Petter Reinholdtsen: Debian Edu interview: Shirish Agarwal
It was a surprise to me to learn that project to create a complete
computer system for schools I've involved in,
Debian Edu / Skolelinux, was
being used in India. But apparently it is, and I managed to get an
interview with one of the friends of the project there, Shirish
Agarwal.
Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
My name is Shirish Agarwal. Based out of the educational and
historical city of Pune, from the western state of Maharashtra, India.
My bread comes from giving training, giving policy tips,
installations on free software to mom and pop shops in different
fields from Desktop publishing to retail shops as well as work with
few software start-ups as well.
How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
project?
It started innocently enough. I have been using Debian for a few
years and in one local minidebconf / debutsav I was asked if there was
anything for schools or education. I had worked / played with free
educational softwares such as Gcompris and Stellarium for my many
nieces and nephews so researched and found Debian Edu or Skolelinux as
it was known then. Since then I have started using the various
education meta-packages provided by the project.
What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
Edu?
It's closest I have seen where a package full of educational
software are packed, which are free and open (both literally and
figuratively). Even if I take the simplest software which is
gcompris, the number of activities therein are amazing. Another one of
the softwares that I have liked for a long time is stellarium. Even
pysycache is cool except for couple of issues I encountered
#781841 and
#781842.
I prefer software installed on the system over web based solutions,
as a web site can disappear any time but the software on disk has the
possibility of a larger life span. Of course with both it's more a
question if it has enough users who make it fun or sustainable or both
for the developer per-se.
What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
Edu?
I do see that the Debian Edu team seems to be short-handed and I
think more efforts should be made to make it popular and ask and take
help from people and the larger community wherever possible.
I don't see any disadvantage to use Skolelinux apart from the fact
that most apps. are generic which is good or bad how you see it.
However, saying that I do acknowledge the fact that the canvas is
pretty big and there are lot of interesting ideas that could be done
but for reasons not known not done or if done I don't know about them.
Let me share some of the ideas (these are more upstream based but
still) I have had for a long time :
1. Classical maths question of two trains in opposing directions
each running @x kmph/mph at y distance, when they will meet and how
far would each travel and similar questions like these.
The computer is a fantastic system where questions like these can
be drawn, animated and the methodology and answers teased out in
interactive manner. While sites such as the
Ask
Dr. Math FAQ on The Two Trains problem (as an example or point of
inspiration) can be used there is lot more that can be done. I dunno
if there is a free software which does something like this. The idea
being a blend of objects + animation + interaction which does
this. The whole interaction could be gamified with points or sounds or
colourful celebration whenever the user gets even part of the question
or/and methodology right. That would help reinforce good behaviour.
This understanding could be used to share/showcase everything from how
the first wheel came to be, to evolution to how astronomy started,
psychics and everything in-between.
One specific idea in the train part was having the Linux mascot on
one train and the BSD or GNU mascot on the other train and they
meeting somewhere in-between. Characters from blender movies could
also be used.
2. Loads of crossword-puzzles with reference to subjects: We have
enormous data sets in Wikipedia and Wikitionary. I don't think it
should be a big job to design crossword puzzles. Using categories and
sub-categories it should be doable to have Q&A single word answers
from the existing data-sets. What would make it easy or hard could be
the length of the word + existence of many or few vowels depending on
the user's input.
3. Jigsaw puzzles - We already have a great software called
palapeli with number of slicers making it pretty interesting. What
needs to be done is to download large number of public domain and
copyleft images, tease and use IPTC tags to categorise them into
nature, history etc. and let it loose. This could turn to be really
huge collection of images. One source could be taken from
commons.wikimedia.org, others could be huge collection of royalty-free
stock photos. Potential is immense.
Apart from this, free software suffers in two directions, we lag
both in development (of using new features per-se) and maintenance a
lot. This is more so in educational software as these applications
need to be timely and the opportunity cost of missing deadlines is
immense. If we are able to solve issues of funding for development and
maintenance of such software I don't see any big difficulties. I know
of few start-ups in and around India who would love to develop and
maintain such software if funding issues could be solved.
Which free software do you use daily?
That would be huge list. Some of the softwares are obviously apt,
aptitude, debdelta, leafpad, the shell of course (zsh nowadays),
quassel for IRC. In games I use shisen-sho while card-games are evenly
between kpat and Aiselriot. In desktops it's a tie between
gnome-flashback and mate.
Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
get schools to use free software?
I think it should first start with using specific FOSS apps. in
whatever environment they are. If it's MS-Windows or Mac so be it.
Once they are habitual with the apps. and there is buy-in from the
school management then it could be installed anywhere. Most of the
people now understand the concept of a repository because of the
various online stores so it isn't hard to convince on that front.
What is harder is having enough people with technical skills and
passion to service them. If you get buy-in from one or two teachers
then ideas like above could also be asked to be done as a project as
well.
I think where we fall short more than anything is in marketing. For
instance, Debian has this whole range of fonts in its archive but
there isn't even a page where all those different fonts in the La
Ipsum format could be tried out for newcomers.
