Re: [all candidates] Return to the desert island (cont.)

[Bart Martens]

On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 11:39:29PM +0100, Jérémy Bobbio wrote:
> 1. Some software Debian distribute are actually only useful when
>connected to the Internet to access services for which the
>source code is unavailable.
> 
> 2. The Debian policy states (emphasis is mine):
> 
>  # 2.2.2 The contrib archive area
> 
>  The contrib archive area contains supplemental packages intended to
>  work with the Debian distribution, but **which require software
>  outside of the distribution to either build or function**.
> 
>  Every package in contrib must comply with the DFSG.
> 
> 3. One test I've been taught to use to reason about free software is the
>Desert Island test [2] which starts by:
> [2] 
> 
>  Imagine a castaway on a desert island with a solar-powered
>  computer.
> 
>   Obviously, software that are only frontends to unreproducible “cloud”
>   services do not pass the desert island test.
> 
> Dear candidates, do you think that libechonest [3] should be called free
> software? As it requires software outside of the distribution to
> function, do you think it should be moved to contrib? What about
> s3cmd [4] then?
> [3] 
> [4] 

Good question.  See also for example bug 681659.  I don't know why
pidgin-facebookchat would belong in section main while flashplugin-nonfree
would belong section contrib.  Both packages contain software that can freely
be redistributed but require software outside of the distribution to function.
Where to draw the line ?

> 
> Do you think that it's a fight that's worth fighting?

It's not about legal problems the Debian project could get in trouble with.
But it is related to one of the core goals of the Debian project.

Regards,

Bart Martens


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Re: [all candidates] Return to the desert island (cont.)

[Steve Langasek]

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 02:07:40AM -0400, Michael Gilbert wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 7:46 PM, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 11:39:29PM +0100, Jérémy Bobbio wrote:
> >> 3. One test I've been taught to use to reason about free software is the
> >>Desert Island test [2] which starts by:

> >>  Imagine a castaway on a desert island with a solar-powered
> >>  computer.

> >>   Obviously, software that are only frontends to unreproducible “cloud”
> >>   services do not pass the desert island test.

> > This is a mischaracterization of the "Desert Island test" as it was
> > formulated on debian-legal.  The Desert Island test is about whether a user
> > can *comply with the license* of the software on a desert island when they
> > have no contact with the outside world.  That the software may not be
> > *useful* to them on a desert island is a separate question, and applies to
> > many sorts of software, not just those used for connecting to particular
> > services over the Internet.

> Then again, this is a misinterpretation of the fundamental question
> Jeremy has attempted to pose.

I am only addressing the factually incorrect interpretation of the Desert
Island test, because such inaccuracies, if allowed to stand uncorrected,
have a nasty habit of spreading.

So no, I did not misinterpret his question - but as I am not a candidate, my
thoughts on that question are out of scope for this discussion.

-- 
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Re: [all candidates] Return to the desert island (cont.)

[Michael Gilbert]

On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 7:46 PM, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 11:39:29PM +0100, Jérémy Bobbio wrote:
>> 3. One test I've been taught to use to reason about free software is the
>>Desert Island test [2] which starts by:
>
>>  Imagine a castaway on a desert island with a solar-powered
>>  computer.
>
>>   Obviously, software that are only frontends to unreproducible “cloud”
>>   services do not pass the desert island test.
>
> This is a mischaracterization of the "Desert Island test" as it was
> formulated on debian-legal.  The Desert Island test is about whether a user
> can *comply with the license* of the software on a desert island when they
> have no contact with the outside world.  That the software may not be
> *useful* to them on a desert island is a separate question, and applies to
> many sorts of software, not just those used for connecting to particular
> services over the Internet.

Then again, this is a misinterpretation of the fundamental question
Jeremy has attempted to pose.  Although admittedly, bullet 3 does
unfortunately lead to that kind of reasoning since it frames the
question in a freeness context, which I agree is misleading.

So, what then is the fundamental question Jeremy meant to pose?  It is
this: given the distinction between main and contrib as stated in
policy 2.2.1 and 2.2.2 respectively:

The main archive area comprises the Debian distribution. Only the
packages in this area are considered part of the distribution. **None
of the packages in the main archive area require software outside of
that area to function.**

[...]

The contrib archive area contains supplemental packages intended to
 work with the Debian distribution, but **which require software
 outside of the distribution to either build or function**.

are the packages currently in main that "require software outside of
the distribution to either build or function" ultimately violating
policy?  And if so, should they be moved to contrib?

I think Jeremy's suggestion of a Desert Island "Use" test seems quite
appropriate to decide that question.  And again, just to be clear, the
Desert Island "Freeness" test has no relevance in answering the real
question posed here.

Note that I've looked into this problem in the past, and such cases
where this question is relevant in main are fortunately quite rare.
Nevertheless, it's an interesting subtle aspect that isn't much
thought about (at least not in the right way).

Best wishes,
Mike


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Re: [all candidates] lack of women in Debian

[Lucas Nussbaum]

On 19/03/13 at 21:43 +0100, Gerfried Fuchs wrote:
> * Lucas Nussbaum  [2013-03-19 07:44:32 CET]:
> > But it's also about how we see our project. I would like Debian to be
> > a very welcoming project, and I hate the fact that it's harder for some
> > groups to get involved.
> 
>  Given that the context of this statement is "lack of women in Debian",
> why do you believe that it's harder for women to get involved?

Let's split the process of getting involved into several steps:

Step 0: Alice knows nothing about Debian
Step 1: Alice is "exposed" to Debian
Step 2: Alice would like to contribute to Debian
Step 3: Alice starts contributing to Debian

Going from Step 0 to Step 1 is less likely for women, because there are
fewer women in situations to be "exposed" to Debian (studying CS, IT
jobs, etc.). And there's not much we can do (as Debian) for that.

