I've come back from foss.in in Bangalore, India which I attended as a representative of the Debian project. Foss.in is the event formerly known as Linux Bangalore. It has broadened out to cover all aspects of Free and Open Source Software and is the largest such event in South Asia. I'm told almost 3000 people attended this year. I arrived on the morning of Monday the 28th. The conference organizers put up myself and other speakers at the guesthouse of the Indian Institute of Science. The accomodations were spartan but comfortable. They got considerably less spartan by the next day which was when I figured how the hot water tap worked. I shared my room with Kartik Mistry of Gujarati l10n fame. The first day of the conference was on Tuesday the 29th. The conference was taking place for the first time in a new venue, in several large canvas tents in the grounds of the Bangalore Palace. There were some technical difficulties; when we arrived on site in the morning, there was a line of people atleast several hundred long, waiting to register. Undoubtedly, some of them must have given up and gone home, but the fact that so many people persevered is a testament to the high level of energy surrounding the event. The talks began late too but everyone I spoke to seemed to take it goodnaturedly. I had planned to give two talks. One my standard half-hour "What is Debian?" song and dance. If you went to Debian Day at Helsinki, you already know what that's about and a 90 minute workshop on "Creating Debian Packages." Both were scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. Owing to the earlier delays, the first of these which was slated for 2:30pm didn't start until 4pm. The organizers actually asked me to roll both talks up into one supertalk which was not a problem for me. However, I made one fatal mistake. At lunch time I had noticed one of the food stalls was selling an inviting-smelling cheese pizza. Now, I've been to India enough times to know, "phirangis" simply don't eat dairy-based food in India unless they have some time to acclimatize to it first. I even said as much as I was eating the pizza. Somehow I rationalized that the cheese was pasteurized and well-cooked so the rule wouldn't apply to me but boy was I wrong. I first noticed signs of distress three-quarters of the way through "What is Debian?" I struggled valiantly to the end but then had to excuse myself to head off to the latrines and perform a hard reset of my gastro-intestinal tract. A couple of minutes of vomitting later, though a bit wobbly, I felt well enough to return and start talking about creating Debian packages. I didn't have slides for this one, I just used my laptop to show the innards of binary and source packages, all the various files in the debian directory, debhelper, debconf, and the lifecycle of package maintainence. Unfortunately wi-fi didn't seem to be stretching as far as my location so I couldn't show such nifty things as apt-get source and pbuilder but hopefully my descriptions of these things were impressive enough. There were lots of good questions from the sizable audience and I think we went over 90 minutes. Apart from some BOFs, I didn't really have any formal commitments for the rest of the conference so I spent it holding court at a table in the expo area. I was constantly busy demoing Debian, answering questions, and signing keys. I met Vaidhyanathan Mayilarangam who is a Debian developer, though inactive at the moment. He is going to start getting involved again soon. On Saturday the 3rd, I met the two currently active DDs, Ramakrishnan Muthukrishnan, and Ganesan Rajagopal. Throughout the days of the conference I also met many other figures on the Indian Free Software scene and made a lot of new contacts. That's it for now; in future blog entries I'll write about some of my impressions of the prospects and problems of Debian and Free Software in India. It remains for me to thank: Branden for authorizing funds for my plane ticket, Atul Chitnis and the other organizers and staff of foss.in, Mahesh Pai and Prasad Kadambi who assisted me in navigating Bangalore, and all the other friends of Debian, new and old, I met during my trip.

Delays suck. I’m actually skipping ahead here, I’d meant to blog about updating the dak codebase into shape for whatever changes were coming up first, but it turns out I’m not in the mood for that. Besides which, most of this entry is preprepared. In the last few entries we went over the background for updating our security infrastructure to make it possible to have security team members that don’t worry about vendor-sec issues (process, overview, NIv2 aka NINJA, queue-build issues), all the while skipping fairly lightly over the question of what has to actually happen. That happens to be the way I prefer to work, lots of background tinkering, then spend as little time on actual implementation as possible; it has it’s drawbacks, but hey, I like it. Anyway, the second last step is working out in detail what’s going to happen. The delay in question was trying to get the security team to sign off on it, but unfortunately they’re busy enough that that looks like it’ll being an indefinite delay, so I’m going with the “well, ftpmaster maintains the dak/katie infrastructure for the security team, so in the end it’s our call on what’s best anyway” line of thought, and just plunging in. Fortunately the current and final plan should make pretty minimal changes to how the existing security team operate anyway, even assuming a massive testing security operation happening in parallel with them – so the downside risk is already pretty minimal. (And it was, afterall, developed in consultation with Joey, and then shopped around a few folks who’ve been doing security work for testing and kernels) What is that plan, you may well ask. It’s something like this: First, let’s restate the idea:

Concept Allow two teams to exist, the current security team as the “vendor-sec subteam”, and the full team which can expand to also include the testing-security people and others interested and able to help out with security work but who do not have access to vendor-sec.

