Re: Why do we take so long to realise good ideas (Was: Difficult Packaging Practices)
On 5/29/19 11:01 AM, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> On Wed, 29 May 2019, Ansgar wrote:
>> On Wed, 2019-05-29 at 10:38 +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
>>> On Wed, 29 May 2019, Andrey Rahmatullin wrote:
One of the popular answers to this and some other problems is "nobody sat
down and wrote the code". Not sure what can we do about this class of
reasons.
>>>
>>> Use the $300,000 on our bank accounts?
>>
>> I heard that this didn't work out well the last time ("dunc tank"),
>> though that was before the time I followed Debian development.
>
> Yes, I was there (and mention it briefly in the questions of the talk I
> gave) but it's been a long time ago. There are things to learn
> from this failed experiment (such as "don't let the DPL decide alone who
> gets paid") but there are also many reasons to believe that we are no
> longer in the same situation. At that time, the number of persons working
> on open source as part of their paid work was rather low and the jealousy
> aspect was likely more problematic than it would be today.
I clearly remember that one heated topic was about the level of salary
for a release manager. Many thought 6K USD was too much and were shocked
about the amount. I probably was at the time. Now, I'm 43, I have
children, higher life cost, and responsibilities. I'm not shocked
anymore, but I can easily understand others would still be.
Let's *not* start this again.
> The topic still needs to be approached carefully
Yes.
> but I believe that we
> should aim to have this discussion and build some framework where we can
> leverage money to complete projects and tasks that we find important
> but that have not gone forward through volunteer work.
I'm not sure if I'm in the favor of Debian slowly transforming itself
into yet another world company.
Cheers,
Thomas Goirand (zigo)
Re: paying people for Debian work (Re: Why do we take so long to realise good ideas (Was: Difficult Packaging Practices))
Hi, Why to support additional fragmentation? My opinion is debian was left behind regarding infrastructure. I do packaging for various distributions. Honestly, I am running debian. But you could provide continues integration for different architectures, not only i386 and amd64. Extend access to porter machines for debian maintainers. Make the request easier and faster. Especially for more exotic flavors like kfreebsd and hurd. I caught me different times setting up some VM, only to check why a test was failing on arch X and not on Y. Best regards, Joël On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 11:43 AM Raphael Hertzog wrote: > > Hi, > > On Mon, 03 Jun 2019, Paul Wise wrote: > > There are a few things that are possibly concerning: > > Thanks for sharing those. Let me answer them. > > > Freexian is essentially the only available-to-hire provider of > > services for Debian LTS, as the Freeside link doesn't lead anywhere > > useful. This means that Freexian essentially does not have any > > competition in the provision of these services. Individuals or > > companies who don't like Freexian's offering do not have any other > > choices, short of going to the general Debian consultants list, who > > may or may not have the needed skills and would take time to search > > through. > > That's correct. But the agreement was always that the relationship > was non-exclusive from the Debian point of view. I.e. someone else > could setup "Debian LTS by " and Debian would not endorse one more > than the other. > > > The funding breakdown for the LTS team appears to be 48% Freexian, 31% > > volunteer/unknown, 21% other companies. I don't have any data on the > > proportion of LTS work done by each of these groups, but I get the > > feeling that the majority of LTS uploads are done by Freexian folks. > > That breakdown does not reflect reality at all. Indeed the vast majority > of the work is done by contributors paid by Freexian. > > > This means that if Freexian decides to end its provision of services > > for Debian LTS, then the level of work done for LTS would go down > > significantly. Were this to happen, it would either significantly > > damage the image of Debian due to having to end the LTS effort or > > require us to do work which we have had a hard time finding volunteers > > for in the past. > > That's correct. However, there's no reason for this to happen. I do care > about Debian and the uninteresting paper work that I have to do to keep > the Freexian service running is paid for. > > That said there are multiple ways to avoid this: > - Debian organizes this by itself (it's possible, the criteria I use > to allocate work hours to contributors are relatively transparent) > - Debian defines clear rules for external services leveraging the Debian > name to fund Debian-related work and encourages to have more of those > > > There is strong coupling between Debian and Freexian in the language > > on the Debian LTS pages and the Freexian pages. This is free > > advertising for Freexian's LTS services and representing Freexian's > > LTS services as "blessed" by Debian or somehow "official", which could > > be objected to by other companies who might decide to