How to become a Galapagos developer and why you should:

But why?

Galapagos aims to build an awesome community of friendly developers, where user and developer exist in symbiosis. Helping develop Galapagos means improving a product which has the potential to be free of the shackles of Gentoo's bureaucracy, user hostility, and alpha-male mentality.

Why don't you fix the problems in Gentoo? Why make Yet Another Linux Distribution™?

Because Gentoo doesn't see themselves as having a problem, though it is clear to us they do. Council and comrel have actively hindered all reform efforts made at fixing the social problems in Gentoo holistically, both inside and outside, and are now to the point of actively suppressing dissent through threats of removing developer status.

To give you an idea of how hard it is to fix, only 37% of developers participate in a typical council election, which is rarely very competitive (about two people on council for each person contesting). Nonetheless, that represents a turnout of about 200 developers, and convincing 200 people to change the status quo is difficult at best.

Though these politics rarely affect end-users unless they interact with the distribution, users should think carefully about what goes into making their distribution.

Surely it can't be that bad?

Why would we have made another distribution, knowing how much effort would be required?

We need your help

We offer an alternative to this toxicity, but we can't do it without your help. We need people to build our fledgling community.

We ourselves are experienced people who have been running Gentoo for years, and aren't some fly-by-night operation by some inexperienced people. Considerable thought has gone into this project and alternatives (including contributing to Gentoo forks) were carefully considered first.

Join us and help us out!

Decide what you want to do

There is a list of issues and a TODO on the wiki you can look at if you want to help. It may be also useful to look at our goals and decide how you want to help.

You can also maintain Galapagos-only packages if you so desire.

The process

Becoming a developer is easy in Galapagos.

Disclaimer

This process will possibly change at some point, but for now we don't have enough people to do it any other way.

Ask an existing developer to join

Until we get enough critical mass of people to institute a real recruitment project, for now you ask any other developer if you want in.

Prove you know your stuff

This isn't like Gentoo's process, although if you are a Gentoo developer, you are by proxy a Galapagos developer. If you wish to contribute more directly and you are (or were) a Gentoo developer, we will take this as proof you know your stuff. Otherwise, we will ask some questions of you and see what role you are fit for, if there is a need for that role at present.