I m happy to announce that after the filing of an Intent to Package and nearly 2 years of work, IronRuby 0.9, IronPython 2.6b2, and the DLR are now in Debian. To my knowledge, this is the first package in Debian with direct and active upstream support from Microsoft. Kudos for this release go to Jo Sheilds (package sponsorship & mentoring), Mirco Bauer (package sponsorship & mentoring), Matthias Klose (IronPython package review), Ivan Porto Carrero (IronRuby build/test support), Jim Deville (IronRuby build/test support), Jimmy Schementi (upstream point of contact @ Microsoft), Dino Viehland (IronPython build/test support), Michael Foord (IronPython build/test support), Marek Safar (mono c# compiler support), Ankit Jain (xbuild support), the folks on OFTC s #debian-cli, Freenode s #ironruby and GimpNet s #mono, and the folks on the IronRuby and IronPython mailing lists. This is my first package in Debian, too. I m pretty ecstatic ;)

This moment has finally arrived! Last Saturday (27-th) on #debconf-team decision was made, DebConf11 is coming to Bosnia and Herzegovina! Our team and myself were working on this whole candidature for last ~9 months, and even though we put incredibly amounts on energy, hard work, enthusiasm and everything else that goes along with it, suspense and uncertainty were there until the very last minute! One of our local team members (trip0d s) wife almost gave a birth to their child during the decision process that lasted full 4 hours As a remainder we were competing with Ecuador and Germany to win this bid, whole process was excruciating and very emotionally distressful in every possible aspect for every team member; at one point Germany took a slight lead ahead of Bosnian team, while in the end by points Bosnia was in slight lead by 0.25 points, and this is exactly what touched me the most about this whole bid/decision/process. This is not a great advantage or anything for that matter, but what happened is that in decision process Debian debconf team and its developers picked Bosnia and Herzegovina as a place where they want to have DebConf11! Our main competitors from M nchen, Germany showed a real fair play and at the end even yielded to our side; really to both of you, Michael Banck (azeem) and Andreas Barth (aba) it was a pleasure and honor to compete with you guys! See you in NYC for proper handshake and possibly a hug? Also I d like to thank Jimmy Kaplowitz (Hydroxide), Moray Allan (moray) who had chairs and who did absolutely incredible job I guess I ll just have to thank the whole debconf orga team for all their amazing work ( can t name names individually because I ll definitely forget someone!) This bid really reunited whole Bosnia and Herzegovina, this whole process also united all of Balkans and whole of Ex Yugoslavia, which makes me especially happy since today (March 1st) we are celebrating the day we officially separated from Yugoslavia. Now this just one small step forward, since the real work is ahead of us and we re starting it all as soon as tomorrow since there s really a lot that needs to be done. Again thank you all, we ll give our best for this to be a DebConf you ll remember (as a great one of course!), in the meantime see you in New York City! Adnan Hodzic aka AbsintheSyringe team leader on behalf of whole debconf11-team. DebConf11 Banja Luka wiki Debconf11 decision log (#debconf-team log)

Registration is now open for DebConf10. The dates of the conference are August 1-7, 2010, with arrivals at our group lodging permitted as of 3 PM on July 31 and departures required by 11 AM on August 8. The conference is preceded by DebCamp from July 25-31 including the arrival day. To receive announcements regarding DebConf and DebCamp, please subscribe to the debconf-announce mailing list. In order to avoid spamming Planet Debian with a long post detailing registration procedure, travel sponsorship, DebCamp info, and cost of attendance, please instead see the DebConf10 website s registration page to answer all your questions. As always, feel free to contact the DebConf team via email or IRC for answers not provided by the website. DebConf10 is going to be great. We re looking forward to seeing you in New York in August! the DebConf team

The DebConf10 team just sent out a press release announcing the dates and venue for DebConf10 in New York City. Most of the readers of this blog already saw it through some other list, so I ll just put the dates here and provide the full text plus other relevant info via links.

• Dates: July 25-31, 2010 will be DebCamp and August 1-7, 2010 will be DebConf.
• Press release text
• First press coverage in response to our announcement
• Main conference website
• Visa info
• Email address for visa help(read the visa info page before emailing)
• Yes, thanks to Valessio Brito we already have I m going to DebConf10 buttons.

We hope to see many of you there!

