Re: Debian money

[Jesús M. Navarro]

Hi, Alexander:

On Thursday 10 September 2009 22:11:24 Alexander Reichle-Schmehl wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Jesús M. Navarro schrieb:
> >>  4 Marketing stuff:
>
> [..]
>
> > So, if Debian can be truly so great for companies from IBM to Alfresco,
> > to Oracle (and the end result can be so great for we, mere users), how is
> > it that we won't have "certified" stuff from them?  It can't be the
> > platform or else they wouldn't certify with, say, Ubuntu.  It's my
> > opinion that's because while Dell's and Red Hat's (or Canonical's) CEOs
> > get to play golf together that's not the case for Debian.
>
> So what do you propose?  Spend Debian money on golf lessons for Steve?

Not.  But trying to get face to face with choiced high ranked bussiness people 
so they get to see what Debian could offer to them.


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Re: Distributing software written by hostile upstream developers

[Joerg Jaspert]

> In terms of rationale, I think it's clear that we do *not* have to
> package every piece of Free Software that is available to us. If we
> can't have a sensible relationship with the upstream developers, then
> I believe it would be better not to expose Debian and our users to the
> problems that will likely arise from packaging and distributing their
> software.

I am all in favor of being able to refuse the addition of software to
Debian if we know that its upstream is a troublemaker.

I am all against having this responsibility solely with FTPMaster.

I wish/hope it will end up being with a group of DDs. That group should
include FTPMaster (as we have to carry out the decision) and many DDs
From all around the project. A dozen or more, diversity==win in this
case. Even better if the group members term expire together with the
DPLs and they have to be selected and delegated again. (Ok, that
excludes FTPMaster from rotation, as we dont change that often).
And every DD can send in statements in support of other DDs (or
themself) to join the group *or* get another term, as well as getting
them out next rotation.

Or, even harder though better: The DPL or someone appointed seeks out
members each time we have an issue brought up. Not getting the same
person into the group three times in a row. (Or something like it).


Yes, this makes it difficult and lotsa work. But heck, we are going to
reject packages based on social and *NOT* technical standards. If that
gets to be an easy thing we are doing it wrong. Especially as the
perception of social standard and behaviour tends to be very different
From person to person[1], so having this be done by a large group hopefully
makes it better, as more viewpoints are added.[2]



[1] Imagine being the one poor guy of (select one: different
nationality, color, religion, whatevercraphumanscanthinkabout) in
the middle of a circle of 30 bad guys with knifes of (the opposite
what you just selected). Thats a *very* different point of view. :)
No, seriously - we are a very widespread project, such a group
should reflect this.

[2] Sure they will have to have a way to get out of pointless
discussions, but Im sure we can find/define a process for it.

-- 
bye, Joerg
  I wrote this thing but it really sucks
  Awesome! We will release it asap


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Re: Distributing software written by hostile upstream developers

[Joerg Jaspert]

>> Thoughts?
> I'm very much in favour of something like this.  Debian is better off
> without schilyware imo.

This isnt special to that. We had/have other people as upstreams we
might not like. (How about the one that purposely added broken code in a
way that it will run on every users system but never on the maintainers?)

-- 
bye, Joerg
[2.6.15.4 direkt nach 2.6.15.3]
 Linus muss Gentooler hassen.
 wieso?
 Naja, die dürften ihre optimierten Kernel gerade fertig gebaut
haben und müssen jetzt aus prompter Versionitis auf das
Ausprobieren verzichten und den neuen kompilieren... 


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Re: Distributing software written by hostile upstream developers

[Joerg Jaspert]

>> There has been some discussion in the last couple of years about
>> whether or not Debian should distribute software that was written by
>> developers that we consider to be "hostile".
> In my opinion, the current recommendation in the developer references
> is enough for now:

Different thing. This encourages the maintainer to think if he wants
it. Now, what if the maintainer wants it (hey, some people might like
some pain), but a huge group in Debian does not? The latter is what
Steve tries to address, the dev-ref doesnt do any good there.

> If someone really want to maintain such package, we should not
> prohibit it, but we should make it clear that it is strongly
> recommended to not maintain such package, and that the advantage of
> the software should be weighted against the problems it causes for the
> Debian community.  Perhaps we should also suggest that one start
> working on alternatives for packages with hostile upstream, instead of
> spending time on social interactions with upstream. :)

It will not prohibit the maintenance. It will only not let it enter
Debian, using up Debian resources. They are free to host their own
repository or just put the .deb wherever upstream distributes their
code.

