The Claim I have seen it claimed that renting a virtual server can be cheaper than paying for electricity on a server you own. So I m going to analyse this with electricity costs from Melbourne, Australia and the costs of running virtual servers in the US and Europe as these are the options available to me. The Costs According to my last bill I m paying 18.25 cents per kWh that s a domestic rate for electricity use and businesses pay different rates. For this post I m interested in SOHO and hobbyist use so business rates aren t relevant. I ll assume that a year has 365.25 days as I really doubt that people will change their server arrangements to save some money on a leap year. A device that draws 1W of power if left on for 365.25 days will take 365.25*24/1000 = 8.766kWh which will cost 8.766*0.1825 = $1.5997950. I ll round that off to $1.60 per Watt-year. I ve documented the power use of some systems that I own [1]. I ll use the idle power use because most small servers spend so much time idling that the time that they spend doing something useful doesn t affect the average power use. I think it s safe to assume that someone who really wants to save money on a small server isn t going to buy a new system so I ll look at the older and cheaper systems. The lowest power use there is a Cobalt Qube, a 450MHz AMD K6 is really small, but at 20W when idling means a cost of only $32 per annum. My Thinkpad T41p is a powerful little system, a 1.7GHz Pentium-M with 1.5G of RAM, a 100G IDE disk and a Gig-E port should be quite useful as a server which now that the screen is broken is a good use for it. That Thinkpad drew 23W at idle with the screen on last time I tested it which means an annual cost of $36.80 or something a little less if I leave the screen turned off. A 1.8GHz Celeron with 3 IDE disks drew 58W when idling (but with the disks still spinning), let s assume for the sake of discussion that a well configured system of that era would take 60W on average and cost $96 per annum. So my cost for electricity would vary from as little as $36.80 to as much as $96 per year depending on the specs of the system I choose. That s not considering the possibility of doing something crazy like ripping the IDE disk out of an old Thinkpad and using some spare USB flash devices for storage I ve been given enough USB flash devices to run a RAID array if I was really enthusiastic. For virtual server hosting the cheapest I could find was Xen Europe charges E5 for a virtual server with 128M of RAM, 10G of storage and 1TB of data transfer [2], that is $AU7.38. The next best was Quantact who charges $US15 for a virtual server with 256M of RAM [3], that is $AU16.41. Really for my own use if I was paying I might choose Linode [4] or Slicehost [5], they both charge $US20 ($AU21.89) for their cheapest virtual server which has 360M or 256M of RAM respectively. I ve done a lot of things with Linode and Slicehost and had some good experiences, Xen Europe got some good reviews last time I checked but I haven t used them. The Conclusion When comparing a Xen Europe virtual server at $88.56 per annum it might be slightly cheaper than running my old Celeron system but would be more expensive than buying electricity for my old Thinkpad. If I needed more than 128M of RAM (which seems likely) then the next cheapest option is a 256M XenEurope server for $14.76 per month which is $177.12 per annum which makes my old computers look very appealing. If I needed more than a Gig of RAM then my old Thinkpad would be a clear winner, also if I needed good disk IO capacity (something that always seems poor in virtual servers) then a local server would win. Virtual servers win when serious data transfer is needed. Even if you aren t based in a country like Australia where data transfer quotas are small (see my previous post about why Internet access in Australia sucks [6]) you will probably find that any home Internet connection you can reasonably afford doesn t allow the fast transfer of large quantities of data that you would desire from a server. So I conclude that apart from strange and unusual corner cases it is cheaper in terms of ongoing expenses to run a small server in your own home than to rent a virtual server. If you have to purchase a system to run as a server (let s say $200 for something cheap) and assume hardware depreciation expenses (maybe another $200 every two years) then you might be able to save money. But this also seems like a corner case as the vast majority of people who have the skills to run such servers also have plenty of old hardware, they replace their main desktop systems periodically and often receive gifts of old hardware. One final fact that is worth considering is that if your time has a monetary value and if you aren t going to learn anything useful by running your own local server then using a managed virtual server such as those provided by Linode (who have a really good management console) then you will probably save enough time to make it worth the expense.

• [1] http://doc.coker.com.au/environment/computer-power-use/
• [2] http://www.xeneurope.co.uk/packages
• [3] https://www.quantact.com/signup.cgi
• [4] http://www.linode.com/
• [5] https://manage.slicehost.com/customers/new
• [6] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2010/01/18/why-internet-access-in-australia-sucks/

