Debian User Forums

Excerpt:

"Dunc-Tank, the unofficial organization set up to fund selected Debian activities, has made its first experimental payment to release managers, but community members are still debating whether a missed deadline and the alleged demotivation of some programmers make the experiment a failure.

As reported previously, Dunc-Tank is managed by leading Debian developers, including Anthony Towns, the Debian Leader, and Steve McIntyre. The organization has been controversial since its announcement in September, with such concerns being raised as whether paying some developers would demotivate others, and whether the composition of Dunc-Tank would cause outsiders to believe that it was an officially sanctioned project. The group was satirized by the Dunc-Bank site, and its advent even resulted in a general resolution to impeach Towns for conflict of interest.

The resolution failed, and, although the controversy continued, Dunc-Tank was able to pay release managers Steve Langasek and Andreas Barth for one month each in the hopes of Etch, the next Debian release, being ready for December 4. However, with the general freeze on Debian packages -- the last major milestone before the release -- occurring only on December 11, the release seems unlikely to occur before the end of January 2007."

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http://www.linux.com/print.pl?sid=06/12/28/1942255

comedy relief while waiting for the release.....gotta love it!

Obviously, this didn't have the desired effect they were going for, but at least they tried something new. Without the courage to go against the grain and try different approaches to an existing problem, debian or linux itself wouldn't even exist. At the very worst they should just chalk it up to experience and move on.


sleepy

sleepyEDB wrote:Obviously, this didn't have the desired effect they were going for, but at least they tried something new. Without the courage to go against the grain and try different approaches to an existing problem, debian or linux itself wouldn't even exist. At the very worst they should just chalk it up to experience and move on.


sleepy

I agree, it's great to see that they dare try out different things in an effort to make a release as soon as possible. That said; personally I never believed that the Dunc-Tank experiment in it self was a good idea. It's very well suited to create jealousy and envy and also, three people working full time on a huge project as a Debian release will not make much difference really.

Seem like this is the time for the Debian 'management' to (re)read "The Mythical Man-Month". A classic that discusses this exact problem...

Tina