-- 
bye, Joerg
You're in good shape for being a Debian, with a SAP background
... anything has to look good from there...


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Re: Debian money

[Alexander Reichle-Schmehl]

Hi!

Jesús M. Navarro schrieb:

>>  4 Marketing stuff:
[..]

> So, if Debian can be truly so great for companies from IBM to Alfresco, to 
> Oracle (and the end result can be so great for we, mere users), how is it 
> that we won't have "certified" stuff from them?  It can't be the platform or 
> else they wouldn't certify with, say, Ubuntu.  It's my opinion that's because 
> while Dell's and Red Hat's (or Canonical's) CEOs get to play golf together 
> that's not the case for Debian.

So what do you propose?  Spend Debian money on golf lessons for Steve?


Best regards,
  Alexander



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Re: Debian money

[Russ Allbery]

Josselin Mouette  writes:
> Le jeudi 10 septembre 2009 à 00:57 +0100, Steve McIntyre a écrit : 

>> 1 New hardware / equipment
>> 
>>a The DSA team have a wishlist of new hardware they'd like […]

> Full ack. Hardware is not that expensive, lack of hardware should not
> hold back any of our development.

Wholeheartedly agreed.

>> b Maintainers of big packages might benefit a lot if we can
>>  loan/donate big machines to them to make things faster. Should
>>  be an easy thing to work out - nominate such people please!

> We could also think of hardware for some specific tasks. We would need
> too much for the kernel team, but for example, wouldn’t Xorg developers
> win from having one graphics card from each major series from the main
> hardware vendors?

Also wholeheartedly agreed.  I think the project could benefit a lot from
buying that sort of hardware (stuff in the $100 to $400 range) for
maintainers who are maintaining high-visibility packages that require it
for testing.  Video cards are an obvious one, as would be some RAID
controllers.  I'm sure others can think of other ideas.

> We could already make more use of the SPI legal advice. There have been
> quite a number of cases where we did not have enough expertise, and
> where we were left in the dark.

Yes.  There have been several lingering questions over copyright
requirements and the like that it would be nice to have resolved.

I'd rather spend money on hardware, on legal advice on issues related to
the project, and on targeted developer meetings than on things like
marketing or direct development.  I think those are places where we know
how to spend money effectively, whereas the latter are not.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   


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Re: Debian money

[Jesús M. Navarro]

Hi, Steve:

On Thursday 10 September 2009 01:57:14 Steve McIntyre wrote:
[...]

>  4 Marketing stuff:

Yes.  There's a kindof "market point" I've been wishing on Debian for 
years "knowing" that it simply could happen: certifications and generally 
rising attention to commercial producers, both hardware and (free/open) 
software.

I think there's right now a thread on debian-users of an individual asking for 
hardware 100% supported because of management.  I know that, say, Dell 
certifices/is certified by Red Hat because both the companies have the 
management the time and the money to reach each other, talk and find their 
common interest points.  It's may opinion that Debian is the perfect platform 
for them: all development being in the open you know from far away if your 
hardware/software will be able to play along next Stable version; if you 
need/want to maintain your own (free) software is quite easy to get into 
Debian repos (you just need to "play nice"); even if you plan to develop on 
the proprietary side, you will be able to use the very same tools than Debian 
for easy and smooth integration.  Being Debian a non for profit with high 
ethics you can count on it not trying to stab you in the back if the wind 
blows in favor of your competitors...

So, if Debian can be truly so great for companies from IBM to Alfresco, to 
Oracle (and the end result can be so great for we, mere users), how is it 
that we won't have "certified" stuff from them?  It can't be the platform or 
else they wouldn't certify with, say, Ubuntu.  It's my opinion that's because 
while Dell's and Red Hat's (or Canonical's) CEOs get to play golf together 
that's not the case for Debian.


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Re: debian trademark tshirt

[Simon Paillard]

On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 06:27:53PM +0200, matouskova.barb...@centrum.cz wrote:
> I have a question about debian trademark. I am trying to find out
> whether I can use debian logo when making a shirt and I came across
> your quotation:
[..]

Yes you can, see : http://www.debian.org/logos/

You can even buy some goodies from:
http://www.debian.org/misc/merchandise

-- 
Simon Paillard


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Re: Debian money

[Harald Geyer]

Frans Pop :
 
> IMO it is not up to us to decide to pass on money donated to us to other 
> projects. If sponsors and donors feel Gnash is worth sponsoring, they 
> will do so themselves. Money donated to Debian should be spent on Debian.