Note: this post written on March 20-21 and posted after our return.
(two women looking into the crypt at St. George s Basilica) We ve had a good couple of days in Prague. The city definitely feels more, well, foreign than Germany and that is perhaps accentuated by the fact that I don t know any Czech at all, while I know some basic German. It s been slow going at times, and surprisingly easy at others. Despite my lack of knowledge of Czech, I d say communicating here has been roughly as easy as in Germany. That is perhaps partially due to the fact that, of the places where we ve needed to communicate, we are either making simple requests (buying bread at a bakery) or the people we re talking to know some basic English. (Or, in one case, a guard at a museum at the Prague Castle complex used German to ask me to check a bag at the coat check, mildly surprising me and confusing Terah when I started to comply with instructions she didn t understand, and didn t know how I did.) The very first time we had a situation where it was a bit difficult to communicate, in the bakery, I got into my difficult to communicate mode and accidentally slipped in a couple of German words. Oops. Terah was laughing at me later, and commented that the store owner might have also been laughing at me or perhaps at his employee that also accidentally slipped into basic German mode. On Friday, we visited Vy ehrad Castle, the one that nobody that visits Prague seems to know about. That is perhaps because the palace/castle part of the complex has been mostly destroyed (but we did know that before going there.) It is in a nice, quiet, and beautiful park, and has the beautiful and old Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, as well as a large ornate cemetery. Then we visited two iconic Prague places: V clavsk n m st (Wenceslas Square) and Starom stsk n m st (Old Town Square). Both were beautiful. And, unfortunately, also packed with tourists and made-in-China plastic trinket shops. There I got my first clue that large tour groups tend to have a detrimental effect on any free site in Prague. They come in, the guides yell, they clog up things, and also generally miss the sites of true interest because buying tickets to them makes the price of the tour uncompetitive. On Saturday, we took the tram out to Pra sk hrad (Prague Castle) the one that everybody knows about. We got there at about 8:15, and although the grounds are open, most of the buildings weren t open until 9. As a result, we had 45 minutes almost to ourselves in the nearly-empty castle complex. We could walk around on the giant squares, take some photos, and generally enjoy a crisp and quiet morning. At 9, it was still pretty empty and we went into the ticket offices to buy our tickets. By the time we got out a few minutes later, it was packed mostly due to the arrival of innumerable tour groups from all over Europe and, apparently, Japan. We went to the Star kr lovsk pal c (Old Royal Palace) first, since I knew from their website that it would close at noon due to a visit from Prince Charles. That was a beautiful building, and it s amazing to read about the features of it that are centuries old or even almost a thousand years old. The Vladislavsk s l (Vladislav Hall) and chapel particularly caught my eye. Underneath the palace is a museum, including some 1000-year-old jewelry and flooring, and some clothing that is several hundred years old recoverd from burial plots.
(Vladislav Hall) Next, we went to the iconic (and free) Katedr la svat ho V ta (St. Vitus Cathedral). Our audioguides fortunately allowed us to bypass the long line, and we could step inside at a side door. That was one of many times in Europe I stepped inside a building, and suddenly came to a stop with a wow . That building is every bit as much impressive as it is made out to be, even crowded as it was. We also went to Bazilika Sv. Ji (St. George s Basilica), which one of the guides described as ancient . It was another wow moment, and it felt like the oldest church we were in yet. I think it probably was, actually; last rebuilt in 1142. For lunch, we asked for a recommendation from our hotel. They suggested one place, which we walked to. It was a nice easy walk down some Prague side streets, but the restaurant and all the others along our walk were closed on Saturday. We eventually made our way back to the hotel and asked for a new recommendation, which was successful this time. Terah ordered some ribs, while I ordered a more traditional Czech goulash, which happened to be served in a bread bowl. A minute later, the waiter brought Terah a fork and knife. And he brought me a bowl of water with a slice of lemon, and announced wash for you. That was a surprise, and a bit puzzling one at that. Turns out that eating bread that had stew served in it is indeed a bit messy, and having some water to clean up with is indeed helpful. We met up with Anna from Leipzig and one of her Czech friends for dinner Saturday night. We found a nice local Czech place. I had ham with sauerkraut in a folded potato cake. It was excellent, and the total bill for Terah and me came to 235 Kc or about $12.50. We had a nice walk back to the hotel in the crisp, dark evening. Sunday morning we had breakfast at our hotel the only time we ate a meal at a hotel this whole trip then got on the tram, the metro, and the bus to the airport. Total cost for that trip for two: 52 Kc, or about $2.75. Far cheaper than a taxi. One weird thing happened to us in Prague. We were riding the tram towards downtown, and as we would be on it for several stops, Terah was sitting. I was standing as there wasn t an available seat for me. Terah and I were both looking out windows, until Terah was startled because her arm was wet. She looked around and it turned out a middle-aged woman had spit on her, and was glaring at her. We never did figure out why. About all we can think of is maybe someone else, such as a very old person, had gotten aboard but Terah hadn t noticed and therefore didn t offer to give up her seat. That was probably the only real rude gesture towards us on the entire trip. We ran the story by Anna s friend (the native Czech) and she was as surprised and baffled as we were. As I wrap this up, we re sitting at our gate in Prague waiting for our flight to Munich. In this airport, in an out of the way corner on the very lowest floor, I spotted only the second drinking fountain I ve seen in Europe this entire time and also perhaps the continent s most expensive cup of coffee. After we get to Munich, it s a flight to Chicago, another to Indianapolis, and finally a drive home Monday.

Steve Langasek:

As a developer, how do you embody the spirit and culture that has made Debian a great operating system? If elected DPL, how will you inspire the same in others?

I do not believe that there is any one single spirit or culture that has made Debian great, never any truly united community. With contributors from various places around the globe, we have a melting pot of different cultural viewpoints. Furthermore we have people doing things for a variety of reasons, some more selfish than others. The interplay between these differences has led to tension, and it has also led to greatness. I am certain that some of the great things in Debian have come to pass borne out of anger and hatred. We have had shifts in cultural norms over the years. When I joined the project, it was considered highly controversial to use the word fuck . Many community members would scream at anyone who did that, rudely sending private emails to admonish them. Eventually, enough anti-censorship people joined that the political tide turned, and many of the people offended by the use of the word fuck quietly faded away. We effectively disenfranchised them. Now the pendulum may be swinging in the other direction, and if it does, we can expect the same sorts of tensions and the same sorts of attrition. Perhaps this is part of the natural cycle of things, perhaps not. So if I list what I do or what I try to do, I do not believe it adequately answers the question. I think that Debian is superior for technical excellence and cohesive policy, so I try to do my part to meet those standards. I think that Debian is great for being a good Free Software Citizen, so I try to forward relevant bugs and patches upstream. I think that Debian is great for not being fully beholden to corporations, other financial interests, or dictatorial personalities, so I try not to encourage that sort of thing. I think that Debian is greater because of a few team efforts, so when someone tries to set up a worthwhile endeavor, I feel some compulsion to join in or at least be supportive. I think that Debian is greater because of some commitment to transparency, so I try not to do anything important behind closed doors, and even when I assume that something is transparent enough because it has been discussed only in public channels, and someone yells at me for hypocrisy, I try to increase the distribution of that information to a level that people feel is appropriate. As DPL I would try to set a good example by not being a hypocrite about any of the things I think are important to Debian, and would try to inspire an atmosphere of more teamwork, cooperation, and empowerment. I think that this could be revitalizing. Alexander Reichle-Schmehl:

Suppose that you would not run for DPL: Who would you vote and why?

I am not sure of how I will be voting. Each of the candidates had said things that I like, and each of the candidates has said things that I dislike very much. I am choosing not to get into specifics here, because I do not consider it appropriate or ethical to try to affect other people's votes in that manner.

Serafeim Zanikolas:

With respect to attracting new contributors, please ponder the idea of a formal one-on-one mentoring scheme (as opposed to one-off interactions via d-mentors).

I see nothing particularly objectionable about this. A long time ago people were talking about replacing NM with a saner mentoring process, and I am certain that mentoring occurs unofficially. I see no reason that you could not set up a formal one-on-one mentoring infrastructure with or without the Project's blessing. Charles Plessy:

So my question to other candidates is simple: what is your opinion and program about membership?

I think that we have enough inequality in the project as it is. That is why I consider DM to be a bad thing, even though it has practical benefits. I think that NM is probably fundamentally broken, and I get a bit nervous when people are talking about increasing the amount of NM indoctrination or bureaucracy. I would be in favor of exploring the replacement of NM with some kind of mentorship-type process, though I would worry it would not scale. I would be in favor of exploring the replacement of NM with something like Lars's proposal a while back, though I would worry that it would encourage popularity contests and cliques and cabals. Raphael Hertzog:

1/ Do you believe that it's a good move to standardize our packaging tools? (example: debhelper is almost standard, quilt is gaining status of the standard patch system thanks to the new source format) 3/ Do you have any preference on the tools that we should try to standardize on (which source format/patch system, dh7/CDBS/yada/etc., VCS helper, etc.)? 4/ Organizing changes that have an impact on (a large part of all) the archive is very difficult: How can we change our processes so that doing/organizing such changes is less of a burden? 5/ I have the feeling that Debian is innovating less than it used to do. We are more often followers rather than leaders. Do you share that feeling? What shall we do to make that change?

