Okay, Hanna didn't really tag anyone; but I'm still going to take the bait, since this sounds interesting.

1. My high school carriere included 4 different schools for 6 different options (latin, science, and drama, to name but a few)
2. My boyscouts totem is 'walrus'
3. Although I play the flute today, there was a time when I was dreaming of playing the oboe, and I also followed lessons to play the recorder for a few months
4. I have a bet running against someone since a few years about which of us is going to be the first to buy a Porsche 911
5. I have a minor chocolate addiction (I don't need it every day; however, I can't go a week without this divine substance)

There. Philip, Kris: your turn now.

I'm not going to make any New Year's resolutions this year. I will, however, use the New Year as an excuse to re-think many things in my life. To start with, I have re-subscribed to several Debian mailing lists, even debian-private. A second new thing is that I have a new toy, an iRobot Roomba GR. In other words, an automatic vacuum cleaner. I used it for the first time today, and it was hilariously funny. Not excessively expensive, either. A third new thing is that I re-installed my laptop, with the Debian-Installer daily build from 2006-12-31. It worked like a charm. The old installation on this laptop had deteriorated over several months, as I did unspeakably evil things to it, so starting from fresh was a bit of a relief. Now I have an encrypted hard disk, and a working suspend and hibernation (suspend-to-ram and suspend-to-disk), apart from the backlight not coming back on automatically after resume. Yay! Etch is going to totally rock. A fourth new thing is that I switched over my web log from CVS to Bazaar (bzr). It was the last vestige of my youth. When I was a child, I used RCS. When I was young, I used CVS. Now in my old age, I use Bazaar, because it is comfortable. Incidentally, Notetak is up to version 0.4, and I'm getting comfortable with it, too. I'm going to experiment with adding tags to notes. I don't yet have an idea what would be a good UI design for that, but it will come to me eventually. New things are good, even for neophobic luddites like myself.

Phil Wainewright: “The idea, by the way, that users are going to keep their own private backup somewhere else, as Google’s PR rep suggested in an email to TechCrunch, is patently absurd. The whole point of storing email in the cloud, surely, is to avoid having to download hundreds of megabytes to your hard disk every night just in case the service falls over.”

Sergey raised the issue of restricting use of software to non-military use, and Alan pointed out how much they've given back to the FLOSS community. However, I'd like to point out that any such restriction violates rules for opensource used by both the FSF and Debian. Debian is pretty clear about it in the social contract:

No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

And in the GNU Free Software Definition:

The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).

So any such restriction would mean your software is no longer free software. It's not that I'm in any way pro military, but allowing usage restrictions will cause a huge mess. Next we'll have some application which may not be used by religious zealots (of any kind), paedophiles, and at some point end up with a huge licensing mess (maybe even full of discrimination). ("No, I can't sell you a web server, because your brother-in-law is in the military."?) Actually disallowing any military use is some kind of discrimination, too. Military is not only used to kill someone, but it can serve humanitarian purposes, too. Rescue people in flooded New Orleans etc. - if you are unhappy with what your government is using your military for, vote accordingly and do politics. It's fine if you as the author point out that you disapprove of any use of it to harm anybody, or commit crimes; but don't put up restrictions you couldn't verify anyway. (As if the military would care much for any such restriction, anyway.) Always remember: it's only the good guys playing by the rules. There is no use in disallowing use of some software for cracking, is there?

Yesterday, Philip Hazel released exim 4.64. I have just uploaded the packages to Debian experimental. If you want to try the lastest and finest exim, please check out the packages. Unfortunately, the release is too late for etch. Debian etch will release with exim 4.63. I mean, unless the release team decides to bend their rules very badly, which I really do not assume.

I've been sitting on this for a while, gradually adding more bits as I think of them. So it's a bit long and rambly, but if I don't post it now I'll never get round to it. First, the details, for anyone who cares. I got married to my partner of 11 years, Katherine, on 1st December. This was actually our 11 year anniversary. We had a civil ceremony in The Assembly House, Norwich with a wine reception afterwards, then moved on to Wolterton Hall for the main reception, with a magnificant feast provided by Brasteds. Afterwards there was a chocolate fountain courtesy of Digby's and Nero thanks to Milton. The wedding cars were provided by American Dream (we had the Excalibur Sedan and the Lincoln Town Car). The bus to/from the reception was from Dolphin Autos. Robin Phillips brought the band. Wonderful purple jacket + the other suits were from John Field Formal Hire. Next, some photos. Burly Dave Ganesh Paddy Steve Tim (Ceremony) Tim (Reception) Finally, some things I've learned. For guests (I wish someone had told me these - Katherine says I sound stroppy but I don't mean to):

• As soon as you know if you're going or not, let the couple know. Especially if you're not going. They will probably be constrained on numbers and there are very few people who can be invited at short notice if you only let them know you're not coming by the RSVP deadline.

