Proposal to Fund Debian Sparks Debate

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Thursday September 21, 2006 @04:33PM from the much-ado-about-something dept.

lisah writes "The announcement earlier this week of 'experimental' group Dunc-Tank's plans to bankroll the work of certain Debian developers has sparked some controversy across the open source community. The leaders of Dunc-Tank say their primary motivation is to see that Debian version 4.0, also known as etch, is released on time this December. Debian developer Lucas Nussbaum, however, says that research shows that 'sometimes, paying volunteers decreases the overall participation.' Dunc-Tank member Raphaël Hertzog countered that the opposite is true and 'many Debian developers are motivated to work when things evolve,' a veiled reference to Debian's notoriously slow release cycle. Dunc-Tank member and kernel developer Ted Ts'o took the idea a step further and said, 'If money were among anybody's primary motivators...they probably wouldn't be accepting a grant from Dunc-Tank; they could probably make more money by applying for a job with Google — or Microsoft.'"

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Let the guys make a few bucks! by Skuggi · 2006-09-21 23:10 · Score: 1, Redundant

They have to have real jobs to cover what they sit on so screw it if someone is a big enough fan of debian to DONATE money for them to make sure they get it out on time let them do it. Hell, might even get the best release yet as those programmers are doing nothing but focusing on debian.