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Debian Delayed by Disenchanted Developers
Torus Kas writes "Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 was supposed to be due by December 4 and development is currently frozen. Apparently the saga was triggered by disenchantment towards funding of $6,000 for each of the 2 release managers to work full-time in order to speed up the development. Many unpaid developers simply put off Debian work to work on something else."
The article did not say what packages were delayed specifically, but Debian is known to have an insane number of packages. Perhaps some culling is in order. I'm not part of the project, just an appreciative user, but here are my two cents.
About the project being "frozen", I don't know about that. I have a laptop running etch-testing. I did an apt-get dist-upgrade in mid-Nov , put it away for a few weeks and ran it again in early-Dec (don't remember exact dates). Something like 70 packages needed upgrades.
Funny isn't it, how no matter how many times humans start over with a utopian system, they end up concentrating their wealth into a small number of strong leaders and leaving a large number of impoverished citizens. We really are programmed to institutionalize.
Understanding (or not) the behind the scenes nomenclature of a development environment has no bearing on your ability to use the final product.
"Obscenity is the crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker." - cloak42
I'm not even sure who's clamoring for Etch to release. Anyone who needs the latest toys can run it already, and anyone who really needs the stability of Debian Stable knows that it will be released when it's ready.
It's the other distros that seem to be in a huge hurry. To each his own; that's why we have more than one distro.
The problem is that dunk-tanc.org really is splitting the community. What they're providing is valuable to some - and does indeed help some problems - but unfortunately it's counterproductive to others people's needs and wants.
You've now got a subset of Debian guys motivated by money, and the rest of them still motivated by making a quality Linux distribution. Sometimes those interests are aligned (as the guys who set up dunc-tank observed) but sometimes those interests are NOT (as the guys who started Caldera and Novell now see when Microsoft can easily use the motivated-by-money lever to change the course of the projects).
IMHO, Debian should stay Debian - and stay as far away from money and paid work as possible -- and let organziations like Ubuntu build the corporate bureacracy stuff like release schedules, support contracts, etc. I hope Ubuntu buys dunc-tank.org and takes those employees with them -- because they and their work are useful for corporate marketing -- but do more harm than good to Debian development.
Open Source can mean a lot of things, not just for the community. I'm sure it's not uncommon for someone to improve packages for themselves.
The problem with open source projects such as Debian is that they're volunteer and that people need to have continual interest in it in order for it to survive - with pay developers or no. That may sound like a obvious point, but it seems that more than a few open source projects are stagnating because of waning interest. NetBSD also comes to mind. What happens to Debian will be interesting not only because of Debian itself, but because the "waning interest" scenario will happen to many open source projects in the future that look perfectly healthy today. I guess I'd say it's a point of maturity we haven't really reached before.
Bringing in managers, paying them, getting people on your back telling you what to do and when to do it, when you were doing this as a "hobby", is a bit erhm -- turning the hobby into a chore. You want a job done, on time, when you want it, sure. Pay for it.
Welcome to the land of software development idiocy.
This is where you have a bunch of people on one side of the fence yelling that there is perfectly viable bussiness reasons to adopt open source... and on the other side of the fence you have even more people that wouldn't pay for surgery that could save their own life. (Since practically no one pays for anything open source, no one really makes much money from it.)
Then you get people that start out with open source projects, and then turn the project into a commercial venture... thereby ticking off everyone that helped for free because they wanted a free solution. I speak from experience here. I've been ticked off on occasion, after helping with a project that was then turned into a closed source program and sold as the main product for a company. What's that I hear??? Oh... You should sue... Give me a break. That would cost more money than I would get back, and with that, we've now reached the full circle of stupidity here.
By the way... I'm not angry or bitter about this... It happened a few years ago now. I'm just trying to make a point about the sometimes strange dynamics of large groups of people working on a software project. If you change a couple of minor details then you can easily apply the same kinds of arguments to closed source software too.
What I want to know is, who can afford to live on 6K fulltime?
In the Philippines the average yearly salary for software developers was right at $6K, last time I checked. I expect that other 3rd world countries are similar.
Not that deb guys were filipinos, just answering the more general question.
Open Source is a development methodology. Free Software is a moral standpoint. Neither one says that you can't get paid. Neither one, in fact, says that you must do anything for the betterment of the community - once the appropriate license is used, EVERYTHING you do with the program that is legal contributes to the betterment of the community.
In fact what you and many other people miss is that no one does something for nothing. Sometimes they do it just because they are addicted to the good feeling that they get when they do something altruistic, but at the base level, they are feeding a stimulus-response pattern in their brain that causes them to want to do that. They are being paid in good feelings.
If I am contributing work for which many people get paid, and then I see that someone else is being paid for work which many others contribute, I may come to the realization that I need to pay my bills and they cannot be paid with good feelings which are unfortunately non-transferable and not considered legal tender for any but the most private of debts, if you know what I mean. Or maybe I'll just turn into a stingy bitch who wants some of that or y'all can fuck off. Either way, the contributions don't get made.
Ultimately, if you're going to have a release schedule and you plan to stick to it, you're going to either have to pay some people, or make sure some people don't need to get paid, which boils down to supporting those people, which is a form of pay even if you don't give them actual money. Otherwise you will have problems because people will have other motivations. This will continue until the cost of living drops so far through technology that people no longer have to work. Then we will have new problems.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The release managers are not worth 6000 times more than the developers.
Why should the release managers be surprised? Afterall, they were paid money to improve their own work ethic. Are the developers, who are arguably doing more *actual* work, not worth as much as the release managers, or held to a higher standard than the release managers?