• Don't leave buying your present until the last minute. The couple will have lots more important things on their minds in the final week or two than trying to make sure there's enough left on the gift list.

• People really do mean that they'd rather you turned up than gave a gift. I never fully appreciated this; I'd feel bad going to a wedding without having given a gift. However I know that it's not cheap to get to Norwich and (in most cases) have to spend at least one night in a hotel. I'd much rather people did that and I got to see them on the day than they sent a present.

For couples getting married:

• It costs more than you think. Really. I'd always assumed hotels dug their arm in for weddings and upped all the prices, but actually the hotels we looked at were the cheap options, both in terms of the actual cost and also the fact they'd throw extras like a honeymoon suite in for free.

• Make sure everyone in the wedding party knows the way to the ceremony venue. Really. Don't rely on them to ask you, or assume that they'll have looked at the directions you've prepared.

• People are far too generous. We received many completely unexpected gifts from relatives or friends who we hadn't invited to the wedding, or those who couldn't make it. (As well as many of the people who came to the wedding buying us far too much.) If you gave us a gift, you will get a thank you card - these are already in progress but it probably won't be until after the New Year before they're all sorted and sent.

• Don't leave booking a honeymoon until after the wedding. We had issues regarding not being sure about Katherine's holidays and we ended up not sorting anything until a couple of weeks later. This reduced our options somewhat.

• So far it doesn't seem to have changed anything much. Katherine and I have already been living together for some time which we consider a bigger step. And we haven't seen a whole lot of each other since the wedding, though we have spent the past week together. But really, we don't feel a lot different yet.

Just for the record!

[*.cloud.*]

Alive. Birthday. Happy. Sad. Changes. Freeze. Packages. i18n. Ideas. Plans. University. Life. Family. Mother. Notebook. Frieds. DebConf. DebConf7. Edinburgh. OLS2007. LI. OpenBeach. Work. Free. Freedom. Debian. Brasil. Sorry. Smooth. Standards. Ideas. Core. Philosophy. Beliefs. World. Creed. 24. Translations. Organization. pt_BR. NMU. l10n. Past. Present. Future. Notes. Messages. Kind. Patience. Friendship. Fellowship. Party. Meeting. Food. Discussion. Debate. Cry. Try. Fix. Solve. Together. Alone. Team. Workgroup. Fast. Again. Just. Me.

Thanks: peretto and enerv.

