Bits from the Debian Project Leader (January 2019)
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Dear developers,
Greetings from a snowy Europe. ⛄ "Buster is coming…"
Here follows a brief overview of what I've been getting up to as your
Project Leader during the past month. For those interested in the
numbers, January was another busy month in the DPL inbox with just shy
of 500 non-spam mails received and — including this one — just over
100 emails sent.
~ § ~
* I updated the delegation for the Release Team [0]. As I wrote in my
redelegation text [1] this represents Paul Gevers (elbrus) joining
as a Release Assistant — welcome.
* On behalf on the Debian Project I co-signed an affirmation of the
"Open Source Definition" [2] (based on our own Free Software
Guidelines [3]) and the OSI's role as a steward of said Definition.
This will be published in early February.
* I was also delighted to furnish Software in the Public Interest,
Inc. [4] with a brief overview of Debian's activities throughout
2018 for their annual report. SPI is Debian's primary holder of
substantial legal assets such as domain names, funds and
trademarks, etc.
* Finalised arrangements for a Bug Squashing Party [5] in Gothenburg,
Sweden during April 2019 as part of the foss-north [6] conference. I
subsequently posted an announcement [7] and briefly assisted in the
announcements of the Austin [8] and Berlin [9] BSPs.
* I made a call for potential nominations for the 2019 Open Source
Initiative [10] board elections. As an "affiliate" of the OSI,
Debian may nominate a candidate in such an election [11].
* Issued signed "DD certificates" [12] for a number of Developers and
maintainers as part of new employment or positions in academic
institutions, etc. If you are a DD, a DM or a Debian Contributor and
you'd like official certification of that, you may ask the DPL to
generate one for you; please email leader@debian.org.
* "Attended" a number of conference calls on a currently-embargoed
trademark issue, the Server Side Public License [13] as well as
further follow-ups the "Commons Clause" [14] license amendment.
* Replied to to an generalised invitation for a developers to attend
the WeAreDevelopers "World Congress" [15] in Berlin 2019 and
responded to a company who are using Debian for their embedded
product who wished to check "the correct usage of the GPL", pointing
them towards a competent copyright attorney.
* Assisted a Debian Developer by physically authoring a recommendation
for an immigration application, provided some quick assistance
regarding announcing a large donation, and responded to a invitation
to attend the New York Linux Users Group (NYLUG) [16].
* Responded to a number of responses to my previous "Bits from the
DPL" and redirected the usual requests for private support,
including one enquiry on the "freeness" of the firmware in non-free.
[ 0] https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/ReleaseTeam
[ 1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2019/01/msg00009.html
[ 2] https://opensource.org/osd
[ 3] https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
[ 4] https://spi-inc.org
[ 5] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP
[ 6] http://foss-north.se/
[ 7] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2019/01/msg00006.html
[ 8] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2019/01/msg00004.html
[ 9] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2019/01/msg00003.html
[10] https://opensource.org/
[11] https://opensource.org/node/963
[12] https://wiki.debian.org/DDCertificate
[13] https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-public-license
[14] https://lwn.net/Articles/763179/
[15] https://www.wearedevelopers.com/world-congress/
[16] https://www.meetup.com/nylug-meetings/
~ § ~
We have a huge number of events coming up in the month(s)
ahead, including:
* February 2nd → February 3rd: FOSDEM. [17]
* February 9th → February 10th: Berlin, Germany. [18]
* February 9th → February 10th: Bratislava, Slovakia. [19]
* February 22nd → February 24th: Bonn, Germany. [20]
* February 28th → March 3rd: Laveno, Italy. [21]
* March 8th → March 10th: Cambridge, United Kingdom. [22]
* April 5th → April 8th: Salzburg, Austria. [23]
* April 7th: Gothenburg, Sweden. [24]
… and there will naturally a large number of developers and contributors
Belgium in early February for other FOSDEM-related roles/events such as
CopyleftConf [25], Config Management Camp [26], etc.
[17] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEvents/be/2019/FOSDEM
[18] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2019/02/de/Berlin
[19] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2019/02/sk/Bratislava
[20] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2019/02/de/Bonn
[21] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEvents/it/2019/SnowCamp
[22] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2019/03/gb/Cambridge
[23] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2019/04/Salzburg
[24] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2019/04/se/Gothenburg
[25] https://sfconservancy.org/news/2018/apr/30/copyleft-conf/
[26] https://cfgmgmtcamp.eu/
If there are no Bug Squashing Parties (BSP) planned near you, both in
time and space, please do consider organising one [27][28] — Debian is
willing to reimburse 100 USD (or equivalent) to attend BSPs [29] which
can help encourage people to come.
[27] https://wiki.debian.org/BSPPlanning
[28] https://wiki.debian.org/HostingBSP
[29] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP
~ § ~
In financial matters, I approved:
* A significant expense to replace our DSA-maintained [30] core
mirroring infrastructure. This would — inter alia — separate the
public-facing and backend roles and improve the uplink connection
from 1Gbps to 10Gbps.
* Expenses for two Developers to perform a reconnaissance of likely
DebConf20 [31] locations (Lisbon & Haifa). This resulted in a report
being sent to the debconf-team mailing list [32]. In addition, I
asked some initial questions on a preliminary budget for
DebConf19 [33].
* Funding for a DebianMed [34] sprint that planned to take place in
March 2019 in Vilnius, Lithuania [35].
* Travel expenses for an additional Developer to attend the DebConf
Video Team [36] Sprint [37] at Linux Belgium [38] in Diegem.
* Funding for Debian Ports [39] to purchase some replacement drives as
the previous systems' drives were outdated and physically did
not fit.
* Food expenses for the Bug Squashing Party (BSP) that took place in
Montreal, Canada [40] and for parallel expenses for the BSP in
Bratislava, Slovakia [41].
[30] https://dsa.debian.org/
[31] https://wiki.debian.org/DebConf/20
[32] https://lists.debian.org/debconf-team/2019/01/msg00008.html
[33] https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf19
[34] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMed
[35] https://wiki.debian.org/Sprints/2019/DebianMed2019
[36] https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebConf/Video
[37] https://wiki.debian.org/Sprints/2019/DebConf%20Video%20team%20sprint%20@%20FOSDEM%202019
[38] http://linuxbe.com/
[39] https://www.ports.debian.org/
[40] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2019/01/ca/Montreal
[41] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2019/02/sk/Bratislava
Finally, I followed up on a company requesting a receipt for their
donation, responding to a developer requesting travel sponsorship to
PyCon Namibia [42] and handled some travel reimbursements around the
recent Reproducible Builds summit [43] in Paris, France.
[42] https://na.pycon.org/
[43] https://reproducible-builds.org/events/paris2018/
~ § ~
Just in case you missed it, the Debian 10 'buster' freeze has very much
begun ☃! [44] Here's to "Buster" in 2019 and see you all next month…
[44] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2019/01/msg00008.html
Best wishes,
- --
,''`.
: :' : Chris Lamb
`. `'` lamby@debian.org 🍥 chris-lamb.co.uk
`-
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