A couple of days ago, AO3 reached 1 million fanworks in 14,353 fandoms. The AO3 is an archive of fanfiction for multiple fandoms, founded and run by a non-profit organization, Organization for Transformative Works with the aim of "providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms." The code behind AO3 is open source, their servers run Debian and they even have a Diversity Statement! How cool is that? :) And, well, there's also the fact that...

"[...] the Archive is one of a very small number of open-source projects founded and largely staffed by women, another contribution fans have made to the internet as a whole. Many women who were not previously involved in technology have learned new skills in the name of fannish activities, and the AO3 is proud to stand as a shining example of this growth."

So, congratulations AO3!

[...] this is a great example of overcoming something that we call "problem A, problem B" paradox.
So you've got a group of people coming together, and they're all trying to solve the same problem (problem A) and they're really passionate about it. And then, you've got this problem B thing, which is that you got a bunch of people with different views.
And they may seem to be conflicting, and it seems like a paradox: the same differences that we need to solve the problem are getting in our way. But if you think about it as a paradox, you can get through it.
You think: OK, we've got all these differences. You have to identify the differences that actually are going to move us forward and those that are getting in our way.
And the differences that are getting in your way, set them aside. Push them off to the side and focus on the ones that are helping you move forward.
Kathryn Jablokow Well, I noticed that at first everybody was saying "Yes, but this is my idea".
And as we got closer and closer together, it became "Yes, and".
Jack Matson

(Quotes from a lecture about "Collaboration skills", part of the Creativity, Innovation and Change course on Coursera) IMO this is an important lesson to learn if you want to work effectively in a community project like Debian.
We talk much about diversity, and the added value of diversity in our project.
But diversity also means that to converge towards consensus is difficult and requires a specific set of best practices. A little thing like saying "Yes and" instead of "Yes but" could be of help. Words definitely matter.

Today is Ada Lovelace Day:

"Ada Lovelace Day is about sharing stories of women - whether engineers, scientist, technologists or mathematicians - who have inspired you to become who you are today. The aim is to create new role models for girls and women in these male-dominated fields by raising the profile of other women in STEM". source

