Search Results: "zack"

12 August 2012

Gregor Herrmann: RC bugs 2012/32

this was a weird RCBW week for me. although we are not that far into the freeze yet, the amount of easy-enough-for-me-to-fix RC bugs on UDD is already rather low. besides the not very impressive list below, I at least tried to do some housekeeping on some bugreports (tagging, reassigning, forwarding, ).

8 August 2012

Martín Ferrari: Debian whois: a proposal to increase visibility and recognition of contributors

Another great DebConf is over. Two weeks ago, I was lingering a little longer in Nicaragua, enjoying some tropical holidays, and having a few To as with some fellow debconfers in Granada, and I exposed some rough ideas I've been incubating in the back of my head for some days. Since it had a positive initial reaction from the table (Gregor already volunteered to help!), I want to show it to a larger audience, in the hopes of getting some useful feedback, ideas, and maybe even some volunteers! The trigger was Zack's Bits from the DPL talk, and Enrico's post on the same topic. We need to recognise more what people is doing in the project, much valuable work is done in the shadows, and it is in our interest to make the people doing that work feel acknowledged, feel they are part of the project. The core of my idea is to create a web service that, for each person known to the project (let's say, http://whois.debian.net/tincho), shows a simple page with information about the person, optionally a mugshot/hackergotchi, what are they working on, maybe some stats and links (the Debian portfolio stuff, for example), and the core of this idea badges of merit, and attribution for their contributions. What I picture is having badges that say: Closed X RC bugs , Active translator for Esperanto , #1 video team camera operator in DC12 , Created 100 bugs .. You get the idea. In this ugly mock I created with my null designing skills, the idea might be a little more clear.
An important feature of the project is that it will be just a collector of information distributed in different places: This way, every team or project in Debian that wants to give recognition to its volunteers would easily do it, without needing to dive into the details of the code, or dealing with much bureaucracy. Just a signed mail with the pointer to the source of the data would be sufficient. I think the more complex part of this project would be matching different identities to real persons, in a way similar to carnivore, so we can match between different email addresses, a name, a Debian or alioth user-id (if applicable), IRC nickname, or any other identification that might be used to distinguish a person inside Debian. This might sound scary, but I don't plan on exposing or crawling any identities that are not currently publicly exposed, I just want to be able to see in a single page all the information associated both with my debian.org email address and with my gmail one. I have some basic design ideas, but I don't want to make this post even longer than what it is now. Please get in touch if you have comments, ideas, or if you want to flame me. Tags: Planet Debian

5 August 2012

Stefano Zacchiroli: bits from the DPL for July 2012

Monthly DPL bits, fresh from the oven.
Tip to feel good about the release #476: before reading this, grab and fix one of the RC bugs affecting Wheezy. Done? Now you're ready for a slightly less exciting report of DPL activities. Highlights Assets Logo & trademark Note that the actual logo relicensing should be done by SPI, via their board, upon request of mine (as Debian Project liaison). We won't make it for the next SPI board meeting, as it is on 4 days away. But we can aim for the subsequent meeting, on September 13th. If all goes well (big "if"), we will enjoy a DFSG-free logo after that date. Internal organization Recent flurry of re-organization in the tech-ctte --- which I somewhat triggered pushing for periodic meetings --- seems to be proceeding well. I'm very happy about it, as we all need to trust that tech-ctte decisions will be not only sound, but also prompt. If you're interested into this topic, some recent evidence of the ongoing reorganization and its result can be found in their DebConf12 BoF, minutes of the last meeting, a set of forthcoming GRs, and the recent great decision of posting decisions results to d-d-a (as it happened for node/nodejs). Kudos to tech-ctte members for the recent activism! I haven't worked on it myself directly, but I highlight Enrico's work on server side archival of NM conversations. It has the potential of enabling automatic detection of stuck NM processes. I'm a bit rusty as AM now, but I think missing that ability is one of the main remaining causes of frustration when joining Debian. So, if you are an AM, please opt-in and use this feature with your appicants. If you are not an AM why not? :-) Miscellanea Some misc legal stuff: and some misc "political" stuff: Happy RC bug squashing,
Cheers.
PS the boring day-to-day activity log for July 2012 is available at master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.txt.201207

14 July 2012

Jonathan Carter: Debconf 12 Managua, Nicaragua


It s the last day of Debconf 12 in Managua, it s the first ever Decbonf I ve attended and it has been just awesome.