Hello, The DebConf10 local team would like to announce availability of visa information at http://debconf10.debconf.org/visas.xhtml Full information is contained at that page, provided by our lawyer; however some important points are indicated below. - The United States depends on its tens of millions of visitors annually for its economy to function. Getting approved for a visa is not a rare exception, and it is even easier given our generous free help from an immigration lawyer. - If you are from a Visa Waiver Program country (see visa page), fill out the ESTA web form to apply for your travel authorization now. You don t need any information about the conference itself or your means of travel. - If you will need to apply for a visa, check the visa information page for information on what to do. Carefully check the wait times for your country s embassy. For most countries there is no *immediate* urgency, but plan to get an appointment well in advance of May 2010. - Make sure you will have a passport that will expire in February 2011 or later (6 months after the latest possible DebConf date). If not, apply for a new passport. Special note to Venezuelans: Since the wait time for a visa appointment in Caracas is so long, we have been paying special attention to its visa application process. We have reports that the dates for visa appointments are moving quickly, getting later and later. If you are are applying for a visa in Caracas, you need to make an appointment immediately. You just need to make an appointment now, supporting materials can be assembled later. Also consider applying for a visa in a different US embassy such as the Quito, Ecuador one with a significantly shorter wait time. Consult with our lawyer for advice on the advantages and disadvantages of doing this. The local team hopes that everyone interested can meet us in New York City and have a great DebConf10 experience! Feel free to email us (publicly archived list) or ask in #debconf-team or #debconf-nyc on OFTC with your questions or ideas. - The DebConf10 Local Team

Wikia search is a new project from Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. As discussed on the second autonomo.us podcast, his objective is to create a Free Network Service for Web search: an alternative search engine compatible with the Franklin Street Statement.

To add Wikia Search to your Firefox search bar:

• visit this page (with Javascript turned on)

If you use vimperator to reduce the amount of mousing involved in your daily web browsing, put this in your ~/.vimperatorrc to make Wikia your default search plugin:

:set defsearch=wikia

Please let me know if this stops working, I'll update the search extension.

In this age of bits and bytes, there are many virtual organizations and networks which produce all sorts of stuff we use on a daily basis. My two favorite institutions are Debian (not a surprise) and Wikipedia, not just because they oh-so-useful to me and many others, which they are, but because the social organizations behind these two entities are so (at times maddeningly) complex and full of nuance, they provide for endless analytical fascination. One of my friends, Joe Reagle, who has recently graduated from my home department, is presenting is work on Wikipedia and I thought some local New York geeks might be interested. Information below:

All welcome 4:30 - 6:00 PM, Tuesday February 17
206 Vanderbilt Hall, 40 Wash. Sq. So. Wikipedia: Nazis and Norms Joseph Reagle, NYU Department of Media, Culture, and Communication Abstract: In 1990 Mike Godwin coined his Law of Nazi Analogies to capture the common devolution of Usenet discourse into insulting comparisons with Nazis or Hitler. Eleven years later, Jimmy Wales wrote that it was important that the Wikipedia community preserve and extend our culture of co-operation, with all of us standing as firmly as possible against the culture of conflict embodied in Usenet. I argue Wikipedia is a realization even if flawed of a long-held vision for a universal encyclopedia: a technology inspired vision seeking to wed increased access to information with greater human accord. And I claim Wikipedia s collaborative culture is a big factor for this success: the norms of Neutral Point of View ensures that the scattered pieces of what we think we know can be joined and good faith facilitates the actual practice of fitting them together.

In this age of bits and bytes, there are many virtual organizations and networks which produce all sorts of stuff we use on a daily basis. My two favorite institutions are Debian (not a surprise) and Wikipedia, not just because they oh-so-useful to me and many others, which they are, but because the social organizations behind these two entities are so (at times maddeningly) complex and full of nuance, they provide for endless analytical fascination. One of my friends, Joe Reagle, who has recently graduated from my home department, is presenting is work on Wikipedia and I thought some local New York geeks might be interested. Information below:

All welcome 4:30 - 6:00 PM, Tuesday February 17
206 Vanderbilt Hall, 40 Wash. Sq. So. Wikipedia: Nazis and Norms Joseph Reagle, NYU Department of Media, Culture, and Communication Abstract: In 1990 Mike Godwin coined his Law of Nazi Analogies to capture the common devolution of Usenet discourse into insulting comparisons with Nazis or Hitler. Eleven years later, Jimmy Wales wrote that it was important that the Wikipedia community preserve and extend our culture of co-operation, with all of us standing as firmly as possible against the culture of conflict embodied in Usenet. I argue Wikipedia is a realization even if flawed of a long-held vision for a universal encyclopedia: a technology inspired vision seeking to wed increased access to information with greater human accord. And I claim Wikipedia s collaborative culture is a big factor for this success: the norms of Neutral Point of View ensures that the scattered pieces of what we think we know can be joined and good faith facilitates the actual practice of fitting them together.

