Re: to Moray: encourage teams to take interns
Le Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 08:07:40PM +0300, Moray Allan a écrit : Nevertheless, I think it would be useful for us to have some wider kind of internship scheme, for the huge proportion of Debian activity that definitely will not fit under the current GSoC rules. Hi Moray, I have a question: could you comment on the differences, complementarity, or overlap between such an internship and the NM process, which already has extensive questions about packaging. My personal experience is that when I went through the NM process I learned a lot through the exchanges with my AM, to the point that I felt it close to be a kind of internship sheme... Lucas and Gergely, you are of course free to comment if you wish. Cheers, -- Charles -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312064538.ga12...@falafel.plessy.net
Re: [to all candidates] about a DPL board
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi! Martin Zobel-Helas zo...@debian.org writes: in the past i heared several ideas about a Debian Project Leader board similar to the SPI board. So lets imagine the project would have to vote for several members of this sort of board, with every member being on-board for (lets say) 3y. What do you think about this idea? Would it be worth in long term to establish such a leader board (and therefore a change to our current constitution) for the Debian Project, or do you think the DPL should stay a single person? A few years back - even last year! - I might have said I'd support such a board, it is something that's been lingering at the back of my mind for a long, long time. But no, I would not support such an initiative, for a multitude of reasons: First of all, for a board to function well, we need people with similar vision, who can work together. Electing not one, but 3-5 people is not only much harder for the project, it is also much more risky, as there are no guarantees that compatible people will be elected. Trying to guarantee that with the Constitution or by any other means is just adding insult to injury. Over the past year, Zack started the DPL Helpers initiative, which does show some resemblance to a board, in that it takes load off of the DPL, makes some of the work the DPL does more transparent, thus making transitions easier too, and so on and so forth. It has *all* the benefits of a board, with none of the downsides. All three of the current candidates have contributed to Zack's initiative, which, for me, is proof enough that it works. It is still in its infancy, but it already shows great promise, even though it's only a year old. It does not need a change in constitution, makes it easier for all participants to work together better, as they themselves can figure out if they're compatible, and act accordingly, without any harmful bureaucracy involved. Furthermore, I see other issues with a board: how long should members be elected? One year seems short, unless members are reelected (DPL-DPL transitions aren't trivial as it is, imagine if that would need to involve more than two people!). Three years? That's the longest any DPL ever was in service, do we really want to make that the minimum? Three years of commitment is a long time. Granted, one can always step down, but... that just complicates things. We do not need more complex solutions, especially if the solution is for a problem that does not necessarily exist in the first place. I used to think that a board would have tremendous advantages, such as being able to represent Debian in that role at various events and places much more frequently than a single person possibly could. But do we need a board for that? No. We don't. We need people who can do that, and empower them to do it. The DPL Helpers initiative provides a great forum for that, in my opinion. I just don't see anymore what problems a board would solve, that other solutions can't solve better, therefore, I'd rather encourage those initiatives that already show promise. Perhaps I've seen too many otherwise great projects fail in recent years, due to their leadership board being unable to act and respond to outside events in a timely manner. I've been frustrated with leader boards being terribly slow, and argue over miniscule details. I've seen too many of them being far less agile than our project leaders have been. I believe we have a fairly good system, that can use improvements like the DPL Helpers initiative, but it is a good system nevertheless. I see no need to change what works, and what points forward. There's a lot we can and should change about, but none of that require abandoning the DPL role. Granted, one should be willing to take risks, but amending the constitution and transitioning to a board is a risk too high, with no clear benefits. A risk without clear benefits is a risk we should not take. - -- |8] -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJRPtcpAAoJEGznDG6LngZEcmkP/2X048uZy2FbDUTW18BtzdAN OBQxZoS8tUj/2+g8ws6U/QUZIebCvy79mNbYwiWD5GHMy4pkRMDEZEOlTiwSOgpk f0J7tyDF7PXA9MuVX+bCPgsZlbDscpL1+Yd+joMzBydGaDVDhhyGpuD50tRBhir1 5QUwiK7WDgx4xxnhTsgLm6Dunfav12LXfkaeVVV5xa89HWhIr2crHa76DPhYbSGg BtematQc3BBpjzNLkY8WWySvDrolUfyDJWL8qh2+Fq0//Ge1MVr1pzIGvcafYOHw dxnPld9y195HY6kN8+L7L0n/tQzoqpNokbBHc2MzA9PC3wIHvG4HVGpiec53r39i pG8tbLu+1PxsQyW6mPAcP6oyYMvC0Sv43RdlkCiGK3VSxCcpkVovpYmKK7FFgUMy Sr71a2Duh44rx74fLbwnDp/F+ZhcA2NWWg9z6hcm0Udh+QNftk0kBpu2U2eKaUao YNcE/TLmEhbqXDnThV3Uxu+NT3OrK/NoOBfa6yVRIFcPnVuezsS9UwzFJW8/ITJS eIYganZO5VQVlane4ygPy4aVLIgF+E3TkKQu84Lu5eROUNTr0zRjtNyRJNUr+5W0 kpGeSmWy4SEtZYUo8PDbioDstiS626N/PCWweiDSr39Pqj9Sd2Sn8qu23Ch/Ibgz Vk0azgXMr2566h183rON =ss5L -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive:
Re: [to all candidates] using debian funds for Debian's hardware infrastructure
Martin Zobel-Helas zo...@debian.org writes: in the past Debian had some generous donors, who donated a huge amounts of high quality hardware on regual basis to the Debian project. For some reasons (not to be discussed here) those sources dont exist any more. One idea - perhaps a naive one, as I do not know the circumstances - could be to figure out a way to find hardware donors again, to cover at least part of the expenses. This obviously assumes that this is possible, and because the reasons why these donations stopped is not known to me, neither should the issue be discussed here, I'm unable to elaborate on this idea. But it is, nevertheless, something to consider, in my opinion. As this hardware comes to the end of it's lifecycle, DSA will need to buy new hardware. To keep up our standards on hardware for core infrastrucure, DSA will need to spend several 10k USD on new hardware in the next year. @all: do you think it is worth spending large amount of money donated to Debian to keep our core hardware infrastructure on its current level? Yes, it is. @all: do you think Debian should do a fundraising campain where we collect a larger amount of money dedicated to Debian's hardware infrastructure? This, I'm not sure about. I donated to a number of fundraising campaings by members of the larger free software community, and it filled me with sadness that quite a few of them never reached their goal. That's discouraging both for the project, and for those too, who did donate. I don't want that. So *if* such a campaing is to be made, it needs to set an achievable goal, and it must not be neither the sole source of funding for Debian hardware, nor the biggest part of it. There's a lot more that needs to be done for a campaign to be successful, ranging from making it known and visible, long enough to receive a usable amount of funds, but short enough to not be seen as 'begging', either. It must have a clear goal, a generic we need hardware, please donate is not going to cut it - people want to know what their money is used for, and we want to tell them up front too (that's one of the reasons why the work of Debian Auditors is so important, among other things). But alas, we already have fundraising campaigns within the project, so all we need is get the relevant people involved, and help them prepare and drive the campaign (which, of course, includes learning from past campaigns too, and improving on their ways too). And if we do launch a new campaign, we need to ensure that there is coordination between the new and running campaigns, to avoid approaching the same organisations twice, without knowing about the other, and other similar mishaps. @lucas, @algernon: in your platform you are not stating how you will handle money requests, and what do you think about using Debian's money at all. Can you please elaborate? When it comes to financial stuff, I'm bad at it. Luckily, I'm well aware of that, and even better, so is Debian (Constitution 5.1.10). Therefore, my intention is to, if elected DPL, rely on (and possibly delegate, if that seems more useful) trusted members of our project, who are far more experienced and better at these matters than I am. That's not to say I don't want to be involved, quite the contrary! I just know my limits. Nevertheless, the general idea is to continue down the path we're on, and make spending as transparent as possible. Due to my shortcomings mentioned above, to do my job properly, transparency and involving the larger project in decisions is the only option available to me anyway. If elected, this may result in some bumpy times in the beginning, slower reactions and perhaps more bureaucracy than needs be, but in time, it should become a much smoother procedure. I only touched spending, however. As far as fundraising goes, there are existing campaigns, and there's a need for more. I think we can all agree, that coordinating these would be beneficial for everyone involved, and thankfully, we have people more than capable of undertaking that task, and as DPL, a task like this will have my full support. -- |8] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/877gldghtn@galadriel.madhouse-project.org
Re: [to all candidates] about a DPL board
...and I managed to sign it with the key I use for signing my repos, instead of the correct one. *sigh* Sorry about that. -- |8] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/8738w1ghku@galadriel.madhouse-project.org