There s so much I could talk about and it would take forever to put down, but here s a few highlights for me:
  • My first time in Nicaragua and also Central America! First time I ve ever seen a vulcano!
  • The Bits from the DPL talk was great, Zack pretty much hit several nails on the head of why I love the Debian project so much
  • The Debian Cheese and Wine party was off the wall, the food and the drinks were awesome and it was a lot of fun
  • I ve been attending some of the Debconf organising sessions, I was considering getting a few people together so that we could put in a bit for Sherbrooke for 2016, but then I learned that a bunch of people are already getting together to put a bid together for Montr al in 2014, so I ll get involved with that instead. Stefano and I have also been talking about a hypothetical Debconf in 2018 or 2020 in Cape Town or Stellenbosch. As much as we want a Debconf in Africa, neither of us will have time to organise a team for that in the short term. I m hoping that being involved in the Montr al bid (and hopefully an event) will give me good experience for the Cape Town one.
  • The day trip in the middle of the week was great. I just spent the whole day lying in a hammock, drinking beer and staring at the ocean. I think I needed that.
  • The Debian key signing party was good, I got my key signed by more than 20 Debian contributors this week.
  • The sessions and BoFs were great. I learned a lot about the Debian project this week and filled up a few gaps in my knowledge.
  • I got involved with the video team and played camera man for a few sessions for the live video feeds. It was surprisingly fun. I took some photos too during the week but my camera is really awful, I need to get a new one by the next Debconf.
  • The people of Nicaragua are awesome. Everyone here is so friendly and helpful, it turned
  • There s probably too much other things to mention and I ll never get a blog entry out if I even try, but thanks to everyone who made this Debconf possible, even Pollito.

12 July 2012

Enrico Zini: More diversity in Debian skills

More diversity in Debian skills This blog post has been co-authored with Francesca Ciceri. In his Debconf talk, zack said:
We need to understand how to invite people with different backgrounds than packaging to join the Debian project [...] I don't know what exactly, but we need to do more to attract those kinds of people.
Francesca and I know what we could do: make other kinds of contributions visible. Basically, we should track and acknowledge the contributions of webmasters, translators, programmers, sysadmins, event organisers, and so on, at the same level as what we do for packagers: DDPO, minechangelogs, Portfolio... For any non-packaging activity that we can make visible and credited, we get: Here's an example: who's the lead translator for German? And if you are German, who's the lead translator for Spanish? Czech? Thai? I (Enrico) don't know the answers, not even for Italian, but we all should! Or at least it should be trivial to find out. To start to change this, is just a matter of programming. Francesca already worked on a list of trackable data sources, at least for translators. Here are some more details, related to translation: And here are some notes about other fields: And finally, if you are still wondering who those translation coordinators are, they are listed here, although not all teams keep that page up to date. Of course, when a data source is too hard to mine, it can make sense to see if the workflow could be improved, rather than spending months writing compicated mining code. This is a fun project for people at Debconf to get together and try. If by the end of the conference we had a way to credit some group of non-packaging contributors, even if just one like translators or website contributors, at least we would finally have started having official trackers for the activities of non-packagers.

10 July 2012

Gunnar Wolf: From DebCamp to DebConf through cheese, wine and an intro track

One week. One long week. One beautiful week. One of the two major weeks of the year has passed since my previous post. Surely, we are in the middle of the two Major Weeks of the year, in the yearly schedule I have upheld for almost(!) ten years: DebConf+DebCamp. Yesterday, DebConf officially started. For the first time ever, we had a DebConf track targetted at the local (for a wide definition of local: All of the Central American countries) communities, which I chaired. We had the following talk lineup during this track: I believe it was a great success, and I hope the talks are useful in the future. They will be put online soon thanks to the tireless work of our work team. Today we sadly lost the presence of our DPL due to very happy circumstances he will surely announce himself. But DebConf will continue nevertheless - And proof of that is our anual, great, fun and inviting Cheese and Wine Party! After a series of organizational hiccups I hope nobody notices (oops, was I supposed not to say this?), today we had a beautiful, fun and most successful cheese and wine party, as we have had year after year since 2005. As many other people, we did our humble contribution for this party to be the success it deserves. There is lots of great cheeses, great wines, and much other great stuff we have to thank to each of the individuals who made this C&W party the success it was. Yes, it might be among the least-academic parts of our conference, but at the same time, it's one of its most cherished -and successful- traditions. And above all else, we have to thank our Great Leader^W^WCheeseMaster (who we still need to convince to play by our Great Leader's mandates - And no, I don't mean Zack here!) Hugs and thanks to my good and dear friend Christian Perrier for giving form to one of DebConf's social traditions that makes it so unique, so different from every other academic or communitary conference I have ever been part of. We still have most of the week to go. And if you are not in Managua (and are not coming soon), you can follow our activities following our video streams. Remember, debian/rules, now more than ever! And even given the (perpetual) heat in Managua: Wheezy is frozen, whee! [ all photos here taken by regina ]
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100_2122.JPG1.51 MB