So I know, I know. There are a lot of annoying memes circulating on the net/facebook/[pick your spot] and well, sometimes the best thing to do is stop the damn thing by ignoring its existence. But I have to say, I have completely, totally and absolutely have loved reading the 25 things notes on facebook. It just provides a window into the extraordinary character that emerges from the collection of mundane events/likes/pleasures that make up people s lives. Reading them took me back to elementary school when and where I was an avid slam-booker. I have very fond of collecting and reading the tidbits of thoughts and information people left behind in my notebook. What also struck me about these recent 25 thingie notes is how odd or not as interesting, I think, it would be to have them recited to you over coffee or at dinner. Now I could be wrong here but I think the list-like quality would just not fly in a conversational context. A few facts with more embellishment would work but a whole string of thoughts would just sound flat and out of place. A reminder that format does matter for engendering certain types of knowledge. So here is my list.. 1. I looked like a boy for the first three years of my life (but a cute one, I think).
2. I love dogs so much that I often think that if I had a criminal streak, I would be a dog nabber.
3. I would routinely bring home dogs from the street when I was a kid. Many of them ended up dead after being hit by cars (they liked to return to the street and this only happened to 2 of them).
4. My favorite concert was Jimmy Cliff in a parking lot. There was lots of rain and lots of weed.
5. I like have a penchant for tall men. My mom claims it was because I lacked a strong father figure in my early childhood years. Who knows if that is the case.
6. I knew the instant that I took an anthropology class I wanted to be an anthropologist. I guess I made it happen (and it was one of the few moments of clarity in life).
7. I started the first environmental club in my high school and my car was called the recycle-mobile because there were always cans in the back seat.
8. I love the ocean; swimming, snorkeling, diving, sailing, and just watching it, though the cold ocean is not always by cup of tea.
9. I had terrible insomnia for a year and slept for a good chunk of it on a couch. I like the snuggle feeling I got from sleeping against a back.
10. I am very indecisive person. It is annoying as i tend to worry a lot about whether I made the right decision.
11. I was a shy kid and barely talked until meeting my best friend in kindergarten, Yael
12. I also failed the psychological test to get into school but my mom managed to get me in anyway.
13. I often wonder if I would have been a nun if I had lived prior to 1900s to escape various domestic obligations. I think it might have been fun to be a nun.. Fun to be a nun also has a nice ring to it.

14. I am currently struggling with an Etsy addiction and the UPS delivery guy asked if delivering packages would be a daily occurrence.. I just find all the stuff amazing and it brings me back to my artist days when I used to paint and spend a heck of a lot of time in the darkroom.
15. I have recurrent issues with nausea and have been hospitalized for it a few times. It is gut wrenching and really uncomfortable when it happens.
16. When I left NYC in 1997 I thought i would never come back. I am here now and quite happy.
17. I was obsessed with Ultimate Frisbee for many man years. I played more than I studied and finally gave up as it was ruining (or perhaps ruined?) my neck. I still miss it.
18. I LOVE tostones and would eat them everyday if they were not, you know, so bad for you.
19. I have been using IRC for 7 years and consider some of my best friends to come from there.
20. Some folks have asked how I became interested in politics and I am pretty sure it was Doonesbury.
21. When I was like 4 we went to some fair and I swore that I almost got flung off some rickety ride but this could be totally wrong. It was really frightening.
22. The coldest night of my life was spent in Los Nevados, Venezuela and the scariest car ride I ever took was leaving Los Nevados in a jeep and something that resembled a road.
23. A few sucker fish once tried to stick on me while I was doing a decompression stop after a dive. My dive buddy smacked the fish, which had devil faces, with the regulator, saving me from what would have been a really sort of sucky situation.
24. I am trying to learn how to surf and am really sorry that I did not do so when a teenager since I don t exactly have the time to really learn.
25. Since I am not sure how to end, I will do so with a

So I know, I know. There are a lot of annoying memes circulating on the net/facebook/[pick your spot] and well, sometimes the best thing to do is stop the damn thing by ignoring its existence. But I have to say, I have completely, totally and absolutely have loved reading the 25 things notes on facebook. It just provides a window into the extraordinary character that emerges from the collection of mundane events/likes/pleasures that make up people s lives. Reading them took me back to elementary school when and where I was an avid slam-booker. I have very fond of collecting and reading the tidbits of thoughts and information people left behind in my notebook. What also struck me about these recent 25 thingie notes is how odd or not as interesting, I think, it would be to have them recited to you over coffee or at dinner. Now I could be wrong here but I think the list-like quality would just not fly in a conversational context. A few facts with more embellishment would work but a whole string of thoughts would just sound flat and out of place. A reminder that format does matter for engendering certain types of knowledge. So here is my list.. 1. I looked like a boy for the first three years of my life (but a cute one, I think).
2. I love dogs so much that I often think that if I had a criminal streak, I would be a dog nabber.
3. I would routinely bring home dogs from the street when I was a kid. Many of them ended up dead after being hit by cars (they liked to return to the street and this only happened to 2 of them).
4. My favorite concert was Jimmy Cliff in a parking lot. There was lots of rain and lots of weed.
5. I like have a penchant for tall men. My mom claims it was because I lacked a strong father figure in my early childhood years. Who knows if that is the case.
6. I knew the instant that I took an anthropology class I wanted to be an anthropologist. I guess I made it happen (and it was one of the few moments of clarity in life).
7. I started the first environmental club in my high school and my car was called the recycle-mobile because there were always cans in the back seat.
8. I love the ocean; swimming, snorkeling, diving, sailing, and just watching it, though the cold ocean is not always by cup of tea.
9. I had terrible insomnia for a year and slept for a good chunk of it on a couch. I like the snuggle feeling I got from sleeping against a back.
10. I am very indecisive person. It is annoying as i tend to worry a lot about whether I made the right decision.
11. I was a shy kid and barely talked until meeting my best friend in kindergarten, Yael
12. I also failed the psychological test to get into school but my mom managed to get me in anyway.
13. I often wonder if I would have been a nun if I had lived prior to 1900s to escape various domestic obligations. I think it might have been fun to be a nun.. Fun to be a nun also has a nice ring to it.

