Re: On a policy for non-debian foss content in a mini debconf
at bottom :-
On 9/6/14, Pirate Praveen <praveen@debian.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> There was recent discussions on debian-dug-in list [1][2] on the content
> of a mini debconf being planned in India during October 17 and 18.
>
> The event is being organized in an engineering college with a good track
> record of free software contributions [3]. I proposed a mini debconf in
> the hope of getting more contributions to debian. Since we did not get
> many debian contributors to attend the event and encouraging the student
> who already contributed to give talks on their Free Software contributions.
>
> But many in the community felt mini debconfs and debconfs have been
> primarily about debian and having other talks would confuse attendees.
> Some suggested 1/3 of the talks could be about debian as debconfs have a
> debian day where local community can join.
>
> I would like us to define the requirements of calling an event mini
> debconf as a policy so we don't have to have this debate every time we
> organize a mini debconf.
>
> My suggestion would be to leave that to the local organizers based on
> the strength of local communities to decide how much debian content
> would qualify for calling it a debconf.
>
> I'm also thinking about creating a new brand like "debian utsav" which
> would mean a joint event of debian and local debian community to share
> each others experiences.
>
> Cheers
> Praveen
>
> [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-dug-in/2014/08/msg00090.html
> [2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-dug-in/2014/09/msg00014.html
> [3] http://amritafoss.in/
>
Hi all,
I am one of the organizers of the event but am here with a debian-user
hat. I may slip at times from the organizer's perspective but that
would be purely incidental.
I understand that both Debian, debconf and minidebconfs have a certain
reputation to protect. Now forgive me, but most of the debconfs have
been in some of the more developed economies (it might be a fallacy
and would love to be proven wrong) where there are more than enough
Debian contributors and if not, funds are there to fly people in and
out which is all nice.
But in places like India, Pakistan, Burma, Bangladesh or Africa there
might not be many Debian contributors even if they are Debian
enthusiasts. And while we want to turn Debian enthusiasts into Debian
contributors, we can't do that under a gun (either real or imagined).
So what we would like to do is make it possible to have events where
people could use the name Debian and have some other word added to it
irrespective of the talks/demos in it.
Now I do understand the argument what if people start mis-using or
mis-leading it as we have been accused of. Even if that were to be
true, it still pushes the Debian name ahead. The truth is at least in
India, in most of the Engineering Colleges, both the students and
their faculties believe that Ubuntu came on its own and aren't aware
of Debian's contributions to its birth. So even if we are mis-using or
mis-labelling the event Debian still stands to benefit as more people
come to know about it just by hearing the name and trying to
understand it via their favorite search-engine.
Those who are upset about the purity and the expectations for the name
could use this opportunity and more, to share talks and demos and
really strengthen the community. If we have enough people to do a
Debian event by itself then we won't have to.
Lastly, this is not about a single event in itself. We actually tried
last year as well but due to lack of contributors, lack of good host
institution which would take the challenge etc. had to call it off. So
we want to multiple events using the Debian even hopefully encouraging
more and more Debian newbies to become enthusiasts and in-turn them
becoming users and organizers.
Hoping to generate some opinions, some debates about this. We can't
move ahead without having some sort of consensus and the cost of
inaction on part of Debian has a telling on the outreach activities
that we can do.
Looking forward to reading other people's replies.
--
Regards,
Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल
My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0
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http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com
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