To celebrate, we asked to some of the "women behind Debian" to share their stories with us. Enjoy! Ana Guerrero Lopez (ana) Who are you? I'm a 30-something years old geek. I'm from Andalusia, Spain but live in France. What do you do in Debian? I work mostly on my packages, in sponsoring new people's packages and in this very blog you're reading now. I also maintain an unofficial Google+ page about Debian. At $PAID job, I work in an internal Debian distribution so from time to time, I get the opportunity to contribute back some of the stuff we do there. How and why did you start contributing to Debian? I started using Debian around 2003 switching from Mandrake. I was a happy Debian user when the Debian Women project started in the summer 2004. When I saw the project announced, I asked myself why I wasn't contributing to Debian and the rest is history... in a couple of weeks it'll be my 7 years DD-versary! If for some reason you want a longer reply to this question, read here. Beatrice Who are you? I am a PhD student with a degree in Biology. I am a computer fan since my first C64 and I am a self-taught computer geek wanna-be. And I am a bug fan - not software bugs, real bugs :) What do you do in Debian? I work on translations - doing the translation work itself, but also reviewing other translators' work and helping in coordinating the translation effort. How and why did you start contributing to Debian? I started using Linux because I liked the idea of an open source operative system based on collaboration and I began reviewing open source software translations. Since my first Linux system was Debian Potato and I sticked to Debian ever since, it only seemed natural to focus my translation work on Debian. Christine Caulfield Who are you? My name is Christine Caulfield. My day job is principal software engineer at Red Hat working on the cluster infrastructure components corosync & pacemaker. Outside computing I'm a musician and sound engineer. I play violin with lots of technology attached, and love avant garde music. What do you do in Debian? I'm not that active on Debian any more due to pressure of time, and maturity of the packages I work on. I currently maintain the, little-used, DECnet userspace packages and the, even less used I suspect, mopd bootloader. I used to maintain lvm2 for a while but dropped that a few years ago. How and why did you start contributing to Debian? My initial reasons for joining Debian were slightly selfish, to find a home for the DECnet project that I was heavily involved in at the time. I was a keep Debian user and people wanted a distribution where the software was easy to set up. DECnet is quite complicated for users to configure, being a totally independant networking stack to IP and so OS support is needed. Debian seemed like the logical place to make this happen. As mentioned above I got quite involved for a time and maintained other packages too. I picked up lvm2 because I was on the lvm2 dev team at work in Red Hat and as it was a new package at that time I seemed a logical choice. Elena Grandi (valhalla) Who are you? I'm a 30-something years old geek and Free Software enthusiast from Italy. What do you do in Debian? I'm currently maintaining a few packages (2 python modules and a python program) as a sponsored uploader; I'm also slowly looking around for other things to do (by preference technical, but not limited to packaging), with the aim to spend more time contributing to Debian. How and why did you start contributing to Debian? For a while I had being distro-hopping between "fun" distributions (the ones that break now and then) on the desktop while using Debian stable on the home server and in chroots. I was already doing marginal contributions to those distributions, where finding stuff that was missing was easy, but my perception as a stable user was that Debian was already working fine and probably didn't really need any help. Then I started to socialize on IRC with some DDs and DMs, and realized that my perception was superficial and that in reality there were dark holes in the depths of the archive where Evil festered and prospered and... ok, sorry, I got carried away :) Anyway, since I was actually using Debian more and more I decided to start contributing: I read documentation, I attended the useful IRC sessions on #debian-women and decided that it was probably best not to add new stuff, but look for things that I used and that needed help. Then nothing happened for a while, because finding stuff that doesn't work is hard (at least on my mostly textual systems). Then one day I was trying to write a python script that needed to verify gpg signed messages; it had to run on my Debian server, so I was trying to use python-pyme and its documentation was painful to use, while I remembered an earlier attempt using python-gnupg that was much more pythonic, but not available in Debian. In a fit of anger I decided to forgo all of my good intentions and actually add a new package: I checked the sources for problems, packaged, sent it to mentors@d-o, got reviews, fixed problems, resent and finally got sponsored and well, everything started. Francesca Ciceri (madamezou) Who are you? I'm Francesca, a 30-something Italian graduated in Social Sciences. What do you do in Debian? I'm a (non uploading) Debian Developer since 2011 and have been DPN editor, press officer, webmaster for www.debian.org and translator for the Italian l10n team. Recently, due to time constraints, I had to reduce my involvement and now only work on two things: writing/editing articles for bits.debian.org together with Ana Guerrero, and creating subtitles for the DebConf talks, in the DebConf Subs team. How and why did you start contributing to Debian? Basically thanks to the sudden abundance of free time - due to an health problem - and the desire to give something back to this wonderful operating system. After that, I found out that Debian is not only a great OS but also a very special community. Today, some of my dearest friends are people I met through Debian. :) Laura Arjona Who are you? I live in Madrid (Spain), and work as IT Assistant in the Technical University of Madrid (UPM). I'm married and I have a 4-years-old son. What do you do in Debian? In 2012 I started to clean spam and to translate Debian web pages into Spanish. I also follow the work of the web and publicity team, I hope I'll get more involved there too. And of course, I'm in Debian Women :) How and why did you start contributing to Debian? I'm using Debian at work since 2007 (servers), and in my desktops since 2010. I like very much that it is a community distro and I wanted to participate. I was already doing translations in other (small) free software projects, so I began here too. The Debian-Women list, the planet, and people in identi.ca helped me to learn a lot and feel part of the community even when I was not contributing yet. M nica Ram rez Arceda (monica) Who are you? My name is M nica Ram rez Arceda and I am an enthusiast of free software and sharing knowledge cultures: for me it's a kind of philosophy of life. I studied Maths a long time ago but ended up working as a developer for some years. Now I'm working as an IT teacher. What do you do in Debian? Debian is a huge project, so you can help in various scopes. Mainly, I work on packaging, fixing wnpp bug inconsistencies in BTS and helping in spam cleaning of the mailing lists. But I also enjoy doing some non-technical work from time to time: the project I am just now involved is organizing, with the rest of Debian Catalan community, a local team to propose Barcelona as the venue for a minidebconf where all the speakers will be women. How and why did you start contributing to Debian? In 2000 I discovered Free Software world and I fell deeply in love with its philosophy. Since then, I've been trying to do my best in different activities, like spreading the word, giving free courses, helping collectives and friends in technical stuff (from installing Debian to developing some helping apps for them)... but two years ago I was looking forward to join a free software project and I decided to try Debian, since it has been my first and only distro in my day-to-day life for about ten years. So, I wanted to give back Debian all what it had offered to me, but.... I thought I couldn't (hey, Debian is for real hackers, not for you little ant!), but I started to adopt some orphaned packages, do some QA uploads, fix some RC bugs, talk with some Debian Developers that helped me and encouraged me more than I expected, I traveled to my first Debconf... And one thing takes you to the other, and on March 2012 I became a DD. Now, I'm glad to see that everything that frightened me is not so scary :-)