14. I am currently struggling with an Etsy addiction and the UPS delivery guy asked if delivering packages would be a daily occurrence.. I just find all the stuff amazing and it brings me back to my artist days when I used to paint and spend a heck of a lot of time in the darkroom.
15. I have recurrent issues with nausea and have been hospitalized for it a few times. It is gut wrenching and really uncomfortable when it happens.
16. When I left NYC in 1997 I thought i would never come back. I am here now and quite happy.
17. I was obsessed with Ultimate Frisbee for many man years. I played more than I studied and finally gave up as it was ruining (or perhaps ruined?) my neck. I still miss it.
18. I LOVE tostones and would eat them everyday if they were not, you know, so bad for you.
19. I have been using IRC for 7 years and consider some of my best friends to come from there.
20. Some folks have asked how I became interested in politics and I am pretty sure it was Doonesbury.
21. When I was like 4 we went to some fair and I swore that I almost got flung off some rickety ride but this could be totally wrong. It was really frightening.
22. The coldest night of my life was spent in Los Nevados, Venezuela and the scariest car ride I ever took was leaving Los Nevados in a jeep and something that resembled a road.
23. A few sucker fish once tried to stick on me while I was doing a decompression stop after a dive. My dive buddy smacked the fish, which had devil faces, with the regulator, saving me from what would have been a really sort of sucky situation.
24. I am trying to learn how to surf and am really sorry that I did not do so when a teenager since I don t exactly have the time to really learn.
25. Since I am not sure how to end, I will do so with a

So I know, I know. There are a lot of annoying memes circulating on the net/facebook/[pick your spot] and well, sometimes the best thing to do is stop the damn thing by ignoring its existence. But I have to say, I have completely, totally and absolutely have loved reading the 25 things notes on facebook. It just provides a window into the extraordinary character that emerges from the collection of mundane events/likes/pleasures that make up people s lives. Reading them took me back to elementary school when and where I was an avid slam-booker. I have very fond of collecting and reading the tidbits of thoughts and information people left behind in my notebook. What also struck me about these recent 25 thingie notes is how odd or not as interesting, I think, it would be to have them recited to you over coffee or at dinner. Now I could be wrong here but I think the list-like quality would just not fly in a conversational context. A few facts with more embellishment would work but a whole string of thoughts would just sound flat and out of place. A reminder that format does matter for engendering certain types of knowledge. So here is my list.. 1. I looked like a boy for the first three years of my life (but a cute one, I think).
2. I love dogs so much that I often think that if I had a criminal streak, I would be a dog nabber.
3. I would routinely bring home dogs from the street when I was a kid. Many of them ended up dead after being hit by cars (they liked to return to the street and this only happened to 2 of them).
4. My favorite concert was Jimmy Cliff in a parking lot. There was lots of rain and lots of weed.
5. I like have a penchant for tall men. My mom claims it was because I lacked a strong father figure in my early childhood years. Who knows if that is the case.
6. I knew the instant that I took an anthropology class I wanted to be an anthropologist. I guess I made it happen (and it was one of the few moments of clarity in life).
7. I started the first environmental club in my high school and my car was called the recycle-mobile because there were always cans in the back seat.
8. I love the ocean; swimming, snorkeling, diving, sailing, and just watching it, though the cold ocean is not always by cup of tea.
9. I had terrible insomnia for a year and slept for a good chunk of it on a couch. I like the snuggle feeling I got from sleeping against a back.
10. I am very indecisive person. It is annoying as i tend to worry a lot about whether I made the right decision.
11. I was a shy kid and barely talked until meeting my best friend in kindergarten, Yael
12. I also failed the psychological test to get into school but my mom managed to get me in anyway.
13. I often wonder if I would have been a nun if I had lived prior to 1900s to escape various domestic obligations. I think it might have been fun to be a nun.. Fun to be a nun also has a nice ring to it.