provide security > > support services. It may be prudent to remove or alter the language on > > the Debian LTS pages. > > I don't see the need to act pro-actively here. The current description > is a fair representation of the reality. It might not be the ideal > situation that we want for Debian but then again I suggest we work on > defining criteria for all services/companies that would aim to have the > same kind of "Debian blessing". > > > LTS. This means that the individuals/organisations doing consulting > > around Debian miss out on the opportunities to work on LTS. > > This is not true. Many have joined the set of contributors paid by > Freexian. Some of the contributors are working as individuals > (freelancers) and others as members of an organization that invoices > Freexian (Codethink for Ben Hutchings for example). > > You are saying that they don't have an opportunity to work on LTS > outside of Freexian. That's also not true but the easy path is > definitely to go through Freexian who has an established situation > and whose join rules are open-enough to avoid the need to create > a competitor. > > > Freexian doesn't fund LTS contributors who are not DDs/DMs: this > > eliminates skilled developers from outside Debian who could contribute > > to LTS via Freexian and eventually work on Debian more generally. This > > seems to have prevented at least one former Debian member who was > > interested in Freexian's offer from contributing. It might also make > > LTS funding seem like a reward for Debian insiders. > > Or it creates an incentive to contribute to Debian to be able to join > the set of paid developers. > > I'm sorry that you see this as a problem. This job is about contributing > to Debian and we need persons who already know how to do this.
Re: paying people for Debian work (Re: Why do we take so long to realise good ideas
> "Paul" == Paul Wise writes: Paul> On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 5:32 AM Holger Levsen wrote: >> LTS is accepted by the Debian community. Paul> I'm not entirely sure this fully represents the range of feelings Paul> about the LTS efforts. Paul> There are a few things that are possibly concerning: Paul> This means that if Freexian decides to end its provision of services Paul> for Debian LTS, then the level of work done for LTS would go down Paul> significantly. Were this to happen, it would either significantly Paul> damage the image of Debian due to having to end the LTS effort or Paul> require us to do work which we have had a hard time finding volunteers Paul> for in the past. If Freexian were to end its LTS effort because the funding disappeared, then I do not think Debian's image would be significantly damaged by ending LTS. We've made it clear that we're doing this because people are funding it. If they stop and are not replaced with people doing the work, then market demand has disappeared. If Freexian stopped their LTS effort but people were still interested in funding LTS, I suspect we could find someone else willing to handle the administrative aspects of it. Paul> https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Team Paul> There is strong coupling between Debian and Freexian in the language Paul> on the Debian LTS pages and the Freexian pages. This is free Paul> advertising for Freexian's LTS services and representing Freexian's Paul> LTS services as "blessed" by Debian or somehow "official", which could Paul> be objected to by other companies who might decide to provide security Paul> support services. It may be prudent to remove or alter the language on Paul> the Debian LTS pages. I actually think it's important for us as a project to endorce or support people doing great work in our communities. That's something we can do that significantly increases user confidence and makes it easier for people to partner with us. If we get the objections you're talking about, let's find a way to figure out whether we should be blessing or making those other companies official too. I've seen a number of discussions over the years about partnering with people stall because we wanted to establish a bunch of rules ahead of time. I do think it's important that we respond to objections from people who want to be included and are not. I think the best response will be to work with those organizations and figure out how they can be included too. Yes, if we get a bunch of different organizations jumping up and down to work on LTS, we'll have to figure out rules for inclusion. It seems that whatever those rules are, Freexian (today) would be one of the official partners. So, I think both our users and the free software community are best served by being honest that we are working closely with Freexian. Paul> https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Funding Paul> As far as I can tell, the sole communication between the LTS team and Paul> the list of individuals/organisations doing consulting around Debian Paul> is a mail attempting to recruit folks to work for Freexian. As far as Paul> I can tell, there has been no suggestion that Paul> individuals/organisations doing consulting around Debian add Paul> themselves to the list of organisations available to hire to work on Paul> LTS. This means that the individuals/organisations doing consulting Paul> around Debian miss out on the opportunities to work on LTS. If we get feedback from people who would like to work on LTS but who don't think the current structure works for them, we should definitely look into that. Paul> https://www.debian.org/consultants/ Paul> https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/20160502094142.ga19...