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Dunc-Tank To Help Meet Debian Etch Deadline
Da Massive writes, "Debian GNU/Linux is experimenting with a new project called Dunc-Tank, which is aimed at securing funding to pay two key release managers — Steve Langasek and Andi Barth — in an effort to ensure the forthcoming Debian 4.0, known as etch, is released on time in December." Dunc-Tank is not affiliated with the Debian Project directly, and in fact was controversial on the debian-private list.
... to do it. Can't get on the site at the mo'. Seems to have died for some reason ;) Anyone got a mirror of it?
Couldn't they ask for donations as well? I remember on of the other distro's doing this (was it Mandrake?).
"If A equals success, then the formua is A=X+Y+Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut" - A Einstein.
Basically, Dunc is an experimental project to try out ways of funding Debian development. Not paying for servers or bandwidth, or reimbursing expenses and flight costs, but actually paying people to sit down and do useful Debian work rather than some other day job.
Who is Dunc?There's info about who exactly is behind Dunc at the board page.
Dunc directly supports work on Debian, and is made up of a small group of people who use Debian and who want to see Debian improve. But Dunc is not endorsed by Debian, and Debian does not exercise any control over how Dunc operates.
What about other people funding Debian work?A number of other groups fund Debian work directly or indirectly, whether that be by allowing or encouraging their employees to contribute to Debian, or having Debian work be part of their actual job description. Dunc does not aim to compete with those groups, either in the tasks being worked on, or in the people being recruited, but rather to address other niches in the Debian ecosystem.
What does "Dunc" mean?Dunc is an acronym standing for "Development Under Numismatic Control" -- which could equally be called "coin-operated coding". The point of the project is to try some new possibilities of funding free and open source software development and helping people work on free software development on a full-time basis.
Really, though, the name is a reference to the linux.conf.au auction in 2003, for the t-shirt signed by the speakers, proceeds from which were directed to Electronic Frontiers Australia. To make the bidding more lively a certain individual foolishly suggested that the next Debian release would be named after the winning bidder, should the bidding go above $2000. Due to the combined resources of a table of inebriated Sun folks, Duncan Bennet won the bidding, and the right to have his name associated with the next Debian release -- which, many years later, turns out to be Debian 4.0, aka etch. So yes, this is yet another free software project that has its roots in the consumption of a little too much wine at a conference dinner.
What will the future bring?As Dunc is an experiment, we don't know what will end up happening with it. We may decide it works perfectly as is, or that it was a horrible idea that should never have been tried. In any event, we expect to review what worked, what didn't, and what should be done over the course of the first project, and have a public discussion about what to do after the release of etch.
Random factoidThis site is maintained using Joey Hess's ikiwiki.
It is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2.
Links: index Last edited Tue Sep 19 13:20:35 2006Dunc-Tank.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
If you're going to attempt something like this, you might as well do it with a project named after a carnival game.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
I am sure paying these folk will get this Debian release out on time. Money always motivates people to work harder and faster.. and it always makes sure a deadline will be met...
i know the odds of actually winning is very small...
At a physics talk I heard a speaker explain how the chances of winning the lottery are smaller than the chance that a neutron star will pass through our solar sytem close enough to us to capture the earth and pull us away from the sun, thus dooming us to a dark and brief future.
I play sometimes too...
I've seen a lot more people win the lottery than neutron stars lately so maybe I should take a course in statistics. I don't get it.
Beer! It's what's for breakfast!
Personally I think things are perfect the way they are in the Debian and Ubuntu Camps. I use both, Ubuntu on my desktop and Debian on my servers. They both have their place and they both do their jobs well. If anything the Ubuntu people should have called themselves Desktop Debian or something. Debian developers shouldn't hang it up. They are already working on Ubuntu directly. Ubuntu just takes their work and adds a little to it.