Re: to Moray: encourage teams to take interns
On 2013-03-12 09:45, Charles Plessy wrote: I have a question: could you comment on the differences, complementarity, or overlap between such an internship and the NM process, which already has extensive questions about packaging. My personal experience is that when I went through the NM process I learned a lot through the exchanges with my AM, to the point that I felt it close to be a kind of internship sheme... I agree that often in the NM process there is a form of mentoring. We also have packaging mentoring through debian-mentors. In addition, we already have existing structured schemes in Debian like https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMed/MoM and http://www.debian.org/women/mentoring besides of course GSoC. For the NM process itself, though, I would note that over the years Front Desk have tended to increase how ready they would like people to be before starting. The ideal in the NM process is seen to be that someone is already clearly ready to be a Debian member, and that the process is just a formality. And that's not just a recent change -- back when I was first an AM, it was recognised that some applicants wanted the process to be much more of a mentoring one than it was -- in some cases, people hope they can apply for membership without knowing at all yet what they want to do in Debian, and be guided into an appropriate role. Even if we made the NM process more heavily a mentoring scheme, it would still only help people who are at the specific stage of trying to become a Debian member. The internships I have in mind are more general: - They could work for people not ready for NM yet, by pulling in even people who don't yet have any ideas about how to contribute to Debian, but want to help and learn in a structured scheme. - They could also work for existing long-term Debian members, like the FTP team's FTPTrainee scheme.[1] -- Moray [1] See https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/09/msg1.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/d018145525e5ab9b703497018a4cb...@www.morayallan.com
Re: mentoring programs in Debian
On 2013-03-11 23:56, Ana Guerrero wrote: The question I would love to see answered by you both is: What new schemes of mentoring/integrating new contributors do you envisage we could try in Debian? I'm sure there are more possibilities that I haven't thought of yet, but I can see space for several types. For example: - General new contributors: Recruit people and train them on how to work on topics that interest them. Even if they don't end up working on those topics permanently, it could help draw them into Debian more generally. As well as packaging and coding, these internships could cover design, documentation writing, publicity work, or any other type of Debian role. - Targetted groups: Advertising schemes aimed at students (like GSoC) or women or retired people or any other underrepresented group can help us pull in Debian contributors from a wider pool. - Existing contributors: Some existing contributors might want to participate in the previous type of scheme directly, to learn about a new area. But I can also imagine some team internships that are only open to existing Debian contributors, like the FTPTrainees scheme.[1] These would likely be used by teams to recruit new members, but I think they can also serve a wider purpose than that -- where time and energy is available, it's valuable just to have more people around who understand in detail the type of work done by each team. Within each type, schemes could obviously be longer or shorter/more or less detailed/more about mentoring or shadowing, depending on the resources available. Each of these types has been tried already in specific parts of Debian, so we should of course try to learn from those experiences in running any future wider schemes -- thanks for sharing some of your own thoughts about GSoC. -- Moray [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/09/msg1.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/b675d1872fec9e7566d1199533812...@www.morayallan.com
Usage of Debian's Money
(starting a new thread) Hi, On Tue, 12 Mar 2013, Moray Allan wrote: If there was general support then we could look at organising a funded program, but I would need a lot of persuasion before wanting to get into the question of Debian picking specific individuals to pay for their work while everyone else is unpaid volunteers.[2] [2] Some of you will remember Dunc-Tank. Despite the above statement, your platform mentions “I would seek suggestions on how we could try to advance Debian's goals by spending money in ways we're not currently doing. While I think we should be careful with money, I would be willing to authorise spending to try out new ideas from others, where goals can be defined and the success of an initiative can be judged.” What kind of new ideas would be acceptable? Feel free to invent some hypothetical examples to illustrate. To other candidates, do you believe that we could benefit from using money for other things than hardware and meeting/travel reimbursment? If yes, what kind of things? Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer Get the Debian Administrator's Handbook: → http://debian-handbook.info/get/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312094330.ga30...@x230-buxy.home.ouaza.com
Re: Usage of Debian's Money
On 2013-03-12 12:43, Raphael Hertzog wrote: On Tue, 12 Mar 2013, Moray Allan wrote: If there was general support then we could look at organising a funded program, but I would need a lot of persuasion before wanting to get into the question of Debian picking specific individuals to pay for their work while everyone else is unpaid volunteers.[2] [2] Some of you will remember Dunc-Tank. Despite the above statement, your platform mentions “I would seek suggestions on how we could try to advance Debian's goals by spending money in ways we're not currently doing. While I think we should be careful with money, I would be willing to authorise spending to try out new ideas from others, where goals can be defined and the success of an initiative can be judged.” What kind of new ideas would be acceptable? Feel free to invent some hypothetical examples to illustrate. Before thinking about any further examples, I first want to explain what I meant above, since it seems like I wasn't clear to you: I said I would need (a lot of) persuasion before paying individual Debian contributors. That's true, but it certainly doesn't mean I would attempt to veto paid internship stipends for e.g. students, if there seemed to be general support for them. I was not trying to exclude them from acceptable ideas. For ideas which have not been tried at all before, my personal persuasion-threshold for doing an experiment would be lower than for this, though I would still want to be careful about the amount spent. -- Moray -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/ce49a42c27fe5429bb22a3488e4f9...@www.morayallan.com
Debian's relationship with money and the economy
Hi, my previous mail targeted the topic of using Debian's money (20130312094330.ga30...@x230-buxy.home.ouaza.com). But the topic of money in Debian does not have to be limited to that. The Debian ecosystem includes many economical actors, be it companies or individuals, but we tend to hide those aspects as if they didn't exist. Despite Debian's non-profit status, IMHO Debian's growth and success relies on the capacity of those actors to have some economical success. And there are many ways to help those actors, without involving any direct flow of money from Debian to them, in particular at the press/publicity level. When a project ultimately benefits to the Debian project, we should not fear to promote it even if that promotion helps the project initiator to make money (and IMO even more so when the project initiator is a Debian member). Do you agree with this analysis and statement? If not, why? If yes, how can we shift our culture and our policies towards this goal? For full disclosure, I'm speaking of experience here since I tried to get some Debian press coverage of the fundraising for the liberation of the Debian Administrator's Handbook. See https://lists.debian.org/debian-publicity/2011/10/threads.html#1 for the discussion that happened. I also use my blog (and thus Planet Debian) to build an audience and try to get donations to support my Debian work. In the end, I even got a mail of DAM saying that they got some complaints (I have never been told who complained and how many they were) that I was abusing Debian resources in ways not authorized by the Debian Machine Usage Policy (« Don't use Debian Facilities for private financial gain or for commercial purposes ») and that there was a risk that people loose trust in my work because of financial interests that I could have. I say this now, not to start a thread on my specific case, but to show that the level of agressivity towards openly-for-profit activities in a Debian context is not null even when those activities do benefit to Debian. And IMO we should try to fix this, eventually. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer Get the Debian Administrator's Handbook: → http://debian-handbook.info/get/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312110606.gb30...@x230-buxy.home.ouaza.com
Re: [to all candidates] using debian funds for Debian's hardware infrastructure