I'm currently in (the really lovely) Philadelphia airport again, waiting for my connecting flight to San Francisco. I'm rapidly arriving at the conclusion that it is easier to enter the US once you've landed on US soil, than it is to depart from the country bound for the US. I had the most harrowing experience of my life this morning, trying to check in for my return flight. Due to the way various people's itineraries worked out, I ended up having to share a taxi from Badajoz to Madrid Airport at 12:30am. My flight didn't depart until something like 12:20pm, but the bus with the bulk of the people on it wasn't going to get me to the airport with less than 2 hours before departure, and I didn't want to risk missing my flight, especially given I'm feeling under the weather. So I got to the airport at about 4am, having had little sleep in the taxi. Terminal 1 has a real dearth of seating for people waiting to check in. I spent 4 hours trying to make myself as comfortable as possible on the hard floor, and didn't get a lot of sleep then either. For the record, check-ins (at least for US Airways) seem to open around 4 hours before the scheduled departure time. So I went to check in, and the way they were working it was there was a bunch of podiums out the front of what I would consider a conventional check-in counter. The people at these podiums then proceeded to give you your first Spanish Inquisition. I'd previously remarked to myself at how trivial it was to get into Spain... I was asked the purpose of my trip to Spain. I told the woman it was for a business meeting. She then asked where I'd spent my time I Spain. I told her Badajoz. She asked if I had a hotel receipt to show for it. I told her the accommodation was paid for my someone else. She then asked if I had any business cards to show for the business meeting. Sheesh, I thought. Luckily I still had all the copies of people's keys leftover from the keysigning we did, and some of them were in a business card format, so I pulled out a fistful of them and gave them to her. Oh, and she wanted to see a copy of my itinerary, and seemed satisfied that the flights were a reversal of what got me there in the first place. She wandered off with my passport, itinerary and the fistful of "business cards" and came back, seemingly satisfied that everything was in order. She stuck little blue stickers on my luggage and passport (the size of an Australian convenience-store price tag) and I was allowed to wait for the next check-in person. The rest of the checking-in process was fairly normal. I can appreciate the airline wanting to avoid having to deal with passengers being refused entry to the US, but I had a valid US visa in my passport, so that should make all of that a moot point. I don't know why I had to prove my trip's legitimacy to the airline. So I thought that was the end of it. Hardly. Terminal 1 of Madrid Airport seems to have heaps of gates, with a letter/number combination. Mine was in the B series, and I went through the security screening, and it became apparent that I had to go through another guard post looking thing to get from the A series to the B series. The signage looked like it said "Police". Anyway, the guy there had so-so English, and he initially was a little unhappy that I had an Australian passport and was flying to the US and not Australia. I pointed out the US visa, and he seemed less concerned. Then he asked me to say something in Spanish. I don't know if he was trying to be conversational, or I had to be able to speak some Spanish to get past or what the story was, but by this stage I was pretty tired, and this caught me totally off guard. I think I stammered out a Buenos d as or something. He then wanted to know how many hours it took to fly from Australia to Spain. I told him I had no idea, because I'd only flown from the US to Spain. He then begrudgingly gave me an exit stamp in my passport, and I was allowed on my way. I think the whole thing was made the more harrowing by the fact I was deadly tired, the Police guy didn't speak terribly fantastic English, and I wasn't expecting a second Spanish Inquisition (let alone the first). Oh, and closer to boarding time, they chucked everyone out of the lounge area closest to the gate, and rechecked everyone's passports and boarding passes. That was fair enough, and not unlike what happens in Sydney going to the US, but they don't even let you into the lounge area in the first place. That departure process was more what I would have expected an entry process to be like, and has put me off returning to Spain a little bit. The entry process was a joke. The guy barely looked at my passport long enough to give me the entry stamp. Fortunately I slept for the bulk of the flight from Madrid to Philly, and now I'm feeling a bit more human.

The Free Ryzom Campaign that I have mentioned earlier is now officially supported by the Free Software Foundation with a donation pledge of $60.000 (which now makes a total of ca. 134.000 Euros together with the contributions by many other people).

The Free Ryzom campaign was established to purchase the online game and universe known as Ryzom, property of the now bankrupt Nevrax company, and release the entire game as free software. As stated by Peter T. Brown, Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation, the FSF considers the Free Ryzom campaign "a high priority project for the free software movement". The aim of the campaign is to publish the source code to the entire game under the terms of the
widely-used GPL, as well as publishing all of the artwork and other content under similar free licenses. The Free Ryzom campaign represents a unique opportunity for the free software movement and the emerging free gaming field. A fully free MMORPG (massively multiplayer online roleplaying game) engine and client/server architecture would allow the development of a myriad of universes, each one evolving its own philosophy and unique content - but sharing in general technical improvements. If successful, this campaign would allow any user to create their own universe and produce their own content based on the Ryzom/Nevrax architecture.

The new goal is now to reach 200.000 Euros in order to increase chances to convince the judge to choose the Free Ryzom project as the new owner of the code and game data.

Pledges must be made within the next few days, since the deadline for the final bid is expected sometime before Wednesday, December 19th, depending on when the judges make their decision.

Good luck to the project! Update 2006-12-14: Fix the numbers (Euro vs. Dollar messup). Thanks Ward Vandewege!

Well this is all a bit exciting. This is my first real foray into a country that doesn't speak English. Hong Kong was so bilingual it wasn't really a challenge. Here Hablas ingl s? is the first order of the day, otherwise I have to fumble my way through C mo consigo al terminal cuatro? with my head stuck in the Lonely Planet. The flight to Madrid was fairly uneventful. US Airways doesn't suck any more or less than United. No luggage lost or damaged. I bounced of Philadelphia, and that's a pretty cool airport. Lots of white rocking chairs littered in the middle of the concourse for general consumption, and a veritable shopping mall within the airport. Terminal 4 of Madrid Airport is a spiffy new looking thing. Very architectural, I like it. I've got a few hours to kill here while I wait for the European contingent to arrive, so I can catch up on my post-vacation work email backlog... Certainly a different way to spend a birthday.

It's been more than one year that I'm waiting on NM queue, waiting for an Applicant Manager, performing Philosophy & Procedure part 1 & 2, then Tasks & Skills.

