After starting with
Joey Hess, we continue with Paul Wise. What makes his star to shine are many things such as being a DSA (Debian System Administrator), a helpful hand on mailings list, encouraging people to join Debian teams but most of all - he has encyclopedia knowledge on Debian as a whole which he gladly shares with anyone who asks (very fast response on IRC channels). It is almost impossible for any single person to count all Debian teams, work and places - to know most of those things, you can image the vast knowledge which Paul has. The legend says that his brain has better and faster search engine algorithm on Debian related queries than all other engines combined. So lets see what he has to share with world.
me:
Who are you?
pabs: Paul Wise (
pabs) and I have to say that I'm no-where near as knowledgeable as your intro suggests.
me:
How did you start programming?
pabs: Messing around with fractals and graphics things in MS BASIC.
me:
How would you now advise others to start programming?
pabs: Pick an issue in a tool you use, investigate how the tool works and how you can change it, fix that and contribute the change back to the project that created that tool. In the process you will learn skills, interact with the community and contribute to the project.
me:
Setup of your development machine?
pabs: Lenovo Thinkpad with external monitor, Debian testing and some
tweaks
me
What is your preferable language (for hacking)? Why? How do you compare it to other languages?
pabs: I currently prefer Python for its readability. It still has some rough edges though the documentation covers them fairly well. I generally pick up new languages when working on projects written in them. Haskell is next on the horizon due to
Nikki and the Robots.
me:
Describe your current most memorable situation as software
developer/hacker?
pabs: I had a great time creating fractals in BASIC, learning about the Mandelbrot set, L-systems and more. My days and nights of hacking on frhed (a GPLed hex editor for Windows) to help me cheat at Civilisation were pretty memorable. frhed led to my work on reverse engineering the CHM file format (a documentation format for Windows programs). A stand-out moment during my time with Debian was hacking on the
derivates census patch generation code during the Debian UK BBQ weekend, surrounded by geeks playing Portal, cooking things, hacking on Debian and generally having a good time (thanks Steve!).
me:
Some memorable moments from Debian conferences?
pabs: There are so many; meeting Debian folks, playing Mao once and then never again, late night games of werewolf, both delectably delicious and hideously disgusting cheeses, fried insects, day trips to beautiful landscapes, inspiring keynotes, exciting BoFs, secret IRC channels for planning surprise birthday parties, blue hair, wet air, blocks of fried cheese, a vast quantity of icecream, pants, geeks in the surf, volcanoes, hiking, a wonderful view, a uni-cycling stormtrooper & more.
me:
How do you see future of Debian development?
pabs: I hope we will continue to exist and uphold our principles for the foreseeable future. I don't have any crystal balls though.
me:
You recently became member of Debian DSA - what is that like, what roles do you have and what tasks are in front of DSA?
pabs: We wrote a bit of text about that for
DPN recently.
me:
You have large knowledge on Debian and you share it with anyone who wants to know more. What motivates you to do so?
pabs: I want the operating system I personally rely on to exist into the future, helping folks work on and join Debian can help with that.
me:
Why should developers and users join Debian community? What makes Debian a great and happy place?
pabs: Every Debian contributor has different reasons for joining the community. Personally the Social Contract, the DFSG and the spirit and culture behind them are the main reason to be involved. I also like our many efforts towards technical excellence and correctness. Of course I've made a number of good friends over the years, especially as a result of attending DebConf every year since 2007.
me:
You are member of Debian publicity team which writes Debian news - do you need more people to join that team and how can they start?
pabs: Since there is an infinite amount of work to do, pretty much every part of Debian always needs help, that includes the publicity team. We published a
post about ways to help here.
me:
If someone wants to contribute to Debian in terms of packaging, can they do it anonymously (for example over Tor network, does Debian have .onion address)?
pabs: Due to Debian's penchant for transparency it is harder but there are definitely package maintainers who have built up a reputation for good work under a pseudonym over the years and become Debian contributors as a result. I'm not aware of completely anonymous package maintainers but there are definitely people who file bugs using one-off pseudonyms, which is almost the same thing as anonymously. There are definitely Debian contributors and members who use Tor while contributing to Debian. In fact, as Debian is very highly dependent on OpenPGP and the best practices for OpenPGP include
refreshing your keyring slowly over Tor, so probably quite a number of Debian contributors use Tor. As far as I know Debian itself does not run any Tor relays or onion services.