On 2013-03-12 02:47, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote: @all: do you think it is worth spending large amount of money donated to Debian to keep our core hardware infrastructure on its current level? For people who don't know what the hardware replacement plan is about, see e.g. https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/04/msg00079.html First, I should say that from my perspective this path was already agreed on in the project, and I think that an incoming DPL should need rather strong reasons to abort existing spending plans (and if so should make it a prominent part of their platform). Since we potentially change DPL every year, but many parts of the project work on a longer timescale, we would have major problems if each incoming DPL reopened decisions about hardware spending, the DebConf budget, etc. Having said that, when I first heard about the planned level of spending for new hardware, I was a little concerned about it. In part, it wasn't clear to me (just as an interested Debian member) how much cost/benefit analysis had been done for different options, though I mostly trusted that the involved people were making a sensible decision. More significantly, I wanted to see clearly that we would try to balance spending by fundraising, not just run down existing Debian funds then have a problem later -- of course, money sitting unused isn't helpful, but we should weigh up the benefits of alternative uses of money. And while it might not be relevant for a few years given the economic situation, I would prefer it if we continued to seek appropriate hardware donations, in the hope of shifting back towards more donated hardware if it became possible. If I had been DPL when the hardware replacement plan was first proposed, I'm rather confident that you would have persuaded me it made sense, I'm just trying to describe the kinds of ways that I want us to think carefully about money. As a more general point, I also think that for the longer-term we need to establish some clearer conventions about how we authorise non-urgent spending. The constitution says, [The DPL may] In consultation with the developers, make decisions affecting property held in trust for purposes related to Debian. (See §9.). Such decisions are communicated to the members by the Project Leader or their Delegate(s). Major expenditures should be proposed and debated on the mailing list before funds are disbursed but I don't think we have any convention on what counts as major. And, even after a debate, the DPL can ignore the real consensus. While most decisions in Debian can be reversed later, once money is spent we can't override that. @all: do you think Debian should do a fundraising campain where we collect a larger amount of money dedicated to Debian's hardware infrastructure? I would like us to do more active fundraising in general. Spending money on hardware will be a clearly positive use of donations for most donors. I don't think it will help us to split hardware infrastructure fundraising into a separate fund, but it might be useful to run a fundraising campaign which promotes this specific need. @moray: can you tell DSA the lottery numbers of next week please? 3, 11, 14, 24, 34, 35. But I won't tell you *which* lottery those are for. -- Moray -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/a42b79bfd976edc41a18162b866ce...@www.morayallan.com
Re: All candidates: Development and technical issues and challenges
On 2013-03-12 07:17, Paul Wise wrote: Removing packages in the freeze is way too late, they should be removed from testing in an (semi-)automated fashion during the whole release cycle. IIRC the release team are planning on doing this and have done it manually in the past. Indeed -- I should really have said something like much earlier in the release cycle. There is apt-listbugs but does that work for things like PackageKit or software-center? I'll be interested to hear what tools already exist that I've missed. Then the challenge is to get them onto more machines in such a way that people pay attention to what they say. Normally people are installing/updating packages because they're trying to achieve some goal, and they won't tend to interrupt that to debug issues that might be mentioned in messages there. For some contributors, a popup notification about new RC bugs like existing upgrades are available ones might be useful, though clearly for many users this would just be an unhelpful worry. -- Moray -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/b1d09baeecfa82dc990e8fc89b6df...@www.morayallan.com
Re: mentoring programs in Debian
On 2013-03-12 01:03, Russ Allbery wrote: On the general topic of mentoring, though, I think one of the hardest parts of helping new people join the project is that people need to start with relatively easy tasks so that they can get their feet wet. Yes. Even where there is an existing list of tasks, these will often be too hard to be a good introduction for new people. Or otherwise, easy but boring and not introducing enough aspects of a team's work. Or too urgent to have a working solution for, so that depending on the new person completing one quickly is dangerous and unfair. In some areas it may be better to start with artificial tasks. Already in Debian we have often used artificial tasks in the NM process, as a quick way of checking skills that weren't demonstrated by past activity: e.g. asking how to respond to a specified list of invented bug reports, or asking to find some of the problems in licences that we already know are bad. In some other areas, it might be necessary for people to start just by shadowing the activity of someone experienced. Even these cases can give the new people a real insight into the relevant area of work just from seeing what is done and seeing how decisions are made, and much more so if the experienced people take the time to work through some decisions with them in depth, listening to the person's suggestions before responding with comments from their own experience. -- Moray -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e619f6037a66fc178291860feb778...@www.morayallan.com
[OT] flag RC-buggy packages to users of testing
[M-F-T set to 628...@bugs.debian.org, as I believe this is becoming OT] On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 12:17:29PM +0800, Paul Wise wrote: [..] On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 3:30 AM, Moray Allan wrote: [..] Flag up RC bugs: To tackle things earlier in the cycle, perhaps we could push use of some tools[1] that more actively flag up new RC-buggy packages to users of testing? There is apt-listbugs but does that work for things like PackageKit or software-center? software-center is unaware of apt-listbugs and PackageKit explicitly disables it (because it otherwise hangs while apt-listbugs waits for console-based input). Two things need to happen: - apt-listbugs design should be revised for invocation by programs (as opposed to manual/interactive invocation) - high level package managers must learn how to interact with apt-listbugs -- Every great idea is worthless without someone to do the work. --Neil Williams signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: mentoring programs in Debian
On 11/03/13 at 21:56 +0100, Ana Guerrero wrote: [Some sort-of thread hijacking] Hi folks, I see this thread going nowhere and it's a pity because discussing new ways to integrate contributors in Debian is a topic worth discussing. I have been involved in GSoC in the editions 2011 and 2012 and in Code-in 2011. Besides that, I mentored a now DD inside the Debian Women mentoring program. All those mentoring programs were *very* different therefore producing different results. And I'm sure we can use more schemes of recruiting/attracting new contributors. The question I would love to see answered by you both is: What new schemes of mentoring/integrating new contributors do you envisage we could try in Debian? Interesting question. You write about new mentoring schemes, I'm going to extend the scope a bit to improvable schemes. I hope you don't mind. I think we have many different schemes, and I'm not sure that we need to add new ones. But we could optimize some of them a bit. The various schemes are all (or most of them) useful. Different schemes suit different people, so it's important to continue to offer them. So, what do we offer in terms of mentoring in Debian? That's a pretty good question and actually, we should have an overview of that somewhere on the website or the wiki. What I can think about: per-upload mentoring using -mentors@ and mentors.debian.net --- (it's not strictly per-upload, but at least it starts that way) this works quite well. I see two ways we could improve that: - work on the mentors.d.n infrastructure: + include more automated checks by default (packages could be built and tested with piuparts, for example) + include a social dimension (with karma and stuff). People would be able to review others' packages and earn points when comments are good-quality. - localize -mentors. We could have language-specific lists and IRC channels for the languages that are quite well represented in Debian (FR, DE, ES, etc.). Often, the language barrier is a problem for young contributors. list of easy/starting tasks --- We do it, AFAIK: - through bugs tagged 'gift'. This does not work very well. Maybe advertising that more could be enough to improve that. - through listing tasks in the team pages (see the starred ideas on e.g. http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Ruby). We need to encourage all teams to have such lists on their pages. mentoring inside teams -- Like https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMed/MoM. That's a very good idea. We could build a list of teams willing to mentor someone, and publish that list in a call for mentorees. NM process -- Not strictly-speaking mentoring: it would be better if the mentoring happened mostly outside (before) the NM process to relieve the load on the AM. Internship-like (e.g. GSoC) --- That's a nice way to get involved for people who can dedicate a lot of time to Debian for a short period of time. We could explore participation into other programs, such as https://live.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen So, to summarize the key ideas: - build an overview of mentoring schemes offered by Debian - improve mentors.d.n - localize -mentors@ - advertise our lists of easy tasks - develop mentoring inside teams - explore other internship-like programs If elected, that's clearly something I'd like to push. It's also a field where I would welcome help from others. Lucas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312121803.ga27...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: mentoring programs in Debian
