I was shocked to learn today that Richard Stallman has been reinstated as a member of the board of the Free Software Foundation. I think this is plain inappropriate, but I cannot see how anyone who doesn t think that could fail to see the reinstatement as counterproductive. As Bradley M. Kuhn put it,

The question is whether an organization should have a designated leader who is on a sustained, public campaign advocating about an unrelated issue that many consider controversial. It really doesn t matter what your view about the controversial issue is; a leader who refuses to stop talking loudly about unrelated issues eventually creates an untenable distraction from the radical activism you re actively trying to advance. The message of universal software freedom is a radical cause; it s basically impossible for one individual to effectively push forward two unrelated controversial agendas at once. In short, the radical message of software freedom became overshadowed by RMS radical views about sexual morality.

There is an open letter calling for the removal of the entire Board of the Free Software Foundation in response. I haven t signed the letter because the Free Software Foundation Board s vote to reinstate Stallman was not unanimous, so the call to remove all of them does not make sense to me. I agree with the open letter s call to remove Stallman from other positions of leadership. I hope that this whole situation can be resolved quickly.

On February 28th, GitHub published a brand new version of its Terms of Service (ToS). While the first draft announced earlier in February didn't generate much reaction, the new ToS raised concerns that they may break at least the spirit, if not the letter, of certain free-software licenses. Digging in further reveals that the situation is probably not as dire as some had feared. The first person to raise the alarm was probably Thorsten Glaser, a Debian developer, who stated that the "new GitHub Terms of Service require removing many Open Source works from it". His concerns are mainly about section D of the document, in particular section D.4 which states:

You grant us and our legal successors the right to store and display your Content and make incidental copies as necessary to render the Website and provide the Service.

Section D.5 then goes on to say:

[...] You grant each User of GitHub a nonexclusive, worldwide license to access your Content through the GitHub Service, and to use, display and perform your Content, and to reproduce your Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality

ToS versus GPL The concern here is that the ToS bypass the normal provisions of licenses like the GPL. Indeed, copyleft licenses are based on copyright law which forbid users from doing anything with the content unless they comply with the license, which forces, among other things, "share alike" properties. By granting GitHub and its users rights to reproduce content without explicitly respecting the original license, the ToS may allow users to bypass the copyleft nature of the license. Indeed, as Joey Hess, author of git-annex, explained :

The new TOS is potentially very bad for copylefted Free Software. It potentially neuters it entirely, so GPL licensed software hosted on Github has an implicit BSD-like license

Hess has since removed all his content (mostly mirrors) from GitHub. Others disagree. In a well-reasoned blog post, Debian developer Jonathan McDowell explained the rationale behind the changes:

My reading of the GitHub changes is that they are driven by a desire to ensure that GitHub are legally covered for the things they need to do with your code in order to run their service.

This seems like a fair point to make: GitHub needs to protect its own rights to operate the service. McDowell then goes on to do a detailed rebuttal of the arguments made by Glaser, arguing specifically that section D.5 "does not grant [...] additional rights to reproduce outside of GitHub". However, specific problems arise when we consider that GitHub is a private corporation that users have no control over. The "Services" defined in the ToS explicitly "refers to the applications, software, products, and services provided by GitHub". The term "Services" is therefore not limited to the current set of services. This loophole may actually give GitHub the right to bypass certain provisions of licenses used on GitHub. As Hess detailed in a later blog post:

If Github tomorrow starts providing say, an App Store service, that necessarily involves distribution of software to others, and they put my software in it, would that be allowed by this or not? If that hypothetical Github App Store doesn't sell apps, but licenses access to them for money, would that be allowed under this license that they want to my software?

However, when asked on IRC, Bradley M. Kuhn of the Software Freedom Conservancy explained that "ultimately, failure to comply with a copyleft license is a copyright infringement" and that the ToS do outline a process to deal with such infringement. Some lawyers have also publicly expressed their disagreement with Glaser's assessment, with Richard Fontana from Red Hat saying that the analysis is "basically wrong". It all comes down to the intent of the ToS, as Kuhn (who is not a lawyer) explained:

any license can be abused or misused for an intent other than its original intent. It's why it matters to get every little detail right, and I hope Github will do that.