Recently, I've been attending a training course in Moldova about the representation of gender in the media and the influence on society of gender stereotypes.
The course was organized by Inesa Lupu, of Invento and financed by the UE as part of the Youth in Action program. It was the first time, for me, in this kind of international project and it was, in a word, fantastic.
Among the participants, there were people from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Italy, Latvia, Moldova and Slovenia.
That meant a great mix of cultures, languages and experiences.
And that was the key, in my opinion, of the success: coming from different countries and different social and cultural contexts meant that we were able to have a very broad and diverse point of view on the problem of gender stereotypes. So, here's some highlights on what we discussed. The media representation of gender (aka: gender issues are not only women issues) Tough Guise by Jackson Katz is a interesting documentary about the way the modern society - particularly in the US - defines masculinity as intrinsically tied to violence, aggressivity and "toughness" and on the consequences of this on the society as a whole. The author's theory is "that male violence, misogyny, and homophobia are inextricably linked to how we define manhood as a culture. The film gives special attention to how American media have glamorized increasingly regressive and violence masculine ideals in the face of mounting social and economic threats to traditional white male heterosexual authority". It then results clear that we cannot avoid to think about gender issues as women and men issues, because after all is the cultural definition of both femininity and masculinity that heavily influences the behaviour of men and women and their interaction.
In particular, I liked Katz's analysis of media's use of victim blaming speech while reporting of violences against women which tend to shift the focus from the violence perpetrated by men as part of definition of masculinity. Another documentary we watched, more focused on women representation, is MissRepresentation by Jennifer Siebel Newsom.
The film analyses the under representation of women in position of power, and the issue of women and leadership, especially in politics, in the US. Nothing too new, if you are interested in gender issues, as it is a widely discussed and studied topic, but still worth watching. After watching them, we formed little groups of three-four persons from different countries to discuss them, and it was even more interesting to listen the opinion of the guys (we had four male participants). Photography and Phototherapy As a workshop on media representation of gender, photography and advertisement were two of the main argument we spoke about. We focused on it for two days: our trainer, Lietta Granato - photographer and phototherapist - first gave us a lesson on photography, making us experimenting a bit with exposure times and diaphragm's aperture. Then she presented the evolution in the last 50 year or so, of the depiction of women in the ads.
And that, to be honest, was a bit upsetting.
I've already had seen one of the most important and widely known films on this theme, the Killing Us Softly series by Jean Kilbourne, but some of the ads Lietta showed to us were really really horrible. Actually, most of them were horrible. Commenting and deconstructing these ads would take a separate blogpost, probably, and there are many people more competent than me on the topic, so I've decided to simply share some of the worst ads in a collage, without much commenting. These are vintage, from the fifties to the seventies. Do you think we got better? Pff. They go from promoting violence and rape to heavily objectifying women. Special mention for the Compaq ad: as a geek woman I feel particularly insulted by the idea that I'm supposed to use a "pocket pc" as "pocket mirror". Because I wouldn't be able, obviously, to use it as a computer. Lietta also introduced us to photographic therapy and particularly the work of Jo Spence and Rosy Martin. If you browse Jo Spence's site, please be aware that there is a series of pics documenting all the stages of her illness (she died of breast cancer) and they are pretty intense. "In 1984, alongside Rosy Martin, Spence developed Photo-Therapy , adopting techniques from co-counselling. The considerable achievement of Photo-Therapy was to invert the traditional relationship between the photographer and the subject. If historically the subject had little control over their own representation, Photo-Therapy shifts this dynamic. The subject was able to act out personal narratives and claim agency for their own biography." (source: http://www.jospence.org/biography.html)
I love this concept and I really really love Spence's photos. To close on a happier note, I really suggest you to allocate 20 minutes of your time to watch this great talk by Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, about the role of "single story" in shaping stereotypes and misunderstandings.

