... yet, before conclusion of DW's Deb at XRoads

Quoting:"In Debian at the crossroads, ITWire's Sam Varghese argues that any radical change could actually do more harm than good to the project: "The temptation to chase behind commercial shadows is indeed great but in the end, Debian is unique among Linux distributions and too much of change would hurt the project rather than help it progress."

Quoting:Thus, all candidates in the running for the position of leader have listed what they see as the issues which prevent Debian from adhering to some kind of timely release schedule. One of the issues that figures prominently is communication to reduce seemingly needless debate and flamewars. Another is the scrapping between sub-groups.

If etch is released in the next month or so as seems likely, it would have taken about 22 months, which is not bad at all considering the nearly 34 months that sarge took to emerge. It must be borne in mind that this is a team of 1000+ developers spread over 43 countries at work. And they always put out a high quality distribution which is ported to many more architecures than any other distribution. In 2007, one would be hard put to find a Linux distribution which can be installed over the internet after booting from a couple of floppies - but Debian meets that requirement too.

So, while there are areas which need a bit of a kick in the pants - which, perhaps, as Murdock outlines, a benevolent dictator may be better placed to do than a leader who functions as a true democrat - there are many areas of Debian which should not change else the project would lose its character. The temptation to chase behind commercial shadows is indeed great but in the end, Debian is unique among Linux distributions and too much of change would hurt the project rather than help it progress.