1/ I think that we should standardize on dpkg-dev. If there are features which absolutely every package needs, it would seem the logical place to add them. 3/ Right now I wish everyone were using git, but I do not believe in forcing them. Of the available source formats, I like 3.0 (quilt) with no additional patch system, and no package helpers at all. I am not quite sure what a VCS helper is so I have no known preference to express. 4/ I am not sure whether or not what you are talking about should, in fact, be less of a burden, and why it should or should not, so I do not have a valid opinion on how to change the process. 5/ I do share that feeling. I think that sometimes we get bullied by Ubuntu when there are things we would do for our own benefit which would make their lives difficult. I think that people are generally resistant to change, even when it would be of little cost to them and great benefit to someone else. These problems are social and might be correctable with a better spirit of teamwork and cooperation. However, I do not think we should be innovating just for innovation's sake or to be known as the most innovative kid on the block. We should be making my favorite operating system.

Hector Oron:

Secondly, I was wondering how Debian could make it easier for people to contribute than other (derivatives and non-derivatives) distributions. I came up with a really nice draft howto[1] which I would like to bring up to your attention, so the basic question would be what do you think you could do to make contributions paths easier (take in account not all teams, groups follow such community guidelines)

Human beings are not computers, so I find that applying HOWTOs to them to be misguided at best. As for enforcing a set of arbitrary community guidelines, I would not do that. Frank Lin PIAT:

planet.d.o has became one of the most visible media for Debian, if not the most visible one. Do you think it is a good thing?

I consider it neutral. If people start thinking of blogs or microblogging as important though, I think we might have a problem. I am in favor of our informal policy to never post anything important on blogs unless it is merely a copy of something communicated properly on an official channel. This includes anything that would go into our packages. Consequently I do not think it a valuable goal to respect copyright law by enforcing DFSG-free licenses on blogs, whether they are aggregated or not. Kumar Appaiah:

One of the questions which I've not yet seen exactly in the discussions is on the transparency in the maintenance of non-core but "important" packages, such as python, wherein the maintenance of the package and policy (till a short while ago) has been, poor at best, and we've had near zero communication from the maintainer(s) for over a year. This has led some parts of the "community" (Debian Python, in this case) to knock the doors of the tech-ctte[1] (recommended reading, unless you have done so already).

I think that is a failure of the entire community that the situation has even come to this point. In other analogous situations, the package would have been hijacked by now and the situation resolved. I think it would be appropriate for the DPL either to step in and mediate situations like this before they get anywhere near the tech-ctte, or to delegate someone to do the same. I think it would be equally appropriate for the people involved to resolve this themselves. Of course all of this should be open.

I have written a tutorial on how to produce colored comic strip from script to finished image, using pencils, ink, paper, scanner, and the Gimp. It, of course, suffers from the fact that I am myself fairly new to this stuff, but there it is. I hope someone finds it useful.

I have been at Amazon.com for a very short while (I have only gotten one paycheck from them so far), but long enough for first impressions to have settled. Dress is casual, Parking is limited. Cafeteria food is merely OK, and is not free. There is a very flat structure at Amazon. The front line work is done by one-or-two pizza teams size measure by the number of large pizzas that can feed the team. Individual experiences with the company largely depend on what team you happen to end up with. I think I lucked out here. I get to work on interesting and challenging problems, at scales I had not experienced before. There is an ownership culture. Every one including developers get to own what they produce. You are responsible for our product down to carrying pagers in rotation with others on your team, so that there is someone on call in case your product has a bug. RC (or customer impacting) bugs result in a conference call being invoked within 10-15 minutes, and all kinds of people and departments being folded in until the issue is resolved. Unlike others, I find the operations burden refreshing (I come from working as a federal government contractor). On call pages are often opportunities to learn thing, and I like the investigation of the current burning issue du jour. I also like the fact that I get to be my own support staff for the most part, though I have not yet installed Debian anywhere here. While it seems corny, customer obsession is a concept that pervades the company. I find ti refreshing. The mantra that it s all about the customer experience is actually true and enforced. Whenever a tie needs to be broken on how something should work the answer to this question is usually sufficient to break it. Most other places the management was responsible for, and worried about budgets for the department this does not seem to be the case for lower to middle management here. We don t get infinite resources, but work is planned based on user experience, customer needs, and technical requirements, not following the drum beat of bean counters. The focus is on the job to be done, not the hours punched in. I can choose to work from home if I wish, modulo meetings (which one could dial in to, at a pinch). But then, I have a 5 mile, 12 minute commute. I have, to my surprise, started coming in to work at 7:30 in the morning (I used to rarely get out of bed before 9:30 before), and I plan on getting a bike and seeing if I can ride my bike to work this summer. All in all, I like it here.

RCBW - #25 Last (long) week has finally passed: first in Geneve visiting Gismo, then in Sierre/Crans-Montana to present a paper at SAC 2010, then back in Paris for half a day before a day in Bruxelles for the 2nd year Mancoosi project review. (And of course campaigning has always been going on ...) All went fine and I can finally relax a bit for a week-end back "home" (i.e. Paris). Regarding RCBW, it looks like that in the past 2 months I've stabilized around 3 issues per month, which makes me happy nevertheless. Without any further ado, here are this weekissue's squashes:

• Debian bug #570727 - xmldiff - fix tree comparison (on i386), patch by Daiki Ueno
• Debian bug #574640 - turbogears2 - ensure compatibility with new routes, patch by Piotr O arowski
• Debian bug #574083 - wwwoffle - add missing dep on net-tools, needed by init.d script
• Debian bug #555036 - bash-completion-lib - RM/RoQA/ROM (see Debian bug #575260)
• Debian bug #574228 - mediamate - request RM/RoQA (see Debian bug #575508)
• Debian bug #574025 - mathgl - switch to octave3.2 (bonus: QA upload w/ proper orphaning)
• Debian bug #482790 - elserv - fix emacs deps wrt current emacsen flavours (malus: fought with cdbs' DEB_AUTO_UPDATE_DEBIAN_CONTROL)

Random points:

• Up and downs in the "RCBW community": gregoa rock's (as usual) whereas Lucas is subverting the rules! (bad Lucas, bad).
• Some of the side comments by Gregor made me realize that I have probably chosen the wrong tagline/acronym for RCBW, as the point is not really keeping a sustained average (or feel bad about not keeping it), but rather doing that "constantly" in some available Debian time slots, as well as trying having others do the same.
• Clint has commented on BSPs also mentioning RCBW. (I mention en passant that I've never claimed RCBW to be innovative, as my kudos show; my memory is short though, I'll be happy to integrate the list with pointers to similar initiative more far in the past.) The idea of newbie/teaching-oriented BSPs is just wonderful, it only needs some motivated people to (continue) organizing them.

