Gentoo Project Under Stress

Sep 24, 2008

Kristian Kissling

Developers of the Gentoo distribution have cancelled the release of Gentoo 2008.1.

Official reason: the overstretching of human resources during the prolonged 2008.0 release process caused too much stress for the release engineers, with repeated postponements of the publication as a result. The severe and perpetual lack of manpower at Gentoo has caused them to adopt a more “back-to-basics approach”. Gentoo wants to concentrate on a weekly release of builds and tarballs and perhaps the publication of an annual LiveCD. The majority of users at the Gentoo forum praised the decision.

Gentoo is desperate for new volunteers. In particular, they need ebuild developers and people who can help to test stage tarballs and locate and repair ISO image problems.

These are tough times for Gentoo. In January this year, Gentoo founder Daniel Robbins, offered to return to his old position as chairman because the foundation was in a crisis, and for a short period it even lost its status as foundation. In May however, it regained its status and the developers committed themselves to the release of Gentoo 2008.0.

Comments

Severe lack is only in the release-engineering team

Donnie Berkholz
This is a little exaggerated. It's the release-engineering team that's stressed out, overworked, etc by releases, not all of Gentoo.