1. Your worth is your productivity.
2. You cannot trust your own feelings and limits.
3. There is always more you could be doing.

• Orange line (top10)
• Green line (top10)
• Blue line
• Yellow line
• Global Top 10

• The subway map displayed on this page, the original dataset and my modified dataset are licenced under CCO 1.0: they are in the public domain.
• The R code I wrote is licensed under the GPLv3+. Feel free to reuse it and write something nice about how the pandemic impacted the STM. I've made small changes to the 2019 version, but it's mostly the same thing.

How our for-profit company became a nonprofit, to better tackle the digital divide. Originally posted on the Endless OS Foundation blog.

An 8-year journey to a nonprofit On the 1st of April 2020, our for-profit Endless Mobile officially became a nonprofit as the Endless OS Foundation. Our launch as a nonprofit just as the global pandemic took hold was, predictably, hardly noticed, but for us the timing was incredible: as the world collectively asked What can we do to help others in need? , we framed our mission statement and launched our .org with the same very important question in mind. Endless always had a social impact mission at its heart, and the challenges related to students, families, and communities falling further into the digital divide during COVID-19 brought new urgency and purpose to our team s decision to officially step in the social welfare space.

On April 1st 2020, our for-profit Endless Mobile officially became a nonprofit as the Endless OS Foundation, focused on the #DigitalDivide.

Our updated status was a long time coming: we began our transformation to a nonprofit organization in late 2019 with the realization that the true charter and passions of our team would be greatly accelerated without the constraints of for-profit goals, investors and sales strategies standing in the way of our mission of digital access and equity for all. But for 8 years we made a go of it commercially, headquartered in Silicon Valley and framing ourselves as a tech startup with access to the venture capital and partnerships on our doorstep. We believed that a successful commercial channel would be the most efficient way to scale the impact of bringing computer devices and access to communities in need. We still believe this we ve just learned through our experience that we don t have the funding to enter the computer and OS marketplace head-on. With the social impact goal first, and the hope of any revenue a secondary goal, we have had many successes in those 8 years bridging the digital divide throughout the world, from Brazil, to Kenya, and the USA. We ve learned a huge amount which will go on to inform our strategy as a nonprofit.

Endless always had a social impact mission at its heart. COVID-19 brought new urgency and purpose to our team s decision to officially step in the social welfare space.

Our unique perspective One thing we learned as a for-profit is that the OS and technology we ve built has some unique properties which are hugely impactful as a working solution to digital equity barriers. And our experience deploying in the field around the world for 8 years has left us uniquely informed via many iterations and incremental improvements.

With this knowledge in-hand, we ve been refining our strategy throughout 2020 and now starting to focus on what it really means to become an effective nonprofit and make that impact. In many ways it is liberating to abandon the goals and constraints of being a for-profit entity, and in other ways it s been a challenging journey for me and the team to adjust our way of thinking and let these for-profit notions and models go. Previously we exclusively built and sold a product that defined our success; and any impact we achieved was a secondary consequence of that success and seen through that lens. Now our success is defined purely in terms of social impact, and through our actions, those positive impacts can be made with or without our product . That means that we may develop and introduce technology to solve a problem, but it is equally as valid to find another organization s existing offering and design a way to increase that positive impact and scale.

We develop technology to solve access equity issues, but it s equally as valid to find another organization s offering and partner in a way that increases their positive impact.

The analogy to Free and Open Source Software is very strong while Endless has always used and contributed to a wide variety of FOSS projects, we ve also had a tension where we ve been trying to hold some pieces back and capture value such as our own application or content ecosystem, our own hardware platform necessarily making us competitors to other organisations even though they were hoping to achieve the same things as us. As a nonprofit we can let these ideas go and just pick the best partners and technologies to help the people we re trying to reach.

Digital equity 4 barriers we need to overcome In future, our decisions around which projects to build or engage with will revolve around 4 barriers to digital equity, and how our Endless OS, Endless projects, or our partners offerings can help to solve them. We define these 4 equity barriers as: barriers to devices, barriers to connectivity, barriers to literacy in terms of your ability to use the technology, and barriers to engagement in terms of whether using the system is rewarding and worthwhile.