Note: this post written on March 19 for posting after we return. We arrived at Leipzig surprisingly about 5 minutes late on Wednesday morning. My friend Brad was at the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof (central stration) to meet us. As we walked through the city with him, he commented that I hadn t yet tried Currywurst, and there was a stand selling them with different levels of spiciness. I tried one and liked it; Terah was afraid to touch them. After a light lunch with Brad and Anna, we went back into town and saw the V lkerschlachtdenkmal (Monument to the Battle of the Nations). We were warned that it was weird and ugly. And when we arrived, I noticed that it was enormous. And, well, somewhat ugly. And, yes, weird. After that, we walked through the old trade fair grounds. Leipzig has a long history as a trade center, and after they built the new trade fair grounds, the old ones were reused for other things except for the old Soviet building, which is now both gaudy and abandoned. We picked up Fritzi, who is a very cute 4 years old, from preschool and returned to their house for supper. After that, Brad and I went back into town, intending to hear a reading at the old city pool. When we realized it was a different day, we walked around the city center for awhile and then had a beer at a yes combination cafe/laundromat. Thursday was our day to explore the city. Brad showed us a couple of buildings in the university, including the library, then dropped us off at St. Thomaskirche. That s the church where J. S. Bach was music director for many years, and was buried. Like so many, it was impressive in its height and history. Next we went to the Stasi museum. The Stasi were the feared and powerful East German secret police during the Communist times. The museum itself was housed in the former Stasi headquarters for Leipzig and was involved with the history of the overthrow of the Communists. The museum covered a lot of the history of the Stasi, including its frantic last days during the 1989 revolution. The level of spying on people was incredible and sophisticated, and they tried to destroy records as the overthrow of the government was imminent. One of the offices in the inner part of the building was left untouched from the Communist years, right down to the typewriter and coffee machine. After that, we went to the Altes Rathaus (old city hall or townhouse, built in 1556) to do a bit of shopping. Terah was wanting some souvenirs, and I had spotted a shop I thought she might like when walking through the city with Brad the night before. We had already bought some souvenirs at the Schloss Charlottenburg museum store in Berlin (some East German-style crosswalk fridge magnets, and a decorative egg), but wanted something a bit nicer for us and were on the lookout for gifts for others too. We wound up buying a wood carved church scene with a woven wheat tree for us, and another item for others. The shopkeeper spoke no English, and my German vocabulary is small, but we managed to communicate the question of whether or not she could wrap it up in a box for our trip home and she could, and did. Excellent. (I didn t know how to ask about box, but knew how to say that we were Americans, and with a fair bit of gesturing all around, managed to get the idea across.) Then we went in the Altes Rathaus itself, which was both a museum and an interesting cultural experience. We bought our tickets at the booth downstairs, then went upstairs to the entrance. We asked for the English audio guide, which is very common at museums in Germany. (They are small digital audio players that contain recorded information; each room or display has a number you can key in to hear about it in your own language.) We got it, and were told in incredible detail how to use it, even though they are quite easy to figure out and we had used them before. The museum employee told us where the audio tour starts, and in what order it usually goes, which was an effort for her given her limited English. But we all understood and went on our way. It wasn t even 5 minutes later when she had left her desk and came over to us. She was slightly alarmed at two things: one that we didn t have the volume at full blast (which was loud enough for the entire room to hear), and secondly that we weren t looking at the exhibits in the proper order. Never mind that it s easy enough to pull up the audio information about any room just by keying in the number posted in it, I guess. Anyhow, we sort of inwardly shrugged, let her turn the volume up to potentially disturbing the other visitors level, and went through the museum in the order she wanted us to. (Note that this wasn t a museum where there is a one-way flow of traffic or something; you walk into one exhibit, back to the main hall, and then pick your next one.) So we went through the rest of the museum with our English audioguide blaring throughout the large, echoing, wood rooms, feeling a bit rude to the other visitors (maybe 5 of them while we were there) due to its volume. Anyhow, the Altes Rathaus was beautiful and interesting, covering mainly the pre-industrial history of Leipzig. We learned about some of the guilds, the city treasury (vault), and where the town council/parliament met along with rich merchants. There were about as many museum guards as visitors there, and one or two of them sort of followed us around, pointing out the large and completely obvious signs with audio guide numbers in the rooms for us. They are serious about their audio guides in Leipzig. I m glad we went, and I m glad we had the experience we did, too. Terah told me later that she felt reprimanded about the audio guide and visiting order. My take on it was a bit different: the museum is impressive and interesting, but obviously not visited by tourists as much as museums in other cities, or even touristy sites like Thomaskirche in Leipzig. I think they they noticed two people, obviously very foreign (speaking only a little German, and with an American accent) with an interest in their city s history, and took pride in making sure we got the most of our visit and learned as much as possible about something they care about. Here is the main hall of the Altes Rathaus. We met up with Brad in a cafe near St. Thomaskirche for coffee and cake, then it was on to St. Nikolaikirche (the Church of St. Nicholas), the other large church in town. We stepped out of a passageway to face the large building, and walked in. The interior was decorated in pastels, and was also beautiful and historic. I can t get enough of that sort of building, I think. This building was especially important because it was the site of organizing for the Monday evening protests against the Communist government in 1989. People met at the church, sang a few hymns (to qualify it as a religious service, perhaps), then organized their protest for the evening. Sometimes they would wind through city streets and put flowers at the Stasi headquarters steps, and once the citizens actually overtook the Stasi headquarters. After awhile we grabbed a bit more for lunch: a pretzel for Terah and a Currywurst for me. (This one wasn t spicy and wasn t all that good.) Then we went to the GDR museum, which was large and interesting, but unfortunately for us, completely in German with no English guide available. That evening, we went to a Bach concert at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, celebrating Bach s 325th birthday. That was fun, and a neat experience with such good music in a very nice venue. The program included Bach s Suite for Orchestra no. 1 in C Major (BWV 1066), Concerto for Violin no. 2 in E major (BWV 1042), Ich habe genug (BWV 82), and Suite for Orchestra no. 4 in D major (BWV 1069). Sir Roger Norrington was conducting, and was rather fun and atypical to watch. He had the audience chuckling a few times with his minimalist conducting or perhaps his flamboyant gestures. Anyhow, the music was excellent and the tickets included free passage on the public transit system 3 hours before and after the concert a nice touch. Due to our schedule, we didn t spend much time with Fritzi, but we did get to play with her a bit. She likes to pretend to be a shopkeeper, and had her store all ready to lay out. We would ask her for some items, which she d put in a basket for us, and then of course there would be a child s twist: we d get our items, and she d pay us for them too. Terah and I brought some books for Fritzi. The particularly enjoyed Goodnight Moon because inside it is an picture of The Runaway Bunny, which she already had. Fritzi chose one of her books to give to Jacob it was a German book (Maulwurf) based on a Czech cartoon mole. That was nice of her, and Jacob really liked it (I ll write about that later). We had a good time in Leipzig, and I was getting fairly good at navigating downtown and with the trams and then, of course, it was time to move on. So Friday morning we caught our 7:50 train from the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof. We took the ICE train to Dresden, then walked a few feet to get onto the EC to Prague. That was a bit of a funny experience. The ICE trains are all sleek, modern, meticulously maintained, and the passengers tend to be very quiet. Talking is barely above a whisper, and people seem alarmed if their cell phone rings, even outside the quiet car. The EC passenger car appears to have been built, or last renovated, in the 1970s, and may have been Hungarian. The seats and curtains are old and faded; some of the seat backs have rips in the vinyl headrests. People were talking or eating loudly, in a very different setting than on the ICE train. As we rode along, we were on the right side the river Elbe for many miles. The scenery was beautiful, with small houses in the river valley, and the occasional house up in the hillside. At one point (a bit before we passed through K nigstein on the way to the Bad Schandau stop), we spotted what looked like an old walled city up on the hill. I figured out later that it was Festung K nigstein (K nigstein Fortress). Update: I forgot to mention a couple of things about Leipzig. One was our walk through a forest yes, a forest in the city. That was a nifty, quiet, and pleasant surprise. Secondly was seeing all the DDR apartment blocks, where the apartments evidently were quite literally blocks. It is interesting to see the Communist architecture.