14. I am currently struggling with an Etsy addiction and the UPS delivery guy asked if delivering packages would be a daily occurrence.. I just find all the stuff amazing and it brings me back to my artist days when I used to paint and spend a heck of a lot of time in the darkroom.
15. I have recurrent issues with nausea and have been hospitalized for it a few times. It is gut wrenching and really uncomfortable when it happens.
16. When I left NYC in 1997 I thought i would never come back. I am here now and quite happy.
17. I was obsessed with Ultimate Frisbee for many man years. I played more than I studied and finally gave up as it was ruining (or perhaps ruined?) my neck. I still miss it.
18. I LOVE tostones and would eat them everyday if they were not, you know, so bad for you.
19. I have been using IRC for 7 years and consider some of my best friends to come from there.
20. Some folks have asked how I became interested in politics and I am pretty sure it was Doonesbury.
21. When I was like 4 we went to some fair and I swore that I almost got flung off some rickety ride but this could be totally wrong. It was really frightening.
22. The coldest night of my life was spent in Los Nevados, Venezuela and the scariest car ride I ever took was leaving Los Nevados in a jeep and something that resembled a road.
23. A few sucker fish once tried to stick on me while I was doing a decompression stop after a dive. My dive buddy smacked the fish, which had devil faces, with the regulator, saving me from what would have been a really sort of sucky situation.
24. I am trying to learn how to surf and am really sorry that I did not do so when a teenager since I don t exactly have the time to really learn.
25. Since I am not sure how to end, I will do so with a

Just received this comment from Jimmy Kaplowitz over in the US: “yuck, your country continues to turn into Big Brother: BBC News: Giant database plan ‘Orwellian’” Hell, yeah. That’s a reason why my support for the party is so weak at the moment. I’ve been working and writing against this since ST@ND and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which we were told was essential for crime-fighting, but actually helps gov.uk spy on parents making school place applications. Currently, I’m telling people Gov.UK Consults on Forced ISP Snooping: Please Say NO. If anyone has any doubt that the database state will be abused, look at some examples of Labour’s “terrorists” (at least, they had supposedly anti-terror measures used against them) since 2001:-

1. Wolfie, an 82-year-old peace-campaigning heckler at a Labour conference
2. Indymedia
3. a Frenchman in Suffolk who downloaded the Anarchists’ Cookbook
4. an Algerian pilot
5. the country of Iceland

and that’s ignoring gov.uk’s frequent data leaks. Noodles replied: “There’s a quote somewhere that goes along the lines of “If the Tory policy is looking sane compared to what you’re doing, you’re doing it wrong” that’s been applied to the Labour fascist state stuff.” Our terrorism measures are a joke, with loopholes that gov.uk can drive a truck through. They should be repealed and clearly-limited ones enacted, shouldn’t they?

The monthly IRC board meeting of Software in the Public Interest will take place later today, as announced by SPI’s secretary last week. While the announcement is back on time (yay!), the agenda isn’t (aww!). I’d be quite interested to learn how SPI is going to try to reduce the risk to its reserves, given the current slow decline of its primary bank which is not one of the first US banks getting bailed out. I think the best way for not-for-profits to avoid risking donations at the moment is to avoid having them in their bank accounts, in line with the Better Business Bureau standard that

“the charity’s unrestricted net assets available for use should not be more than three times the size of the past year’s expenses or three times the size of the current year’s budget, whichever is higher.”

Back in June 2005, SPI’s board of the time (Ian Jackson, John Goerzen, Jimmy Kaplowitz, David Graham, Bruce Perens, Benj. Mako Hill, Branden Robinson) decided to “remain noncompliant” with that standard and I fear that chicken could be coming home to roost now. I hope we don’t lose anything, but AIUI we’ve got nearly $150,000 in play. Update: Unlike its UK analogue, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation covers corporation accounts up to $250,000, so SPI is only risking temporary unavailability, not yet a risk of loss. Thanks to bd_ for pointing me to that.

After reading on Jimmy Schementi's weblog that IronPython, the .NET implementation of Python, is just an apt-get install ironpython away, I thought I'd give it a whirl. Here's what I got. Huh? Maybe Microsoft took that "significant whitespace" thing a little too literally... It turns out that IronPython really wants you to use a dark background (bug report). Ah, so that's why the background of Jimmy's blog is black! As you can see from the screenshot, it's also a bit difficult to quit from the Ubuntu version of IronPython. That weird symbol is a result of pressing Ctrl+D. Even Ctrl+\, which usually helps in such cases, only produces a nasty .NET CLR traceback with no ill effects to the interpreter. On the bright side, this is a good start. IronPython seems to be more or less functional, with speed comparable to CPython, even though the example code included in Debian looks a little "heavy" (see /usr/share/doc/ironpython/Tutorial).

