Re: debian-private declassification team (looking for one)

2010-06-25 Thread Stefano Zacchiroli
On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 05:06:12PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
 I've been reminded [1] that we're still pending implementation of the
 General Resolution entitled Declassification of debian-private list
 archives [2].
snip
 If you are interested please mail lea...@d.o with your declaration of
 interest.

Status update on this. We got some volunteers, but no one with actually
enough free time to start doing the declassification right now. In fact,
more than that, what is needed is someone to set up a sustainable work
flow to both declassify in batch all the back log and then to keep up
routinely with the new stuff that can be declassified.

All that anticipated, it would be pointless to keep on reiterating call
for helps on this in the future (e.g. at each DPL change :)). So, with
the help of the secretary, we've added the following notice to the vote
page [2]:

 Note: This resolution is currently being implemented, but is not fully
 deployed yet. Check the status page for more information.

where status page is an anchor pointing to [1], that contains the
following text:

 Debian is more than willing to keep up to its promises and implement
 what the outcome of this GR requires. Still, the declassification
 cannot happen per se, but rather needs Debian Developer volunteers to
 actually do that.

 Until a suitable team of volunteers with the energy to work on the
 issue shows up, this GR will remain not implemented.

 Bottom line: help is needed. If you are interested to help, please
 check the last call for help on the matter and contact
 lea...@debian.org to volunteer.

 Ideally, in your mail you should come up with a suitable
 declassification work flow for both past messages and for new messages
 that daily become declassifiable.

If anyone of you want to see this happen, you know what to do and/or you
can point other people to that page.

Cheers.


[1] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianPrivateDeclassification
[2] http://www.debian.org/vote/2005/vote_002

-- 
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Re: Support timeframe

2010-06-25 Thread Bernd Zeimetz
On 06/23/2010 07:22 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
 The reason why I ask is because we have a hardware appliance that is based on 
 Debian and we are working on upgrading to version 5.  Because the previous 
 version is not longer supported, we need to provide a patch policy for our 
 appliance.

If you're still working on that, it might make sense to skip Lenny and upgrade
to Squeeze directly. Its a good time to test things now and come out with the
finished product when Squeeze is released, or probably a bit after that. The
freeze time is more or less fixed now.

As usual in Debian - which is a community effort mostly - you can get a release
quicker or longer security support for a release, if you pay somebody to do so.
There are several companies and consultants who employ/are Debian developers and
would be willing to do such a job.


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Re: Support timeframe

2010-06-25 Thread Yves-Alexis Perez
On 25/06/2010 10:52, Bernd Zeimetz wrote:
 As usual in Debian - which is a community effort mostly - you can get a 
 release
 quicker or longer security support for a release, if you pay somebody to do 
 so.
 There are several companies and consultants who employ/are Debian developers 
 and
 would be willing to do such a job.
 

And if in the end that means there are more people working on security
updates for (old)stable release, that means it benefits every user.
Sure, the support might be on very specific packages, not all the
distribution, meaning the security team can't extend the supported time,
but it's still better than nothing :)

Cheers,
-- 
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Re: debian-private declassification team (looking for one)

2010-06-25 Thread Andreas Tille
On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 09:58:23AM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
 
 Status update on this. We got some volunteers, but no one with actually
 enough free time to start doing the declassification right now. In fact,

I have the gut feeling that this declassification issue is some kind of
RFP bug which nobody really wants to pick.  If you ask me if I would
prefer people working on fixing RC bugs or rather reading piles of old
mails to decide about declasification or not I would have a clear
answer.

IMHO we should rethink the issue:  In how far is spending time into
declassification of old E-Mails helpful for our users and Debian as a
project.  Just to prove we are open (except of about 10% of the not
declassification mails)?  Does anybody think that some thousand of
people after declassification of mails will start reading those old
stuff?

To get me correct: I'm not against declassification in general and I'd
be fine if all my mails to debian-pr would be published - but the effort
to do the actual work just drains time from people who could spend their
time more effectively for the good of Debian.

Kind regards

   Andreas.

PS: Stefano, all people who disagree with my mail are obviosely
volunteers for the declassification team and will probably start
working on it soon.

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Re: debian-private declassification team (looking for one)

2010-06-25 Thread Stefano Zacchiroli
On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 10:36:24AM +0200, Andreas Tille wrote:
 I have the gut feeling that this declassification issue is some kind of
 RFP bug which nobody really wants to pick.  If you ask me if I would
 prefer people working on fixing RC bugs or rather reading piles of old
 mails to decide about declasification or not I would have a clear
 answer.
snip
 PS: Stefano, all people who disagree with my mail are obviosely
 volunteers for the declassification team and will probably start
 working on it soon.

