On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 11:43 AM, Michael Hanke <michael.ha...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Dear Debian developers, > > > for some reason I am subscribed to debian-devel and even try to read > most of the posts. I guess I do that to stay in touch with the most recent > developments, but it is also I fairly good indicator of the projects > climate ... which seems to be getting colder ... > > But I cannot understand _why_ this is happening. Posts in the thread > started by the resignation of our secretary (but, in fact, also > countless times before) have speculated that it might be due to an > unfortunate (self-)selection of people generating most traffic on the > major mailing lists, preferably about supposed-to-be-negative aspects of > this project. What can be done? > > Let me express my appreciation and gratitude for Debian. > > I believe that the Debian project (not just the OS it produces) is an > outstanding and unique example of what can be jointly achieved by people > from a huge range of cultural backgrounds, access to monetary ressources > and types (or sources) of motivation. Given the reality on this planet, > the sheer existance of the project after so many years is so unlikely > that Hollywood should think about a movie. I am really proud to be able > to contribute my bits to Debian. > > Debian is about freedom and Debian is setting the standards. The project > is percieved as the mothership of free-software. Software that is not in > Debian is hardly distributed somewhere else. If you want to have > something in Debian, you have to do it _right_. Not just on the > software-enginering side, but also wrt the legal situation. A lot of > people only start thinking about what a license really is about when > forced to obey it by some Debian packager. IMHO this is very important > as it propagates the idea in an effective and productive way -- much > more than a disfunctional wireless device due to a missing firmware. > > Sorry, for the long intro -- here is my 'success story'. > > I work in the neurosciences. Fortunately, over the last few years the > idea of open-source (sadly not necessarily of free _and_ open source) > got established in this science community. More and more great pieces of > software become available. > > But even better: more and more software also becomes part of Debian (see > http://debian-med.alioth.debian.org/tasks/imaging.html for the ones > relevant for my research). > > Debian can be considered the optimal environment for brain imaging > research (compared to all other possible operating systems). It allows > neuroscientists to setup a functional analysis environment within a few > hours ... and keep it that way for years with minimal effort. > > This is only possible due to the _joint_ effort of the whole Debian > project. I can only fail to list and thank all the subprojects and > developers who contribute to that success, therefore I will only pick a > few examples: > > You cannot make people try the universal OS if it doesn't run on their > hardware. Thanks to the amazing Debian installer it runs on almost > anything. In a number of neuroscience labs I know it is often the case > that people are forced to work in some predefined environment, set up to > fulfil the needs of the sysadmin, not the researcher. Quickly installing > Debian in a VM is actually helping a lot of people to be more > productive. But for sure it serves as a proper desktop, the powerful > workstation and the computing cluster equally well. Thanks for that. > > I am also part of the upstream developer team of a machine-learning > framework geared towards neurocientific datasets (http://www.pymvpa.org and > of course http://packages.debian.org/unstable/python/python-mvpa). > This framework is intended to glue together lots of generic packages and > make them available for neuroscience research through a uniform > interface. Again, Debian is the optimal environment to do that, as it > provides almost any software package that is useful for our purpose. > > I went through the process of providing binary packages for this tool > and its major dependencies on other operating systems. For some it is > almost impossible (win), for some painful (mac). The OpenSuse build > service is a great tool to compile stuff for a wide range of RPM-based > distros, but still you have to do it yourself, as there is not a strong > neuroscience-related community. In Debian however, you have a great > Python team and the Debian-med blend, that make it a nice and pleasant > job. Thanks for that as well. > > But the best is that people get used to things being to easy and just > work that they start to demand more. With a (admittedly still low), but > increasing frequency you hear people: 'I have this Debian setup, will > your new tool work in it?' ... setting standards. > > I hope Debian will continue to provide this rich environment (even for > the very-special-interest software) and propagate the idea of freedom. > I could go on for a while listing examples of what makes me happy about > Debian, but I guess this message is already long enough. > > I'd love if the feeling while reading -devel would become a bit more > similar to the one I get when using the OS.
I was just about to write the same thing. Debian is great and it is doing very well. I am very busy with my own studies (theoretical physics) and research (electronic structure calculations), so I haven't finish my NM yet, but I will. Because Debian is just the best platform for scientific computing I know of. And as to community, I was to Merida QA meeting the last year, Ubuntu Developer Summit in Prague and Google Mentors Summit (where I met our DPL and other develoepers), so I think I met some part of the community and the people I had a chance to meet are great. Ondrej -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org