Bernd Zeimetz:

From the other candidates I'd like to know their opinion and plans (if there are any) about license/copyright requirements in Debian.

I believe that intellectual property laws are wrong and should be abolished, so I am not particularly in favor of giving copyrights any more respect than necessary. However, I do not think that Debian is the place to undermine copyright, and that we should attempt to maintain standards which not only protect people from legal liability, but are also in the best interests of our developers and users. I do not know what level of nitpicking best serves our developers and users. A GR seems like an interesting way of determining at part of that. Anthony Towns:

What's your estimate of the current number of Debian users?

I do not have one. While I do acknowledge that the number of users does affect us in terms of potential contributor base, and scaling issues (including bug reporting), I do not think that the exact number is important at all to what we do. Also I would hope that whichever DPL is elected chooses to focus on practical matters rather than academic exercises. Kurt Roeckx:

I think that one of issues we have is that there is alot of work to be done by some teams, some of them even regularaly mail that they need more members, but they seem to have a hard time keeping the numbers up, burning the other team members out. What are your ideas to make sure those teams keep running?

• Diffusion of power throughout the rest of the project
• Delegation of people who do not seek to be core team members if they have the time, are willing, and would make good additions.

Note that I do not think it appropriate either for core teams to choose their own members or to reserve the privilege of demanding that a new person be able to work with them in a certain way. An ideal team member should be able to work with anyone. If the existing delegates are unable to work with new people, perhaps they are not ideal team members. Charles Plessy:

During the discussions that started after the GR, I suggested that the GR proposer should have more control about the options put to the vote. In particular, it would be useful if he can refuse an option that would disequilibrate the voting system. That would make him responsible for the success of the GR: discarding a popular option is taking the risk that the whole GR is refused and the option is accepted as a separate GR, which is the kind of public failure that I expect that people will avoid.

I do not think GR proposers should have any special control over general resolutions beyond what is Constitutionally granted at present. In fact, I would prefer if people did not try to propose multiple options or strategically craft ballots for any purpose. To me, the only honest method is to propose the outcome one genuinely wants to win, and let our strange and special brand of parliamentary procedure take care of the rest. As for the supermajority issue, I am not a huge fan of political word games. Debian distributes non-free software. We have a non-free section within our normal infrastructure, and while it is segregated and does not receive quite the same love that main does, it is still very much part of what we work on and distribute from our official infrastructure. So there is no amount of word lawyering, cognitive dissonance, or NM indoctrination that can make me believe that it is an honest statement to say that non-free is not part of Debian. Likewise I do not believe in redefining success or the meanings of Foundation Documents. I do not think that we should allow ourselves to pass any kind of magical resolution that contravenes the DFSG or Social Contract without actually modifying them. That seems utterly absurd to me, and I have seen what has become of the United States government.

When I first converted my journal from Movable Type, I converted all the comments with it and planned on adding comment support, as a long-term goal. But I've increasingly found that not having comment support is nice, and recently after reading several different takes on this topic, I've decided to take this off my long-term to-do list. A point made by both people involved with sites with strong commenting communities (Making Light and John Scalzi's Whatever) and others who have turned off comments is that maintaining a good comment community in the face of significant interest is a lot of work. One of my goals right now is to do less work that isn't directly interesting so that I can reserve my energy for things that I consider more core. I've now added a link to my explanation for why there are no comments to all of my journal posts and indices. A few more thoughts in addition to the ones there: I've been reading a lot of comments recently, mostly from following the debate in the US about health care reform, and I've been struck at how rarely comments are meaningfully addressed to the original post author or show intent to participate in a discussion. On political topics, most comments appear instead to be taking advantage of the comment platform to post one's own opinion in public, sometimes with the additional gratification of forcing that opinion to show up in the space of someone who obviously disagrees. I'm not interested in participating in or enabling that. If you want to make a controversial statement or take a political stance, own your own words and take that stance in your own space. I also suspect that one of the reasons why this happens so much in comments is that comments are considerably more anonymous than journals. Even if one's journal isn't openly connected with one's real name and life, like mine is, there is some persistance and history to most journals. I'm a strong believer in anonymous speech for a variety of different reasons, but one of those reasons is not to permit drive-by content-free attacks on other people. And that's the standard behavior in both political blogs and comment pages on newspaper sites. The anonymous speech I have the most respect for is the type that creates and builds reputation for an anonymous nom de plume, presenting a consistent public image and taking responsibility for one's previous beliefs. This isn't what happens in comment threads. Finally, I consider all of my web site, including my journal, to be to some extent permanent. I mostly do not take down pages, and I wouldn't want to take down comment threads. But for the most part comments, particularly on controversial topics, don't fit into that model. There's nothing wrong with that, but it makes me want to redirect them to a more appropriate forum. If I felt like there was some lack in the world of places where people could anonymously publish controversial opinions, I might feel more obligation to provide one in my journal, but I don't. It's also not something that I'm good at; other people are doing a much better job. So I'm going to stay out of hosting that type of on-line discussion and leave it to people with more interest and time. I welcome e-mail replies to journal posts, and have had several good discussions in those e-mail exchanges. That's what works best for me.

Gerfried Fuchs:

I have a question to the candidates: History has shown that DPLs more or less disappear not too long after their period or at least reduce their visible efforts immensly. I wonder where you see the reasons for this trend, what your impression is about it and wether you try to follow that trend or what you will try to do to not have this happen to you, too.

I think that some DPLs are overwhelmed by the amount of requests they receive, and more importantly, are overwhelmed by the feeling of futility from perceiving that it is impossible to fix the things that they had intended to fix. So, unless there are other factors I would need to adapt to, I would try to discourage the number of private requests, and to not lose hope and faith in Debian. I imagine that delegation could be very useful in both these areas. Gunnar Wolf:

What would be different if there was no leader? Where would the project lose more? Would it gain in some aspect?

