Slashdot Mirror
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 development is NOT frozen. The Packages going into Etch are frozen, meaning that the current versions will get into etch with all the necessary bugfixes. development is on full steam.
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.
But it's actually a fascinating case of unintended consequences -- hiring some full-time workers seems to have had precisely the opposite effective of the intended. It's a lesson worth considering before deciding that, say, what some third world country really, really needs is millions of laptops dumped on their children.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
i've been running debian/etch(testing) for ages. the whole freeze thing doesn't matter to me.
i don't know what everyone else has their apt sources pointed at, but the rate of updates haven't changed any that i can see.
take your time, make it stable.
then i'll switch to what ever the next one is.
I kid because I love. :-)
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Now -that- is how to write an irritating alliterative headline! ^^
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.
Please, correct me if I'm wrong... but isn't the whole point of Open Source to contribute code for the betterment of the community? Which, as it happens, means not getting paid to write code. So, unless these unpaid devs have it in writing, --that they were going to be paid for their work-- I don't think they'll get paid.
Many other open source projects -- distributions included -- are developed by a mix of full-time paid contributors and unpaid volunteers. And yet they manage to keep things going.
I know Debian is all about the Free, but it seems odd that paying a couple of people would cause problems with volunteers.
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.
"Stix nix hix pix" to you!
668: Neighbour of the Beast
An annoyingly alliterative announcement.
While I primarily use FreeBSD, I have a Debian box to run Scalix Community Edition for email. Of all the Linux distros out there, it is the tightest. I sure hope they get past their current problems and get Etch released.
This email from October 26 is pretty darn informative when it comes to dunc-tank. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/10/msg 00260.html
6 /11/msg00004.html
/.ers just go straight to http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/ and get the news. I certainly wish the editors at /. would.
This email from November 16 will pretty much bring everyone up to date on Etch status: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/200
Since its publication, Etch has gone into bug-fixing only.
Nice little bonus for debian users on the end if you read it all the way through.
Please, please
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Never try to help anyone but yourself. Trying to help yourself is noble and good. Helping others is based on the delusion that you can even try to put yourself in another's shoes and understand what they need or want. It will only lead to heartache. Selfishness is next to Godliness. Which is next to sarcasm, in case you couldn't figure that one out.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
Alliterative Article Appelation Aggravates Argumentative Arbiter of Arbitrary And Academic Article Arrangement
OMG! wait till M$ hears this. All they have to do is to donate some 1000$ to a few developers in each Open Source to project, and all other devlopers will quit because they are jelaous and these few will retire happily using those 1000$ or 2000$ handout. All Open Source projects will grind to a halt! Wow! That is Steve Ballmer's dream. He might actually sit on a chair or two now.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Did they at least get a Nexus Crystal?
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
$6,000 does not sound like a whole lot; hell £6,000 does not sound like a whole lot. Here in the old world $6,000 is bellow minimum wage, way bellow, so with $6,000 they would probably have to live in a tent and do their 'management' from internet cafés.
I support Microsoft rather than Linux
Microsoft is a company. Linux is a product. You are comparing apples and oranges.
Do you mean:
I support Microsoft rather than Debian
or
I support Microsoft Windows rather than Linux
or
I support Microsoft rather than the people that donate their time to work on Linux
Whichever way you put it your comment doesn't really make sense and needs more explanation. How does Microsoft help you make a living in a way that Debian can not do?
Is it just that you can make more money selling a product for Windows than a similar product for Linux? Is your ability to make a profit a result of the fact that Microsoft pay their developers, or is it just because Windows currently has more market share? If Windows was open sourced would it hinder you in making a profit?
Please try to make your comment make sense because I am sure that you have an interesting point but I think you forgot to say what it is.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
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.'"
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.
