Debian Linux project group to pay developers

Wednesday, 20 September 2006

A group of senior developers from the Debian GNU/Linux project have decided to raise funds to pay volunteers who work on the project in order that releases can be made more frequently.

The initiative, which is being promoted by the Debian project leader Anthony Towns, is called Dunc, "an acronym for 'Development Under Numismatic Control' - which could equally be called 'coin-operated coding'."

In a media release, the Dunc board said what they were trying to do was to set up an experimental project to try and find ways of funding Debian development.

They stressed that Dunc was not endorsed by Debian, and Debian did not exercise any control over how Dunc operated. It was "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."

Debian's last release, Sarge, took nearly three years due to various reasons and the inordinate delay attracted criticism from various quarters.

In view of the delay, the next release of Debian, codenamed Etch, has been scheduled for this December. All Debian releases are named after characters from the film Toy Story.

The other developers who are part of the Dunc board are Steve McIntyre, one of the founders of the Debian UK Society, Ted Ts'o, a founding member of the Free Standards Group and its current chairman, Joey Hess, a major Debian contributor for most of the 13 years of the project, and Raphael Hertzog, who has been a major part of the project's quality assurance efforts.

Website: www.dunc-tank.org {moscomment}

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