Debian release delayed

Sam Varghese
Wednesday, 20 December 2006 02:47

Opinion and Analysis

Having gone through a few hundred emails on the subject, all on various Debian mailing lists, it appears that the delay is seen as proving that the Dunc idea does not work. Had the release been made on time, then it is possible that it would have been attributed in part to the creation of this sub-project, not part of Debian but at the same time assisting the project.

Those objecting to Dunc say it creates a two-tier system within Debian. And why, they ask, is the work of some (in this case the release managers) deemed more important than that of others? Indeed, one senior developer, Martin "Joey" Schulze, has been so annoyed by it that he has stopped producing the Debian Weekly News email, something he was doing as part of his involvement with Debian.

This is not the first time that Debian developers have been paid to work on the project. There are several cases where companies which are interested in one software package or another have paid developers for their work. Indeed, when the chief technology officer for Linux at HP, Bdale Garbee, was the Debian project leader, HP hired or supported some Debian developers (DDs).

A post by Ts'o makes this clear: "For example, when Bdale was DPL, he was also the CTO of Linux at Hewlett Packard, and in such a role he certainly had a lot of influence over what HP would fund its employees to do - and HP, to its credit, has hired/supported quite a few DD's. So while this isn't exactly the same as AJ and Dunc-Tank, it's pretty close."As another example, some of the other commercial Debian efforts where headed by Debian developers which were "high profile" (such as the the original founder of our project!) and they hired/funded DD's - and the world didn't end."

Given the number of release-critical bugs remaining in the distribution - which Barth put at 157 on December 1 - it is likely that it will take a few more months for Debian version 4.0 to emerge. Or it may run to mid-2007. One never knows.

There are over 1000 Debian developers from various countries and it is remarkable that they produce one of the best distributions. Several commercial distributions are based on it and Debian itself is the second most popular Linux after Red Hat. It is unlikely that any company with this number of far-flung developers would be able to even remotely match what Debian achieves.

There is some murmuring, though, and it will probably continue for a while. It would be good to look at things the way Ts'o does: "Folks who are claiming that they are demotivated because two people have volunteered to give up a full month of their time to take on a job where they giving up something like 75% of their normal income - and the problem is that they gave up only 75% instead of 100% - those people who are kvetching should take a very deep look into their hearts and motivations. If that's what it's all about for those folks, maybe those people who have left Debian are really doing themselves (and the project) a favor..."