By popular demand: (source: myeerah's avatar on Why, God, Why? forum. I guess (s)he's the author)

"I think that we need to be better at accepting mistakes. It's OK to not know everything, it's OK to not be perfect right from the start, but it's better to be vocal about things you don't know, things you are unsure, than to just hide it under the carpet and hope nobody will notice."
Lucas Nussbaum, Bits from the DPL "This is my definition for a team: waking up in the morning and realizing that somebody else has solved your problem from yesterday."
Andreas Tille, How to attract new developers for your team

While working on English subtitles for DC13 talks, you can stumble upon some real gems. The subtitling work is progressing nicely: four talks have now subtitles available (you can find them here), thanks to the work of Daniel, Gunnar and myself (as well as the reviews from Justin, Andreas and Michael!). In the meanwhile we created an alioth group and a related repository for the sub team, and there are several subtitles in progress! How can you help?

• you can claim a talk and create the English subtitles for it (more info here)
• you can translate in your language the subtitles already available
• if you are hearing impaired, please send us some feedback: we are trying to create subtitles that are also useful for people with hearing problems, but we've not much experience in the field :)

• People from Argentina don't like to shake hands when you first met them: it's too formal (sorry, Marga!)
• Video team volunteering is extremely fun. Even directing is fun, except when the speaker decides to wander out of the talkroom just to make a point during a demo.
• I won't call names, but I'm not the only one in Debian to remember how to dance the Time Warp and not ashamed to do it in public.
• You can bribe a bloodthirsty deity with cheese, especially if the deity is a French one and you are in Switzerland.
• A zip line is also called: tirolina (in Spanish), tyrolienne (in French) and - my all time favourite - Tarzanbahn in German, or at least in the German spoken by A. when he was a kid.
• Given the number of talks about it this year, we - as a community - care a lot about newcomers, mentoring, creating a welcoming environment and community outreach in general. That's really great!
• Self tagging yourself on the badge with your main interests provides conversation starters and make easier to meet new people. Many thanks to Bremner for this brilliant idea.

• Cheese&Wine party is the perfect time to discuss pedagogical methods (and discover interesting projects like Sugar (desktop environment)).
• During a Mao game, an extremely simple rule by a newbie can result too difficult to guess even to seasoned players. Oh the irony and the inherent democracy of that! All hail the helicopter!
• Once in a while, to cook dinner for upstream and/or sit with them around a table and plan your next moves is a good idea and as well as a common practice in Community-supported agriculture.
• There are people out there brave enough to stand up and declame their poems or poems they love. As a shy person, I really am in awe of them. They make a sentence like "There will be poetry" sound less threatening.
• If you sleep in room 43, next door is the answer. Or the previous one, depending on the direction you're walking.

This week's project is a quick t-shirt reconstruction with the reverse appliqu technique which basically means layering two different fabrics, sew them togheter, and then cut away part of the top one to reveal the one underneath.
Ready to start? What you will need

• a plain t-shirt in your size
• some fabric for the patch
• fusible interfacing
• fabric shears
• small and sharp scissors
• pins
• needle and thread (or, if you prefer, a sewing machine)
• pencil

A guitar, Infinite Jest, The Illuminatus Trilogy and The Year of the Flood, while suggested for your personal enjoyment, are not strictly necessary for this project. Step 1 Cut a square of red fabric of the desired dimensions, I've used the short sleeve of a ruined red t-shirt.
On the wrong side of your patch, apply the fusible interfacing. Step 2 Draw a swirl on the interfacing.
IMPORTANT: remember to draw the swirl as mirrored, because the interfacing is the wrong side of our patch.
So, if usually the Debian swirl has the back to the left and the front to the right - like a "(" - when you draw it on the interfacing it will need to have the back to the right and front to the side - like a ")".
I do realize that this explanation isn't really clear: just look at the picture above. Step 3 Turn your t-shirt inside out and pin the patch (with the interfacing up) in the place you want to put it: I decided to put mine on the lower left corner, approximately 10 cm above the bottom hem.
(In the picture is lower, I changed idea on the position just before sewing it)
Now you can sew it, following closely the drawn line.
Because I'm lazy, I decided to do it by hand, but if you're not afraid of sewing curved shapes, doing it with the sewing machine is definitely the right (and quick) way to do it. Step 4 Now, you can cut the extra fabric around your swirl. Step 5 Turn your shirt right side out.
Make a snip through the knit in the fabric on the inside part of your stitches and cut off the extra fabric, to reveal the red swirl underneath.
Be careful to not cut the red fabric! Step 6 If you like it, you can end embroidering a dashed line (with running stitches) in a contrasting thread all around the swirl. And you're finished: now you can enjoy your new Debian t-shirt! :) For any questions feel free to contact me.