He went even further and said that "we should assume the ambiguity in their ToS as it stands is favorable to Free Software". The ToS are in effect since February 28th; users "can accept them by clicking the broadcast announcement on your dashboard or by continuing to use GitHub". The immediacy of the change is one of the reasons why certain people are rushing to remove content from GitHub: there are concerns that continuing to use the service may be interpreted as consent to bypass those licenses. Hess even hosted a separate copy of the ToS [PDF] for people to be able to read the document without implicitly consenting. It is, however, unclear how a user should remove their content from the GitHub servers without actually agreeing to the new ToS.

CLAs When I read the first draft, I initially thought there would be concerns about the mandatory Contributor License Agreement (CLA) in section D.5 of the draft:

[...] unless there is a Contributor License Agreement to the contrary, whenever you make a contribution to a repository containing notice of a license, you license your contribution under the same terms, and agree that you have the right to license your contribution under those terms.

I was concerned this would establish the controversial practice of forcing CLAs on every GitHub user. I managed to find a post from a lawyer, Kyle E. Mitchell, who commented on the draft and, specifically, on the CLA. He outlined issues with wording and definition problems in that section of the draft. In particular, he noted that "contributor license agreement is not a legal term of art, but an industry term" and "is a bit fuzzy". This was clarified in the final draft, in section D.6, by removing the use of the CLA term and by explicitly mentioning the widely accepted norm for licenses: "inbound=outbound". So it seems that section D.6 is not really a problem: contributors do not need to necessarily delegate copyright ownership (as some CLAs require) when they make a contribution, unless otherwise noted by a repository-specific CLA. An interesting concern he raised, however, was with how GitHub conducted the drafting process. A blog post announced the change on February 7th with a link to a form to provide feedback until the 21st, with a publishing deadline of February 28th. This gave little time for lawyers and developers to review the document and comment on it. Users then had to basically accept whatever came out of the process as-is. Unlike every software project hosted on GitHub, the ToS document is not part of a Git repository people can propose changes to or even collaboratively discuss. While Mitchell acknowledges that "GitHub are within their rights to update their terms, within very broad limits, more or less however they like, whenever they like", he sets higher standards for GitHub than for other corporations, considering the community it serves and the spirit it represents. He described the process as:

[...] consistent with the value of CYA, which is real, but not with the output-improving virtues of open process, which is also real, and a great deal more pleasant.

Mitchell also explained that, because of its position, GitHub can have a major impact on the free-software world.

And as the current forum of preference for a great many developers, the knock-on effects of their decisions throw big weight. While GitHub have the wheel and they ve certainly earned it for now they can do real damage.

In particular, there have been some concerns that the ToS change may be an attempt to further the already diminishing adoption of the GPL for free-software projects; on GitHub, the GPL has been surpassed by the MIT license. But Kuhn believes that attitudes at GitHub have begun changing:

GitHub historically had an anti-copyleft culture, which was created in large part by their former and now ousted CEO, Preston-Warner. However, recently, I've seen people at GitHub truly reach out to me and others in the copyleft community to learn more and open their minds. I thus have a hard time believing that there was some anti-copyleft conspiracy in this ToS change.

GitHub response However, it seems that GitHub has actually been proactive in reaching out to the free software community. Kuhn noted that GitHub contacted the Conservancy to get its advice on the ToS changes. While he still thinks GitHub should fix the ambiguities quickly, he also noted that those issues "impact pretty much any non-trivial Open Source and Free Software license", not just copylefted material. When reached for comments, a GitHub spokesperson said:

While we are confident that these Terms serve the best needs of the community, we take our users' feedback very seriously and we are looking closely at ways to address their concerns.

Regardless, free-software enthusiasts have other concerns than the new ToS if they wish to use GitHub. First and foremost, most of the software running GitHub is proprietary, including the JavaScript served to your web browser. GitHub also created a centralized service out of a decentralized tool (Git). It has become the largest code hosting service in the world after only a few years and may well have become a single point of failure for free software collaboration in a way we have never seen before. Outages and policy changes at GitHub can have a major impact on not only the free-software world, but also the larger computing world that relies on its services for daily operation. There are now free-software alternatives to GitHub. GitLab.com, for example, does not seem to have similar licensing issues in its ToS and GitLab itself is free software, although based on the controversial open core business model. The GitLab hosting service still needs to get better than its grade of "C" in the GNU Ethical Repository Criteria Evaluations (and it is being worked on); other services like GitHub and SourceForge score an "F". In the end, all this controversy might have been avoided if GitHub was generally more open about the ToS development process and gave more time for feedback and reviews by the community. Terms of service are notorious for being confusing and something of a legal gray area, especially for end users who generally click through without reading them. We should probably applaud the efforts made by GitHub to make its own ToS document more readable and hope that, with time, it will address the community's concerns.