9 July 2012

Jonathan McDowell: SVG::TT::Graph::TimeSeries and the Debian keyring

I'm at DebConf 12 and I've decided to use my time to clear out some minor bits and pieces I've been planning for a while. One of these was to do some graphing of the Debian keyrings over time. The bzr repository goes back to March 2008, but I've also got copies of keyrings for releases back to slink (February 1999). I've been a long time user of GD::Graph under Perl, but recently discovered SVG::TT::Graph and have been meaning to play with it. So I did. First up, number of keys in each keyring: ring-totals.png Most of the interesting data is towards the right, but we can also see the point where our v4 keyring overtook v3 keys back in 2001. More recently there's the end of our v3 support in 2010, and the steady increase of Debian Maintainers. The tiny green line is the Debian non-upload keyring. Next I looked at key size (limiting myself to the DDv4 keyring to make things simpler): key-sizes.png Here we can see the steady increase of 4096 bit keys since 2009, and to a lesser extent 2048 bit keys. There are a few other sizes - 1 10k key, 1 8k key and 2 3k keys (I suspect these are tied to OpenPGPv2 cards). We're up to 28% of the keyring being stronger keys, but there's still a long way to go. (Interestingly the Debian Maintainer keyring is much better with 65% of keys being 2k or larger. The non-upload keyring is all 2k or greater.) Finally I graphed key type, again limiting myself to the DDv4 keyring: key-types.png No real surprises here; DSA far and away the most common with RSA usage increasing as part of the move to larger key sizes. In the past we had a few Elgamal signing keys, but these were shown to be compromised thus disappeared entirely. What do these graphs show me? At least the following: (You should be able to click on the graphs for larger version.)

6 July 2012

Stefano Zacchiroli: DebConf BoF HOWTO - redux - redux

If you're organizing a DebConf12, and especially if you're new to it, please have a look at the DebConf BoF HOWTO. One of its main take away messages is: don't be exclusive, think of the kittens. Since last year, and to the might powers of DSA (and their kittens), we now have a more stable place for the gobby server: gobby.debian.org. I've just amended the howto to point to that, and updated the info about which gobby package to use (nowadays clarified, thanks to Phil). Enjoy your BoF-s!

4 July 2012

Stefano Zacchiroli: bits from the DPL for June 2012

Monthly DPL bits, fresh from the oven^W^W^W hot from DebConf12, and just posted to d-d-a.
Howdy from DebConf12. It's hot, but it's also time to bother you again with a (not so) brief DPL activity report, this time for June 2012. Time-based freeze: DONE, short freeze: TODO Two highlights for this month. First, you've probably noticed Wheezy is now frozen, YAY. This is huge achievement for the release, but also for the project. It's the first time we do a time-based freeze, and it took some quite heated discussion at the beginning of the release cycle to decide to do this. And we did it properly: respecting the planned month and narrowing down the period later. This exercise has hopefully helped both DDs in their package planning and our upstreams in targeting Wheezy with stable releases of their software. Kudos to the release team for their coordination work! Now we've the second part still TODO: releasing Wheezy, without RC bugs, with a freeze period as short as possible. See the beginning of my last "bits from the DPL" mail for my usual song and dance :-P on how to deliver that, together. DebConf12 A lot of us will attend DebConf12. Enjoy it! ... and take the chance to both have fun and make great plans for Debian's future. But remember that "if it didn't happen on a mailing list, it didn't happen". Not all of us will be lucky enough to attend DebConf (in person or remotely). Make sure that those who don't can take part in your team decisions and get informed of what is going to happen here. Politics Zack's spring tour I spent a significant part of June doing Debian talks ins some sort of "spring tour" between Italy and France. In particular: Many thanks to the organizers of these events for inviting and sponsoring me (as well as other Debian people, in the ESRF case) and for their interest in Debian. Sprints Assets Discussions Some relevant discussions for project evolution has been going on in June and I took part into them. You might want to have a look at them: Misc Cheers.
PS the boring day-to-day activity log for June is available at master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.txt.201206