Then, we want to think about the processes that are involved at a global level. First for uploads that can’t be made public until some later date, and can only be worked on by the “vendor-sec” enabled security team.

• Source upload to queue/unchecked (as now)
  • Upload is authenticated etc
  • Upload is moved to queue/embargoed
• Upload is autobuilt
  • Logs are sent to a procmail address
  • Logs are forwarded (by procmail) onto the vendor-sec subteam
  • Logs are signed and sent back
  • Binaries are uploaded to queue/unchecked
  • Binaries are moved to queue/embargoed
• Uploads (source + binaries) are approved from queue/embargoed by
• running amber
  • Uploads are moved into the archive
  • The archive is mirrored
• The approver issues an advisory

And likewise for issues that don’t need so much secrecy:

• Source upload to queue/unchecked-disembargo (new directory)
  • Upload is authenticated etc
  • Source+version added to unembargo table
  • Upload is moved to queue/unembargoed
• Upload is autobuilt
  • Logs are sent to a procmail address
  • Logs are forwarded (by procmail, after checking unembargo table) onto the full team
  • Logs are signed and sent back
  • Binaries are uploaded to queue/unchecked
  • Noting that the source is in the unembargo table, Binaries are moved to queue/unembargoed
• Uploads (source + binaries) are approved from queue/unembargoed by running amber
  • Uploads are moved into the archive
  • The archive is mirrored
• The approver issues an advisory

Processes are great, but they have to be supported by proper information handling, so it’s worth looking at what the above actually means for the on-disk structures, too. This is particularly important, since filesystem level security is mostly how we wall off vendor-sec stuff from other users of the system (whether they’re also working on security issues, or doing, eg, web page maintenance or something equally random). Voila:

queue/unchecked, queue/unchecked-dismebargo
    world writable
    accessible only by katie
    contents automatically cleared every 15m
queue/embargoed
    writable only by katie
    accessible by vendor-sec subteam
    amber allows packages to be ACCEPTed
    [...] allows packages to be REJECTed
queue/unembargoed
    writable only by katie
    accessible by full team
    amber allows packages to be ACCEPTed
    [...] allows packages to be REJECTed
queue/accepted
    packages only sit in accepted briefly while amber is running

And finally, to sum things up, this is what a member of the security team should expect to actually do to release an advisory:

• Upload package to queue/unchecked (or queue/unchecked-disembargo)
• Wait for build logs to be sent to your address
• Check and sign those build logs
• Check the final packages in queue/embargoed (or queue/unembargoed)
• Run amber over the packages to accept them
• Fill in the template advisory generated and send it to the -announce list

The differences between that process and the current one used by the security team is pretty minor, ttbomk: currently uploads sit in queue/accepted not queue/embargoed, and currently the security team ignore the template advisories amber generates preferring to make their own – aiui, this is mostly due to delays in actually receiving the advisory template since amber mails it instead of leaving it somewhere convenient on disk. Anyway, that’s what the plan looks like. We should see how well it survives contact with the enemy, or at least reality, remarkably soon. (Of course, I guess “political issues” could always foul it up completely anyway, particularly going by the fact that it’s been more or less the only problem raised by the folks I’ve passed this on to… Oh well, reconstruct that bridge when we get to it, I guess)

I'm currently trialing VMWare 5.5 on my laptop, to run Windows XP so that Vicky can use iTunes to manager her iPod (no, gtkpod isn't an option, and neither is SharpMusique). However, it's not working. :( I've installed iTunes, but when I plug in the iPod XP detects first an iPod and then a USB Mass Storage device. It appears that the Mass Storage device is overriding the iPod drivers so iTunes doesn't notice the iPod. And so I ask the Lazyweb: has anyone else seen this, and is there a way around it? Update: looks like the problem is caused by VMWare exposing my USB 2 controller as a USB 1.1 controller, which iTunes refuses to support as it would be too slow. Dammit! Any known workarounds? Update 2: there are suggestions that this may be fixed by using an older version of iTunes, so does anyone have a Windows iTunes 5 installer to hand? Apple are only providing the latest release on their site. NP: Laika Come Home, Space Monkeyz vs. Gorillaz

With Planet Scheme and more referrals, I seem to have gained many new readers recently, so here's a quick description of this blog. I'll post before noon each day if I'm in the office (where the computer that I use for writing is), usually at least Monday to Friday. I post about: scheme programming (also in scheme.rss), gnu/linux free software support (also in hacks.rss), koha development (also in koha.rss), creativity and copyright (also in affs.rss), running a non-traditional business, bicycling, events around Lynn, Norfolk and other events I take part in. If you would like to contact me about it, I prefer trackback: some posts include trackback URLs (and others aren't hard to guess); or my email info is linked from the top of my blog page now. Stuart wonders how to track use, reuse and repurposing - from when I was writing for "real" publications, I'd say that the same problem is faced by anyone doing a news release. All you can do is monitor the outlets and see where it goes. If you're lucky, you'll get pinged, but I think that happens only for about 1 in 10 or less. Anyone know real numbers for that? Can anyone expect audience statistics to be sorted out when even the copyright aspect of online syndication is still being figured out?

