Re: Supporting armel/armhf in wheezy-lts

[Federico Pietro Briata]

Hi folks,

2016-04-25 9:43 GMT+02:00 Santiago Ruano Rincón :

> From the other side, what about armel/armhf LTS support? No objecting
> voices?
>
I enjoy my debian wheezy on my iop32x, which wheezy is the last supported
release for my arch, so  +1 for consider LTS  support on my n2100.

thanks, regards
happy hacking
federico

Re: Supporting armel/armhf in wheezy-lts

[Holger Levsen]

Hi,

just nitpicking about a single detail here…

On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 09:55:10AM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> The reason why I did it within Freexian is that it was just the simplest
> way to get it started and to prove that given some sane rules it's
> possible to not harm the Debian community. Now that it's proven, I believe
> we can and should discuss how to handle it at the Debian level directly.

a.) this is nothing which can be proven and then it's done. Instead it
needs to be continously proven that this doesnt harm Debians volunteer
work model or otherwise doesn't hurt the community.

b.) doing this within Freexian is entirely different than doing this
within Debian. 


-- 
cheers,
Holger

p.s.: it just occurred me that doing LTS differently might also hurt
the community in unexpected ways: LTS itself might work less well, and
that would also be harm. ("LTS stopped working".)


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Re: Supporting armel/armhf in wheezy-lts

[Santiago Ruano Rincón]

El 25/04/16 a las 02:07, Luca Filipozzi escribió:
> On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 09:55:10AM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > Do you have some concrete suggestions?
> 
> Decrease the separation by moving the funds management into Debian proper (via
> a TO like SPI) and move to a bounty model for working on LTS.  Make sure we're
> transparent with our language regarding Debian being produced by volunteers
> (eg: "The Debian Project consists of volunteers, and our products are 
> developed
> entirely by volunteers." on [1]) by commenting on how bounties are available
> (or something).  Consider making LTS management a delegated team.
> 
> OR
> 
> Increase the separation by removing the fundraising statements / links from 
> the
> LTS pages previously mentioned, making Freexian just another consultancy 
> listed
> on the consultancy pages.
> 
> None of this is meant to diminish or tarnish the very significant contribution
> that you or Freexian are making, which are both extensive and impressive.  I'm
> seeking greater definition of the role and the language used.

As a Debian LTS paid contributor, I would disagree to get money from
Debian own funds or directly by Debian in exchange of a my work. And
this is for any of my work on the project. I agree with the consultancy
model and I obviously support the Freexian umbrella, which I think is
highly valuable.
So if the LTS Funding statement is not clear enough, I prefer to
increase the separation in https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Funding.

Thanks for bringing this up!

From the other side, what about armel/armhf LTS support? No objecting
voices?

Cheers,

Santiago


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Re: Supporting armel/armhf in wheezy-lts

[Luca Filipozzi]

On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 09:55:10AM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> Do you have some concrete suggestions?

Decrease the separation by moving the funds management into Debian proper (via
a TO like SPI) and move to a bounty model for working on LTS.  Make sure we're
transparent with our language regarding Debian being produced by volunteers
(eg: "The Debian Project consists of volunteers, and our products are developed
entirely by volunteers." on [1]) by commenting on how bounties are available
(or something).  Consider making LTS management a delegated team.

OR

Increase the separation by removing the fundraising statements / links from the
LTS pages previously mentioned, making Freexian just another consultancy listed
on the consultancy pages.

None of this is meant to diminish or tarnish the very significant contribution
that you or Freexian are making, which are both extensive and impressive.  I'm
seeking greater definition of the role and the language used.

[1]: https://www.debian.org/devel/join/

-- 
Luca Filipozzi
http://www.crowdrise.com/SupportDebian

Re: Supporting armel/armhf in wheezy-lts

[Peter Palfrader]

On Sun, 24 Apr 2016, Raphael Hertzog wrote:

> > Consequently, I find the use of Debian resources such as the advertising 
> > above
> > and/or the use of Debian machines as being problematic.
> 
> It is really worse that indicating that some Debian services are handled
> by a given (commercial) CDN?

