Re: Creating a Debian Spending proposals and discussion mailing list
Now that the DPL voting is over, I'd like to ask Jonathan directly what you think of this idea in the context of your plans for an Expenditure policy? Could this fit alongside, help feed into it or is likely to be made obsolete? The thread starts here: https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2021/04/msg1.html On Tue, Apr 06, 2021 at 10:14:50PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote: > On Sun, 04 Apr 2021, Phil Morrell wrote: > > Please keep in mind that I'm proposing this list purely as a practical > > experiment, it does nothing that can't already be done elsewhere, and if > > it doesn't work out after say 6 months, then so be it. All I'm looking > > for is an indication that it would not be a complete waste of my time to > > set up, that doing so has the potential to help Debian, and that some > > DDs would be willing to review and Second proposals. > > I think it's important to experiment in this direction but for a low-key > experimentation I'd rather go with a gitlab project where you file ideas > as issues, people vote up and down various ideas with the usual +1 -1 > buttons (gitlab can then show you a sorted list by popularity). You can > have draft projects in text files and people can collaborate with MR on > enhancement to those drafts. > > We could have a "debian/spending-ideas" if you want so that all DD have > write access by default. We could restrict access to issues for project > members (that automatically includes all DD + selected non-DD directly > added to the project). Understood, I'm happy to organise it that way too if folks would prefer. It just *seems to me* that the email workflow of seconds and inline quoting is less structured and very familiar to DDs for fleshing out an idea, perhaps augmented with an ad-hoc jitsi call. -- Phil Morrell (emorrp1) signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Creating a Debian Spending proposals and discussion mailing list
Hi Raphaël, your feedback in particular is very much appreciated. Please keep in mind that I'm proposing this list purely as a practical experiment, it does nothing that can't already be done elsewhere, and if it doesn't work out after say 6 months, then so be it. All I'm looking for is an indication that it would not be a complete waste of my time to set up, that doing so has the potential to help Debian, and that some DDs would be willing to review and Second proposals. On Sun, Apr 04, 2021 at 12:01:05PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote: > I would be saddened if this system turned only into a way to give our > money to other free software projects instead of using that money to help > us towards our common mission. I'm not so sure about that, there's a lot of overlap involved (e.g. reproducible builds or calamares) especially since the project resists funding direct packaging work like QA. Even assuming the initiative accidentally ends up solely donating to other existing projects, provided they benefit Debian I'd count that as successful - a contra policy guidance or GR could also be proposed if it becomes excessive. > On Fri, 02 Apr 2021, Phil Morrell wrote: > > I think this will lower the barrier for proposals. I looked up what the > > current process is and it's literally "email the DPL and convince them", > > which could be offputting without knowing how many other people support > > your idea. Similarly I would expect a lot of teams to know their own > > problem areas but be unaware of the level of support outside the team > > through multiple levels of reverse dependencies. > > It's certainly good to lower the barrier for proposals but for your Kotlin > example, the issue is more "who will be paid to to the work"? Someone has to > select a winning bid and having that kind of responsibility within Debian > is the historical friction point related to use of money in Debian. Isn't that the same issue you have for Freexian? Presumably the Proposal would be either an Executor or (implied by default) Reviewer by your terminology, so then the Seconds are agreeing who will review the work. https://salsa.debian.org/freexian-team/project-funding/-/blob/master/Rules-LTS.md#who-can-make-bids > IMO the bulk of the work is not in finding ideas, but on transforming > them into actionable projects Exactly my reason for proposing this new list to facilitate fleshing out of ideas collectively. Unlike -vote, I'm hoping most Amendments would be accepted by the proposer, so perhaps my Peertube example was unhelpful here. There are a lot of current suggestions that the money could be put towards some goal or category, but as you say they're not actionable. https://wiki.debian.org/BudgetIdeas > and on selecting which project can have the largest impact on Debian. I think Jonathan's comment (and indeed platform) shows that we're not at a point where that is a concern. For now I am happy giving more visibility to actionable projects with *any* reasonable impact on Debian. This also reminds me of multiple DebConfs sentiments on the bank balance to the effect of: Whenever Debian successfully manages to spend money, we're burdened with increased funding to compensate. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Creating a Debian Spending proposals and discussion mailing list