I took a note of the various talks I attended at DebConf, with the aim of writing a few notes about each so that I could try to explain to my work mates exactly what I get out of going. However I think a lot of the benefit is about general face to face contact with fellow DDs and random conversations that happen. Having worked from home for over 3 years I'm finding it quite nice to be back in an office with people working on the same things as me; there are conversations that you will have over a quick cup of coffee or in the corridor that you wouldn't bother typing on IRC or email or picking up the phone for. Debian is a lot like a large organisation full of telecommuters and DebConf provides a vital opportunity for us to have those "minor" conversations that prove quite useful and to remind each other what we're actually like in person. I didn't end up writing a lot of notes during the talks so these are just snippets after the fact. If I'd been more organised I'd have done a write up on a daily basis rather than leaving it all until the week after. A lot of the below is fragmented thoughts, but the longer I leave it the less relevant it gets and the more chance I forget something. It'd have been up faster if I hadn't been fighting Movable Type to try and get some sort of headings. Sunday
Introduction, Marga The "Welcome to DebConf" bit. Marga got up and talked about how at DebConf4 (Brazil) she hadn't been a DD and now she was and how it had been a life changing event. She'd thought she was to blame for DebConf8 in Argentina, but trawling mail archives had shown it was originally Mart n's idea. She hadn't realised at the start quite how much work it would be. Steve's DPL talk, Steve McIntyre The DPL welcomes us to DebConf and talks about Debian's achievements, some of the results of his team survey (the teams largely say they need more manpower. Not really a huge surprise.). NM/User Survey BOF, Paul Wise Paul emailed debian-user, debian-newmaint and various other places (I think) asking about people's experiences as a Debian user or applicant to New Maint. His final results aren't yet published and I got the impression a disappointing number of our users had replied. The NM problems these days seem to be largely down to a lack of AMs, at least according to the stats on nm.debian.org. Meet SPI board - bdale, maulkin, jimmy, michael, others A chance to meet those of the SPI board who were present. The usual "If you're involved with Debian you should seriously consider joining SPI". Some discussion about the fact that although SPI was originally mostly Debian these days other projects are making more and more use of it - OFTC, PostgreSQL and Madwifi for example. Not a huge amount of new information for me. I've been an SPI member for some time and I think they perform a vital role for Debian. They've had issues in the past but it's really good to see them overcome and more projects on board. Monday
http://hp.com/go/debian, bdale Bdale talks about the history of Debian and HP. And makes the point that HP aren't doing any of this to be "nice"; their primary responsibility is to their shareholders. Not surprising, but it's good that even with that criteria at the fore front Debian ends up a good idea for a large multinational. Managing 666 packages, Mart n Ferrari Mostly centered around the pkg-perl experience and the tools/workflow they have to help manage things. Impressive web tool (DEHS) to help track packages with new upstreams, issues or pending uploads. Quality Assurance in Lenny + 1 I can't remember a lot of this, which is a bit bad. I remember a discussion about whether we should release with orphaned packages, or if they should be removed. The argument for not removing them seemed to revolve around a theory that if they weren't buggy then what was the harm, the argument for was that if they were unmaintained and not really used than how did we actually know they weren't buggy, and was it reasonable that they potentially held up library transitions etc? Bugs in large packages Don Armstrong and ways in which the BTS can help people with lots of bugs. This (thankfully) doesn't affect me, but it was interesting to hear Don talk about his work on the BTS and his various ideas. I was sorry I'd missed his talk on SOAP access to it; I shall have to find time to watch the video. Tuesday
Debian and Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth The usual interaction with Debian stuff, including how we interact with our upstreams. If a bug is raised with an Ubuntu package then it might well be appropriate to raise it with Debian and upstream as well, but each set of people should be able to use their own bug reporting systems rather than having to go to a foreign system. I don't think it was actually said, but I guess the idea is that launchpad is the thing that will do this gluing together. He also talked about Ubuntu as an "experiment" rather than a fork of Debian; something that has potentially different ideas about how to do things but that these ideas may lead to things that should be fed back into Debian. The point was made that even if you consider Ubuntu a fork they've forked 9 times now; it hasn't been a case of forking once and diverging wildly since thast point. I have a few thoughts on all the whole Debian/Ubuntu stuff which I should really try to form into something coherant and post. I think it's important to take Mark's talk in the context of bdale's "Shareholders come first" point. Derivatives round table Didn't stay for most of this. Ubuntu, Debian-EDU (which I hadn't realised was a derivative rather than a team within Debian, but apparently there are various things it was much easier for them just to patch now and try to work towards a generic solution later), someone from Extramadura and someone from the Munich government Linux stuff. I'm sure I've missed someone off. tdebs/i18n This was a useful BOF. It helped that we said no to the usual video team requirement that if you want to speak you had to wait for the microphone. This works fine for a normal talk, but really impedes the flow of conversation in something like a BOF. tdebs are something that have partly come from a need of Emdebian to reduce installed package size and partly from the desire of the i18n team to be able to update package translations