When applying for NM, it's really appreciated to already maintain a few packages in the archive, so for T&S the AM can check them and appreciate the work done. I guess people applying for NM first start by taking care of some package, before submitting.

But for me, it was the opposite way. I joined pkg-xfce team more than 18 months ago, and got my first packages in the archive a few weeks later.

I only applied to NM 6 months later, because, as I was dedicating more time to pkg-xfce, it would be more efficient for me to be able to upload directly, without
bothering huggie or ema (the two DDs in the team). It wasn't really required, but
it interested me, and huggie said me that it'd take some time so the sooner, the better.

Now, due to personal reason, huggie and ema don't have time/motivation anymore to work on pkg-xfce. I'm currently the one in charge, as I spent some time on it, and tries to spent some time on debian-desktop team, so we have a nice and consistent look for desktop environments in Etch. But I can't upload my packages myself, I need to find a sponsor. Xfce represent more than 50 packages (including goodies), that's quite a lot, and we have scripts and procedure to be efficient when rebuilding everything. If I could do everything myself, Xfce 4.4rc2 (released 2006/11/05) would have been in Etch since a long time. But I can't, because I'm stuck in NM queue.

Most of 4.4rc2 packages have been uploaded by my AM, Dafydd Harries (which I want to thank, though), but not everything, and few packages won't be in Etch, now that it's frozen. Yeah, that means that Etch will have half rc1 and half rc2, which isn't really good. Not really bad either, but still... (ok, and not as bad as shipping broken svn snapshots...)

I'm interested in beeing a Debian Developper because I *know* it'll make my work and my time more efficient. And not beeing able to push rc2 to Etch because of that really makes me sad...

WTF IS THIS SHIT? Ok, that above would be what a newly-baptized “FOSS advocate-slash-zealot” would say upon seeing Federico Pascual Jr.’s PostScript regarding the FOSS bill. I suppose I could have said that myself a couple of lifetimes ago. But, there is more than meets the eye. While I would like to think of myself as a “FOSS veteran”–believe me, I have still so much to learn about it–I would like to step into the shoes of such a person when approaching an article as sensational as Mr. Pascual’s. Despite what seems to be a most interesting article on the mechanics of government software usage, it fails to address the one particular bit that is just as important as the proposed bill itself: the real Free and Open Source Software. Let me nitpick this article bit by bit:

FREE RIDE: A bill is being pushed in Congress forbidding all government agencies and state-controlled firms from buying and using any of the computer software sold in the market!

Alas, when I first heard of the FOSS bill sometime before September, I also had a bad impression of it. Perhaps I was just too politically allergic at that time (yeah right,) but I tried to adopt a wait-and-see’ approach first and let the dice roll. Perhaps because this bill was to be introduced by a very visible congressman with alleged leftist ties made me feel uncomfortable, but then, so was (and still is) with the current administration. Or perhaps I just felt it wasn’t damn right to legislate FOSS as an end-all solution, preferring instead of presenting is as a process for reforming the local software industry. Looks like first impressions definitely make a difference.

The proposed law to be called “Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) Act of 2006″ commands government offices to use only information and communications software that are given away for free and have no restrictions as to their use. The objectives appear to be to save money for the government and to encourage the making of free (non-commercial) software.

So? What’s wrong with these objectives? FWIW, the early FOSS bill draft did seem to have such a Draconian section as forcing the government and allied offices to use, and use only, FOSS. IMHO that by itself ran against the very fundamental ideal of FOSS: the freedom of choice. Not Hobson’s choice, but real choice. The current bill IIRC now allows this true choice; unless there is an extreme case where FOSS cannot be applied without becoming non-self-sustaining (not to mention self-liquidating,) agencies may implement their infrastructure using FOSS as their primary instrument, with the application of open standards (that is, open document formats, open communications protocols, etc) unifying the disparate components. Perhaps right now, this situation may seem kind of far-fetched, but its not really that far-off, considering what other nations and cities have done (or not done) with FOSS. Munich, Extremadura, Beijing… the list is not yet that long, but its bound to go a long way Now, while the government may now adopt open standards and open-everything, does not mean that the openness’ forgoes security, either; the government may opt to use well-known encryption protocols and even base their own security infrastructure on them. In fact, they are free to even look inside the source of these well-known standards, to study them, and to branch off new implementation that may even change the way these standards work. In fact, even without this bill in place, the government can participate in the production and development of FOSS!!! Wait a minute, wasn’t I supposed to defend this bill? Eh, well. I suppose this bill is good and all, but like I said earlier, there are those first impressions made by the parties involved in the making of this bill which unsettles me. IMHO I would rather see applications of this first in key cities (the happy works in Munich and in Extremadura are no accident, believe me) which in turn, would allow both local the national government to see just exactly how this FOSS magic works. Then, when the observations have been made, the papers are in, and the workers get hired, then, maybe, we’ll have a nation where FOSS can be mandated as a very strong preference, but never a forced one. Its all about growing up, really. I’m being reminded of Tom DeMarco’s The Deadline, where a newly-retrenched guy from a telco literally lands into the fantastic job of his life, managing an entire nation of software engineers and architects to develop several killer apps within a year (or so; raid you nearest Book Sale and be lucky Its a great experiment: when it succeeds, you’ll be the first to be present, but when it fails, you’ll be the first to be nowhere.

