Aw: Re: Community renewal and project obsolescence

[Steffen Möller]

> Gesendet: Donnerstag, 28. Dezember 2023 um 20:02 Uhr
> Von: "Mo Zhou" 
> An: debian-project@lists.debian.org
> Betreff: Re: Community renewal and project obsolescence
>
> On 12/28/23 10:34, Rafael Laboissière wrote:
> 
> > * M. Zhou  [2023-12-27 19:00]:
> >
> > Thanks for the code and the figure. Indeed, the trend is confirmed by 
> > fitting a linear model count ~ year to the new members list. The 
> > coefficient is -1.39 member/year, which is significantly different 
> > from zero (F[1,22] = 11.8, p < 0.01). Even when we take out the data 
> > from year 2001, that could be interpreted as an outlier, the trend is 
> > still siginificant, with a drop of 0.98 member/year (F[1,21] = 8.48, p 
> > < 0.01).
> 
> I thought about to use some models for population statistics, so we can 
> get the data about DD birth rate and DD retire/leave rate, as well as a 
> prediction. But since the descendants of DDs are not naturally new DDs, 
> the typical population models are not likely going to work well. The 
> birth of DD is more likely mutation, sort of.
> 
> Anyway, we do not need sophisticated math models to draw the conclusion 
> that Debian is an aging community. And yet, we don't seem to have a good 
> way to reshape the curve using Debian's funds. -- this is one of the key 
> problems behind the data.

What hypothese do we have on what influences the number of active individuals?

Positive factors
* Location of DebConf (with many or not so many devs affording to attend)
* Popular platforms like the Raspberry Pi working with Debian derivative
* Debian packaging teams on salsa
* self-education
* Impression the DD status makes on outsiders/your next employer
* Pleasant interactions on mailing lists with current or past team members
* Team building with other DDs on projects of interest

Negative factors
* Advent of homebrew+conda
* Containers
* Increasing workloads as one ages and does not give packages up
* Work-life-balance
* Migrating to upstream
* Delay between what upstream releases and what is available in our distro
* Unpleasant interactions on mailing lists with current or past team members

Do you have a better list?
I keep thinking about what the last significant change in Debian may have been 
- to mind came salsa.debian.org. Do I miss anything?
And I think the change I would like to see the most is a variant of brew/salsa 
for Debian, preferably in some mostly automated way, so we have some way to 
install the very latest with Debian all the time.

Best,
Steffen

Aw: Debian 12 vs MySql WOrkbench

[Steffen Möller]

Hi Allan,

The status of the package is described on
https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/mysql-workbench

and you see it is waiting for another package to transition to testing, so it 
can migrate itself.

The bug it depends on is
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1040290
and it is already fixed for several months, just apparently the maintainers did 
not get around to reupload a fixed version.

No idea how to speed this up. Man power is a thing. If you are using Debian on 
your very own hardware then I suggest to just use unstable, really. This is 
where you can run the very latest versions (why typically are just as good as 
what uptream provides), find problems and confirm fixes to work. And why not 
maintain a package of your interest yourself?

Steffen

> Gesendet: Dienstag, 21. November 2023 um 08:25 Uhr
> Von: "Allan Frank" 
> An: debian-project@lists.debian.org
> Betreff: Debian 12 vs MySql WOrkbench
>
> Hi Linux Debian 12
>
> Im a student and I use Debian 12 and in general very happy for that.
> Now according my edducation I need MySql Workbench, but as I see its in
> status "unstable" to Debian 12.
> Is there any fix for that issues in the near future ??
>
> Yes, I can use a ViatuelBox and have a whole other system there, but
> its not optimal.
>
> Let me hear from you, if there is any tips/fix or something I can do,
> that make the MySql Workbench work on Debian 12.
>
>
> Kind regards
> Allan Frank
> It-Arkitechtur
> IBA - Kolding
>
>

Aw: Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?

[Steffen Möller]

> Gesendet: Montag, 21. November 2022 um 03:10 Uhr
> Von: "Roberto A. Foglietta" 
> An: "Steve McIntyre" 
> Cc: "Michael Neuffer" , debian-project@lists.debian.org
> Betreff: Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
>
> On Mon, 21 Nov 2022 at 00:59, Steve McIntyre  wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 12:07:53AM +0100, Michael Neuffer wrote:
> > >Am 20. November 2022 23:04:05 MEZ schrieb Mattia Rizzolo 
> > >:
> > >>On Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 10:45:15PM +0100, Michael Neuffer wrote:
> > >>> On 11/20/22 22:14, Roberto A. Foglietta wrote:
> > >>> > On Sun, 20 Nov 2022 at 21:42, G. Branden Robinson
> > >>> >  wrote:
> > >>> >
> > >>> > > Thank you for, perhaps inadvertently, compelling me to review some 
> > >>> > > of
> > >>> > > the content of the package.  I can now say that I am certain there 
> > >>> > > is
> > >>> > > material of worth in the fortunes-off package and support its 
> > >>> > > retention
> > >>> > > in the Debian distribution.  A review process for individual entries
> > >>> > > that are incompatible with the project's values is manifest in the 
> > >>> > > BTS.
> > >>> > >
> > >>> > rational approach vs cancel culture: 1 vs 0
> > >>> > <3
> > >>>
> > >>> I can only very much agree to this.
> > >>
> > >>I also wholly agree, alas it seems we already lost before this even
> > >>started :(
> > >>
> > >>https://tracker.debian.org/news/1385116/accepted-fortune-mod-11991-72-source-amd64-all-into-unstable/
> > >>
> > >
> > >As it was an NMU, this should be easily rectified.
> > >Don't let cancel culture win.
> >
> > Are you volunteering to pick up the package and review its contents,
> > removing the worst stuff that is clearly *not* fit for us to publish?
> > In its previous state it included:
> >
> >  * content that is downright illegal in many jurisdictions
>
> Obviously illegal material should not be distributed. How many of
> these quotes do you find that violate the law in some countries?
> Please, keep in mind that in Germany the nazi propaganda is out-of-law
> but in some other countires out-of-law is the use of the name of the
> profet (whoever he is). So, law compliance might not be as easy as you
> pretend to be unless OUR ONLY culture is considered (which by the
> way?).

Not a lawyer, and I did not have a look into that package, but in Germany, in 
part also because of our 
censoring-and-we-punish-your-family-if-we-cannot-get-you-for-it past, it is 
unlikely that you are censored as long as this is satire - and fortune-off from 
the descriptions given I consider to qualify. Also, just wait until we are 
sued, then we know.

The main concern I understood to be that our community would see some damage by 
such an exceptional package being redistributed. But I do not see that.

> >  * content that is impossible to justify against Debian's stated values
>
> Nice, so we are going to burn "Mein Kampf" in such a way nobody will
> be able to read it?

That is is bit off. The question would be if Debian would decide to 
redistribute it. I have my full trust in our FTPadmins that this would not 
happen, though. That package would be a bit sick, also a fortunes-meinkampf 
that comes up with random quotes from it. There are many differences between 
redistributing that with redistributing anything like fortunes-off, the most 
important one to me is "intent".

> Every library should do that, conforming to their
> values. Burning books, uhm where we saw these before? So, the great
> difference here is to explicitly tell the reader that the content can
> be offensive in some culture or under some PoV.

But if there was something like fortunes-rickygervais - oder 
fortunes-jordanpeterson - not? Even though those two are triggering many 
feelings.

> This is exactly what the -o option does
>
> -o Choose only from potentially offensive aphorisms.
>
> Please, elaborate your opposition because it is quite generic,
> everything above considered.

I would leave that fortunes-off package in. And I just hope for some 
self-censoring that keeps the trolls in us in check so we can delay discussing 
what we are discussing here.

Steffen

Re: Covering visa fees as part of flights+accommodation expenses for events

[Steffen Möller]

On 27.06.22 17:34, Jonathan Carter wrote:

This had mixed results, for one, people who had their visa's covered
in the past may have been surprised to learn that this time round they
suddenly had to pay $100-200 that they thought would have been covered.

Furthermore, visa requirements tend to affect people from less
privileged countries the most. If we're serious about diversity, I
think that we should include covering the visa fee if we offer
travel+accommodation by default, and that this should be the default
for DebConf going forward, and ideally for all Debian events.

A conference is about rendering us all mostly equal - some location,
same food, same discussions. Diversity would also include those who
cannot travel, or who cannot travel alone. I am fine with paying all
travel-associated costs, but not because of diversity, please. Just call
if "fairness" or "equal opportunity" or whatever.


I realise I have some bias here, I myself come from a country where I
need a visa nearly everywhere I want to travel to, but I do think that
including visa fees by default will help making Debian easier to
contribute to for people who come from such countries, and ultimately
have a small role in helping us expand to more areas and improve our
diversity.


You mean global coverage.

I agree that it would help the project to have direct contacts to many
regions in the world.

Best,

Steffen

Re: We need to define a path for Debian to climate neutrality

[Steffen Möller]

On 13.04.22 17:29, Steffen Möller wrote:


On 13.04.22 17:01, Sandro Tosi wrote:

While I see no problem with the services of Debian to turn carbon
neutral, Debian should think of ways not to end here. What else
could we do?

please do not transform Debian in an activist project (i wont comment
on the carbon neutrality proposal). Debian has one goal: provide a
universal operating system. this is where it starts and this is where
it ends, and that's all the "else" that we can do.

You have a point. And I can agree that Debian should not do anything
that is not part of being an universal operating system.

I have seen more heated (pun intended) discussions on Debian's lists
than this one.

You're free to support all your passions, missions and projects
OUTSIDE of Debian. The Debian project is not your echo chamber for
your activism.


Let me rephrase this. What else can a universal operating system do for
climate neutrality?


Was hoping for some external input. To mind come:
 * monitoring systems (I know of a provider of professional wind
turbine monitoring systems that reside on the wind turbines and run Debian)
 * billing systems for community-organised shared resources

I presume that most software tools that ship with inverters, power walls
etc are just accessible via some web interface. Nothing too much for us
to do, I presume. But whenever there is an Open API etc we could
possible point to such a Debian-compatibility.

Cheers,

Steffen

Re: We need to define a path for Debian to climate neutrality

[Steffen Möller]

On 13.04.22 17:01, Sandro Tosi wrote:

While I see no problem with the services of Debian to turn carbon
neutral, Debian should think of ways not to end here. What else could we do?

please do not transform Debian in an activist project (i wont comment
on the carbon neutrality proposal). Debian has one goal: provide a
universal operating system. this is where it starts and this is where
it ends, and that's all the "else" that we can do.

You have a point. And I can agree that Debian should not do anything
that is not part of being an universal operating system.

You're free to support all your passions, missions and projects
OUTSIDE of Debian. The Debian project is not your echo chamber for
your activism.


Let me rephrase this. What else can a universal operating system do for
climate neutrality?

Steffen

Re: We need to define a path for Debian to climate neutrality

[Steffen Möller]

The idea is good.

There is Debian as an organisation that could immediately shift activity
towards renewable resources. There are carbon neutral compute centers.
And there is something close to carbon neutral travel if investing extra
money in these tree planing institutions.

An interesting reference is IKEA
(https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2021/ikea-renewable-energy/718146),
producing more solar energy than it uses.

While I see no problem with the services of Debian to turn carbon
neutral, Debian should think of ways not to end here. What else could we do?