Fastly and MaxCDN aren't asking for donations to keep Debian running.
They are the sponsors here.

-- 
|  .''`.   ** Debian **
  Peter Palfrader   | : :' :  The  universal
 https://www.palfrader.org/ | `. `'  Operating System
|   `-https://www.debian.org/

Re: Supporting armel/armhf in wheezy-lts

[Moritz Muehlenhoff]

On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 09:55:10AM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/ makes it appear that LTS is an official Debian
> > effort.
> 
> And it is. There are multiple Debian developers who have initiated this
> project, have been organizing it on debian-...@lists.debian.org (and not
> all of them have been paid by Freexian, including many members of the
> security team).

Indeed. In addition there's also quite a few DDs who have worked on LTS updates
who are not payed through the funds collected by Freexian (usually for packages
maintained by them).

Cheers,
Moritz

Re: Supporting armel/armhf in wheezy-lts

[Raphael Hertzog]

Hi,

thanks for the feedback.

On Sat, 23 Apr 2016, Julien Cristau wrote:
> I think one of the contentious points is how "Freexian raising funds to
> work on Debian LTS" is already too close to calling itself "Debian LTS
> fundraising", so I'm not sure bringing them closer would alleviate
> anyone's concerns.

On Sat, 23 Apr 2016, Luca Filipozzi wrote:
> I'm interested in working on Debian Partners but not if it includes Debian LTS
> fundraising as currently structured: either Debian LTS fundraising falls under
> the same umbrella as other Debian fundraising (and subject to the same rules,
> including that funds not be used for reimbursing effort, potentially) or it is
> separate and branded as a Freexian service.

Just to be clear, I don't mind if the money (and the corresponding work
that I don't particularly enjoy) is handled by a trusted organization. But
as long as we assume that Debian is not willing to "reimburse effort" as
you put it, then it just does not make sense since it would mean that
Debian LTS would not exist.

The reason why I did it within Freexian is that it was just the simplest
way to get it started and to prove that given some sane rules it's
possible to not harm the Debian community. Now that it's proven, I believe
we can and should discuss how to handle it at the Debian level directly.

As a Debian developer (and not only as a freelancer/company owner) I do
care about Debian LTS because it is important for Debian's long term
relevance (at least according to me).

> https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/ makes it appear that LTS is an official Debian
> effort.

And it is. There are multiple Debian developers who have initiated this
project, have been organizing it on debian-...@lists.debian.org (and not
all of them have been paid by Freexian, including many members of the
security team).

> However, https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Funding directs those interested in
> providing funding in support LTS to do so through Freexian rather than through
> Software in the Public Interest.

This page directs to Debian developers who are willing to do the work
for money. Most of them preferred to join the initiative I started behind
the Freexian umbrella... mainly because it makes sense to have a common
offer, clear rules, etc.

While you might find that the distinction is not important, I find it
important. Since Freexian is external to Debian, there's no reason
for it to have some exclusive relationship concerning Debian LTS. We
could have other similar structures. I do make a distinction between
the Debian LTS project and Freexian as an administrative facilitator.

> Consequently, I find the use of Debian resources such as the advertising above
> and/or the use of Debian machines as being problematic.

It is really worse that indicating that some Debian services are handled
by a given (commercial) CDN?

> Make the distinction clearer, and the problem goes away.

Do you have some concrete suggestions?

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer

Support Debian LTS: http://www.freexian.com/services/debian-lts.html
Learn to master Debian: http://debian-handbook.info/get/

Re: Supporting armel/armhf in wheezy-lts

[Luca Filipozzi]

On Sat, Apr 23, 2016 at 02:41:30PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> That's why I have been advocating for a change of the DMUP. It has been used
> far too often to annoy persons who are being paid (or who are accepting
> donations) to work on Debian instead of causing real troubles that could
> annoy sponsors or create problems to the DSA team.

I think that the distinction between Debian LTS and Freexian is too indefinite.

https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/ makes it appear that LTS is an official Debian
effort.

However, https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Funding directs those interested in
providing funding in support LTS to do so through Freexian rather than through
Software in the Public Interest.