me:
What are places that non-packaging developers and people could join and help spread Debian even more?
pabs: There are many ways to
help Debian, including non-technical ones. Unfortunately our web page about helping Debian isn't quite up-to-date with all of them but a few more are to
volunteer at
DebConf, helo with
artwork requests,
speak about Debian at events or even come up with
ideas for projects. Whatever skills you have, Debian can probably make use of them. If you aren't sure where to start, jump on the debian-mentors mailing list or IRC channel and we can probably guide you to the right place within Debian. Don't worry about not being skilled enough, everyone starts somewhere.
me:
How do you see Debian will manage webapps?
pabs: Personally I prefer locally installed software, standard data formats and standard data transfer protocols to the wild webapps world but I understand they are becoming very popular to produce and use due to the ubiquity of the web browser platform. Antonio Terceiro is mentoring a
project for this year's newcomer mentorship programs (outreachy/gsoc) that aims to improve support for installing web apps on Debian installations. I hope it succeeds as it could help make Debian more popular on servers and home servers in particular.
me:
How would you advise Debian (and other FLOSS users) to setup their machine in terms of security and anonymity?
pabs: All technology has upsides and downsides. I would advise anyone to analyse their situation and protect themselves accordingly. For example if you have a bad memory, full disk encryption, which is based on pass-phrases might lead to data loss and physical security might be a better choice for protecting your data. The right choices around technology are very much a personal thing.
me:
Is it better to setup xmonad (because it is Haskell based WM) with small dependency chain or GNOME (because it is getting sandboxed apps) in term of security and privacy implications?
pabs: Again, the right choices around technology are very much a personal thing. Due to the design of X11, both of these are approximately equivalent from a window-manager security properties point of view, that is to say, pretty bad. Wayland is one of the possible X11 successors and offers much better security properties. GNOME folks are working on switching to Wayland. Ultimately though it comes down to how each person uses their window manager and which software they run under it.
me:
Should Debian join Tor project as distro that installs Tor relays by default - should it offer that as option in installer in Debian 9?
pabs: Running a Tor relay requires a reasonably fast and reliable Internet connection and should be a conscious
decision on behalf of the sysadmin for a computer so Debian probably shouldn't install them by default. If tasksel gets support for
installing tasks from Debian Pure Blends, then we could add a Tor relay task to the
Debian Sanctuary Pure Blend.
me:
Have you ever considered joining initiatives such as FreedomBox?
pabs: I was quite moved by Eben Moglen's
talk at DebConf10 in New York and the resulting
BoF. It seemed like a very ambitious project but I didn't really have the knowledge, skills or time to contribute yet.
me:
Are you a gamer? Valve Steam games are offered for free to Debian Developers - do you use steam and play Valve games? Your thoughts on Steam and non-free Linux gaming?
pabs: I play computer games occasionally, all from Debian main or ones that I'm packaging. 0ad is my current go-to for a bit of gaming. I don't have any experience with Steam or non-free games on Linux.
me:
Is there something you would change in FLOSS ecosystem?
pabs: Various folks have highlighted new and ongoing challenges for the FLOSS ecosystem in various places in recent years.
Something that I would like to highlight that does not get talked about enough is the choices we make around our digital artefacts. This is the discussion around "preferred form for modification" or "source". The "source" for a particular digital artefact is a deliberate choice on behalf of the authors. Often generated files are distributed alongside the "source" without any instructions for reproducing the generated files from the "source". It sometimes happens that FLOSS contributors forget to distriute what they have chosen as "source", instead just distributing the generated files. This is a fairly well known issue but still happens. What isn't thought about quite as much is that the choice of "source" has consequences for future development possibilities of that "source". Some forms of "source" are more expressive than others, can be modified in a wider variety of ways and are better choices in general. Sometimes the consequences of choosing less expressive forms are mild and other times they are quite important. I hope more people will start to think about these choices. Some examples where, in my opinion, various people could have made better choices are listed in
the mail I sent to the games team list last year.