Steffen

Re: Sponsoring Ukranian i18n work

[Steffen Möller]

I suggest you just contact your local city council if you can hang up a
job advert where they register as refugees. That said, maybe you find
some sponsors for some IT training and the refurbishing of some spare
laptops ... hm .. saying that .. I should possibly make a move myself.

On 09.04.22 11:31, Free unofficial Italian translation - FUIT wrote:

Dear Mike,
thank you for your initiative in favor of Ukraine.

In order to protect the privacy of Ukrainians you could also send your
project to communities such as Tails, Tor, Parrot and embassies. The
latter have excellent contacts both with the Ukrainian community
around the world and universities.

Good Luck.

Antonio Bonaccorso

-- Forwarded message -
From: *Mike Gabriel*
Date: sab 9 apr 2022, 01:28


Hi all,

via my company Fre(i)e Software GmbH [1], I would like to sponsor
Ukranian i18n work.

If you know anyone who is good in English and fluent in Ukranian,
please forward this proposal to them. The person must be open to using
tools like Weblate, Transifex and possibly also poedit (for
translating debconf templates).

If you know anyone eligible and forward this mail to them, please also
be available for presenting a short reference for that person. Thanks.

The starting budget will be equivalent to a German Mini Job (450,-EUR
per month for the employee). The translator candidate should be
(temporarily) resident in Germany and must have a work permit for
Germany.

Once somone has been found for this position, we will announce this in
greater public and see if more funding can be scraped together.

(Make sure to reply to my address, I am not subscribed to the
debian-ukrainian mailing list.)

Greets,
Mike (aka sunweaver)

[1] https://freiesoftware.gmbh
--
Fre(i)e Software GmbH
Mike Gabriel

Phone: +49 4354 9965707
Fax: +49 4354 9965709
E-mail: mike.gabr...@freiesoftware.gmbh
Web: https://freiesoftware.gmbh

--

Represented by the Management Board / Vertreten durch die
Geschäftsführung:
Mike Gabriel

Commercial Register entry: HRB 22309 at the Local Court, Amtsgericht Kiel
Handelsregistereintrag: HRB 22309 Amtsgericht Kiel

Postal address / Postanschrift:

Fre(i)e Software GmbH
c\o DAS-NETZWERKTEAM im TÖZ Eckernförde
Marienthaler Str. 17
24340 Eckernförde
Germany / Deutschland

Company address / Firmenanschrift:

Fre(i)e Software GmbH
c\o Mike Gabriel
Herweg 7
24357 Fleckeby
Germany / Deutschland

Re: Spende via Banküberweisung

[Steffen Möller]

Am 07.01.21 um 17:23 schrieb Pierre-Elliott Bécue:
> Le mercredi 30 décembre 2020 à 17:06:01+0100, Steffen Möller a écrit :
>> This is a question about how to donate to Debian from a German-speaking
>> counry while keeping fees to a minimum. I think I can answer that.
>>
>> Sehr geehrter Herr Dischinger,
>>
>> vielen Dank für Ihre Spende. Auf der Seite
>> https://www.debian.org/donations sind Ihre Optionen zusammengefasst. Es
>> bietet sich eine Banküberweisung an Debian-France an.  Deren
>> Bankverbindung steht auf https://france.debian.net/soutenir/#compte .
>>
>> Mit freundlichen Grüßen und besten Wünschen für 2021
> Indeed the answer was pretty good.
>
> Thanks!

I had a few friendly back-and-forths with him. He seems to be a good guy.
Busy, working in Desktop publishing, and also donating to a selection of
upstreams.

Best,

Steffen

Re: Spende via Banküberweisung

[Steffen Möller]

This is a question about how to donate to Debian from a German-speaking
counry while keeping fees to a minimum. I think I can answer that.

Sehr geehrter Herr Dischinger,

vielen Dank für Ihre Spende. Auf der Seite
https://www.debian.org/donations sind Ihre Optionen zusammengefasst. Es
bietet sich eine Banküberweisung an Debian-France an.  Deren
Bankverbindung steht auf https://france.debian.net/soutenir/#compte .

Mit freundlichen Grüßen und besten Wünschen für 2021

Steffen Möller

Am 30.12.20 um 16:28 schrieb temp0...@posteo.de:
> Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,
>
> ich würde gerne etwas Geld an Debian spenden, möchte aber nicht Paypal
> verwenden. Von "Software in the Public Interest" habe ich keine
> Kontoverbindung und befürchte auch, dass auf dem Weg in die USA einiges
> an Gebühren "hängenbleibt".
>
> Gibt es eine Bankverbindung im Euro-Raum?
>
> Mit freundlichen Grüßen
>
> (Herr) Dischinger
>

Re: Please consider making "corectrl" part of the debian distribution

[Steffen Möller]

On 27.06.20 16:18, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

[Assuming you are not subscribed, sorry for the Cc: in case you are]

On Sb, 27 iun 20, 15:21:42, hans_pali...@web.de wrote:

please consider making the application "corectrl" a part of the
official debian (testing) distribution within the next few month.

Please note that debian-project is meant for discussions about the
Debian Project. For development of the Debian operating system the
debian-devel list is more appropriate.

In this particular case you might want to file an RFP (Request For
Package).

https://wiki.debian.org/RFP

If done correctly, it will be automatically sent to debian-devel as
well.


I'd offer mentoring for a Debian Newbie volunteering to maintain the
package.

Steffen

gparted alternatives Re: Please consider making "corectrl" part of the debian distribution

[Steffen Möller]

On 27.06.20 17:46, Peter Ehlert wrote:


On 6/27/20 7:18 AM, Andrei POPESCU wrote:

[Assuming you are not subscribed, sorry for the Cc: in case you are]

On Sb, 27 iun 20, 15:21:42, hans_pali...@web.de wrote:

please consider making the application "corectrl" a part of the
official debian (testing) distribution within the next few month.

Please note that debian-project is meant for discussions about the
Debian Project. For development of the Debian operating system the
debian-devel list is more appropriate.

In this particular case you might want to file an RFP (Request For
Package).

https://wiki.debian.org/RFP


very interesting.  I did not know of the RFP facility

can that also be used to request packages to be included in the Live
images?


maybe start looking here
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianLive/

Steffen

Re: [Summary] Discourse for Debian

[Steffen Möller]

On 16.04.20 20:18, Olek Wojnar wrote:


On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 12:19 PM Ross Vandegrift
mailto:rvandegr...@debian.org>> wrote:

Sorry for not speaking up, but I agreed with your concern.  I thought
the summary overemphasized cons and dismissed the pros.

I'm sending this in case this is a situation where only negative
feedback is voiced.  I think Neil's experiment is a good idea and I'm
perplexed by the strong reactions to merely testing out a tool.

Ross

(who would've clicked  instead of emailing, if we had the
technology)


Second and   to that!


Could refrain from "third", but had to 

Can we gpg-sign ""s on discord?

Re: Outreachy and smearing campaign

[Steffen Möller]

On 22.02.20 10:15, Ulrike Uhlig wrote:

Hi,

On 21.02.20 17:09, Ken Starr wrote:


Debian spends $25,000 every year on just four women

This is entirely wrong as far as I can tell:

Outreachy is a 501(c)(3) non-profit under their parent organization,
Software Freedom Conservancy. Outreachy internship stipends, travel
fund, and program costs are supported by donors. Debian itself does not
pay any intern.

Furthermore, Outreachy is open to all "people from groups
underrepresented in tech".


Thank you for this reply, Ulrike. Debian spending money to support
Outreachy would not be completely inconceivable. As a DD I have full
(very close to ultimate) trust that I would not have missed a discussion
about it. But as a regular user of Debian project?

No idea what this "Ken Starr" (name chosen after
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Starr ?) is after. At best we are the
subject of a study on how well defamation campaigns work in
ideals-driven tech environments. @Ken, pump it up! Something evil in me
is enjoying this. Much like skimming through the tabloids when all you
wanted to do is to go and fetch some fruit from the supermarket.

@Debian, we should find ways to objectively discuss what has been
brought up. For instance - Ken reporting on someone attending DebConf,
finding a mentor and jointly sketching a project they want to work
together - I mean, that is why we have DebConf in the first place -
@Ken, this is a success story. I am not sure if Outreachy then needs to
fund this any further, but from a Debian perspective - please do. Don't
we have someone in our midst to dissect truths in Ken's rants from
fictions? And maybe to even admit when something went wrong?

Steffen

Re: Do we still value contributions?

[Steffen Möller]

Hello,

We need to change something. I am just not exactly sure what this is.
Since software/workflows that we cover in Debian has increased in
complexity, we have come up with salsa. And we are increasingly
automating our testing. The package review has not yet seen any
methodological change but we expect it to just somehow keep up. And
complex software having some essential module waiting in new is -
unfortunate for everyone. Just to give you an example, I am packaging
for the same biological workflow since two or three years now. What
keeps me going? Read through
https://bcbio-nextgen.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ and ask yourself if you
think that should work on Debian - it works via conda on Debian, but
that is not what I meant. Why is this difficult? For many reasons. One
is that it uses software that is written in "nim", which is not so very
much known, yet. But this is also how Debian benefits from this effort
as a whole. A serial dependency on five or so non-biological modules it
has. And the first (nim-unicodeplus) sits silently in the New Queue
since 8 months.

Folks at conda do everything on github, including a peer review. For
most scientific packages I sense this to be just fine. Maybe we could
somehow stage our developments? A peer-reviewed (as in "get at least
three signatures" maybe?) instant upload into a "periphery" distribution
with a transition into a "as time permits" FTPmaster-scrutinized "main"
distribution?

Also, I find it somehow sad that FTPmasters after their ingenious
isolation of a problem that would then be fixed real easy don't have the
chance to just do the fix in salsa and have the package accepted from
there. The workflow now is that the package goes back to the uploading
developer who then fixes the typically trivial bit and the package
impose the same work on the FTPmasters again, often with a llooonngg
delay again. Instant trivial fixes would dramatically reduce the
rejection rate, I presume, and may also increase the fun to be an FTPmaster.

Best,
Steffen

Re: Some thoughts about Diversity and the CoC

[Steffen Möller]

On 13.12.19 08:17, Jonathan Carter wrote:

I find your offense to the mere use of words of 'nazi' and 'genocide'
quite bizarre, there's nothing rude or even impolite to using these
words in normal conversation.


Ouch! Many problems here.

Re: Community Team - where we want to go

[Steffen Möller]

A community team is a good thing. Just its apparent focus on the Code of
Conduct is unfortunate. The biggest modulators of how we interact among
ourselves and how much inviting we are perceived as a community imho
currently are (somewhat ordered):

 * salsa

 * blends

 * debconfs

 * sprints

 * patches by .deb maintainers on github/bitbucket/...

 * news on Debian being adopted by some 3rd party for something fancy

 * our discussion on the mailing lists

And I want more of that. I wish the Community Team comes up with new
ideas that are all positively minded. The CoC is somewhere out there but
luckily not omnipresent. I have some confidence that no (zero) DM/DD
enjoys to be meeting regularly in some group to discuss that CoC and its
application ... this is just nothing why we are here. And consequently
DDs distrust other DDs that volunteer to be on such a team. So, have
your Meta Team and talk about how to evolve our togetherness. That shall
involve having an eye on that we are no intentionally or unintentionally
hurting each other in our communication but should by no means dominate
what that team is about.