If they can't find developers to replace those who have reduced their contributions, and the lack of development contributions is the primary cause of the delay, then very likely the developers ARE worth more than the release managers. So you can suggest they just replace them all you want, but I hope it won't come as a surprise to you that the free labor market isn't exactly full of high quality talent willing to work long hours to come onto an already late project.
Perhaps the release managers should distribute some of their new found resources to developers in exchange for additional contribution.
Hence the reason why fully community-based projects are not suited for mission-critical applications, unless you are willing to support your own use of it.
Some people are, so that kind of software is fine for them. Others are not, and so it is not. It's just that simple.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Let me be crystal clear: THIS IS NOT TRUE!!
What is happening is the value of software is shifting. In the future, you won't have to work on open source software "in your spare time." You will be paid to work on open source software by the company you work for, because they have a stake in the software's success. Software is a living thing and must be maintained. If my business directly depends on... say... Asterisk running correctly, then I'd better have at least one OSS hacker who knows the Asterisk source code... get it?
Remember the old mantra: Free Software was never intended to be free-as-in-beer. You still have to pay for it if you want any real commercial use out of it. Companies will slowly realize they don't have to pay a monopolistic empire for all their software needs, but rather can hire their local blue-collar OSS hacker. Only then will the economy make some progress...
-dave
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
The dunc-tank concept is not hurting Debian, its the reaction by a small group of developers that is hurting Debian.
That kinda is the point: If that small group of developers is important enough, then why are these people not getting paid as well? Is your work more important than mine? As long as there is no money involved, the whole thing is mostly a meritocracy, but with money a relatively small committee gets to decide who is going to be paid, and that means many other factors decide on the "importance" of certain tasks. As soon as people get paid, there is an incentive to reach a certain position in the group of developers which is decoupled from the goal of the project. These positions attract manager type personalities, people who have their own gain in mind and see the project as a means to achieve that. But a project cannot exist with just that kind of people. You need developers who do the grunt work and the fact that this equally important work goes unpaid indeed causes the community to split. As a volunteer developer, I don't want to fight to get my rightful share of the money. If I wanted to be in that kind of environment, I'd just work longer hours in my normal job.
This is why Linux will never catch on. "Packages going into Etch"?? WTF does that mean?
/., "news for nerds",) and would have no bearing on her use or non-use of Linux. It is an article about internal politics of a particular distribution of Linux that she probably wouldn't be using anyway.
Genuine Advantage in Vista? WTF does that mean? This is why Windows will never catch on.
iSight on a Mac? WTF is that?
If a well-educated slashdot reader has no clue what you're talking about, how is the general public, let alone my grandma, supposed to use Linux?
I would bet that most Linux using and a large portion of non-Linux using slashdot readers knew exactly what that meant. By your trollish and poorly thought-out comment, I would assume that you are not in the majority here. Terminology in technology always requires some domain knowledge. This article is NOT aimed at your grandma (doubt your grandma reads
While in concept I like the idea of a wide-open operating system where anyone -- including the "great unwashed" -- can contribute, I think the total lack of ownership of the final product translates to a total lack of motivation on the part of part-time developers. The GPL totally does away with someone owning the fruits of their labour. Would all the programmers stand up for a moment, please? Now, sit down if you're not altruistic enough to work for free. Of those left, sit down if you don't have the superior skills to write a modern operating system. Now, of those left, sit down if you don't have enough time to put in the long hours of your free time to contribute to a project that nobody owns. Is there anyone left standing? If there is, ask yourself if you agree with all of the goals of the project on which you're working. Do you think some things could be done better if you started your own distro? Sit down if you do.
Is anyone left standing? Hey Linux users: see the problem yet? How much longer are you going to foster the illusion that you can get something for nothing?
I'm not so sure that this isn't happening already. Look at the small percentage of income that is spent in the US on basic needs. Look at the small percentage of us who actually make things.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
If you want the latest, greatest "Vista" from Microsoft, then you do need to worry when they keep delaying it. Likewise for Debian - if you want the latest, greatest "Etch" release, you need to worry about delays too.
If you don't care about that stuff, then just use the version that's available right now.
I fail to see how this is any different between MS and Linux? With Linux the process is more transparent, so when you go to a site that bills itself as "news for nerds", you can read about all the gory details if you want.
Ideologically, I support Microsoft rather than Linux because Microsoft allows people like myself to make a living.
Until they want your revenue stream. Your going to be out of a job in Microsofts vision of the future:
Software factories: http://www.softwarefactories.com/
I wonder if the people at STAC, Netscape, etc. felt the same way as you do?
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
In fact, if you'd note, the DWN is run by a pretty strong critic of dunc-tanc (hence it not being weekly anymore).
So you're a bit off there.
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2006/41/
Money tends to throw a wrench into the works of an OSS project. I have seen it happen time and time again. GPL or BSD, it doesn't matter. At first people think its great, then something happens and the money is no longer there and, poof, suddenly the project is no longer able to support itself because people had become dependant on the cash flow. Or the core group decides to commercialize it (how many dozens of projects has that happened with? So many...) and work simply stops on the OSS version of the project, or people start arguing over where the money should go and who controls it, or it gets commecialized and the company then goes bust, or numerous other things.
Having source code available is no guarentee of continuance. What matters is who is doing the actual work. I don't recall a single instance where a previously uninvolved third party has ever been able to successfully fork a large open source project after the original authors broke up or went commercial. Forking comes from within... it almost has to for it to have any chance of succeeding.
For Debian this means that the resolution to the problem must also come from within. Either elements within the existing core group must fork the project, or they must work to resolve the mess the money has caused and become a cohesive entity again. No third party is going to bail them out.
Matthew Dillon
-Matt