For a while, Debian was the community Linux darling. In its heyday, Debian was known for its strong moral point of view and its outstanding code. Numerous important distributions, such as Linspire, Knoppix, and today's most popular distribution, Ubuntu, have sprung from it. Things have changed.
Debian,这个昔日Linux社区的宠儿，曾以强烈的精神信仰和杰出的代码而辉煌一时。许多众多重要的版本都发源于它，如Linspire，Knoooix以及今天最流行的版本——Ubuntu。
Today, Debian is a troubled distribution. In order to get Debian GNU/Linux 4.0, codenamed etch, out the door by its scheduled date of December 4, 2006, Dunc-Tank.org, a group of Debian developers and fans, was formed.
但是今天，Debian已经变的麻烦重重。。为了能在2006年12月4日按时发布代号为etch的Debian GNU/Linux 4.0，Debian开发者和爱好者们不得不建立了Dunc-Tank.org组织。
Historically, Debian has been notoriously late ever since Debian 1.2 was released almost a decade ago in 1997. So, Dunc-Tank was created to accelerate Debian's development.
事实上自从十年前在1997年发布Debian 1.2起，Debian就已经因为屡屡延期而变得声名狼藉。现在通过创建Dunc-Tank以期加速Debian的开发。
Dunc-Tank's membership includes Anthony Towns, the Debian Leader, Steve McIntyre, the assistant to the Debian Leader, prominent Debian developers Raphael Hertzog and Joey Hess, and well-known Debian and Linux kernel developer Ted Ts'o
Dunc-Tank的组织成员包括Debian负责人Anthony Towns,助理Steve McIntyre,卓越的开发人员Raphael Hertzog和Joey Hess以及著名的Debian和Linux内核开发人员Ted TS'o等等。
Dunc-Tank plans to accomplish its mission by raising funds to be used for "financially supporting the volunteers working on managing the release process, allowing them to devote their full attention to that task." Specifically, the group's goal is to be able to raise enough funds to pay "both release managers enough to work exclusively on the release of etch for a month each, having Steve Langasek available full-time during October and Andreas Barth available full-time during November, with the release expected to follow soon after in the first week of December."
Dunc-Tank计划通过筹集资金来达成这一目标。这些资金将“用来对志愿人员管理发布进程给与资金支持，保证他们已全部精力完成这一目标。”组织的目标是能够筹集到足够的资金来保证开发人员在两个月内能够全职为etch工作以及Steve Langasek和Andreas Barth能够分别在十一月和十二月投入他们全部的时间以此力求在十二月的第一个星期后能够发布这以版本。
Simple, straightforward, practical, and it has led to calls for the head of the Debian Project, Anthony Towns, to be recalled because he's a member of the Dunc-Tank board.
目的简单，直截了当而又实用。但是行动却导致了对领导人Anthony Towns的罢免。原因很简单——他是Dunc-Tank组织的中心成员之一。
Why? Because Denis Barbier, a relatively new Debian developer, claims that Towns has confused people into thinking that Dunc-Tank is officially supported by the Debian Project. Therefore, Barbier urged via the Debian voting mailing list that Debian developers "make this confusion vanish, and I would like to propose that we answer to the valid question quoted in the second paragraph above by recalling our Project Leader ... and am seeking seconds for this proposal."
这是什么！原因是新的开发人员Deins Barbier发表声明说Towns这种行为使人们对Ducn-Tank的性质发生误解，以为其为Debian官方支持的组织。因此，Barbier通过 Debian投票邮件列表极力号召Debian开发人员“消除误解，并建议我们通过罢免我们项目领导人来回答在上面第二段提出的问题。”（该问题指的是 Deins Barbier的邮件的第二段。）
Barbier immediately received numerous seconds for his motion.
Barbier的提议立刻得到了大量的拥护。
There were other objections behind this recall movement. One developer, Lucas Nussbaum, said that "experiments have shown that sometimes, paying volunteers decreases the overall participation."
罢免背后还有其他不同的反对意见。如开发员Lucas Nussbaum说“过去的尝试已经证明，有时给自愿人员报酬会降低公众的参与性。”
Another concern is that paying developers will be bad for Debian. As T'so comments, though, in a Linux.com story on the controversy, "If money were among anybody's primary motivators," then "they probably wouldn't be accepting a grant from Dunc-Tank; they could probably make more money by applying for a job with Google -- or Microsoft."
另一个受到关注的焦点是为开发人员支付报酬会损害Debian。按照T'so在辩论中根据Linux开发经验的解释，“如果金钱成为人主要动机，那么他们很可能将无法从Dunc-Tank获得满足而将可能向Google或者微软求职而获得更多的钱。”
Others within the Debian community also wonder what all the fuss is about. Matthew R. Dempsky wants to know, for example, "What's so scandalous about the DPL encouraging a timely release?"