We define the 4 digital equity barriers we exist to impact as:
1. barriers to devices
2. barriers to connectivity
3. barriers to literacy
4. barriers to engagement

It doesn t matter who makes the solutions that break these barriers; what matters is how we assist in enabling people to use technology to gain access to the education and opportunities these barriers block. Our goal therefore is to simply ensure that solutions exist building them ourselves and with partners such as the FOSS community and other nonprofits proving them with real-world deployments, and sharing our results as widely as possible to allow for better adoption globally. If we define our goal purely in terms of whether people are using Endless OS, we are effectively restricting the reach and scale of our solutions to the audience we can reach directly with Endless OS downloads, installs and propagation. Conversely, partnerships that scale impact are a win-win-win for us, our partners, and the communities we all serve. Engineering impact Our Endless engineering roots and capabilities feed our unique ability to build and deploy all of our solutions, and the practical experience of deploying them gives us evidence and credibility as we advocate for their use. Either activity would be weaker without the other.

Our engineering roots and capabilities feed our unique ability to build and deploy digital divide solutions.

Our partners in various engineering communities will have already seen our change in approach. Particularly, with GNOME we are working hard to invest in upstream and reconcile the long-standing differences between our experience and GNOME. If successful, many more people can benefit from our work than just users of Endless OS. We re working with Learning Equality on Kolibri to build a better app experience for Linux desktop users and bring content publishers into our ecosystem for the first time, and we ve also taken our very own Hack, the immersive and fun destination for kids learning to code, released it for non-Endless systems on Flathub, and made it fully open-source.

What s next for our OS? What then is in store for the future of Endless OS, the place where we have invested so much time and planning through years of iterations? For the immediate future, we need the capacity to deploy everything we ve built all at once, to our partners. We built an OS that we feel is very unique and valuable, containing a number of world-firsts: first production OS shipped with OSTree, first Flatpak-only desktop, built-in support for updating OS and apps from USBs, while still providing a great deal of reliability and convenience for deployments in offline and educational-safe environments with great apps and content loaded on every system. However, we need to find a way to deliver this Linux-based experience in a more efficient way, and we d love to talk if you have ideas about how we can do this, perhaps as partners. Can the idea of Endless OS evolve to become a spec that is provided by different platforms in the future, maybe remixes of Debian, Fedora, openSUSE or Ubuntu? Build, Validate, Advocate Beyond the OS, the Endless OS Foundation has identified multiple programs to help underserved communities, and in each case we are adopting our build, validate, advocate strategy. This approach underpins all of our projects: can we build the technology (or assist in the making), will a community in-need validate it by adoption, and can we inspire others by telling the story and advocating for its wider use?

We are adopting a build, validate, advocate strategy.
1. build the technology (or assist in the making)
2. validate by community adoption
3. advocate for its wider use

As examples, we have just launched the Endless Key (link) as an offline solution for students during the COVID-19 at-home distance learning challenges. This project is also establishing a first-ever partnership of well-known online educational brands to reach an underserved offline audience with valuable learning resources. We are developing a pay-as-you-go platform and new partnerships that will allow families to own laptops via micro-payments that are built directly into the operating system, even if they cannot qualify for standard retail financing. And during the pandemic, we ve partnered with Teach For America to focus on very practical digital equity needs in the USA s urban and rural communities. One part of the world-wide digital divide solution We are one solution provider for the complex matrix of issues known collectively as the #DigitalDivide, and these issues will not disappear after the pandemic. Digital equity was an issue long before COVID-19, and we are not so naive to think it can be solved by any single institution, or by the time the pandemic recedes. It will take time and a coalition of partnerships to win. We are in for the long-haul and we are always looking for partners, especially now as we are finding our feet in the nonprofit world. We d love to hear from you, so please feel free to reach out to me I m ramcq on IRC, RocketChat, Twitter, LinkedIn or rob@endlessos.org.

usage: nspawn-runner [-h] [-v] [--debug]
                      chroot-create,chroot-login,prepare,run,cleanup,gitlab-config,toml 
                     ...
Manage systemd-nspawn machines for CI runs.
positional arguments:
   chroot-create,chroot-login,prepare,run,cleanup,gitlab-config,toml 
                        sub-command help
    chroot-create       create a chroot that serves as a base for ephemeral
                        machines
    chroot-login        enter the chroot to perform maintenance
    prepare             start an ephemeral system for a CI run
    run                 run a command inside a CI machine
    cleanup             cleanup a CI machine after it's run
    gitlab-config       configuration step for gitlab-runner
    toml                output the toml configuration for the custom runner
optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -v, --verbose         verbose output
  --debug               verbose output

