On Thu, Dec 14, 2006 at 03:50:14PM -0500, Douglas Tutty wrote: > On Thu, Dec 14, 2006 at 04:27:09PM -0400, D G Teed wrote: > > Howdy, > > > > I'm a sysadmin of the Unix half of a small University > > main server room. Recently we have been trying to > > decide on a replacement for FreeBSD for 14 servers. > > > > I favor Debian, however I can't make that decision on > > my own. I found it was a challenge to convince > > others in the decision making process that Debian > > is solid and here to stay when the Dunc Tanc causes > > the Weekly News to drop out of consistent appearance. > > I know there are alternate sources of information, but > > one must consider that non-Linux users are amongst > > the visitors of the Debian project web site. > > > [...] > > If there are other users who also feel this issue has degraded the > > appearance of the Debian project and its web site, you might share > > your view. Hi Doug, > > Whats a Dunc Tanc? here is the main site[0]. During the development of Etch, folks wanted to get Etch released in a more timely manner after watching Ubuntu do 6 month releases and wanted to addresss some of the issues that lead to problems and the long delay of Sarge. Some unknown (sort of) folks wanted to make a fund to allow the 2 Stable Release managers to devote a month of their time to focus on doing Etch relase managment rather than other things. Eventually they got some more funds and they agreed to pay each person 6000 USD, which is yet to be paid along with any other financial and legal obligation that needs to be done. This, as it was labeled, 'experiment' caused much protest in the debian development community. Traditionally no one is paid to do Free software work. So when these people were to be paid, others felt 'unvalued' by comparison and thus lead to people being less motivated. One affect was the Debian weekly news (DWN) not being done or release slowed. Which the commentor thins should have not happened. Some people stopped working on project and orphaned them. Others were in favor of the effort. There was an offical vote and this expressed the view that most of Debian had no problem with the experiment and wanted to at least try this to see if it would improve things. A very vocal and more senior minority disliked the vote outcome. And we will see what impact this ultimately has in the comming years. This is just a condensed synopsis. There are many more comments on the debian-devel mailing list over the last few months if you want a more nuanced and complete understanding. Cheers, Kev
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