Bits from the DPL (March 2018)
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Dear fellow developers…
Greetings from a rather soggy London. Here's an outline of what I've been
getting up to during March 2018 as your DPL:
* Re-delegated the Debian Account Managers (DAM) [0] to represent the
stepping down of Christoph "myon" Berg. On behalf of the Project, we thank
him for his work.
* I was honoured to be elected to the board of the Open Source Initiative [1].
As part of this appointment I will be naturally be representing Debian's
interests and using my experience as DPL to help the free software community
in general. Please let me know if you have any specific concerns or issues
that you think the OSI should be addressing, whether on behalf of Debian or
not.
* Updated the Front Desk delegation [2] as Jan Dittberner (jandd), Mike
Gabriel (sunweaver) and Francesca Ciceri (madamezou) are stepping away from
the team. Please join me in thanking them for their diligent work over the
years.
* Following the recommendation of the Technical Committee, I was extremely
happy to approve Simon McVittie (smcv) joining the team [3]. (As defined by
our constitution, the Debian Technical Committee is not delegated like other
teams.) Welcome aboard!
* Submitted my re-nomination and platform for 2018 Project Leader [4] as well
as responded to a few questions on the debian-vote mailing list [5].
* Met with a considerable number of Debian folks at the Southern California
Linux Expo ("SCALE") [6] with the usual keysigning, friendly chats, photos,
etc. Thanks to all those who were at the booth, both in front & behind it.
I also managed to start some cross-distribution discussions — and even
cross-operating system — that I will follow-up on.
* Shepherded the announcement of Debian's appearance on the "Windows
Subsystem for Linux" platform [7][8] as well as redirect numerous follow-ups
to the correct locations. I have also started organising the somewhat
inevitable merchandise to be revealed soon. :)
* Attended the Free Software Foundation's [9] LibrePlanet 2018 [10] conference
in Boston, MA. Whilst I gave a presentation on Reproducible Builds [11] I
represented Debian at the "SpinachCon" [12] pre-conference user testing
event as well wore my DPL "hat" in all manner of discussions and questions
in and around the conference.
* Lastly, I am sorry to report that this month was especially draining with
respect to issues in the anti-harrassment space [13] both in terms of volume
and importance. In addition, I felt I had no choice but directly address a
number of DDs in private on their public activities which were reflecting
poorly on themselves, (let alone the Debian Project itself.
[0] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2018/03/msg00001.html
[1] https://opensource.org/node/926
[2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2018/03/msg00002.html
[3] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2018/03/msg00005.html
[4] https://www.debian.org/vote/2018/vote_001
[5] https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2018/03/threads.html
[6] https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/16x
[7] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/03/06/debian-gnulinux-for-wsl-now-available-in-the-windows-store/
[8] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/debian-gnu-linux/9msvkqc78pk6
[9] https://fsf.org/
[10] https://libreplanet.org/2018/
[11] https://reproducible-builds.org/
[12] http://www.eximiousproductions.com/2018/03/09/spinachcon-2018/
[13] https://wiki.debian.org/AntiHarassment
Events & finances
=================
As well as responding to various follow-ups to previous funding requests, I:
* Approved the purchase of a number of "Turbot" single-board computers [14]
for use by the DebConf Video Team [15].
* Various DebConf-related administrivia around the status of a defunct Trusted
Organisation, the DebConf Committee, and the budget for the upcoming
DebConf18 event [16] in Hsinchu, Taiwan.
* Approved travel expenses for a UEFI "Secure Boot" sprint that will take
place in Fulda (Germany), FOSS'ASIA 2018 [17] (Singapore), a Bug Squashing
Party (BSP) in Tirana, Albania [18], and a Debian Edu [19] sprint during the
upcoming Hamburg MiniDebConf [20].
* Responded to a query on which Trusted Organisation [21] should be invoiced
for Google's Summer of Code [22] outreach programme (Debian France).
* Investigating missing reimbursements from SPI, Inc [23] from the Cloud
Sprint in 2017.
* Acknowledged expenses for the Debian Med sprint [24] that was held in
Barcelona in February. This additionally involved users and developers from
related communities such as Bio-Linux [25], etc.
* Contributed my thoughts to a discussion on a policy for expenses that are
"unused" due to illness or similar, as well as for receipts that did not
have prior approval.
* Initial conversations regarding funding a potential webmaster team [26]
sprint.
[14] https://minnowboard.org/
[15] https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Videoteam
[16] https://debconf18.debconf.org/
[17] https://2018.fossasia.org/
[18] https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2018/01/msg00024.html
[19] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/
[20] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEvents/de/2018/MiniDebConfHamburg
[21] https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Treasurer/Organizations
[22] https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2018
[23] https://www.spi-inc.org/
[24] https://wiki.debian.org/Sprints/2018/DebianMed2018
[25] http://environmentalomics.org/bio-linux/
[26] https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Webmaster
Bug Squashing Parties
=====================
Debian is willing to reimburse up to 100 USD for expenses to attend Bug
Squashing Parties (BSPs) [27]. If there are no BSPs near to you, please help
organise one [28]!
Reimbursement requests should meet the following conditions:
* The requester should be a Debian contributor of some description or have
otherwise demonstrated an ability / committment to do that kind of work.
* The requester agrees to communicate about their activities during the event,
such as posting to Planet Debian [29] The goal here being to increase
visibility of "sponsored" work.
[27] https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DPL/Reimbursement
[28] https://wiki.debian.org/BSPPlanning
[29] https://planet.debian.org/
Other
=====
In addition to all of the above, I spent time on:
* Contributing to, monitoring and/or moderating the "/r/debian" subreddit [30] and
@Debian Twitter profile [31].
* Redirecting a large number of private support queries and questions sent to
the leader@ alias including ones regarding the Debian Wiki [32], VPNs, the
naming of the Debian distributions, an "executive level" free-software job
opening, as well as how to find Debian-related consulting companies in Asia,
etc. In addition, we received two sincere request to place adverts on our
webpages [33] which were also politely redirected.
* Contacting SPI, Inc [34] with regards to granting access to some DNS settings
for the Debian System Administrators [34].
* Issuing a signed PDF certificate [36] for a Developer. (These are also
available for Debian Maintainers.)
* Responding to the "SARbian" [37] Debian derivative who were asking for
clarification on their use of "Debian" in the portmanteau [38] of our
respective names.
[30] https://reddit.com/r/debian
[31] https://twitter.com/Debian
[32] https://wiki.debian.org/
[33] https://debian.org/
[34] https://www.spi-inc.org/
[35] https://dsa.debian.org/
[36] https://wiki.debian.org/DDCertificate
[37] https://eo-college.org/sarbian/
[38] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmanteau
And finally...
==============
In case you missed it:
* Debian 9.4 was released. [39]
* The Call for Proposals for the Hamburg MiniDebconf in May [40] was
announced [41] and looks like it will be well-attended. I intend to present
on (at least) diffoscope [42] at this event.
* The DebConf18 Call for Proposals (CfP) also remains open. [43]
[39] https://lists.debian.org/debian-announce/2018/msg00000.html
[40] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEvents/de/2018/MiniDebConfHamburg#Talks_wanted_.28CfP.29
[41] https://lists.debian.org/debconf-mini-hamburg/2018/02/msg00000.html
[42] https://diffoscope.org/
[43] https://debconf18.debconf.org/cfp/
See you all next month! Well, I hope…
Best wishes,
- --
,''`.
: :' : Chris Lamb
`. `'` lamby@debian.org / chris-lamb.co.uk
`-
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