For me this year's event was the most successful and wonderful LinuxTag I've eve been to. I've worked during LinuxTag as much as I could and did my best to make it the best event ever. If I commit myself to something, I try to work properly and generate proper results. This was the same for LinuxTag. As a result, this year I had many tasks to work on. First of all I managed the community and free projects so that they had an opportunity to present themselves to the broad audience during LinuxTag. This required months of communication with members of all attending projects and negotiating their needs. It also required to gather information about the various parts of LinuxTag that also affected projects. Since it is boring having to answer the same questions all the time I decided not doing that anymore and once started to maintain an FAQ that intends to contain all important information for exhibiting projects. Last year I've also added an location plan with information about shops and restaurants nearby and this year I contributed a map for getting to the AKK where the legendary KaLUG party was organised. Being responsible for the projects I was required to decide which project are suited to get a sponsored booth, its size and its location. This year we have had the opportunity to use the ground floor of the conference building in addition to the regular exhibition ground, so that we've could use about 700m in total for the projects exhibition. I've worked nearly two entire weekends to get the booths assigned properly and to have proper graphics. For the conference building I also created the "official" booth map, booth naming, booth signs and booth numbering. One weekend was planned, the other was an accident since we had to rearrange some booths. Exhibiting projects and other community and Free Software oriented projects also had the opportunity to use two workshop rooms for workshops, BoF sessions, meetings and talks. For these I maintained the schedule and negotiated with the speakers and projects, and also acquired moderators for both rooms for the entire time. The people who organised the Accessibility booth people managed to get green light for building a large booth and a so called forum, which is an open talk area, but without any support. Since they couldn't fill in all slots and you can't dismantle a forum in the middle of the show, I've taken over its maintenance and schedule and managed to complete it with interesting talks, setting up, looking for moderators and dismantling. One of these talks I've even held on my own. Fortunately, a DJ contacted us and was able to provide his PA, boxes, microphone and stuff. Without him, the forum would have been an utter disaster. To support the projects we had to build up the network in the main exhibition hall for them on our own. Otherwise it would have cost us several thousand euro, which we didn't have. So I had to draw plans containing the cables we had to lay, calculated the length and decide where to deposit switches and stuff. On the day before the show opened, several supporters went around with a large ladder laying the cable. In the conference building this was done by the KaLUG. I've also coached the supporters during LinuxTag, and was even present at a special short meeting for and with supporters in order to reflect the past day and talk about the next day. This year was the first time I really had the time to attend the meeting and thank our supporters. Before the show started I've also negotiated food arrangements with a restaurant and a colleague so that we had lunch during the show. I ate from it as well, but didn't manage to eat every day unfortunately. Most additional signs of A4 and A3 size that we used during LinuxTag in order to help visitors and officials to find their way were designed and printed by me. Many of them were the result of last year's aftermath. Most of them were fixed with adhesive tape by our supporters. The Coding Marathon was supervised by me as LinuxTag representative. It was organised by HP, intel and Red Hat and, of course, negotiated with the acquise team of LinuxTag. The Coding Marathon was a half day programming session for visitors. The resulting code is released under the GNU GPL and winners were awarded with prizes at the end of each day. This required me to attend several phone conferences, name one or two interested people from "LinuxTag" who would propose a task and head the marathon during one day. Last year already, when I took over this job, With p2 and Arne I've already found two competent people, and this year also added Alex Schmehl for a task I proposed. Naturally, it was not possible for me to moderate the Coding Marathon during LinuxTag due to other obligations. When I arrived at LinuxTag the week before it officially started my first job was to build up the office and prepare the rooms so that the entire "team" could work inside properly. The first office should be used by supporters for general requests and customers, with a desk for me as well. The next room was meant to host the speakers office and the other rooms were intended to be back offices or private rooms. In order to be able to work properly in the office I've also brought with my some of my network equipment and set up the office LAN, server and printer. I had already experienced cable problems last year, that prevented us to use 100MBit/s switches, so that antiquated 10MBit/s hubs had to be used. I've also supervised our daily shopping tours and collected demand for various items from others. The most important items were fluids since it was quite warm during LinuxTag and collapsing core members and supporters are no fun. Other food had to be fetched as well. A lot of other items had to be purchased as well, in order to run LinuxTag and be able to fix or improve various areas. One or two supporters were taking the car for the shopping tours. When I arrived in Karlsruhe the HP booth was already being built. The other, smaller booths followed on Monday. Hence, on Monday and Tuesday I also supervised the building of the booths. It's important that somebody is around for questions, both from booth builders and from officials of the fairground. One also has to check if the booths are built properly and that they don't cause