I'm not a DD but I already helped runnning debian booths in vienna. We
did collect donations there. My experience is, that some donors do ask
what we will do with the money but actually most of them don't. They are
giving money to debian, because it's the site where they got their
software from and because they trust us enough to assume that something
useful will be done with the money. Some donors even lack the technical
insight to understand the difference between debian and upstream ...

Well, after the dunc-tank desaster I started to recommend to people
not to donate any money to debian at all but to upstreams instead, 
because "debian has more money than it needs and giving more money to
debian only will cause DDs to start arguing about it and effectively
distracting them from working on the distro." - I would be happy if
debian manages to fix this.

Anyway, the feedback I got after recommending donations to upstreams
was mostly that people generally don't know which upstreams need them
and actually would do something useful with it. Also people don't want
to only support the really big upstreams that have there on booth (OOo
comes to mind) but are simply lost in the massive amount of useful
software in debian.

>From this POV supporting some selected upstreams with money actually
seems something very valid to do. Especially if the money is spent
in a way that fits well with the social contract.

I agree that we should consider the fact that debian is not a commercial
distribution. Perhaps this means that just employing somebody to do
some task is not a good idea. (I believe this is one of the things that
dunc-tank got wrong.) But there sure are other options and perhaps
debian even can experiment with new ways to use money.

Harald


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debian trademark tshirt

[matouskova.barbora]

Hello,
I have a question about debian trademark. I am trying to find out whether I can 
use debian logo when making a shirt and I came across your quotation:

 "We allow all businesses to make reasonable use of the Debian trademark. For 
example, if you make a CD of our Debian GNU/Linux distribution, you can call that product 
Debian. If you want to use the name in some other way, you should ask us first."

Can I make a shirt with the debian logo? I am not going to sell it or make many 
of them. I would like to make one shirt for my brother who has been a debian 
user for many years.

Thank your for any answer.

Barbora Matouskova

Re: Debian money

[Nico Golde]

Hi,
* Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt  [2009-09-10 16:01]:
> Steve McIntyre  writes:
> >  4 Marketing stuff:
> >a box(es) of equipment to take to stands at various shows and
> >  expos. Might be useful, but could be expensive. Where do we store
> >  it/them? Who organises shipping?
> 
> I think this is something which we should pursue. I generally have the
> impression that the Debian booth is relatively boring, while other
> projects seem to be better in properly decorating, displaying their
> products and attracting interest. We should definitely work on that -
> currently, the Debian project booth is usually just like prejudices
> against Debian: Highly technical, unattractive and of no interest to new
> users.

Full ack, on the conferences I visited I always found the 
booths of other distros way more "attractive".

Cheers
Nico
-- 
Nico Golde - http://www.ngolde.de - n...@jabber.ccc.de - GPG: 0xA0A0
For security reasons, all text in this mail is double-rot13 encrypted.


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Re: Distributing software written by hostile upstream developers

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Thu, Sep 10 2009, Steve McIntyre wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 11:00:53AM +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:

>>If someone really want to maintain such package, we should not
>>prohibit it, but we should make it clear that it is strongly
>>recommended to not maintain such package, and that the advantage of
>>the software should be weighted against the problems it causes for the
>>Debian community.  Perhaps we should also suggest that one start
>>working on alternatives for packages with hostile upstream, instead of
>>spending time on social interactions with upstream. :)
>
> Well, what happens if somebody wants to maintain software where there
> is a strong set of opinion that we don't want it? In this case, I'd
> like to delegate the power to the ftpmasters to say so and reject from
> NEW etc. If we have a clear consensus that that would be OK then fine;
> otherwise I'd like to run this through the GR process to make sure the
> project as a whole agrees.

> It could be controversial, which is why I'm bringing this up now
> rather than via an argument after-the-fact...

I would like to see more on how the ftpmasters (a small group of
 overworked people already tasked with too much) will be able to
 determine that there is a strong set of opinions that we do not want it
 (as opposed to a small vocal minority that vehemently opposes
 something -- we have had people violently opposed to things like HAL
 and udev)?