Another thing I would like to highlight is the work that organisations like
Software Freedom Conservancy and
Software in the Public Interest do to protect, defend, promote and support FLOSS projects. It is very important work that needs our interest and support.
me:
Can FLOSS world create great alternatives to Viber, Dropbox, WhatsUp, Facebook, Skype and other non-free services?
pabs: I think that the FLOSS world has already created alternatives to all of those. The success of non-free services doesn't take these alternatives away but it does mean some of them are less useful because some of them are the kind of tools that become more useful with a larger amount of people using them. I don't know what it would take for the FLOSS alternatives to achieve similar success as
network effects are hard to overcome. Hopefully mako is right and the
network effects are overrated.
me:
Your thoughts and compare Cloud, IaaS, PaaS, SaaSS? To what should the FLOSS world pay more attention and energy?
pabs: Initially I dismissed these as buzzwords and a threat to Free Software. These days I view them as potential opportunities for Free Software. Cloud-related technologies such as OpenStack and virtual machines can make private compute farm hardware more flexible and useful to their owners. IaaS providers can be used to run Debian more simply and cheaply and therefore bring Debian to more people than possible with hardware. PaaS providers can be used to run Free Software services. SaaSS can be based entirely on Free Software and respect users. Of course, just like running Free Software on hardware (proprietary or libre), cloud technology, IaaS, PaaS and SaaSS all come with downsides. The FLOSS world should aim to inform users of our software of these downsides. For example, the Debian installer could note that it is running on Intel CPUs with a proprietary BIOS and various proprietary software running, that it is running on a mobile phone with a locked bootloader, that it is running in a Xen VM on machines owned by Amazon. Free Software services could note they are running on Google App Engine etc. Free Software web browsers, chat clients etc could note when they are connecting to proprietary network services. All these notes could inform users about the downsides present in the particular situation encountered. There is also much work to be done making it easier to run Free Software on top of or use Free Software to connect to all manner of platforms from lowRISC to UEFI to VMware to Google App Engine to GitHub to Facebook. The more places Free Software can reach, the more people will be exposed to the philosophy behind it and the more potential there is for folks to join the community. While co-option of the FLOSS world is a dangerous certainty, co-option of proprietary platforms might be able to expand the reach of the philosophy behind Free Software.
me:
Your thoughts on Purism (the open hardware laptop initiative that got recently funded on CrowdSupply)?
pabs: I don't know enough about that to comment but personally I am more interested in a laptop based on a libre CPU architecture. The
RISC-V ISA and the
lowRISC project seems to be one of the more promising possibilities at this point in time.
me:
Did you watch Citizenfour - comments on it?
pabs: I've seen the trailer and look forward to watching it at some point, I read there might be a
screening at DebConf15.
[As You Like It, Act III, Scene V]
Hey Beautiful
I thought of you on the Fourth of July; which does not, in and of itself,
distinguish the day from any other since I met you. It was remarkable
only in that it was justifiable, given our conversation about fireworks
displays. Of course, I'm happy to take the flimsiest of displays as an
excuse to mark you.
I'm home alone right now, after watching The Bad Seed. Truth be told,
the shadows keep spooking me. I can't seem to stop myself from imagining
precocious blonde murderers in them. It's a manageable silliness, but
made a little less so by the fact that I forgot to lock the door. Less
troublesome than the night I spent after Ringu (the original Japanese
version of The Ring). I finished watching it in the wee hours of the
morning, and I wanted to go to sleep. I was in half a stupor, but the
incessant inner critic in me kept imagining all the changes that could
have been made to make the movie more truly unsettling until visions of
Obake were swimming around me.
Ordinarily I doubt I'd be bothered particularly by a 50's classic, but
went back up to Boston this afternoon. 's at a conference in
Finland, so I invited him down to visit while I have the apartment all
to myself. It was strange to have a visitor actually in my home for
whom I didn't have to play at being contented. At any rate, being
around for three days essentially meant carrying on a three-day-long
conversaiton, and the abrupt drop of sociability makes me feel my
isolation a little more acutely.
We watched The Way We Were together, and agreed that it should be
remade with casting that actually works. I hadn't seen it before, and
was surprised to find it unusually nuanced and substantial, yet still
not good. It was nice to have someone around who would dissect it with
me afterward. It's been a while since I actually discussed a film with
someone. Partly out of my own fault; I don't always enjoy verbalizing
my opinions of movies immediately after watching them if I've found them
in the least bit moving. I guess I consider the aftertaste part of the
experience. In this case, we both felt the film had missed its
emotional mark so it wasn't so much of an issue. On the other hand, I
don't find most movies moving. I find them frustratingly flawed, and by
the time they end I'm raring to rant about their petty contradictions
and failures of logic. I think it might give people the impression that
I don't actually make any effort to tease out the messages filmmakers
weave into their work. Or maybe I'm just making excuses for having
uninteresting friends. Either way, it was pleasant to be in the company
of someone eager to tolerate the convolutions of my thought process.