Best,
Steffen

Re: Using Debian funds to support a gcc development task

[Steffen Möller]

Hello,

On 30.09.19 06:20, Charles Plessy wrote:

Le Sat, Sep 28, 2019 at 11:44:26AM +0200, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz a écrit :

In the future, gcc upstream expects all backends to be using MODE_CC for the
internal register representation as the old CC0 is supposed to be removed.

Since the lack of modernization would eventually mean that m68k support would
get removed from gcc, I'm currently running a campaign to prevent that. I
have already opened a tracker bug upstream in gcc's bugzilla [2] as well as
linked the issue to BountySource [3].

(...)

I thought of something around $1000 to $5000 depending on how much the project
is willing to spend.

Hi John and everybody,

given the reminders that Debian refrains from paying developers for
their time, I wonder if it would still be possible to make a small
contribution that expresses Debian's interest and sympathy to your goal,
with the hope that our name will help the crowdfunding effort.
Something on a scale that would allow us to answer positively to similar
requests without putting a significant burden on our finances... Maybe
$100 ?  This is the same amount as what Debian is willing to reimburse
for travel costs to bug-squashing parties, for instance.


I like the idea to find additional "enablers" of developments that
Debian would support. And such a $100 honorary bounty might have some
merits. If we collect a couple of them, then this would also help
defining the strategy of our development a bit.

Something else that Debian (or some institution next to Debian that we
invent for that purpose) could possibly come up with is a "go fund me"
for key technologies to be ported to off-mainstream platforms. Or for
key technologies that our distribution misses.

Best,
Steffen

Re: GR proposal: mandating VcsGit and VcsBrowser for all packages, using the "gbp patches unapplied" layout, and maybe also mandating hosted on Salsa

[Steffen Möller]

On 24.07.19 17:38, Fabien Givors wrote:
> Le 24/07/2019 à 15:16, Vincent Bernat a écrit :
>> Without a GR, the outcome is decided by a shouting contest. A GR seeems
>> great to know if people are a majority or not.
> A GR is not just a poll.

Yup. I personally see little chance this goes through. To have polls,
among DDs and our users, seems like a good idea, though.

Best,

Steffen

Aw: Re: academic alliances or the like

[Steffen Möller]

Hi Morten,

> Gesendet: Sonntag, 10. April 2016 um 12:52 Uhr
> Von: "Morten Bo Nielsen" 
> An: "Paul Wise" 
> Cc: "debian-project@lists.debian.org" 
> Betreff: Re: academic alliances or the like
>
> On 2016-04-06 17:09, Paul Wise wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 8:17 PM, Morten Bo Nielsen wrote:
> >
> >> I am searching for a way to cooperate with the Debian project.
> > ...
> >> Have there ever been thoughts on doing a Debian "academic alliance"
> >> style partnerships?
> > I don't recall any discussion around these themes.

I find that the concept of Debian Blends pretty much aims at getting
particular communities together. Please check out
  https://www.debian.org/blends/
and the associated mailing lists. There are no formalities attached.
Those who do good are recognised as such by their peers. Every community
has some individuals that are more active and some that are less,
so in practice you find your explicit partner.

> >> My wish list
> >> 1) a contact person that could help me find relevant local/regional
> >> companies that use Debian
> > We have a list of companies using Debian on the website:
> >
> > https://www.debian.org/users/#com
> >
> > There are also some companies and individuals doing Debian consulting:
> >
> > https://www.debian.org/consultants/

And we have https://www.debian.org/partners/ . 

> >> 2) course material that makes it easy for me to teach linux from a
> >> Debian point of view
> > We don't really have teaching material AFAIK, but perhaps some of our
> > user and developer documentation is useful to you:
> >
> > https://www.debian.org/doc/

Yes, both the material and an infrastructure for the material are important.
For instance I find readthedocs to be beyond what the contributors to
Debian have yet at their disposal.

Part of the difficulty is to have the important bits translated to all
the various languages out there. You will be amazed how much there is
e.g. for Danish.

> >> 3) some organizational structure where my students can contribute on
> >> their level
> > There are lots of opportunities for students and other newcomers to
> > contribute in various ways depending on their skill set. Probably the
> > most relevant here are the Outreachy and Google Summer of Code
> > internship programs. In addition, the how-can-i-help package can point
> > out issues that might be suitable for newcomers to tackle as well as
> > issues relating to the system it is installed on.
> >
> > https://www.debian.org/intro/help
> > https://wiki.debian.org/gsoc
> > https://wiki.debian.org/Outreachy
> > https://wiki.debian.org/how-can-i-help
> > http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=newcomer

The most amazing offer in this respect is the Menotring of the Month
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMed/MoM
I tend to think. But also the regular mentors list
https://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/
is always constructive and
helpful, but more for those who know what they are after and less personal.

> Thanks for all the feedback.
> 
> I will spend some time going through your suggested links and other
> Debian related resources. There is a lot, and maybe it will not be hard
> work to compile and gift wrap a "Linux from scratch using Debian"
> course. As Ian suggests (cheekily...), it is a good candidate for a
> course that the students contribute to and help to find relevant
> material. I will get back to you, if/when I have looked into it.
> 
> My biggest issue is related to how to find industry partners. Debian
> doesn't keep a record of it and keeping track of persons/companies
> doing  downloads/updates is not something we want,  so we will have do
> it differently.

I propose you set up a site with you offering to mentor your students
for real world problems in local industry - and why not also a bit abroad.

> I don't have good ideas right now, but it is important for me to be able
> to document to my boss and collegues that Debian is relevant for  the
> students :-)
 
:) Maybe some three letters like 'IoT' suffice. With Debian (or its derivatices)
your students can do everything, i.e. from embedded via mobile to HPC and big 
data, on
the same platform, bare metal or virtual. Everything is inspectable, 
rebuildable,
changeable and traceable at runtime. Quite a platform for learning and as a help
to find one's deeper interests.

Steffen

Re: Debian 64bit information on website

[Steffen Möller]

Hi Marc,

On 05/03/16 12:49, error.hotm...@brushdesign.com wrote:
> Dear Sirs,
>
> A long time Debian user I still have friends asking me where to find a 64bit 
> distro to run on INTEL processors. When pointing out that the AMD64 distro is 
> the way to go I always got questions why it is named AMD64 vs. i386.
I agree. Had tried it on an IT-savvy close relative.
> Users normally do associate Intel and AMD to be two different sets.
>
> Could this information on the website be made available more prominently? 
> Directly on the download locations of the "how to get Debian" instead of the 
> wiki or the FAQ?
I tend to agree that what may people let associate "Debian" with "for
geeks" or "difficult" may in parts be outside the distribution.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop
has fewer platforms to distinguish, nonetheless, one should possibly
learn from them.
> It would be interesting to have a look at todays downloads, I suspect that 
> the 32 bit versions are still more prominent.
No, not really. You can see some stats on
http://popcon.debian.org/
which finds amd64 to now have more installations than i386 ever had.

To me, the best way to install Debian is anyway to do it together with a
friend who had done it before.

Cheers,

Steffen

Re: Debian Project Contribution - Sheetal

[Steffen Möller]

Hello,

On 09/12/15 22:40, Riley Baird wrote:
[...]
>> Please assign me a suitable task. I am ready to give more than 8 hrs every
>> week for it.
> We don't exactly assign tasks. You can pick up whatever you want and
> start working on it. However, if you're looking for ideas, you might
> want to try adopting an orphaned python package. Here is a short list:
>
> http://wnpp.debian.net/?type[]=O=python
>
> The Debian Python Modules Team (DPMT) and the debian-mentors lists
> should be able to help you with this if you get stuck.
Debian helps with the distribution of software. Closely connected is
the distribution of skills using that software. Either is rewarding to
contribute to. It does not really matter where you start. I propose
you take something you are already comfortable with, e.g. the Python
modules as proposed, and just take any of their packages and rebuild
them locally. You may find an outdated module and offer help to the
current maintainer to perform the update as an entry to the world of
Debian package maintenance, which is likely to bring the first mentor
and sponsor, too. Quite a number of packages are team-maintained.
The Debian wiki pages explain how this works.

The Debian Policy document is surprisingly readable. I once read it
annoyingly late when I was starting.
https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/

From there, you may decide to connect yourself not only with Debian
but also with the upstream developers.

Best,

Steffen

Aw: Re: Google contacting (harassing?) new DDs

[Steffen Möller]

 2013/12/10 Enrico Zini enr...@enricozini.org:
 
  it looks like as soon as one becomes DD, an email arrives from Google
  recruiters.
 
  I am toying with the idea of contacting companies with aggressive
  recruiting policies like Google asking them to please leave us in peace,
  and offering instead to maintain a wiki page of recruiting contacts for
  companies that like the taste of DD blood. Something like:
 
  Comments?

Debian Developers/Maintainers are self-driven technical enthusiasts
with international contacts, not afraid of peer review and most of us
also enjoy learning new stuff. We should be considered by any fast
(or not so fast) growing company to be a good idea to recruit from
or to be asked for some honest consultancy.

I have no exact idea about what we can do to help recruiters, so they
do not feel to miss out when not contacting the individual DDs directly.
Information on who is available and who not, who would be prepared to
move, who not, ... is nothing that we would want to put on any website
anywhere. We have the debian-jobs mailing list. Maybe this should be
promoted? Or should we have a list of Debian-supporting recruiters
to be contacted when up for a change?

Cheers,

Steffen


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/trinity-24d31695-d79b-4156-ab76-f45e475b63c0-1386846714845@3capp-gmx-bs19

Aw: Re: Buying hardware with Debian money

[Steffen Möller]

Hello,

 On Sun, Oct 20, 2013 at 11:41 AM, Lucas Nussbaum lea...@debian.org wrote:
  Hi,
 
  I received a few requests for hardware purchases, that I think are worth
  discussing with the project as a whole in order to progress towards
  having clear guidelines for what is acceptable and what isn't in terms
  of spending Debian money.
 
  Please provide feedback on the proposed decisions -- they are not final
  yet.
 
 
  A. Memory expansion cards for m68k buildds (expected cost: 500 EUR)
  ===
...
  B. Powerful machine for d-i development (expected cost: 1.5k-2k EUR?)
  =
...
  C. Laptop for developer (expected cost: 1k-1.5k EUR?)
  =

Brian:
 That said, it does seem that the situation with C is suboptimal, and
 perhaps he could try to see if any DDs have a spare laptop that they
 could lend/give, as even a 5-6 year old laptop seems that it would be
 better than what he has now?

+1 

The community spirit among ourselves should be supported this way and
maybe we find more ways towards it. How about the DPL first deciding
if something is sufficiently close to our key project ideas to receive
direct funding from the Debian money, and if not, if the Debian project
should ask for the explicit funding for a project through its communication
channels from the community, much like what kickstarter or indiegogo do.
For the ABC above, it could go like

B : direct funding for the installer team

A : request to the community a large to donate money for the M68K project
to update their memory. I volunteer to donate 20 €/$ whatever.

C : reject, or change to a request to forward a used machine matching
some specification for a student  ... 

I find the request C a bit strange or I do not get it right. For
every DD there are machines to log in to for building packages. Right?
Hence, even only with a Raspberry at hand, there are tons of useful bits
to contribute to our distribution and so much every student can afford.