I surely agree that, having to choose on where we should put energies,
fixing RC bugs is a way better investment of volunteer time (.. and I
hope this is enough to avoid being hit by your side rule :-)). But this
is not the point here: the point is rather that we had a vote on the
matter, we decided as a project that such archives shall be
declassified. Now it's time to keep up with what we promised.

Apparently ATM we don't have the energy to do that. That is just fine:
we are all volunteers and we cannot be forced to do specific stuff.
Still, we need to show our honesty, clarify our willingness to implement
our decision, and make clear the needed conditions for that GR to be
implemented. I believe that the wiki page and the pointer to it from the
vote page are enough of a message in that respect.

If anything, this episode might also help us realize that before voting
on a matter (or proposing to vote on a matter) we should think twice at
the possibility of keeping up with what the vote entails.
.oO( vote is cheap, show me the volunteers ?)

Cheers.

-- 
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Re: debian-private declassification team (looking for one)

2010-06-25 Thread Andreas Tille
On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 12:57:06PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
 But this
 is not the point here: the point is rather that we had a vote on the
 matter, we decided as a project that such archives shall be
 declassified. Now it's time to keep up with what we promised.

I clearly remember that vote.  But how much sense does this vote make if
nobody does the actual work?  Voting about a decision is cheap, but
doing the work is not.  Normally you vote between comparable options.
We voted between no work at all, just proceed as before and doing an
in principle reasonable thing which cases a lot of work (not to mention
triggering fatal failures).  If you ask me the voting was based only on
in principle reasonable but not on I want to do this work.
 
 Apparently ATM we don't have the energy to do that. That is just fine:
 we are all volunteers and we cannot be forced to do specific stuff.
 Still, we need to show our honesty, clarify our willingness to implement
 our decision, and make clear the needed conditions for that GR to be
 implemented. I believe that the wiki page and the pointer to it from the
 vote page are enough of a message in that respect.

To throw in some fire into the discussion: If somebody want's us to do
this work, he should probably pay for this.  IMHO this kind of work
needs some more motivation than just that some people decided.  If
nobody is willing to pay for the work which has to be done (not the
content which is free for sure) there is obviosely not enough interest
in getting the work done.  (And I personally would vote against spending
Debian's own money for this.)
 
 If anything, this episode might also help us realize that before voting
 on a matter (or proposing to vote on a matter) we should think twice at
 the possibility of keeping up with what the vote entails.
 .oO( vote is cheap, show me the volunteers ?)

Yep.  IMHO the vote is just void and was done in an emotional heat.

Kind regards

Andreas.

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Re: debian-private declassification team (looking for one)

2010-06-25 Thread Bernhard R. Link
* Stefano Zacchiroli z...@debian.org [100625 12:57]:
 Apparently ATM we don't have the energy to do that. That is just fine:
 we are all volunteers and we cannot be forced to do specific stuff.
 Still, we need to show our honesty, clarify our willingness to implement
 our decision, and make clear the needed conditions for that GR to be
 implemented. I believe that the wiki page and the pointer to it from the
 vote page are enough of a message in that respect.

 If anything, this episode might also help us realize that before voting
 on a matter (or proposing to vote on a matter) we should think twice at
 the possibility of keeping up with what the vote entails.
 .oO( vote is cheap, show me the volunteers ?)

Even if not acted on, the vote still has the advantage that it specifies
a proper process. We do not need any heated discussions next time and
noone can claim they did not know something like this would happen with
their mail. And if someone complains they cannot quote some publically
or use in some scientific paper they can be told they just need to
volunteer

I might be too much looking at Debian from the inside, but I never
considered it to have any effect without volunteers willing to do so.

Bernhard R. Link


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Re: debian-private declassification team (looking for one)

2010-06-25 Thread Stefano Zacchiroli
On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 01:19:42PM +0200, Andreas Tille wrote:
 I clearly remember that vote.  But how much sense does this vote make if
 nobody does the actual work?  Voting about a decision is cheap, but
 doing the work is not.  Normally you vote between comparable options.
 We voted between no work at all, just proceed as before and doing an
 in principle reasonable thing which cases a lot of work (not to mention
 triggering fatal failures).  If you ask me the voting was based only on
 in principle reasonable but not on I want to do this work.

I'm not sure I understand against *what* exactly you're arguing; nor it
is clear to me whether you are proposing a different course of action
than the status quo.