Hi Russ, On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 03:03:42PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: Ana Guerrero a...@debian.org writes: - For some DDs in previous years, this seemed to be a way to have students doing stuff from their TODO lists... Just a quick note on this part: I don't think this is inherently a bad idea, although of course it should be something the student is also excited about. But I remember what I was like when I was in high school: I really wanted to program, but I was horrible at coming up with useful things to do. I needed a good problem stream that I could work on and then I enjoyed finding ways to solve the problems. Not everyone is like that, of course, but I do think there are people out there who just want to put skills to use and learn how to do new things but don't know how to select good and useful problems to work on. On the general topic of mentoring, though, I think one of the hardest parts of helping new people join the project is that people need to start with relatively easy tasks so that they can get their feet wet. That often means that one needs to step back and let new people do things that are easy for the mentor, which in turn means leaving easy work undone for long enough to give people a chance to do it. I see your point. In these cases, the mentor was more treating the GSoC program as a bounty program or a way to have contractors paid at the expense of somebody else. It wasn't a real mentoring scheme. This kind of mentoring let's package this new software stack (and create a team to maintain it, when it doesn't exist) doesn't need to happen inside the GSoC, it can happen already in Debian. In fact, some Debian teams already do this, but fail to announce it clearly. When an interested user ask, we tend to say: if you want new version of X in Debian, we need help instead of we welcome new contributors. If you don't have a lot of experience, don't worry, we'll mentor you! Please take a look at this and if you can questions mails us to X and/or join us in IRC or something along these lines :) Ana -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312131416.ga12...@pryan.ekaia.org
Re: [to all candidates] Free Software challenges and Debian role
On 2013-03-11 16:35, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: But then, one wonders, what are the main challenges that free software at large faces today? [...] What do candidates think of this? Is free software going well? Is it going to go better or worse in forthcoming years? Why? For me the biggest challenges for free software today that are getting worse are: - End-users are moving to more closed hardware. Only a small proportion of people carefully screen their hardware for free-software drivers etc. before choosing it. In the last few years, we've been in a fairly good situation where installing Debian on laptops and desktops generally just worked. That won't necessarily stay the case. And for many tablets and phones there is already no easy way to install any free software base. - End-users are moving to web applications/the cloud. Few of the most heavily used ones are free software. Even if they are, centralised web applications remove users' ability to modify software to their own needs unless they duplicate a large amount of infrastructure. And in many cases cloud services reduce users' control even over their data itself, not just over the platform. We used to have trouble with the network effect of e.g. Microsoft Office file formats, but free-of-charge web applications can be even worse for free software, since objectors need to argue an ideological point to say why they want information in another way, rather than only explain that they haven't bought that piece of software or that it won't work on their OS. - Server users are also migrating to the cloud. In many cases this means that their services move to sit on a non-free platform, and it often reduces ease of modification even in free parts of the platform. Alongside those we have some challenges that may be getting better, including: - Divisions. When we take free software as an ideological/political position, it is natural for us to defend our principles even against divergent views from others who believe in free software. For example, we have had significant disagreements with the FSF. However, factionalism damages our cause, and makes it harder for outsiders to hear the viewpoints that we share. - Radicalism. There is a danger that we stop being radical, and forget about activism, and become happy for free software just to be some open source code that supports the lower-level of internet services, and something we can run ourselves on carefully chosen hardware. But there is already public and media awareness of some of the negative aspects of the cloud, including for users' privacy and control of their data -- there is an opportunity for us to gather new supporters. Then, if you think free software is not at its best at present, what do you think Debian could do to help? At a glance, Debian seems to have always done one thing (distributing free software) and has done so relatively well. Is that enough for current and future free software challenges? Or should we change to better face those challenges? As a member of the free software community, Debian should aim to take clear positions, especially where it can combine its voice with other parts of the community. Beyond that, I do think that building an operating system that we intend to be 100% free, and making it available to others to use, modify and redistribute, is how we can contribute best. In my platform, I also spoke about a hope that we might increase our active contacts with press, companies, governmental organisations, and through local groups. In those contexts we should always be clear on Debian's position on free software. Often a missionary attitude could be counterproductive, but that doesn't mean we should hide our position behind vague statements. In some cases it is easier for Debian to be heard than purely campaigning organisations -- for example Debian contributors who run companies in a region can contact politicians and local media as concerned business interests. In most regions, a free software economy that supports many small local businesses would be economically preferable to depending on a few large international IT companies. -- Moray -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/9590d546cfb0d4630ed60fd63bb0d...@www.morayallan.com
Re: [to all candidates] about a DPL board
On 2013-03-12 02:54, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote: What do you think about this idea? Would it be worth in long term to establish such a leader board (and therefore a change to our current constitution) for the Debian Project, or do you think the DPL should stay a single person? Before answering, I will point out that forming a board is *not* part of my platform. While I have mentioned the DPL helpers initiative, and other similar topics, I don't think that a true board of equals is really possible under our current constitution. And as DPL I would want to ask for views, help and delegates from the whole of Debian, not only from people who might be part of a board experiment. Nor is it part of my platform to push the constitutional changes required to get us a board. Having said that, I suspect that some kind of permanent board is almost inevitable sooner or later. While I don't think that keeping the current concentration of power in the DPL and adding a board alongside would work well, I can see some positive aspects in moving from a single leader to a board of equals. Positive ways to use this would include: - A board could include more diversity. This would clearly depend on how elections happened, but it's not hard to be more diverse than one person. In particular, many good leadership candidates are excluded at present simply because they don't have enough time for the DPL role due to other commitments. - A board could increase transparency (and perhaps quality) of decisions. For example, money decisions can currently be made directly by the DPL, acting alone. List threads don't always give clear decisions, but the GR process is too heavy to use for regular spending. A board could quickly discuss and vote when decisions are needed. - A board could perhaps function as the sort of social committee some people have suggested creating in the past. I wouldn't want to push designing the necessary constitutional changes myself, but would want to examine any proposal, and would be likely to vote for such a change if it seemed well-designed. A couple of dangers I can see: - It would be bad in my view if we ended up with a board made up of very similar people. A board may be more likely than a single person to think that they don't need to consult further outside to get ideas. - It would be bad in my view if a board ended up dominated by a group of people who stayed on it a long time by reelection. A DPL will typically run out of time eventually, so we get some change and new perspectives brought in, but board membership might stay similar for much longer. -- Moray -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/cf3bab841997856c8e6c58cfd4a58...@www.morayallan.com
Re: Usage of Debian's Money
On 2013-03-12 13:19, Moray Allan wrote: Before thinking about any further examples In fact I fear that it's logically impossible for me to give examples to demonstrate my point. My claim is that I would be open to new ideas from others about spending money, and actively look for suggestions. Anything that I suggest myself here is by definition not a new idea from others! For any new ideas, besides the costs, I would want us to assess the probability of different outcomes (e.g. probability of harm to Debian, of no benefit, of a small benefit, of a large benefit), and to agree in advance how the success of the spending will be measured and reviewed. I suspect that I would be unconvinced by most ideas that suggested that we spend spend money in ways that it would not be permitted for SPI to spend money under relevant legislation and the SPI by-laws. -- Moray -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/b2751744b3833e26c46b9160b4029...@www.morayallan.com
