What is Dunc?
Basically, Dunc is an experimental project to try out ways of funding Debian development. 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.
Who is Dunc?
There's info about who exactly is behind Dunc at the board page.
Dunc directly supports work on Debian, and is made up of a small group of people who use Debian and who want to see Debian improve. But Dunc is not endorsed by Debian, and Debian does not exercise any control over how Dunc operates.
What about other people funding Debian work?
A number of other groups fund Debian work directly or indirectly, whether that be by allowing or encouraging their employees to contribute to Debian, or having Debian work be part of their actual job description. Dunc does not aim to compete with those groups, either in the tasks being worked on, or in the people being recruited, but rather to address other niches in the Debian ecosystem.
What does "Dunc" mean?
Dunc is an acronym standing for "Development Under Numismatic Control" -- which could equally be called "coin-operated coding". The point of the project is to try some new possibilities of funding free and open source software development and helping people work on free software development on a full-time basis.
Really, though, the name is a reference to the linux.conf.au auction in 2003, for the t-shirt signed by the speakers, proceeds from which were directed to Electronic Frontiers Australia. To make the bidding more lively a certain individual foolishly suggested that the next Debian release would be named after the winning bidder, should the bidding go above $2000. Due to the combined resources of a table of inebriated Sun folks, Duncan Bennet won the bidding, and the right to have his name associated with the next Debian release -- which, many years later, turns out to be Debian 4.0, aka etch. So yes, this is yet another free software project that has its roots in the consumption of a little too much wine at a conference dinner.
What will the future bring?
As Dunc is an experiment, we don't know what will end up happening with it. We may decide it works perfectly as is, or that it was a horrible idea that should never have been tried. In any event, we expect to review what worked, what didn't, and what should be done over the course of the first project, and have a public discussion about what to do after the release of etch.
Random factoid
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