其他Debian内部人员也想知道这些人大惊小怪是为什么。如Matthew R. Dempsky就想知道为什么对于领导人促进及时发布新版本的行为有这么多攻击和诽谤。
Still other developers are fighting back against the recall movement. Loic Minier, a French Debian developer, said "I am pissed enough by the attitude of some developers that I want to reaffirm support for the elected DPL whatever he does to suppose Debian outside of the project."
还有其他的成员抵制对领导人罢免。Loic Minier,一名法国籍Debian开发人员说道：“对于一些开发人员的态度我感到非常气愤。我重申我支持领导人在Debian之外所做的一切有利于Debian的行动。”
He then proposed the following counter-proposal: "The Debian Project reaffirms its support to its DPL. The Debian Project does not object to the experiment named 'Duck 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. The Debian Project wishes success to projects funding Debian or helping towards the release of Etch."
然后他也提出了的反方面的建议：“Deibian项目应重申对现任领导的支持。Debian项目不应反对由领导人Anthony Towns 和副领导人Steve McIntyre所开展的Duck-Tank组织。。但这个开发组织并不是由Debian项目官方控制。Debian项目希望能够促进Debian长期发展或者实现Etch如时发布。”
Interestingly, Towne has seconded the motion for his own recall, to bring the matter to a decision.
有趣的是，事情的结果是Towne对这场罢免自己的运动做出了让步。
He wrote, "I'm seconding this because I do think it's a fair question for the project to consider, and to make it clear I don't personally have any problem with being recalled if that's what the project thinks is right and proper. If I'm not DPL, I expect I'll continue doing what I have been: working on dunc-tank.org, working on helping the release team get the release out, poking at the security infrastructure to make sure it keeps behaving itself, and continuing to support other folks who've approached me in the past year where they still want that support. Frankly, I think we're doing great, and I'm not remotely interested in quitting."
他写道：“我辞职是因为我认为这对于社区是一个实实在在要考虑和解决的问题。只要社区认为这样是正确合适的，我本身对于罢免没有任何问题。即使我不在是 Debian的领导人，我将会继续作我所做的事情：为Dunc-tank.org工作，帮助发布小组发布新的版本，维护安全机制使其良好运行，继续在过去亲密工作伙伴需要我的地方提供支持。真的，我认为我们合作的非常好！我没有任何想退出的想法。”
This battle continues to rage on in the Debian lists, but I'm going to leave recording the details of that to others.
在Debian的邮件列表上这场争论还在无休无止，但是我不再提及其它的一些细节。
Here's my point: The Debian community, instead of rejoicing in a perfectly sensible idea to help get the next version out the door, has instead fallen into a snake-pit of online politics. The result of all this infighting will, of course, be that less attention will be paid to the Etch code.
我的观点是：Debian社区不是非常明智的去帮助即将到来的下一个版本，却陷入这场网络上疯人院般的内部斗争中。这场斗争显而易见的结果是无法为Etch(Debian的下一版本)投入全部精力。
As Towne points out, "Given two weeks of discussion for this, two weeks of voting, and the nine week election process, the earliest we'd have a DPL would be the end of December by my count; so assuming this resolution passed and we released on time, we'd be doing so without a DPL [Debian Project Leader]."
就像Towne指出的，“用两个星期讨论，两个星期投票，然后九个星期选举，估计我们有一个新的领导人的最早的时间是十二月份末。如果假定这样决定而且我们能如愿按时发布新版本，我们将是在没有领导人的情况下完成这一切。”
If this were an isolated incident, I'd be inclined to dismiss it. It's not, though.
如果这事件只是孤立而偶然的，我不会关注它。然而它不是。
On August 28, well-regarded Debian developer Matthew Garrett resigned from Debian because "Debian doesn't really seem to know who or what it's for. Arguments erupt over whether something is a deeply held principle or an accident of phrasing on the website; whether we should release more often or less often; whether free software is more important than our users having functional hardware. And, depressingly, these debates generally seem to turn into pedantic point scoring and insults and yes, I'm probably as guilty as many others in this respect. But it's got to the point where social interaction with Debian-the-distribution makes me want to stab people."
8月28号，著名的Debian开发人员Matthew Garrett辞去了在Debian的职务。用他的话讲是因为“Debian完全不知道谁或什么对它来说是合适的。一些事情是否是涉及到原则的问题还是小事；我们应该发不信版本更频繁还是跟少一些；！·#￥·#%￥%。所有的这些都将引爆喋喋不休的争吵。而且让人郁闷的是，争吵往往最后变成学究式的互相争辩和侮辱。是的，我自己也许和别人没什么不同。但是它已经让我变得想杀人的程度了。
He's not the only developer to get sick of Debian politics coming before Debian development. Scott James Remnant, another Debian developer who has left the fold, recently explained on his blog why he has gone to Ubuntu.