Note: this article first appeared in the Linux Weekly News.

On February 4th and 5th, Debian will be attending FOSDEM 2017 in Brussels, Belgium; a yearly gratis event (no registration needed) run by volunteers from the Open Source and Free Software community. It's free, and it's big: more than 600 speakers, over 600 events, in 29 rooms. This year more than 45 current or past Debian contributors will speak at FOSDEM: Alexandre Viau, Bradley M. Kuhn, Daniel Pocock, Guus Sliepen, Johan Van de Wauw, John Sullivan, Josh Triplett, Julien Danjou, Keith Packard, Martin Pitt, Peter Van Eynde, Richard Hartmann, Sebastian Dr ge, Stefano Zacchiroli and Wouter Verhelst, among others. Similar to previous years, the event will be hosted at Universit libre de Bruxelles. Debian contributors and enthusiasts will be taking shifts at the Debian stand with gadgets, T-Shirts and swag. You can find us at stand number 4 in building K, 1 B; CoreOS Linux and PostgreSQL will be our neighbours. See https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEvents/be/2017/FOSDEM for more details. We are looking forward to meeting you all!

Hi, I am in two minds of what to write about Doha. My job has been vastly simplified by a friend when he shared with me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdrAd-44LW0 . That video is more relevant and more closer to the truth than whatever I can share. As can be seen it is funny but more sad the way Qatarians are trying to figure out how things will be and as can be seen it seems to heading towards a real estate bubble . They would have to let go of the Sharia if they are thinking of wealthy westerners coming to stay put. I am just sad to know that many of my country-men are stuck there and although I hope the best for them, I dread it may turn out the way it has turned out for many people of Indians, and especially from Kerala in Saudi Arabia. I would touch about the Kerala situation probably in another blog post as this time is exclusively for legal aspects which were discussed in Debconf. A bit of backgrounder here, one part of my family is lawyers which means I have somewhat notion of law as practiced in our land. As probably everybody knows, India was ruled by the British for around 150 odd years. One of the things that they gave while leaving was/is the IPC (Indian Penal Code) and is practiced with the common law concept. The concept means precedence of any judgement goes quite some way in framing rulings and law of the land as time goes on besides the lobbying and the politics which happens in any democracy. Free software would not have been there without the GPL The General Public License. And the license is as much a legal document as it s something that the developers can work without becoming deranged, as it is one of the more simpler licenses to work with. My own understanding of the legal, ethical and moral issues around me were framed by two-three different TV shows, books (fiction and non-fiction alike) apart from what little news I heard in family. One was M*A*S*H* (with Alan Alda and his frailness, anarchism, humanism, civil rights), the Practise and Boston Legal which does lay bare the many grey areas that lawyers have to deal with ( The Practice also influenced a lot of civil rights understanding and First amendment, but as it is a TV show, how much of it is actually practiced for lawyers and how much moral dilemma they are can only be guessed at.) . In books it is artists like John Grisham, Michael Connelly as well as Perry Mason Agatha Christie. In non-fiction look at the treasures under bombayhighcourt e-books corner and series of Hamlyn Lectures. I would have to warn that all of the above are major time-sinks but rewarding in their own way. Also haven t read all of them as time and interests are constrained but do know they are good for understanding bit of our history. I do crave for a meetup kind of scenario when non-lawyers can read and discuss about facets of law . All that understanding was vastly amplified by Groklaw.net which made non-lawyers at the very least be able to decipher and understand what is going on in the free software world. After PJ (Pamela Jones) closed it in 2013 due to total surveillance by the Free World (i.e. the United States of America, NSA) we have been thirsty. We do get occasionally somewhat mildly interesting articles in lwn.net or arstechnica.net but nowhere the sheer brilliance of groklaw. So, it was a sheer stroke of luck that I met Mr. Bradley M. Kuhn who works with Karen Sandler on Software Conservancy. While I wanted to be there for his presentation, it was just one of those days which doesn t go as planned. However, as we met socially and over e-mail there were two basic questions which I asked him which also imbibes why we need to fight for software freedom in the court of law. Below is a re-wording of what he shared . Q1. why do people think that GPL still needs to be challenged in the court of law while there are gpl-violations which has been more or less successfully defended in the court of law ? Bradley Kuhn the GPL violations is basically a violation of one or more clauses of the GPL license