But I can also hear in the background a call to an unholy war against multinationals whose popular software run virtually all maybe 95 percent? of the computers of the world.

Now this is a low blow. Maybe partly because of the prevailing images of the advocates–geeks and leftists, my, what a c-c-c-combo!–is what drives Mr. Pascual to make this point. But really, multinationals are not the main concern. FWIW, FOSS is multinational in nature: it is even multi-denominational and multidisciplinary. FOSS is one of the things that make anonymous people like you and me Internet superheroes. FOSS connects the Internet’s tubes and keeps away the trucks. FOSS makes the Internet serious business, yet also drives them crazy. The Linux distros that I have worked, am working, and continue to work on, are all multinational: Debian and Ubuntu. People from all over the world, from all 7 continents, participate and work on what would arguably be the biggest software distribution the human world may ever produce, freely, regardless of motivation or goal. I suppose all the folks involved have only one common goal, and that is to see a work created for the benefit of the community by the community. I suppose the background howl comes from somewhere altogether, but its hardly just from FOSS. FOSS is the epitome of what is truly multinational, and one thing that is not truly controlled by any one single person, corporation or not.

Venkatesh Hariharan recently wrote an article on Indias traditions of knowledge and how Open Source meshes with them. Now having met him at foss.in and knowing of his work, I am 100% convinced he is on the side of the angels and their is no malice in what he wrote. However, his interpretation (really not his, but the conventional wisdom amongst the Indian elite.) of Indian history and culture is so monumentally wrong it bears correction. While I admit my hackles were raised by the cultural and theological mistakes made, there are implications for Open Source advocacy in India and the world at large too. He starts by giving the example of Nalanda, supposedly "the first university in the world." but more accurately a Buddhist vihara (monastery.) Its' very name indicated sharing. I use the past tense because Nalanda doesn't exist anymore. In fact except in a few border areas influenced by Tibet or Burma, Buddhism itself is so thoroughly extinct in the land of its birth, the place where it flourished for over 1500 years, that the only reason people like Hariharan or myself only know that there ever was such a thing due to the work of 19th century Western Indologists. How could this be? One theory is that a resurgent Hinduism coopted or persecuted the Buddhists into oblivion. However this is unsatisfactory. It does not explain why Jainism (a religion as old as Buddhism and equally heretical for exactly the same reasons from the Hindu point of view) still survives to this day and it doesn't explain how it could have happened for even the most advanced genocidal regimes of the 20th century have been unable to "disappear" undesirables to the extent which Buddhism disappeared. A more plausible explanation revolves around the fact that, as I mentioned before, places like Nalanda were Viharas. This doesn't mean that they can't have university-like properties too; after all the great academic institutions of Europe also had religious foundations but the monastic nature of a vihara is salient. A monastery is not a place you go to engage the world, its a place you go to escape it. To mix metaphors a bit, the viharas were cathedrals not bazaars. While there may have been a lively intellectual life within its walls, there is no evidence that Nalanda and its denizens interacted much with the surrounding culture. An economically unproductive institution of such vast size (15,000 monks at its peak) could only survive by the patronage of kings and other rich people. When that patronage dried up as for example when the medieval Muslim invasions swept away the old royalty, Nalanda and its sisters couldn't survive. Just as when a proprietary software company dies, its "intellectual property" often dies with it, when centralized Buddhism died, Buddhist ideas died with it. (Luckily Buddhism had spread to other countries by then and developed new, less monolithic forms so it was not lost to the world altogether.) In contrast Hinduism (and for that matter Jainism) while having all due respect for monks were and are primarily lay movements. The pursuit of morality (Dharma), wealth (artha) and pleasure (kama) in this world are equally valid human goals alongside liberation from the world (moksha.) and this manifested as the much maligned institution of caste. Hariharan quotes the conventional view probably familiar to Westerners from Anthropology 101, a lock-step hierarchy of four classes (varna is the Sanskrt word) with fixed occupations, with knowledge and privilege on top and ignorance and oppression at the bottom. The thing is, this view bears no relationship whatsoever with social reality in India now or historically. There is another Sanskrit word, jati, which can be translated as caste. There are thousands of these jatis and while Indian thinkers have periodically attempted to try and shoehorn them into the varna framework, they have had little success and varna is for all practical purposes just a theory. And this is not just a fall from some putative golden age (Like the canard that once caste was flexible and merit based and only later became rigid.) but the state of affairs throughout recorded history.

