed, done, built from 4.1, then it immediately becomes a prime contender for the basis of 4.3. It would have to be a Unleashed build system, with packages rebuilt from Slackware packages, not a remaster. The 'devx' component also!

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Comments

Small groups and innovation
Username: Raffy
We've already seen small groups and individuals contribute innovations for the project, so it is a useful tradition favored by the outspoken members of the community. You'll remain the exceptional innovator for Puppy Linux. :)

Finding Useful People
Username: Dougal
"My rule of thumb for you would be that anyone who talks about what should be different about 4.2 should be _avoided_. I feel like I'm looking at a primary school class, where they're playing a game of "being grownups" or something and all the can think of is "I'll change the world", "I'll build a rocketship and go to the moon" and such, not realizing you first need food and shelter -- since they're used to their parents (Barry) doing it all for them. What people should aim at right now is being able to create an infrastructure that enables them to _duplicate_ the existing Puppy: setting up repositories, compiling everything from source and packaging it etc. since that's the most basic part of maintaining a distro -- not being able to change the WM or whatever else people do with their puplets. This obviously means there needs to be quite a bit of delegation for authority/responsibility: a person responsible of compiling the kernel (and maybe a "team" to make decisions on what to enable/disable), people responsible for "maintaining" certain parts of the filesystem etc. since it will not be reliably done otherwise -- it's too much work for one person (unless they're retired...). I emailed HairyWill some suggestions about a week ago, but I really don't know who could be the "coordinator"... It has to be someone with the time to deal with a lot of people and with a basic overall understanding of how Puppy/Linux/GNU works - or else they wouldn't really be in a position to comment on anything the people "below" them do...

Succession to the throne
Username: growler
"We've been a dictatorship (a benevolent happy puppy one :-) and we are attempting to move to a democracy - not an easy process as abundantly clear from the US experience in Iraq! Dictatorships acheive far more because there is not the endless discussion and stiffling of innovation that results from often uninformed debate and then senseless squabbling. Without a clear allocation of duties by the dictator (the only one qualified with the big mana/repsect of all to lead) then the actions of the few who actually "pick up the ball" and develop will shape the future. Under this scenario I expect there will be a number of pupplets evolve and each have their following - perhaps this is no bad thing. I think the mission to create the democracy is perhaps a bigger mission altogether for you Barry than actually developing another puppy!! You have already acheived and done so much for the puppy community/following it seems foolish to ask you to step into a mire/bog when I expect you have no interest in people or organisation management other than to see your legacy go on. I have no doubt it will - but only by those who act rather than discuss and seek opinions from all and sundry. The only people with rights are those that do something (developers) - and they have every right to do it!! Announcements about what people are doing are helpful so effort is not duplicated - discussion about what "we" - him/her or anyone else should do ... I'm not so sure these are much use to anyone other than to get the other person's back up!

The transition
Username: dogone
"I believe the key to a peaceful and productive transition is for the community to take one step at a time. We must first focus on (just) tweaking and updating 4.1. 4.2 will thus be Barry's Puppy with community fingerprints on it. By the release of 4.2 we should be sufficiently organized to begin defining 4.3 and the future of Puppy. What we must guard against is "noise" generated by the less disciplined among us. Those who insist on being heard rather than helpful must be reminded of the mission. This is not the time for ego but for devotion to cause.

Tags: retirement