[all candidates] Work balance and traveling
Hi, while reading your platforms I noticed that you're rather vague on your future Debian commitment for that one of you ending as DPL for real. Moray mostly answered my question already, but if he wants to extend he's surely invited to elaborate. Hence, my question primarily addresses lucas and algernon: Sorry to tell, but you're all compared to zack leaving back some by-now established patterns as a DPL. So I wonder, will you step back from maintainer/team activities during your term? You are both well known for your work within Debian, lucas' archive rebuilds come me in mind immediately, and algernon likewise for his tireless work behind the curtains (reassigning lost bugs. Does anyone else besides him read debian-bugs-dist? Helping on the mentors edge and more). How do you intend to handle your existing Debian commitment, in case you're elected for DPL? Moreover, I wonder how much time you intend to spend for representative conference/summit work, where zack once again did an impressive job to represent Debian in talks, press and presentations. -- with kind regards, Arno Töll IRC: daemonkeeper on Freenode/OFTC GnuPG Key-ID: 0x9D80F36D signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
[all candidates] DPL term duration
I'm writing this prompted by some of the lines written by Gergely and Moray in the about a DPL board thread. One of the difficulties I perceive we have seen over the years is the time it takes to transfer the know-how and work rhythm from an outgoing DPL to an incoming one. Several of our DPLs have repeated their term. In the past, when I was a new DD, there was this strange and sad tendency that after finishing their DPL term, DPLs tended to leave the project (or strongly reduce their involvement) — I *think* there is some correlation with the DPL task pickup burnout time, which can be an important portion of the term. We have seen some discussions in the past regarding whether the term should be lengthened to two years, with a mid-term referendum (or chance to politely step down) rather than full election procedure. How would you feel about it? Would you prefer the term to be stated as a longer journey, or is one year the right duration? Would you be interested in pushing for this change? There is, of course, also the personal committment: Of course, if you were to push for two years, and we got the change accepted... Would you hold your bid committing two years of your life to leading the project? signature.asc Description: Digital signature
To Lucas: how do you plan to push your ideas
Hello Lucas, I've read your platform and I share your 5-years goals and I agree on most of the suggested intermediary goals to bring us closer to the long term goals. That said, it's not clear to me how you plan to achieve them. Being the DPL doesn't grant you more time to implement them yourself and your influence as DPL is limited. You said “at least you know what I consider the most important, and where I would push”. How do you expect to push your agenda for the project? Do you plan to recruit minions^WDPL helpers to work on each of the sub-goals? Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer Get the Debian Administrator's Handbook: → http://debian-handbook.info/get/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312173714.ga7...@x230-buxy.home.ouaza.com
Re: mentoring programs in Debian
On 12/03/13 at 14:14 +0100, Ana Guerrero wrote: Hi Russ, On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 03:03:42PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: Ana Guerrero a...@debian.org writes: - For some DDs in previous years, this seemed to be a way to have students doing stuff from their TODO lists... Just a quick note on this part: I don't think this is inherently a bad idea, although of course it should be something the student is also excited about. But I remember what I was like when I was in high school: I really wanted to program, but I was horrible at coming up with useful things to do. I needed a good problem stream that I could work on and then I enjoyed finding ways to solve the problems. Not everyone is like that, of course, but I do think there are people out there who just want to put skills to use and learn how to do new things but don't know how to select good and useful problems to work on. On the general topic of mentoring, though, I think one of the hardest parts of helping new people join the project is that people need to start with relatively easy tasks so that they can get their feet wet. That often means that one needs to step back and let new people do things that are easy for the mentor, which in turn means leaving easy work undone for long enough to give people a chance to do it. I see your point. In these cases, the mentor was more treating the GSoC program as a bounty program or a way to have contractors paid at the expense of somebody else. It wasn't a real mentoring scheme. This kind of mentoring let's package this new software stack (and create a team to maintain it, when it doesn't exist) doesn't need to happen inside the GSoC, it can happen already in Debian. Nothing really needs to happen inside GSoC. But GSoC provide several advantages: - there's a rigid framework (deadlines, etc) that help the student organize and focus - the student gets paid by Google - the student gets to mention both Debian and Google on his CV, which is probably seen positively by future recruiters. Lucas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312185027.gc8...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: mentoring programs in Debian
On 12/03/13 at 13:18 +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: What I can think about: Forgot something: schools/seminars -- Ubuntu does https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDeveloperWeek - a set of seminars on IRC to teach Ubuntu development. I'm not sure of how useful that is (I've never attended it) and if we should do it too. AFAIK we don't do that inside Debian. But I thought it was worth mentioning. Lucas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312185542.gd8...@xanadu.blop.info
Are there problematic infrastructure or processes in Debian?
Hi, this is a question to all candidates. Debian's infrastructure and processes have grown organically over the years, with all the strengths and weaknesses that it implies. Sometimes it's a good idea to step back and look whether some of those need to be amended/replaced/dropped/etc. Based on your own experience, which infrastructure(s) or process(es) would benefit from significant changes? Are there infrastructures or processes that we're (still) lacking and that could make a significant difference in the work of Debian's contributors? Cheers, PS: I tried to avoid being negative in my questions because I believe it's important to respect the work of whovever created the infrastructure/process you might have in mind, but the questions could be rephrased as “What sucks in Debian in terms of infrastructure and/or processes?”. -- Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer Get the Debian Administrator's Handbook: → http://debian-handbook.info/get/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312191719.gb7...@x230-buxy.home.ouaza.com
Re: mentoring programs in Debian
On Tue, 12 Mar 2013 19:55:42 +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: schools/seminars -- Ubuntu does https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDeveloperWeek - a set of seminars on IRC to teach Ubuntu development. I'm not sure of how useful that is (I've never attended it) and if we should do it too. AFAIK we don't do that inside Debian. But I thought it was worth mentioning. There have been some IRC Training Sessions organized by the Debian Women team: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWomen/Projects/Events/TrainingSessions Cheers, gregor -- .''`. Homepage: http://info.comodo.priv.at/ - OpenPGP key 0xBB3A68018649AA06 : :' : Debian GNU/Linux user, admin, and developer - http://www.debian.org/ `. `' Member of VIBE!AT SPI, fellow of the Free Software Foundation Europe `- NP: Bob Dylan: It's All Good signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [to all candidates] about a DPL board
Hi, On 12/03/13 at 00:54 +0100, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote: Hi, in the past i heared several ideas about a Debian Project Leader board similar to the SPI board. So lets imagine the project would have to vote for several members of this sort of board, with every member being on-board for (lets say) 3y. What do you think about this idea? Would it be worth in long term to establish such a leader board (and therefore a change to our current constitution) for the Debian Project, or do you think the DPL should stay a single person? Powers inside Debian rely on a very subtle balance, and we need to be careful about not breaking that balance. A team to help the DPL is a very attractive idea, and it's great that Stefano started his DPL helpers initiative. It could help share the load with more people, get people to train and understand the job, etc. But do we need an official board, or just an informal team of DPL helpers? I think that for now, an informal team is enough. Many of the actions that people expect from the DPL do not require special powers (and those are generally the most time-consuming). For those which require special powers, there are other solutions: - delegate someone for a specific task and time - limit the role of the helper to expertise/advise/drafting -- the DPL does the final action or takes the final decision Also, I think that we need more time to understand how such a board would work, using the DPL helpers initiative as a prototype. So, if elected: - I will not push for a DPL team/board myself. Of course everybody is free to discuss and push for constitutional changes - I will continue the DPL helpers initiative Additionally, I must admit that I quite dislike the DPL helpers name, and I'd like to find another name. The best name I've come up with so far is Debian Driving Force. Driving, because its role is to drive the project. Of course, not like a bus driver that follows an agenda you don't control and takes you wherever s/he want. More like a taxi driver: people in the taxi/project decide via consensus where they want to go, and how they want to go there, and the driver takes them there following their requests. Force (and not team), because I think that it's important to have an open group of people, and not imply that there are people in and people out. Lucas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312193945.ge8...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: [all candidates] Work balance and traveling