Before we chose to override a  DD's decision about their own
 package, there ought to be an objective criteria for that override, in
 my opinion.

manoj
-- 
Q: What's yellow, and equivalent to the Axiom of Choice? A: Zorn's
Lemon.
Manoj Srivastava    
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B  924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C


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Re: Debian money

[Muammar El Khatib]

Hi,

On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 8:45 AM, Petter Reinholdtsen  wrote:
> [Giacomo A. Catenazzi]
>> It is useful not only for Debian, so IMHO Debian could donate some
>> money, but only if other big distributions (RedHat, SuSe/Novel,
>> Ubuntu, etc.) do the same.
>
> I find this to be a rather useless requirement to have, unless the
> goal is to do nothing.  If something is a good idea to do, Debian
> should do it independently of what the other distributions are doing,
> otherwise we will waste time trying to convince other distributions
> instead of spending time on improving Debian.  Are you volunteering to
> convince the other big distributions to donate money to the same
> projects Debian want to donate money to?  I am not.
>

I do agree with you, Debian should act independently of what the other
distributions are doing without forgetting that in some way we have to
compete and doing it without loosing our essence . OTOH, those
distributions that were named are commercial while we aren't. Our
priority should be to invest money in our project, our DD's and our
maintainers. Once we have covered our needs,  then I think we can
considerate donating money to others.

I found great the idea of  buying hardware for those teams that need
them, as it was said, this shouldn't be a problem for us (given that
we have the money for covering this need). Furthermore, the idea on
investing in how users see us (investing in materials for stands at
expos or more attractive artwork) to make Debian more attractive to
them in some way is very nice, too. It'd be good to break the Idea
that Debian is for people with lots of technical skills and an OS
which is not easy to use. This should be expensive, but  I think we
may destinate at least some money for it at least once to see what
happens.

Regards,

-- 
Muammar El Khatib.
Linux user: 403107.
GPG Key = 127029F1
http://muammar.me | http://proyectociencia.org
  ,''`.
 : :' :
 `. `'
   `-


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Re: Debian money

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

[Giacomo A. Catenazzi]
> It is useful not only for Debian, so IMHO Debian could donate some
> money, but only if other big distributions (RedHat, SuSe/Novel,
> Ubuntu, etc.) do the same.

I find this to be a rather useless requirement to have, unless the
goal is to do nothing.  If something is a good idea to do, Debian
should do it independently of what the other distributions are doing,
otherwise we will waste time trying to convince other distributions
instead of spending time on improving Debian.  Are you volunteering to
convince the other big distributions to donate money to the same
projects Debian want to donate money to?  I am not.

A better approach would be to state that Debian will donate some money
and propose publicly for other distributions to do the same. :)

Happy hacking,
-- 
Petter Reinholdtsen


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Re: Distributing software written by hostile upstream developers

[Steve McIntyre]

On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 11:00:53AM +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
>[Steve McIntyre]
>> There has been some discussion in the last couple of years about
>> whether or not Debian should distribute software that was written by
>> developers that we consider to be "hostile".
>
>In my opinion, the current recommendation in the developer references
>is enough for now:
>
>  If you find that the upstream developers are or become hostile
>  towards Debian or the free software community, you may want to
>  re-consider the need to include the software in Debian. Sometimes
>  the social cost to the Debian community is not worth the benefits
>  the software may bring.
>
>If someone really want to maintain such package, we should not
>prohibit it, but we should make it clear that it is strongly
>recommended to not maintain such package, and that the advantage of
>the software should be weighted against the problems it causes for the
>Debian community.  Perhaps we should also suggest that one start
>working on alternatives for packages with hostile upstream, instead of
>spending time on social interactions with upstream. :)

Well, what happens if somebody wants to maintain software where there
is a strong set of opinion that we don't want it? In this case, I'd
like to delegate the power to the ftpmasters to say so and reject from
NEW etc. If we have a clear consensus that that would be OK then fine;
otherwise I'd like to run this through the GR process to make sure the
project as a whole agrees.

It could be controversial, which is why I'm bringing this up now
rather than via an argument after-the-fact...

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com
"Since phone messaging became popular, the young generation has lost the
 ability to read or write anything that is longer than one hundred and sixty
 characters."  -- Ignatios Souvatzis


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Re: Debian money

[Frans Pop]

On Thursday 10 September 2009, Giacomo A. Catenazzi wrote:
> It is useful not only for Debian, so IMHO Debian could donate some
> money, but only if other big distributions (RedHat, SuSe/Novel, Ubuntu,
> etc.) do the same.

Even then not IMO. Those other distributions are commercial, Debian is 
not. Our money comes from sponsors and donors who've decided to donate 
their money to *Debian* and not to Gnash.

IMO it is not up to us to decide to pass on money donated to us to other 
projects. If sponsors and donors feel Gnash is worth sponsoring, they 
will do so themselves. Money donated to Debian should be spent on Debian.