@home.ouaza.com Paul> Freexian doesn't fund LTS contributors who are not DDs/DMs: this Paul> eliminates skilled developers from outside Debian who could contribute Paul> to LTS via Freexian and eventually work on Debian more generally. This Paul> seems to have prevented at least one former Debian member who was Paul> interested in Freexian's offer from contributing. It might also make Paul> LTS funding seem like a reward for Debian insiders. The difference between reward and job qualification small here. Or put another way, if doing a bunch of hard work to learn about Debian packaging and contributing to our community opens up opportunities for our members and maintainers, that sounds great to me.
Re: paying people for Debian work (Re: Why do we take so long to realise good ideas (Was: Difficult Packaging Practices))
Hi, On Mon, 03 Jun 2019, Paul Wise wrote: > There are a few things that are possibly concerning: Thanks for sharing those. Let me answer them. > Freexian is essentially the only available-to-hire provider of > services for Debian LTS, as the Freeside link doesn't lead anywhere > useful. This means that Freexian essentially does not have any > competition in the provision of these services. Individuals or > companies who don't like Freexian's offering do not have any other > choices, short of going to the general Debian consultants list, who > may or may not have the needed skills and would take time to search > through. That's correct. But the agreement was always that the relationship was non-exclusive from the Debian point of view. I.e. someone else could setup "Debian LTS by " and Debian would not endorse one more than the other. > The funding breakdown for the LTS team appears to be 48% Freexian, 31% > volunteer/unknown, 21% other companies. I don't have any data on the > proportion of LTS work done by each of these groups, but I get the > feeling that the majority of LTS uploads are done by Freexian folks. That breakdown does not reflect reality at all. Indeed the vast majority of the work is done by contributors paid by Freexian. > This means that if Freexian decides to end its provision of services > for Debian LTS, then the level of work done for LTS would go down > significantly. Were this to happen, it would either significantly > damage the image of Debian due to having to end the LTS effort or > require us to do work which we have had a hard time finding volunteers > for in the past. That's correct. However, there's no reason for this to happen. I do care about Debian and the uninteresting paper work that I have to do to keep the Freexian service running is paid for. That said there are multiple ways to avoid this: - Debian organizes this by itself (it's possible, the criteria I use to allocate work hours to contributors are relatively transparent) - Debian defines clear rules for external services leveraging the Debian name to fund Debian-related work and encourages to have more of those > There is strong coupling between Debian and Freexian in the language > on the Debian LTS pages and the Freexian pages. This is free > advertising for Freexian's LTS services and representing Freexian's > LTS services as "blessed" by Debian or somehow "official", which could > be objected to by other companies who might decide to provide security > support services. It may be prudent to remove or alter the language on > the Debian LTS pages. I don't see the need to act pro-actively here. The current description is a fair representation of the reality. It might not be the ideal situation that we want for Debian but then again I suggest we work on defining criteria for all services/companies that would aim to have the same kind of "Debian blessing". > LTS. This means that the individuals/organisations doing consulting > around Debian miss out on the opportunities to work on LTS. This is not true. Many have joined the set of contributors paid by Freexian. Some of the contributors are working as individuals (freelancers) and others as members of an organization that invoices Freexian (Codethink for Ben Hutchings for example). You are saying that they don't have an opportunity to work on LTS outside of Freexian. That's also not true but the easy path is definitely to go through Freexian who has an established situation and whose join rules are open-enough to avoid the need to create a competitor. > Freexian doesn't fund LTS contributors who are not DDs/DMs: this > eliminates skilled developers from outside Debian who could contribute > to LTS via Freexian and eventually work on Debian more generally. This > seems to have prevented at least one former Debian member who was > interested in Freexian's offer from contributing. It might also make > LTS funding seem like a reward for Debian insiders. Or it creates an incentive to contribute to Debian to be able to join the set of paid developers. I'm sorry that you see this as a