On Wednesday night, I have a date to meet up with some former
co-workers/friends that I've been passively avoiding for several years
now. Every time I fail to carefully manage my visibility, people seem
to come flooding back into my life. This time the culprit was a day
spent logged into instant messaging without stringent privacy settings.
I should feel lucky for that, I suppose. I'm not sure how I actually
feel. One of the formers is a woman I was very close to, as far as
most of the world her included could discern. The other is a Boston
boy I admired for the touch of golden child in the air that hung about
him. The main theme of his life was (and I suspect still is) getting
to drinks with friends at one of his regular bars at the end of every
evening. Which did not at all stop him from being productive,
interested in the world, and bright. If he had been a girl I would
have been hateful with envy. Instead he's always stood out in my
memory as the only person I've had a bit of a crush on despite not
finding him particularly intellectually stimulating. A month or so
ago he sold his company to google. Now he spends a lot of time out of
town giving lectures. I suspect I may be generally happy for him,
and I'm not quite sure what to do with that.
Thursday I'm leaving for a few days in Denver. I wish I hadn't
scheduled it for a time when I could have been the sole occupant of
my domicile, but other than that I'm looking forward to it. I've
no idea what I'll do there, but at least that means I really am
going someplace that wouldn't occur to me outside of a peculiar set
of constraints. I think it would be advisable to work out the
transportation system before I depart, though.
I hope this letter finds you relatively satisfied, at a minimum.
I don't actually need to tell you how much I miss talking to you, do I?
You're wonderful.
Affectionally, as always,
A small update to 
Here s a photo journal of a walk I just completed around the Pot Lake loop of the Bluff Wilderness Hiking Trail. Hope you enjoy it!
I was dissatisfied with my initial post, so have reduced the size to improve load time, changed the gallery software and have rewritten many of the captions.
[slb_group]
What happened about the 
Transitions
There is huge ongoing work on package transitions. Take a look at our 
KDE
We will ship with at least KDE Applications 4.13, maybe some 4.14 things as well (if we are lucky, since Tanglu will likely be in feature-freeze when this stuff is released). The other KDE parts will remain on their latest version from the 4.x series. For Tanglu 3, we might update KDE SC 4.x to KDE Frameworks 5 and use Plasma 5 though.
GNOME
Due to the lack manpower on the GNOME flavor, GNOME will ship in the same version available in Debian Sid maybe with some stuff pulled from Experimental, where it makes sense. A GNOME flavor is planned to be available.
Common infrastructure
We currently run with systemd 208, but a switch to 210 is planned. Tanglu 2 also targets the X.org server in version 1.16. For more changes, stay tuned. The kernel release for Bartholomea is also not yet decided.
Artwork
Work on the default Tanglu 2 design has started as well any artwork submissions are most welcome!
Tanglu joins the OIN
The Tanglu project is now a proud member (licensee) of the
As 
Sorry 
If traveling in Switzerland to see the mountains, then it works out cheaper to fly into Milan, Italy, which is very close to the Swiss border. Most of the journey from Milan to Vaumarcus can be covered using one of the Swiss railway travel passes, with stops for sight-seeing on the way, and the other days on the pass used for sight-seeing.
Now imagine people arriving in a group: the rail ticket prices quickly add up. For a family of four, 4 * 315 = CHF 1,260. Car rental may be a better option. Hiring a car in Switzerland is expensive, hiring in Italy is much cheaper, the plane tickets to Italy are cheaper too, so there is a lot of money to be saved.
But who wants the hassle of travelling to Switzerland via Italy?
Of course that is the silliest rhetorical question you are going to see this week: visiting Italy is not a hassle at all. Even the Swiss enjoy going there so much that they just built the world's longest rail tunnel under the Alps to bring Como and Milan that little bit closer, the 
I know it's been ages since I last blogged anything at all. To some degree I had a down phase, but I hope to get out of it. It's nice to see that there are people out there who give me a prod every now and then, and don't let me drown. Thanks, most of you probably know that I mean exactly you, and in case you are uncertain, you probably are meant if you contact me every now and then.
Anyway, if you remember that I blogged about 
