WEBlog -- Wouter's Eclectic Blog

Mon, 30 May 2005

Starting a pool

So, now that the release is getting extremely close to actually being there, I feel we should get up and prepare to party. Prepare, that is, because it isn't right to party for something that hasn't happened yet.

So, I propose a pool: we all vote on "When will Debian 3.1 actually release?"

A few ground rules:

1. You need to specify a date, time, hour, and minute. All times are assumed to be in UTC, unless otherwise specified.
2. The exact time of the release is taken by the Date: header from the mail that is sent to -announce or -devel-announce (whichever is first), as it appears in my mailbox.
3. In the interest of fairplay, Release Managers are excluded from betting (sorry guys), unless someone convinces me otherwise with serious arguments.
4. If you place a bet, you pledge to pay one drink to the winner at the upcoming DebConf5 in Helsinki. This can be an alcoholic beverage, but it does not have to be; if the winner prefers a cola, you'll pay him a cola.
5. Obviously, this means we have to see you in HEL. If you're not coming to DebConf5, you can't participate. Sorry.
6. You can place multiple bets, but that also means you get to pay multiple drinks.
7. One bet is defined as 'one named minute'. If you think you're funny and say "Every minute from now 'till the day the world ends", that's a lot of drinks...
8. All votes that are received within 48 hours of the actual release time will be declared invalid and thrown out of the pool (they won't have to pay a drink, either).
9. All votes that predict a release time after 2005-07-01 are declared invalid, for reasons of optimism and practicality (no fun in winning a prize which you cannot ever get anymore).
10. Bets will be anonymized and published on my website as I process them (which will likely be done manually).
11. If nobody gets the exact date and time right, the person who was closest wins.
12. If there's more than one winner, they get to share their prize. It'll be up to them to find out how.

Other than that, everything's fair game. I think. If I find additional rules are needed (don't think so), then I'll announce them here.

Bets can be sent to <wouter+release-pool@grep.be>; you should receive an acknowledgement within 48 hours. If you don't, yell.

/en/computer/debian

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