I think you're talking about this:
and/or this:
The quotes in themselves aren't fully summing up the idea, but I didn't think it would be wise to cut and paste the whole chapter(s) in this post. The first quote is from the chapter "On Management and the Maginot Line" in tC&tB. The second quote comes from the chapter "Gift Outcompetes Exchange" in Raymond's Homesteading the Noosphere.
brandelf: invalid ELF type 'KEEBLER'
They shouldn't be paying any managers anything in the first place. If they want paid development work, pay the developers doing the work, not some morons that are just going to annoy the people actually making the product. It's very very little wonder this has pissed people off. It's essentially the same as having a layman (i.e., not someone educated in development in any form) take the "lead developer" position (at 6000% of the normal devs' pay), and then the managers ("lead dev") trying to tell all the devs that they need to work harder. I don't know about anyone else here, but I'd quit immediately if a layman were posted above me at 6000% of my salary, and probably also hurl copious insults.
"Disenchanted Debian Developers Delay Distro"
Debian ships When It's Ready.
But for those of us who are holding our breath for release time, a good and rough indicator of when it will ship is the number of release critical bugs. When the number hits zero, Debian is (almost?) ready. Since the etch freeze was announced about a week ago, the number of release bugs has wavered around 130, with a slight downward trend. This is the stock market of the free software world. :-) The etch freeze means that no packages can move down from unstable (sid) to the current testing (etch) automatically anymore (normally, packages in unstable are automatically moved down to testing by a script if no bugs are filed against them for some time, several days, iirc). Packages can still be moved from unstable to testing, but only manually if it's clear that they are stable enough for the next release.
The dunk-tank drama in the Debian mailing lists is old news. Yes, some developers expressed concerns about the dunc-tank project, but I would hardly call this "frozen development". Developers are working hard to get the Debian release. I estimate January or February at the latest will be beer and pizza party time for all the Debian developers that have produced the largest binary free GNU/Linux distribution amongst which so many other distros depend.
Personally, I'm very excited. I'm not sure how much truth there is in this, but Ubuntu has probably put pressure in Debian to more timely releases, and this release will be much more in time than the previous sarge release was. I've been given permission to install Debian in 20 workstations of our local network, and I'm waiting for the stable release and the renowned Debian quality and security to do so. I'll probably be tracking the next testing release after I install them, though, since testing works well for desktop use and workstations.
I think its actually a perfect example of status anxiety. People were all happy when they were working (or percieved to be working) for the same wage (free) and a measure of equality. But as soon as some were elevated above the others, anxiety took root. Theres a book and a 2004 documentary film on the concept. It really is a perfect example.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Debian developers throw a fit because of unfair compensation. Debian users get to wait until developers remember who they are developing for. Debian Enterprise goes down the toilet because its gone from long release cycles, to long release cycles and an unstable development team. I've been a huge fan of debian since my first days of using Linux, but this is just petty, and childish.
Do I really have to say it?
Well, ok. Maybe I do.
Who is John Galt?
You forgot "Dunc-tank Despondent"
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
erroneous editors encouraging enmity?
What materials does that produce?
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?
Delays? A decidedly damnable development. Do I detect disagreement?
Saying your "phone ran out of batteries" is like saying your "car ran out of gas tanks".
Dude put it on the AH ... I always get screwed with like 6x http://www.thottbot.com/?i=1039 or some shit when I disenchant items!
"Keep at least 3-6 full bottles of hard alcohol on hand, a 2 week resignation notice,..." - Poetmatt
"Ideologically, I support Microsoft rather than Linux because Microsoft allows people like myself to make a living"
I take it that you work for Microsoft? Or is your living dependent on one or more particular Microsoft products (reseller)?
I guess you could also be a developer who is dependent on the size of the Microsoft ecosystem.
But none of that has anything to do with Linux, OSS, Debian or (even) Redhat (since you did bring them up). Although you do have a point -- companies would not invest in OSS unless there was a "value proposition" of some sort. Interestingly, the value proposition for Linux is usually higher for Linux in the SOHO market. As long as there aren't any teens in the house, Linux is a pretty easy sell.
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
I'd revise that to say that any piece of software is not suited for a mission-critical application until it has already been developed, released, and tested by the people who will be depending on it.
If your critical mission is on hold because you are desperately waiting for some code to ship, you have done quite the disservice to your mission.
if it's free software, where does the money come from to pay all these devs that apparently should get paid according to the comments here? i'm asking seriously. i mean, microsoft sells things to pay it's devs. does debian sell anything that comes from this free labor?