Beer! It's what's for breakfast!
is Mark Shuttleworth slipping in a few $$$ here?
ready for a dunking
:)
third picture down
sorry bdale
The chance of some CHOSEN ticket (eg 1 2 3 4 5 6) winning is less than a neutron star, but the chance of ANY of the tickets bought in a lottery winning is much larger.
ah, mod points
While individual rich people can help many by tossing their money at projects, distributed funding methods have proven extremely effective as well. The only problem is that they only tend to work at times of crisis where sometimes it's too late (I'm talking both about non-profit/small businesses as well as natural disasters). An easy way for many people to donate small amounts of money, especially on a monthly basis, might be more reliable... searching google revealed some begging sites though, perhaps Dunc could post a page for donations there... "Open-source operating system project managers must pay bills while saving world from..."
As for the lottery, my friend calls it a tax on the mathematically challenged. We'll see what he says after I win.
Buying a single ticket is logically worth it, especially if picking numbers that will have a higher return (less likely to have multiple winners). $1 for a chance to win huge! There's a bigger difference between a zero probability and nearly zero probability than there is between nearly zero and nearly zero. It's the people who buy more than $1 that I can't really understand. That's my logic and I'm sticking to it.
I also pledge to Dunc some OS devs/pm's if I win the lotto.
"Too lazy to fail." - Heinlein
The GP says the odds of you winning the lottery, not the odds of someone winning the lottery. If the person he is quoting is correct, and I won't even pretend to know whether he is, each year there must be a small number of planetary systems in the Universe 'lucky' enough to get a visit from a passing neutron star. I'm not saying the odds of winning the lottery are big, but I personally would be surprised if the odds of death by neutron star in our lifetime is anywhere near the odds of winning the 6/49. But I like the analogy a lot.
But in reading through the "fine" article, I still don't know what the hell "dunc tank" is. (Other than funding for Debian projects.) Anyone care to explain ..?
The sea changes color, but the sea does not change.
In addition to what RidiculousPie said, I intentionally left out the part (for dramatic effect, I was trying to be more funny than insightful) about how the neutron scenario probability was a cumulative probability. So over the next many millions of years (I forgot how many) that death by rouge neutron star is more probable than me winning the lottery today.
Personally I hate odds and statistics. Maybe the odds of me winning the lottery are lower than the neutron star but I like to think of everything as 50/50. Either I win or I don't win. I may be stupid for thinking this way, but logically speaking it's correct. It'll either happen or it won't. Now the probability is very slim. If I don't buy a ticket however I have no chance at all. Some chance is better than none. This dunc-tank idea. Do we get to put people from the #debian channel in a dunktank and then when they say RTFM, we throw the ball and hit them in the head?
Beer! It's what's for breakfast!
After reading the slashdot writeup and the linked page, I still don't know what they're doing. I know they're trying something new for funding, and I know how it got its name, but I still don't know what new thing it is they're trying. If it was in there, it got buried under a mass of other less important details.
I think it means they are going to raise some funds (how?) to pay some developers directly to work exclusively for some time on Etch. But if so, that's not exactly innovative; other projects have done so before (Perl foundation grants, as one of many examples), and I'm surprised Debian hasn't.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
haven't they frozen the features of Etch yet??? It's awfully short now to December...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I RTFAed, but I still don't understand exactly how the program is going to work, where the money is going to come from, or what the controversy is about.
They call it "coin operated coding," but are they going to let users choose what work their money gets used to fund? So if I want, say, better window transparency, then I can donate $20 and he'll spend 15 or 30 minutes working on that someday? Or is it just the electronic version of one of those "money thermometers" that everyone's seen in front of their local Lion's Club / Church / Women's Auxiliary, proclaiming how close or far away donors are from a predetermined goal that will allow something to happen?