without having to do a full binary NMU of a package. We had some of the FTP team, the release team, the i18n team and Emdebian there and I think some progress has been made. There'd been various conversations had before this meeting which I think helped people think about the issues and objections so that we had answers by the time we all sat down together - an excellent example of the use of DebConf. DebConf9 C ceres Various bits of discussion about next year's DebConf in Extramadura. Temperature is likely to be an issue for me as they reckon it could easily get up to 40C! I'll melt! Venue sounds good; some queries regarding late night hacklabs and net connections to same, but I'm sure the networking team will sort it all out as usual. ;) DebConf10 bids Venezela and New York were both pitching. Lots of people don't want to travel to the US or think they'll have problems doing so (I hadn't realised there was such an issue for people from South America). I suspect various people will have issues with Venezela as well; I heard expressions of doubt over their political stability expressed. However I'd be happy to go to either (and preferably both! DebConf10 + 12 perhaps?) Speaking of which, what ever happened to the Sarajevo bid? If they're reading, have you considered DebConf11? Wednesday
A day trip to an Argentinian ranch and lunch was an asido. Fantastic food and a pleasant afternoon spent sitting in the sun chatting to people. That evening was the formal, but thanks to having stayed up until after 4 on Tuesday I had to wimp out and go to bed fairly early. Not until I'd seen the DPL dance though. :) Thursday
Internationalization in Debian I forget most of this other than pretty graphs from Christian regarding what's translated and what other languages we might have; e.g. you can consider South America to be covered largely by Spanish and Portuguese, or you can consider it to not be covered very much at all by the local indigenous languages. dh-make-webapp: yeah right! Mainly what I took away from this was "It'll never happen thanks to the fact that every web app author uses a different system" and that more work needs to be done on the web apps best practices document. I don't really do web apps, but having them easily installable on my systems is a good thing so I hope some standardisation within Debian comes from this. Best practises in team-maintaining packages Various team members got up to talk about work flow in their teams. Not unsurprisingly different things seem to work for different people. Predictable PRNG in the Vulnerable Debian OpenSSL Package Lucian giving his Black Hat talk about the OpenSSL issues we faced earlier this year. Some queries about automated testing and that it should have found this, which originally I agreed with until I thought about it - you'd have to have run > 65536 tests and compared all the data to find this; something like the FIPS tests against a single run wouldn't have shown any issues. Lucian wanted feedback on ensuring he was presenting the Debian side of things acceptably as well. Keysigning Run by Don Armstrong. Nothing to really remark except I think key signing attendance is dropping off after things like the Helsinki experience. Also I've now managed to get my new RSA key signed by keys other than my own (and I'll try to get sorted out to sign keys myself soon). Friday
LessWatts Intel's drive towards reducing power usage. Odd to hear such things from someone who wasn't Matthew Garrett and I think I'd heard most of it before. Debian technical policy update Sorry Manoj, I should have been paying more attention. Debian Policy is something I think is important, but I'm not enough of a nitpicker to really feel I can contribute a whole lot. Virtualisation in Debian - Present and future This was depressing. What I took away was "We had 2 forms of virtualisation in etch (Xen + vserver) and we're supporting neither for Lenny". As someone running a Xen machine this is problematic. The host does have the hardware support that would allow kvm, but I'm worried about smooth migration (it's a colo box). There was some mention of Xenner, which isn't packaged for Debian. I took a look at doing so but there are some worrying items in the TODO list (like, oh, locking to enable reliable SMP) and I've spectacularly failed to get it compiling so far. I should have another go. Emdebian update Neil Williams about where Emdebian is and waved his Balloon3 about. Some interest from the Openmoko guys and discussion about why it might be better than OpenEmbedded. And equally what it couldn't do that OpenEmbedded can manage (mainly very small installs; a minimal Emdebian install is 24MB+ and with X that goes up to 75MB+ I believe). netconf I'd never actually seen Martin talk about netconf before. Am impressive flow of control diagram. It all sounds quite complex for little benefit at present, but if he pulls it off then I can see it being a much more flexible replacement for the likes of Network Manager. Saturday
Lenny - The Road To Release Neil played with putting the heads of the release team on random images. And tried to tell us all how to behave during the release process in terms of what should and shouldn't be uploaded etc. Most of it is just common sense, but apparently everything he talked about he'd experienced. Also pointed out we were supposed to release in 3 weeks and didn't even have the appropriate kernel in testing yet so it's probably not going to happen. Colour me surprised. Sustainable Computing Low power consumption/affordable computing. Interesting points about the OLPC being used in the middle of nowhere with no chance of an Internet connection being close by compared to neighbours in large cities where people can't necessarily afford top of the line computers or individual connections - in this sort of scenario mesh networking is really viable in terms of getting people connected up. Multi winner voting Manoj needs pretty diagrams, probably drawn by Martin Krafft. ;) Semi-interesting discussion about multi-winner voting (e.g. SPI board elections) and how the current Debian voting system is completely tied to Debian's infrastructure eg the LDAP setup. Manoj would like to make it more generic so it could be used by other groups as well as for different sorts of votes in Debian.