problem. This job is about contributing to Debian and we need persons who already know how to do this. Contrary to GSOC and others, our purpose is not to train outsiders to contribute to Debian. > The structure of using existing Debian contributors and funnelling > most of the funding to them through one company reduces incentives for > companies wanting security support to direct their employees to work > on Debian security support. This means that our contributor base stays > more static and reduces the chance that new folks will join us. An > alternate model where each of the companies currently sponsoring > Freexian LTS services instead directed their employees to spend some > hours on Debian security support seems more likely to lead to new > people getting involved. I certainly agree that the efficiency of the contributors paid by Freexian means that companies
Re: paying people for Debian work (Re: Why do we take so long to realise good ideas (Was: Difficult Packaging Practices))
On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 5:32 AM Holger Levsen wrote: > LTS is accepted by the Debian community. I'm not entirely sure this fully represents the range of feelings about the LTS efforts. There are a few things that are possibly concerning: Freexian is essentially the only available-to-hire provider of services for Debian LTS, as the Freeside link doesn't lead anywhere useful. This means that Freexian essentially does not have any competition in the provision of these services. Individuals or companies who don't like Freexian's offering do not have any other choices, short of going to the general Debian consultants list, who may or may not have the needed skills and would take time to search through. https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Funding The funding breakdown for the LTS team appears to be 48% Freexian, 31% volunteer/unknown, 21% other companies. I don't have any data on the proportion of LTS work done by each of these groups, but I get the feeling that the majority of LTS uploads are done by Freexian folks. This means that if Freexian decides to end its provision of services for Debian LTS, then the level of work done for LTS would go down significantly. Were this to happen, it would either significantly damage the image of Debian due to having to end the LTS effort or require us to do work which we have had a hard time finding volunteers for in the past. https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Team There is strong coupling between Debian and Freexian in the language on the Debian LTS pages and the Freexian pages. This is free advertising for Freexian's LTS services and representing Freexian's LTS services as "blessed" by Debian or somehow "official", which could be objected to by other companies who might decide to provide security support services. It may be prudent to remove or alter the language on the Debian LTS pages. https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Funding As far as I can tell, the sole communication between the LTS team and the list of individuals/organisations doing consulting around Debian is a mail attempting to recruit folks to work for Freexian. As far as I can tell, there has been no suggestion that individuals/organisations doing consulting around Debian add themselves to the list of organisations available to hire to work on LTS. This means that the individuals/organisations doing consulting around Debian miss out on the opportunities to work on LTS. https://www.debian.org/consultants/ https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/20160502094142.ga19...@home.ouaza.com Freexian doesn't fund LTS contributors who are not DDs/DMs: this eliminates skilled developers from outside Debian who could contribute to LTS via Freexian and eventually work on Debian more generally. This seems to have prevented at least one former Debian member who was interested in Freexian's offer from contributing. It might also make LTS funding seem like a reward for Debian insiders. https://www.freexian.com/services/debian-lts-details.html#join https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/calqvjpbwcpvr82jrmxmcwuga_mn7wot425-qftvpqpb7aa7...@mail.gmail.com The structure of using existing Debian contributors and funnelling most of the funding to them through one company reduces incentives for companies wanting security support to direct their employees to work on Debian security support. This means that our contributor base stays more static and reduces the chance that new folks will join us. An alternate model where each of the companies currently sponsoring Freexian LTS services instead directed their employees to spend some hours on Debian security support seems more likely to lead to new people getting involved. -- bye, pabs https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
Re: Why do we take so long to realise good ideas (Was: Difficult Packaging Practices)
hi,
just commenting on two bits now:
On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 07:17:07AM +0200, Helmut Grohne wrote:
> On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 10:46:48AM +0200, Ansgar wrote:
> > On Wed, 2019-05-29 at 10:38 +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > > Use the $300,000 on our bank accounts?