For something that's being touted as a new method of funding, it sure seems rather vaporous to me. Anyone want to fill in on exactly how it's supposed to work?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You seem to think the chances of winning a particular lottery are less than the chances of a neutron star pulling away the Earth during that lottery. I think what is meant is that the chances of winning a particular lottery with a particular ticket are less than the chances of a newtron star ever pulling away the Earth, but I could be mistaken.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
That would be "Duct Tape". What you're talking about is something you use when kidnapping a duck.
I propose a simple game with you. You win if a fair die is rolled and comes up 1. I win otherwise. We both put in £1/$1/1 or whatever each time. I will play until you are bankrupt.
ah, mod points
Oh but the real odd are on whether I play or not. In that there is a 50/50 chance. So if I play your game I go bankrupt and if I don't play I keep all my money. Everything is 50/50.
Beer! It's what's for breakfast!
Yeah, but what about neutron stars that aren't some shade of red?
JOIN US FOR PONG!
Buying a single ticket is logically worth it
Depends on what you mean by "logically", I guess. Buying a ticket is logically worth it if a chance to rub your ticket and dream about what you'd do with all that money is worth $1 to you. It's generally not worth it if you calculate the stastical expected value of the ticket (odds of winning multiplied by the probable size of the pot). The expected value of a ticket is nearly always far less than its price, for obvious reasons.
However, there's another angle that may make it more "logical". The argument is that wasting $1 will have essentially zero impact on your quality of life. You could throw a $1 bill in the road every week and probably never notice any change. OTOH, winning the lottery would change your life immensely. So, if you can measure the values in terms of life impact, the $1 ticket has a near-zero cost, and the value of winning is huge, so perhaps the expected value of the ticket exceeds its certain cost.
Personally, I think that's crap. The value of $1 per week, if saved and invested over years, is decidedly non-trivial, so the argument can only work if you accept as a given your inability to save money.
It's the people who buy more than $1 that I can't really understand.
Why? I see three reasons to buy lottery tickets:
First, because the statistical expected value of the ticket exceeds its cost. This can happen when the pots get really big. In that case, there are lots of appropriate strategies, depending upon your available funds, but pretty much all of them would suggest buying more than one ticket.
Second, because you buy the low-impact/high-reward argument, and your perceived expected value is higher than your perceived cost. In that case the logical approach is to buy as many lottery tickets as will have no discernable effect on your finances. Perhaps you make and spend exactly the right amount of money so that $1 is that threshold, but it's more likely that the painless amount is higher or lower.
Third, because you like to dream, and like the excitement of having a chance. In that case, since you're basically spending money for entertainment, you just have to decide how many tickets give you the best bang for your buck. Most people would probably say one ticket, but a book of 50 really makes a nice slapping sound in your hand, so YMMV.
Personally, I can dream about what I'd do with millions of dollars without buying a ticket at all, so that's my strategy. Sure, I have no chance of winning the millions, but buying a ticket only changes that by a miniscule amount, and the buck can sit in the bank and gather interest.
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If your going to ask for money on a website, have it so people have 1-2 clicks to contribute.. Even if its pledges, have it so the pledges are processed when the project is approved.. Right now they are essentially turning away thousands in contributions, especially with this type of publicity.
For bleu stars the probability goes up by 45%, but for jaune it drops by 20%. Vert stars are so rare that the probability drops nearly to 0.
I've been using Debian for quite some time, and to me the point of Debian is stability. I couldn't give a rat's ass when etch releases as long as it works the way Debian is meant to. Please don't force the release to meet a deadline. You'll only be hurting the users that depend on Debian to be a stable and functional system.
No, some things are 50/50. If you played, you have a greater than 50% chance of losing, so that isn't 50/50. Now, I'd also argue that you can either choose to play or choose not to play and, as playinh has potential negative consequences, you're less likely to choose playing. So that wouldn't be 50/50 either.
How to use coral cache: http://slashdot.org.nyud.net:8090/~oscartheduck
Personally I think the Debian people should just hang it up and start working on Ubuntu.
The Debian people are working on Ubuntu. And Knoppix. And <insert favorite Debian-derived distro here>.