Cheers,
FJP


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Re: Debian money

[Giacomo A. Catenazzi]

Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:

[Frans Pop]


   b Gnash. Petter is very keen on this, but I'm not so sure. Don't
 they have other ways to get funding? Thoughts?

I don't think Debian as a project should sponsor upstream
development.  That's up to individual DDs.


A working free software implementation of the flash web plugin is a
requirement for Debian to provide a complete free software based
desktop.  At the moment flash is used on so many web sites that the
common user will not accept a browser without working Flash.  I
believe that should be a priority of the Debian project to provide a
complete free software desktop.  And as Gnash is one of the few
projects where money will help speed up development, I believe
spending Debian money on Gnash is a good idea.  Why should Debian not
sponsor upstream development for projects that are important to
Debian?


It is useful not only for Debian, so IMHO Debian could donate some
money, but only if other big distributions (RedHat, SuSe/Novel, Ubuntu,
etc.) do the same.

ciao
cate


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Re: Debian money

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

[Frans Pop]
>>  6 Fund other related projects
>>
>>a Debian Edu. Clearly good for us to do - heavily linked with
>>  Debian.
>
> Not sure about that. IMO it's up to the schools and governmental
> institutions that use Debian Edu to sponsor that.  However, I have
> no problem with Debian sponsoring development meetings that aim to
> work on Debian Edu, but that comes under the heading of "Fund
> developer gatherings".

Almost all expenses in the Debian Edu project are for developer
gatherings.  We try to organize 7-8 gatherings a year, and the cost
per gathering is around 2500 EURO, thus giving us a yearly need for
2 EURO.  In addition to this, we buy test hardware for use at the
developer gatherings, have funded a user conference once, and funded
travel and lodging for debconf and other conferences.  We funded a
Gnash developer gathering last year.  The Debian Edu project is almost
out of funds, and need more donations. :)

>>b Gnash. Petter is very keen on this, but I'm not so sure. Don't
>>  they have other ways to get funding? Thoughts?
>
> I don't think Debian as a project should sponsor upstream
> development.  That's up to individual DDs.

A working free software implementation of the flash web plugin is a
requirement for Debian to provide a complete free software based
desktop.  At the moment flash is used on so many web sites that the
common user will not accept a browser without working Flash.  I
believe that should be a priority of the Debian project to provide a
complete free software desktop.  And as Gnash is one of the few
projects where money will help speed up development, I believe
spending Debian money on Gnash is a good idea.  Why should Debian not
sponsor upstream development for projects that are important to
Debian?

Happy hacking,
-- 
Petter Reinholdtsen


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Re: Debian money

[Martin Schulze]

Frans Pop wrote:
> On Thursday 10 September 2009, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> >  5 Pay people to do stuff we don't/can't/won't:
> 
>  g website redesign and restructuring
>This is something we seem unable to make any progress at and that
>is very much overdue. Especially the restructuring part would
>involve loads of tedious work and some compensation for that would
>IMO be in order. Of course we would need to agree on requirements
>first.

Such work should only be done by people inside the project and not by
external people.  There have been several attempts by external people
that haven't caused the required concense and agreement inside the
project.  New attempts shouldn't be done similar.

We also need to recall problems Dunc-Tank caused and don't make
similar mistakes again.

Regards,

Joey

-- 
Have you ever noticed that "General Public Licence" contains the word "Pub"?


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Re: Debian money

[Frans Pop]

On Thursday 10 September 2009, Frans Pop wrote:
> >  6 Fund other related projects
> >
> >    b Gnash. Petter is very keen on this, but I'm not so sure. Don't
> >      they have other ways to get funding? Thoughts?
>
> I don't think Debian as a project should sponsor upstream development.
> That's up to individual DDs.

Or users obviously.


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Re: Debian money

[Philipp Kern]

On 2009-09-10, Frans Pop  wrote:
> On Thursday 10 September 2009, Steve McIntyre wrote:
>>  5 Pay people to do stuff we don't/can't/won't:
>
>  g website redesign and restructuring
>This is something we seem unable to make any progress at and that
>is very much overdue. Especially the restructuring part would
>involve loads of tedious work and some compensation for that would
>IMO be in order. Of course we would need to agree on requirements
>first.

There's a website redesign pending.  When I conclude from my own expiriences
from webwml it's mostly a fear to overload/disappoint translators that blocks
huge updates from happening.