> > I heard that this didn't work out well the last time ("dunc tank"),
> > though that was before the time I followed Debian development.
> I tend to concur with Raphael and Holger here.
I think you misunderstood me, in some aspects of this discussion I very much
disagree with Raphael, while at some others I agree with him very much.
Or maybe you haven't ;)
in short: I think Debian should stay a project of volunteer work(ers) and
should not have paid staff. I also think that more people should be paid
by outside entities to work on Debian. And that more people should work
completly voluntarily on Debian!
> [...] But the Linux Foundation is also paying
> people to make Debian reproducible.
"has paid" is correct, nowadays we work under SFC's umbrella, see
https://reproducible-builds.org/news/2018/11/08/reproducible-builds-joins-software-freedom-concervancy/
--
tschau,
Holger
---
holger@(debian|reproducible-builds|layer-acht).org
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Re: Why do we take so long to realise good ideas (Was: Difficult Packaging Practices)
Quoting Helmut Grohne (2019-05-31 07:17:07)
> On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 10:46:48AM +0200, Ansgar wrote:
> > On Wed, 2019-05-29 at 10:38 +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > > Use the $300,000 on our bank accounts?
> >
> > I heard that this didn't work out well the last time ("dunc tank"),
> > though that was before the time I followed Debian development.
>
> I tend to concur with Raphael and Holger here. We've learned a few
> lessons, but that doesn't mean it cannot work. Indeed, I argue that
> "we" are paying developers now and you just didn't notice.
>
> Freexian was already mentioned. But the Linux Foundation is also
> paying people to make Debian reproducible. They're putting a similar
> amount of money into Debian.
>
> While Canonical maintains Ubuntu, they also pay a number of people who
> work on Debian directly and often times push their work into Debian
> first. I think we can honestly say that Debian wouldn't be where it is
> today without Canonical's support in a positive sense.
>
> A number of people report their activities on planet.d.o and some
> disclose which parts of their work are being paid. It turns out that
> some fraction of maintenance cost is performed on company time.
>
> What all of these have in common is that it's some external (to
> Debian) entity that decides which work ends up being done and that it
> is the business of that external entity to source the relevant money.
> The decision who is being paid is externalized from the Debian project
> and that is a quite strong difference to dunc tank.
>
> So if someone were to run a "Fix problems in Debian" company and were
> able to source money for doing so, I think that'd actually work. I'm
> less convinced that we can use Debian money for this in any way. But
> we can still tell people: If you want to improve X in Debian, consider
> donating to Y.
>
> In a sense, I'm arguing that this money business should be
> decentralized. And it already is.
There is a big difference between "Debian people get paid" and "Debian
pays Debian people". The former was always the case, the latter is
problematic.
Debian is a community (involving participants some doing business).
Debian is not a business, and should not become a business!
- Jonas
--
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
[x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private
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Re: Why do we take so long to realise good ideas (Was: Difficult Packaging Practices)
On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 10:46:48AM +0200, Ansgar wrote:
> On Wed, 2019-05-29 at 10:38 +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > Use the $300,000 on our bank accounts?
>
> I heard that this didn't work out well the last time ("dunc tank"),
> though that was before the time I followed Debian development.