Ten days passed, and I'm still trying to come down from the high of Leonard Cohen's gig.
And trying to find words to describe it, but I'm no poet and nothing less than poetry could make you feel the sense of awe and peacefulness and understanding and sheer pleasure I felt that night, letting his deep, smoky, perfect voice wash over me.
Three hours, no less, of beautiful music and even more beautiful lyrics. If you have the chance, go to see him live.
Really, do it. Then, in the few moments you are able to come down to Earth again and be aware of your surroundings, try to refrain from killing all the people around you who, instead of enjoying this almost mystical experience, are using their phones to take pics to the stage and/or record videos.
I felt quite the Luddite, honestly.

My second #debcraft project is a crocheted cozy for a phone, with a nice Debian swirl on it.
As the previous one this is a very quick project - I made mine in half an hour - and easy also for crochet newbies.
As I've not mastered yet the tapestry technic in crochet, I opted for a less elegant solution and used a surface slip stitch to add the swirl.
The only downside of this approach is that you'll need a bit of practice before crocheting a decent and regular swirl (it took me a couple of tries to get the hang of it).
My phone is a Samsung Galaxy, so this pattern fits a phone of 6cm x 11cm x 1cm, but you can easily adapt it to yours. This pattern is written in US crochet terms: check this page for a US/UK conversion table. What you will need

• black cotton
• red cotton
• a 3 mm crochet hook

Obviously, the crochet hook's size depends on the weight of the yarn you're using. I used a DK/8 ply cotton yarn. Finished size : 11cm x 8cm x 1cm Stitches used :

• chain stitch (ch)
• single crochet (sc)
• surface stitches

Instructions Ch 15 + 1 for turning. Continue in flat rows, working 15 sc each row, plus one ch at the end to turn.
Continue till the desired dimensions, in my case I ended with a rectangle 22cm long.
Now the fun part: with the red yarn, start creating a swirl with the surface stitches.
Here's a good tutorial on how to do these, with step-by-step photos. Now the last part: use the single crochet stitch to join the lateral seams of the cozy as showed in this tutorial. And you're finished! Pretty easy, wasn't it? For any questions feel free to contact me.
And if you are a knitter or a crocheter, did you know that on Ravelry exists the Debian Knitters group?

The next August 16th, Debian will turn 20.
What are you planning to do to to celebrate?
Being a DIY geek, I decided to create some craft projects dedicated to the Universal Operating System. I'll publish them, one per week, on this blog with a detailed tutorial, released under a CC:BY-SA 3.0 license. If you have an original project dedicated to Debian (from cookies and cakes to knitted socks, from beaded earrings to handpainted mugs, from plushies to pottery, from glass arts to lettering and so on) join me!
Post a tutorial about your project on your blog (or if you don't have one, send me a mail and you'll publish it here as guest post) with the hashtag #debcraft and a free (as in freedom) license. Bonus points for project using recycled material :). Ready to start? Below my first one: swirl charms from plastic bottles.

---

This is a little tutorial on how to create swirl charms for keyrings from plastic bottles.
The project is really easy and quick to realize, the materials very common and the result quite pretty.
I found out that there are tons of tutorial in the Internet about how to make jewelry from PET bottles, and I'll surely give them a try (earrings, in particular, seem a good idea).
If you want some inspiration, I suggest you to check out the amazing work of Turkish artist Gulnur Ozdaglar who creates ethereal jewelry and everyday objects from plastic bottles.