Hi, On 12/03/13 at 18:31 +0100, Arno Töll wrote: Hi, while reading your platforms I noticed that you're rather vague on your future Debian commitment for that one of you ending as DPL for real. Moray mostly answered my question already, but if he wants to extend he's surely invited to elaborate. Hence, my question primarily addresses lucas and algernon: Sorry to tell, but you're all compared to zack leaving back some by-now established patterns as a DPL. So I wonder, will you step back from maintainer/team activities during your term? You are both well known for your work within Debian, lucas' archive rebuilds come me in mind immediately, and algernon likewise for his tireless work behind the curtains (reassigning lost bugs. Does anyone else besides him read debian-bugs-dist? Helping on the mentors edge and more). How do you intend to handle your existing Debian commitment, in case you're elected for DPL? Moreover, I wonder how much time you intend to spend for representative conference/summit work, where zack once again did an impressive job to represent Debian in talks, press and presentations. If elected, I will reduce my involvement in other areas of Debian: - I will stop doing Ruby work (I'm getting tired of it and I need to move on anyway). We have two quite new DD in the Ruby team who are very active and doing great work, so it's a perfect time to stop. - Now that I did the work to move the archive rebuilds infrastructure to AWS (see http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=718), someone else can do the whole process without my help. In the worst case, no archive rebuilds during the first year of a release cycle (imagining we will release soon) is bad, but not as bad as during the second half of a cycle. - UDD could stay in maintenance mode for a while. There are also other DDs involved in its maintenance. - Most of the packages I maintain are either low-maintenance, or co-maintained. I will be able to spend more time on Debian than I currently do¹. The last months of my personal life have been rather difficult, and required a lot of time to be dealt with, but this is now over. ¹ well, I'm not talking about since the discussion period started ;) My day job offers me a lot of flexibility in my time management (I have the same position as Stefano). Travelling to conferences to talk about Debian is not a problem. Finally (and the most important), I don't plan to do all the work alone. I will continue the DPL helpers initiative, and really hope to get some help from there. This is important also for the project on the long term. I find it quite sad and worrying that we only had three DPL candidates this year. Having an active group of people willing to contribute to DPL shores will make running for DPL less frightening for potential candidates. Note that even if the above completely fails, this does not mean that I will go MIA. I'm quite an organization freak, and I'm used to prioritizing, so I'm very confident that in the worst case, at least the important stuff will get done. Note that I've been doing archive rebuilds on a quite regular basis since 2007 with only rare interruptions. ;) Lucas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312195401.gf8...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: To Lucas: how do you plan to push your ideas
On 03/12/2013 06:37 PM, Raphael Hertzog wrote: Hello Lucas, I've read your platform and I share your 5-years goals and I agree on most of the suggested intermediary goals to bring us closer to the long term goals. That said, it's not clear to me how you plan to achieve them. Being the DPL doesn't grant you more time to implement them yourself and your influence as DPL is limited. You said “at least you know what I consider the most important, and where I would push”. How do you expect to push your agenda for the project? I do wonder why your question is for lucas specifically? It would be interesting to hear other candidates on this too. Do you plan to recruit minions^WDPL helpers to work on each of the sub-goals? Not replying for him but his platform mentions that. Maybe you should read it? Cheers, -- Mehdi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/513f8abf.6000...@dogguy.org
Re: [all candidates] DPL term duration
On 2013-03-12 20:35, Gunnar Wolf wrote: In the past, when I was a new DD, there was this strange and sad tendency that after finishing their DPL term, DPLs tended to leave the project (or strongly reduce their involvement) — I *think* there is some correlation with the DPL task pickup burnout time, which can be an important portion of the term. While this burnout has been most visible in DPLs, we have seen the same pattern in other Debian roles. I would relate this to the more general point I have been making, that we should aim for people to rotate into new roles earlier (not later, as you are suggesting here ;). It's a waste if we leave people in roles until they burn out then leave the project, rather than guiding them earlier into new roles where we can transfer their experience to other areas. In the specific case of the DPL role, I would rather that someone stayed around the project a long time as an occasional advisor than that we pushed them to take an extra year as DPL then saw them burn out and disappear. We have seen some discussions in the past regarding whether the term should be lengthened to two years, with a mid-term referendum (or chance to politely step down) rather than full election procedure. How would you feel about it? I can certainly see a potential benefit for the project from spending less time on elections (currently 10% of each year is the election period). And a two-year term would allow people to work on some of their plans on a more relaxed timetable. However, the DPL role for a single year is already a big commitment, taking a lot of energy and time (typically including a lot of the time that person previously spent in other areas of Debian). Already many people who would perform the role well choose not to run due to the required commitment. While you suggest that the second year would be separate and optional, I can see it becoming a point of pride in the election period to say that you plan to perform the full two years, discouraging those who don't feel so confident about asserting this. Equally, losing a referendum could be more stressful for an incumbent DPL who wants to continue than being beaten by another candidate -- and if they failed the referendum we'd presumably need a full vote, but would face an interim period with either no DPL or one who knows that they lack formal support. In my view, if we want to lengthen the term of office for our leadership roles, which could have beneficial aspects, we should do that as part of a wider reform that reduces the concentration of roles/power in a single person. -- Moray -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/681fab73e17f7486dc9a672a0e3b6...@www.morayallan.com
Re: [all candidates] DPL term duration
Moray Allan mo...@sermisy.org writes: However, the DPL role for a single year is already a big commitment, taking a lot of energy and time (typically including a lot of the time that person previously spent in other areas of Debian). Already many people who would perform the role well choose not to run due to the required commitment. For example, I would question whether one could do the role of DPL with a conventional full-time job in IT, at least if you want to keep any other hobbies outside of those two jobs. The amount of media and expected travel to represent Debian is rather intimidating (particularly to an introvert), as are the number of things that are relatively time-sensitive and require a lot of effort. (I think mediations and helping people work together is much more difficult than technical work on packages.) -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87fw00nywj@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: [Soc-coordination] mentoring programs in Debian
Hi Ana, On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 14:14 +0100, Ana Guerrero wrote: I see your point. In these cases, the mentor was more treating the GSoC program as a bounty program or a way to have contractors paid at the expense of somebody else. It wasn't a real mentoring scheme. This kind of mentoring let's package this new software stack (and create a team to maintain it, when it doesn't exist) doesn't need to happen inside the GSoC, it can happen already in Debian. In fact, some Debian teams already do this, but fail to announce it clearly. When an interested user ask, we tend to say: if you want new version of X in Debian, we need help instead of we welcome new contributors. If you don't have a lot of experience, don't worry, we'll mentor you! Please take a look at this and if you can questions mails us to X and/or join us in IRC or something along these lines :) Would you mind elaborating on this? The background to this is that I am currently considering mentoring the Leiningen Clojure packaging project [0] and your comments make me think twice about commiting to this. I thought that the proposal has merit and would allow an interested student to gather valuable insights into Debian and its packaging infrastructure or tooling. [0] http://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2013/Projects#Leiningen_.26_Clojure_packaging -- Wolodja deb...@babilen5.org 4096R/CAF14EFC 081C B7CD FF04 2BA9 94EA 36B2 8B7F 7D30 CAF1 4EFC signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: To Lucas: how do you plan to push your ideas
