Re: FOSDEM thoughts
On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 02:33:53PM +0100, Ingo Juergensmann wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 08:44:05PM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
>
> > After going to a conference, I'm usually filled with ideas, and FOSDEM
> > is no different in that regard. Also, it was nice to finally meet cts :-)
>
> Hehe... I met him the first time lately after 7 years also... ;)
Yeah, I know, I need to travel more, I think I'll have to go to Alabama
again, and I have never been down under ;-)
> Generally I think that's a good idea, but I also think that fund raising for
> such a meeting is more than difficult.
Lets worry about funds, when we need funds. We spend so much money on m68k
already for hosting, electricity, and some hardware fixes, some people might
be willing to spend another 100[LOCAL_CURRENCY_UNIT] for a flight, if
needed. But I also think that there are several funding options available,
there is the Extremadura meeting where we might be able to join, or maybe
even Debian will fund a few people, but first we need to organize a meeting
and a schedule first. A meeting at one of the conferences might work, too,
but then we'd need and extra day or at least a half to concentrate on m68k.
> I think someone already mentioned skype... Also there're some drawbacks with
> skype (proprietary, etc), I would be a nice and simple way to hold a
> telephone conference at least...
I think nothing beats an in person meeting, it is great if you can finally
connect a face with a name (Hi Geert, Luk! Too bad I did not know about
doko), not everybody is blogging as actively as some of you, and even with
the pictures, I would not have recognized Wouter :-)
> > Obviously the list of people that I gave above isn't extensive; I'm also
>
> I'm surprised that you mentioned me as I just host some machines and can't
> do much more than that, except maybe sysadmin stuff...
It will be good to include everybody that is still interested in helping
m68k, and you helped us quite a bit (even though you had no solution for the
amiga harddisk problem either ;-)
We should find out how many people are still using m68k, maybe we could
convince some more people to help us, after all manpower is the main problem
of many ports.
> Getting the coldfire port working would be nice, yes... I believe that would
> bring in fresh blood and a general boost for debian-68k/cf...
We had a discussion with Aurelien, Geert and Sven about coldfire. The
consensus was that we should not make cf a separate port, since we would
probably loose all m68k developers in that case. I personally am interested
in cf only if it can help m68k, if I want something "new", I would go
powerpc, I need an excuse to get a PS3 ;-)
Also we would probably share the fate of arm/armel. armel will be in lenny+1
but arm will be removed after lenny to not further increase the load on the
mirrors, I am afraid m68k would be dropped completely if we ask for a new cf
port.
> A video conference at a near-by site would be nice, though...
Google has an office in Hamburg, though I don't know where, but that would
be a suitable location for us. There is one in Zurich, in Ireland, and a
couple in the US (I need to check the recruiting emails for details).
Probably more, so that should be fairly easy for everybody to reach. I guess
most universities have a video conference system, but if google wants to
support us, why not? I would not wonder if that works better than a
university system.
I am not a big fan of skype, does video even work on Linux? But with this,
or some other voip solution, nobody would meet face to face, and I think
this is less efficient, at least for the first meeting.
Maybe Wouter can come up with the topics for a meeting, some hacking part to
get the coldfire boards running, or to set up aranym systems. Then we should
think about a date, I suggest a date not earlier than 5-6 months from now,
to get the topics worked out (and to wait for the next break at the
university). Maybe the Oldenburg meeting in the fall can be revived? Until
then, everybody can have a look at the release page and fix some of the m68k
issues (not that we will be included in lenny, but we could try to come
close so that we might be considered again for lenny+1):
http://release.debian.org/lenny/arch_qualify.html
Some more m68k developers need to be found and maybe the popcon numbers
could be increased a bit to show the number of users. The aranym buildds
might be suitable as fast/security buildds?
Christian
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