The media release about Dunc-Tank said, in part: "The experiment's initial goal is to be able to raise enough funds to pay both release managers enough to work exclusively on the release of etch for a month each, having Steve Langasek available full-time during October and Andreas Barth available full-time during November, with the release expected to follow soon after in the first week of December."

But this did not find favour with many other developers. They began to slow down their work on Debian so that Etch would miss the scheduled release date. Barth made mention of this in his blog, saying: "On the other hand, there was a large disadvantage of the whole experiment: Some people who used to do good work reduced their involvement drastically. There was nothing I could do about, (sic) and that happened way before I started full-time on release, but on the global picture that still counts. So, as a first summary, I am happy with my own involvement, but that doesn't necessarily apply to the full experiment."

Some other developers who opposed the Dunc-Tank idea even went to the extent of demanding that Towns step down. When it came to a vote, however, the Dunc-Tank idea won approval in October that year.

Hocevar was open in his opposition to the Dunc-Tank idea. On a page titled "welcome to the Dunc-Bank" Hocevar wrote: "The Dunc-Bank is an experiment to see how aggressive bug reporting can delay the release of Debian Etch."