The DPL is theoretically one of the most important checks against the power of delegates. The absence of a DPL would thus increase any power imbalance in the the project, and likely to make the fighting between core teams even more political and harmful. Communities and teams are destabilized by egos because people stop paying attention to their healthy shared goals and the people around them and instead focus on their own individual success. So if the project were to achieve some kind of anarchic utopia where this is not an issue, I could imagine that the DPL would be the last remaining ego threat, and removing that role would make things better. However, we are nowhere near that now, and I think the DPL can do more good on this front. Yavor Doganov:

What do you think the project should do (with or without or regardless of your help as potential DPL) to preserve this goodness (maximum supported architectures) for as long as possible? Do you think it is "goodness" or you're in the "good riddance" camp?

I definitely think that one of our strengths is being available on a large number of architectures, and beyond that, providing nearly identical experiences on each of those platforms. I am saddened when porters or package maintainers make decisions to stray from the norm on a particular architecture, because I truly enjoy the consistency. I have run Debian on i386, sparc, hppa, powerpc, amd64, and in the few cases where something was different, I found it irksome. However, there is definitely a point where the cost in maintaining a release architecture far exceeds the benefit, and at that time I think we must regretfully bid it farewell. So you are right that porters are a precious resource, and as DPL I would try to reduce their attrition. Speaking as a former porter, I found the unresponsiveness and uncooperativeness of certain buildd maintainers (especially when not porters themselves) to be extremely demotivating. I would try to find a way mitigate porters being demotivated in such a way.

Marc Haber:

Do you see the diminishing care for our Core infrastructure as a problem? Do you have any idea how do sensibilize our new blood for the fact that "new packages" doesn't help Debian if our Core stuff is diminishing? I know that this is not exactly within the power of the DPL, but do you think that you, as DPL, can help speeding up Core development again?

Note: "core infrastructure" here refers to dpkg and apt. I am seeing numerous projects across the free software world struggle with a lack of contributors, and wonder why they cannot get anyone to help them. In most cases, I think there are hints about why people might feel disenfranchised by a particular development process, and in most cases, I think the people in charge are mostly unwilling to change the way that they have been doing things for years and years just to accommodate potential contributors. I think this is particularly true of projects where there is a dictatorship or a single gatekeeper for all VCS repository commits. Frequently these things seem to work themselves out after a long time. Old people leave, new people come in. Sometimes it is peaceful, sometimes it is violent. Rarely does it result in structural improvements. I do not know why there is lack of manpower on dpkg and apt right now. I know I tried to make a change to dpkg a few months ago and was unable to do so, partly due to the codebase and partly due to important information existing only in Guillem's mind. In the end, I had to just wait for Guillem to do it, which he helpfully did, and now we have libdpkg-dev in experimental, with one reverse build-dep. Had I been able to make the change myself, it is unclear whether I would have made any other contributions; that was the only itch I needed scratched, and I have plenty of other things to work on. So even though I found it near-impossible to contribute to dpkg in this way, I don't think that I'm excluded. So as DPL I would first try to determine why there might not be enough contributors to dpkg and apt, or why the existing contributors are not performing up to your standards. This could be an instance where I would solicit private communication from people who might have potentially-valuable information that they do not wish to communicate in public for fear of hurting someone's feelings. This does not mean that I would try to resolve these issues behind the scenes, because I consider that to be a dangerous and potentially-harmful tactic. Given a reasonable theory about why the problem exists, I would then proceed to encourage the resolution of that problem. I also think that some package maintenance teams may share some issues with some core teams and even the project at large, and addressing the more general problems could lead to relief in many areas. Specifically I would name problems related to ego and teamwork, which is a theme on which I plan to elaborate later.

Russ Allbery:

Do you have any thoughts about how to resolve release issues with less hurt and negative impact to the project all around?

I sure do. There has been a trend over many years to conflate the release management role with many other things: QA work, buildd work, ftpmaster-like work (I mean britney here), and in some cases I would even say DPL work. If we relegate release management to a strictly managerial role, I am certain that much of the stress, tension, and burnout will be mitigated. This means putting more access into the hands of many people, which is a good thing anyway. A release manager's job should be to say when a release is ready, what should and should not be in that release, and potentially some coordination with other developers, who are almost their equals. There will still be social conflict when the spirit of teamwork and cooperation is overcome by other factors, but I can conceive of a point where even that would not happen. Raphael Hertzog:

What do you think of this and would you be ready to withdraw a delegation for a delegate that behaved badly towards another DD (even outside of his delegated role), that has been warned once by you and that did it again later on? Do you think we can draft a code of conduct for Debian and do you think you can ensure that it would be respected by delegates?

I do not think that any long-term delegations should exist. I think that if they do, we have a structural problem which should be addressed in another way. Therefore I do not think it should be a big deal to withdraw a delegation for any legitimate reason, and if we are trying to force people to behave better (by a definition I agree with), then it seems reasonable to withdraw a delegation for bad behavior. Of course I would include ignoring people and having secret meetings in Vancouver as bad behavior, so that is perhaps not what you are getting at. I am not particularly in love with any formal codes of conduct, but I do think it is reasonable to hold DPL delegates or anyone who holds privileged positions of power to a much higher standard of behavior than the standard DD. With power should come responsibility, and all that. Presumably I would not delegate anyone who would place self and ego ahead of the well-being of the project, and presumably if there were a formal code of conduct or set of guidelines for delegates, those principles would align.

Dmitrijs Ledkovs:

Sometimes technical Debian discussions (mailing lists, bug reports, blog posts, etc.) become personal flame-wars. Do you think current frequency/amount of heated discussions is acceptable for the Debian project? What would you do to reduce those?

I do think that the current frequency/amount of heated discussion, as I perceive it, is acceptable for the project. I think that it is acceptable because it demonstrates that we have problems, and we should not be trying to hide problems. A code of conduct, or CoC, is something that treats symptoms but not causes. As DPL I would encourage the identification and resolution of the root causes. Why are people so angry? Why is there lack of respect? Why are people not asking these questions? In any healthy, functional organization, there are shared goals. Shared goals, obviously, contribute to a feeling of unity of purpose, and perhaps a vague and general direction to follow. Another thing is the spirit of cooperation and teamwork, and perhaps this is most important. Such spirit does not flourish when there are power inequalities or hierarchical structures. Such spirit does not flourish when you say that it is reasonable to make someone ask for permission to do things that anyone should be able to do. Such spirit does not flourish when things like ego and greed get in the way. Anyone can claim to be a team player, but it is rare that I actually encounter one. Paul Wise:

Which project and external Debian-related communications media do you follow? and contribute to? As well as a general list I'm interested in specific lists (for eg #debian, #debian-devel, debian-devel@l.d.o, debian-project@l.d.o, the Hardware forum on forums.d.n etc). How do you see those two lists changing if you become DPL? Which of these communications media do you feel is important for the DPL to read?

