The project's eight-member committee was tasked back in November with selecting the default init system for the next release of Debian GNU/Linux, Jessie, by the leader of the project, Lucas Nussbaum.

It became clear through lengthy discussions on mailing lists that four members of the panel - Keith Packard, Russ Allberry, Don Armstrong and chairman Bdale Garbee opted for the Red Hat-developed systemd while the other four - Colin Watson, Steve Langasek, Andreas Barth and Ian Jackson - have expressed a preference for the Canonical-developer upstart.

One vote went to the wall last month. And then all hell appears to have broken loose.

Jackson, who appears to be hellbent on dragging the discussion on and on, proposed another, extremely complicated vote late last month.

Then Garbee came through with a simpler set of choices. The vote came in 4-4 again but Garbee has yet to exercise his casting vote.

But the project can vote on a general resolution and throw out this decision. Hence, while some are trumpeting that a decision has been reached, that is far from being the case.

The debate rose to such a pitch that there were calls for Jackson to be thrown out of the technical committee. This came after Jackson issued a call for deposing Garbee as the chairman of the committee.

There were 632 messages on the technical committee mailing last month, all discussing this question of a default init system. This month, at the time of writing, there were already 374 messages.

And users are still expected to take this lot seriously.