On 12/03/13 at 18:37 +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: Hello Lucas, I've read your platform and I share your 5-years goals and I agree on most of the suggested intermediary goals to bring us closer to the long term goals. That said, it's not clear to me how you plan to achieve them. Being the DPL doesn't grant you more time to implement them yourself and your influence as DPL is limited. You said “at least you know what I consider the most important, and where I would push”. How do you expect to push your agenda for the project? Do you plan to recruit minions^WDPL helpers to work on each of the sub-goals? Before addressing the core of your question: as I said in https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2013/03/msg00072.html, I'm not a big fan of the DPL helpers name (and no, minions is not better :) ) First, even if being DPL would not grant more time to implement my ideas, it could increase efficiency a bit: if I'm elected, it's likely that DD will consider requests related to the goals listed in my platform with slightly more attention. But I fully agree that it's no enough. That's where the DPL helpers / Debian Driving Force come to help. Yes, I will recruit people to work on those goals. I will organize discussions (on mailing lists, and during IRC meetings) towards achieving those goals: reviewing and providing feedback on possible implementation plans, discussing locks and how to overcome them, and then doing regular status updates, and looking for more volunteers to help if needed. Sure, some goals might not get done. Is that bad? maybe. But it might also indicate that those goals were not important enough to attract enough volunteers. I just would like to stress two things: - The usual consensus-based decision making processes will of course be applied. - It's not a closed process with a closed list of goals. From my platform: if elected, I will encourage (discussion of) innovative ideas, investigate how the project's resources can be used to support them, and advertise experiments. Of course, such experiments need to include success metrics, and the necessary warnings (no long term guarantee that the experiment will continue, no security support, etc.) Lucas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312204920.ga10...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: [all candidates] DPL term duration
Hi, On 12/03/13 at 11:35 -0600, Gunnar Wolf wrote: I'm writing this prompted by some of the lines written by Gergely and Moray in the about a DPL board thread. One of the difficulties I perceive we have seen over the years is the time it takes to transfer the know-how and work rhythm from an outgoing DPL to an incoming one. Several of our DPLs have repeated their term. In the past, when I was a new DD, there was this strange and sad tendency that after finishing their DPL term, DPLs tended to leave the project (or strongly reduce their involvement) — I *think* there is some correlation with the DPL task pickup burnout time, which can be an important portion of the term. We have seen some discussions in the past regarding whether the term should be lengthened to two years, with a mid-term referendum (or chance to politely step down) rather than full election procedure. How would you feel about it? Would you prefer the term to be stated as a longer journey, or is one year the right duration? Would you be interested in pushing for this change? There is, of course, also the personal committment: Of course, if you were to push for two years, and we got the change accepted... Would you hold your bid committing two years of your life to leading the project? I think that one-year terms are a good compromise, and I don't think that there's much to gain from doing two years with a referendum. I really don't see DPL elections as a loss of time. They are a good time to review the project status, discuss where we are going, exchange ideas, etc. It's unfortunate that it's mostly limited to a QA with candidates. Some of the threads could probably degenerate into very interesting project-wide discussions. I think that the DPL helpers initiative could greatly contribute to: - ease the start of a DPL term, and transitions between DPLs, due to a better understanding of the job - make the job look less frightening and more doable without committing a large amount of your life to this job (I really regret we don't have more candidates) Lucas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312210543.gb10...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: mentoring programs in Debian
On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 07:50:27PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: On 12/03/13 at 14:14 +0100, Ana Guerrero wrote: .. This kind of mentoring let's package this new software stack (and create a team to maintain it, when it doesn't exist) doesn't need to happen inside the GSoC, it can happen already in Debian. Nothing really needs to happen inside GSoC. But GSoC provide several advantages: - there's a rigid framework (deadlines, etc) that help the student organize and focus - the student gets paid by Google - the student gets to mention both Debian and Google on his CV, which is probably seen positively by future recruiters. Yeah, and also the GSoC have a huge disadvantage, it is available only to a tiny small percentage of the population who have the privilege of getting a higher education, then only if their school load and life responsibilities allow them to participate in the program. It would also be good for us to encourage our own programs to a wider and diverse population, instead of relying exclusively on the rules set by a non-free-software company. And assuming that students want non-free-software companies on their CV. Your whole point here somehow seems to be against this internship idea While you seemed to agree previously that all of these internship-like things (GSoC, NM, team-trainee, ...) are good. Ana -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312205610.ga30...@pryan.ekaia.org
Re: Are there problematic infrastructure or processes in Debian?
Hi, [ Your question is similar in some ways to a question asked earlier by Lars Wirzenius. See my answer at https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2013/03/msg00020.html ] On 12/03/13 at 20:17 +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: Hi, this is a question to all candidates. Debian's infrastructure and processes have grown organically over the years, with all the strengths and weaknesses that it implies. Sometimes it's a good idea to step back and look whether some of those need to be amended/replaced/dropped/etc. Indeed. I think that the organic growth of Debian's infrastructure and processes is a great strength of Debian. It's technically very easy to experiment an idea by starting to develop a service, and get it linked from important places such as the PTS so that everybody can benefit from it. That's something we should encourage. Based on your own experience, which infrastructure(s) or process(es) would benefit from significant changes? Before answering your question, I'd like to state that the situation has generally improved greatly over the last years. There are still some grey areas, but when I started contributing to Debian, there were entire process that were sometimes stuck for months. Are there infrastructures or processes that we're (still) lacking and that could make a significant difference in the work of Debian's contributors? I see two main areas of improvement: - We should ensure that process that are regularly blocking contributors with no easy way to circumvent them work as smoothly as possible. If elected, I will closely monitor such processes to be proactive. - We still lack some infrastructure to help with team maintenance. We have PET (http://pet.alioth.debian.org/), which is great, but many teams are not using it yet. It should probably be advertised/generalized a bit more. More generally, there's the problem of combining information found on all pieces of the Debian infrastructure. Quoting my platform: Debian services (dak, wanna-build, BTS, DEHS, popcon, lintian, etc.) are very much heterogeneous in terms of technologies and interfaces. The positive impact is that it is very easy for anyone to develop another service and get it integrated into our existing infrastructure. The negative impact is that it is very hard to combine data. Ultimate Debian Database solves that by importing all relevant data about Debian (and derivative distributions) into a single SQL database. Several services have been developed on top of UDD (including bugs.cgi and Debian Maintainer Dashboard) and many others rely on UDD as a data source. (Note that unfortunately, UDD no longer contains data from PET about VCS -- that importer is broken since PET moved to alioth.) Lucas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312212854.gc10...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: mentoring programs in Debian
On Tue 12 Mar 2013 17:56:10 Ana Guerrero escribió: [snip] Yeah, and also the GSoC have a huge disadvantage, it is available only to a tiny small percentage of the population who have the privilege of getting a higher education, then only if their school load and life responsibilities allow them to participate in the program. Without taking into account that summer is happening just in the northern hemisphere. In the remaining of the globe, we are not on holidays. -- Esperando confirmación de ingredientes necesarios que serán expuestos a la radiación... Manera geek de expresar que se espera la compra de carne para un típico asado argentino. Silvio Rikemberg. Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer http://perezmeyer.com.ar/ http://perezmeyer.blogspot.com/ signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: mentoring programs in Debian