A jati consists of people who share a common (or fictive) kinship, who have particular food and ritual choices, and marry endogamously. While many jatis are associated with a particular occupation, many others are not. This is what caste means to a typical Indian (it is also the social organization prevalent amongst Jains, Sikhs, Muslims and Christians even if they don't accept its theological basis.) Yes, hierarchy and concommitantly oppression, are in some cases a byproduct of casteist thinking but they are hardly its raison d'etre. A comparison can be made to the Western nuclear family system. Some people think it is superior to any other form of social organization. Most people wouldn't go that far but go along with it as "the way it is." Some of those of a liberal persuasion might want tweaks of certain aspects of it. A very small fringe think it is nothing more than a nefarious plot to spread patriarchy, subjugation and racism etc. They are mostly considered kooks by the other groups. (Unfortunately when India and caste are concerned, the kooks are ruling the roost.) The diversity of jatis like the diversity of open source creates a certain resistence to disruption that a monoculture cannot. Thus though Hinduism also suffered grievously from invasions, it was able to hold on where Indian Buddhism could not. Brahmin (sic. That's an English mispronounciation.) is also misinterpreted as one who knows Brahma (masculine noun. The Creator God.) instead of Brahman (neuter noun. The supreme spirit pervading the Universe.) though even then it would be wrong because Brahmin, Brahma, and Brahman all come from a common root word brhati (feminine noun. Sacred speech.) as any Sanskrit dictionary will attest. Hariharan cites the example of the sacred scriptures (Sic. He means the Vedas) and the notorious statement of the Manusmrti saying that an unqualified person who hears them should have molten lead poured into their ears as examples of the proprietarization of knowledge. Now the long-suffering untouchables may have been afraid of many things but having lead earplugs was not one of them. There is no historical evidence that any such action was ever attempted. You can criticize the Manusmrti for even saying such a thing but that is a far cry from using it as evidence of historical attitudes. You see, the Manusmrti is not even in the most orthodox conception Hindu Sharia and the Vedas are not "Sacred Scriptures" in the sense that the Bible or Koran are. Rather they are part of a wide range of significant literary works respected in Hinduism of which other important examples are the two Epics the Mahabharata (which includes the Bhagavadgita), and the Ramayana, and the vast compendia of geneologies, philosophy, lore and legend called the Puranas. Hariharan actually missed a good chance to make his point here because while the Vedas are indeed "proprietary" the other works I mentioned are not and have in fact permeated all over India and even beyond its borders. Many Indian languages owe their literary existence to translation of the epics or Puranas. For instance one of the earliest monuments of Hindi literature is the Ramacharitamanasa, Saint Tulsidas's translation of the Ramayana. When he wrote it in the 16th century, he did face some opposition from those who didn't think such an august work should be rendered into a "vulgar" tongue, he also received encouragement from equally orthodox people (including those who believed the Vedas should be restricted to Brahmins) Today it is by many accounts the most popular Hindu holy book in existence. So really the whole idea that the Hindu canon shows a fall from open grace to rigidly controlled private property is just bogus. To those who have slogged their way though all this verbiage wondering what it has do with Linux and Open Source, let me assure you I am getting to the point :-) It's bad enough from my point of view as a devout Hindu that my religion would be misrepresented this way but from my point of view as a supporter of Free Software ideals, it is catastrophic. Linux and Open Source in India has spread, as in most parts of the world, primararily as a hobby amongst computer enthusiasts and for a hobby it's doing ok. However if you think of it as more than that, as a tool to enhance society and empower peoples lives, that is not nearly good enough. But how can one serve a society if one apparently has no clue about that societies history and mores? The developing world is littered with failed projects that were carried out with the purest of motives but no regard to what the putative clients actually wanted. Do we want Linux and Open Source deployments to go the same way? For a couple of years now I've been trying to get Indian and NRI programmers to get involved in localization in debian-installer and elsewhere but even with the small minority that are sympathetic to Open Source (a scandal in itself.) it is like pulling teeth. To their credit, Red Hat India pays people to work on such things but volunteerism is the heart of the Open Source movement as we all know so the apathy of Indian IT professionals is deeply troubling. Hariharan is trying to increase interest by appealing to the Indians' sense of cultural pride which is a good tactic--it has been successfuly applied by many non-western or minority cultures--but he is not going to be very successful if the vision of Indian culture he is presenting is as alien as Eskimo culture to the vast majority of the people. Western Open Source advocates also run into difficulties due to being tone-deaf in their understanding of how third-world cultures actually operate. When India declined to participate in the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, some commentators on places like Slashdot were perplexed. Wouldn't a poor country want an inexpensive yet efficient pc using free software instead of high-priced imports? The thing they missed is that while people in India may be poor, thanks to a more-or-less democratic polity and more-or-less open communications, their frame of reference is no longer their village. Their trends are increasingly set in Mumbai, New York, Paris, and London. The forward-thinking amongst them know that computers are the key to the future. They also know Bill Gates is the richest man in the world thanks to something called "Windows" knowing which can get you a green card and your own chance of becoming rich. So if Linux comes along, presented as a cheap alternative which is "just as good", the fake Gucci handbag of IT if you will, it is not going to impress. Thinkpads and Dells appeal to the upwardly-mobile persons vanity, a third-world hand-cranked laptop does not. (This incidently is what is behind the "Nalanda university" meme too. Monasteries are yesterday. Universities are the in thing so we have to have some in our past and not just any but by golly, the first university in the world.) When they venture from pure technology into the realm of culture, Open Source advocates need to be a lot more sophisticated, not to mention accurate, in their arguments lest they fall on deaf ears. Platitudes and sentimentality about "spiritual" versus "material" culture aren't enough. There must be concrete demonstrations of the benefits of why the Open Source approach to knowledge is better. They must be more sensitive in their presentation to avoid needlessly antagonizing people who might otherwise be natural allies. I believe the Open Source ideal is good for India and the whole world, not just in software but for society at large and I wish Venkatesh Hariharan and all the others on the frontlines of the fight for openness the best of luck. But good intentions cannot excuse sloppy thinking.