Steffen


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/trinity-3bb086d2-548d-47fa-82b3-aeabbdb6dab6-1382347051603@3capp-gmx-bs40

Aw: Re: Debian companies group

[Steffen Möller]

 Von: Michael Meskes mes...@debian.org
 On Tue, Sep 03, 2013 at 11:12:12AM +0200, Paul Wise wrote:
  I didn't really understand your proposal, it was missing the What?
  section. What do you intend to change apart from the description of
  the debian-companies list?
 
 It is not just the description but the subscription policy that is changed. 
 But
 my goal is to get some feedback about the idea in general as it hasn't got 
 much
 traction so far. If there is no interest from companies we can simply close 
 the
 list. But if there is we should start talking.

I support the idea. There are quite some different types of Debian companies 
around,
and to learn about their concerns - early - may be of interest for our 
distribution.

Steffen


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/trinity-eba82059-3a65-4e77-a87f-d98e0b027d7f-1378202642647@3capp-gmx-bs52

Aw: Re: Re: Debian companies group

[Steffen Möller]

 Gesendet: Dienstag, 03. September 2013 um 14:24 Uhr

 Am 03.09.2013 12:04, schrieb Steffen Möller:
 
  It is not just the description but the subscription policy that is 
  changed. But
  my goal is to get some feedback about the idea in general as it 
  hasn't got much
  traction so far. If there is no interest from companies we can 
  simply close the
  list. But if there is we should start talking.
  I support the idea. There are quite some different types of Debian
  companies around, and to learn about their concerns - early - may be 
  of interest for
  our distribution.
 
 Yes, but Debian can not learn from it with the subscription policy as 
 is (and
 intended to stay for now). Its an exclusive thing for some people, who 
 fit
 companies with a DD and at least 10 other people, so none else gets 
 anything from there.
 Not the self-employed DDs, not those working in smaller companies.
 
 Sounds bad. Why do those smaller ones matter less?

Ah. I missunderstood. Any volunteer interested in rendering our
distribution more suitable for commercial entities should of course
also have an option to join and/or read bits and pieces anonymously.

Steffen


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/trinity-de1fefda-b05d-4d1a-86b0-959586d4d909-1378212667124@3capp-gmx-bs52

Aw: Re: Debian companies group

[Steffen Möller]

  On Dienstag, 3. September 2013, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
   But I don't understand why
   interested DD aren't allowed to subscribe to it. I also don't understand
   what the minimum size requirement brings.
  
  me neither. why are small debian companies no debian companies (in this 
  context)? Why shouldn't they? We had one person companies sponsoring 
  DebConfs 
  several times.
 
 Right and we already have a debian-consultants mailing list, don't we? The 
 idea
 was that bigger companies may have other topics and ideas. But then maybe not,
 but it's worth a try imo. The numbers are not set in stone btw, but I strongly
 believe in the beginning we should not start with everyone, but a group that 
 is not
 really represented so far.

I prefer you trying the way you want to try it rather than talking it down.
How open you want to be to smaller groups you may want to discuss on the list,
then. Go for it.

Steffen


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: 
http://lists.debian.org/trinity-51fda7c8-3f9b-4611-97a8-7719749a7044-1378233115371@3capp-gmx-bs45

Aw: Geant321 and geant4 in science package

[Steffen Möller]

Hi Christophe,



There is a steady in-and-out of activity on the CERN-associated packages. By all means, you would be more than welcome to help with contributing later versions of it all. Please skim through http://wiki.debian.org/DebianScience at your leisure and follow the link to the Blend ... which is basically a svn/git repository with all the build instructions where all those contributing to the science packages can help each other out.



Well-meant suggestion: To keep your motivation on packaging high, please set a piority on those packages that you need for your daily (or almost daily) work. Do not primarily try to fill a gap of packages in Debian. With shifts in your focus, and maybe earlier, try finding someone to adopt the packaging from you - the sharing of packaging efforts in the Blend help this process.



Welcome!

Steffen



Gesendet:Dienstag, 16. April 2013 um 15:18 Uhr
Von:Christophe Hugon christophe.hu...@ge.infn.it
An:debian-project@lists.debian.org
Betreff:Geant321 and geant4 in science package

Hello,

Im very interested in debian since few years, in a good part because
the science packages are not bad. But I think that it should even better
with the geant4 package. I dont know why, geant3 is in packages since
years.
Maybe I can start contributions for packaging by that (Im physicist),
but I dont know how to enter in contact with science maintainers, and
how to start.

Regards

Christophe


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/516d4fb1.1000...@ge.infn.it






-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/trinity-696fc112-eda0-4ce7-b294-15ae81929712-1366142915941@3capp-gmx-bs34

Aw: Re: Debian participation into GNOME Outreach Program for Women

[Steffen Möller]

Hello,










Gesendet:Freitag, 05. April 2013 um 09:45 Uhr
Von:Andreas Tille andr...@an3as.eu
An:debian-project@lists.debian.org
Cc:debian-wo...@lists.debian.org
Betreff:Re: Debian participation into GNOME Outreach Program for Women

Hi,

On Thu, Apr 04, 2013 at 07:52:18PM -0400, Brian Gupta wrote:
 OK from my reading of
 https://live.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen#For_Organizations_and_Companies
 it seems that Debian can be a participating project, without also
 being a financial sponsor. IE: We provide mentors and help select the
 best project submissions. I think this sounds like a great idea, and
 we should definitely pursue it. (Assuming my understanding is
 correct.)

I agree that at least in my perception Debian is way better in terms of
providing knowledge rather than in providing money. So we should rather
provide in what we are good in (mentoring, programming skills) and not
what we are no experts in (dealing with money) to external projects. I
do not have trouble personally in spending the money on OPW but I would
also see a similarly fair use of the GSoC org money to keep on
sponsoring DebConf newbees and explicitly prefer women who apply for the
support. IMHO this fullfills the same intention to lower the entrance
barrier for women into the Free Software world.

In short: This is no veto against OPW support rather a slight reminder
whether we are just jumping enthusiastically on a train (which
admittedly goes in the right direction) before we have sorted out all
ways to spend this Debian money to support women inside Debian.





I agree with Andreas in that we have many ways still open for us to communicate the technology and Debian as a society to outsiders. Having a focus on those issues that females have most problems with to tolerate / understand may help our project at large. I would be particularly interested to learn about how Debian is perceived by female geeks in other disciplines, e.g. those performing research in various sciences or areas of engineering, and how Debian compares to the perceived more user-friendly Ubuntu. This would also transform the perception of money spent from giving to women because they are not techie enough to get the idea by themselves to give the money to women because they sense and verbalise issues that males are more likely to fail to communicate. If our participation in OPW gives such concerns some sort of a platform, then I am fully up for it. That said, I whole heartedly also feel with Sune that for the technology alone we should not invest so much - anyone could do it, even males. For the money one should then rather support local workshops and support those female aspiring geeks directly who have some interest than going for a single project - 100 times more effective, I tend to think.



Cheers,



Steffen









--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/trinity-2e73c058-4ab8-4703-a595-e5b29ae327a3-1365169973583@3capp-gmx-bs31

Re: Presentation of iso downloads - simpler like Fedora?

[Steffen Möller]

Dear all,

Firstly, many many many thanks for the very constructive thread.

On 08/22/2012 04:05 PM, Ben Armstrong wrote:
 On 08/21/2012 09:05 AM, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
 Along the same lines, I suggest to simplify the choices according to the 
 ways of acquiring
 Debian that are more likely for users. The suggestion is implemented in the 
 attached patch:
 
 - it put first the two options that I think are more likely for our users, 
 i.e. downloading
 debian (be it in the live flavor of not), and the other options (buying CD 
 or pre-installed
 systems) next
 
 - the choice of small vs large is now a sub-choice of downloading an 
 installation image
 (the title of the section points to small, as I believe is the choice we 
 recommend)
 
 Thanks. I will review/apply soon.

To bring it to a test and get some extra feedback for you all, I yesterday 
grabbed a Mac user for a virtual installation on his
laptop. I said fetch any iso and download it, starting from www.debian.org. 
The button at the top right was not seen. We
followed the Getting Debian route. The Try Debian live was not chosen (or 
even not seen), the small installation images
appealed most. This brought us to http://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst, no 
difficulty up to here. Also the selection of Small
CDs (which should be renamed to the singular form IMHO) was almost immediate. 
The problem then was with the selection of the
architecture. The small text describing the 180MB download was fine, but then 
there was a very different skill level required to
decide for the platform ... I almost dropped dead laughing ... but the 
selection of the architecture was not possible for that Mac
guy. amd64 (the right choice) was immediately rejected, knowing that it is no 
longer a PowerPC (also rejected) and Apple back then
did not go for AMD but Intel as a partner. i386 was only understood as the very 
old stuff, ... well, you can guess about the rest
producing many question marks ... I was glad for the opportunity to explain the 
difference between kernel and userspace for
kfreebsd ...

We then installed stable, which hurt me just a bit who I would have preferred 
testing the Wheezy installation, but I did not want
to change rules here. From within stable, I missed
 * a preparation for packages from backports.d.o
 * instructions how to update to Wheezy from Squeeze, we only found some 
Squeeze-only package management tool of Gnome.
I started to become a true fan of backports and know some hard core 
stable/old-stable users depending much on that, praising
Debian for it. To have this more readily for everyone would help also our 
release schedule, I am sure, since the pain to have a
package just miss the release for a few days is then reduced. Maybe there is 
way to have backports readily in for Wheezy.

For the architectures-issue on the netinst download page I suggest some support 
by mouse-over, maybe auto-filled with some first
paragraph taken from wiki.debian.org. The ones reading the page with no 
JavaScript these days are also the ones who know what to
download already :o)

Steffen


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/5039e9c1.8080...@gmx.de

Re: Presentation of iso downloads - simpler like Fedora?

[Steffen Möller]

 Original-Nachricht 
 Datum: Sun, 12 Aug 2012 20:41:15 +0200
 Von: Michael Banck mba...@debian.org
 An: debian-project@lists.debian.org
 Betreff: Re: Presentation of iso downloads - simpler like Fedora?

 On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 09:59:45PM -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh
 wrote:
  On Fri, 10 Aug 2012, Yves-Alexis Perez wrote:
   On ven., 2012-08-10 at 14:01 +0200, Steffen Möller wrote:
some binary software forced me into downloading a RedHat flavour, so
 I
went for Fedora. I found it very easy to get an ISO. I mean - very
 very
very easy. My suggestion is to copy that for our now pending release
 or
to make it even easier - not that I would know how to do that. They
 even
auto-picked a good mirror for me.

http://fedoraproject.org

   What about the direct link on top right of http://www.debian.org ?
  
  Whatever the reason, a lot of people seems to miss that Download box.
  I mean it.
 
 Yeah, I did as well, when I last looked at it.

This thread pointed me to it. The Getting Debian is what jumped at me. And I 
had a colleague next to me whom I wanted to stop from installing Ubuntu by 
downloading the iso quickly since he was already burning Ubuntu's. One is 
guided to the Ubuntu ISOs more easily than with Debian, too, just more 
nerve-wrecking than with Fedora because of the extra clicks. The download link 
did not allow to change to Wheezy, which these days might possibly be 
worthwhile to announce a bit more.