Going from Step 1 to Step 2 is also less likely for women, because the
prospect of getting involved in a project with so few women might be a
bit frightening.

I don't see why going from Step 2 to Step 3 would be less likely for
women. One could also point out that women tend to get more help (for
good or bad reasons) when they ask for help.

So, maybe I should have said "less likely" rather than "harder".
However, for some other groups, it might be "harder". For example, it's
harder for non-native english speakers to be involved in Debian, because
contributing to Debian requires some english knowledge.

Lucas


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Re: To all candidates: which way out of the project ?

[Lucas Nussbaum]

On 20/03/13 at 11:22 +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I did not manage to formulate a better subject... the question is about what
> should be the usual way to end our formal membership in the Debian project.
> 
> In Debian, we stay member until we die or quit (or very exceptionally, are
> expelled).  The consequence is that it is hard to evaluate how much active
> members we have.  It may also create more crispations about giving membership.
> 
> We often discussed about how to become a member, but more rarely about the
> other side of it. I would be interested to read your opinion, especially on 
> the
> implications that the current practice, or possible changes, have for the
> project as a whole.

As KiBi pointed out, we have MIA. And we also have WAT runs (the idea
was to do regular pings of otherwise inactive DDs -- no vote, no upload
during the last n months), though I'm not sure that WAT runs were done
recently. (WAT runs:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2007/02/msg8.html)

Inactive members are quite harmless, I'm not sure if we need to spend
more work detecting them. Detecting inactive package maintainers is more
much useful.

Lucas


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Re: [all candidates] discussions in -devel

[Lucas Nussbaum]

Hi,

On 20/03/13 at 00:00 +0100, Serafeim Zanikolas wrote:
> Dear candidates,
> 
> In the words of Lars [*]:
> 
> We're not very good at dealing with situations where a few individuals
> are dominating the discussion by being loud, insistent, and unwilling to 
> budge
> or to give any credence to opposing views. I don't know what to do about 
> that,
> but we clearly need social and possibly technical tools for this.
> 
> According to Lars, behind the scenes diplomacy is not sustainable. It seems to
> me that the only way to solve this issue effectively is to make trolling
> harder (requiring more effort) than ending it.
> 
> Our usual approach of darwinism (whereby a single hacker's solution gets
> gradually adopted) does not work here because any attempted solution (social,
> technical or both) requires some kind of upfront policy change (and, for
> technical measures, some kind of infra change).
> 
> How do you propose that we go about dealing with this issue, keeping in mind
> that it's imposs^Wchallenging to get to consensus about non-technical and
> potentially controversial policy (moderation) changes?

Basically, my "solution" is three-fold:
- Have healthy discussions. I discussed that in
  https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2013/03/msg00246.html
- In rare cases, use the TC to decide, as discussed in
  https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2013/03/msg00246.html and
  https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2013/03/msg00132.html
- In some cases, use polls to measure consensus, as discussed in
  https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2013/03/msg00144.html
 
Lucas


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Re: All candidates: Development and technical issues and challenges

[Michael Gilbert]

On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 3:14 AM, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
>> Maybe we could discriminate on the package's priorities. For example,
>> about a third of the 49 packages *really* blocking the release (not
>> waiting for a transition) are from "extra"[2]. Only 5 bugs affect
>> required, important or standard packages. We could focus on those and
>> tell the "extra packages" to hurry up or be shipped with packages that
>> will need to be fixed in a point release... or simply removed.
>
> That's something I already commented on in
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2013/03/msg00020.html:
>
>Another possible area of improvement is the focusing on the more
>important RC bugs. One way to achieve that would be to remove as many
>leaf/not-so-popular packages as possible at the start of the freeze.
>If they get fixed, they could get back in.

Even the suggestion of a testing removal can evoke negative feelings
for those affected (sometimes from those on the sidelines too).  A
recent example:
http://bugs.debian.org/703258

Do you have any thoughts on addressing the social aspect of this
approach?  In actuality, a testing removal is really not a big deal
since the package can come right back once the RC bug is fixed.  Even
so, some see removals as a kind of judgement on themselves as
maintainer.  What can be said or done to qualm the fear and anxiety?

Best wishes,
Mike


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Re: To all candidates: which way out of the project ?

[Cyril Brulebois]

Charles Plessy  (20/03/2013):
> In Debian, we stay member until we die or quit (or very exceptionally, are
> expelled). […]

Or spotted as being MIA. This might help:
  http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/MIA

Mraw,
KiBi.


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To all candidates: which way out of the project ?

[Charles Plessy]

Hi,

I did not manage to formulate a better subject... the question is about what
should be the usual way to end our formal membership in the Debian project.

In Debian, we stay member until we die or quit (or very exceptionally, are
expelled).  The consequence is that it is hard to evaluate how much active
members we have.  It may also create more crispations about giving membership.

We often discussed about how to become a member, but more rarely about the
other side of it. I would be interested to read your opinion, especially on the
implications that the current practice, or possible changes, have for the
project as a whole.

Cheers,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan


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Re: [all candidates] Return to the desert island (cont.)

[Russ Allbery]

Jérémy Bobbio  writes:

> In the lightning talks session of DebConf11, I presented [1] some wild
> thoughts about contrib, the Desert Island test, and some software Debian
> currently ship in main.

> To sum it up:

> 1. Some software Debian distribute are actually only useful when
>connected to the Internet to access services for which the
>source code is unavailable.

> 2. The Debian policy states (emphasis is mine):

>  # 2.2.2 The contrib archive area

>  The contrib archive area contains supplemental packages intended to
>  work with the Debian distribution, but **which require software
>  outside of the distribution to either build or function**.

