• Bits from the DPL (August 2018)

    From Chris Lamb@21:1/5 to All on Fri Aug 31 10:50:02 2018
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    Dear developers,

    Greetings from a glorious "Indian summer" in England…

    Whilst it feels a long time ago now it was great to connect with so
    many of you at DebConf18 [0] despite the many demands being made on all
    our time. Don't forget that if you were unable to (physically) attend
    all videos have now been uploaded to the video archive [1] and, of
    course, you can be making amends by planning your travel well in-advance
    of DebConf19 [2] in Curitiba, Brazil…

    It was a further pleasure to see so many people celebrating Debian's
    25th anniversary on August 16th on social media, in the technical press
    and at so many in-person "DebianDay" [3] events around the world. Alas,
    at the last moment I was not unable to attend the event in Cambridge [4].

    [ 0] https://debconf18.debconf.org/
    [ 1] https://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2018/DebConf18/
    [ 2] https://debconf19.debconf.org/
    [ 3] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianDay/2018
    [ 4] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianDay/2018#DebianDay.2F2018.2FUnited_Kingdom.2FCambridge.United_Kingdom:_Cambridge

    ~

    Anyway, here's a brief overview of what else I've been getting up to as
    your Project Leader during August 2018:

    * I updated the delegation for the Policy Team. As I write in my re-
    delegation text [5] I would like to thank Andreas Barth (aba) and
    Bill Allombert (ballombe) for their many contributions over
    the years.

    * In June, I accepted an invitation for Debian to join the KDE
    Advisory Board [6] and subsequently helped draft a press release
    announcing the news [7]. In this capacity I attended Akademy [8]
    where I was particularly taken Neofytos Kolokotronis talk on KDE's
    onboarding process (covered on LWN [9] this week) but also found the
    Distro BoF [10] very illuminating. Here, a large and diverse group of
    small distributions shared their approaches to common problems,
    especially with respect to interacting with large upstream projects.

    * I also updated the delegation for the Keyring Maintainers [11].
    Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor (dkg) for his past contributions and a
    warm welcome to John Sullivan to the team.

    * Online followups to a conference call with Deb Nicholson from the
    Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) [12], Chris Neugebauer of North
    Bay Python [13] and Bdale Garbee (bdale). This was regarding
    speakers, content, sponsor engagement, etc. for conferences that
    projects such as Debian and the SFC would be happy associating
    themselves with. The plan is now that this will result in a public
    document that we have been revising together.

    * Fielding a number of license-specific questions and queries,
    particularly around the recent announcement of the "Commons Clause"
    license [14] condition (of which I am the maintainer of a package in
    question) as well an unrelated trademark issue.

    * Facilitating a number of informal in-person and online meetings from
    enterprises who currently use Debian, as well as those considering
    adopting it.

    * Providing further assistance to Tobias Frost around his proposal for
    a packaging "salvaging" process, the discussion phase of which is
    nearing completion [15].

    [ 5] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2018/08/msg00002.html
    [ 6] https://ev.kde.org/advisoryboard.php
    [ 7] https://dot.kde.org/2018/07/12/debian-joins-kdes-advisory-board
    [ 8] https://akademy.kde.org/2018
    [ 9] https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/763175/67e76c9922db60dd/
    [10] https://community.kde.org/Akademy/2018/Monday#Room_127_.2837_people.29_-_13th_August
    [11] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2018/08/msg00007.html
    [12] https://sfconservancy.org/
    [13] https://northbaypython.org/
    [14] https://lwn.net/Articles/763179/
    [15] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2018/08/msg00006.html


    Finances & event reimbursements
    ===============================

    In addition to responding to various follow-ups to previous requests, I:

    * Helped finalise reimbursements for a sprint [16] that happened as
    part of MiniDebConf Hamburg [17] in May.

    * Blessed the purchasing of some 24-core "arm64" buildds [18] to be
    installed in the University of British Columbia [19].

    * Approved the booking of hotel reservations for DebConf19 [20].

    * Connected a number of Developers with our Trusted Organisations [21]
    to locate missing reimbursements.

    * In terms of specific events I fielded enquiries for the "DebUtsav
    2018 Kochi" [22] event in Kerala, India and for the "FTSL" [23]
    free-software conferences in Curitiba, Brazil.

    [16] https://wiki.debian.org/Sprints
    [17] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEvents/de/2018/MiniDebConfHamburg
    [18] https://wiki.debian.org/buildd
    [19] https://www.ubc.ca/
    [20] https://debconf19.debconf.org/
    [21] https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Treasurer/Organizations
    [22] http://debutsav.in
    [23] http://ftsl.org.br/


    Other
    =====

    In addition to the above, I spent time on:

    * Early/initial discussions around a potential Debian Cloud [24]
    team delegation.

    * A non-trivial amount of administration around the Google Summer of
    Code [25] outreach program.

    * Redirecting support queries/questions sent to the leader@ alias as
    well as responding to feedback from my previous «Bits from the DPL».

    * Issuing a "DD certificate" [26] for a Developer as part of a
    job application.

    * Enqueuing various ideas for "micronews" [27] for approval by the
    Publicity Team [28] and copy-editing an upcoming edition of Debian
    Project News [29].

    * Last month I mentioned that Debian had reached over 100,000 installs
    on the Windows Subsystem for Linux [30] platform. I was subsequently
    asked by a number of developers for a public citation for this
    statistic (it was revealed to me in private correspondence) but
    after significant research I was unable to obtain one, alas.

    * Providing advice on how to best promote the Libre Application Summit
    [31] in Denver, Colorado to Debian developers and contributors.

    [24] https://wiki.debian.org/Cloud
    [25] https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/
    [26] https://wiki.debian.org/DDCertificate
    [27] https://micronews.debian.org/
    [28] https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Publicity
    [29] https://www.debian.org/News/weekly/
    [30] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/
    [31] https://las.gnome.org/conferences/LAS


    And finally…
    ============

    In case you missed it:

    * Helmut Grohne announced a Bug Squashing Party on 28th—30th September
    in Chemnitz, Germany [32] and Ian Jackson announced a Debian/Xen
    microsprint in Cambridge, UK [33].

    * Debian is willing to reimburse 100 USD (or equivalent) for expenses
    to attend Bug Squashing Parties (BSP) [34]. If there are no BSPs
    near to you, perhaps you can be tempted to organise one [35].

    Indeed, ff the are any "blockers" to you organising such events,
    please contribute to the recent thread [36] on the debian-project
    mailing list.

    [32] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2018/09/de/Chemnitz
    [33] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2018/08/msg00005.html
    [34] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP
    [35] https://wiki.debian.org/BSPPlanning
    [36] https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2018/08/msg00004.html


    Okay, see you all next month. As always, don't forget that any queries, feedback, questions or concerns about the Project that might be
    difficult to bring up in public are welcome at .


    Best wishes,

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