 I think it is unfortunate that the button is part of the banner, I guess
 I quickly skip over the banner because I do not expect any important
 content in it and many other users might as well.
 
 Having a button left/right of the Getting Started section might be
 more visible.

This apparently trivial thing delayed my sleep for a few nights now. We are 
covering more architectures than Fedora or Ubuntu. Our download page should 
then be allowed to be more complicated. But quite a few who may be new to Linux 
may possibly want to be guided a bit more towards the right thing to download 
than what they get on http://www.debian.org/distrib/ and then 
http://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst or 
http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/squeeze/main/installer-amd64/current/images/.
And what when you want to try the current developent release not the stable  
one? I find this hard to find. Well, we do not want _every_ user we possibly 
could have.

I do not have any immediate answer. We just do an awful lot of things. And not 
all fits on the home page. And is the web page a page for us developers? Or 
about us developers and how Debian works? Or should it primarily bring our 
product to our users so our work gets the best possible perception? Something 
else?

Anyway, I just looked around at Ubuntu.com and like that a lot, also for what 
they are doing. RedHat is a catastrophe, even worse than our site at a first 
glimpse, SuSE a bit better than Redhat.  Fedora is nice. Truly nice, not only 
for the download but also for the integration of communty spirits. 

Steffen



-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120812214505.227...@gmx.net

Presentation of iso downloads - simpler like Fedora?

[Steffen Möller]

Dear all,

some binary software forced me into downloading a RedHat flavour, so I
went for Fedora. I found it very easy to get an ISO. I mean - very very
very easy. My suggestion is to copy that for our now pending release or
to make it even easier - not that I would know how to do that. They even
auto-picked a good mirror for me.

http://fedoraproject.org

I apologise for those who feel like this had been discussed before. I
do, actually. :o)  My suggestion was meant to be constructive.

Steffen





-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/5024f82e.1040...@gmx.de

BitCoin and Debian?!?

[Steffen Möller]

-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120512165544.39...@gmx.net

Re: [Draft] GR: diversity statement for the Debian Project

[Steffen Möller]

 Original-Nachricht 
 Datum: Sun, 6 May 2012 23:23:23 -0700
 Von: Steve Langasek vor...@debian.org
 An: debian-project@lists.debian.org, debian-v...@lists.debian.org
 Betreff: Re: [Draft] GR: diversity statement for the Debian Project

 On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 12:32:03AM +0200, Francesca Ciceri wrote:
  DRAFT TO BE VOTED STARTS HERE
  
  The Debian Project welcomes and encourages participation by everyone.
  
  It doesn't matter how you identify yourself or how others perceive you:
  we welcome you. We welcome contributions from everyone as long as they
  interact constructively with our community.
  
  While much of the work for our project is technical in nature, we
  value and encourage contributions from those with expertise
  in other areas, and welcome them into our community.
  
  DRAFT TO BE VOTED ENDS HERE
 
 Seconded.  I know you haven't called for seconds yet, but I don't see any
 reason to wait when this has already reached broad consensus on
 debian-project.


I agree that this should go out. Just, we have our community twice in the 
text. punAny linguistic expertise with us we could possibly welcome?/pun 
Anyway, it sounds strange enough to me to suggest substituting the first 
occurrence with just us. And, since we also want new contributors to also 
interact constructively between themselves, and since to me it is somewhat 
redundant in the first place, I would even feel inclined to remove the with 
our community. Second paragraph untouched.

Steffen


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120507081828.265...@gmx.net

Re: Diversity statement for the Debian Project

[Steffen Möller]

I am starting to enjoy this.
 Original-Nachricht 
 Datum: Sat, 7 Apr 2012 11:03:07 +
 Von: Luca Filipozzi lfili...@debian.org
 An: debian-project@lists.debian.org
 Betreff: Re: Diversity statement for the Debian Project

 On Sat, Apr 07, 2012 at 12:23:21PM +0200, Enrico Zini wrote:
  On Thu, Apr 05, 2012 at 10:32:21PM +0200, Francesca Ciceri wrote:
  
   It doesn't matter how you define yourself or how others define you: 
   we welcome you.  We welcome contributions from everyone 
  
  Moar nitpicking: s/define/perceive/g
  
  That gives: It doesn't matter how you perceive yourself or how others
  perceive you: we welcome you.
  
  This is after feedback from a respected friend on a private IRC channel,
  who pointed out that the concept of definitions has unwelcome
  connotations.
 
 The first 'define' might want to be 'identify' and the second 'perceive'
 for
 
   It doesn't matter how you identify yourself or how others perceive
   you: we welcome you.
 
 Or possibly:
 
   It doesn't matter how you choose to identify or how others perceive
   you: we welcome you.

And what about a bit of a simplification: It does not matter who you or who 
others think you are: we welcome you.

Best,

Steffen



-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120407165747.131...@gmx.net

Re: Diversity statement for the Debian Project

[Steffen Möller]

 Original-Nachricht 
 Datum: Tue, 03 Apr 2012 09:39:22 -0700
 Von: Russ Allbery r...@debian.org
 An: debian-project@lists.debian.org
 Betreff: Re: Diversity statement for the Debian Project

 Francesca Ciceri madame...@debian.org writes:
 
  --- 8 --- 8 
  The Debian Project welcomes and encourages participation by everyone.
  It doesn't matter how you define yourself or how others define you: we
  welcome you.  We welcome contributions from everyone within their areas
  of expertise, as long as they can be constructive members of our
  community. While much of the work of the Project is technical in nature,
  we will value and encourage contributions to the Project from those with
  expertise in non-technical areas and welcome such contributors as part
  of our community.
  - 8 --- 8 ---
 
 Works for me, with or without the differences mentioned in other replies.

Yip, even though I would be tempted to leave out within their areas of 
expertise. Something is constructive or not. Even a question to someone 
writing a documentation can be constructive.
 
 Thank you again, Francesca, for your work on this.

Indeed. This is a tantalizing improvement over the typical formulation of being 
an equal opportunity organisation.

Steffen


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120403170557.49...@gmx.net

Re: Diversity statement for the Debian Project

[Steffen Möller]

 Original-Nachricht 
 Datum: Tue, 3 Apr 2012 17:23:57 +
 Von: Luca Filipozzi lfili...@debian.org
 An: debian-project@lists.debian.org
 Betreff: Re: Diversity statement for the Debian Project

 On Tue, Apr 03, 2012 at 07:05:57PM +0200, Steffen M?ller wrote:
   Francesca Ciceri madame...@debian.org writes:
   
--
The Debian Project welcomes and encourages participation by
everyone.  It doesn't matter how you define yourself or how others
define you: we welcome you.  We welcome contributions from
everyone within their areas of expertise, as long as they can be
constructive members of our community. While much of the work of
the Project is technical in nature, we will value and encourage
contributions to the Project from those with expertise in
non-technical areas and welcome such contributors as part of our
community.
--
   
   Works for me, with or without the differences mentioned in other
   replies.
  
  Yip, even though I would be tempted to leave out within their areas
  of expertise. Something is constructive or not. Even a question to
  someone writing a documentation can be constructive.
 
 so that would be something like constructive contributions to the
 Project in non-technical areas

 micro suggestion: s/will value/values/
 
 the rest of the statment is in present tense; let's not use future tense
 for how much we will value and encourage participation; will is to
 much like try; do or do not :)

Here a summary of what I read so far and some extra changes I liked. The first 
two sentences of Francesca are my favorite and the most important, I think. I 
am not sure how much of the rest is needed, anyway:

The Debian Project welcomes and encourages participation by
everyone.  It doesn't matter how you define yourself or how others
define you: we welcome you.  We welcome contributions from
everyone
s/within their areas of expertise,//
as long as they
s/can/interact/
constructive
s/ members of/ly with/
our community. While much of the work
s/of the Project/for our project/
is technical in nature, we
s/will // (Luca)
value and encourage contributions to
s/the Project/Debian/
from those with expertise in
s/non-technical/other/ (Stefano)
areas and welcome such contributors
s/as part of/in/
our community.


Cheers,

Steffen


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120403213033.49...@gmx.net

Re: Diversity statement for the Debian Project

[Steffen Möller]

Hello,

 Original-Nachricht 
 Datum: Sun, 1 Apr 2012 13:43:46 -0400
 Von: Kevin Mark kevin.m...@verizon.net
 An: Philip Hands p...@hands.com
 CC: Kevin Mark kevin.m...@verizon.net, debian-project@lists.debian.org
 Betreff: Re: Diversity statement for the Debian Project

 On Sun, Apr 01, 2012 at 11:59:01AM +0100, Philip Hands wrote:
  On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 19:07:33 -0400, Kevin Mark kevin.m...@verizon.net
 wrote:
   If we say we accept people of all races or that we dont discriminate
   based on race, then we are not the ones who are going to discriminate,
   and this is a good thing and is welcoming.
  
  Well, except for the fact that by saying that one is reinforcing the
  notion that race means something useful, which it really doesn't.
 
 In an ideal world, none of this would matter. Alas, we do not live in that
 place.

Not in RL, but from the Debian packaging perspective, I think we are at least 
very very close to such idealism and the only race conditions we have are very 
technical and are reported as bugs already. I am with Philip and suggest to 
postpone discussions about racial discrimination until we have an issue within 
Debian or with those redistributing our packages. If you refer to an unequal 
distribution of our distribution in the world, to me the answer is about 
helping our marketing, or help some team building somewhere as a seed/bridge 
into a remote community.

Steffen


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120401191703.203...@gmx.net

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Steffen Möller]

On 03/28/2012 10:25 AM, Philip Hands wrote:
 On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:06:46 +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli z...@debian.org 
 wrote:
 On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 01:55:37PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
 DDG will earmark traffic originating for Debian, for browsers who want
 to do so, by using the search URL
 https://duckduckgo.com/?q={{search}}t=debian
 The privacy implications of this need to be considered. At least for
 Chromium there is no indication in the user agent that the user is
 using Debian.
 Thanks for pointing this out. Let's consider them then.
 Should this not be a debconf question, along the lines of popcon, but as
 a machine wide:

Do you mind trading a little privacy to allow us to declare your use
of Debian to search engines, and thus possibly benefit from revenue
sharing arising from your searches?

 No idea if that should default to yes or no.  It also might be better to
 make that less search specific.

 We could also have a debconf question for setting the default search
 engine across all browsers, which defaults to unset, and is low
 priority, so that people can preseed it, but the browser packagers get
 to make their own decisions if the value has not been set.
I think we give up too much of our principles with that. DDG loudly
states not to track us on their pages and the first thing we talk about
is to tell them more about ourselves. I find that ironic.

How much money are we talking about? Less than $5000? More? Difficult to
say, between 1000 and 1? Is Krenn donating any amount with every day
a Debian instance is running on their servers? If we think that DDG's
principles are very much like ours, but if we also agree that they can
well use the money they get themselves to further improve their
technology, then maybe we should just ask for the money they can afford
and want to give? Let them make an estimate about how much Debian's
contribution possibly was and happily accept that.

In my opinion we should find ways to help Open Source-supporting
companies like DDG but do not make any compromise with our principles.
Andy maybe they can help us best by employing someone of or close to us?
They can invite upstreams and Debian developers for sprints at their
site about distributed computing, organise bug squashing parties ...
there is so much they can do which helps their standing in the Open
Source community and helps us.