I tend to concur with Raphael and Holger here. We've learned a few
lessons, but that doesn't mean it cannot work. Indeed, I argue that "we"
are paying developers now and you just didn't notice.
Freexian was already mentioned. But the Linux Foundation is also paying
people to make Debian reproducible. They're putting a similar amount of
money into Debian.
While Canonical maintains Ubuntu, they also pay a number of people who
work on Debian directly and often times push their work into Debian
first. I think we can honestly say that Debian wouldn't be where it is
today without Canonical's support in a positive sense.
A number of people report their activities on planet.d.o and some
disclose which parts of their work are being paid. It turns out that
some fraction of maintenance cost is performed on company time.
What all of these have in common is that it's some external (to Debian)
entity that decides which work ends up being done and that it is the
business of that external entity to source the relevant money. The
decision who is being paid is externalized from the Debian project and
that is a quite strong difference to dunc tank.
So if someone were to run a "Fix problems in Debian" company and were
able to source money for doing so, I think that'd actually work. I'm
less convinced that we can use Debian money for this in any way. But we
can still tell people: If you want to improve X in Debian, consider
donating to Y.
In a sense, I'm arguing that this money business should be
decentralized. And it already is.
Helmut
paying people for Debian work (Re: Why do we take so long to realise good ideas (Was: Difficult Packaging Practices))
On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 11:01:44AM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > > Use the $300,000 on our bank accounts?
> > I heard that this didn't work out well the last time ("dunc tank"),
> > though that was before the time I followed Debian development.
> Yes, I was there (and mention it briefly in the questions of the talk I
> gave) but it's been a long time ago.
that dunc tank has been 10y ago doesnt really mean things have changed.
> There are things to learn
> from this failed experiment (such as "don't let the DPL decide alone who
> gets paid") but there are also many reasons to believe that we are no
> longer in the same situation.
well, "believe"...
> At that time, the number of persons working
> on open source as part of their paid work was rather low and the jealousy
> aspect was likely more problematic than it would be today. We have been
> getting used to have Debian contributors being paid (such as on LTS) and
> we know that with appropriate rules, the social impact of the use of money
> is acceptable.
I'm not sure this conclusion is true. True, nowadays there are probably
more people being paid to work on free software (but then, also 10y many
people were paid doing that) and true, there's now Debian LTS, which
pays very few Debian people to do work which many Debian people consider
boring.
But there's one significant difference between LTS and dunc tank: dunc
tank was ment as an initiative inside Debian, while LTS is carefully set
up on both sides, in- and outside Debian, and the money part of it is
*completly* handled outside Debian, and I very much like this and I
consider this a main reason why LTS is accepted by the Debian community.
I *believe* things can become ugly very easily if a volunteer projects
decides about salaries and whom to hire and fire, to give two basic
examples.
Also, once motivation has been destroyed, it can be very hard to
impossible to rebuild it. Money can be a huge motivator, and a huge
demotivator as well.
So I don't think LTS has shown that "this can work", as in LTS we have a
very nice benevolent dictator and as such the setup is very different
from what I imagine would be a Debian setup.
I'd much rather have an/more external entity/project/s paying people
doing Debian work. And if that entity is a charity as/under SPI, Debian
could even transfer money to that entity.
--
tschau,
Holger, who is getting paid for free software work, incl. LTS
---
holger@(debian|reproducible-builds|layer-acht).org
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Re: Why do we take so long to realise good ideas
On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 5:36 PM Mo Zhou wrote: > For example, many years ago I proposed that we could hire some > web developers to rewrite our homepage, to make it more good-looking > (Generally I don't care about superficial stuff but our homepage > is really old enough. Look at Gentoo's homepage and compare it with > the ancient version.) The web team has been working on this at their latest sprint. -- bye, pabs https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
Re: Why do we take so long to realise good ideas
Hi, On 2019-05-29 08:38, Raphael Hertzog wrote: > Use the $300,000 on our bank accounts? I totally support the idea that we should find more valuable usage of our fund. For example, if developers don't have enough time or don't want to do something difficult, we could hire somebody else to fix them. For example, many years ago I proposed that we could hire some web developers to rewrite our homepage, to make it more good-looking (Generally I don't care about superficial stuff but our homepage is really old enough. Look at Gentoo's homepage and compare it with the ancient version.)