a risk for the exhibition hall, neighbour booths, smoke detectors and stuff. Issues should be corrected as soon as possible so that they don't become problems later. As soon as I arrived I also took over our own storage area and maintained deliveries for booths that haven't built up yet. Several companies negotiated with me before the show so that I knew which deliveries to expect and could move them to their respective booths as soon as they were built up. This year the first X.Org developers conference took place right before LinuxTag as well. I negotiated with both the X.Org people and the fairground people so that this developers conference could really take place. Unfortunately the plans and acknowledgements were sent out quite late so we were in a hurry getting everything set up and organised. Since we experienced network problems this year, they had not network as well, so did we in the office. Two days without a network connection. Pure horror. On Thursday the legendary KaLUG party took place. The location had to be prepared for the party, for which several supporters went there before the party has started. It was planned that I attend the party, so I went there at about 1 a.m. For some reason I didn't manage to leave the fairground earlier, and on the way to the AKK some of my friends who were also supporters were on their way home, excusing themselves for leaving before I arrived. Eumh... When I arrived at the party I first checked the situation and saw loads of uncleaned pots and stuff. Since nobody was cleaning them, I jumped into the mobile kitchen and started cleaning before I even ate or drank anything. That was fun, though a bit unplanned. The social event on Friday was organised by Claudia from a service provider who got some support from me before the show and during the show. Several supporters helped her clean the area that was unused for several years. During the evening I only gave away free tickets for the supporters and moved inside afterwards, always looking around if everything was ok, negotiating with her, of course. Very well managed, I can only say. This year I gave three talks during LinuxTag. Usually I only give zero or one during such an event, due to my other obligations. However, this time I felt, that I should make a maximum use of LinuxTag, anticipating the future. Hence, it started with Debian Security held during this year's Debian day, followed by Howto LinuxTag on the following day and finally Debian Internals together with other Debian developers. After the last talk I had about two hours to calm down again and initiate the general dismantling. Fortunately I've already planned a lot before the event because after my final talk I was a bit exhausted and needed to calm down and get into LinuxTag organisation again. Dismantling is the most parallel work at LinuxTag because all booths are dismantled at once and many people are running around with arbitrary stuff. One really has to take care of ones own stuff or it gets lost faster than one can shout. During the evening the entire fairground was cleaned, from all conference rooms the audio and video technique was removed again, all bottles and glasses were moved back into the office, the movable walls collected and moved back to their owners, the Internet caf was dismantled and computers moved back into their respective boxes. Some exhibitors had to use extra storage space temporarily. The Community forum in the conference hall had to be dismantled and chairs stacked properly. The same goes for tables and chairs used by the projects booths in both, the exhibition hall and the conference building. The network for projects had to be removed again, cables and switches secured. All additional signs had to be removed again. Since we have used some durable signs that could be used for future events again these had to be removed carefully and secured again. We've also ordered a container for paper since a lot of paper had to be thrown away and throwing away large amounts of junk is expensive. This way we were able to get rid of paper stuff a bit cheaper, but had to take extra care so that only paper went into this container. Hence, we needed a supporter who stayed with the container until it was fetched again. When the internal LinuxTag party in the office was nearly over, I came back into the office with all other areas finished, ready to start dismantling the office - usually the colleagues don't let me because they want to party and don't have any obligations anymore. That sucks a lot. So, again the internal party went on nearly without notice by me, but I'm used to that. This year I had already taken this into account and organised some stuff for an after work party (contrary to the other while-others-work party) outside of the office with supporters, friends and some team members that were still sober. This night we went to bed after 5a.m. and hence had a chance to get a quick breakfast already (we didn't use it, though). It was when we thought "Yes, this was a hell of an event!" I usually went to bed at 1 to 3a.m. and got up again at 5 or 6a.m. so that I was able to work on the important stuff that I committed myself to, and so that I was able to chat with friends and supporters in the evening. That was something I really missed on past events. Last year I probably wouldn't have spoken to Alfie if he hadn't placed himself into my way as a brake block. Thanks Alfie! This year such a maneuver wasn't required. In order to be able to work on so many areas during LinuxTag I tried to optimise the workflow and the processing as much as I could. I also used several sheets and paper to write down stuff for later processing so that my brain was kept clear and I don't become insane (or more insane, for what it's worth). That worked quite well and all areas I worked in worked fine as well, since I had time to talk to people even during the day. Even after my talks I wasn't flooded by phone requests like last year. After the event I had to drive some 750km back, after having only little sleep. Getting to Karlsruhe is always the easy part. Driving back is exhausting because I'm usually quite exhausted and in need of a lot of sleep. I won't disclose how long it took me to reach Oldenburg but it was faster than last year.