The vote is there and we cannot change the past; the vote gives a
process (as Bernhard observed in a different post) and shows our
willingness to be transparent. Are you proposing to state explicitly
that the vote is moot? I disagree, it is not. Still it is currently not
implemented. The only thing that has changed is that we now clearly
state that it is so and detail what is needed to go forward.  Are you
against any of the above? I personally see no regression in all that.

 To throw in some fire into the discussion: If somebody want's us to do
 this work, he should probably pay for this.  IMHO this kind of work
 needs some more motivation than just that some people decided.  If
 nobody is willing to pay for the work which has to be done (not the
 content which is free for sure) there is obviosely not enough interest
 in getting the work done.  (And I personally would vote against spending
 Debian's own money for this.)

This is a very slippery rope: it is us who voted, not someone external
to the project; arguing now that that someone should pay, if she really
cares about obtaining the result, sounds very weird.  But OK, that was
just to heat the discussion (do we really need that?), so I probably
shouldn't have bitten :)

Cheers.

-- 
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z...@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
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Re: debian-private declassification team (looking for one)

2010-06-25 Thread Frans Pop
On Friday 25 June 2010, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
 I'm not sure I understand against *what* exactly you're arguing; nor it
 is clear to me whether you are proposing a different course of action
 than the status quo.

 The vote is there and we cannot change the past [...]

I would welcome a new GR to rescind the previous one and revert d-private 
to what it's always been: private. That way we can stop worrying about the 
whole issue and we will no longer run the risk of making things public 
that their authors do not want to be made public.

Cheers,
FJP


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Re: debian-private declassification team (looking for one)

2010-06-25 Thread Andreas Tille
On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 01:59:53PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
 The vote is there and we cannot change the past;

I do not want to change the past.

 the vote gives a
 process (as Bernhard observed in a different post) and shows our
 willingness to be transparent. Are you proposing to state explicitly
 that the vote is moot?

No it is not.  In the sense of Bernd the vote just shows our
willingness.  But the effect of the vote is in my opinion not more.  (In
a similar way we could vote on having nice weather conditions next
summer.  I would agree on this, but I think there is nothing we can
really do about the realisation of this vote.) 

 I disagree, it is not. Still it is currently not
 implemented. The only thing that has changed is that we now clearly
 state that it is so and detail what is needed to go forward.  Are you
 against any of the above? I personally see no regression in all that.

I do not want to stop any volunteer to do the work.  I just doubt there
will be anybody.
 
  To throw in some fire into the discussion: If somebody want's us to do
  this work, he should probably pay for this.  IMHO this kind of work
  needs some more motivation than just that some people decided.  If
  nobody is willing to pay for the work which has to be done (not the
  content which is free for sure) there is obviosely not enough interest
  in getting the work done.  (And I personally would vote against spending
  Debian's own money for this.)
 
 This is a very slippery rope:

Yes, this was intended.

 it is us who voted, not someone external to the project;

To stick to my example above: If we would vote on good weather
conditions, do you think we are really responsible to start working on
this just because we voted on it?  You just have no handle on volunteers
to do a boring job like this.

 arguing now that that someone should pay, if she really
 cares about obtaining the result, sounds very weird.

Well not really.  We agreed that somebody is *allowed* to do the work
(instead of keeping the information secret).  We did not voted on the
means which are needed that someone really does the work.  (If I
remember correctly I *intentionally* did not voted on this GR because
I was wondering who would really do the work.)

My ulterior motive in this suggestion was: How we can practically find
out whether some is *really* interested in a work which consumes a team
of DDs spare time.

 But OK, that was
 just to heat the discussion (do we really need that?), so I probably
 shouldn't have bitten :)

Yes, the main motivation was do we really need that? and stretching
the idea a bit to some provoking ends.  Also my answer to your arguing
was not completely honest, just continue provoking.  And I go even
further:  I will probably not continue to spend my time on discussing
this issue - it is probably wasted as well, because it just does not
change the issue as it is.

Kind regards

Andreas.

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Re: debian-private declassification team (looking for one)

2010-06-25 Thread Russ Allbery
Frans Pop elen...@planet.nl writes:

 I would welcome a new GR to rescind the previous one and revert
 d-private to what it's always been: private. That way we can stop
 worrying about the whole issue and we will no longer run the risk of
 making things public that their authors do not want to be made public.

+1.  Then people wouldn't have to keep putting this is private in
messages and could just assume it.  If there aren't enough volunteers to
do the work anyway, we're wasting low levels of energy making people aware
of this right now.