Steffen








--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4f72d161@gmx.de

Re: revenue sharing agreement with DuckDuckGo

[Steffen Möller]

On 03/27/2012 10:39 AM, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
 On 12-03-27 at 10:26am, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
 Dear Project Members,
   thanks to the introductions by Mike Hommey, as Iceweasel maintainer,
 I've been approached by a representative of the DuckDuckGo (DDG) search
 engine [1] about a revenue sharing agreement among them and the Debian
 Project.

 [1] https://duckduckgo.com/
[..]
 I welcome feedback on this matter,
 Sorry if it is just me: What is our end of the agreement - apart from 
 being ok accepting money from them?

 Thanks for your work on this,
For the sake of consistency Iit may be preferable to work towards having
them listed as a partner and they just donate and announce whatever they
want to donate.

But I truly wish we'd have several of such sites through which Debian
gets some money. This could be the typical online bookshop or anything
else like me getting tires for my car. The problem I see is with a
competition with upstream. If we  in any way lower the impact firefox
has for google, then this has a direct effect not only on firefox but
also on our relation with them and other upstreams.

At the moment we are perceived as enthusiasts serving upstream
developers with the best possible presentation of their work.  Once we
start getting money through their tools, they may possibly start
thinking differently. This is not necessarily a bad change of thought,
but it is different. Thinking it all further, should we for instance
have some user-configurable optional android-like ads shown in
applications? This would be simple to code and Debian could earn a lot
with this. We would not want that, right? Would we? Or do we have the
obligation to come up with an option for something more commercial to
feed not us but the upstream developers?

Best,

Steffen




--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4f719394.4000...@gmx.de

Re: 1 year release good enough.

[Steffen Möller]

On 01/01/2012 07:28 PM, Russ Allbery wrote:
 dE . de.tec...@gmail.com writes:
 
 http://stats.wikimedia.org/archive/squid_reports/2011-10/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm
 
 You might have 60% usage of Debian but for the world it's 0.02%.
 
 I've never been fond of putting too much weight on this sort of
 statistic.
 
 One of the delightful things about Debian is that the project consists of
 a group of people who are working together to create something that,
 primarily, we all want to use.  Making it usable for everyone else as well
 is, of course, a wonderful goal and something that many of us care a lot
 about.  But I think it's important not to lose sight of the fact that
 world-wide adoption on the order of Windows is not a requirement for the
 Debian project to be a success.
 
 Debian is successful every time I boot a system and it's running Debian,
 every time Debian solves my problems, every time I can fix something I ran
 into because it's Debian and I can help make it better.  It's *fun* if I
 can get more people to use Debian, and it's important to have an influx of
 new blood and new ideas to keep Debian fresh and responsive, but that's
 about *keeping* Debian successful, not about *making* Debian successful.
 
 If we have enough developers to maintain and improve Debian even at the
 rate that we're maintaining and improving Debian today, to me that's a
 success, and I don't really care whether that number ever moves off of
 0.02%.  One of the great things about free software is that we're not a
 business: we don't live or die by market share, we aren't going to get
 bought out by someone else if we don't become a big enough fish, and we
 don't have to grow 10% a year or implode.  It would certainly be *nice* to
 attract more people and more users and improve even faster, and I
 certainly wouldn't want to stand in the way of that, but it's not part of
 my metric of success.

This was so nice, I am sure you all liked reading my quote again ;) The
very personal/metaphorical successometer of Russ during does not allow
any statistics. Anyway, do we have any numbers that are indicative of
what we consider successful? What comes to mind are
 * popcon - the absolute numbers we do not are so much about
 * popcon.ubuntu.com - the more frequent release cycle variant of us
 * developer distribution 
http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2010/08/07#devel-countries-2010
 * fresh blood http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMaintainer
 * the number of blends http://wiki.debian.org/DebianPureBlends

And then there is the social side
 * traveling somewhere meeting other DDs
 * bringing scientists and techies together
No idea how to score anything like that.

Well, if I have forgotten about anything ... tell me.

Cheers,

Steffen



-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4f00b339.7050...@gmx.de

Re: Consulta

[Steffen Möller]

Hola Ana,

On 11/27/2011 03:04 AM, Ana Elena Gonzalez wrote:
 Por favor, quiero hacer una partición en UBUNTU para probar DEBIAN,
 pero no sé hacer eso.
 
 Podeis ayudarme?

well, I could, but not from here. Please find some help that is local to you. 
The regular search engines will guide you. I have
not understood or you have not said what the problem with Ubuntu is that you 
experienced. The two distros are very different in
many details, but you need to look deeper than the install instructions for 
that. My hunch is that you do not want to install
Debian in the first place and suggest to start with a LiveCD, say from 
http://www.knoppix.net/ which may give you an impression.
Also try ours from http://live.debian.net/ .

Good luck

Steffen


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4ed2b8c8.1050...@gmx.de

Re: development of Debian OS

[Steffen Möller]

Hello,

On 11/25/2011 03:04 PM, Bhaskar Rao Santa Dimili wrote:
  I am the user of Debian for the past one year. I feel great
 for using the Debian OS and i have so many doubts
 on these GNU/Linux Operating Systems. Why it was unable to compete with
 Microsoft and that's not a big deal for you
 to popularise the linux to the outside world, and there are so many linux
 flavors available to easily compete with Microsoft.
  You are working so hard to improve the Linux but at the same
 time why people are not able to migrate from
 windows to linux. Why you people are not able to develop a simple graphical
 user interface linux
 which is mostly controlled by GUI, in order to popularise the Linux in the
 real world.
   For best of my knowledge Apple Mac OS has also derivative of
 Linux and it has grown so much compared to
 available linux flavors. Who is stopping the growth of the Linux Operating
 System.

   If the above matter seems to be confidential to you, then
 please revert to me with the same after that i will be very happy.
I had some problems while parsing your email. So much I can help:
Mac OS is not a derivative of Linux or even Debian. Near miss. But
spread that as a rumour, it is fun and sufficiently useful for many.

This interview
http://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/11/17/people-behind-debian-mark-shuttleworth-ubuntus-founder/
with quite an ambitious Debian developer will answer most of your
questions, I presume.

Cheers,

Steffen



-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4ecfa8b2.5030...@gmx.de

Re: a good command

[Steffen Möller]

On 10/10/2011 02:08 PM, Tapio Lehtonen wrote:
 09.10.2011 12:20, fereshteh noori kirjoitti:
 dear Debian developers
 i am working about Debian features compared by other Linux
 distribution, i reach to something which was amazing for me, now i am
 asking you the question.
 i know that the top command works on Debian system, not only Debian
 but also all Linux distribution. but i could not find it in Debian man
 pages, i used the link : http://manpages.debian.net, really it does
 not work on Debian? or it just does not work on Debian pure
 installation and it should be installed to work?
 would you please do me a favor and finish this confusing?

 regards
 fershteh


 
 The command top comes with package procps, which is priority important
 and I believe it is always installed in Debian GNU/Linux.
 
 I do not know why manpages.debian.net does not have man top. The man
 page is included in the packages, as shown by
 
 http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/i386/procps/filelist

With the typical mixture of information and some mediocre humor,
let me propose the cause of its omission to be a silent transition
of the Debian user community from top to the in some aspects
superior htop. And htop also has a package on its own. No idea
if its appears on m.d.n.

All the best with your study

Steffen




-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4e92ef62.7050...@gmx.de

Re: Greaat disappointment

[Steffen Möller]

Hello,

On 10/01/2011 06:13 AM, Ben Hutchings wrote:
 On Sat, 2011-10-01 at 01:55 +0200, Qactuar Rogue wrote:
 Hi.

 I was planning on installing Debian on a new laptop that had Windows 7
 pre-installed.
 I was researching the methods of installation for two weeks
 (partitioning etc).
 Then right before beginning the disk wipe and later the installation
 I had problems deciding on my own for what kind of partition table to
 create
 and wanted to have feedback from somebody who has a comprehensive
 understanding on the subject.
 I went on IRC. Firstly I tried #Debian on irc.debian.org then I tried
 #Debian at chat.freenode.com

 I would like to express my greatest disappointment regarding the
 `helpfulness` of the people on the channel.
 On irc.debian.org everyone was a complete dumbass. On both channels I
 was told off for asking my questions by PMing someone
 who  replied to my posting on the channel.
 
 That seems quite reasonable.  You have no right to expect free
 one-to-one support.

I have never been to an IRC activity @debian.org. With all those
larger companies now having an online chat window opening when one
idles for more than a second on their page, I can well imagine
expectations to somehow change.

 My nick was Ti-chan. You can research if you please.
 I did nothing, just kindly asked for help regarding partitioning.
 [...]
 
 And then, apparently, you started insulting people.

I can well imagine how one has made the investment to install some
IRC client to get access to that presumed source of help. One is
happy to get it started and to understand what this join to a channel
might mean - and then nobody wants to react to a my machine does not
boot kind of question. Let us assume too little time to have passed
between that experience and the mail to this list.

irc.debian.org was an inappropriate address for that kind of help
seeked. A local Linux group for volunteers' help may work out better.
However, at least over here, the Linux user groups are somewhat on
the decline, much like nobody ever hears about Windows user groups.
Linux is just everywhere. When we send people off to look for help
locally, this effectively really means to either have a (friend's)*
friend who has done it before or to just ask any IT professional.

For improving synchronous help, I have no immediate idea. Anything
that comes to mind would cost money. And the Debian main pages would
need to point to that. This is then more Ubuntu than Debian, I think.

 I also considered investing into the Debian project by donating
 millions of dollars.
 [...]
 
 If you really have so much money to spare, consider paid support from a
 consultant as listed under http://www.debian.org/consultants/.

A million donated to Debian would have zero effect on irc.debian.org,
I presume. What would we do with a million for Debian? My personal
hunch is that Debian would best be served by having the donor starting a
viable business that uses our distro and where there is a gap in
functionality have that closed by a new Open Source development / patches
to existing software. :o) This sounds like an interesting separate
thread.

All the best,

Steffen





-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4e86d19c.3060...@gmx.de

Re: Comments on the constitution?

[Steffen Möller]

Dear all,

On 08/29/2011 10:17 AM, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
 [ M-F-T: debian-vote ]

 On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 12:08:45PM +0200, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote:
 during the last DPL voting period, a question [1] about the current
 length of the DPL period came up. This topic was also discussed during
 recent DebConf11.

 While I do not want to come up with a change of the constitution at
 this point, I would like to hear a broader opinion on that topic.
 Thanks for re-raising this topic.  I guess --- given the amount of
 followups --- that this discussion is not particularly intriguing for
 many of us, but it still an important one to have. We won't be able to
 propose any change unless we have at least an idea of how people feel
 about this.
 [...]
 What do you think?
If there is not too much overhead with every year's voting, which I
personally think it is not, then it shall be the Debian community to
decide annually if the extra continuity is good for the project or not.

I think we had (and have :) ) all excellent DPLs. They were how they
were, not this typical policitian's acting. Being more in sync with the
one or other is natural. Of course the DPL will become better with
the training he/she gets on the job. But my answer to  that is that
we should then train more people this way and take that training back
to his/her paid life.