"What is PET bottle?
A domesticated bottle kept for companionship or amusement."
Gulnur Ozdaglar

What you will need

• one or more plastic bottles
• metal keyring
• jump rings (I made my own ones with metal wire from a spiral block note)
• red nail polish, or acrylic paint (only for the painted swirl)
• red thread and needle (only for the transparent with red embroidery)
• scissors
• a lighter
• pen and paper (if you want to use a paper swirl as guide while cutting)
• a pin (to punch holes)
• pliers and cutters

In the pic there's also a soda can, because I thought it could be a good material too.
After some tests, I decided that soda cans would probably need some resin to make the edges less sharp and avoid cuts, so I think I'll experiment a bit more with them. Step 1 First of all, you'll need to cut out the swirl from the bottle.
I cut it in the upper part of the bottle, using a paper swirl as guide to cut the swirl shape as regular as I could. Step 2 As the edges of the cut are a bit raw, I decided to lightly melt them with the lighter: be careful as if the plastic melt too much it will ruin our nice swirl. Also, remember to open a window while doing it: it's not a lot of melting but better safe than sorry. Step 3 With a pin or a needle punch a hole in the upper part of the swirl, where the jumpring will be set to connect the swirl with the keychain ring. Now you need to decide which type of swirl do: for the painted one, follow step 4a; for the transparent one with the red embroidery, follow step 4b. Step 4a Paint your swirl red, or of your favourite colour (I experimented a bit here, having lots of nail polish, and made also a purple one). Step 4b With a pin or a needle, punch a series of holes, in the middle of the swirl, following the swirl shape.
Then embroider it using backstitch. Step 5 Add the jumpring, if you have a ready made one.
If not, use a pair of cutters to cut a little bit of metal wire and the pliers to create a ring with it, insert in the hole and close it. Step 6 Connect the jumpring and the metal keyring. Congratulations: you now have a swirl shaped keycharm!

If we can t write diversity into sci-fi, then what s the point? You don t create new worlds to give them all the same limits of the old ones.
Jane Espenson (from interview with Advocate)

Basically reblogged from here: I couldn't resist, because it's just oh-so-damn-right.
And this should always apply when we imagine new worlds, no matter if for writing them or for fighting for them.

In the survival kit of the person suffering from migraine (like yours truly), a sleep mask is essential. This is my new one: I made it a couple of days ago, following this awesome pattern by Bunnytan.

Sun.
Anarchy flags.
Red roses for Gaetano Bresci, Sacco and Vanzetti, Giordano Bruno (among others).
Fava beans and Pecorino.
Old anarchists songs, at top of your lungs.
The beautiful streets of Carrara. May 1st is my Christmas.

I totally forgot it, but as the DPL elections are now done, we have a winner for the #DPL game. Of the (more or less) fifteen persons who participated to the game (thank you!), only four received points for having at least one of their Fantastic Four running for DPL:

• M nica Ramirez Arceda proposing Moray Allan
• Mehdi Dogguy proposing Lucas Nussbaum
• Paul Tagliamonte proposing Gergely Nagy
• Tiago Bortoletto Vaz proposing Moray Allan

As Lucas is now the new DPL, our one and only winner of the DPL game is... ... Mehdi Dogguy! Congrats!

Dear Project Members,

   "Now that I have your attention, I would like to make the following
delegations:"

... nah, scrap that. In my last day in office I first of all owe you a report of DPL activities for the last reporting period of this term, i.e. March 8th until today. Here it is! Highlights

• At LibrePlanet (see below) I've discussed at length with Karen Sandler as GNOME representative the possibility of Debian participation in the FOSS Outreach Program for Women. I've then proposed that we do participate and, as you might have read on d-d-a, we're now doing that. Many thanks to the volunteer co-organizers for Debian participation in the program: M nica Ram rez Arceda, Ana Guerrero L pez, and Patty Langasek.
• A couple of years of work with the auditors has come together. At elgar.debian.org:/srv/accounting.debian.org/ledger/ you can now find Debian monetary transactions for the 2010-2013 period. Note that: 1) They are not all of our transactions, most notably because we haven't yet managed to get access to all our bank transactions at SPI (while we do have access to other transactions there, e.g. donations). Given the relevance of the missing transactions for our budget, this is a blocker for producing meaningful public periodic reports of Debian finances. This is clearly annoying, but I'm confident that our feedback to SPI over the past years has helped them better understand our needs and improve. I hope this could be finally solved during the next DPL term. And, 2) Donor names have been anonymized in the ledger files, in wait of a donation system that allow to express privacy preferences. Complete donation information is available in the companion ledger.git repository, which is accessible to auditors only. I'd like to thank the Debian auditors, and in particular Martin Michlmayr, for their amazing work on this over the past 3 years.
• As you might have noticed, we now have an official Debian Project blog, finally entering the brave new Web 1.5 era I've only helped "politically" here and there with this over the years, and I'm happy to see it live. Your thanks for this should go to the blog editors---Francesca Ciceri and Ana Guerrero Lopez---and to DSA for making it real. A proper delegation for the editors is pending and I'm confident the next DPL will pick it up.

