“I am proud to announce that The Zynot Foundation was registered
today as a 501.c.3 member controlled, non-profit organization in
the state of Oregon. This new entity is being established to hold a
fork of the Gentoo Linux distribution, targeting embedded and
enterprise users and developers. We will be establishing a new
development culture suitable for creating a reliable, validated,
and production-ready distribution–initially using the Gentoo
technology we all have come to know and love.“While I am currently leading this effort, I have already
attracted a number of others willing to help me guide this project
through its initial growing pains. In the next couple of months, I
expect this project to evolve as truly community run organization,
and we will be drafting the foundation’s bylaws out in the open,
accepting input from the community thoughout the entire
process.“I humbly submit that every present or future Gentoo user,
developer, client, or investor should read my paper [linked
below]. In great detail, it describes the events that drove me
to this current state of affairs, the reasoning behind the fork
(along with a section covering the most current events), along with
a brief glimpse at the choices this fork will be offering the
community that grows around it…”
[Editor’s Note: Welch references several links in his post
to gentoo-dev, among them a lengthy and informative article
entitled “Reasons for Forking A Linux Distribution,” excerpted and
linked here. -BKP]
Zynot.org: Reasons for Forking A Linux Distribution
“These words were written in an attempt to explain the reasons
that factored into my decision to fork the Gentoo project and to
provide a history lesson to all those that may come after me. I
hope that, by sharing my recent experiences as an open source user,
developer, and business owner, others will benefit from my insights
if they someday find themselves embroiled in similar political
throes. I will also attempt to explain what steps I then took to
ensure that the technology was preserved for the community, and the
technical problems we intend to solve by forming a new culture
around an existing and explosively popular technology.“I have tried hard to make the following narrative as impersonal
as possible and to convey the facts as objectively as possible;
however, I must admit to the simple fact that my own intimate
involvement with these events will have skewed my perception of
them. As such, my attorneys and business advisors have also
reviewed these words to ensure that my personal feelings neither
cloud nor obviate the point that this story ultimately tries to
make:“A major fork of the Gentoo Linux distribution was both
necessary and inevitable…”