$ ./nspawn-runner toml buster
[[runners]]
  name="buster"
  url="TODO"
  token="TODO"
  executor = "custom"
  builds_dir = "/var/lib/nspawn-runner/.build"
  cache_dir = "/var/lib/nspawn-runner/.cache"
  [runners.custom_build_dir]
  [runners.cache]
    [runners.cache.s3]
    [runners.cache.gcs]
    [runners.cache.azure]
  [runners.custom]
    config_exec = "/home/enrico/ /nspawn-runner/nspawn-runner"
    config_args = ["gitlab-config"]
    config_exec_timeout = 200
    prepare_exec = "/home/enrico/ /nspawn-runner/nspawn-runner"
    prepare_args = ["prepare", "buster"]
    prepare_exec_timeout = 200
    run_exec = "/home/enrico/dev/nspawn-runner/nspawn-runner"
    run_args = ["run"]
    cleanup_exec = "/home/enrico/ /nspawn-runner/nspawn-runner"
    cleanup_args = ["cleanup"]
    cleanup_exec_timeout = 200
    graceful_kill_timeout = 200
    force_kill_timeout = 200

• updating the master chroot would disturb the running CI jobs that use it. Using nspawn's btrfs-specfic features would prevent this problem, and possibly simplify the implementation even more.
• New step! trivially implementing support for multiple OS images

mkdir test
cd test
git init
cat > .gitlab-ci.yml << EOF
tests:
 script:
  - env   sort
  - pwd
  - ls -la
EOF
git add .gitlab-ci.yml
git commit -am "Created a test repo for gitlab-runner"

gitlab-runner exec shell tests

• config, to allow to override the run configuration outputting JSON data
• prepare, to prepare the environment
• run, to run scripts in the environment (might be ran multiple times)
• cleanup to clean up the environment

• Abhijith PA did 7.0h (out of 14h assigned), thus carrying over 7h to January.
• Ben Hutchings did 16.5h (out of 16h assigned and 9h from November), thus carrying over 8.5h to January.
• Brian May did 10h (out of 10h assigned).
• Chris Lamb did 18h (out of 18h assigned), thus carrying over h to January.
• Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did 16.5h (out of 26h assigned), thus carrying over 9.5h to January.
• Holger Levsen did 3.5h coordinating/managing the LTS team.
• Markus Koschany did 26h (out of 26h assigned and 10.75h from November), thus carrying over 10.75 h to January.
• Ola Lundqvist did 9.5h (out of 12h assigned and 11h from November), thus carrying over 11.5h to January.
• Roberto C. S nchez did 18.5h (out of 26h assigned and 2.25h from November) and gave back the remaining 9.75h.
• Sylvain Beucler did 26h (out of 26h assigned).
• Thorsten Alteholz did 26h (out of 26h assigned).
• Utkarsh Gupta did 26h (out of 26h assigned).

• Platinum sponsors:
• TOSHIBA (for 64 months)
• GitHub (for 54 months)
• Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) (for 32 months)
• Gold sponsors:
• Blablacar (for 79 months)
• Roche Diagnostics International AG (for 75 months)
• Linode (for 69 months)
• Babiel GmbH (for 58 months)
• Plat Home (for 57 months)
• University of Oxford (for 14 months)
• Deveryware
• Silver sponsors:
• The Positive Internet Company (for 80 months)
• Domeneshop AS (for 79 months)
• Nantes M tropole (for 73 months)
• Univention GmbH (for 65 months)
• Universit Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 65 months)
• Ribbon Communications, Inc. (for 59 months)
• Exonet B.V. (for 48 months)
• Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 42 months)
• CINECA (for 32 months)
• Minist re de l Europe et des Affaires trang res (for 26 months)
• Cloudways Ltd (for 15 months)
• Dinahosting SL (for 13 months)
• Platform.sh (for 8 months)
• Bauer Xcel Media Deutschland KG (for 7 months)
• Moxa Intelligence Co., Ltd.
• Bronze sponsors:
• Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 80 months)
• Evolix (for 79 months)
• Linuxhotel GmbH (for 77 months)
• Intevation GmbH (for 76 months)
• Daevel SARL (for 75 months)
• Bitfolk LTD (for 74 months)
• Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 74 months)
• Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 73 months)
• NUMLOG (for 73 months)
• WinGo AG (for 72 months)
• Ecole Centrale de Nantes LHEEA (for 69 months)
• Entr ouvert (for 64 months)
• Adfinis AG (for 61 months)
• Laboratoire LEGI UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 56 months)
• Tesorion (for 56 months)
• GNI MEDIA (for 55 months)
• Bearstech (for 47 months)
• LiHAS (for 47 months)
• People Doc (for 43 months)
• Catalyst IT Ltd (for 41 months)
• Supagro (for 37 months)
• Demarcq SAS (for 35 months)
• Universit Grenoble Alpes (for 22 months)
• TouchWeb SAS (for 14 months)
• SPiN AG (for 10 months)
• CoreFiling (for 6 months)
• Institut des sciences cognitives Marc Jeannerod

• Internet-using messengers leak certain metadata (eg, that a person is using it, or perhaps a sophisticated adversary could use timing analysis to determine that two people are talking using it)
• Cell signal outages due to natural disaster, large influx of people (protests, unusual sporting events, festivals, etc), or other factors
• Locations where cell signals are not available (rural areas, camping locations, wilderness areas, etc.)
• Devices that don t have cell data capability (many tablets, phones that have had service expire, etc.)

