Debian team settles several contentious issues

. . . keeping an eye on the penguin

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Oct. 16, 2006

The Debian community has been fighting within itself over several very contentious issues, but in the last few days the group has reached conclusions that should allow it to get its next Linux distribution out the door.

This was done by means of a vote on three major resolutions. The results of the latest round of Debian Project general resolutions have come in, and many of the more extreme voices in the Debian mailing lists have had their pet ideas shot down.

First, the resolution to recall project leader Anthony Towns failed by a whopping 277 to 48 votes. While the 277 votes were actually for "Further Discussion," a counter-resolution put an end to this rebellion in the ranks.

The counter-resolution gave Debian's support to the Dunc-Tank initiative. This Initiative was formed by a group of Debian developers and fans, including Towns, to provide financial support for key developers to work on getting Debian GNU/Linux 4.0, codenamed Etch, out by its scheduled date of December 4. It was his part in this initiative that led some hot heads to calling for Towns to be recalled.

The passed resolution reads, "The Debian Project does not object to the experiment named 'Dunc-Tank,' lead by Anthony Towns, the current DPL, and Steve McIntyre, the Second in Charge. However, this particular experiment is not the result of a decision of the Debian Project."

Additionally, the passed resolution said, "The Debian Project wishes success to projects funding Debian or helping towards the release of Etch."

On a much closer vote of 149 to 136 the Debian community has decided to table, until Etch is out the door, the issue of whether proprietary code can be included with Debian. In particular, this includes the question of whether should Debian work with the proprietary distributable firmware that's used by many devices.

This was a pragmatic decision, since trying to replace the firmware provisions in Etch so late in the development project would have certainly meant that the distribution would not have arrived on time. This very old argument will be played out again in Debian circles, but only after Etch makes it appearance.

With these hot-button issues out of the way, Etch should arrive on time, albeit with its IceWeasel Firefox fork in tact.

-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

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