If the *thousands* of Debian developers stopped doing what they're doing, Ubuntu would grind to a halt. So far Mark Shuttleworth has spent nearly $20M on Ubuntu, and all of that money has accomplished relatively little, from a purely technical perspective. What's great about Canonical's efforts is that what they've done has been focused on polishing the bits needed to make the non-developer's user experience better -- the bits that many (not all) developers tend to be less interested in.
Ubuntu isn't structured to manage the participation of thousands of active developers working on a dozen platforms. If Ubuntu were to restructure to meet that goal, (1) growing pains would cripple the project for a good long while and (2) the result would look a lot like Debian.
IMO, the status quo is better. Ubuntu takes a raw diamond and cuts and polishes it while Debian is busy squeezing carbon deposits into diamond.
BTW, I'm a Debian user, and a software developer, but not a Debian developer. I've tried Ubuntu a couple of times, but always found it to be lacking in software packages I need. I can pull those packages from Debian, of course, but there are always little issues with that, so I find it easier to stick with pure Debian (sid on my desktop, testing on my family's desktops and stable on my servers).
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always found it to be lacking in software packages I need. I can pull those packages from Debian
May I ask which packages these were? AFAICT Ubuntu includes nearly the complete Debian repo if you enable the universe and multiverse repositories which are off by default.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
You're missing another important aspect of the lottery in your reasoning. The money made from the lottery goes back to the cities. So it's not just $1 wasted, it's $1 contributed to the city (minus the operating expenses of course).
While you're dollar sits in the bank, the $5 I spend per year on playing the lottery (when jackpots get huge) will go to the city as well as giving me 5 chances to win huge and do good things with the money. What are the odds of you making a ton of money that you can put to good philanthropic causes? Probably much bigger than mine but probably still statistically insignificant.
"Too lazy to fail." - Heinlein
AFAIK, the problem is that those packages are designed to work with Debian, not Ubuntu, so you end up with more problems than you'd have if you just ran Debian sid.
Personally, I feel that Ubuntu is sort of a Debian for Beginners. As soon as you're no longer a beginner, Debian proper is probably a better option. That said, I still recommend Ubuntu to people who I know are beginners.
http://outcampaign.org/
and it lives up to the Debian standard of reliable running, even in testing.
They've got a nice fully functioning gui net installer for etch that worked perfectly for me on a Dell 2300 server with raided SCSI drives. I did a basic LAMP+desktop install. They changed the default sshd install to use keys. (as in public key in ~/.ssh/known_hosts file) Excellent! I'm looking forward to finding more of my usual security tweeks configured as default.
It's testing, so the usual security warnings apply.
I think that there may be a little more sense of urgency at the Debian project with some legitimate competition from deep-pockets Shuttleworth. My etch install suggests they are responding with better product and new ideas to accelerate the development pace.
Install it today! http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
If this works, it's a great idea.
I've been been bankrupted by my involvement with a free municipal wifi project. For the better part of a year, I've been plugging away at developement, installation, and worst of all, attending endless meetings. The problem is that once you give the consumer (the public, the city, whomever) some free work, and talk about how you really like the open source movement, they think you'll do everything for free. They think that money just grows on trees for you, or that you are living in your parents' basement and content with it. Well, it doesn't work that way. Sure, I put in time and money towards seeing a worthy project get off the ground, but I am not going to carry the whole burden all the way to the projects completion. There needs to be some fundraising, and most especially, a system of paying for specific problems to be worked on.
I've basically dropped all work on the muni wifi project, but there's an effort on to find the next sucker to do some work on it. I doubt it's going to happen - the deadlines are long since missed, and they can't even get volunteers to update and freshen the web page. Cognitive dissonance at work here.
I really hope DUNC-TANK can reach the folks who realize that while there are many contributors, you need a few talented, full-time people to meet deadlines by coordinating efforts and delegating work. These people have real lives, and need to be paid.