One of the issues faced constantly in installations is with updates
and upgrades. People have this myth that each update and upgrade
means the user interface will / has to change. I have seen this
innumerable times. That perhaps is one of the reasons which browsers
like Iceweasel / Firefox change user interfaces so much, not because
it might be needed or be functional but because people believe that
changed user interfaces are better. This, can easily be pointed with
the user interfaces changed with almost every MS-Windows and Mac OS
releases.
The problems with Debian Edu for deployment are many. The biggest
is the huge gap between what is taught in schools and what Debian Edu
is aimed at.
Me and my friends did teach on week-ends in a government school for
around 2 years, and
gathered
some experience there. Some of the things we learnt/discovered
there was :
- Most of the teachers are very territorial about their subjects and they do not want you to teach anything out of the portion/syllabus given.
- They want any activity on the system in accordance to whatever is in the syllabus.
- There are huge barriers both with the English language and at times with objects or whatever. An example, let's say in gcompris you have objects falling down and you have to name them and let's say the falling object is a hat or a fedora hat, this would not be as recognizable as say a Puneri Pagdi so there is need to inject local objects, words wherever possible. Especially for word-games there are so many hindi words which have become part of english vocabulary (for instance in parley), those could be made into a hinglish collection or something but that is something for upstream to do.
This year's DPL campaign is over and voting period is also almost over. Many did not vote yet and they really should consider doing so. This is meant as a reminder for them. If you didn't have time to dig into 
Once again, on March 11 I had a great guest to save me some work and give a talk at my class! This time it was C sar Y ez, and he talked about memory management algorithms, emphasizing on ARC.
The video is available, both 
I am a console user. I really just started to use X11 again about two weeks ago,
to sometimes test an a Qt application I am developing. I am not using
Firefox or anything similar, all my daily work happens in shells
and inside of emacs, in a console, not in X11. BRLTTY runs all the time,
translating the screen content to something that my braille display can
understand, sent out via USB. So the most important programs to me, are
really emacs, and brltty.
This is my desktop, that is up since 179 days.
I find interesting when faced a taken-for-granted situation, in particular in the tech world. This time s history is about an Internet ADSL connection that allows all traffic but SSH. Yes, you read it correctly. It was very bizarre confirming such event was a real-life situation.
I don t claim to be a networking expert but at least I want to think I m well educated. After few minutes I ve focused my efforts on dealing with the ADSL router/modem s networking configuration. The device is provided by Movistar (formerly Telefonica) and it runs OpenRG. I ve discovered that 
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My monthly report covers a large part of what I have been doing in the free software world. I write it for 
In my last 
Who are you?
My name is Francesca and I'm totally flattered by your intro. The fearless warrior part may be a bit exaggerated, though.
What have you done and what are you currently working on in FLOSS world?
I've been a Debian contributor since late 2009. My journey in Debian has touched several non-coding areas: from translation to publicity, from videoteam to www. I've been one of the www.debian.org webmasters for a while, a press officer for the Project as well as an editor for DPN. I've dabbled a bit in font packaging, and nowadays I'm mostly working as a Front Desk member.
Setup of your main machine?
Wow, that's an intimate question! Lenovo Thinkpad, Debian testing.
Describe your current most memorable situation as FLOSS member?
Oh, there are a few. One awesome, tiring and very satisfying moment was during the release of Squeeze: I was member of the publicity and the www teams at the time, and we had to pull a 10 hours of team work to put everything in place. It was terrible and exciting at the same time. I shudder to think at the amount of work required from ftpmaster and release team during the release. Another awesome moment was my first Debconf: I was so overwhelmed by the sense of belonging in finally meeting all these people I've been worked remotely for so long, and embarassed by my poor English skills, and overall happy for just being there... If you are a Debian contributor I really encourage you to participate to Debian events, be they small and local or as big as DebConf: it really is like finally meeting family.
Some memorable moments from Debian conferences?
During DC11, the late nights with the "corridor cabal" in the hotel, chatting about everything. A group expedition to watch shooting stars in the middle of nowhere, during DC13. And a very memorable videoteam session: it was my first time directing and everything that could go wrong, went wrong (including the speaker deciding to take a walk outside the room, to demonstrate something, out of the cameras range). It was a disaster, but also fun: at the end of it, all the video crew was literally in stitches. But there are many awesome moments, almost too many to recall. Each conference is precious on that regard: for me the socializing part is extremely important, it's what cements relationships and help remote work go smoothly, and gives you motivation to volunteer in tasks that sometimes are not exactly fun.
You are known as Front Desk member for DebConf's - what work does it occupy and why do you enjoy doing it?
I'm not really a member of the team: just one of Nattie's minions!
You had been also part of DebConf Video team - care to share insights
into video team work and benefits it provides to Debian Project?