Freexian isn't a TO and the funds it collects aren't subject to the same
disbursement conditions (approval by DPL; execution by SPI Treasurer; review by
Debian Auditor) as funds collected by Debian.

Consequently, I find the use of Debian resources such as the advertising above
and/or the use of Debian machines as being problematic.

Make the distinction clearer, and the problem goes away.

> I have also been looking at ways to bring the "LTS funding" closer to Debian
> and to find a way to join all this in the Debian Partner program but we don't
> have many volunteers interested in this work. We discussed it a bit last year
> during Debconf with Luca Filippozi, Martin Krafft and Neil McGovern, but this
> never went further. And I obviously don't want to be leading this project due
> to the clear conflict of interest that I would have...

I'm interested in working on Debian Partners but not if it includes Debian LTS
fundraising as currently structured: either Debian LTS fundraising falls under
the same umbrella as other Debian fundraising (and subject to the same rules,
including that funds not be used for reimbursing effort, potentially) or it is
separate and branded as a Freexian service.

I don't begrudge people making a living supporting Debian.

I do mind the indistinction between Debian LTS and Freexian.

It's situations like these that cause organizations to have things like DMUP.

(You also have a clear conflict of interest in arguing for changes to the DMUP.
That said, periodic re-examination of policies and procedures is healthy for
organizations.)

(The majority of Debian equipment is still hosted by post-secondary
institutions where commercial activity using university resources is frowned
upon.)

-- 
Luca Filipozzi
http://www.crowdrise.com/SupportDebian

Re: Supporting armel/armhf in wheezy-lts

[peter green]

On 23/04/16 13:41, Raphael Hertzog wrote:

Hi,

On Fri, 22 Apr 2016, Tollef Fog Heen wrote:
   

I am not speaking on behalf of DSA here.
 

Thanks for making this clear. I also want to explain why I included DSA
in the discussion: I wanted to make sure that the fact that we run wheezy
armel/armhf buildd for two more years do not go against some DSA plans to
decommission some machines running those buildd and that you had no other
problems to keep those machine running during the LTS timeframe.
   
I'm not DSA but my understanding is that all suites are built on the 
same buildds, since jessie supports armel and armhf and squeeze will 
almost certainly support at least one and hopefully both of those we 
will need autobuilder hardware for the forseeable future.

Re: Supporting armel/armhf in wheezy-lts

[Julien Cristau]

On Sat, Apr 23, 2016 at 14:41:30 +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:

> I have also been looking at ways to bring the "LTS funding" closer to Debian
> and to find a way to join all this in the Debian Partner program but we
> don't have many volunteers interested in this work. We discussed it a bit
> last year during Debconf with Luca Filippozi, Martin Krafft and Neil
> McGovern, but this never went further. And I obviously don't want to be
> leading this project due to the clear conflict of interest that I would
> have...
> 
I think one of the contentious points is how "Freexian raising funds to
work on Debian LTS" is already too close to calling itself "Debian LTS
fundraising", so I'm not sure bringing them closer would alleviate
anyone's concerns.

Cheers,
Julien

Re: Supporting armel/armhf in wheezy-lts

[Holger Levsen]

On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 05:16:19PM +0200, Tollef Fog Heen wrote:
> > The LTS period is about to start soon and we will send out an announce
> > soon... it would be nice to be able to say a word about armel/armhf, so
> > an official confirmation from ftpmasters/DSA would be nice.
> 
> So, I'm a bit divided on all this.  While the DMUP is heavy artillery
> and we should be careful about invoking it, I think it crosses the line
> in «Don't use Debian Facilities for private financial gain or for
> commercial purposes, including consultancy or any other work outside the
> scope of official duties or functions for the time being, without
> specific authorization to do so.», so you need explicit authorization
> before you start.

I'm a bit surprised you bring this up now, when the question at hand is,
whether to add armel+armhf as new supported architectures to Wheezy LTS.

Because, also for doing Squeeze LTS for i386 and amd64, Debian machines
were used, with - I'd say - consens of the project that this is ok, IOW:
there was specific authorisation to do so.