and not the GPL license as a whole and my effort during my lifetime would be to make/have such precedents that the GPL is held as a valid license in the court of law. Q2. Let s say IF GPL is held to be valid in the court of law, would FSF benefit monetarily, at least to my mind it might be so, as more people and comapnies could be convinced to use strong copyleft licenses such as GPLv3 or AGPLv3 . Bradley Kuhn It may or may not. It is possible that even after winning, that people and especially companies may go for weak copyleft licenses if it suits them. The only benefit would probably would be to those people who are already using GPLv3 as the law could be used to protect them as well. Although we would want and welcome companies who would use strong copyleft license such as the GPL, the future is in future and hence uncertain. Both possibilities co-exist. While Bradley didn t say it, I would add further here it probably would mean also moving from being a more offensive mode (which GPL-violations is based upon where a violation occurs and somebody either from the victim s side or a by-stander notices the violation, brings it to the notice of the victim and the GPL-volations team.) to perhaps it being defended by the DMCA people themselves, once GPL is held as a valid license in the eyes of law. Although should you use the DMCA or not is a matter of choice, personal belief system as well as your legal recourses. I have to share that the FSF and the GPL-violations team are probably very discerning when they take up the fight as most of the work done by them is pro-bono (i.e. they don t make a single penny/paisa from the work done therein.) and hence in view of scarce resources, it makes sense to go only for the biggest violators in the hopes that you can either make them agree to compensate and agree to the terms of license of any software/hardware combination or sue them and take a bigger share of the reward/compensation awarded by the Court to help the defendant and maybe some of the proceeds donated by the defendant and people like you and me to make sure that Conservancy and the GPL-violations team is still around to help the next time something similar happens. Now, as far as his presentation is concerned, whose video can be seen at http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2016/debconf16/The_Supreme_Court_of_DFSGFree.webm , I thought it was tame. While he talked about gaming the system in some sense, he was sharing that the system debian-legal works (most-of-the-time). The list actually works because many far more brilliant people than me take time to understand the intricacies of various licenses and how they should be interpreted through the excellently written Debian Free Software Guidelines and whether the license under discussion contravenes the DFSG or is part of it. I do agree with his point though that the ftp-master/s and the team may not be the right person to judge the license in adherence to the DFSG, or her/is not giving a reason for rejecting a package to not entering into the package archive. I actually asked the same question on debian-legal and while I had guessed, it seems there is enough review of the licenses per-se as answer from Paul Wise shows. Charles Pessley also shared an idea he has documented which probably didn t get much traction as involves more work on DD s without any benefit to show for it. All in all I hope it sheds some light on why there is need to be more aware of law in software freedom. Two Organizations which work on software freedom from legal standpoint are SFLC (Delhi) headed by the charming Mr. Eben Moglen and ALF (Bangalore). I do hope more people, especially developers take a bit more interest in some of the resources mentioned above.
Filed under: Miscellenous Tagged: #Alternative Law Forum, #bombayhighcourt e-library, #Common Law, #Debconf16, #Fiction, #Hewlyn lectures, #India, #Jurispudence, #legal fiction, #real estate bubble, #SFLC.in, #Software Freedom, #timesink, Doha, Law

Debconf15 started yesterday and as expected, talk rooms are always fully crowded! I had to stand up in a couple of talks and I watched another couple of them from outside thanks to the real time streaming. Thanks to the fantastic work of the video team, video recordings of the talks from yesterday have started to be available at http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2015/debconf15/.
I would heartily recommend you to watch Debian s Central Role in the Future of Software Freedom by Bradley M. Kuhn (video available).
I was expecting a good talk and Bradley exceeded my expectations. I also got to meet again Simon Kainz and to get my DUCK branded lighter from the duck challenge :) After dinner, we celebrated Debian s 22 birthday, that s exactly today. We had a wonderful cake made by DebConf attendees made by small pieces of pastry with fruits drawing a mosaic with a Debian swirl.
While the cake was a very nice detail, the best part of it was watching the people making the cake. Everybody had a great time and this kind of things are what make Debian (and DebConf) great. When people work together to make something wonderful.