>  Every package in contrib must comply with the DFSG.

> 3. One test I've been taught to use to reason about free software is the
>Desert Island test [2] which starts by:

>  Imagine a castaway on a desert island with a solar-powered
>  computer.

>   Obviously, software that are only frontends to unreproducible “cloud”
>   services do not pass the desert island test.

As Steve pointed out, that's not the Desert Island Test.  But, on top of
that, note that free software interfaces to proprietary cloud platforms
are frequently used to manipulate the data in those platforms including
pull data *out* of those platforms.  It would be quite ironic if we
refused to include in the distribution the tools required to pull one's
data out of non-free platforms.

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


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Re: [all candidates] Return to the desert island (cont.)

[Steve Langasek]

On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 11:39:29PM +0100, Jérémy Bobbio wrote:
> 3. One test I've been taught to use to reason about free software is the
>Desert Island test [2] which starts by:

>  Imagine a castaway on a desert island with a solar-powered
>  computer.

>   Obviously, software that are only frontends to unreproducible “cloud”
>   services do not pass the desert island test.

This is a mischaracterization of the "Desert Island test" as it was
formulated on debian-legal.  The Desert Island test is about whether a user
can *comply with the license* of the software on a desert island when they
have no contact with the outside world.  That the software may not be
*useful* to them on a desert island is a separate question, and applies to
many sorts of software, not just those used for connecting to particular
services over the Internet.

-- 
Steve Langasek   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/
slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org


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Re: [all candidates] how to choose Jessie init system

[Gergely Nagy]

Gergely Nagy  writes:

> Stefano Zacchiroli  writes:
>
>> Some of the longest -devel thread in recent years have been about
>> Debian's (default) init system: SysV, SystemD, Upstart, OpenRC, etc.
>> Despite folklore, I don't think those thread have been (entirely)
>> trollish, they all hint at a concrete problem:
>
> (For the record, it's systemd, not SystemD. Sorry!)
>
>> How do we make an inherently archive-wide technical decision when
>> multiple, possibly equally valid solutions do exist?
>
> What I believe to be a solution in cases like this, is to sit down with
> the stakeholders (preferably in person; a conference or DebConf would be
> a perfect opportunity for this): maintainers of said systems, porters
> (primarily kFreeBSD & Hurd folk), the security & release teams, and if
> possible, upstream developers of the individual init systems too. I'd do
> this behind closed doors, initially, because the number of arguments and
> the level of noise needs to be controlled, and we've seen how well that
> works on a public mailing list.

Just to clarify: the intent here is not to lock people up until one
emerges, that would be useless and counter productive. I genuinely
believe that with the right people having a civil discussion can get
results out the door in a reasonable timeframe. They just need some
careful herding, is all. And face to face, that can be done - over the
internet, nope.

-- 
|8]


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[all candidates] discussions in -devel

[Serafeim Zanikolas]

Dear candidates,

In the words of Lars [*]:

We're not very good at dealing with situations where a few individuals
are dominating the discussion by being loud, insistent, and unwilling to 
budge
or to give any credence to opposing views. I don't know what to do about 
that,
but we clearly need social and possibly technical tools for this.

According to Lars, behind the scenes diplomacy is not sustainable. It seems to
me that the only way to solve this issue effectively is to make trolling
harder (requiring more effort) than ending it.

Our usual approach of darwinism (whereby a single hacker's solution gets
gradually adopted) does not work here because any attempted solution (social,
technical or both) requires some kind of upfront policy change (and, for
technical measures, some kind of infra change).

How do you propose that we go about dealing with this issue, keeping in mind
that it's imposs^Wchallenging to get to consensus about non-technical and
potentially controversial policy (moderation) changes?

[*] http://blog.liw.fi/posts/diplomacy/
http://blog.liw.fi/posts/discussion-what-works-or-not/

-- 
Every great idea is worthless without someone to do the work. --Neil Williams


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[all candidates] Advertising testing and security support

[Jérémy Bobbio]

Hi!

Lucas wrote in his plateform:

  For example, we have been providing a fairly good rolling release for
  almost 13 years with testing, but we totally fail at advertising it as
  something supported and usable by end users.

Even if a dedicated team is supposed to care about security in
testing [1], the dedicated mailing-list [2] has not seen an announcement
since February 2011.

Dear candidates, do you think it would be wise to advertise `testing` as
a usable distribution to our users given that state of affairs? Given
that our security support for stable is already not as best as it could
be, do you think we should encourage volunteers to be more active in
security support for testing? Do you have ideas on how to attract more
volunteers to the dull, hard, and sometimes boring tasks of taking care
of security issues in Debian?

[1] 
[2] 

Thanks for your answers. :)

-- 
Jérémy Bobbio.''`. 
lu...@debian.org: :Ⓐ  :  # apt-get install anarchism
`. `'` 
  `-   


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[all candidates] Return to the desert island (cont.)

[Jérémy Bobbio]

Hi!

Thanks algernon, Lucas and Moray for running… I'd like to present my
apologies for the following questions. Feel free to simply dismiss them.


In the lightning talks session of DebConf11, I presented [1] some
wild thoughts about contrib, the Desert Island test, and some software
Debian currently ship in main.

To sum it up:

1. Some software Debian distribute are actually only useful when
   connected to the Internet to access services for which the
   source code is unavailable.

2. The Debian policy states (emphasis is mine):

 # 2.2.2 The contrib archive area

 The contrib archive area contains supplemental packages intended to
 work with the Debian distribution, but **which require software
 outside of the distribution to either build or function**.

 Every package in contrib must comply with the DFSG.

3. One test I've been taught to use to reason about free software is the
   Desert Island test [2] which starts by:

 Imagine a castaway on a desert island with a solar-powered
 computer.