Unless what you are installing on doesnt have a network connection. Then having a proper cd based distro is important.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
a single sardonic soliloquy starts slashdot's sundering symposium
> Many unpaid developers simply put off Debian work to work on something else.
...development is currently frozen.
This is a gross exaggeration.
>
This is false. Etch (Testing) is frozen in that packages are no longer automatically moving into it from Sid (Unstable) but this is a normal part of the release cycle: it happens just before a release. Development continues apace in Sid.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Well, actually, shelters that feed the poor and help battered women DO take donations to support the staff and the facility. Pretty much exactly what the folks paying the Debian guys were doing... put a little money in the pot so the facility can be open. So I'm afraid you came up with an example for the other side.
According to this EU sponsored report", more than half the free software developers make money on their free software work one way or another.
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
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've watched the development of GNU/Linux over the years. Yours is a viable criticism, but I think it's a little bit exaggerated to claim that these problems are definite show stoppers that are killing FOSS itself.
For starters, the idea of getting "something for nothing" is not an illusion. I've been using FOSS without paying for many years, and I've noticed too that development is more advanced and rapid now than it ever was before. For me it's a stark reality. I'm getting something for nothing, to be sure, but I'm not the only person in this equation. There are in fact lots of people getting something, and lots of people giving something for something in return. It depends on the somethings--there are a lot of somethings in the world. If you suppose only two somethings exist in the world (software and money), then certainly your model is the most important, but fortunately that's not the case...
You betcha - their non-profit, tax-exempt foundation is Software in the Public Interest.
They should spread it out if possible. For example, you can earmark your donation for uncompensated developers. These folks deserve whatever money kindly comes their way. Debian is a GREAT.
If you can print money without having to raise taxation, politicians can pay for any whims that they have. They can pay for the whims of the populace. This leads inevitably to an expansion of the state to actually implement those whims. As far as 90% of the population is concerned it's free money. The free and easy money is like a wellspring to corporations so they spend a lot of time trying to inveigle government contracts.
In fact the free money is a tax on the old and the poor. Printing money causes inflation, the middle class with mortgages and the rich benefit, the economy stretches and they can arrange their finances to be in the top half of the stretch. The old and the poor generally can't and so simply get poorer.
The process of increasing state control will inevitably continue as long as the government continue run a deficit and to print money. (Note, borrowing money that you have no intention of paying back is not borrowing.) It's also worth noting that inflation is a runaway process; try 3% per year compounded over 80 years as an example.
If the government run at a surplus *cough* and actually reduce the national debt the process will reverse. Running a gold backed currency will also stop the process of increasing government and influence of corporations because they will then have to balance the budget. Gold has it's own problems though. Perhaps a world currency designed to be neither inflationary nor deflationary, free from political control would be advantageous. Maybe neither pure socialism or pure capitalism is the answer? No, it's basically down to the monetary system. We're heading for fascist states btw rather than socialist.
If you would describe yourself as a libertarian, or classical liberal you should be making use of a currency which is independent of governmental manipulation.
e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_gold_currenc
Deleted
The sky is falling.
I read your post twice, trying to get your point. When I found myself reaching for paper and a pen so I could draw a Venn diagram, I said to hell with it.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
OK. Now you are dancing on my hot buttons. Each time I have tried to make a living using Microsoft products, they have eventually put their boot up my ass. They preach about a new technology. They release beta API's, then they deprecate the toolkit and go off in another direction. If a particular tool kit seems too useful, the kill it and assign part of their consulting group to do that work directly for clients, instead of allowing independent developers to do the work. After years of membership in MSDN, I finally had to ask Microsoft for help with a technical issue stopping me from making progress for a client, and they repeatedly answered a question they liked rather than respond to my carefully worded requests. At the point where I started receiving hundreds of sympathy emails from Compuserve users watching Microsoft wag me around over my simple request, I got the message. It should be obvious at this point that they want everyone coding in Visual Basic and all the important programming done at Microsoft by Microsoft programmers. Microsoft has single handedly done more to hurt the independent programmers than any other company IMNSHO.
Subsequently, the name of this release is being changed to "Debian Forever"
In Debian's perspective, taking money for support is acceptable. Taking for profit is not. And the money lever operates differently in both cases.