Kind regards,
Philipp Kern


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Re: Debian money

[Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt]

Steve McIntyre  writes:
>  4 Marketing stuff:
>a box(es) of equipment to take to stands at various shows and
>  expos. Might be useful, but could be expensive. Where do we store
>  it/them? Who organises shipping?

I think this is something which we should pursue. I generally have the
impression that the Debian booth is relatively boring, while other
projects seem to be better in properly decorating, displaying their
products and attracting interest. We should definitely work on that -
currently, the Debian project booth is usually just like prejudices
against Debian: Highly technical, unattractive and of no interest to new
users.

Marc
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Re: Distributing software written by hostile upstream developers

[Julien Cristau]

On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 00:12:18 +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote:

> Thoughts?
> 
I'm very much in favour of something like this.  Debian is better off
without schilyware imo.

Cheers,
Julien


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Re: Debian money

[Frans Pop]

On Thursday 10 September 2009, Steve McIntyre wrote:
>  5 Pay people to do stuff we don't/can't/won't:

 g website redesign and restructuring
   This is something we seem unable to make any progress at and that
   is very much overdue. Especially the restructuring part would
   involve loads of tedious work and some compensation for that would
   IMO be in order. Of course we would need to agree on requirements
   first.

>  6 Fund other related projects
>
>a Debian Edu. Clearly good for us to do - heavily linked with
>  Debian.

Not sure about that. IMO it's up to the schools and governmental 
institutions that use Debian Edu to sponsor that.
However, I have no problem with Debian sponsoring development meetings 
that aim to work on Debian Edu, but that comes under the heading of "Fund 
developer gatherings".

>b Gnash. Petter is very keen on this, but I'm not so sure. Don't
>  they have other ways to get funding? Thoughts?

I don't think Debian as a project should sponsor upstream development. 
That's up to individual DDs.

Cheers,
FJP


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Re: Debian money

[Mauro Lizaur]

2009-09-10, Steve McIntyre:

> Hi folks,
> 
> Suggestions and comments from others
> 
> 
[...]
>
>  6 Fund other related projects
>  
>a Debian Edu. Clearly good for us to do - heavily linked with
>  Debian.
> 


I think that this could be really interesting.
Another thing that could be done regarding Debian and education is
to do something ala (don't hate me) Ubuntu by preparing cds/dvds and 
sending them to public schools from places with little/no resources, 
which unfortunately tend to receive  privative software at *low cost* (!).
Note that I'm not referring to just "hey, let's giveaway free cds! \o/"
like Ubuntu does, but something more like the OLPC project.
The downside of this idea is that will probably be too expensive,
but OTOH 1 u$s =~ 4 $AR, and I'm sure that in many places the 
conversion rate goes in a similar way.

Saludos,
Mauro

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Re: Debian money

[Giacomo A. Catenazzi]

Steve McIntyre wrote:


 1 New hardware / equipment

   a The DSA team have a wishlist of new hardware they'd like, along
 with a set of donated machines that need configuring and/or
 shipping. As far as I'm concerned, so long as the individual
 requests here look reasonable then they get approved as and when
 they happen.

   b Maintainers of big packages might benefit a lot if we can
 loan/donate big machines to them to make things faster. Should
 be an easy thing to work out - nominate such people please!


Some months ago Debian asked for sponsored hardware:
http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090208

I did not read any news about his, so maybe we could use some
money for such infrastructure hardware.

ciao
cate


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Re: Debian money

[Josselin Mouette]

Le jeudi 10 septembre 2009 à 00:57 +0100, Steve McIntyre a écrit : 
> 1 New hardware / equipment
> 
>a The DSA team have a wishlist of new hardware they'd like […]

Full ack. Hardware is not that expensive, lack of hardware should not
hold back any of our development.

> b Maintainers of big packages might benefit a lot if we can
>  loan/donate big machines to them to make things faster. Should
>  be an easy thing to work out - nominate such people please!

We could also think of hardware for some specific tasks. We would need
too much for the kernel team, but for example, wouldn’t Xorg developers
win from having one graphics card from each major series from the main
hardware vendors?

> 2 Fund developer gatherings:
> 
>a Teams interested in a face to face meeting […]
>b More money for DebConf travel sponsorship […]

Given the compared efficiency of both kinds of meetings, I think we
should favor more specific meetings (like the Extramadura ones) rather
than Debconf, which could end up sucking all our money given the number
of participants, for little added benefit.