  Obviously, software that are only frontends to unreproducible “cloud”
  services do not pass the desert island test.

I never followed-up that (small) talk by any concrete actions, but the
question still comes up to my mind from time to time.


Dear candidates, do you think that libechonest [3] should be called free
software? As it requires software outside of the distribution to
function, do you think it should be moved to contrib? What about
s3cmd [4] then?

Do you think that it's a fight that's worth fighting?


[1] 
,
starting at 00:10:33.
[2] 
[3] 
[4] 

-- 
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lu...@debian.org: :Ⓐ  :  # apt-get install anarchism
`. `'` 
  `-   


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Re: [all candidates] lack of women in Debian

[Gerfried Fuchs]

* Lucas Nussbaum  [2013-03-19 07:44:32 CET]:
> But it's also about how we see our project. I would like Debian to be
> a very welcoming project, and I hate the fact that it's harder for some
> groups to get involved.

 Given that the context of this statement is "lack of women in Debian",
why do you believe that it's harder for women to get involved?

 Thanks,
Rhonda
-- 
Fühlst du dich mutlos, fass endlich Mut, los  |
Fühlst du dich hilflos, geh raus und hilf, los| Wir sind Helden
Fühlst du dich machtlos, geh raus und mach, los   | 23.55: Alles auf Anfang
Fühlst du dich haltlos, such Halt und lass los|


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Re: [all candidates] vote time?

[MJ Ray]

Rhonda
>  And personally, I consider that is a false direction in the campaigning
> period.  Addressing "big issues" isn't something the DPL has more power
> for than any other DD-- [...]

Sure they do - we've seen DPLs call things consensus when that's very
unclear to me and invoke their power to "Make any decision for whom
noone else has responsibility."  They also have power to streamline
the General Resolution process and hold the casting vote.

I agree that DPL candidates often plan to do stuff that doesn't need
the DPL powers, but there are a few powers which help tackle big
issues, even if they can be tackled without them.

Hope that makes sense - I'm in a rush.
-- 
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http://koha-community.org supporter, web and library systems developer.
In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
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Re: [all candidates] how to choose Jessie init system

[Lucas Nussbaum]

Hi,

On 18/03/13 at 13:55 +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> Some of the longest -devel thread in recent years have been about
> Debian's (default) init system: SysV, SystemD, Upstart, OpenRC, etc.
> Despite folklore, I don't think those thread have been (entirely)
> trollish, they all hint at a concrete problem:
> 
> How do we make an inherently archive-wide technical decision when
> multiple, possibly equally valid solutions do exist?

Regarding the default init system decision:
There must be compromise in any such issue. My compromise is to ignore
anything from lennart. Then, anything from Ubuntu. Once we've done
that, we've decided.

But sometimes, such archive-wide technical decisions don't involve
Lennart or Ubuntu¹, so it's harder to decide.


Our goal should be to *make the best decisions*. For that, we need to make
sure that there's an healthy discussion. There are several ways someone
can contribute to having healthier discussions, and the DPL authority is
helpful for them, while not mandatory (I've done what follows on a few
occasions myself):
- summarize long discussions so that:
  + people can join the discussion without feeling they have
to read everything
  + the same arguments stop being repeated over and over again
- calm down people who get too vocal

I find it great that such discussions usually result in a throughout
review of the possible solutions by Debian.

Often, there's the possibility to limit the impact of the decision, e.g.
by providing a default, but also supporting alternatives. When that's
possible, that's something that should be explored. It's a good thing
for the current alternatives, but also to help future alternatives
later.

Regarding the decision itself, we often have developers in position to
take a decision about the default solution (d-i maintainers, maintainers
of important packages that depend on one or the other solutions, etc.)
In the last resort, it's also possible to bring the issue to the TC.
Also, as I said in
https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2013/03/msg00132.html, on rare
occasions and especially when there's no clear possible decision-maker,
we could ask the TC to decide.

Lucas

PS:
[*] In case you are not sure: yes, the first paragraph of my reply was
not serious. And mostly motived by:
18:47  lucas: I'll buy you a beer if you post that.


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Re: to Moray: being Debconf chair and DPL?

[Moray Allan]

On 2013-03-19 22:34, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote:

if you are ellected as DPL, will you stay Debconf chair, which is a
delegation you got from the current DPL? How can you tell the project
which decission you do as DPL and which as Debconf chair?

In your platform you only say you might to less for Debconf while 
being

DPL.


If I am elected DPL, I will resign from this position.  Beyond the 
general point of it being a DPL delegation, we e.g. have a process for 
DPL approval of a budget presented by the DebConf Chairs, where it is 
better to have a clear separation of powers.


At that point, I hope we can agree an ongoing turnover plan for the 
DebConf Chair positions, which was already talked about there 
previously, but didn't happen yet.  (It might be natural, though not 
compulsory or automatic, for DebConf Chairs to stay in the DebConf 
Committee when they rotate out.)


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to Moray: being Debconf chair and DPL?

[Martin Zobel-Helas]

Hi Moray,

if you are ellected as DPL, will you stay Debconf chair, which is a
delegation you got from the current DPL? How can you tell the project
which decission you do as DPL and which as Debconf chair?

In your platform you only say you might to less for Debconf while being
DPL.

Cheers,
Martin
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Re: [all candidates] vote time?

[Lucas Nussbaum]

On 19/03/13 at 19:28 +0100, Gerfried Fuchs wrote:
> > In fact, campaigning period has always been an occasion to discuss "big
> > issues", as you put it, and it would be sad to pass on the occasion.
> 
>  And personally, I consider that is a false direction in the campaigning
> period.