* 1. General Public License. This program is free software, and may
* be redistributed or modified subject to the terms of the GNU General
* Public License (version 2) or the GNU Lesser General Public License,
* or (at your option) any later versions ("Open Source" code).

* 4. Notices. User hereby agrees not to remove, alter or destroy any
* copyright, trademark, credits, other proprietary notices or confidential
* legends placed upon, contained within or associated with the Software,
* and shall include all such unaltered copyright, trademark, credits,
* other proprietary notices or confidential legends on or in every copy of
* the Software.

Mmhmm.

6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the
Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the
original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to
these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further
restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.
You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to
this License.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE. NO GPL INCOMPATIBILITY. NO PROBLEM. ENTIRELY HAPPY. NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT, CERTAINLY NO COPYRIGHT ISSUES WHATSOEVER

#ifdef __cplusplus
extern "C"

#endif

(Note: kernel module code)

#if LINUX_VERSION_CODE < KERNEL_VERSION(2,4,0)
#define get_zeroed_page get_free_page
#define try_inc_mod_count(mod) ((mod && !(mod->flags & MOD_DELETED)) ? __MOD_INC_USE_COUNT(mod), 1 : 0)
#endif // LINUX_VERSION_CODE < KERNEL_VERSION(2,4,0)

#if defined(CONFIG_ALL_PPC) && !defined(CONFIG_PPC_PMAC) && (LINUX_VERSION_CODE < KERNEL_VERSION(2,6,0))
#define CONFIG_PPC_PMAC
#endif

ENTIRELY COMPETENT CODE WRITTEN ENTIRELY IN THE LINUX KERNEL CODING STYLE

Note to Fedora Core 2, 3 and 4 users:The default stack size in original FC2, FC3 and FC4 kernels is only 4K. Because some drivers require more stack space to operate properly, we recommend using a kernel with a larger stack size if you experience problems or crashes. You can either rebuild your own custom kernel, or get one of our replacement "stk16" kernels provided for your convenience through the distribution-specific Fedora Core 2i, 3 and 4 links above.

Or you could fix your drivers. Oh, except you can't, because they're actually chunks of the Windows one wrapped in code like the above.

This is truly an excellent piece of work.

Remember, kids, you're only paying $19.99 for code of this quality!

Linuxant are possibly worse than Orkut. And Fujitsu Siemens.

Various samples of code:

#* In all cases CONFIG_SMP redetermined bye 'cpu0'-line in /proc/stat.

do if (smbusDebug & (1 << ( 1 ))) printk(KERN_DEBUG "smbus(%d):" "asus_PowerDown(%p,%p,%p)\n" , (int)(jiffies-jiffies0),CmdBuffer, ResultBuffer, fSmbiExec ); while (0) ;

typedef char CHAR;
typedef CHAR *PCHAR;

* All rights reserved
MODULE_LICENSE("GPL");


Thanks, Fujitsu Siemens. You COPYRIGHT INFRINGING INCOMPETENT FUCKMONKIES.

I mean, christ.

CHRIST.

UNBELIEVABLE HOLY CHRIST ON A FUCKING BIG STICK.

So that I have something in my blog again, lets repeat what I wrote to debconf-list about the moved lists.debconf.org setup: As announced to the old debconf6-team list there is now a new layout of lists.debconf.org running. We are running mailman now with lurker as the web-archive thingie. That also got a few new lists in our setup, see below. Generally - all lists are subscriber-only, non-subscribers are moderated. debconf-announce: Important news about Debconf. This list is a MUST for everyone, organisator or participant. Postings are moderated, discussion happens at debconf-discuss@lists.debconf.org Moderator and only allowed posters are currently: Gunnar Wolf, Andreas Schuldei and me. debconf-discuss: General purpose discussion list for all participants and interested people. Moderator is currently Andreas Schuldei and me, any volunteers are welcome! debconf-team: The list for the organizer team to communicate about all kinds of dirty details and grand schemes. Moderator again Andreas and me, volunteers welcome. debconf-video: The list for taping and streaming the conference. Moderator is Holger Levsen and me, ask Holger if he accepts you as an additional one. debconf-website: The list for website development. Moderator is Neil McGovern and again me, ask Neil if he wants you. :) debconf6-speaker: For the speakers, wanna-speakers and bof-initializers, to sort out and exchange relevant infos and helpfull tips. Moderator is Andreas Schuldei, Alexander Schmehl and myself. debconf6-localteam: Specially designed for local matters on the Debian Day, this mailing list brings discussions for all the people involved locally on DebConf. In the webarchives, you also see the old Debconf5 Speakers list. Of course that one is closed, but the archives are there. Similar for the other lists, I imported the archives into all of them. If you want to volunteer to moderate a list: - Its not much work, usually lists are subscribers-only. You need to go and look regularly for posts that mailman put on hold, either because the list isnt in To or CC or because some other problems it might have. You will get a daily mail if there is something waiting on you and can then select “Approve, Discard, Reject” together with “Sender will be banned/accepted forever”. - If you want to volunteer ask the existing *other* moderator, not me.

