Why did you resign from Debian in August 2006?

The short answer is simply that I wasn't enjoying it any more. The longer answer is that I found that too much of my time in Debian was spent in petty inter-personal conflicts. I could have ignored those and just carried on working on my own, but being an active member of a community is part of what makes open source development so interesting.

In the end, I decided that my time could be better spent elsewhere. I'm generally more relaxed and happy now, so I've no doubts about whether or not it was the right decision.

What is your take on Dunc-Tank? Many Debian users were quite vocal about it. Were their criticisms founded?

I think Dunc-Tank was a worthwhile experiment. Based on the degree of disruption it's caused, I've no idea whether it'll be considered a success. I think many of the people who objected about it had an idealistic interpretation of what Debian was, and felt that the introduction of money would spoil things. In reality, people have been paid to work on Debian almost since the project began - Ian Murdock spent time being paid by the FSF.

I think some of the criticisms were somewhat more reasonable. People were concerned about the project leadership choosing who to spend money on, and I can understand how people might feel slighted about not receiving money when they've put in a comparable amount of effort to those who do.