2 July 2012

Stefano Zacchiroli: DebConf no sporran 12

It's that time of the year again. No, not only the Debian biyearly freeze that has just happened, again (YAY!). It's DebConf time again. Yesterday night I arrived in Managua, Nicaragua, for DebConf12. I'm still jetlagged a bit, but the first impression is great. And that impression is also very green, shockingly green. The city is gorgeous: full of trees and plants (well, at least compared to my metropolitan European standards), and the campus of Universidad Centroamericana where the conference is hosted is even more so. Also, it's a great pleasure to have DebConf in an university campus where students are still swarming. My only reason for sadness thus far. While I did bring my traditional Debian kilt at DebConf, I discovered this morning that I forgot my sporran at home :-(
So if you don't see me wearing my kilt at this DebConf often, that's why

16 June 2012

Vincent Bernat: GPG Key Transition Statement 2012

I am transitioning my GPG key from an old 1024-bit DSA key to a new 4096-bit RSA key. The old key will continue to be valid for some time but I prefer all new correspondance to be encrypted with the new key. I will be making all signatures going forward with the new key. I have followed the excellent tutorial from Daniel Kahn Gillmor which also explains why this migration is needed. The only step that I did not execute is issuing a new certification for keys I have signed in the past. I did not find any search engine to tell me which key I have signed. Here is the signed transition statement (I have stolen it from Zack): 
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256,SHA1
I am transitioning GPG keys from an old 1024-bit DSA key to a new
4096-bit RSA key.  The old key will continue to be valid for some
time, but I prefer all new correspondance to be encrypted in the new
key, and will be making all signatures going forward with the new key.
This transition document is signed with both keys to validate the
transition.
If you have signed my old key, I would appreciate signatures on my new
key as well, provided that your signing policy permits that without
reauthenticating me.
The old key, which I am transitional away from, is:
  pub   1024D/F22A794E 2001-03-23
      Key fingerprint = 5854 AF2B 65B2 0E96 2161  E32B 285B D7A1 F22A 794E
The new key, to which I am transitioning, is:
  pub   4096R/353525F9 2012-06-16 [expires: 2014-06-16]
      Key fingerprint = AEF2 3487 66F3 71C6 89A7  3600 95A4 2FE8 3535 25F9
To fetch the full new key from a public key server using GnuPG, run:
  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-key 95A42FE8353525F9
If you have already validated my old key, you can then validate that
the new key is signed by my old key:
  gpg --check-sigs 95A42FE8353525F9
If you then want to sign my new key, a simple and safe way to do that
is by using caff (shipped in Debian as part of the "signing-party"
package) as follows:
  caff 95A42FE8353525F9
Please contact me via e-mail at <vincent@bernat.im> if you have any
questions about this document or this transition.
  Vincent Bernat
  vincent@bernat.im
  16-06-2012
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux)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=0QnC
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
For easier access, I have also published it in text format. You can check it with: 
$ gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-key 95A42FE8353525F9
gpg: requesting key 353525F9 from hkp server keys.gnupg.net
gpg: key 353525F9: "Vincent Bernat <bernat@luffy.cx>" not changed
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:              unchanged: 1
$ curl http://vincent.bernat.im/media/files/key-transition-2012.txt   \
>       gpg --verify
To avoid signing/encrypting with the old key who share the same email addresses than the new one, I have saved it, removed it from the keyring and added it again. The new key is now first in both the secret and the public keyrings and will be used whenever the appropriate email address is requested. 
$ gpg --export-secret-keys F22A794E > ~/tmp/secret
$ gpg --export F22A794E > ~/tmp/public
$ gpg --delete-secret-key F22A794
sec  1024D/F22A794E 2001-03-23 Vincent Bernat <bernat@luffy.cx>
Delete this key from the keyring? (y/N) y
This is a secret key! - really delete? (y/N) y
$ gpg --delete-key F22A794E
pub  1024D/F22A794E 2001-03-23 Vincent Bernat <bernat@luffy.cx>
Delete this key from the keyring? (y/N) y
$ gpg --import ~/tmp/public
gpg: key F22A794E: public key "Vincent Bernat <bernat@luffy.cx>" imported
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:               imported: 1
gpg: 3 marginal(s) needed, 1 complete(s) needed, classic trust model
gpg: depth: 0  valid:   2  signed:   0  trust: 0-, 0q, 0n, 0m, 0f, 2u
gpg: next trustdb check due at 2014-06-16
$ gpg --import ~/tmp/secret
gpg: key F22A794E: secret key imported
gpg: key F22A794E: "Vincent Bernat <bernat@luffy.cx>" not changed
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:              unchanged: 1
gpg:       secret keys read: 1
gpg:   secret keys imported: 1
$ rm ~/tmp/public ~/tmp/secret
$ gpg --edit-key F22A794E
[...]
gpg> trust
[...]
Please decide how far you trust this user to correctly verify other users' keys
(by looking at passports, checking fingerprints from different sources, etc.)
  1 = I don't know or won't say
  2 = I do NOT trust
  3 = I trust marginally
  4 = I trust fully
  5 = I trust ultimately
  m = back to the main menu
Your decision? 5
Do you really want to set this key to ultimate trust? (y/N) y
I now need to gather some signatures for the new key. If this is appropriate for you, please sign the new key if you signed the old one.