Re: Why do we take so long to realise good ideas (Was: Difficult Packaging Practices)
On Wed, 29 May 2019, Ansgar wrote:
> On Wed, 2019-05-29 at 10:38 +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > On Wed, 29 May 2019, Andrey Rahmatullin wrote:
> > > One of the popular answers to this and some other problems is "nobody sat
> > > down and wrote the code". Not sure what can we do about this class of
> > > reasons.
> >
> > Use the $300,000 on our bank accounts?
>
> I heard that this didn't work out well the last time ("dunc tank"),
> though that was before the time I followed Debian development.
Yes, I was there (and mention it briefly in the questions of the talk I
gave) but it's been a long time ago. There are things to learn
from this failed experiment (such as "don't let the DPL decide alone who
gets paid") but there are also many reasons to believe that we are no
longer in the same situation. At that time, the number of persons working
on open source as part of their paid work was rather low and the jealousy
aspect was likely more problematic than it would be today. We have been
getting used to have Debian contributors being paid (such as on LTS) and
we know that with appropriate rules, the social impact of the use of money
is acceptable.
The topic still needs to be approached carefully but I believe that we
should aim to have this discussion and build some framework where we can
leverage money to complete projects and tasks that we find important
but that have not gone forward through volunteer work.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer
Support Debian LTS: https://www.freexian.com/services/debian-lts.html
Learn to master Debian: https://debian-handbook.info/get/
Re: Why do we take so long to realise good ideas (Was: Difficult Packaging Practices)
On Wed, 2019-05-29 at 10:38 +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> On Wed, 29 May 2019, Andrey Rahmatullin wrote:
> > One of the popular answers to this and some other problems is "nobody sat
> > down and wrote the code". Not sure what can we do about this class of
> > reasons.
>
> Use the $300,000 on our bank accounts?
I heard that this didn't work out well the last time ("dunc tank"),
though that was before the time I followed Debian development.
Ansgar
Re: Why do we take so long to realise good ideas (Was: Difficult Packaging Practices)
Hi, On Wed, 29 May 2019, Andrey Rahmatullin wrote: > One of the popular answers to this and some other problems is "nobody sat > down and wrote the code". Not sure what can we do about this class of > reasons. Use the $300,000 on our bank accounts? https://lists.debian.org/debian-news/2019/msg2.html And I heard of another $300,000 donation from Google (through Thomas Koch) although I can't find any reference to it. FWIW, I gave a talk on LTS and the topic of funding Debian work at the minidebconf in Marseille (30 minutes): http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2019/miniconf-marseille/2019-05-25/5_years_lts_funding.webm My slides are here: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEvents/fr/2019/Marseille?action=AttachFile=view=debian-lts-5-years-of-funding.pdf Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer Support Debian LTS: https://www.freexian.com/services/debian-lts.html Learn to master Debian: https://debian-handbook.info/get/ signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Why do we take so long to realise good ideas (Was: Difficult Packaging Practices)
On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 08:43:55AM +0200, Andreas Tille wrote: > IMHO this touches another burning topic: Its not that we do not want to > provide some PPA equivalent - its just that we do not realise it. I do > not remember how many years ago we talked about bikesheds (and > obviously we even found an extremely speaking name). > > I do not want to trigger another PPA-bikeshed thread but may be some > analysis why we need to take so much time to realise good ideas (i.e. > I consider a Debian release another very good idea where we take too > long) and what we can possibly do to shorten that time span. One of the popular answers to this and some other problems is "nobody sat down and wrote the code". Not sure what can we do about this class of reasons. -- WBR, wRAR signature.asc Description: PGP signature
