The Dunc-Tank project, which sought to pay Debian release managers to push Debian Etch out the door on schedule, stirred up a fair amount of controversy among Debian Developers and led to an unsuccessful attempt to remove Towns from the DPL position. Ultimately, Dunc-Tank failed in its objective, and Etch remains in development.

Hertzog, who was on the Dunc-Tank board, says that the experiment taught developers “we can get enough money to run some projects, but it didn't give us a way to do it without causing too much trouble.” However, Hertzog still supports the general idea of an “open funding structure” for Debian, and says “it's still a long-term project for me to find out how such a structure could work, but it wouldn't be a priority of mine if I'm elected. We have more urgent stuff to do.”