Jimmy Kaplowitz writes:

“Software in the Public Interest, Inc., will hold a public board of directors meeting on Wednesday, August 20, 2008, 19:00 UTC. [...] SPI meetings are held on the OFTC IRC network, irc.oftc.net, in #spi. [...] Agenda“

A couple of weeks ago, I asked why people do and don t join SPI? The answers I got can be grouped into a few headings:-

Don’t know about SPI

“I admit that I was unaware of SPI. However seeing its age, a few familiar names on the board and also on the project list it looks like a solid organisation.”

“I too am unfamiliar with your organization”

“I guess I would be yet aother person who was not aware of this group.”

“Lack of awareness of SPI is probably the biggest hurdle. I too, was unaware of SPI. I am aware of the Linux Foundation and the FSF and others, but how does SPI differentiate itself and its goals from those organizations?”

Don’t know about joining

“The membership page on the SPI website is buried at the bottom of a secondary menu. One has to really go looking for it. And this definitely gives the impression that adding members is not a very high priority.”

“I ve been looking a while for how to join, is not the first time, I did before and never found it until now”

Don’t see why to join

“Even as an open source software advocate, I have not joined SPI because my particular interest and focus is on Plone. The Plone Foundation handles largely the same functions that SPI does for smaller, independent groups.”

“Why, what’s in it for me? The betterment of mankind or bragging rights when a corporations steals all of my work and gets rich off of it.”

“If you are someone who is very interested FOSS (free and open source software) rights and licenses, you are probably more inclined to become a part of the FSF (Free Software Foundation) or the OSI (Open Source Initiative).”

I’d welcome any thoughts you have on how we should overcome these barriers, either in the comments here, or on IRC #spi - I think I should be there a bit before or after the meeting. I’ll try to summarise the best over the next Wednesday or two.

Regular readers may remember that I stood in the board election of Software in the Public Interest, the main democratic free software corporation, a few weeks ago. Well, the result is posted with David Graham and Jimmy Kaplowitz are re-elected. Well done and good luck to both. Thanks to the other board members for running the election and restarting the voting machine as necessary. The postponed July meeting might happen in irc.oftc.net #spi today (Wednesday) at 1900UTC, but I expect they’ll announce it in the usual place before it happens. Naturally, I’m disappointed that more news, members’ panels and the annual report weren’t attractive enough to get more votes, and that old untruths were being reposted to some forums, but I can’t get too upset about this year’s result because both elected candidates had fine manifestos. I’m glad that Jimmy Kaplowitz’s platform includes posting more news and look forward to seeing that. Slightly worrying are the low turnout (down for the third year) and that over 80% of those few voters were from debian (my estimate). I’ve my suspicions why, but I’d love any non-voters to leave me a comment telling me why you think it is. The apology: the summary of responses to my questions about SPI membership will appear next week because I made a mistake on one site, set the closing date a week late and I don’t see any way to edit surveys after they’ve opened. Oops. Sorry. (Now, if that site was running free software, I’d see if I could fix the user interface to allow previews.) (Aside: I was going to include a bar chart of the voting, like last year, but Wordpress’s stupid post editor strips style attributes from li tags. I’ll go looking for that with a hack-axe Real Soon Now, before it causes me serious trouble.)

Before I start on this, note that SPI's next board meeting is next Wednesday at 1900 UTC on irc.oftc.net #spi and logs should appear here and on spi-general less than a day after. I expect the agenda will appear here. Last Tuesday morning, someone asked about SPI holding copyrights. On Tuesday afternoon, I answered with the policy and the only practice example I found. SPI's policy is fine. SPI's practice seemed unclear. On Wednesday morning, I clarified that reply to one board member and made a suggestion to one who seemed to want to ask a lawyer. On Sunday afternoon, after a staggering number of posts which weren't really getting anywhere, I tried to drag it back to the practice example a bit rudely, but that's the level the discussion had fallen to by then. It didn't go down well. It seems rude is fine from other people, but not me. Damn baggage. There was a sequence of posts telling me that SPI members weren't even allowed to ask about this task. I replied to one on Tuesday morning and took the useful bits off to debian vote. Yesterday, I lost my cool, really, and posted too much, replying to all the stupid posts suggesting that you can only ask if you wear the right hat, and one or two particularly ugly personal attacks. Sorry about that. Meanwhile, over on IRC, a draft solution to the problem has been developed/found. So all's well in the end. I give big thanks to Jimmy, Sam and Lucas in particular and a big apology for responding to the mailing list abuse.

I have just watched The Wire’s last episode. For those who don’t know about it, The Wire is the greatest TV series ever created (Salon and Slate back me on this). It’s been acclaimed by critics, but widely disregarded by audience. I’ll never forget Jimmy McNulty, a troubled Irish American dipsomaniac murder detective (played by brilliant Brit Dominic West) or Omar Little, a Robin Hood-like stickup homosexual man in west Baltimore. The rest of the deeply portrayed characters of the show are great too, but above all of them, the real starring role belongs to Baltimore. I am sure Baltimore’s reality goes way beyond this show, but I don’t think a show can get more real than The Wire. Each season focuses on a different topic, such as drug-dealing, unions, politics, the press, always keeping the police department around. The story arcs are really long and complex, The Wire is not the kind of show you can enjoy watching a single episode of, but more like, as its own creator - a former Baltimore Sun journalist - put it, a “66 hour movie”. Well, I could keep praising it for hours, but lots of people have done that already, even Barack Obama loves it (:P, let’s ride the hype). Praise available in Spanish too Besides, Eliot Spitzer has made wiretaps really popular again these last days Really, you must see it.