AFAIK, the problem is that those packages are designed to work with Debian, not Ubuntu
I don't know what you mean with "those", if you mean the Ubuntu universe and multiverse repos then you know wrong - those are recompiled for Ubuntu and work (but are unsupported).
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
This is a great point about Debian and Ubuntu. I ran Ubuntu recently but was disappointed, so I wiped it and re-installed Debian (unstable). I didn't just re-point the repositories to Debian and apt-get dist-upgrade (ultimately), I did a complete re-install. I've been running Debian since way back when. Not to get involved in a distro war but while Ubuntu cuts the raw diamond that Debian is, it puts some pieces of diamond in its pocket and leaves the user with a smaller chunk. Ubuntu seems to have performed alchemy by converting the Debian diamond into a rhinestone. The concept seems to be that if you start tossing money haphazardly at developers, that they'll produce something better. This is readily accepted by people who come from Microsoft Windows. They seem to think that Linux is "not good" because it is "hard to use." Ask these same people what their definition of "better" is, and they'll probably break it down into "easier." They're usually satisfied when some monkey is paid to sandpaper all the sharp edges for them. Ubuntu promises to be easier, but it isn't. If it were, I would not have wiped it. Easy is a promise that Ubuntu doesn't keep, just like all other for-profit operating systems. Not saying that Ubuntu is a for-profit OS, but it apparently wants to be like one. Mark Shuttleworth's writings show me that he is looking toward Bill Gates and Microsoft Windows when planning his distribution. You don't change the way people use computers by creating a mimicry of an old standard, you create a whole new way of doing things that surpasses the accepted norm. Debian has always "just worked" and that's what made it stand out from the other distributions in the earlier days. Tossing loose change at developers accomplishes nothing but getting them their next cup of coffee (or internet bill) paid for. Paying a developer creates an agreement (implicit or explicit) between the funder and the developer. Developers produce software that is "in the public interest" because they are part of the public themselves. A paid developer produces quality software because they have an implicit or explicit committment to uphold that is bonded with monetary exchange, not because there has been some loose change thrown into their "guitar case" by a random passer-by. It is a criminal, not a developer, that will tell you that there will be better software, if only there could be "more change" in "the guitar case." Dunc-tanc is wrong because it creates committments between donors and recipients that likely don't benefit anyone but the donors and the recipients. Rushing the release of Debian 4 is wrong, and pointless. If you're so hot for new software then you can point your apt.sources to unstable, because "unstable" is what the next "stable" will be, when the name changes. Debian developers have always had a committment to producing quality software. That's what worked for Debian in the past, and it still works for Debian to this day.
> As soon as you're no longer a beginner, Debian proper is probably a better option. That said, I still recommend Ubuntu to people who I know are beginners.
I use Debian for ? 11 years or something and have worked as a Debian sysadmin. So... no, I don't think I am a beginner.
I prefer (K)Ubuntu to Debian because, in my understanding, Ubuntu as a community and project understands that their main task is to control the complexity of the operating system. Period.
IMHO Debian, as a project, dont seem to get this. For me, Debian, to some extent, still fells like those old Linux people in the 90s talking about how the system should not be made easier to be used. Again IMHO, using Debian involves an unnecessary amount of effort just to get it running, simply because the mentality is that the system must be shiped naked with no configuration choices made, since after all "real linux people" should always configure the system and learn while doing it, i.e. IMHO they leave unnecessary complexity exposed to the end user.
BTW1: this is my firstBTW2: I use both Debian and Ubuntu
Fine balancing act, I guess. Debian has to commit to quality because without that it is nothing - there would be no point in using it. OTOH, there are other pressures, too, not least being seen to run a well-founded ship. Users out there, particularly institutional ones, are bound to have expectations. For example, today the City of Munich announced the latest stage in its Debian rollout, but they likely wouldn't have gone for Debian to begin with if they'd thought its development process was struggling. And maybe some folks - quite understandably - want to lay a few ghosts to rest after the soap opera of the Sarge release.