15 June 2012

Paul Tagliamonte: debtree.pault.ag - my latest toy

I ve pushed up some code (named familytree) to my GitHub, which lets folks browse the social connections that make up Debian. Many thanks to the number of people who gave me feedback (arno, luca, algernon (at least!)) Y all rock! I ve taken the dump of information from nm.debian.org, and rendered it out into four datasets. Mashing this up with an example d3 page, I ve come up with what I m calling debgraph . Here are some notable examples that I think are rad :) By the way - green lines indicate sponsorship, black lines indicate sponsors, and dashed lines indicate AM-ing. Tan nodes are DD-emeritus, and blue is active. I don t think this handles MIA correctly. Anyway, here it is: Me! (paultag) Algernon tbm (OK, this one is massive, I ve scaled it down a skitch old computer warning, it ll peg your CPU!) zack

9 June 2012

Stefano Zacchiroli: bits from the DPL for May 2012

Just posted to d-d-a, here are the monthly DPL bits.
Dear project members,
here's the periodic report of what has happened in DPL land, this time during May 2012. It's briefer than usual, as this year I've enjoyed the lovely French habit of frequent holidays during the month of May. Highlight First highlight for this month is an invitation to us all. We're now in June and the Wheezy freeze is literally a few days away. The RC bugs count is moving in the right direction, but it's still stellar if we want to ensure a short freeze. And a short freeze is of paramount importance: it'll reduce the time during which we can't implement great plans for the future, increase the "freshness" of software we'll ship with Wheezy, and reduce the inconveniences for those who run the testing suite due to its nice "rolling" feature. So please set out some regular time to do RC bug squashing, by providing patches and doing NMUs. Releasing Wheezy is not something that could be outsourced to the Release Team, it's a collective responsibility that kicks in as soon as our own packages are RC bug free (which they already are, right? :-)) The second highlight is more on the internal structure camp. As mentioned last month, I've discussed with the tech-ctte insisting a bit to set up periodic IRC meetings, to ensure outstanding issues get periodically reviewed. At the end of May the first IRC meeting has happened, and has been very productive. See the minutes. Another one has been scheduled, trying to setup a monthly cadence, for the end of June. Many thanks to all tech-ctte members who have took part in and helped with the meeting organization. Communication I've given an interview to iTWire, answering a number of questions about several past and future Debian challenges. Discussions The ongoing discussion to harmonize packaging of multimedia software between the official Debian archive and the unofficial debian-multimedia.org archive (dmo) has progressed. I've tried to help the two groups reaching an agreement on which packages belong where, so that both duplicate packaging efforts and user inconveniences are minimized. That seems not to have worked and dmo maintainers have simply announced that they will move away from the current domain name to a new one that does not include "debian" in its name. Sprints There will be a Debian Science sprint in June, co-located with the broader Debian Science event organized by European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble. I've confirmed my attendance for the opening talk of the conference day. ESRF organizers have kindly sponsored travel for all Debian attendees, many thanks to them! Another sprint will happen next week-end in Paris, this time by the i18n/l10n team. I've approved the corresponding tentative budget for travel sponrship for ~2'000 EUR. Other expenses Hardware replacement plans go on. We've ordered SSDs (for ~3'000 CAD) for recently bought machines meant to replace bugs-mirror, bugs-master, and udd. On the "small emergencies" front, we also had to replace failing disks on wagner (1/2 of alioth), for as little as 100 GBP. Miscellanea Happy Wheezy freeze,
and RC bugs squashing!
PS the boring day-to-day activity log for May is available at master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.txt.201205