Hi, On 12/03/13 at 21:56 +0100, Ana Guerrero wrote: On Tue, Mar 12, 2013 at 07:50:27PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: On 12/03/13 at 14:14 +0100, Ana Guerrero wrote: .. This kind of mentoring let's package this new software stack (and create a team to maintain it, when it doesn't exist) doesn't need to happen inside the GSoC, it can happen already in Debian. Nothing really needs to happen inside GSoC. But GSoC provide several advantages: - there's a rigid framework (deadlines, etc) that help the student organize and focus - the student gets paid by Google - the student gets to mention both Debian and Google on his CV, which is probably seen positively by future recruiters. Yeah, and also the GSoC have a huge disadvantage, it is available only to a tiny small percentage of the population who have the privilege of getting a higher education, then only if their school load and life responsibilities allow them to participate in the program. It would also be good for us to encourage our own programs to a wider and diverse population, instead of relying exclusively on the rules set by a non-free-software company. And assuming that students want non-free-software companies on their CV. Your whole point here somehow seems to be against this internship idea While you seemed to agree previously that all of these internship-like things (GSoC, NM, team-trainee, ...) are good. You wrote: This kind of mentoring let's package this new software stack [..] doesn't need to happen inside the GSoC, it can happen already in Debian. I agree that this kind of mentoring can happen already in Debian, but that's not a reason not to do it in GSoC. I was pointing that GSoC offers several advantages that might not be easy to offer in other programs. I think that it would be better to talk about mentoring schemes rather than internship-like things. I'm not sure if it's a cultural issue, but in my mind, internship go with working full time. I think that it's good to have a wide variety of mentoring schemes, to address different needs and possibilities, in terms of available time, of status, of focus, etc. And I also think that in terms of internship programs (=~ full-time work inside the project during the summer), we should explore joining other programs and/or creating our own. Lucas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312214431.gd10...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: [to all candidates] using debian funds for Debian's hardware infrastructure
On 12/03/13 at 00:47 +0100, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote: Hi, in the past Debian had some generous donors, who donated a huge amounts of high quality hardware on regual basis to the Debian project. For some reasons (not to be discussed here) those sources dont exist any more. As this hardware comes to the end of it's lifecycle, DSA will need to buy new hardware. To keep up our standards on hardware for core infrastrucure, DSA will need to spend several 10k USD on new hardware in the next year. @all: do you think it is worth spending large amount of money donated to Debian to keep our core hardware infrastructure on its current level? Sure. It's very important that we continue to have an infrastructure in a very good health. @all: do you think Debian should do a fundraising campain where we collect a larger amount of money dedicated to Debian's hardware infrastructure? There are several questions here: 1) Should we do fundraising? My answer is Yes. We need some money to support Debian development. 2) Should we spend more on hardware? (larger amount of money) I'd say that it depends on the needs. Our infrastructure is extremely important, but we still need to make sure that expenses are justified. Of course, I have a high confidence that DSA is reasonable ;) 3) Should we do fundraising specifically for hardware? In a fundraising campaign, it generally helps to have a story to tell to possible donors. Or afterwards, to be able to say thanks to our donors, we were able to So yes, we could use our hardware infrastructure as a story in a fundraising campaign. That would also be a nice way to advertise how our infrastructure work. @lucas, @algernon: in your platform you are not stating how you will handle money requests, and what do you think about using Debian's money at all. Can you please elaborate? On handling money requests: As pointed by Moray, we have a small problem with how money requests are currently handled, and we could improve transparency a bit. For example, planned expenses could be announced on a list to give a change to other DDs to react. On using Debian's money: My line, which is quite consensual I think, is that Debian money can be used to support Debian development (hardware infrastructure, travel reimbursement, ...) but not to pay contributors. If we were to run our own internship program, I would be hard to convince to use Debian money for stipends. A separate fundraising campaign specifically for stipends would be better IMHO. And I would probably disagree quite strongly if the program allowed DDs to receive stipends. [ I'm copying here Raphael's question, since it covers money as well ] On 12/03/13 at 10:43 +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: To other candidates, do you believe that we could benefit from using money for other things than hardware and meeting/travel reimbursment? If yes, what kind of things? Again, several questions in one: 1) Could we use Debian money for other things than hardware and meeting/travel reimbursement? Yes, we could. 2) Would it be a good idea? Could we benefit from it? Maybe. Depends. 3) For what kind of things? Since you are asking the question, isn't it up to you to come up with ideas/examples? :) I find it difficult to discuss such things in the general case. Lucas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312225842.ga11...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: Usage of Debian's Money
On 12/03/13 at 10:43 +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: To other candidates, do you believe that we could benefit from using money for other things than hardware and meeting/travel reimbursment? If yes, what kind of things? [ I replied in https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2013/03/msg00084.html ] Lucas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312230048.gb11...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: To Lucas: how do you plan to push your ideas
On Tue, 12 Mar 2013, Mehdi Dogguy wrote: I do wonder why your question is for lucas specifically? It would be interesting to hear other candidates on this too. Because I find that Lucas has included more technical and concrete goals than others have done and it's difficult to find volunteers to implement one's ideas. At least that was my feeling, yours might differ and I have no problem if others candidates want to respond to my question. Do you plan to recruit minions^WDPL helpers to work on each of the sub-goals? Not replying for him but his platform mentions that. Maybe you should read it? He mentions the continuation of DPL helpers but as a way to share the workload and to move forward with *their* ideas, which might not necessarily be the same than his own ideas. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer Get the Debian Administrator's Handbook: → http://debian-handbook.info/get/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312231813.ga10...@x230-buxy.home.ouaza.com
Re: Usage of Debian's Money
Hi, On Tue, 12 Mar 2013, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: 3) For what kind of things? Since you are asking the question, isn't it up to you to come up with ideas/examples? :) I find it difficult to discuss such things in the general case. On Tue, 12 Mar 2013, Moray Allan wrote: In fact I fear that it's logically impossible for me to give examples to demonstrate my point. My claim is that I would be open to new ideas from others about spending money, and actively look for suggestions. Anything that I suggest myself here is by definition not a new idea from others! Since both of you want examples of possible uses of money, here you have some that I quickly came up with: 1/ Grant some amount of money to the release team to offer as bounties on release blocker issues that are not going forward. 2/ Have the ftpmasters write up a spec of what needs to be done to finally have ddeb support (or PPA or ...) and use Debian's money to contract with someone (unaffiliated to Debian?) to actually implement the spec under the supervision of ftpmasters. Copyright of the code written would fall under Debian/SPI. 3/ Buy advertising space on various media to recruit new contributors and lead them into our (improved) mentoring infrastructure. Offer goodies as rewards to new contributors who successfully played some game which tricked them into contributing to Debian. I suspect that I would be unconvinced by most ideas that suggested that we spend spend money in ways that it would not be permitted for SPI to spend money under relevant legislation and the SPI by-laws. What kind of restrictions are you referring to? Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer Get the Debian Administrator's Handbook: → http://debian-handbook.info/get/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130312235750.gb10...@x230-buxy.home.ouaza.com
Re: mentoring programs in Debian
On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 2:55 AM, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: Ubuntu does https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDeveloperWeek - a set of seminars on IRC to teach Ubuntu development. I'm not sure of how useful that is (I've never attended it) and if we should do it too. AFAIK we don't do that inside Debian. But I thought it was worth mentioning. In Debian we mostly do continuous mentoring on all topics on the debian-mentors IRC channel and mailing list rather than specific sessions at specific times. I guess some folks learn better the other way and might benefit better from specific sessions so it might be interesting to do both. I'm not sure about the full week part though, maybe something more continuous would be good. -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/caktje6egod-_gr7suruvjwzaopeh5phnylw19u_p167csc4...@mail.gmail.com