> 3 Legal costs
> 
>a Pay for legal advice if needed. We have some cover for legal
>  advice via SPI, but we may need to ask for more than the pro bono
>  services might be able to give us.

We could already make more use of the SPI legal advice. There have been
quite a number of cases where we did not have enough expertise, and
where we were left in the dark.

> 4 Marketing stuff:
[Lots of nice but expensive stuff]

This kind of thing should be encouraged, but maybe with a different pool
of funds. I’d be all for creating a specific entity gathering funds for
marketing operations if there is enough interest in it.

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Re: Debian money, booth on german church meeting

[Steve Langasek]

On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 10:52:37AM +0200, Martin Schulze wrote:
> > It seems to me that these consulting businesses would be good
> > addresses to ask for sponsorship of a Debian/GNU/Linux booth if there
> > is no way getting a free booth for a charitable association such as
> > the Debian Project or the GNU/Linux community.

> I've just seen that LUKI e.V. is an association that actively seeks
> donations.  If you'd have to pay for a booth at the next Kirchentag
> and the organisers are unwilling to sponsor a booth, wouldn't LUKI
> e.V. be the canonical organisation to ask for sponsorship.

My understanding was that this was about helping LUKI afford to *have* a
booth at the event, not about Debian having its own booth at the event.

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Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
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Re: Distributing software written by hostile upstream developers

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

[Steve McIntyre]
> There has been some discussion in the last couple of years about
> whether or not Debian should distribute software that was written by
> developers that we consider to be "hostile".

In my opinion, the current recommendation in the developer references
is enough for now:

  If you find that the upstream developers are or become hostile
  towards Debian or the free software community, you may want to
  re-consider the need to include the software in Debian. Sometimes
  the social cost to the Debian community is not worth the benefits
  the software may bring.

If someone really want to maintain such package, we should not
prohibit it, but we should make it clear that it is strongly
recommended to not maintain such package, and that the advantage of
the software should be weighted against the problems it causes for the
Debian community.  Perhaps we should also suggest that one start
working on alternatives for packages with hostile upstream, instead of
spending time on social interactions with upstream. :)

> I also ended up talking to multiple people at DebConf about this
> issue and it was suggested that we should have a proper project
> discussion on this front, maybe leading to a GR to properly gauge
> the opinion of the project as a whole.

I do not believe this warrant a full GR vote.  A simple web survey
would be enough, in my opinion.

Happy hacking,
-- 
Petter Reinholdtsen


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Re: Debian money, booth on german church meeting

[Martin Schulze]

Martin Schulze wrote:
> Thomas Koch wrote:
> > > Thomas Koch wrote:
> > > > There's a german association, "Linux user in der Kirche"[1] (Linux user
> > > > in the church), which plans to organize a booth on the next big meeting
> > > > of the german church in 2010.
> > > > They aim is to promote the usage of linux in the administrations of
> > > > church communities and of course private use of linux.
> > > > The cost of the booth is around 800 Euro, which must be collected from
> > > > private sponsorship until december to make the booth happen.
> > > >
> > > > Maybe debian could sponsor this event?
> > > 
> > > Thanks a lot for your engagement for Debian and GNU/Linux in clerical
> > > environments.
> > > 
> > > For other events and shows we have always asked the organisers of the
> > > event to sponsor the booth for Free Software.  This even worked for
> > > highly commercial events such as CeBIT and Systems.  Partially these
> > > booths weren't sponsored by the organisers but by companies already
> > > maintaining a booth on that particular show.
> > > 
> > > I'm not sure the Debian project should start paying for booths now.
> > > 
> > > I would rather like Debian to help running the booth by providing
> > > hardware if needed or booth material such as posters and large signs.
> > > 
> > There's a radical difference between technical exhibitions like CeBIT and 
> > the 
> > Kirchentag: At the Kirchentag most of the exhibitants are non-profit. 
> > Compared 
> > to little initiatives supporting schools in poor countries, a linux booth 
> > is 
> > even more on the profit site:
> > If people switch to linux there is business to be made in consulting. 
> > (Still 
> > luki is such a small association that there members would not be likely to 
> > profite from such business.)
> 
> It seems to me that these consulting businesses would be good
> addresses to ask for sponsorship of a Debian/GNU/Linux booth if there
> is no way getting a free booth for a charitable association such as
> the Debian Project or the GNU/Linux community.

Hi again,

I've just seen that LUKI e.V. is an association that actively seeks
donations.  If you'd have to pay for a booth at the next Kirchentag
and the organisers are unwilling to sponsor a booth, wouldn't LUKI
e.V. be the canonical organisation to ask for sponsorship.