他并不是唯一对伴随着开发模式而来的决策机制感到头疼的人。前开发者Scott James Remnat最近在博客上解释了他为什么转投Ubuntu。
Remnant said, "I think that the end of my love-affair with Debian started at Debconf last year where several developers treated those of us who also worked on Ubuntu quite rudely. Someone was attacked for wearing an Ubuntu t-shirt at the conference, while someone else was applauded for wearing a "Fuck Ubuntu" t-shirt. That's where I realized that maybe I didn't have as much in common with these people as I thought I did."
Remnat写道，“自从去年的Debian开发者年度会议开始，我知道我和Debian的亲密无间结束了。在大会上，我和其他的同时在Debian工作的开发者受到了粗暴的侮辱。一些人因为穿了Ubuntu的体恤衫而受到指责；而另一些人在衬衫上写着‘Fuck Ubuntu’,他们受到了欢呼和喝彩。那时起我开始认识到，过去我常常认为和这些人有着共同的思想，但现在我知道我们不是同一路人。”
Once more, we see ugly, juvenile politics rearing its ugly head.
再一次，我们看到了丑陋、不成熟的决策机制露出了它丑恶的面孔。
It was more than that, though. Remnant also objects to "Debian considering removing documentation and firmware from the distribution, especially the documentation, was another point I started wondering whether I shared anything in common with the project anymore."
然而不仅仅是这些。。Remnant也反对Debian其它的行为，“Debian正在考虑从发行版中去除文档和固件。特别是这些文档，开始让我考虑是否应该继续和这个项目共享我的东西。”
Remnant continued, "Call me strange, but I think that one of the fundamental purposes of a Linux distribution is to be useful to its users. If nobody can use the distribution because it doesn't support their hardware, and even if it did, all the documentation has been stripped out; I started to wonder what its aims are. It became increasingly apparent that the only users Debian was considering a priority were its own developer."
Remnant继续写道：“这是我很惊讶！我想一个Linux版本最基本的目的就是对它的用户有用处。如果用户无法实用它是因为它不支持他们使用的硬件，或即使支持却不是提供相应的文档。我开始怀疑它的目的了。Debian唯一考虑的特权用户只有它自己的开发者。”
So, here we are. We have a Linux "community" at war with itself.
所以，现在我们有了一个以自己为敌的Linux“团体”。
This is a community that in August of 2005 objected to its own founder, Ian Murdock, creating a group of Debian-based companies, the DCC Alliance, to further the operating system because it was at first named the Debian Alliance.
这就是一个在2005年8月发对自己创始人的团体。Debian创始人Ian Murdock想通过创建一个所有基于Debian的版本共同组成的名为“DCC联盟”组织来促进这个操作系统的进一步发展却招到反对。原因仅仅因为组织最初的名字叫Debian联盟。
Enough.
够了！
Debian has become a distribution whose supporters are clearly more interested in scoring points off each other than creating a serious Linux distribution. It is a group where far too many of its people are far more concerned with moronic minutiae than they are with development.
Debian已经变成了起开发者对互相攻击而不是发行一个高质量的软件套间的版本。这个团体的成员越来越多的开始更加关心一些愚蠢的鸡毛蒜皮而不再关心他们的开发了。
Is it any wonder that Ubuntu took Debian's old and great code and produced a wonderful distribution from it, when Debian's own developers couldn't cut the mustard?
当Debian的开发者军心涣散时，对于Ubuntu能过接过Debian的古老而又伟大的代码来建立一个高质量的版本还有任何疑问吗？
I think it's clear why Ubuntu rules. Debian's best and brightest left for Ubuntu because there, with a formal organization and a focus on coding instead of petty personal politics, development gets done. In Debian, everything becomes a subject for debate and delay.
我认为对于Ubuntu为什么成为主流，原因是相当清楚的。Ubuntu取代了Debian的荣誉和辉煌是因为其正式的组织结构以及集中精力于程序开发而不是人们之间的不同的政策政治。这样开发才能进行。而在Debian，所有的主题都变成了辩论和推迟。
It's possible that Debian may yet rise off its death-bed. Dunc-Tank is part of the medicine it needs to get well. But, unless the patient stops fighting with itself, Debian will continue its decline and die.
当然，Debian可能能过从它的病床上爬起来。Dunc-Tank就是医治它的药物之一。但是除非病人能够停止自残行为，否则Debian将会不断的衰落，直到死亡。
If it does die, we'll miss it -- but in Ubuntu and the other Linux distributions that have been based on the best of it, its DNA will live on.
如果消失了，我们失去了它。但是在Ubuntu和所有其它的基于Debian精髓的Linux版本中,它的血统将继续。
原文链接：http://bbs.chinaunix.net/viewthread.php?tid=835820