-- 
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Overview of Debian's financial flows

2010-06-25 Thread Luk Claes
Hi

Here is an overview of the most important financial flows of money hold
on Debian's behalf this year up to May 31st.

January:

SPI [0] (in USD):
  * donations:+ 9,849.73
  * freight:  - 3,372.66
  * hard drives:  - 1,138.35
  * processing fees:  -23.68
  * SPI 5%:   -   142.58
  * travel reimbursement: - 1,030.13

ffis [1] (in EUR):
  * donations:+   721.11
  * BSP Moenchengladbach  -   297.50
  * new backup server - 7,607.48

February:
-
SPI (in USD):
  * donations:+ 2,039.00
  * Debian Edu sponsoring:- 5,022.00
  * Processing Fees:  -70.96
  * BSP New York: -19.92
  * SPI 5%:   -   101.95
  * travel reimbursement: - 1,085.06

ffis (in EUR):
  * donations:+   100.00
  * travel reimbursement  -   500.00

March:
--
SPI (in USD):
  * donations:+ 4,759.35
  * DebConf Housing: - 28,620.00
  * DebConf Liability Ins: -  390.00
  * Incoming Wire Fee:-15.00
  * Panama Mini DebConf:  - 1,100.00
  * Processing Fees:  -26.93
  * Spanish Mini DebConf: - 2,061.15
  * SPI 5%:   -44.97
  * travel reimbursement: - 2,826.31

ffis (in EUR):
  * donations:+   216.11

April:
--
SPI (in USD):
  * donations:+ 1,888.15
  * Candy for LH: -67.00
  * Hardware for MIPS:-76.29
  * Processing Fees:  -66.76
  * SPI 5%:   -54.91
  * Trademark Reg:-   500.00
  * travel reimbursement: -   602.31

ffis (in EUR):
  * donations:+51.11
  * Groupware Meeting:-   240.00
  * travel reimbursement: -   719.43

May:

SPI (in USD):
  * donations:   + 41,199.65
  * DebConf DayTrip:  - 1,003.50
  * new archive server:  - 17,051.35
  * Processing Fees:  -   242.51
  * SPI 5%:   -46.20
  * travel reimbursement: - 5,472.59

ffis (in EUR):
  * donations:+   547.11

Note that DebConf financial flows are included in SPI's figures, though
mentioned separately where easily possible. Also note that some of the
sponsoring for meetings and Debian Edu is (or will be) used by its
organisers for travel reimbursement.

More information about the Debian Auditor's role and the list of
organisations holding assets in trust for Debian can be found on the
wiki [2].

Cheers

Luk

[0] http://www.spi-inc.org/
[1] http://www.ffis.de/
[2] http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Auditor


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Re: debian-private declassification team (looking for one)

2010-06-25 Thread Faidon Liambotis
On 25/06/2010 07:43 μμ, Russ Allbery wrote:
 I would welcome a new GR to rescind the previous one and revert
 d-private to what it's always been: private. That way we can stop
 worrying about the whole issue and we will no longer run the risk of
 making things public that their authors do not want to be made public.
 
 +1.  Then people wouldn't have to keep putting this is private in
 messages and could just assume it.  If there aren't enough volunteers to
 do the work anyway, we're wasting low levels of energy making people aware
 of this right now.
I agree as well. There's no point in making promises we cannot fulfill;
if anything, it makes us look bad.

We should just accept the fact that noone will ever re-read a big pile
of old, heated, discussions and vacation notices just to publicize parts
of them. The time plus the risk of making a mistake (and the fallout of
that) just doesn't worth it.

Regards,
Faidon


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Re: debian-private declassification team (looking for one)

2010-06-25 Thread Peter Samuelson

[Andreas Tille]
 I do not want to stop any volunteer to do the work.  I just doubt
 there will be anybody.

In other words,

1. You think declassification is not worth anyone's time

2. You are not volunteering to do it

3. You don't want to stop other people from volunteering to do it

Why even bother to post?  Seems to me you could have accomplished all
three points by just not hitting Reply.

 My ulterior motive in this suggestion was: How we can practically
 find out whether some is *really* interested in a work which consumes
 a team of DDs spare time.