The video team work is extremely important: it makes possible for people not attending to follow the conference, providing both live streaming and recording of all talks. I may be biased, but I think that DebConf video coverage and the high quality of the final recordings are unrivaled among FLOSS conferences - especially since it's all volunteer work and most of us aren't professional in the field. During the conference we take shifts in filming the various talks - for each talk we need approximately 4 volunteers: two camera operators, a sound mixer and the director. After the recording, comes the boring part: reviewing, cutting and sometimes editing the videos. It's a long process and during the conference, you can sometimes spot the videoteam members doing it at night in the hacklab, exhausted after a full day of filming. And then, the videos are finally ready to be uploaded, for your viewing pleasure. During the last years this process has become faster thanks to the commitment of many volunteers, so that now you have to wait only few days, sometimes a week, after the end of the conference to be able to watch the videos. I personally love to contribute to the videoteam: you get to play with all that awesome gear and you actually make a difference for all the people who cannot attend in person.
You are also non-packaging Debian Developer - how does that feel like?
Feels awesome! The mere fact that the Debian Project decided - in 2009 via a GR - to recognize the many volunteers who contribute without doing packaging work is a great show of inclusiveness, in my opinion. In a big project like Debian just packaging software is not enough: the final result relies heavily on translators, sysadmins, webmasters, publicity people, event organizers and volunteers, graphic artists, etc. It's only fair that these contributions are deemed as valuable as the packaging, and to give an official status to those people. I was one of the firsts non-uploading DD, four years ago, and for a long time it was just really an handful of us. In the last year I've seen many others applying for the role and that makes me really happy: it means that finally the contributors have realized that they deserve to be an official part of Debian and to have "citizenship rights" in the project.
You were the leading energy on Debian's diversity statement - what gave
you the energy to drive into it?
It seemed the logical conclusion of the extremely important work that Debian Women had done in the past. When I first joined Debian, in 2009, as a contributor, I was really surprised to find a friendly community and to not be discriminated on account of my gender or my lack of coding skills. I may have been just lucky, landing in particularly friendly teams, but my impression is that the project has been slowly but unequivocally changed by the work of Debian Women, who raised first the need for inclusiveness and the awareness about the gender problem in Debian. I don't remember exactly how I stumbled upon the fact that Debian didn't have a Diversity Statement, but at first I was very surprised by it. I asked zack (Stefano Zacchiroli), who was DPL at the time, and he encouraged me to start a public discussion about it, sending out a draft - and helped me all the way along the process. It took some back and forth in the debian-project mailing list, but the only thing needed was actually just someone to start the process and try to poke the discussion when it stalled - the main blocker was actually about the wording of the statement. I learned a great deal from that experience, and I think it changed completely my approach in things like online discussions and general communication within the project. At the end of the day, what I took from that is a deep respect for who participated and the realization that constructive criticism does require certainly a lot of work for all parts involved, but can happen. As for the statement in itself: these things are as good as you keep them alive with best practices, but I think that are better stated explicitly rather than being left unsaid.
You are involved also with another Front Desk, the Debian's one which is involved with Debian's New Members process - what are tasks of that FD
and how rewarding is the work on it?
The Debian Front Desk is the team that runs the New Members process: we receive the applications, we assign the applicant a manager, and we verify the final report. In the last years the workflow has been simplified a lot by the re-design of the nm.debian.org website, but it's important to keep things running smoothly so that applicants don't have too lenghty processes or to wait too much before being assigned a manager. I've been doing it for a less more than a month, but it's really satisfying to usher people toward DDship! So this is how I feel everytime I send a report over to DAM for an applicant to be accepted as new Debian Developer:
How do you see future of Debian development?
Difficult to say. What I can say is that I'm pretty sure that, whatever the technical direction we'll take, Debian will remain focused on excellence and freedom.
What are your future plans in Debian, what would you like to work on?
Definetely bug wrangling: it's one of the thing I do best and I've not had a chance to do that extensively for Debian yet.
Why should developers and users join Debian community? What makes Debian a great and happy place?
We are awesome, that's why. We are strongly committed to our Social Contract and to users freedom, we are steadily improving our communication style and trying to be as inclusive as possible. Most of the people I know in Debian are perfectionists and outright brilliant in what they do. Joining Debian means working hard on something you believe, identifying with a whole project, meeting lots of wonderful people and learning new things. It ca be at times frustrating and exhausting, but it's totally worth it.
You have been involved in Mozilla as part of OPW - care to share
insights into Mozilla, what have you done and compare it to Debian?
That has been a very good experience: it meant have the chance to peek into another community, learn about their tools and workflow and contribute in different ways. I was an intern for the Firefox QA team and their work span from setting up specific test and automated checks on the three version of Firefox (Stable, Aurora, Nightly) to general bug triaging. My main job was bug wrangling and I loved the fact that I was a sort of intermediary between developers and users, someone who spoke both languages and could help them work together. As for the comparison, Mozilla is surely more diverse than Debian: both in contributors and users. I'm not only talking demographic, here, but also what tools and systems are used, what kind of skills people have, etc. That meant reach some compromises with myself over little things: like having to install a proprietary tool used for the team meetings (and getting crazy in order to make it work with Debian) or communicating more on IRC than on mailing lists. But those are pretty much the challenges you have to face whenever you go out of your comfort zone .
You are also volunteer of the Organization for Transformative Works -
what is it, what work do you do and care to share some interesting stuff?
The annoucement below just went to the 
Here s a short preview of our latest accepted paper (to appear at 