So, I’m heading back out to Israel for work, and it turns out I have a 12-hour (!) layover in Amsterdam. I’m arriving at 8AM next Tuesday (Dec. 6) and won’t depart until 7:45PM. That gives me a full day to see the city. If any Debian people would like to meet up in Amsterdam that day, please drop me an email.

Without the vast number of voluntary supporters past LinuxTag events wouldn't have been possible at all. On the financial side LinuxTag has always made only little profit after the event. Without these nearly 100 volunteers who have supported us directly during the event and during its preparation the show wouldn't have been possible. Without the help of so many supporters during the event, the entire show isn't possible. Hence, it is important to either generate more income and be able to pay for hostesses and callboys or manage a proper environment in which many supporters want to help. For this, accepting the importance of the supporters, acknowledging their work and supporting them with food, fluids, fun and other advantages is very important. To my regret, I have to admit that this has not always been the case inside the core team. I have argued in favour of the supporters several times, so hopefully not much of it has been noticed by them. Supporters have worked in several different areas. I'll try to list them below but I'm sure I already forgot half of them even though I have coached most supporters directly or indirectly. We have maintained the parking ground so we were able to ensure that the Festplatz in the middle of LinuxTag is not abused as a parking place during the event. This required us to maintain a gate with at least one gatekeeper from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. This was a lot of work, and it wasn't that interesting, but good for people who want to read or hack in the gatekeeper pavilion. We have manually built the projects network in the exhibition halls. In the conference building it was built by the KaLUG. All information signs and plans had to be drawn, printed, magnified and fixed at their respective locations. There are a lot of additional signs that we have maintained to help visitors find their way. I'm sure still a lot of signs were missing. I have used the opportunity to prepare most of them after the last event, so that we have less work for the new one. Our own office had to be set up, since we've used naked rooms with only some cupboards, tables and chairs inside. More furniture had to be arranged, the network had to be built up, the server had to be installed or configured, the printer had to be attached, the network configuration needed testing, the desks had to be set up. For some years now one to three volunteers have helped us in the office in order to support the core team and so that we are able to present visitors, exhibitors, the press etc. We've had an an additional human firewall who worked for two or three days usually and was able to support most people already without clogging the office room. The firewall (Arne) himself had the idea to become a firewall several years ago and I have to agree that it was a very good idea. However, with the exhibitor support maintained at a special booth at the entrance less work had to be done for the firewall this year. Several large and self-standing signs had to be prepared or repaired after the had been broken at the last event or their content has been obsoleted. Signs for the gate from above had to be printed and fixed at proper locations so that exhibitors find their way. We have built up the entire audio and video equipment on our own with a service provider from Bremen. Since this affected up to six rooms a lot of equipment and cables had to be moved, installed and dismantled after the show. For this we've helped J rg and Sven with several volunteers. The business congress had to be prepared as well. Stuff for the attendees had to be created and taken to the conference building. The entrance counter for it had to be maintained and staffed. Doors had to be secured. Deliveries had to be maintained in a storage area, since before LinuxTag a lot of stuff is delivered to LinuxTag without the target booth built up already. During setting up the booth, the booth builders also had to be supported and problems detected, discussed and corrected. During the entire time of our siege of the fairground we've had to maintain our own storage of fluids and food. Due to the high temperatures having around enough fluids was very important. In addition to this demands for several goods also required us to send somebody out for shopping each day. In order not to die of starvation during the event we have also organised a delicious lunch for all supporters and core team members. Kudos to Thomas we were able to order large pots of salad and cooked food for two years so that we didn't have to eat unhealthy food (such as fat pizza for six days) and everybody could decide on their own how much they want to eat. In the years before we've had rented a cook and even ordered Pizza. The food had to be fetched from the restaurant, arranged, together with table clothes, cutlery and stuff, and finally taken back at the evening. Cutlery had to be cleaned regularly as well. For the social event the location had to be cleaned and prepared. This year we've had the great opportunity to use the Nancy Caf which was unused for about 10 years, and hence required a lot of cleaning. As it turned out just before the show began, it required a lot more cleaning than expected. However, thanks to the competent and highly motivated supporters the location was cleaned in time. Kudos to Claudia, this year's social event was also one of the most successful. For the legendary KaLUG party the location had to be prepared as well and the food cooked. Looking at the pictures, the pavilions had to be built, tables and chairs arranged, cutlery and fluids organised. In the evening all the stuff had to be cleaned as well. This year KaLUG had organised a so called "Sp lmobil" that helped with doing the washing-up, but somebody had to work in it as well. The KaLUG has maintained the Internet caf in the conference building and has set up the network for the exhibiting projects in the conference building. For this they have acquired a lot of computers and network equipment that had to be built up and dismantled after the show. They have also acquired a number of movable walls for separating booths and providing poster space. During the show we have distributed fluids for the conference rooms and exchanged information posters and flyers with the daily schedules. When you're giving a talk, your throat often gets quite dry, hence, a cup of fresh water is a good cure, but requires the organisator to maintain water and cups. Since the conference program changed daily posters and handouts had to be exchanged during the evening. Project exhibitors were supported directly by us while company exhibitors were supported by a service provider. Additionally all speakers had to be supported as well. The conference rooms were also maintained by a moderator who supported the speaker, announced the talks and speakers, ran (!) around with a microphone, helped in case of technical problems and maintained the schedule. Even though it may look strange for an outsider there are a lot of costs that emerge when such an event is organised at a commercial fairground. LinuxTag has always had the problem of only little yield after all bills have been paid after the show but had to start preparing the event for the upcoming year. In the past years it was always a struggle to continue with only little financial substance trying to get the next event set up properly. LinuxTag has been unique in its configuration, looking at its history, its organisation structure, its size and its components. There are basically only three ways of creating income: commercial exhibition, business congress and sponsoring. All three have obviously been on the descending path for several years now, reducing a lot of flexibility for the organisation. This income has had to be used for all expenses. On the other side there are a lot of areas that just cost money, such as the conference building, exhibition hall, hotel, travel reimbursements, projects booths, advertising. In addition to that we've had two service providers that have taken over some tasks and needed to be paid as well. A very rough overview is in my Howto LinuxTag talk from this summer.