Hi all, moving off -vote and heavily trimming, original thread here: https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2021/03/msg7.html On Thu, 18 Mar 2021, Philip Hands wrote: > On Thu, 18 Mar 2021, Jonathan Carter wrote: > > I think as things stand now, every DD pretty much already has the entire > > Debian budget available at their disposal if they can think of a way to > > spend it that benefits the project. > > I was reflecting on the way the Peertube funding was achieved. > There were enough people keen on that happening that if we'd each had an > earmarked e.g. 1k budget to allocate, we could have just agreed it > amongst ourselves, and done it On Sun, 21 Mar 2021, Raphael Hertzog wrote: > On Thu, 18 Mar 2021, Philip Hands wrote: > > On Thu, 18 Mar 2021, Raphael Hertzog wrote: > > > I'm considering paying someone to identify useful > > > projects. That person could talk to various teams, make proposals based on > > > their own experience, and even run a poll among Debian developers. > > > > I've been pondering how it might be possible to spend more of Debian's > > money, and it occurred to me that we could allocate a budget to each DD > > which they could spend on pretty-much anything > > > > Encouraging people to pool their budgets to fund bigger things would > > hopefully result in them forming teams of mentors to oversee the work. > > I really like your idea! I wonder if there would be some infrastructure > that would make it easy to describe projects and track how much money > has been allocated by the various DD. > > But if we find something usable, we could have a volunteer in charge of > entering the "votes" of the DD by adjusting a Debian pledge in a open > system (and have some associated ledger where the DD allocations are > tracked). This whole idea inspired me, so if just a couple of DDs agree with the below, I'm hereby volunteering to do the admin work involved. I've thought about what such a system could look like, perhaps signed commits to a salsa project or a simple site like mentors. I came to the conclusion that there's already a working system in place for counting DD support of suggestions. debian-vote has proposals, low-bureaucracy seconders, and the Project Secretary validating signatures. I propose creating an experimental debian-spending mailing list based on the same rules to test this idea. The equivalent of the GR here would be a filled out project proposal for consideration by the DPL or Freexian. I'd have to do more research on the process first, since I haven't interacted with the voting system myself. Taking the peertube example: Alice: Proposal: Video team needs peertube v3 to support streaming Bob: Amendment: Donate €20,000 to the public fundraising campaign Carol: Seconded: Bob Dan?: Seconded: Bob Erin: Amendment: Donate €10,000 to the public fundraising campaign emorrp1: Dan you forgot to sign Frank: Seconded: Erin Dan: Seconded: Bob ... etc. I would then send an email to the DPL (or fill out the Freexian template) with the project details and the list of signatories. The outcome could be absolutely anything of course - the DPL could see that 30 people supported 10k and 10 people 20k, but they know that the budget can handle 15k and do that, the point is to have a concrete proposal. Another example is that debian-android-tools has all the DD availability for sponsoring Kotlin uploads, and most initial work done by GSoC students, but no-one had free time to work on it betwen Oct and Mar. Now it turns out that no less than 3 other teams are depending/awaiting a kotlin upload: Java, Freedombox for Jitsi, Games for Mindustry. That's a lot of potential DDs who could have seconded a tender for a third-party contractor to bid on say a week to a month's work. I think this will lower the barrier for proposals. I looked up what the current process is and it's literally "email the DPL and convince them", which could be offputting without knowing how many other people support your idea. Similarly I would expect a lot of teams to know their own problem areas but be unaware of the level of support outside the team through multiple levels of reverse dependencies. Hopefully that's enough to convince you, and it's clear I'm only offering to do the administration, not make any actual decisions. I'd also like to help the list get started in a personal capacity by digging up old BudgetIdeas and writing up proposals say once a week. This doesn't block implementing the idea of a per-DD budget later. Say, €100pm and the Seconders include how many months of their allocation they wish to spend on a project. I could include the total in the email to DPL, or feedback to the list that a project has reached 50% funding and needs more Seconders, or if they've exceeded the budget just include them in the signatories with a sum of 0. -- Phil Morrell (emorrp1) signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: GR proposal: mandating VcsGit and VcsBrowser for all packages, using the "gbp patches unapplied" layout, and maybe also mandating hosted on Salsa
On Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 07:34:02PM +1000, Alexander Zangerl wrote: > i detest unwarranted, imposed, uniformity. i *love* consistency. we have > had consistency in the distribution for ages. we don't need uniform > workflows. It's not (always) about mandating workflows, see Ian's careful distinction in the GitPackagingSurvey between sharing format and workflow. Your previous mail said: > as long as the resulting package aupload conforms to the specs i see no I believe this GR is about moving the needle on what those specs say - that a source tarball is no longer enough to represent the "preferred form of modification" for debian developers (to reference another thread). **If** it's decided that a debian package must have a git representation hosted on salsa as a service to users, then yes that may restrict your workflow freedom. I hope it wouldn't go as far as requiring that you literally use git-buildpackage itself, but it might say that in non-exceptional cases, tag2upload must replace dput. That's a long way off, but yes you would end up having to adapt your workflow slightly to meet the new spec. > or do you also plan to insist that your roofing contractor only uses > tools and only cuts the rafters with your preferred saw? To extend the analogy, no, but I would be happy insisting that they place tiles, not thatch, and that rafters are cut in accordance with local building regulation. This will incidentally turn away all thatching contractors and anyone's workflow which relies on e.g. cutting corners when out of sight. Ultimately, assume a maintainer, or a whole team of uploaders gets hit by a bus, how can we specify the definition of a "package" such that other DDs can quickly and easily take up future maintenance. -- Phil Morrell (emorrp1) signature.asc Description: PGP signature
