Dunc-Tank To Help Meet Debian Etch Deadline 89
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.
Re:if i win big (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
Re:The solution.... (Score:4, Insightful)
So what is it? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
How does it work? (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Re:if i win big (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
website design please (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:website design please (Score:3, Insightful)
This site (Dunc Tank [dunc-tank.org]) has to be the downright worst attempt at fund raising I've ever seen in my life.
The ironic thing is, it's representative of far too many open source documentation projects. Not that anyone in their right mind would think you need documentation for a monatary contribution. Seriously, people don't give a crap abotu wading through a few pages of latex2html just to kick $5 (or $100 for that matter) to a decent project only to find out they need to email some guy and pledge the doe.
Here's a tip, try this out for size:
Help keep the Debian Project on track!
Every bit helps [Click Here to Show Your Support] [slashdot.org]
Of course, I'm sure Debian probably doesn't want money from people too impatient to RTFDD (read teh fucking donation documentation)
Re:The solution.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Re:Vista anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
Etch Installed This Week... (Score:3, Insightful)
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/ [debian.org]
People are CHEAP (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Vista anyone? (Score:2, Insightful)
You got it wrong. It's not about greed for money becoming a motivator in developing Debian, it's about enabling some release managers to take a holiday from their day jobs and to concentrate full-time on making sure that Etch gets released according to the schedule.
I think this is a good idea. Volunteer developers don't always have enough time for their GNU/Linux work no matter how motivated they are.