Talks Over the past month or so I've attended and spoken on behalf of Debian in the following occasions:

• "Debian: 20 years and counting" talk at the New York Linux User Group; slides are available. Many thanks to Brian Gupta and Tom Limoncelli for inviting me.
• "Debian and GNU" talk at LibrePlanet 2013; slides are available. Many thanks to John Sullivan and the Free Software Foundation for inviting me to talk at their main conference. My presence there has also been a chance to reassess the status of collaboration with FSF (see John's brief summary) and discuss further technical collaboration with the Trisquel maintainers.
• "Legal issues from a radical community angle" keynote at the yearly workshop of FSFE's European Legal Network; slides are available. The talk has also been covered by a LWN feature article last week (the link should become unembargoed for non-LWN subscribers starting tomorrow).

Assets I've approved the budget for the following forthcoming sprints:

• 6th Debian Groupware Meeting (~500 EUR)
• DSA sprint (~3'000 EUR)

Also, we've bought a 3-year warranty pack for the disk array that powers ftp-master.d.o (~900 USD). On the income side, Brian Gupta has started an interesting matching fund experiment, in order to raise funds for the forthcoming DebConf13. The matching fund will be open until April 30th, so your help in spreading news would be welcome. Many thanks to Brian for the idea and to his company, Brandorr Group, for funding it. DPL helpers Three more DPL helpers IRC meetings have been held; minutes are available at the usual place. Legal Spring Cleaning I've finally cleaned up the pile of pending legal matters (but I'm sure new ones will show up for the delight of the next DPL :-P)

• one is merely internal for trademark@d.o: our procedures for (n)acks on incoming requests has now been vetted by our legal advisors
• the second one is relevant for our mentors.debian.net service: one of the blockers to officialize it as mentors.debian.org have historically been DMCA-related concerns. We now have a DMCA policy for (wannabe) mentors.d.o, which I've shared with the service maintainers and DSA. This specific part should no longer be a concern.
• the last one concerns the possibilities of playing DVDs with Debian. We now have legal guidelines on how to include installer packages that allow to do so; that should allow us to have a decent solution for our users in the Jessie time frame.

Once again, I'd like to thank SFLC for the pro bono and very high quality legal advice they keep on offering to Debian. Miscellaneous

• I've mentioned last month that, as a Debian representative, I've joined a working group by the Italian public administration (PA) that should define procurement rules for software in the PA at large, together with representatives of other well-known FOSS initiatives (e.g. KDE, FSFE). The first meetings have now been held and I've participate in some, for the moment on my own budget. I'll check with the next DPL the feasibility of keep on doing so on in the future.

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Now, before I get sentimental, let me thank Gergely, Lucas, and Moray for running in the recently concluded DPL election. Only thinking of running and then go through a campaign denote a very high commitment to the Project; we should all be thankful to them. Then I'd like to congratulate Lucas for his election. I've known him for a long time, and I can testify about his clear vision of the role Debian has to play in Free Software and on what Debian needs to improve to do so. Best wishes for the term ahead, Lucas! Finally, I'd like to thank you all for the support you've shown me over the past 3 years. Serving as DPL is a great honor, but also a very demanding job. Thank to you all, and to how cool Debian is, it has been for me an incredibly rewarding experience. I had no idea what I were doing when I embarked on this adventure, but in hindsight I don't regret any of it. See you around, as I don't plan to be anywhere far away from Debian anytime soon. Cheers.