My interest is less in what the DPL is doing during his DPL term. I am
much more interested in what the DPL, commonly a strong personality
and well connected, is doing afterwards. Luckily, that afterwards
time is much longer than his/her active duty. The profile of a DPL
certainly helps a reach out, like ah, one of us is strong in Debian,
so Debian must be good for us. This will then help our development.
So, I want the DPLs to change reasonably often. Annually sounds
good to me.

Best,

Steffen


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4e5b5199.8070...@gmx.de

Re: Linuxtag Germany (Berlin) 2011 -- recap

[Steffen Möller]

Hello,

On 05/21/2011 10:45 PM, Jan Hauke Rahm wrote:

We all encouraged users to use 'reportbug', share their experiences with
Debian, help improve it in whatever way they can think of. Almost all of
them figured they could do something, even if it's simple stuff. We
can't fix bugs that we don't know about was possibly the most repeated
sentence during the four days of the event. And it seemed to make sense
to them. :)


this is amazing, indeed. And I experience fairly frequently, too. From my
observation the issue is less the picture than the immediate appreciation
that there are folks caring for their user experience so much that the
decision towards Ubuntu feels safer.

We can react to this in multiple ways:

 * get more artists attracted to Debian and encourage them to contribute
   in some way that we may not even foresee, yet it's art after all.
   How to render Debian more attractive to artists I don't really know.
   What comes to mind:
o a Debian blend for art?
o better visibility of authorships for contributed art throughout the
  system, to help the artists' promotion?
o competitions, prices?

 * strengthen the concept of Blends more for various communities. This
   may help to ensure more complete workflows for various user groups
   and increases the likelihood that because of particular ties between
   users and developers the one or other piece of glue code may find
   its way into the archive, which may not fit to any particular package
   but ist just helpful in some way,

 * do nothing

 * ..?

All those changes would need to come from those who use those packages.
No idea how this could be triggered. And it may not be clear if an active
effort to recruit contributers for from the core of the project is truly
in our interest in the first place.

Steffen


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4dd83b3e.4060...@gmx.de

Re: Better visibility of what can you do with Debian on the Debian main page

[Steffen Möller]

On 04/14/2011 11:28 PM, Andreas Tille wrote:

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 09:54:40AM -0700, Noah Meyerhans wrote:

I think a case could be made for Debian's apt system being the original
app store


Yes.  That's what I wanted to say in my previous mail!

And because there was a mail about not accepting the term app store
because repository is such a good name:  I have no idea whether

[...]
How about Free App Store ?  The double meaning of Free
shall help to get some extra attention. That Free and Store
don't really go together in a commercial sense is also rather
lovely ... from that one can deduce what meaning that Free
shall have.  Actually, we should trademark that.

Steffen


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4da7690c.3050...@gmx.de

Debian Med Sprint on Bioinformatics

[Steffen Möller]

Dear all,

over the last weekend in January the Debian Med team hosted the first
Sprint on Bioinformatics [1] in Travemünde at the Baltic Sea in
Germany. It was an intense time of up to 6 Debian developers (tille,
moeller, banck, manuel, cts, schuldei), another two with bioinformatics
packages already in the distribution, a representative from Ubuntu derived
Bio-Linux [2], another from Knoppix derived Goebix [3] and then all the
bioinformatics researchers, teachers and sysadmins that totaled to 25
individuals from 6 countries.

The meeting had a couple of very tangible outcomes

  * The packaging of Ensembl [4] (joint project by the EMBL - EBI
and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute to produces and maintains
automatic annotation on selected genomes) was continued and
uploaded to the new queue for experimental.  It is prepared by and
maintained with all insights from the company Eagle Genomics [5]
in Cambridgeshire. They benefit from it themselves when setting up
their cloud environments with Debian and so shall everyone else.

  * New packages
- Bowtie
- TMalign
- rq
- vienna-rna
- mothur

  * Revisions in collaboration with upstream
- T-Coffee, stimulating the packaging of many additional
  alignment tools

  * We got cran2deb [6,7] installed on
master.dermacloud.uni-luebeck.de/cran2deb/rep
and ran through the 2565 most-easy-to-pack packages from CRAN [8]
and another 898 from BioConductor [9] over the last two weeks.

  * Taverna [10] could already talk to  Debian's command line before,
but now it can also understand the description of tools in EMBOSS
[11] in an automated manner. This involved our community and
the representatives from both upstreams alike.

But we have met for the soft sides more, where we have to report on

  * Training on packaging software for Debian on 6 individuals. But as
usual, on some higher level everyone learned something from everyone
else. Key signing. Hey, quite some of us where seeing each other
for the first time. This helps.

  * We learned about how Debian Med is perceived. There should be less
geeky web pages or those that we have be made more obvious. We are
doing many things right, but we should advertise them more. We were
not completely confident that we have a critical mass of developers
already. But we can definitely say that as community Debian Med
has long exceeded any regular academic funding scheme.

  * Discussion of differences and complementary ideas between getData
[12] (low tech and close to Debian) and biomaj [13] (very user
friendly but no direct interaction with Debian packages) for the
automated retrieval of biological data and its post processing.

  * EMBOSS and BioLib [14] found the right level of abstraction to get
linked up.

  * Bio-Linux and Debian Med have found ways to collaborate (and have
done so with T-Coffee and TMalign already). This will be particularly
interesting since Bio-Linux is allowing itself not to completely
adhere to the DFSG when this helps packages to be used by their
community.

We have decided to mutually learn from our experiences here and
communicate the problems or successes with repackaged software. This
mostly addresses e.g. Java programs in the bioinformatics community
which frequently depend on a very particular version of a library,
and even more often the exact version of a particular Jar is not
even known. Bio-Linux can in those cases ship a binary package. We
from Debian Med cannot upload binary only packages to main and we
do not want to use non-free in this case, even though we could.
It would be in our interest to explain Bio-Linux as an extension
from what Debian Med is offering. We will be formulating something
together in this respect over the next days.

  * We are still discussing the effect that non-redistributable
software (you can download binaries only from the developers but
are not allowed to give that to someone else) but with inspect-
and buildable sources (you are asked to send patches in) should
have on the Debian Med repository.  The situation is a bit like
the opposite to having only binary packages in Bio-Linux.

In the subversion and git repositories of Debian Med we can
exchange the code that is required to prepare Debian packages
for such software. The source code or the binaries themselves
are not shared. Some such software is rather delicate to build
and the formalities of the build process to be exchange publicly
through us should play well into the hands of the respective
communities.

The NERC Environmental Bioinformatics Centre in Oxford [15] that is behind
Bio-Linux has direcly paid for the travel of multiple participants for
~1000 pounds. This was very generous and we very much thank Tim and the
Bio-Linux team for this. We 

Re: Success of iPhone apps (was: Re: What is annoying in the flattr buttons?)

[Steffen Möller]

Hello,

Julien in reply to
 Charles Plessy ple...@debian.org wrote:
 
  And in conclusion, I would like to remind the extraordinary success of
 non-free
  software on the iPhone, which I think can be explained by the easiness
 of
  micropayement through the Apple webstore.
 
 It's clearly not the only reason, and it's not even the first one on
 the list.
 
 You should have told about the high level of integration of the whole
 platform, the overall quality of the (top) apps, the ease of use, the
 sexiness of the apps, ... and lots of other things that free software
 apps do, more often than not, lack.
 
 But you absolutely do have a point in that there are lessons to be
 learned, though the one you are highlighting isn't the most important of
 all.

the iPhone/Pad/Pod app store was such successful that Apple now started to 
adopt that thing also for the desktop. There must be something to it that 
escapes us.

We do not even need to run a DebStore ourselves, in principle. Anybody could 
start that. But why has not for instance Mark has already started one? He must 
have thought about it and certainly has the resources, too. 

My personal interest would be less in the applications themselves but into good 
tutorials that should be sold through us - and possibly even be cross platform 
and cross packages to some degree. Some larger book store should have an 
interest to support such as an experiment to conquer new markets, possibly. 

Best regards,

Steffen



-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/2010084303.228...@gmx.net

Re: where can I get etch debian package?

[Steffen Möller]

Hello,

On 10/26/2010 09:53 AM, Naufal Alee wrote:
 I'm using SBC with ARM and using Debian Etch. Usually, I download any
 package at Debian website but now I can't see the etch package anymore. Can
 I get it? or Where can I get it?
   
Well, etch is the old stable release, which is no longer
supported, really. The current stable is called lenny,
which is soon to be replaced by squeeze.

I don't know SBC and there may be something in your question
that I am missing. There are two general answers to your question
if you are aware of the new releases but don't want to upgrade.
One is called backports.debian.org, which does the best it can
do to port newer versions of software to the older libraries of
previous releases.

The second answer is snapshots.debian.org, which is an
archive of all the packages that have at one time been associated
with any release. And I would be somewhat surprised if
etch is not also covered by that effort.

If you cannot find what you were looking for, then ask on
a debian-user mailing list of your region. You may find other
suitable mailing lists here http://www.debian.org/MailingLists/subscribe

Hoping to have helped

Steffen



-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4cc68f49.30...@gmx.de

Re: Debian accepting Social Micropayment?

[Steffen Möller]

Hi Patrick,

On 08/18/2010 11:33 AM, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote:
 On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 06:18:39PM +0200, Steffen Möller wrote:
   
 On 08/17/2010 05:24 PM, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote:
 
 On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 05:02:43PM +0200, Steffen Möller wrote:
   
   
 we should only help collecting when we are certain to know what we are
 doing.
 
 Agreed.

   
 2) Not every *developer* in our project might agree that this money should
 then go to upstream. After all we have packages which are *quite*
 a lot of work for the Debian developers maintaining them. They might
 find it unfair to see users spending money (possibly on their work)
 which then ends in the hands of other people.
   
   
 well, that is correct, but this means that that maintainer should then
 be considered a part of upstream, then. and hopefully upstream
 recognizes that effort and gives some money to its package maintainer
 and then co-developer.
 
 Ehm, yeah, and my father is the emperor of china, then.
 As you know, in Debian we have to deal at least with:

 - uncorporative upstreams
 - dead upstreams
 - corporative upstreams
   
which would then fall under the we don't know what we are doing,
and if upstream is not cooperative then one does not loose anything
either. It is just your pride that hurts.

But I have already come to accept that it may be preferable to not
go for a package-based collection. At least not as a start. Though
that is equally unfair to upstream, then. I hence like the idea to have
a tool that is suggestion where to donate to in dependency of the
packages that one has installed.

 But even for the last group no one can expect our upstreams
 to share donations with their downstreams. Consider the amount
 of work this would mean for them. How should this work
 after all?
   
We are not talking about real money. It is only an opportunity
for our users to feel a bit better in that they can give something back
when they don't have the technical skills or time to do so.
I don't care.
 So clearly if we'd want to do this and if we'd want to share
 what comes in with our own developers we need to do the allocation
 (or give it into the hands of SPI for obvious reasons) ourselves.
   
It is not on me to decide anything. To sum up:
When asking the spontaneous end user to donate, we shall not expect
them to distinguish between the upstream work and our packaging work.
I hence find it problematic to collect only for us. A Debian money drop
point should exist, and we should also use our presence to help upstream
to get some help, just to be fair, and let the user decide what route to go.