So paying a couple of guys (and only if needed) to help get this huge and complex project out on time doesn't seem a big deal. If the quality is still not there, I am sure Debian will delay the release anyway. I guess what this shows is that there is a lot of competition out there now - Ubuntu, CentOS, etc - and Debian can't afford to go "ivory tower" despite what some of its developers probably think. The Dunc-Tank board has some very solid and experienced people on it. Best to wish them well. They are hardly looking to raise zillions, just a decent wage for the best talent available.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
You're missing another important aspect of the lottery in your reasoning. The money made from the lottery goes back to the cities. So it's not just $1 wasted, it's $1 contributed to the city (minus the operating expenses of course).
I'm not missing that at all. The city gets plenty of my money. If I want to donate $1 to a good cause (and I donate lots of dollars to good causes), I wouldn't give it to them.
While you're dollar sits in the bank, the $5 I spend per year on playing the lottery (when jackpots get huge) will go to the city as well as giving me 5 chances to win huge and do good things with the money.
More would be accomplished if you just gave the $5 to the city.
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May I ask which packages these were?
Sure. I don't remember what they were, though. I use lots of different packages, installing and uninstalling frequently, and it just seems that every time I try Ubuntu I run into stuff that isn't there, even with multiverse and universe enabled.
Another issue is that Ubuntu's 6-month release cycle means that an Ubuntu system is less up to date than a Debian sid system. That usually doesn't matter, but sometimes it's important.
I also use stuff that Debian doesn't have packaged, building from source, but I'd rather do less of that, so sid seems to be my best bet.
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I see. Yeah, in that case sid is surely the best option for a distro of the debian family. (The ubuntu dev versions are a much tougher ride than sid)
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Buying a single ticket is logically worth it, especially if picking numbers that will have a higher return (less likely to have multiple winners).
Yes, people often use birthdates. That means 1-12 > 13-30 > 31 > 31+. Many people also use patterns on the lottery ticket, another bad idea. But not nearly enough to create arbitrage.
$1 for a chance to win huge!
It might be "worth it", but not it terms of expected payoff which is mathematical answer. Then again, life is about more than accumulating wealth. What's my "expected payoff" by reading slashdot? Eating at a good restaurant? Sleeping with a girl? None, yet they all seem like worthwhile activities.
There's a bigger difference between a zero probability and nearly zero probability than there is between nearly zero and nearly zero. It's the people who buy more than $1 that I can't really understand. That's my logic and I'm sticking to it.
See now, here's where I lost your post. You claim that one in a kazillion or two in a kazillion doesn't matter. Yet the very first thing you talked about is making the most of that one kazillionth. You don't care about kazillionths, but you care about fractions of kazillionths? You're sticking to something, but logic isn't it.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If the nuetron star is coming in one hundred million years, but I win the lottery next week, then I don't see a problem with this.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
I use Debian for ? 11 years or something and have worked as a Debian sysadmin. ...
.conf file to get it up and running - apt did everything for me.
Again IMHO, using Debian involves an unnecessary amount of effort just to get it running, simply because the mentality is that the system must be shiped naked with no configuration choices made
Wow. I've only been a Debian user for 5 years, some of that time as an admin.
I use Debian precisely because it saves me from having to configure stuff. I had a need to start developing with Zope the other day, I didn't have to edit a single
Packages like gforge are utterly remarkable. The debian apt installer scripts ask you basic questions and will setup/configure/create (dbs, tables, domains, user accounts, etc) for every dependency: OpenLDAP, PostgreSQL, Exim, Apache... a fully working and configured system without touching a single configuration file.
For admin/dev stuff, Debian is remarkable. For the Desktop, you have to do some fiddling to get the final 1% functionality, but that's no problem for me. If a noob doesn't want to remember to install nm-applet to get a nice WLAN configuration applet, or which xmodmap commands will make his/her multimedia keys work - then Ubuntu is great.