Welcome to this 5th issue of the DeFuBu contest, the monthly championship of the funniest bug reported to the Debian BTS. The challengers

• Pierre Habouzit with #395522 (whitelister terminates immediately)
• Josselin Mouette with #396247 (sound-juicer: weird playback if disk is ejected)
• Christian Perrier with #396223 (gnome-applets-data: Colorado Springs listed as "Colourado Springs" in British English)
• Joey Hess with #393846 (wave at a webcam to overwrite file)
• Michael Ablassmeier with #397646 (exim4-config: reportbug mail issue)

How the vote has been done Four Debian related people voted for these bugs, Philipp Kern, Julien Louis, Cyril Brulebois and David Pashley. Full ranking Bugs

• #393846 (wave at a webcam to overwrite file) (with 12 points)
• #396223 (gnome-applets-data: Colorado Springs listed as "Colourado Springs" in British English) (with 10 points)
• #396247 (sound-juicer: weird playback if disk is ejected) (with 9 points)
• #397646 (exim4-config: reportbug mail issue) (with 9 points)
• #395522 (whitelister terminates immediately) (with 3 points)

Challengers

• Joey Hess (12 points with 1 bug)
• Christian Perrier (10 points with 1 bug)
• Michael Ablassmeier (9 points with 1 bug) and Josselin Mouette (9 points with 1 bug)
• Pierre Habouzit (3 points with 1 bug)

The winners

• Bug: #393846 (wave at a webcam to overwrite file) (with 12 points)
• Challenger: Joey Hess
• Bug reporter: Joey Hess
• Voter: David Pashley with the nearest ordered tierc : #393846, #396223 and #397646.

Congratulations to Joey Hess, two victories in a row :-) Notes To participate, simply drop me an email with a bug number. About DeFuBu

Every time Microsoft manufactures a Zune, Universal receives US$1. Universal is now pointing its finger to Apple (due to the iPods). Considering for a moment the tax isn't insane. What about ask Philips, Sony and Toshiba some bucks due to the cd/dvd recorders? In a way it will be funny watch the lawsuits floating but in the end of the day we (the consumers) will pay.