• Over the Internet, via Tor onion services
• Via Bluetooth to nearby devices
• Via Wifi, to other devices connected to the same access point, even if Internet isn t wokring on that AP

• Basic 1-to-1 private messaging
• Private groups , in which one particular person invites people to the chat group, and can dissolve it at any time
• Forums , similar to private groups, but any existing member can invite more people to them, and they continue to exist until the last member leaves (founder isn t special)
• Blogs , messages that are automatically shared with all your contacts

  total_time = pp->utime + pp->stime;
  if(include_dead_children) total_time += (pp->cutime + pp->cstime);
  seconds = cook_etime(pp);
  if(seconds) pcpu = (total_time * 1000ULL / Hertz) / seconds;

• At time T: Process P1 starts and uses 100% CPU
• At time T+10 seconds: Process P1 stops using CPU but still runs, perhaps waiting for I/O or sleeping.
• Also at time T+10 seconds: Process P2 starts and uses 100% CPU
• At time T+20 we run the ps command and look at the %CPU column

    TIME ELAPSED %CPU COMMAND
      10      20   50 P1
      10      10  100 P2

Free software

• The debian_official, debian_backports, and debian_experimental repositories contain Debian's official, backports, and experimental repositories, respectively. These shouldn't have to be managed through extrepo, but then again it might be useful for someone, so I decided to just add them anyway. The config here uses the deb.debian.org alias for CDN-backed package mirrors.
• The belgium_eid repository contains the Belgian eID software. Obviously this is added, since I'm upstream for eID, and as such it was a large motivating factor for me to actually write extrepo in the first place.
• elastic: the elasticsearch software.
• Some repositories, such as dovecot, winehq and bareos contain upstream versions of their respective software. These two repositories contain software that is available in Debian, too; but their upstreams package their most recent release independently, and some people might prefer to run those instead.
• The sury, fai, and postgresql repositories, as well as a number of repositories such as openstack_rocky, openstack_train, haproxy-1.5 and haproxy-2.0 (there are more) contain more recent versions of software packaged in Debian already by the same maintainer of that package repository. For the sury repository, that is PHP; for the others, the name should give it away. The difference between these repositories and the ones above is that it is the official Debian maintainer for the same software who maintains the repository, which is not the case for the others.
• The vscodium repository contains the unencumbered version of Microsoft's Visual Studio Code; i.e., the codium version of Visual Studio Code is to code as the chromium browser is to chrome: it is a build of the same softare, but without the non-free bits that make code not entirely Free Software.
• While Debian ships with at least two browsers (Firefox and Chromium), additional browsers are available through extrepo, too. The iridiumbrowser repository contains a Chromium-based browser that focuses on privacy.
• Speaking of privacy, perhaps you might want to try out the torproject repository.
• For those who want to do Cloud Computing on Debian in ways that isn't covered by Openstack, there is a kubernetes repository that contains the Kubernetes stack, the as well as the google_cloud one containing the Google Cloud SDK.

Non-free software While these are available to be installed through extrepo, please note that non-free and contrib repositories are disabled by default. In order to enable these repositories, you must first enable them; this can be accomplished through /etc/extrepo/config.yaml.

• In case you don't care about freedom and want the official build of Visual Studio Code, the vscode repository contains it.
• While we're on the subject of Microsoft, there's also Microsoft Teams available in the msteams repository. And, hey, skype.
• For those who are not satisfied with the free browsers in Debian or any of the free repositories, there's opera and google_chrome.
• The docker-ce repository contains the official build of Docker CE. While this is the free "community edition" that should have free licenses, I could not find a licensing statement anywhere, and therefore I'm not 100% sure whether this repository is actually free software. For that reason, it is currently marked as a non-free one. Merge Requests for rectifying that from someone with more information on the actual licensing situation of Docker CE would be welcome...
• For gamers, there's Valve's steam repository.

Again, the above lists are not meant to be exhaustive. Special thanks go out to Russ Allbery, Kim Alvefur, Vincent Bernat, Nick Black, Arnaud Ferraris, Thorsten Glaser, Thomas Goirand, Juri Grabowski, Paolo Greppi, and Josh Triplett, for helping me build the current list of repositories. Is your favourite repository not listed? Create a configuration based on template.yaml, and file a merge request!