30 May 2012

Paul Tagliamonte: My first foray into non-compliant Debian packages

I ve decided to start putting together packages to rebuild the bare bones install I use for most of my systems, since rebuilding everything by hand is starting to get annoying. I call it hairy candy. Because my setup relies on some chem interesting chem hacks, none of this is fit in any way for the archive. If the vim team was to catch wind of what I was doing, they d be none too happy :) While these packages work great for me, I can t stress enough how badly they can break something. Using Zack s guide, I was able to get an archive up and running, no problem. Taking his advice, I even got signing working. Simple. mini-dinstall rocks a nice alternative to a PPA, for sure. At least, for one arch :) Now, the one spin I took on Zack s work was to add a landing page a listing of what s in the archive. I did this using a bit of Python & Jinja2. The script follows. 
#!/usr/bin/env python
# Copyright (c) Paul Tagliamonte, under the terms of the Expat license.
from jinja2 import Template
import sys
def parse_packages(fd):
    ret = []
    cur =  
    key = None
    for line in fd.readlines():
    if line.strip() == "":
        ret.append(cur)
        cur =  
        continue
    if line[0] == " ":
        cur[key] += "\n" + line.strip()
    else:
        key, val = line.split(":", 1)
        cur[key] = val.strip()
    return ret
pkgs = parse_packages(open(sys.argv[1], 'r'))
context =  
    "pkgs": pkgs
 
t = Template(open(sys.argv[2], 'r').read())
print t.render(**context)
Invocation looks something like: 
render.py $ARCHIVE/debian/wicked/Packages $DATA/index.html
I kick this script off in the singing script, since mini-dinstall doesn t have a exit hook. Works great, thanks everyone!