Many greetings

Steffen



-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c6bb1b1.30...@gmx.de

Re: Debian accepting Social Micropayment?

[Steffen Möller]

On 08/18/2010 12:46 PM, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote:
 [ all said above, I think ]
 When asking the spontaneous end user to donate, we shall not expect
 them to distinguish between the upstream work and our packaging work.
 I hence find it problematic to collect only for us. A Debian money drop
 point should exist, and we should also use our presence to help upstream
 to get some help, just to be fair, and let the user decide what route to go.
 
 Ehm aren't your two statements conflicting with each other? You want to
 give the choice to the user but you don't expect him to be able to
 choice?
   
:)  yes. I don't expect anything that is completely fair. I am considering
this money collecting thingy as a service to our users and I do not think
there is a gold standard way to reward adequately (relatively speaking
or in absolute terms) the value of the idea, the team building, the design,
the implementation, the packaging, ... whatever.

And we should not care too much, as long as our own donations continue
to flow. The money should be used for what will be, not as a reward for what
was already done.

We can have two buttons with every package. One for Debian (which should
go to the SPI, not to the packager) and the other for upstream.

Steffen


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c6bd32e.2020...@gmx.de

Debian accepting Social Micropayment?

[Steffen Möller]

Hello,

there is a new advent on the Internet horizon which is the social
micropayment. Regular web users pay in some money and distribute that
with respect to their clicks in the web. I feel that Debian should
somehow participate with that, i.e. we should have links whenever we
display a package in the bts or in the pts, that allows the user to
flattr or otherwise support that package. The amount collected should
then go to upstream. Maybe we should not do this for all packages but
only when upstream asks for it.

Needless to say, there should be separate opportunities for Debian and
its Blends to collect money by the same mechanism. What do you think? We
don't talk about much money here. At least not yet. It is more of a
general decision. And it is also interesting to see what bits of Debian,
beyond popcon, the users like best.

Many greetings

Steffen


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c6aa493.2080...@gmx.de

Re: Debian accepting Social Micropayment?

[Steffen Möller]

On 08/17/2010 05:43 PM, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
 On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 05:02:43PM +0200, Steffen Möller wrote:
 Hello,

 there is a new advent on the Internet horizon which is the social
 micropayment. Regular web users pay in some money and distribute that
 with respect to their clicks in the web. I feel that Debian should
 somehow participate with that, i.e. we should have links whenever we
 display a package in the bts or in the pts, that allows the user to
 flattr or otherwise support that package. The amount collected
 should then go to upstream. Maybe we should not do this for all
 packages but only when upstream asks for it.

 Needless to say, there should be separate opportunities for Debian
 and its Blends to collect money by the same mechanism. What do you
 think? We don't talk about much money here. At least not yet. It is
 more of a general decision. And it is also interesting to see what
 bits of Debian, beyond popcon, the users like best.
 I dislike the thought of endorsing and promoting specific monetary
 mechanisms, which is in reality what we do by adding such links.
I agree. If we go for one, then we should go for all. This is also why I
would like Debian to collect the money and forward it in batches, rather
than forwarding to a collection page of upstream (which we could also do).

Cheers,
Steffen


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c6ab472.3030...@gmx.de

Re: Debian accepting Social Micropayment?

[Steffen Möller]

Hello,

On 08/17/2010 09:49 PM, Russ Allbery wrote:
 Steffen Möller steffen_moel...@gmx.de writes:
 
 there is a new advent on the Internet horizon which is the social
 micropayment. Regular web users pay in some money and distribute that
 with respect to their clicks in the web. I feel that Debian should
 somehow participate with that, i.e. we should have links whenever we
 display a package in the bts or in the pts, that allows the user to
 flattr or otherwise support that package. The amount collected should
 then go to upstream. Maybe we should not do this for all packages but
 only when upstream asks for it.
 
 So far, these systems look like a great way for the micropayment broker to
 make money and rather iffy for everyone else involved.  I'm dubious about
well certainly they get a share.
 the desirability of the project as a whole making a substantial
 contribution to Flattr, which in practice is what this would mean at the
 moment.
I am in no way tied to Flattr. If you know something better then let's go
for that. And we could indeed postpone any per-package-collection until
we have some more experience with it all.

Steffen


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c6b116f.4040...@gmx.de

Re: hi there

[Steffen Möller]

Hi Rody,

On 08/16/2010 12:49 PM, rody abd wrote:
 my name is rody im from iraq and i love debian and i want work with devel
 team in translate debian Sector to arabic
you can start right-away here http://www.debian.org/intl/l10n/ddtp
and follow the pointer to the web interface, so I suggest. Hm.
I don't see Arabic, though, please contact the administrators
on this.

I have seen a few posts from Arabic speaking developers before,
I am confident it is somewhere.

 i hope you agree to accept me
The acceptance to Debian as an uploader of software is a multi-step
process. And you'd need to meet a current developer for it. There
is more to read about it on http://nm.debian.org . For translations
though you don't need anything like it.

Many greetings

Steffen



-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c691dfe.60...@gmx.de

Re: Debian 6.0

[Steffen Möller]

Salut Michelle,

On 06/08/2010 05:08 AM, Michelle Konzack wrote:
 Am 2010-06-07 01:05:32, hacktest Du folgendes herunter:
   
 Hi , 
  
 When Debian 6.0 will be released ?
 
 Maybe when it is ready?
   
you may not have followed the thread that your initial posting has
induced. From your signature I may deduce that you are an IT
professional, so there are two answers:
 * the release team http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/ReleaseTeam produces a
series of status announcements, the last one I am aware of is here
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2010/05/msg0.html
 * apparently you are technically involved, and you will find many
individuals speaking German or French (so there is no language barrier
for you) , who are contributing to the release - join and communicate
with them, send bug fixes for the packages that you use.

My personal opinion is that I am using squeeze already and you can, too.
Don't expect dramatic changes, in particular not for your field which is
embedded computing. This way, you'll be ready for Squeeze as soon as
Squeeze is.

You can contact me in a PM for details, please refrain from posting to
the list.

Best regards,

Steffen


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c0deef7.4010...@gmx.de

Re: Gemini Project

[Steffen Möller]

Hi Marco,

On 06/01/2010 10:59 AM, Marco Mura wrote:
 i'm not English... so, my english isn't all that good... I've a dream, or
 a idea, choose what you want. I'd like to create a website where you can
 see a lot of OS and you can test them, you can see what they can do, how
 they works.
   
 First Test It. After that you can choose what you Need. So, i'm interested
 into Debian for this project, i'd like to insert Debian into this OS List
 =)
   
Good!
 The Project it's a website, you can test the OS without installing it,
 it's different from a live cd or a live dvd, you do not need to download
 it, the system probably have a lot of limitation, we are on the web,
 that's true... If the Debian Project are interested i need an
 authorization to recreate your system, with your images, example within
 the different Themes (Plastik, etc), Kde or Gnome, etc, i'm not a new user
 of linux, but i do not know Debian that good..
   
My suggestion would be to contact
http://www.netboot.me/browse/live/linux/ who will most certainly happily
accept your contributions. I tried it once myself, this is a truly
amazing service. And...there is no Debian, yet. What came to mind is to
check out an integration of http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ , but I admit
not to have run that for several years.

Enjoy!

Steffen


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c04d051.10...@gmx.de

Re: Estadistical proyect.

[Steffen Möller]

Hello,

for the truly interesting statistics with Debian itself we don't
have the data, and we don't want to have it since we don't want
our users to be possibly identified and characterised in some way.

But if you think a bit upstream of Debian, we can definitely need
every minute of yours. With my education-hat on, I suggest that
you have a look at OpenOffice (or kspread or gnumeric to be
politically correct) and then check out its statistical functions.
You will find them basically not to exist and to be absolutely
impossible (well, almost) to set the parameters.

Your master work could identify ways to bring regular spreadsheets
closer to what various statsoft programs are already providing for us.
And then you should implement at least some skeleton of it. You have
some six months, right? If it was easy, then Redmond would have
done something to its hilariously bad corner of Excel.

I'd fancy an integration of R. So maybe you could somehow map the
two suites.

Just an idea. Debian brings software and skills to work with it
to the end users and developers alike. Many of us are also involved
in some upstream project. You could help with manual/tutorial
writing any time, also at the core of Debian, but not for your master thesis.

Many greetings

Steffen (two weeks almost offline)


On 05/02/2010 07:29 PM, angel wrote:
 I see...I don't understand exactly what are the meaning of
 pro-activity or autonomy for you, maybe cause never do something
 like a software contribution, and feel a bit lost, sorry :) but you are
 right when said I need someone who oriented and tell me what debian
 need. I'll try to do something useful with your link to the debian
 database (thanks a lot), but if someone got a better idea or think that
 there is anything better I could do, contact with me. Thanks Stefano.
 
 El dom, 02-05-2010 a las 18:18 +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli escribió:
 On Sun, May 02, 2010 at 05:27:21PM +0200, angel wrote:
 It's not a bit, it's too much vague :) but for two basic reasons:
 
 .- The project can be as big (or hard) as we need (always within range
 of my master degree, of course, only must to study it), so you are
 completely free for to propose me any idea or project (like manpower, on
 software bugs, on timing of our procedures, etc...). Is like a blank
 canvas...but you must to say me what exactly want I'll do with the data
 (for example, something like obtain a certain probability/stadistic) I
 need to known the data and what do you want I do with these data to
 start and I'm sure you know this much better than me.

 Then, I fear, we won't have a deal :-) We generally don't work this way:
 while we welcome any kind of input and help, the proposer usually needs
 to show some pro-activity and autonomy.

 Additionally, it seems that currently we don't have any specific idea
 about the precise assignment you seem to be looking for. So, unless
 someone steps in this thread with that (and maybe with willingness to
 guide you), you'll have to come up with a precise proposal yourself and
 some willingness to dig into our data which, by the way, are publicly
 available and generally quite accessible (e.g. in UDD:
 http://udd.debian.org).

 Cheers.

 
 
 


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4bddf3b0.9070...@gmx.de

Re: Welcome to our 2010 Debian Google Summer of Code students!

[Steffen Möller]

On 04/26/2010 11:12 PM, Josselin Mouette wrote:
 Le lundi 26 avril 2010 à 21:40 +0200, Obey Arthur Liu a écrit : 
 == Debian High Performance Computing on Clouds ==
 by Dominique Belhachemi, mentored by Steffen Moeller

 The project paves a way to combine the demands in high performance
 computing with the dynamics of compute clouds with Debian. Combining
 the Eucalyptus cloud computing infrastructure with the TORQUE resource
 manager and preparing the components for dynamically added and removed
 instances provides the user with a attractive high performance
 computing environment. Such a system allows users to share resources
 with large compute centers with minimal changes in their workflow and
 scripts.
 
 Sorry but I have to object to a project that is based on non-free
 software. Especially when we have free and superior packages in the
 archive that provide similar functionality.

You are probably refering to Torque. I had some difficulties about
their license but finally came to the conclusion that it is actually
DFSG compatible. The respective upload is overdue, I admit.

If there is something you see the need to be discussed, then feel
free to do so.

Torque to me is something that I feel comfortable with. It could also
be Sun Grid Engine or something else. If we are successful then we
have learned and documented enough to become fairly flexible with
the batch system to use.

Steffen


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4bd61b67.9070...@gmx.de