Hi folks, It's been a very long time since I've written a summary of what I've been up to, and I apologise for that. I've been plenty busy enough, but rubbish at reporting back regularly. As it's coming up to the end of my term and I'll be handing over to a new DPL very soon, I should rectify that. Here's some more details, and some links to other stuff that's been going on. Press ----- I've had the usual selection of chats with the press about topics related to Debian. You'll have probably seen most of them already, but here's some links in case: * Richard Hillesley at H Online asked me for my opinion about how Debian and Ubuntu get on. [1] * I spoke with Juan Marcelo Rodríguez Monti of Circo Linux in Argentina, but I couldn't find any sign of the results. * There were a few discussions with Sam Varghese at ITWire on various topics, e.g. [2,3,4] * Miscellaneous discussion with debianizzati.org [5] * Press reports about the new CD build server that Thomas Krenn sponsored for us [6,7] Talks & Meetings ---------------- In December I was invited to give a talk to students and staff at Aberystwyth University, where they have a new module entitled 'Open Source Development Issues' [8]. I gave them an introduction to Debian as a large FLOSS project, helping them to give an insight into how things work and the motivations for Free Software development. [9] The talk was well-received and I fielded a range of questions from enthusiastic students. In February, I took part in a meeting in London organised via the FSFE, a UK Free Software Round Table. A number of well-known developers and supporters were there, and we discussed strategies on how to better promote Open Source and Free Software usage in the UK. We seem to be quite a way behind other countries in the take-up of FLOSS, so it would be great if this group can help fix that. There should be more similar meetings in the future as we continue these efforts. Teams ----- I have a number of core team updates to report from the last few months. First of all, I renewed the delegation of the Project Secretary post to Kurt Roeckx and Neil McGovern back in January. Secondly, I officially added delegations for Alexander and Meike Reichle-Schmehl onto the press team [10] in February. Thirdly, Luca Falavigna has joined the ftp team as an assistant [11]. Finally, Luk Claes has resigned as Release Manager [12]. I'd like to offer my sincere thanks to him for all his efforts over the last few years, and look forward to seeing him back at work after his vacation. In the meantime, other members of the release team have taken up the job of managing Squeeze work [13,14]. Good luck to them with that; let's all try to work together and get Squeeze out soon and to our usual high standards. A number of teams are continuing to look for more support for a variety of tasks. As examples, the debian admin team are looking for more help to run a variety of services and the ftp team are still looking for new blood. Sometimes working on core issues like these might seem like a thankless task, but the workload gets much easier as more people help out. If you can find the time, please watch for team requests and join up to keep Debian infrastructure running smoothly! Developer Certification ----------------------- Something that I've done on request for a few people is provide "official" certification to show that they are (or have been) Debian developers. It seems that more and more companies are keen to hire Debian folks, so it can be useful to have this kind of documentation available. I've been glad to help out when people have asked - please inquire if you'd like similar. DebConf ------- DebConf 10 is coming soon [15], and lots of us will be travelling to New York for the usual mix of fun and hard work. We're still looking for sponsors to help cover us for costs and equipment [16], and the various teams are working hard on organising things for us. I look forwards to seeing lots of you there! The official deadline for applying for travel sponsorship is the 15th of April [17], so be quick if you need assistance. As an extra incentive to help bring people (back) into Debian, a suggestion made after DebConf last year (thanks to Joey for this!) was extra support for developers who have never been to a DebConf before, or who have not made it for several years. If you would need this kind of help, but have not applied for sponsorship because you don't want to give a talk and are maybe not self-confident enough to think you would merit travel funding on the strength of your reputation, please get in touch! DebConf is an amazing experience, and an incredible way to get more involved in Debian; don't miss this opportunity! Debian Money ------------ We've had a number of other suggestions made in the last few months for ways to productively spend Debian money, and I've been following through on a number of them. An obvious choice is funding for hardware that's needed, and I've approved lots of that. There's a mix of small consumables (like hard disks), slightly larger amounts to help people working on various Debian ports (e.g. mips, arm and avr32 boards) up to larger expenses like support contracts and replacements for some of our larger core servers. We've put money into a large number of developer meetings recently, ranging from team meetings (e.g. ftpmaster and NM team meet-ups in Germany and the kernel team going to LPC in Portland) to more general conferences (mini-confs in Taiwan, Panama, Argentina, Thailand, Spain and Germany). These are helping a lot for collaboration inside and outside of Debian, so these are clearly worth doing. I've made a policy of asking meeting/conf organisers to write up what they're doing as a condition for getting Debian money, so you should have seen (or be seeing) lots of blogs and mails about these. I also approved a lump of funding for the Debian Edu subproject, which will help them to continue their developer meetings into the future. SoC2010 ------- Debian has been accepted again as a mentoring organisation for the Google Summer of Code programme. [18] We're looking for mentors and students with good project ideas Right Now(TM), so if you're interested please get in touch. Obey Arthur Liu is continuing as lead admin for us, with me and Michael Schultheiss helping out where we can. Election -------- As you'll have seen, it's that time of year again. Voting for the next DPL will start very soon [19,20]. We have four candidates to choose from this year, and there has been a huge amount of discussion and campaigning on the debian-vote mailing list in the last couple of weeks. Good luck to all of the candidates, and huge thanks to them all for standing! The DPL job can look very daunting, so volunteering for it is a great sign of commitment to the project. That's all folks! ----------------- Well, not totally. :-) I've had a busy and very fulfilling time as DPL for two years, and I hope I've done a good job. I'm not about to vanish from the project, but I'm planning on spending a little less time on project work in the next few months. A new job and a new fiancee are working together to take a lot of my attention at the moment, so I'll probably be quiet(er) for a while. I am, however, looking forwards to having more time for some hacking! Cheers! [1] http://www.h-online.com/open/Health-Check-Ubuntu-and-Debian-s-special-relationship--/features/113260 [2] http://www.itwire.com/content/view/25683/1090/ [3] http://www.itwire.com/content/view/26060/1090/ [4] http://www.itwire.com/content/view/29541/1090/ [5] http://e-zine.debianizzati.org/web-zine/numero_2/?page=0 [6] http://www.linux-magazin.de/NEWS/Debian-dankt-Neuer-Server-rast [7] http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/Debian-Project-Pleased-with-Ten-Times-Faster-Build-Server [8] http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/modules/deptcurrent/?m=CS38110 [9] http://www.einval.com/~steve/talks/Aberystwyth-2009/ [10] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2010/02/msg00004.html [11] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2010/03/msg00003.html [12] http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2010/03/msg00152.html [13] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2010/03/msg00005.html [14] http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2010/03/msg00206.html [15] http://debconf10.debconf.org/ [16] mailto:sponsors@debconf.org [17] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2010/03/msg00009.html [18] http://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2010 [19] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2010/03/msg00000.html [20] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2010/03/msg00006.html -- Steve McIntyre, Debian Project Leader <leader@debian.org>
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