Windows Vista (RTM, build 6000) installer doesn't proceed if you've less than 512mb of ram. No, i'm not kidding. I thought 64kb was enough. :)

We had a good, successful show again this year. The show itself seems to be continuing the trend of fewer visitors each year, but we're still seeing a good number of visitors at the Debian stand. Not many wanted to buy DVDs this year, another continuing trend. As Noodles found ("Use Debian! It's great!"), a large number of those visitors were already Debian users. The common questions were predictable:

• When's Etch due?
• What do you think of Ubuntu?

Phil, Neil and I also took the opportunity to wander round the hall to try and pick up some more sponsors for Debconf next year, and this was very useful. Thanks to all the people that helped, either by turning up on the stand or by organising the .org area. After all these years, it's still fun to turn up and help people find out more about Debian. :-)

This is the first of my two formal reports to the Dunc-Tank board on the release management funding experiment. Although submitted to the board some time earlier, I've delayed publishing it to the wider community until a release update could be sent out with more concrete information on timeline adjustments as Debian developers are wont to demand.

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I'm supposing that I don't need to give you any more specific details on what I've been working on than what's already been posted in my blog. There has certainly been plenty to keep me busy the past three weeks, including a lot of triage work on the state of bug reports in the BTS, managing the last of the major package transitions into testing for etch, removing packages and NMUing them, and it has indeed kept me busy. Busy enough that I've been lax when it comes to talking about it, either here or in my blog. :) Has the hard work paid off? Well, http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/ shows a sharp decline in release critical bugs affecting testing over the same time period, following the peak resulting from Dunc Bank's successful campaign of identifying latent release-critical bugs in etch. Unfortunately, we have no statistics that track the number of RC bugs closed or opened over time, which makes it hard to judge how large of a dent my own work has made in the overall bug count. It's also totally guesswork to try to judge whether Dunc-Tank has encouraged others to help with the release overall, or discouraged them from doing so. What I can say is that, even though the past month coincides both with the tail-end of the Dunc Bank mass bug filings and multiple archive-wide rebuild efforts, the bug count is moving in the right direction, and I am seeing many maintainers being responsive to bugs in their packages and a number of active NMUers. If not for the buzz-kill of Lucas Nussbaum's latest round of build failure reports :), we would be down from over 300 RC bugs to less than 200 right now, which probably represents at least twice that many RC bugs closed. In terms of how the time I'm putting into this release compares with the sarge release, I'd say it's pretty comparable. That's actually quite a positive statement about Dunc Tank's role, IMHO; getting a Debian release out is uphill all the way, and whereas the sarge release came at a time when I was in a position to work more or less full time on it without compensation, my availability this time around would have been greatly reduced, and progress would have been much more heavily dependent on individual maintainers and semi-periodic bugsquashing parties, which I'm not sure is any longer enough to offset the rate at which new RC bugs are created in the distribution by uploaders. As it stands, I do find myself trying to consciously avoid a hero complex of needing to fix every bug personally, but there are after all only so many options for getting bugs fixed for release. A lot of maintainers respond positively to gentle nudging about their RC bugs, but there are still bugs that the maintainers can't or don't fix and that no NMUers take on, which does leave it more or less up to the release managers to address -- which is why one of my tasks for this week is to try get the count of RC bugs over 20 days old down from 90 to around 20-30, as these are the bugs that really do need more attention to get them resolved. So yes, Dunc-Tank is making a positive difference. Andi and I have reviewed the status, and while we don't think we'll be able to hit the Dec 4 deadline (even if we get the bug count down immediately we're waiting on the debian-installer to release, which needs at least one more release candidate with the 2.6.18 kernel), we do believe that a release before the end of the year is very possible and I'm looking forward to starting the full freeze in the next few weeks.

So I am housed in University of Alberta Department of Philosophy as my supervisor is a philosopher and there is no seperate STS department. And this “academic housing” certainly has its advantages, like for example, learning about probably one of the most audacious (and frankly amusing) statments on religion ever… by Bertrand Russell:

My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a diseaese born of fear and and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilizaion. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknoweldge, but I do not know of any others. Bertand Russel. “Why I am not a Christian” p. 24

I am sure he turned over in his grave when his daughter said:

“He was the most fascinating man I have ever known, the only man I ever loved, the greatest man I shall ever meet, the wittiest, the gayest, the most charming. It was a privilege to know him, and I thank God he was my father.” Katharine Tait, My Father Bertrand Russell, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975, p. 202.