don't panic! (was: "It has come to this...")

[quinlan@spectrum.cs.bucknell.edu (Daniel Quinlan)]

Before you begin to conclude that Debian is going to vanish, I have a
brief message for everyone: Debian is here to stay.

Still, we do have some rougher times ahead.  In the next several weeks,
some things are going to change.  In the long-term, the changes will all
be for the better.  Yes, the release of Debian 0.92, at least as a
complete system, will be delayed.  Please be patient with all of the
Debian developers.

Importantly, various developers of Debian are now working on a preliminary
assessment of what we have, who will be doing which packages, etc.  Once
we are done the assessment, we will ask the Debian lists at-large to pick
up any packages which lack a maintainer.  I ask that you wait until then
before you volunteer to throw yourself on the fire for the Debian project,
especially so we may allocate our resources where we need them most.

Ian Murdock wrote:

> My role in the project is going to have to be significantly reduced.
> There is absolutely no way that I can continue to do what I have been
> doing.  This is a major setback for the project, but it _can_ survive.
> I will continue to contribute to it as much as my time allows and to
> help organize it as best I can.  But the days of Ian-centralized
> releases are over.  Please show me that the group development of Debian
> I envisioned can work.  If everyone can do their part we can get back
> on track.

I agree completely with the above.  We *can* do this.

--

I spoke with Ian earlier and we have come up with a basic plan for the
near future:

  .  Ian Murdock will continue to "lead".  All final decisions will be
     made by him.

  .  ALL non-base (the boot/root disk and the two base disks) packages
     will be "decentralized" and maintained by persons other than Ian.

  .  Ian Murdock will continue to maintain the base Debian system, but
     with help from others.  dpkg, packaging systems, etc. will still
     be a part of the base, but others will also be working on them.

Users of Debian will be kept up-to-date on the reorganization by me and
others.  This here is only a preliminary briefing to make certain nobody
gets the wrong idea (sometimes, I think Ian writes in Dostoevsky-mode).
We want to make it clear that things are relatively okay, if a little
uncertain.

Thank you for your time.

 Daniel

--
Daniel Quinlan  <quinlan@spectrum.cs.bucknell.edu>