Yes, Debian is great for dev/admin work.
My point when saying that the system ships naked is not only package configuration but also package installation, and no, I don't mean that running "aptitude|apt-get install foo" is a problem (BTW, use aptitude); but that knowing which packages to install can be a problem.
Out of the top of my head I can only think of libpam-devperm and dash as /bin/sh. Another case is when there are 4 or 5 different choices of packages and no indication of which one you should try first.
The problem IMHO being that people assume that whoever is running/installing Debian is a trained sysadmin or developer with time to tinker, not realizing (1) how difficult the system is to untrained people, and (2) how the lack of worry with this issue leads to a system that is more complex than what it should, making it a more time consuming system (to administrate) than what it has to be.
I used to work in a convenience store, and let me tell you, the bulk of lottery income isn't coming from $1 a day dreamers. People -- people with college degrees -- drop hundreds of dollars a week, while I sat there staring at them scratching tickets feeling like a slot machine.
You can make all the fancy economic sounding arguments you want about playing the lottery, but most of the money is flowing in for a very simple reason: gambling addiction.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Logic is subjective. Or maybe you'd just prefer me using the term "rational" instead. Either way it's just my own reasoning. Mathematically it might not compute, but like you pointed out we do many things that don't make logical or mathematical sense.
See now, here's where I lost your post. You claim that one in a kazillion or two in a kazillion doesn't matter. Yet the very first thing you talked about is making the most of that one kazillionth. You don't care about kazillionths, but you care about fractions of kazillionths?
One in a kazillion I think matters because it's not zero. Two in a kazillion I think only matters as much as one in a kazillion, because again it's not zero. The only thing that matters logically to me is the difference between having a chance to win and not having a chance to win.
"Too lazy to fail." - Heinlein
Tasksel usually does a reasonable job. Laptop packages do need lots of tweaking. Even if I remember to install nm-applet myself, the security permissions for dbus means that I need to also remember that user accounts need to be members of the netdev group if they want to play with the wireless NIC.
Debian is big. Very big. It tries to be all things to all people. Indeed, it's known as the "universal operating system".
Offering multiple packages to satisfy a dependancy is a good thing: though I agree it would be nice to have a "recommended" item in these cases, it really shouldn't matter (in most cases I've seen) which one you use. And in cases where it does matter, it's usually when you're messing with dev/admin stuff that needs to be understood anyway (e.g. don't know the difference between PostgreSQL vs MySQL? Then why are you installing an SQL server at all?).
Debian's scope is so wide, that making any hard decision at the distro level to force choices onto users is not possible.
One of the hardest things to do in software is limit your scope and narrow it down to something manageable. Enter Ubuntu.
But without Debian, Ubuntu would not exist at all. Even if users aren't running it on their desktop, I think the Debian project's goals are beneficial to all of FLOSS-land, and the problems you're seeing are harder to solve than you think without damaging Debian's usefulness as it stands now.
Compared to RHEL, Slackware and Gentoo (the other distros I've worked with), Debian certainly takes a lot of complexity OUT of my life as a developer.
Debian's installation process is fantastic, as far as I'm concerned - the very same installer runs on everything from circa 1993 Mac pizza boxes to IBM AS/390 mainframes to Sharp Zaurus PDAs... remember the pre-sarge days? Nightmarish! The current install asks very few questions and comes up with a very sane default desktop system if you want it to.
Ubuntu polishes it all off nicely for the newbie, or the Debian user such as yourself who appreciates it.
You can make all the fancy economic sounding arguments you want about playing the lottery, but most of the money is flowing in for a very simple reason: gambling addiction.
Yeah, I was ignoring the "illogical" reasons to buy lottery tickets. Not because they don't exist, but because they weren't relevant to my point. What you say seems very, very likely to be the reality of the matter, though.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.