This year, on top of the many excellent contributed talks, BoFs, and other events always part of DebConf (some of which have already been announced) we are excited to have confirmed the following keynote speakers. During the Open Weekend (Saturday, August 15th and Sunday, August 16th), we will have keynotes delivered by:

• Bradley M. Kuhn, President, Software Freedom Conservancy / Board of Directors, Free Software Foundation (Wikipedia page)
• Werner Koch, Creator and Lead Developer, GnuPG Project / g10 Code GmbH (Wikipedia page)
• Bdale Garbee, Chief Technologist Open Source and Linux, HP / Debian Project (Wikipedia page)

On the last day of DebConf, we look forward to the closing keynote by:

• Jacob Appelbaum, Security Researcher and Journalist / Tor Project (Wikipedia page)

For more information about our invited speakers, please see http://debconf15.debconf.org/invited_speakers.xhtml Citizenfour Screening Additionally, there will be a screening of the Citizenfour movie, winner of the Best Documentary Feature Academy Award on the evening of Friday, August 21st. You still have time to submit your talk There are only a few days left before the end of the Call for Proposals on June 15th. Events submitted after that date might not be part of the official DebConf schedule. So, please, hurry, check out the proposal submission guide and submit your event. Regards from the DebConf Team

I m getting more spam than the amount that I can stand in this blog. Comments are moderated, so the public is not suffering that, only me. From time to time I go to my dashboard and clean the spam. I m afraid that I delete some legit comment in these spam-cleaning-fevers, or, more probably, that a legit comment waits in the queue for several days (weeks?), just because I m lazy to deal with spam and let days pass by (until the fever comes). I think I m going to follow the wisdom of Bradley M. Kuhn and link to a pump.io note for comments on my blog posts (disabling them here in WordPress.com). I usually post a notice when I write something in my blog, so the only task is to update the blog post with the pump.io URL of the thread for comments. While WordPress.com allows to write comments quickly, without need of an account (you write just a name and an email, and the comment), in pump you need to have an account and sign in to comment. That looks as a bad thing, a barrier for people to participate. But of course, it stops spam :) After thinking about it a bit, pump.io it s a federated network, you can choose the pump server that they want, you can create a fake account, you don t need to provide personal information and it s another way to promote one of the social networks where I live. Other systems link to facebook, twitter, or other places, and nobody complains! Even when those services don t have any of the advantages of being in a federated free-software powered social network :) If anybody don t want to use pump.io but wants to comment, other ways to reach me or the related blog post are:

• Comment in the GNUSocial fediverse: the post announcing the thread for each blog post will be propagated to my quitter.se account too.
• While I m still using Twitter, they can comment on the corresponding tweet, but beware that I m seriously thinking about closing my account there, since I rarely use it and don t like the platform.
• Drop me an email, I can post the comment on behalf of that person (if you want your comment to be anonymous , please state it in the email).

So now it s decided, and this is the first post of this new experiment. This text is posted in pump.io too, and you can comment there :)
Filed under: My experiences and opinion, Tools Tagged: Blog, English, federation, pump.io, social networks, Wordpress

Mako's IronBlogger is a great idea. I often find myself postponing blog posts for a very long time, simply out of laziness. IronBlogger provides a nice community incentive to counter (my) laziness and blogging more often. As a related challenge, we have to face the fact that different subsets of our communities use different media to stay informed: mailing lists, blog (aggregators), social media, IRC, etc. Disparities in how they stay informed are a pity and can be countered using multiple medias at a time. Although I haven't blogged very often as of lately, I managed to keep the Debian (Developer) community informed of what happens in "DPL land" on a monthly basis, by the means of bits from the DPL mails sent to d-d-a. While the target of bits mails perfectly fits d-d-a, there is no reason to exclude a broader public from them. After all, who knows, maybe we'll find the next DPL victim^W candidate among Planet readers! Bonus point: blogging this also helped me realize that my mails are not as markdown-clean as I thought they were. I still have no IronBlogger squad, though. (And sharing beers with folks in the Boston area is not terribly handy for me ). Anyone interested in setting up a BloggeurDeFer in the Paris area? (SCNR)

