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Dear fellow developers,

Greetings from a windy and frigid United Kingdom. Whilst the Release
Team Santas won't be bringing us "buster" next month, January will see
the first of our transition freezes [0] so please do make the best of
this holiday season to ensure all of your packages are in shape in
good time…

[0] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2018/09/msg00004.html

~ § ~

November very much ended up being another one of those "iceberg" months
where the majority of the Project Leader's activity was occurring behind
the curtains.

Ironically, success for many of these 10-odd open issues can be defined
partly and sometimes even solely in terms of whether or not the outside
world ever really becomes aware of them.

These involved (good grief!) quite a few conference and one-on-one phone
calls with external entities but also deep in the leader@ email inbox
with well over 150+ emails sent whilst sporting my "DPL hat" this month…

~ § ~

I did manage to get around to the following public affairs, however:

* Attended and presented at both SFScon [1] in Bolzano, Italy as well
as at Freenode Live [2] in Bristol, United Kingdom.

It was great to see so many developers and eager contributors
in/around these events but was also good to have meetings with
organisations wishing to get more-deeply involved with Debian such as
Free Software Foundation Europe [3], OSTIF [4], Speck&Tech [5], etc.

* Represented Debian's interests as appropriate via the board of the
Open Source Initiative. [6]

* Participated in a lengthy round-table discussion between the leaders
of other distributions which should be published in the January
edition of Linux Journal [7]. I also furnished the Free Software
Foundation Europe [8] with a quote to aid their fundraiser.

* Fielded more questions and queries around the Server Side Public
License [9] and the "Commons Clause" [10].

* Redirected the usual requests for private support including ensuring
an enquiry regarding about printer support, but also responded to
quite a few responses to my previous "Bits from the DPL".

* Further assistance in setting up a potential Bug Squashing Party
[11] as part of the "foss-north" [12] conference in Gothenburg,
Sweden in April 2019.

* Assisted a Debian Developer by writing a recommendation for an
immigration-related application and provided advice to a few other
developers on conference booths and suitable/alternative conferences
they may wish to persue.

* Tried to assist in redirecting a donation of some MIPS64 machines
and in finding alternative contact points for organisations where
employees have moved on.

* Approached & subsequently followed-up on some potential additions
for our DD Member Benefits [13] and facilitated in a donation of
some armel/armhf buildd hardware to be announced shortly.

[ 1] https://www.sfscon.it/
[ 2] https://freenode.live/
[ 3] https://fsfe.org
[ 4] https://ostif.org/
[ 5] https://speckand.tech/
[ 6] https://opensource.org/board
[ 7] https://www.linuxjournal.com/
[ 8] https://fsfe.org
[ 9] https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-public-license
[10] https://lwn.net/Articles/763179/
[11] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP
[12] http://foss-north.se/
[13] https://wiki.debian.org/MemberBenefits

~ § ~

On the finance side of things, in addition to responding to various
follow-ups to previous requests I:

* Approved a request for a contributor to attend KubeCon Europe 2019
[14] as well as pre-approved some requests to attend the Bug
Squashing Party in Bern [15] happening now.

* Approved a request for a developer to attend the Reproducible Builds
[16] summit and the Paris Open Source Summit [17] in December.

* Approved spending for a replacement power-supply as well as
equipping some new arm64 buildd [18] machines.

[14] https://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/kubecon-cloudnativecon-europe-2018/
[15] https://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu/2018/10/msg00005.html
[16] https://reproducible-builds.org/events/paris2018/
[17] https://www.opensourcesummit.paris/
[18] https://wiki.debian.org/buildd

~ § ~

In case you missed the announcements, we have a number of events coming
up in the months ahead including:

* November 30th → December 2nd: Bern, Switzerland. [19] (There's still time!)

* January 12th → January 13th: Vendo, The Netherlands. [20]

* February 22nd → February 24th: Bonn, Germany. [21]

* February 28th → March 3rd: Laveno, Italy. [22]

* April 5th → April 8th: Salzburg, Austria. [23]

… and there will naturally be large contigent of Debian Developers in Brussels on the 2nd → 3rd February for FOSDEM [24] and CopyleftConf [25]
the day after.

[19] https://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu/2018/10/msg00005.html
[20] https://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu/2018/11/msg00003.html
[21] https://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu/2018/11/msg00000.html
[22] https://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu/2018/11/msg00006.html
[23] https://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu/2018/11/msg00004.html
[24] https://fosdem.org/2019/
[25] https://sfconservancy.org/news/2018/apr/30/copyleft-conf/

~ § ~

Don't forget that Debian is willing to reimburse 100 USD (or equivalent
in your local currency) to attend Bug Squashing Parties (BSP) [26]. If
there are no BSPs planned near you, please do consider organising one.
[27] [28]

[26] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP
[27] https://wiki.debian.org/BSPPlanning
[28] https://wiki.debian.org/HostingBSP

~ § ~

Concerns or questions about the Project that might be difficult to bring
up elsewhere are always welcome; please address them to <leader@debian.org>. Feedback on these "Bits…" emails are — as always — very warmly received as well.

See you all next month…


Best wishes,

- --
,''`.
: :' : Chris Lamb
`. `'` lamby@debian.org / chris-lamb.co.uk
`-

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