Yes, but the real question is: how do we, as a project, can manage to
have those useful discussions outside DPL campaigns?

We could create debian-longer-term-vision-and-brainstorming@, but I fear
that it would stay quite silent... Well, maybe we could try to have more
focused prospective brainstorming discussions from time to time.
I can promise to try to initiate such a discussion if I'm elected, that's
a cheap promise :p

Lucas


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Re: [all candidates] lack of women in Debian

[Gunnar Wolf]

Lucas Nussbaum dijo [Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 07:44:32AM +0100]:
> > I would like to know your opinion about this graph (thanks Francesca!): 
> > http://blog.zouish.org/posts/dw/
> (...)
> This graph is a very interesting one. As some of my past actions in
> Debian have shown, I like data and statistics, especially when they
> allow one to measure success, failure or progress, or say something
> about the project that we previously didn't know.
> (...)
> Note that this is not limited to women. We have other populations that
> are very much under-represented in Debian if you compare their number to
> the world population, or even to people in IT jobs.

Right, and IMO we cannot limit our views to what we observe in
Debian. I don't know how this figures go in the rest of the world, but
I was amazed (given the maturity of the profession, I'd have expected
a better balance) that in the faculty I teach (Facultad de Ingeniería,
UNAM, probably the biggest school on the different engineerings in
Latin America) we still have a 80%/20% gender imbalance.

So, according to the graphic (and read optimistically, of course),
Debian is faring still quite below that imbalance (~1.5%), but it is
by a factor of ~10, not a factor of ~100 (as to the general
population).


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Re: to DPL candidates: getting new people to Debian

[Gunnar Wolf]

Gergely Nagy dijo [Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 01:32:32PM +0100]:
> I see people around me teach their children to use and control
> computers, to build things with them, even before they learn to
> write. They have their toys, they build stuff, sometimes they
> unknowingly write programs - before the age of eight. I find that
> astounding (I used to be so proud at writing my first program before I
> could write - now it isn't all that rare, and that's a good thing, that
> people have the opportunity to do that).
> 
> The thing is, Debian is often not available on the devices younger
> people start off with - and even if it is, not by default. Someone who
> just began to experiment, to play, will not install a whole new world
> onto his/her device. That's advanced stuff.

Well, Debian is *almost never* available by default on the devices
they start off with, and has never been. We have always been of appeal
to the technically minded (and less so to the very-freedom-minded)
public. Of course, we have tried to go beyond our natural "limits",
but -outside of some local governments providing Debian-based
solutions for a wide spectrum of their society, which cannot of course
be downplayed- have been unable to.

> Debian is also not impressively different, so to say. We have a distinct
> culture, we have great technical solutions, but those are hardly enough
> to impress someone who just casually looks. We need to reach out and
> show them that there is much more under the hood than they may imagine,
> that we can, and we do provide something unique.
>
> And we need to impress them. That's a very, very hard thing to do, and
> something that we'll need lots of help to accomplish, and not
> necessarily from technical folk. (Which is why one of my primary aims is
> to reach and and recruit non-technical contributors to Debian.)

How would you suggest "impressing" them? A new, shiny user interface
is not what it takes, or at least, not all it takes. We have packaged
*great* user interfaces for a very long time. Even other Linux
distributions, aimed at the desktop, have given a lot of extra shine
and polish to their UIs, someof them (i.e. our derivative Ubuntu)
developing completely new frameworks, targetted IMO to touch-devices,
which are all the rage now. And I still cannot say it impresses or
dazzles newcomers.

> Share the knowledge, share the culture, the stories. I've attended a
> couple of code retreats recently (they seem to be quite popular, and for
> a good reason), and found that they're a great forum not only to meet
> others, learn and teach, but to spread the word too, to evangelise, so
> to say. Much like DebConf, but for the not yet initiated.
> 
> What I think would help, are more local events - not always strictly
> Debian related, as you'll only reach a tiny fraction of people with
> that. But things where the attendance can be impressed, to bring them
> closer to our culture, to our ideas. Once interested is sparked, we can
> proceed further, but it is a gradual process: we won't win anyone for
> the project overnight.
> 
> We need to impress the young. We won't be able to do that with technical
> feats alone (though those do help, and are required, and we have much to
> improve there too, at least in the being readily available for all kinds
> of fun devices department).
> 
> Most of the younger people I talked about Debian with in recent years
> were in their early 20s, and what they seemed most impressed about is
> not our technical feats, not our quality, not anything like that. But
> the culture.

Right, I liked very much the insight in this part: What makes Debian
unique, besides the software (which can be integrated into myriads of
other distributions) is the culture. My recent free software-related
talks have also gone more towards the free culture and flat
organization aspects than to towards technical feats. And, although
it's been a long time since I feel I got a new Debian "addict", I
think that's what we should promote if we want to give a sense of
uniqueness. The way our community works, and why it attracts the kind
of people it does. And why we continue working together.


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Re: [all candidates] vote time?

[Gerfried Fuchs]

On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 10:17:41PM +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 10:39:17PM +0300, Moray Allan wrote:
> > It appears to me that some DPLs^Wpeople may merely be asking questions
> > that they find interesting and would like to see discussed.  While
> > it's nice to see these polite discussions of big issues for Debian, I
> > would suggest that some of them might be better started on the
> > specific relevant lists, with participation from more people than the
> > DPL election candidates!
> 
> Speaking for myself only, I've certainly asked a couple of broad, maybe
> "vision", questions, but certainly not because I'd merely like to see
> them discussed. Rather, it's because I haven't found answers to them in
> the candidates' platforms and my vote actually depends on how the
> candidates will both answer and approach them.  I suspect others might
> be approaching the campaigning period with similar expectations.