I am subscribed to over 50 Debian mailing lists. I do not follow them all. I am currently on #debian-glibc, #debian-devel, #debian-women, #spi, #alioth, #debian.de, #debian-devel.de, #debian-devel-fr, #debian-release, #debian-kernel, #debian-private, #debian-dak, #debian-devel-changes, #debian-ftp, #debian-buildd, #debian-games, #debian-dpkg, and #debian-bugs. I do not follow them all. I joined #debian-admin after a misunderstanding which led me to believe that it had become open and transparent, and was kicked out after about a week. I do not read any web forums, as I find them to be unbearable. As for external media, I occasionally read LWN. The only specific change I would anticipate after becoming DPL is the addition of leader@debian.org. I feel that it is important for the DPL to have a grasp of what is going on in the project, but I would not cite anything other than debian-devel-announce@lists.debian.org to be required reading. As for tones and perceptions on these various communications channels, I cannot say that external perception is entirely unimportant. However, if Debian is made the best it can be, I think external perception will become positive or not matter very much. So unless there are specific public relations needs arising out of a particular incident, I imagine that I would prefer to focus on improving Debian rather than improving Debian's external image.

GNOME's current sysadmin team is entirely voluneer-based, but as they are having problems finding enough (trusted) volunteers they are looking at hiring a part-time sysadmin. From looking at the GNOME wiki, it looks like they have had a meeting about the shortage of sysadmins. Citing from the minutes

The biggest problem that we've always had with the maintaining an active sysadmin team is the need for trust. If somebody shows up and wants to help out with a GNOME coding project, then it's easy to build up trust over time. Suggest a project, have the person send patches, review the patches, if the patches are good, eventually give them direct commit access. However, for sysadmin work, we get a lot of people who want to help out, but it's very hard for someone to contribute without being given a "dangerous" level of access to the GNOME systems.

Without having looked very hard, I would guess at the GNOME infrastructure being about as open as most proprietary software projects. There's no way for me, as a third party to take a look at their infrastructure, take a look at their ticket backlog and submit patches for problems. Similarly, their nagios setup is behind a password prompt, so there's no way for me to look at what services often have performance problems, suggest new monitors or point out any servers or services that are not monitored. I'm not saying this to pick on GNOME, and as I'll touch on below, they do seem to mostly do the right thing, and as one of the Freedesktop.org sysadmins, I know we're not any better at least not yet. One way to make it at least somewhat easier to contribute and get involved is to use a tool like Chef or Puppet and publishing the recipes. This won't magically make everything transparent, but it'll be a big step up. Ideally, the recipes should be complete enough that you can bootstrap a working system from them and so easier reproduce the infrastructure and any problems. It seems like GNOME is using puppet, but I couldn't find the recipes. Moving a complete infrastructure from something managed by hand to something managed using automation tools is a fairly big and involved process. However, if you're serious about getting more people involved in your sysadmin team, I think it's one of the more reasonable ways to opening up. It also means that when one of your servers is stolen, catches fire or suffers other catastrophic failure you can rebuild the service much quicker. My last point is to open up your ticket tracker. Most tickets aren't security sensitive, so provide a way for people to mark those tickets that are sensitive as such and make the rest public. The GNOME wiki makes this a bit confusing as it talks a bit about RT, but it seems like they actually use bugzilla for sysadmin tickets and just hide security-sensitive ones.

Raphael Hertzog:

Imagine a DD contacts you, she wants to setup an infrastructure to finance Debian related projects (i.e. paying people to enable them to work on the projects that they'd like to do for Debian) but she wants to avoid the main mistakes made during Dunc-Tank; in her project: - everybody can propose projects to be financed - the projects to be financed are selected by the Debian developers and by the donors - eligible projects can only concern new developements and not recurring tasks

I am imagining that this contact took place in public. I see very few legitimate and good reasons to approach the DPL privately, and as DPL I would encourage people to to work toward transparency unless there were very good reasons to do otherwise. I would begin by telling her about the beauty of Debian as a gift economy community, and point out how great it is that I do not need to pay people to respond to my bug reports, apply my patches, release new versions, or develop any code not funded by corporate sponsors. I would recount my recent experience with a different free software community, where there was much talk of the motivational power of money, and how best to link PayPal to bug tracking systems and write a boilerplate email response template suggesting a donation of $5,000 to help facilitate the development of any feature requests. I would confess my suspicion that if this trend continues, any goodness in that community will be driven elsewhere, and the gift economy, which I believe to be a very important basis for free software, will be severely undermined. When I have completed my feeble attempt at political persuasion, if she is still firm and stubborn in her desire to proceed (and when monetary greed is involved, I expect this kind of stubbornness), I would suggest the following points:

• Keep it as far away from Debian as possible: if these projects can be accomplished upstream or externally, it is better for Debian if done that way.
• Ensure that the people saying that the work is necessary are not the same as the people who are the only ones with access to do the work and thus the only people getting paid, because when those decisions are arbitrary it reeks of corruption.
• There should be as little subjectivity as possible. It should be utterly clear when someone has completed the work and earned the monetary prize. There should be no discretion on the part of persons with privileged positions in Debian, especially if friendships or other personal relationships are involved.

Then I would ask her once again not to do anything like this. Dmitrijs Ledkovs:

Please finish "In ten years I'd like Debian...."

In ten years I'd like Debian to still be my favorite operating system. In ten years I'd like Debian to be egalitarian and cooperative. In ten years I'd like Debian to be completely free software, without a non-free section.

A while back, I promised some people that I would answer the campaign questions on -vote despite not being on the ballot. Many things came up to pre-empt me, including a short-lived surprise stint on the Release Team. I am still a bit behind on bug reports and such, but it might be inappropriate to start answering after the official campaign period has closed, so here is a start. J rg Jaspert:

Do you plan on taking on a "2IC" or a team?

I do not. I do not believe that either option is a good idea to begin with, and even if I did, I would not be in favor of undermining the Constitution by making an end run around it in this fashion. Martin Zobel-Helas:

The Debian Project receives quite a number of monetary donations as well as contributions in kind via several umbrella organization like SPI, ffis, debian.ch, etc. a) What do you think are valid goals to spend this money on? b) How would you think is a valid way to thank (hardware) contributors? b) What qualifies a contributor to become a "Debian Partner"? What qualifies a "Debian Partner"?

a) I think that it is important not to spend money on things that only benefit a single person or small group, such as ex-post facto legal defenses, core team travel expenses, or equipment for select persons. I would consider valid expenditures to be only those that directly benefit Debian as a whole. b) Ideally, contributors, whether they be hardware donors or developers or anything else, would be motivated solely out of doing good for the project and community, and not be seeking recognition, praise, power, or favors in return. However, since it is considered acceptable to have other motives, I think it fairly appropriate to display logos and give recognition on the Partners page. b) If I had my druthers, I would reserve the term Partners for those organizations who were fully aligned with us in a common goal. In the absence of such, though, the current usage seems fine. Paul Wise:

How much time do you currently devote to Debian? How will that amount of time change for the DPL term? How will you balance your DPL time and time for other Debian activities.