6 May 2012

Stefano Zacchiroli: overlapping bits from the DPL for April 2012

Just posted to d-d-a, here is the monthly report about my DPL activities.
Dear project members,
last bits of the past DPL term and first bits of the current term, all in one. Here is a report of what has happened in DPL land last April. Highlight: call for DPL helpers Before the report, though, let me point out that your friendly neighborhood DPL could use some help. As discussed during campaign, there are some intrinsic transparency and scalability limits in the DPL institution, when run by a single person. Before trying something new to fix that, I'd like to give a last try to an old "tactic": calling for help. If you're considering running for DPL or if you're simply interested in the job the DPL does and willing to help with that, please let me know. Ideally, if I find a group of people I'm happy to work with, I'd like to set up periodic IRC meetings with all "DPL helpers" to publicly discuss items in the DPL agenda and share the work-load. Ongoing discussions A big topic of last month has been the proposal by Francesca Ciceri to publish a diversity statement for the Debian Project. After a lively discussion on -project, we reached consensus on a text, and I've been happy to help with that. To finalize statement publication we now need to vote on it with a GR. I've helped drafting a corresponding GR proposal that has already been posted to -vote by Francesca. A final one, looking for seconds, will be posted there soon. Wrapping up March discussions on a revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo, I've announced my intention to finalize the agreement and have done so shortly thereafter. The Iceweasel maintainer has deployed the corresponding search engine query string and other web browser maintainers could do the same, if they want to. In April I've also spent some time to move forward the long running conflict on Python maintenance, reported to the tech-ctte more than 2 years ago. With the help of people on the -python mailing list, I've now submitted to the tech-ctte an up to date list of potential maintenance teams. I hope the tech-ctte now have all the information needed to come to a decision. Speaking of which, I'm also discussing with tech-ctte members the possibility of having periodic ctte meetings; the idea is to ensure that outstanding issues are periodically reassessed, improving the reliability of tech-ctte decision times. I've also discussed at length with members of the pkg-multimedia-maintainers team the relationships with the unofficial debian-multimedia.org (d-m.o) repository, that have been a cause of tension for Debian multimedia users and maintainers for quite some time. On behalf of the team and of the Project I've now reached out to the d-m.o maintainer, hoping to come to some sort of amicable agreement on which packages belong where. Hardware replacement As anticipated in last report, I've started approving hardware purchases to implement the yearly hardware replacement plan prepared by DSA. During April I've approved requests to buy servers to replace the machines running the bugs-master, bugs-mirror, and UDD services. The total expected expenditure is about 15'000 USD. Communication I've delivered my classic Debian "18^W 19 years" talk at UNIVPM, a polytechnic university in center Italy; slides are available. I've then been contacted by people from the European Synchrotoron in Grenoble who, beside having recently migrated their infrastructure to Debian, are looking into organizing a workshop on Debian usage for large science facilities. I've been happy to help out providing a list of potential topics and speakers for the event. Also as anticipated last month, the Debian Project has been present at the OpenStack summit. Loic Dachary has represented Debian at the event and provided a nice report about his experience there. Speaking of which, I've also coordinated a news release about the availability of cloud technologies in Wheezy, taking the chance to point out the relationships between what Debian stands for and the ability to deploy your own private cloud. Sprints April has been a rather calm month on the sprint front, with the notable exception of the I18n team who is organizing a sprint for June in Paris. Miscellanea Thanks for reading thus far,
HDH! (Happy Debian Hacking)
PS the boring day-to-day activity log for April is available at master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.txt.201204

27 April 2012

Stefano Zacchiroli: interview for la Repubblica

Debian, free software, and critical consumption As mentioned in my last report, about a month ago I've been interviewed (in Italian) for la Repubblica, a major general-interest Italian newspaper. Matteo Cortese has kindly contributed an English translation of the interview (thanks!), which I've just made available. If you're a Free Software enthusiast, there is probably nothing new in there for you. But for a different public the story is quite another. In many countries it is still very difficult to find room on general-interest newspapers to explain why Free Software matter to people, and how not caring about it will lead consumers to progressively lose their rights while software become more and more common in the stuff they buy. So many thanks to journalist like Giulia Belardelli who show a genuine interest in these topics and try to bring them "to the masses".