 But how does your vote depend on your questions?  I fail to see how a
fair amount of your questions is something that a DPL can work on.  The
constitution doesn't give special power in that respect and I am quite
astonished that this has to be pointed out to you as current and past
DPL.  Maybe I miss your point here.

 Your questions are all valid and fair, but I see Moray's point of that
it's quite confusing to seem them brought up in DPL campaigning on -vote
instead of on the lists where they might actually belong to be discussed
on, and potentially turn into action by the subscribers to the
corresponding list?

> In fact, campaigning period has always been an occasion to discuss "big
> issues", as you put it, and it would be sad to pass on the occasion.

 And personally, I consider that is a false direction in the campaigning
period.  Addressing "big issues" isn't something the DPL has more power
for than any other DD--which even comes more obvious by the yearly
question along the lines of whether the candidates plan to work on their
agendas even if not elected.  This specific question IMHO shows quite
obviously that these things don't need DPL power (or can't be helped
with by being DPL that much).

 So long,
Rhonda
-- 
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Fühlst du dich hilflos, geh raus und hilf, los| Wir sind Helden
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Re: Debian's relationship with money and the economy

[Gergely Nagy]

Hello,

Raphael Hertzog  writes:

> 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.

Well, we have the debian-companies[1] list, we also have a partners
page[2], and the debian-sponsors-discuss[3] list too (although this
latter one may not be in the same category as the other two).

 [1]: http://lists.debian.org/debian-companies/
 [2]: http://www.debian.org/partners/
 [3]: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-sponsors-discuss

So, no, I don't think we hide this information. Rather, in recent years,
I've seen efforts towards the exact opposite.

> 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.

Perhaps. I'm not entirely convinced that most actors would need
press/publicity from Debian. As far as press and publicity goes, I'd
defer to our very own press team to do as they feel appropriate.

Personally, I would not set up a general rule, but decide on a case by
case basis, and leave it up to the companies (or any other for-profit
organisation, project, whatever) to approach us would they believe that
press/publicity from Debian would help them. They'll see this better,
and I'm sure we'll be able to figure something out to benefit both
parties.

> 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).

I agree with this. How we'd promote said project is another matter
though. I would not issue a press release in the general case,
but... see above! Our press team is doing a great job, this is a task
they excel at, and I do not want to intrude into their territory.

> If yes, how can we shift our culture and our policies towards this goal?

As I explained above, I would not want to set up a general rule, nor
even a guideline. Not at this point yet, anyway. Rather, have these
actors seek us out, and we'll come to a conclusion on a case by case
basis. There's no hat that fits all, as the saying goes, especially when
it comes to this topic.

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Re: to DPL candidates: How do you plan to represent Debian externally?

[Gergely Nagy]

Paul Tagliamonte  writes:

> I'd ask the DPL candidates to speak a bit about how they intend to
> represent Debian externally -- both in terms out downstream outreach, as
> well as upstream (or even side-stream) relations.

Like I expressed earlier, elsewhere, I believe that representing Debian
is a task that can - and often should - be given to those most
appropriate for the task. Who and why is most appropriate, depends on a
lot of things, like availability, familiarity with the topic or
audience, requirements coming from the organisers, and so on and so
forth.

That is to say, if elected, I will not be able to represent Debian on
every front, nor do I feel that this should be expected from the DPL.

What I would like to have, however, is sending the best people to
represent Debian to events where they can do that best, no matter
whether that event is downstream, upstream or even side-stream.

(Of course, this does not mean I plan to hide behind a curtain, I do
love the sound of my own voice, and I'm not afraid to use it either,
when it is appropriate to do so.)

> What sort of plans do you have to collaborate with other F/OSS
> communities? Other distros?

We, as a project, need to be more visible, more approachable. We also
have a lot of people who do upstream work. These two things should be
used to further our cause, to strengthen the bond between Debian and
other communities.

We should coordinate with and talk to our upstreams to make both our
lives easier, and with downstreams too, for similar reasons. The less
work each of us has to do, the better it will be for all of us, and our
users.

We have people among us who did great work in this area in the past, if
elected, I'd encourage their continued effort, and count on their help
too, to move things along. Perhaps we could even have Liaisons, or at
least a dedicated contact point towards distros and communities, to make
ourselves easier to reach, and the work more scalable.

> Realtedly, what sort of messaging (on this topic) can we expect
> from the future DPL?

I plan to keep in touch with distros and communities we're already in
touch with, and open channels towards others where we're not present
yet. These channels should be nurtured, and ideally vibrant and
active. As DPL, I would make it an important recurring task to review
the state of our relationships with others, and step in if necessary -
either to intervene and mediate, or to give a little push.

As for representing Debian - if elected, whenever there's an opportunity
to represent Debian somewhere in an official role, I would strive to
find the most appropriate person, and encourage them to take on the task
(or do it myself, if I happen to be the most appropriate one). Of
course, all this would be done in a transparent manner, by way of
delegating the task in the end.

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Re: [all candidates] beyond tech: how do you deal with humans?

[Gergely Nagy]

anarcat  writes:

> You all have an impressive technical curriculum. Your deeds in Debian
> speak for themselves. However, the role of a project leader is unusually
> non-technical. In fact, you will have to abandon significant technical
> tasks to tend to more "administrative" or "leadership" tasks the DPL
> role requires.

That I may have impressive technical contributions is something I tend
not to believe. You see, even though I am a software engineer by trade,
(which trade happens to be my hobby), my true passion lies with words
and human arts. It's a twisted turn of events that my hobby supports my
passion, and not the other way around.

As such, leaving (some|most) of the technical stuff behind, and
exchanging it for administrativa, mediation, lots and lots of
communication, inspiration and all those things is not going to be
something new. In various settings, I've had experience doing all that
already.