Here is my friend lastguru - the second most active photographer on the AnimeFest3. He is trying to get a shot of the audience, but while he is doing that, I got a shot of him :)

Yesterday I discovered a great surge in popularity of SBackup - just on SourceForge around 700 people downloaded it in a period of three days (compared to ~250 total downloads before that) and some new bugs were filled.Only then I remembered about the interview I gave over the email, looks that it was published on Monday. Fun. Now the plans for a good rewrite are even more prominent on my ToDo list and I am also thinking about trying to get all developers of similar tools to unite in the context of this rewrite. This will bring all their good features in (encryption, per-user subconfiguration, removable media support, config on server option) and ensure continued development of the project even if I get a bit lazy on it ;) A confederation for simple yet feature complete Linux backup solution?

Also today we have a very good milestone - translation of Debian Installer to Latvian language has just reached 100%. I thank greatly our new contributor - Orvils from Latvian University who did bulk of the work. I still had to spend around 6 hours reviewing and correcting his translations and then updating the translations that changed or were added during the time that Orvils was translating, but it was much faster then it would have been it the translation was only up to me :)

Accessors
Matt, Python has advanced tremendously and supports uniform access even more nicely than Ruby. You don’t need to play __getattr__ games at all. class Foo(object):
    def get_foo(self): return unmangle(self.__foo)
    def set_foo(self, value): self.__foo = mangle(value)
    def del_foo(self): ...
    foo = property(get_foo, set_foo, del_foo, "docstring goes here") There’s actually a nicer syntax with the new decorators, but this will work with the Python in Debian. Unlike Ruby, this means you can un-wrap the attribute later if it turns out you don’t need mangling functions and do need speed. (Dick Davies pointed out I said this without anything to back me up. Timing these different methods, it turns out raw attribute access in Python is 30% faster than Ruby’s attr_*, which in turn is 50% faster than manual attribute setters in either language; non-property-ized Python get/sets are slightly faster than Ruby, but property-ized ones are slightly slower. There is a definite advantage to being able to expose the raw attributes.) Really, public get/set methods are a nasty hack, mostly restricted to C++/Java and Ruby/Python/etc. written by people who spent too much time around C++. Welcome
Michael Urman, co-developer of Quod Libet (and author of its sexiest parts), finally got a weblog. Currently there’s not much there, but he’s (hopefully) going to write about the metaprogramming he used to write an awesome Python ID3 reader/writer, and also some details on the Python interpreter bugs we keep turning up.