22 April 2012

Stefano Zacchiroli: deferred bits from the DPL for March 2012

Posted a week ago, already deferred back then, this report is even more deferred now! But as there are people interest in knowing what the "DPL job" is about even among non debian-devel-announce subscribers, here is a blog-conveyed reproduction, for the records.
Dear project members,
here is my monthly DPL activity report, this time for last March. It is delayed by a couple of weeks because, myself being both incumbent and candidate DPL, I preferred not to use d-d-a during the voting period unless really needed. Apologies for the delay (or the unneeded paranoia, you name it). As a side effect of the delay, the results of the DPL election are now known. I'd like to thank all the people who took part in the elections: voters, people who asked questions on -vote, the secretary, and obviously Gergely and Wouter, without whom the campaign wouldn't have allowed to discuss relevant aspects of Debian "politics". Thanks for your trust. I'll do my best to match your expectations. ... and just to remind you what you've just asked for, here goes the BigMonthlyBlurb! Highlight: long-term hardware replacement planning The highlight for this month is long term planning of hardware replacement. It's something I've been discussing with DSA for quite a while and on which DSA has worked hard during the recent sprint. As a result, we now have a quite ambitious 5-year hardware replacement plan that will guarantee that all machines in production are under warranty at any given time (with the nice side effect of generally better performances, as they go hand in hand with newer hardware). The current estimated cost per year is 29'000 USD. That does not yet include buildds and porter-boxes, so it is expected to increase a bit to cover all our hardware needs. But we expect it not increase too much, as we tend to get explicit hardware donations to cover arch-specific needs. Given the current state of Debian finances and donation trends, the plan looks sustainable for at least 2-3 years. But this assessment still needs to be refined as soon as, together with the auditors, we'll manage to obtain the history of past Debian transactions, in particular from SPI. We've been waiting for this for about 5 months now, but I'm positive it could become a reality in the next weeks. In the meantime, it is surely safe to start with the plan for the next 1-1.5 years, so I'll give green light to DSA for the first acquisitions as soon as they're ready for it. When implemented, this plan will increase our ability to rely on hardware. But it also means we will need to become a bit more organized about fund-raising. The discussion started with the sprint report has some insights about how to do that. As part of this, we'll also need to share resources (e.g. contact databases, people, etc.) among the yearly DebConf fund-raising initiatives and the initiatives mentioned in the aforementioned discussion. Ongoing discussions Summer of Code Debian has been accepted as an organization for the Google Summer of Code. At the time these bits go out, the student application deadline has also elapsed. In March I've contributed a few project ideas and chased potential mentors for them, when I thought the project could be important for Debian and the prospective student. I'm happy that one (a dak building block needed for the implementation of PPAs and more) has found both mentors and students. We'll see if any of the corresponding student proposal is retained and how it goes. Communication I've given an interview, about Debian and Free Software in general, to La Repubblica, one of the major newspapers in Italy. The interview is available online, but only in Italian. If some kind (and Italian-speaking) soul would like to translate it into English, I'll be happy to publish the translation as well. (update 22/04/2012: Matteo Cortese has contributed an English translation of the interview, which I'll make available shortly) Legal stuff In order to transfer ownership of the Debian trademark in Japan to SPI, I've contacted the current owners (all Japanese Debian Developers or contributors) to do the needed paperwork. I've been blessed by the help of Kenshi Muto that has taken the matter in his hands. He is now navigating through Japanese trademark procedures, a subject neither myself nor SPI lawyers were familiar with. Thanks also to Jonathan McDowell who has done the needed paperwork, SPI-side. Sprints Plenty of sprints and sprint reports in March!: Debian Med, DSA, DAM/FrontDesk. Everything should also be available from the wiki sprint page where you can find info to organize your team sprint. Assets miscellanea Cheers.
PS the boring day-to-day activity log for March is available at master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.txt.201203

16 April 2012

Wouter Verhelst: DPL vote, 2012

So, the vote is over, and Stefano won. During many past DPL elections, I've made my vote public, and this one is no different: 
V: 1223 		597c362e6156ec7e37b334837161da26
That's me, in this list. Obviously I wouldn't run if I'm not serious about it, so I voted myself first. As to the other part: I thought long and hard about that, but eventually came to the conclusion that both Stefano and Gergely had properties as a candidate that I liked, and properties that I didn't like, and that therefore I couldn't prefer either of them over the other. I found Gergely's platform to be fairly similar to my own, which is a good thing; but there were a few details that made me have some pause about his candidacy. And while I stand by the things I said during campaigning about Stefano as a DPL, the truth is that the project could be far worse off than to have him re-elected. As to the outcome... I can't say it's entirely unexpected. I knew it was a long shot even before I started, and then campaigning didn't excactly go as I would have hoped. I expected to lose, but not by such a margin what Stefano did wasn't winning, it's called 'trashing the opposition'. Congratulations, zack, for a truly exceptional performance; and thanks, also to Gergely, for being a worthy opponent. In closing, I'll say that I don't think I'll run again. I've gone through the process three times now, and have never gotten very close to winning; this probably means that what I feel about the position of DPL is somewhat removed from what the project as a whole thinks about it. So, absent some radical changes in either the project itself or in the way I look upon it, another candidacy from me is highly unlikely. I guess I'll have to find other ways to spend my time...

15 April 2012

Gregor Herrmann: RC bugs 2012/15

another weekend, another RCBW report:

31 March 2012

Stefano Zacchiroli: mutt-notmuch is dead

long life to notmuch-mutt As a consequence, no further separate releases of mutt-notmuch will be made. Future releases (of notmuch-mutt) will happen as part of notmuch. In other news, several changes have been implemented in notmuch-mutt wrt mutt-notmuch 0.2:
Many thanks to David Bremner (for shepherding my changes in) and to Ben Boeckel (whose desire to package mutt-notmuch in Fedora made me kick Debian bug #628018, this time for real).

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