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PS the day-to-day activity logs for March and April 2013 are available at the usual place master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.txt.20130 3,4

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm so excited to present you the official blog of the Debian Project. The idea is to make it the voice of the project, in addition to the official press releases and DPN, our bi-weekly newsletter.
I'm really excited about it not only because it will help us to communicate better with our users in letting them know what is going on, but also because it's something we long waited (and planned) for. And it was surely a collective effort: many thanks to Ana Guerrero, who not only is one of the main editors, but also the engine behind the idea and the realization of it; Stefano Zacchiroli, who during his three terms as DPL gave lots of support to this idea; and the Debian System Administrators Team who put all in place (and found the perfect name for it).

Am I the only one who logically inferred this from the Ubuntu for Android's tagline "One device to rule them all"?

This dent by M nica Ram rez Arceda finally gave me the energy to update the statistics about female participation in Debian, first published by Margarita Manterola back in 2010. So, here the new graph updated to February 2013. The necessary caveat is that is not easy (at least for me) to tell the gender just based on first names, so the actual numbers may be higher. In addition, you should be warned that there are some contributions not easily traceable: it's the case of translators, graphic artists and documentation writers, as well as event organizers. For instance, Beatrice Torracca doesn't appear in these stats, and she is the co-coordinator of the Italian translation team and a long term Debian (and free software in general) contributor. There was a proposal to better track non packaging contributors, but no news on that front yet (at least that I'm aware of). Sources:

• "first uploads": via UDD (except for the first two cases that are from old changelogs)
• DD and DM: taken from NM website

You can find the data used as well as the updated graph here. TODO:

• graph comparing male and female participation in Debian

...at least, if you are into fan fictions and Harry Potter. I love fan fictions, and I'll shamelessly admit that I like Harry Potter too, but I usually avoid crossovers. That is because however interesting and exciting is - in theory - to have your favourite characters from different fandoms together, it often ends bad. So, it's a public duty of every fanfic reader to recommend good crossovers, if they stumble upon them. Here are some I found recently (all the quotes are from the stories' summaries).

• Not Quite A Maia (Harry Potter x Lord of the Rings)

  "Middle Earth has a problem: Gandalf the Grey is AWOL in Time & Space after destroying the Balrog of Khazad-d m. But who will take his place in the Quest to defeat the Dark Lord Sauron? Not who you think..."

  This is a very well written fic, and one of the best HP/LOTR crossover I've ever read. Bonus points for not featuring main characters of HP-verse (someone else will have to save the day in Middle Earth, not the usual Golden Trio). And if there are some minor glitches in the plot (especially in the last chapters), the author has undoubtedly a knack for hilarious situations. If you can read through Augusta's chapters without laughing out loud you are not human. Really.
• Evil Be Thou My Good (Harry Potter x Hellraiser)

  "Nine years ago Vernon Dursley brought home a certain puzzle box. His nephew managed to open it, changing his destiny. Now, in the midst of Voldemort's second rise, Harry Potter has decided to recreate the Lament Configuration... and open it... again."

  Even if I am a notorious addicted to horror and b-movies (and more so to horror b-movies) I've never seen Hellraiser. But you don't have to, to enjoy this story. It's well written, it explains the backstory for the Hellraiser universe (or at least what you need to know about it) and features a refreshing Dark!Harry. The only thing I didn't like is a slightly OOC (Out Of Character) Voldemort, who's described in canon as intelligent and cunning and here seems to me a bit gullible. But apart from that, the story is worth a read.
• That Which Holds The Image (Harry Potter x Doctor Who).

  "Harry Potter faces a boggart that doesn't turn into a Dementor or even Voldermort, but into a horror from his childhood. Now the boggart isn't even a boggart anymore. There's no imitation. That which holds the image of an Angel, becomes itself an Angel."

  I have a soft spot for the Weeping Angels. They are pure evil genius. If you don't know what I'm talking about stop reading now and go watch Doctor Who episode 3x10 "Blink". It's really a masterpiece. So Weeping Angels in Potterverse would be awesome even if the plot of this story weren't as good as actually is. The only thing to make it better would be to have 10th Doctor instead of 11th. But then, you can't have everything, I guess.

If you read any of these and want to talk about it or if you have more crossovers to recommend, drop me a mail. For more fan fiction recommendations, I suggest you to check this detailed index on tvtropes.org.