Regards,

Joey

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Re: Debian money, booth on german church meeting

[Martin Schulze]

Thomas Koch wrote:
> > Thomas Koch wrote:
> > > There's a german association, "Linux user in der Kirche"[1] (Linux user
> > > in the church), which plans to organize a booth on the next big meeting
> > > of the german church in 2010.
> > > They aim is to promote the usage of linux in the administrations of
> > > church communities and of course private use of linux.
> > > The cost of the booth is around 800 Euro, which must be collected from
> > > private sponsorship until december to make the booth happen.
> > >
> > > Maybe debian could sponsor this event?
> > 
> > Thanks a lot for your engagement for Debian and GNU/Linux in clerical
> > environments.
> > 
> > For other events and shows we have always asked the organisers of the
> > event to sponsor the booth for Free Software.  This even worked for
> > highly commercial events such as CeBIT and Systems.  Partially these
> > booths weren't sponsored by the organisers but by companies already
> > maintaining a booth on that particular show.
> > 
> > I'm not sure the Debian project should start paying for booths now.
> > 
> > I would rather like Debian to help running the booth by providing
> > hardware if needed or booth material such as posters and large signs.
> > 
> There's a radical difference between technical exhibitions like CeBIT and the 
> Kirchentag: At the Kirchentag most of the exhibitants are non-profit. 
> Compared 
> to little initiatives supporting schools in poor countries, a linux booth is 
> even more on the profit site:
> If people switch to linux there is business to be made in consulting. (Still 
> luki is such a small association that there members would not be likely to 
> profite from such business.)

It seems to me that these consulting businesses would be good
addresses to ask for sponsorship of a Debian/GNU/Linux booth if there
is no way getting a free booth for a charitable association such as
the Debian Project or the GNU/Linux community.

Regards,

Joey

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Re: Debian money, booth on german church meeting

[Thomas Koch]

> Thomas Koch wrote:
> > There's a german association, "Linux user in der Kirche"[1] (Linux user
> > in the church), which plans to organize a booth on the next big meeting
> > of the german church in 2010.
> > They aim is to promote the usage of linux in the administrations of
> > church communities and of course private use of linux.
> > The cost of the booth is around 800 Euro, which must be collected from
> > private sponsorship until december to make the booth happen.
> >
> > Maybe debian could sponsor this event?
> 
> Thanks a lot for your engagement for Debian and GNU/Linux in clerical
> environments.
> 
> For other events and shows we have always asked the organisers of the
> event to sponsor the booth for Free Software.  This even worked for
> highly commercial events such as CeBIT and Systems.  Partially these
> booths weren't sponsored by the organisers but by companies already
> maintaining a booth on that particular show.
> 
> I'm not sure the Debian project should start paying for booths now.
> 
> I would rather like Debian to help running the booth by providing
> hardware if needed or booth material such as posters and large signs.
> 
> Regards,
> 
>   Joey
> 
There's a radical difference between technical exhibitions like CeBIT and the 
Kirchentag: At the Kirchentag most of the exhibitants are non-profit. Compared 
to little initiatives supporting schools in poor countries, a linux booth is 
even more on the profit site:
If people switch to linux there is business to be made in consulting. (Still 
luki is such a small association that there members would not be likely to 
profite from such business.)

Regards, Thomas Koch

Thomas Koch, http://www.koch.ro


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Re: Debian money, booth on german church meeting

[Martin Schulze]

Thomas Koch wrote:
> There's a german association, "Linux user in der Kirche"[1] (Linux user in 
> the 
> church), which plans to organize a booth on the next big meeting of the 
> german 
> church in 2010.
> They aim is to promote the usage of linux in the administrations of church 
> communities and of course private use of linux.
> The cost of the booth is around 800 Euro, which must be collected from 
> private 
> sponsorship until december to make the booth happen.
> 
> Maybe debian could sponsor this event?

Thanks a lot for your engagement for Debian and GNU/Linux in clerical
environments.

For other events and shows we have always asked the organisers of the
event to sponsor the booth for Free Software.  This even worked for
highly commercial events such as CeBIT and Systems.  Partially these
booths weren't sponsored by the organisers but by companies already
maintaining a booth on that particular show.

I'm not sure the Debian project should start paying for booths now.

I would rather like Debian to help running the booth by providing
hardware if needed or booth material such as posters and large signs.

Regards,

Joey

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