They claim it's because they care about principle...in reality, what they really care about is retaining the ability to tell other people what to do and how to think.
Debian is one of the most flexible distributions availible. I don't give a rats arse about what some random Debian developer thinks about how I use my system or what programs I install because it doesn't affect me.
Personally I'd like to see Debian (as it currently exists organisationally) collapse entirely, and for the codebase to be adopted by Ubuntu, or other projects which will hopefully be run by people who are not so interested in dominating others.
How the hell is Debian collapsing going to help Ubuntu? Ubuntu already uses the Debian codebase. If anything Debian collapsing would hider Ubuntu. Your comment makes no sense.
because of its open nature, any infighting is bound to spread the flame and burn even stronger.
Firefox Power http://firefoxpower.blogspot.com/
Note that Debian is usually quite wise about its use of money. Most of it goes to hardware purchase and the reimbursement of travel expenses for some developers to attend DebConf (and not big honchos with a US salary but often students or citizens of poorer countries that could not affort a ticket, yet have been recognized critical to the effort).
-- don't discount flying pigs until you have good air defense
IMO, this is a bad article. It's full of misinformation and factual errors, and it paints a very inaccurate picture of the current state of Debian.
From the article:
The date of Debian's first release given in this article is only one of the many factual errors that it contains. The Wikipedia article on Debian ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian ) tells that "The Debian distribution was first announced on August 16, 1993 by Ian Murdock" and "The Debian Project grew slowly at first and released its first 0.9x versions in 1994 and 1995." Debian version 1.1 was released in June 1996, version 1.2 in December 1996, and version 1.3 in June 1997.
Of course, the article also fails to mention that the Ubuntu distribution is based on Debian and Ubuntu's each new release relies heavily on the work that is constantly being done in Debian, and the article also fails to tell that Ubuntu takes most of the code it releases from Debian's development branch.
http://mako.cc/writing/to_fork_or_not_to_fork.html
From the article:
Actually, there's no factual evidence at all that the delay in Debian's release schedule is caused by developers doing their work slower than usual. It is not easy to grasp how large and complex the Debian project has grown and many journalists also obviously fail to understand the not-for-profit and volunteer nature of the work that is done in Debian. The huge size of the project and the volunteer nature of its work are sufficient reasons alone to explain why the release has been delayed for a month or two. Such delays can happen for purely organizational reasons even if every developer is working as hard as they can.
Debian is a non-profit volunteer organization where all the important decisions are made democratically. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy ) This means that all important issues in the project management are openly discussed over a period of time and every developer has a chance to get their voice heard. From time to time there are disagreements among the developers and these disagreements are settled by voting where the opinion of the majority wins.
There was recently some disagreement among the Debian Developers about the experimental idea to fund two release managers' full-time work for a short period of time just before the upcoming Debian release. The Debian Developers voted about this issue and the majority of them decided to support the experiment. ( http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006 /10/msg00019.html ) Most of the developers accepted this result but 17 of them have been protesting even after the results of the voting were published. It is perhaps worth mentioning here that Debian has over one thousand officially accepted developers and many more who contribute to the project without having the official developer status. 17 developers out of 1000 is a small minority but they can still make a lot of noise. Those other developers concentrate on coding instead of public arguing, so it is only too easy for the scandal-hungry journalists to ignore all these hard-working silent developers and concentrate on the loud complainers.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006 /10/msg00026.html
Debian Etch will be released quando paratus est.
Arr, I recognize that capitalism promotes a single or few essentially laymen gaining 99% of the profit from expert work, but I was referring specifically to having a layman posted directly as your boss to organize a project in a field he knows nothing about, at 6000% salary. And to the guy above, I work at a small business, and technically no one oversees my work on technical matters (though I supposed you could argue that the owner has this position, and indeed "earns" multiple thousands of times more than myself, but my main point is that a layman shouldn't be making/directing expert decisions, and certainly not at salary anywhere above the expert him/herself). The reason I discount my situation as unalike is that the owner defers to me in technical matters.
oh yeah, that's never a problem in the proprietary software world. In fact that is mostly a problem in the proprietary software world, not the open source one.