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Dear Project Members,
another month has passed, it's time to bother you again about what has happened in DPL land in November (this time, with even less delay than the last one, ah!). Call for Help: press/publicity team I'd like to highlight the call for help by the press / publicity teams. They are "hiring" and have sent out a call for new members a couple of weeks ago. The work they do is amazing and is very important for Debian, as important as maintaining packages or fixing RC bugs during a freeze. It is only by letting the world know what Debian is and what we do, that we can keep the Project thriving. And letting the world know is exactly what the publicity and press teams do. If you're into writing, blogging, or simply have a crush for social media, please read the call and "apply"! Interviews November has apparently been the "let's interview the DPL" month. I've spent quite some time giving interviews to interested journalists about various topics. For both my embarrassment and transparency on what I've said on behalf of Debian, here are the relevant links:

• audio interviewwith Karen Sandler for the Free as in Freedom oggcast by herself and Bradley M. Kuhn
• text interview with Raphael Hertzog for the People behind Debian series
• text interview for the Linux Certification Institute Italy (LICI) (note: the original of this one is in Italian; the English version is a translation by LICI)
• video interview with Amber Granger during last UDS

Assets

• the Video Team sprint approved in October has happened at beginning of November; report is still pending but the organizers are on it
• Christian Perrier reported about his trip to India mini-DebConf, even that he attended on behalf of the Project. I find amazing both the outcome of the event and Christian's report, a very good example of how to inform the Project when acting on behalf of it
• the hardware replacement for ftp,lists .d.o I've mentioned last month has been ordered, has arrived, and DSA have already put their hands on it for the setup. Many thanks to DSA and in particular to Martin Zobel-Helas for the logistics
• as an administratrivia, I've asked SPI to setup for Debian a "gift" credit card, i.e. a credit card with a limited, refillable budget. It is needed for using (with a safeguard) credits offered to the Project by public cloud providers (e.g. AWS' donation), as well as to use various kinds of services that we need from time to time

Legal advice (work in progress)

• I've sought and got from a former SPI lawyer a first legal advice on the relationships among trademark law and the procedures of a Free Software distro like Debian when distributing software subject to trademarks. I'm still waiting to seek a second advice from the current SPI lawyers (whom I've been keeping busy with other stuff). In the meantime I've pending a summary of what I've got thus far in the trademark-vs-DFSG thread. Stay tuned there!
• I've been working with SPI lawyers on a proposal of software patent policy that I think we should advertise to make explicit the position of the Debian Project on software patents. I see it as a continuation/completion of the FAQ we have already published on the subject. I'll let you know as soon as we reach a stable draft, that should be pretty soon.

Relationships with others

• I've been approached by members of the board of the OpenSource Initiative (OSI), about the soon to be open OSI affiliation program. They'd like to know if Debian is interested in being affiliated to OSI. I think we should and I'll eventually start a discussion on this topic. In the meantime, I welcome feedback from anyone who is interested in the topic.
• Thanks to the interest of Andrew Pollock, LaMont Jones, Florian Weimer and the Security Team, we are discussing with ISC to have Debian --- as a project, rather than as individuals who just happen to maintain ISC software in Debian --- become member of all forums relevant for software we distribute (BIND, NTP, DHCP). They are doing all the coordination work, but I've anticipated I'll be happy to pledge for Debian membership.
• I've taken the first step to reach out to companies that have a strategic interest in Debian. According to discussion I've had with representative of such companies, they often face similar challenges in offering Debian support and in contributing back to Debian. I think we should offer a forum for them to discuss and find synergies, as well as explain our needs to them. An official mailing list might be such a place. Once we have a suitable forum ready, I'll propose to the press team to send out a corresponding call for companies. In the meantime, if you happen to know, or even work for, companies that might be interested, please ask them to get in touch with me.

Miscellanea

• I've had a chance to discuss with the editors of the SPDX specification about its relationship with DEP-5. Thanks to the help of Dominique Dumont work is already in progress to have a mutual converter among the two formats. Also, although with some bumps, work on finalizing DEP-5 has finally restarted.
• an interesting thread of a while ago is in need of some work to produce a useful outcome, i.e. a set of security guidelines for DDs. If you're willing to help, have a look at the thread
• some more mediation-fu has been going on during November; have a look at my daily logs below if you care about the details

Thanks for reading thus far,
and happy hacking.

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PS as usual, the boring day-to-day activity log is available at master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.*