[ObPosting: I believe there is some sort of informal policy that maintainers should report to the project when they speak on behalf of the project, so here goes... CC'd to GOLUM so their ears don't burn.] Thursday night, I spoke for about an hour to the "Group of Linux Users in Memphis" (GOLUM - http://www.golum.org/) about the Debian project and the Debian 2.2 release. I was invited to speak by Brock Sides, the vice president of the group. The meeting was at 7:30 at the AutoZone headquarters in downtown Memphis, just off Beale Street. Jim Greer, the president as of the beginning of the meeting[1], provided a Debian 2.2 box which was connected to a rather spiffy video projection system. We had some problems with the local firewall, but Aaron (the group's resident "Debian bigot," as Jim put it ;-) got that straightened out. Aaron got X working on the box before my presentation, while I mainly demonstrated apt, our packaging tools (mainly debhelper, lintian, debuild) and answered questions from the audience, after a brief (~10 minute) introduction to Debian and a rundown of some noteworthy features of 2.2. There was quite a range of questions; I can't remember them all. Among the topics: 1. A discussion of why Debian had a slow release schedule. Someone in the audience theorized that there were two possible reasons: a commitment to stability and the volunteer nature of the project. I expounded my theory that releases are infrequent because 90% developers don't have to deal with them, and those that do can easily install a slink CD and apt-get dist-upgrade it to woody. 2. A discussion of the merits of the Hurd and Debian's support of it. This touched on Debian's "if someone's willing to do the work, they're welcome to" policy and the possible future value of the Hurd; I pointed out that we'll never really know if microkernels are the way to go if we never try it. (I forgot the Amiga example, but it didn't implement Unix.) I also argued (perhaps controversially) that the Hurd continues to exist because the FSF wants to be able to take credit for a "pure GNU" system. 3. A brief answer to the "VA Linux Letter" question, in which I insulted Andover.net (and the wisdom of VA's acquisition thereof) several times. 4. 2-3 people asked about what the time commitment for being a developer is. I estimated that 10-30 minutes a week is typical for most packages, once it is packaged; obviously, this varies depending on the stability of the package, etc. 5. On a similar vein, I was asked about the skill level necessary to be a developer. I indicated that for most packages, an understanding of make and a familiarity with the language the package is written in is sufficient, particularly if you "start out small." 6. A question about how dependencies are figured out. I forgot that Wichert has moved to objdump from ldd for dpkg 1.7 (same principle though). The meeting also featured an election of new officers, the distribution of freebies (I got a copy of Caldera's "Linux Technology Preview", mainly for Sun's JDK 1.3.1), a discussion of the timing of their next InstallFest at Southwest Tenn. Community College (formerly State Tech), and some controversy over whether or not the group should continue having a booth at the "MarketPro" show. After the meeting, revelry ensued at Huey's Restaurant. Overall, a good time was had by all, and several attendees said they would be interested in applying to be maintainers. Chris [1] They elected new officers during the meeting. -- ============================================================================= | Chris Lawrence | Visit my home page! | | <quango@watervalley.net> | http://www.lordsutch.com/chris/ | | | | | Open Directory Editor | Your site belongs here. | | http://dmoz.org/ | [Commercialize your sig today!] | =============================================================================
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