My time commitment varies due to a combination of external factors and Debian-related motivation. Since I have been slowly scaling back my involvement over the past several years, and unless you assume that the DPL role is inherently demotivating, I would presume to be spending about the same time or more on Debian if elected. I will be orphaning some more packages after squeeze is released, regardless of the outcome of the election. I would definitely not run if I doubted my ability to muster up the time and energy to be a good and effective DPL for the full length of the term.

Note: This post was written in March 14-15 and posted after our return. When I think about L beck, the first thing that strikes me is the feeling of history underfoot. It struck me most when we set foot inside the Marienkirche. I had never quite felt a wave of a feeling of stepping back in time like that before. The stones on the floor were uneven and imperfect. L beck has had a wet and snowy winter, so the city had spread sand everywhere: sidewalks and roads. Walking into any grand church, I could hear the sound of sand under the shoes of everyone nearby, and feel it under my own shoes. I think I will long associate with L beck the feeling of walking into a grand old church, looking up at the top of the old building at seemingly impossible heights, while feeling the grit of sand and uneven stone beneath my feet. Marienkirche isn t perfect, like some American churches I ve been in, such as the Basilica of Notre Dame. It doesn t have a lot of gold, either, and both of these attributes are wonderful. Look at a column of bricks, and you can see that each brick isn t exactly like its neighbor, and the entire column isn t perfectly straight. Lots of things in L beck are so old that they aren t perfectly straight, and it made me think that our American notion of always having to fix such things might be somewhat off sometimes. Look up, and you see the frescos from the 1300s, revealed after many years after the building was struck by an allied bombing raid in 1942. This heavily damaged the building and knocked down plaster from the walls and ceiling, revealing the old artwork. Many parts of Marienkirche were lost as a result of the bombing, which perhaps adds to its slightly sparse and ancient feel. The church bells were sadly melted and crashed to the ground due to the bombing, and have been left exactly where they fell as a memorial. Look down, and you see the uneven floor, and the concrete slabs above where important people were buried under the floor an attribute common to many of the churches we visited. It was common to see dates of graves from the 1600s and 1700s, though in some places it would go as far back as the 900s. The main part of the church has no heating or cooling, and visiting it on a day just a bit above freezing adds to the feeling of, well, old. Marienkirche has to be my favorite sight in L beck. Walking around the city, I get a similar feel. Many streets and sidewalks are made of stone. The streets that weren t damaged in the war have rows of beautiful old facades. Walk down many streets, and every so often I d see a little tunnel ( just wide enough for a coffin ) that goes under the street-facing houses to a nice little inner courtyard. These are open to the public, but tend to be very quiet and somewhat private. In the courtyard are smaller houses, which would have originally been used by the less wealthy. We also saw the L beck Dom (cathedral), which had a small museum about the destruction due to the Royal Air Force bombing in 1942. It was very sad to see the photo of the Dom in ruins, still smoking, even now. I can only imagine what it must have felt like to residents of L beck to wake up to see many of their priceless centuries-old landmarks and places of worship so horribly destroyed and all of this for little strategic purpose really focused on the morale of the enemy civil population . It s sad that the allies would do such a short-sighted and terrible thing. Europeans have long had to live with the legacy of war upon war, while we Americans have rarely had to see the consequences of war up close. I think it would be good for more of us to visit these sites and come up face to face with what a bomb can do, and then perhaps we will be more judicious with them in the future. Shifting gears now to where we stayed: Andreas & Sigrid, with whom we stayed, have a beautiful 500-year-old house, with lots of original wood beams exposed, and some very old paintings on the walls and ceilings. Nearby were excellent bakeries and a chocolate shop. Terah and I visited it today and bought some very good chocolate. And this brings me to the second thing I ll remember: Andreas & Sigrid s children, Lukas and Rahel. Now, Terah knows no German, I know only a little bit, and the children know no English. So it was a bit slow getting to know each other to start out, but we managed to work around the communication barrier and had a great time. Terah played board games with Rahel, while with me, she kept inventing games to play: hiding somewhere, saying Hallo! , and laughing at how many unsuccessful attempts I might make to find her. I showed Lukas the camera on my Droid, which he used a lot, though a racing game on Terah s iPod Touch was more exciting. They both enjoyed looking at videos of American trains a bit, but especially pictures of our house and yard with Jacob and Oliver. They tried to teach me the German words for things, and also made futile attempts to correct my pronunciation! When we were leaving today, Rahel came over and gave me a kiss on the hand, then the same to Terah s hand, then a little kiss on one of our suitcases. It was touching and sweet. This was one of those experiences no guidebook prepared me for, and no tour bus would have provided. It is something neat to make friends with children despite the large language barrier. On to the rest of the visit We had arrived a little late into Hamburg. After getting our bags and some Euros at an ATM, the next step was to find the bus to L beck. No signs for it were evident, so I found an information desk. The person at the desk was carrying on a conversation in German with the person ahead of me in line. I figured an information desk person in a busy airport would speak English, and was all ready to ask Sprechen Sie Englisch? , but when I walked up, he got a polite smile, and said, Good morning! How can I help? Guess I m obvious. He directed me to the bus, gave me a brochure about it, and told me what time it would leave. Terah and I found the spot to wait, and for a moment I stepped inside the airport terminal. Terah won t let me forget that someone came up to her and asked a question in German, whereas I was spoken to in English. Anyhow, we found the bus, managed to communicate with the driver that doesn t speak English, and sat next to the friendly person that was talking to Terah. He turned out to be a violin player from Munich, and we had a great conversation for the next hour he asking questions about the USA, us asking questions about Germany and Munich. At one point, he commented, You two are so open minded and you re also Americans! He sounded surprised. We exchanged email addresses at the train station. Andreas found us there, and we walked through the city to his house, with him pointing out the sights along the way. L beck is a beautiful city, and though it was damaged in World War II, much of the really old parts still remain. The famous Holstentor Gate has a museum inside, which was fascinating to visit. On Sunday, we went to church with the family we were staying with, Andreas helpfully translating for us. There I met a British Python programmer, which was fun. His wife is a social worker, which was fun for Terah. Monday it was time to get on the train to Berlin. We again walked through a cold and rainy city to the Hauptbahnhof, ready to head to Berlin. There we got on a train to Hamburg, then an ICE train to Berlin. Despite having just a few minutes for a connection in Hamburg, it all went perfectly smoothly. The train left Leipzig about 10 seconds late the clock inside turned over to the minute, then the doors closed and we were off. Impressive. Note: the rest of my photos from L beck are available on Flickr.

The federated authentication bar BOF will be held tonight at 9 PM US Pacific time in the Manhattan room at the IETF 77 meeting.. Here is information for participation. Reading List

• Use case/briefing paper
• EAP GSS-API Mechanism draft
• RADIUS SAML attributes draft
• sstc-saml-binding-aaa-draft-00
• sstc-saml-eapgss-sso-draft-00
• Feasibility analysis of the approach
• Brief overview

Remote Participation

• Join our audio stream during the session
• Join our jabber chat room at moonshot@conference.jabber.postel.org

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