What does that matter?  There are lots of things DDs do that we don't
know for sure if any users will care.  If you don't want to waste your
time doing those things, then don't.  But what's the point of a thread
discussing whether or not somebody other than you will decide to do
some work you don't think is useful?
-- 
Peter Samuelson | org-tld!p12n!peter | http://p12n.org/


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Re: debian-private declassification team (looking for one)

2010-06-25 Thread Don Armstrong
On Fri, 25 Jun 2010, Frans Pop wrote:
 I would welcome a new GR to rescind the previous one and revert
 d-private to what it's always been: private. That way we can stop
 worrying about the whole issue and we will no longer run the risk of
 making things public that their authors do not want to be made
 public.

My own opinion is that we've done this backwards, and that everything
on -private modulo vacation messages and posts explicitely marked with
a header indicating that they shouldn't be declassified should be
declassified automatically after three years.

Unfortunatly, a large majority[1] of the messages to -private
shouldn't be private in the first place, or they only need to be
embargoed for a short period of time. [I think I've sent more messages
to people requesting that they not continue non-private (or just plain
useless) threads in -private than I've read messages which were
actually useful and contained information that needed to be on
-private.]


Don Armstrong

1: Ignoring VAC messages, of course.
-- 
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. 
 -- Robert Heinlein

http://www.donarmstrong.com  http://rzlab.ucr.edu


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Re: debian-private declassification team (looking for one)

2010-06-25 Thread Serafeim Zanikolas
On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 03:20:14PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote [edited]:
 My own opinion is that we've done this backwards, and that everything
 on -private modulo vacation messages and posts explicitely marked with
 a header indicating that they shouldn't be declassified should be
 declassified automatically after three years.

+1

When I first read the resolution, it really surprised me as to how
bureaucratic the defined process is, as opposed to something amenable to
automation.

-S


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Re: debian-private declassification team (looking for one)

2010-06-25 Thread Don Armstrong
On Sat, 26 Jun 2010, Frans Pop wrote:
 On Saturday 26 June 2010, Don Armstrong wrote:
  My own opinion is that we've done this backwards, and that everything
  on -private modulo vacation messages and posts explicitely marked with
  a header indicating that they shouldn't be declassified should be
  declassified automatically after three years.
 
 But that's not what the project decided to do, so it's rather moot.

It may be moot for the current -private archives, but we can always
change going forward.[1]

  Unfortunatly, a large majority[1] of the messages to -private
  shouldn't be private in the first place, or they only need to be
  embargoed for a short period of time.
 
 Any real evidence to support that rather strong claim?

From our most recent huge thread, with 97 messages, 50 of them at
least were trivially off topic; only about 15 of them contained any
useful information discussing the actual content, and the rest were
near-contentless +1/-1 messages. Two other threads of 30 and 41
mesages didn't belong on -private in the first place. So out of ≈210
non VAC messages, at least 111 of them didn't belong on -private (and
probably 50 of those didn't belong on any Debian mailing list except
-curiosa.)

 IMO most threads on d-private get started there because the sender
 actually wants the subject to be private.

The very first message may be private (or partially so), but the main
part of the discussion usually isn't, and certainly the OT leaves of
the discussion aren't. [In past four big threads we were 2/4 of
starting messages being appropriate for -private...]

 But it seems to me that those are also often the least interesting,
 so what's the gain in declassifying them?

Little, which is why no one has bothered to spend the time to do so.
[The fact that I feel strongly about openness and still won't spend
the time to devote to declassifying -private speaks for itself...]

 IMO the whole idea of partial declassification stinks anyway. Is it
 really desirable to declassify some messages in a thread but not
 others? Does that give the public a balanced view of a discussion?

If people are concerned about having their views represented when the
discussion is declassified, they shouldn't withhold them from
declassification.

 It also seems to me that in any declassification scheme the risk of
 declassifying a message which its author did not intend to ever
 become public is very high.

Frankly, if someone sends a message to -private which they think
should remain private forever, and it's not obvious that it should
remain so to the normal DD, it probably didn't need to be read by a
thousand DDs in the first place.

 Just consider that an objection also extends to any replies that
 quote (part) of it.

Obviously.

 I think it's safer to err on the conservative side and simply
 respect the privacy of the list unconditionally.

That option was further discussion, and lost...


Don Armstrong

1: It's mootness certainly doesn't change my opinion that we made a
mistake. [Hell, I seconded the current process, so *I* made a mistake
too.]
-- 
LEADERSHIP -- A form of self-preservation exhibited by people with
autodestructive imaginations in order to ensure that when it comes to
the crunch it'll be someone else's bones which go crack and not their
own. 
 -- The HipCrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan 
(John Brunner _Stand On Zanzibar_ p256-7)

http://www.donarmstrong.com  http://rzlab.ucr.edu


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