Re: Updates

[shirish शिरीष <shirishag75@gmail.com>]

in-line :-

On 9/4/14, Vipin Nair <swvist@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Shirish,

Hi Vipin,


<snipped>

> Is it because we trying to fill in empty slots? I do not see why having
> fewer
> talks is an issue, if we have not enough people who can talk on the
> subject.

Haven't you looked at the schedule. There are 16 slots if it's going
to be a single track event only. From what we have explored and
thought about there would be 16 slots for Debian and 8-10 odd talks
that have come from the host institution.

There were and are multiple reasons why we said yes to having these
talks and try to those intentions.

a. The event is primarily for students and enthusiasts of Free
software who want to explore Debian. So while we would be having a
Debian track, we do not want to deprive enthusiasts from exploring
those topics. For e.g. one of the students wants to share how to use
git and the other how to use and contribute to the linux kernel. We
can advise them to look at how git repositories are done in debian as
an implementation which could be used as an examples or how the linux
kernel community works under Debian but that's as far as we would like
to go. Let the students explore and see those communities and those
roles and see if they can come up with anything beneficial.

> Yes we do not have a lots of people with expertise or the willingness to do
> this and I sincerely appreciate what you guys are doing. Having said that,
> I do not understand what we are trying to achieve by calling this event
> 'Mini DebConf' and it not being Debian centric. Giving it a generic name
> which also includes a Debian track is perfectly fine, but when you call it
> 'Mini DebConf', you are setting the expectations wrong.

I still do not get it. It is Debian centric, what we don't want is to
force students one way or the other. There is a fine line between
advise and force. If they ask us, this is a topic that we want to talk
about and how Debian can help us, we can tell and share with them, but
for that to happen, the students should be coming to us voluntarily.
For e.g. one of the students wants to talk about education using free
software, we could advise us to explore Debian-edu and the softwares
that are in Debian to do with education. But again, this is a
community event and we don't want to apply any pressures on anybody.

> I would any day pick a small room with enthusiasts and interested folks
> hacking on Debian in one corner over a big event with hundreds of people
> with minimal Debian.

There seems to be assumption here that we would not be hacking on
Debian. While we have our interests, I don't recall having said that
people are not free to hack on one thing or the other. As shared
before, if you have an idea to hack on something, take the leadership
on it and we would give whatever assistance we can from our side.

There has actually been lot and lot of discussions both on-list and
off-list within the community, with the host institution before this
shape took place and as said even now, nothing is fixed, take
leadership, say you will work on something then it's o.k.

> Also, I do not agree with the "Its all free software and Debian supports
> Free
> software, so free software talks are fine" argument. Tomorrow if I create
> my own OS with the Linux kernel and call it Debian, is it acceptable?
> Its not because:
>
> 1) Its not the right thing to do because its not 'Debian'.
> 2) Its a trademark[1] and I am not legally allowed to do it.

It's really sad when we start basing our arguments around what is
right thing and talking things about trademark. If you look at the
history of free software, most of the interesting works were produced
when they were forked and both shared the names.  See for e.g.
'XEmacs' and 'GNU Emacs' even then nobody said that 'Emacs' is their
property.  Or even take the more recent libav and ffmpeg row, where
both of them call their libraries ffmpeg.

> There may not be registered trademarks for the names 'Debconf' and
> 'Mini DebConf' so legally we are fine with it but is it the right thing
> to do because there is nothing legally preventing us from doing so?

I take offense here. All of us were waiting for what now 9 months in
the year for somebody to do something, to do a minidebconf. After much
activity, we got a institution which is ready to help us with
everything and in fact they want us to guide their students. And when
somebody says guide, that means to advise them, gently push them in a
certain direction and let them be. We do not want to be forcing to do
anything and at least I'm happy with the gentle prodding rather than
pushing them to do anything.

> In case you are still not convinced, have at look at other Mini DebConf's
> organized around the world, have a look into the kind of talks they have
> had, compare it to this list and see if you can see any resemblance.

See, I can challenge you in number of ways, do all of these
minidebconfs that you saw have the same number of DD's as we have ?
Please share with me the size of the community, how many years
involvement they have had with debian.org and number of other things.
Each localized community can only infer what is the best way for
itself.

I sincerely believe that the community is young, we are still trying
to find our own voices and articulate it. The only thing this little
flame-war does is it perpetuates the myth that Debian is weak (when
it's not) and doesn't have grace (when it has ample opportunity to
show so.)

Lastly, I believe people are intelligent enough to know if they are
being taken for a ride in any fashion. We hope to have the schedule up
in the next 5-7 days and once it's there on net, any so-called
deceptions or false expectations get killed there. If people outside
the state are coming, they are intelligent enough to make their own
decisions.

I would suggest that instead of putting the energy in this little
flame-war, put energy in what you think would make for good debian
topics and talk to people on-list or off-list to prod them into having
a more debian centric view.

Looking forward to a more beneficial exchange.

> [1] : https://www.debian.org/trademark
>
>
> --
> Regards,
> Vipin

-- 
          Regards,
          Shirish Agarwal  शिरीष अग्रवाल
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