> Why are you good candidates for that role? What social skills do you
> bring to the community in terms of mediation and leadership?

I'm pretty darn good at mediation, did that both inside Debian (see an
example shortly below) and outside of it. It is something I find
challenging and satisfying, an area where I have had great success in
the past, an area I find particularly interesting (people *are*
interesting in general).

I speak, I teach, I coach regularly on various topics (Debian included,
of course), other times, I use a handful of magic dust, and make things
simple. On other occassions, I evangelise. One of my fondest moments of
recent years were hearing these words - said very quietly under her
breath -, by a person who's been hating GNU/Linux for the past decade or
so: "Can you get me a Debian sticker? I love Debian."

Other times, I listen, and just stay invisible.

To illustrate my skills, let me briefly mention a few accomplishments:

- We have the Budapest Clojure User Group meetups running, even though
  it is still a nieche language, and out of the ~15-20 people who attend
  the meetups, most of them don't even use Clojure. They found the
  events and their 'advertisement' interesting. They keep coming back
  for more.

  I help organise these events, I talk, and I help bring people
  in. That's administrativa, communication and inspiration right
  there. ;)

- In a few months, I will spend 100% of my paid time working on free
  software.

  I started the initiative at work, I made compromises (like the status
  quo of 50% support / 50% free software work), I made the case for it,
  and did not back down even when things looked bleak. I made them want
  it too. This even involved financial stuff, which I dislike, a
  lot. Many people in different positions and ideals had to be
  persuaded, they had to be enlightened, and they had to become
  motivated to help me push this deal through.

- I gave Debian packaging tutorials at work (at one point, we gave a ~6
  hour marathon of it with my former boss, that was wicked awesome [not
  my words, either]), which are in such high demand that I will have to
  give more.

There's one more feat I'm particularly proud of, you'll find it below,
because that also answers your last question.
  
> How would you have dealt with the difficult decisions the previous DPL
> had to make regarding various conflicts or problems that occurred during
> his mandate(s)? Would you have intervened? How?

This is something I'd rather not answer, on one hand, because it would
take too long, and on another, because in the most interestring (for
some values of interesting, anyway) cases, I simply do not have enough
historical data to see the whole picture, therefore can't make a well
informed judgement, either.

> Could you give an example of such a situation where you have
> successfully mediated a (potential) conflict? Which tools did you use to
> deal with the situation?

Although this happened years and years ago, when I was young, foolish
and hot-headed, there's one particular feat I'm proud of to this day. I
was an Application Manager at the time, and there was this particular
person who pissed off pretty much everyone in existence: ftp-masters,
prominent maintainers and project members, the Debian Account
Manager. So much so, that he had multiple threads over the course of a
few months (if I recall correctly) all complaints about his behaviour.

We worked together to resolve these issues, it took a long time, but in
the end, he ended up becoming a Debian Developer, worked with the very
same people whom he pissed off before, and some amazing things were
accomplished later on. While skirmishes did occur later too, things did
turn out fairly well for everyone in the end.

To this day, I'm proud that I helped him achieve that, that with our
combined work, he'd become a great collegue to work with the same people
who strongly objected to him even applying for a Debian Developer
position.

This was a tough and dire situation, at a time when I wasn't half as
much 

Re: [all candidates] how to choose Jessie init system

[Gergely Nagy]

Stefano Zacchiroli  writes:

> Some of the longest -devel thread in recent years have been about
> Debian's (default) init system: SysV, SystemD, Upstart, OpenRC, etc.
> Despite folklore, I don't think those thread have been (entirely)
> trollish, they all hint at a concrete problem:

(For the record, it's systemd, not SystemD. Sorry!)

> How do we make an inherently archive-wide technical decision when
> multiple, possibly equally valid solutions do exist?

What I believe to be a solution in cases like this, is to sit down with
the stakeholders (preferably in person; a conference or DebConf would be
a perfect opportunity for this): maintainers of said systems, porters
(primarily kFreeBSD & Hurd folk), the security & release teams, and if
possible, upstream developers of the individual init systems too. I'd do
this behind closed doors, initially, because the number of arguments and
the level of noise needs to be controlled, and we've seen how well that
works on a public mailing list.

We need to estabilish the key requirements (which in this case, will be
a though cookie to crack too), and see what compromises the stakeholders
are willing to make. The primary role of the DPL in this case would be
organisation and mediation, to make sure that those involved understand
that compromises will have to be made, or we'll be stuck with sysvinit
forever, which is likely not what most of them would want.

Also, since there's many people involved, and I would very much like to
get upstreams in too, this would not be doable within a single sitting -
rather, one discussion where Debian members attempt to come to a few
agreements, and another, where upstreams can help us clarify things, or
point out any mistakes in our thinking. There will be conflicts of
interest, which is another reason I would strongly prefer holding this
sprint in person: it is far easier to reason with people in person, far
easier to calm the waters when one does not have to fight latency and
distance too.

Ultimately however, this is a decision that the technical stakeholders
will have to make, but the DPL should be there to faciliate the
decision, and keep strong opinions from clashing into each other's face.

But the task is not nearly done once key requirements are found, not
even when compromises are ready to be made - that's just the
beginning. A painful transition will have to be planned, the change
throughly documented, with strong reasons behind the decision. With all
these, the DPL can help, but he'll be at the instructor's wheel at best.

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Re: [to all candidates] Accessible software in Debian

[Moray Allan]

On 2013-03-18 14:37, Mario Lang wrote:
While discussing this topic on IRC with other Debian people I was 
kind
of shocked to read that basically every feature can be dropped 
anytime,
and since accessibility is for a very small user group, that user 
group

suffering from big rewrites is "normal" and acceptable.