There's another Debian project which is in a similar situation: official
Debian images for cloud services, made on Debian hardware. There's a
commercial purpose too.

(And then we get into the blurry area of all the consultants and
freelancers and employees working on paid time on Debian stuff using
Debian ressources…)

And while I think we absolutly should discuss these things (dc16?) and 
probably revisited the DMUP (written how long ago?) this will all take
time and right now we have a somewhat pressing issue at hand:

Can we add armel/armhf to Wheezy LTS *now*? LTS starts in 3 days.


-- 
cheers,
Holger


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Re: Supporting armel/armhf in wheezy-lts

[Tollef Fog Heen]

]] Raphael Hertzog 

I am not speaking on behalf of DSA here.

> The LTS period is about to start soon and we will send out an announce
> soon... it would be nice to be able to say a word about armel/armhf, so
> an official confirmation from ftpmasters/DSA would be nice.

So, I'm a bit divided on all this.  While the DMUP is heavy artillery
and we should be careful about invoking it, I think it crosses the line
in «Don't use Debian Facilities for private financial gain or for
commercial purposes, including consultancy or any other work outside the
scope of official duties or functions for the time being, without
specific authorization to do so.», so you need explicit authorization
before you start.

We have to balance multiple issues here: on one hand, LTS is clearly
useful.  On the other hand, Debian is a volunteer organisation and we
don't pay people to work on Debian.  By asking for donations for «Debian
LTS» and then paying folks to work on it, we're at least very, very
close to that line, if we don't cross it, somewhat depending on who «we»
are and how it's marketed and presented, and I think that is not
particularly clearly communicated today.

JFTR, for me at least, this isn't about wanting a piece of the action; I
don't want to be paid for my DSA work.  One option I've been toying
about with (but which I'm not sure is a good one) is that some portion
of the Debian LTS income go to Debian, rather than individuals.

-- 
Tollef Fog Heen
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are

[hert...@debian.org: Supporting armel/armhf in wheezy-lts]

[Raphael Hertzog]

Hello,

have a look at this mail about continuing to support armel/armhf
in wheezy/updates (security suite) during the LTS period.

Forwarding it here on request of Hector Oron (zumbi) as my initial mail
only had a copy to debian-arm.

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer

Support Debian LTS: http://www.freexian.com/services/debian-lts.html
Learn to master Debian: http://debian-handbook.info/get/
--- Begin Message ---
Hello,

I know that we decided to not support arm* for wheezy-lts during last
Debconf but it turns out that Freexian has been contacted by a potential LTS
sponsor selling arm* products:

Openblocks A7 (armel)
http://openblocks.plathome.co.jp/products/obs_a/a7/spec.html
Opneblocks AX3 (armhf)
http://openblocks.plathome.co.jp/products/obs_a/ax3/

The decision has been taken on the fact that we knew of nobody that was
really interested on running wheezy on those architectures (we expected
armhf users to run jessie and armel users to be only hobbyists). But here
we have a sponsor willing to sign on a contract saying us « our customers wish
to use Debian 7 OS continuously so that we are planning to sponsor the LTS
efforts for two years. »

Are there teams/persons with objections to adding armel/armhf to the set of
supported architectures for wheezy-lts ?

I have put in copy:
- ftpmasters, they have to agree to keep hosting armel/armhf on 
security.debian.org
- ARM porters, mostly to ensure that buildd maintainers are OK with this
- Debian System Administrators as this might have an impact on the lifetime
  of the arm systems running the wheezy auto-builders

Obviously this does have an impact on the work of LTS team members too since
we will have to monitor ARM* builds too and it might mean more work for the
kernel maintenance too.

Since we have a single sponsor interested in ARM support, maybe we can introduce
it on a provisional/experimental basis so that we can drop it if the sponsorship
does not materialize (or is not enough to cover for the supplementary work). It
might also be an opportunity to make a call for other armel/armhf users to join
as sponsors (if you know some that we should contact, please let us know).

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer

Support Debian LTS: http://www.freexian.com/services/debian-lts.html
Learn to master Debian: http://debian-handbook.info/get/

--- End Message ---