Firefox extensions The release of Firefox 1.5 has awakened my interest in the browser, and a few extensions can make life easier.

View Rendered Source Chart

Really handy for a structured view of an HTML page's source. The big advantage is that is displays generated source too, perfect for figuring out AJAX applications.

Foxpose

Sheer eye candy. Thumbnail all your tabbed pages into one page.

Del.icio.us

Browser button for working with the del.icio.us bookmarks site. I've been reluctant to use remote bookmarks before, this extension might just push me over the edge. Really well thought-out integration with the browser.

Rails in Emacs Seeing as I'm not quite prepared to switch to OS X just in order to get TextMate, I figured it was time again to play with my editing environment. Pages from InVisible Blog and Scott Barron give a lot of tips as to the current state of play with Rails and Emacs. I've now got a reasonably pleasant setup, though I wasn't inclined to go the whole way to running the ECB IDE inside Emacs. On Ubuntu, the packages you are looking for are: speedbar eieio semantic ruby-elisp mmm-mode. I also found pabbrev a very handy interface for tab completion. The future for Ruby and Emacs is looking hopeful. I learned that a proper Ruby grammar for the semantic package is being worked on, which will enable class browsing and intelligent completion. I am still disappointed that there's no version of Emacs that uses Xft or Pango for anti-aliased font rendering. To get sharp fonts, I still need to use a bitmap font like misc-fixed. If I were in the business of offering bounties for open source development, dragging Emacs into the GTK2/Pango era would be the biggest one. Checking the mailing lists indicates that Pango is not suitable for Emacs, but no alternative scheme ever seems to bear fruit. Yet if Aquamacs can do it... If somebody came along with a decent TextMate-a-like for GNOME, I'd pay good money for it. I've never been really happy with an editor since Cygnus Ed. Hallski and I keep talking about this, and only just manage to resist wasting months of time on trying to write one ourselves.

I've followed AJ's experiment in funding free software development with his AJ Market with interest and have thrown money in the pot once or twice for some of the projects I care about. It's an interesting approach. I'm too lazy to do anything like that, or rather, I'm already paid sufficiently to work on free software that doing a joeyh market would too much resemble work. However, I did decide to try something I've seen done occasionally, since I also wonder how that works out -- I added a paypal donations button to the website for one piece of free software. Just as a test, to see if it annoys anyone, and if anyone bothers clicking on it. I chose alien since it's well known, regularly used by a suprisingly large number of people and even appears on the first page of otherwise quite amusing results on a google search for "alien". (I suppose that adding google ads to the page would generate more money, but in a probably less interesting way.) Unlike AJ, I won't promise that clicking on the link will motivate me to work on anything. In fact, the most likely use of any money I get from this will be to pass the buck along to the AJ market or something similar.

< piman> Why don't we have a drama severity/tag?
< ari> piman: because we're not on livejournal
< ari> let's post all of -private to livejournal with backdates
< mjg59> We should move debian-devel to Livejournal
< piman> Let's move all Debian development to LJ.

I just discovered the PIDA python IDE. It's really really nice... What I love best with this IDE: It embeds VIM. The first IDE ever with a reasonable editor within! ;-) You can use other "editors", too, of course. ;-) Actually I didn't use much of the IDE features except the file list, which I could have obtained with dozens of VIM macros as well. And probably I'll continue to use plain VIM mostly. But it's nice to see this development.

When you log into WordPress, it brings you to the Dashboard by default, which begins with a WordPress Development Blog. The latest entry header is: “Don?t Panic! WordPress Is Secure 17 days ago” Yeah, I feel safe; php code especially makes me feel warm and fuzzy. Where did that apostrophe go, anyways?

I just uploaded a belpic that compiles on stable to my people.debian.org webspace, so that people using stable will be able to use belpic, too, and might be able to use their digital ID card to sign emails, or use the tax-on-web thingy of the Belgian government. The idea is to get this into backports.org, but I can't reach Norbert Tretkowski ATM, so it'll have to wait 'till he reads his mail. One thing is weird, though. To be able to build belpic for unstable, I had to change some things like (unsigned char **) in the code to (const unsigned char **), or it wouldn't compile. Now that I try to compile it on stable, I apparently have to reverse those changes, or it won't compile. Probably some definitions of one (or more) of the build-dependencies changed. Not that it's a problem, of course, but it is silly. On a slightly related note, Zetes N.V. (belpic's upstream) suggested I go ahead and maintain packages for them to put on the Government's website, too, so that people would be able to install it by downloading from belgium.be. This wouldn't just be the Debian packages, but also packages for other distributions (probably RPMs, then). Sounds like fun. This isn't at all official yet, but it might be some time from now.