I can appreciate the frustrations here.  Within the DebConf 
organisation we've tried hard to make sure that the conferences are as 
accessible as possible, but individual small decisions by people who 
don't pay attention to these issues can easily spoil a whole event.  In 
the same way, for an accessible desktop we need every upstream 
maintainer to pay attention to these issues, and one change that doesn't 
take account of accessibility can make a program useless to many people.


Sadly I don't think we have the resources to fix every upstream project 
and send patches.  Nor can we just throw out every piece of software 
that is not accessible to everyone, which probably wouldn't leave us 
with much at all.


But clearly accessibility should be part of our decisions about what 
software is "default", and should inform, for example, decisions about 
when we keep new and old versions of a package around in parallel rather 
than only the latest release.  (It's quite possible that a new version 
will be more accessible to one group, but less accessible to another.)



Do you have any ideas what we could do to raise awareness of
accessibility issues, and maybe motivate developers who are currently
not into accessibiility work in any way, to start caring about 
various

issues around accessibility for people with disabilities.


A couple of things I can see that we might be able to do better:

- provide a stronger Debian voice to call for good accessibility 
support, e.g. at developer events for upstream projects


- make sure that accessibility is kept as a headline topic in Debian 
discussions: there may be lessons here to learn from Christian Perrier's 
methods of promoting the need for translation over the years


- track in a more public way packages' accessibility status, both to 
help users filter software that will work for them, and to help 
contributors find areas they can help improve.


As someone who knows a lot more about these topics than I do, do you 
have concrete ideas of things you would like to see us doing as a 
project?


--
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Re: [all candidates] lack of women in Debian

[Lucas Nussbaum]

Hi,

On 18/03/13 at 11:23 +0100, Mònica Ramírez Arceda wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I would like to know your opinion about this graph (thanks Francesca!): 
> http://blog.zouish.org/posts/dw/
> 
> Note that I'm not asking for a way to recruit women (there are already
> efforts on that). I would like to know if you think that this lack of
> women affects (or not) the Debian project and how. 

This graph is a very interesting one. As some of my past actions in
Debian have shown, I like data and statistics, especially when they
allow one to measure success, failure or progress, or say something
about the project that we previously didn't know.
Regarding the data itself, it's great to see that the situation is
generally improving, even if, of course, we would like it to be faster.
It's true that it's a bit disappointing compared to the data from other
projects (e.g. GNOME).

Your question is very specific (impact of lack of women in Debian?).

Yes, it's very likely that the "deficit" of women involved in Debian has
a negative impact. As Moray pointed out, research shows more women
generally results in better results in organizations.
But it's also about how we see our project. I would like Debian to be
a very welcoming project, and I hate the fact that it's harder for some
groups to get involved. So, yes, we should ensure that we work on the
"blockers" of our project regarding integration of women, and also
balance them by easing integration of women through specific actions,
such as Debian Women.

Note that this is not limited to women. We have other populations that
are very much under-represented in Debian if you compare their number to
the world population, or even to people in IT jobs.

> I also would like to know if you have any proposal related to this topic
> that you would like to do if elected.

One thing I would like to do, if elected, is to push for participation
in the https://live.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen.

Lucas


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Re: All candidates: Development and technical issues and challenges

[Lucas Nussbaum]

On 18/03/13 at 19:41 -0400, anarcat wrote:
> On 2013-03-11, Moray Allan wrote:
> > When to release: I would also note that we should continue to be
> > flexible about "-ignore" tags where appropriate.  In some cases
> > leaving a package in the release with RC bugs is more useful to users
> > than removing it altogether.  Indeed, we always release with quite a
> > large number of non-RC bugs, some of which make the packages in
> > question unusable for large groups of users.  At any point in the
> > freeze we should ask not only about the state of the frozen release,
> > but how it compares to the previous release.  Maybe it doesn't even
> > need to be a single date -- we could badge the new release as ready
> > for the desktop before we close it off as final and suggest that
> > people upgrade their servers.
> 
> I think this is a great point, and I would like to push it a little
> further.
> 
> "When to release" seems really important. As things stand right now, we
> have about 70 packages (assuming one package per RC bug) blocking the
> release of 38000 packages[1]. That is 0.2% of the archive. It's really
> small. About 0.1% if we look at the ones that don't have a fix yet (49).
> 
> Shouldn't we be releasing 'as is' at some point and just accept that
> some bugs will be fixed in a stable release later?

That's what we do. We use 'wheezy-ignore' for some bugs.

But I think that it would be inappropriate to comment further on the
release team's work. I think they are doing a great job.

> Shouldn't we "release early, release often"? 

I think that the length of current Debian release cycles are a good
compromise. I'd rather have us explore doing a rolling release in
addition to our stable releases.

> I agree that releasing with, say, 1000 RC bugs is crazy, but maybe
> waiting forever for the last 100 packages is also nonsense.
> 
> Maybe we could discriminate on the package's priorities. For example,
> about a third of the 49 packages *really* blocking the release (not
> waiting for a transition) are from "extra"[2]. Only 5 bugs affect
> required, important or standard packages. We could focus on those and
> tell the "extra packages" to hurry up or be shipped with packages that
> will need to be fixed in a point release... or simply removed.

That's something I already commented on in
https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2013/03/msg00020.html:

   Another possible area of improvement is the focusing on the more
   important RC bugs. One way to achieve that would be to remove as many
   leaf/not-so-popular packages as possible at the start of the freeze.
   If they get fixed, they could get back in. But then, if those
   packages are not so important, it's better to focus the (scarse)
   manpower on bugs affecting packages that we cannot live without.

   Another way to achieve the same thing would be to improve existing
   tools, such as http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi (which I developed) to
   indicate bugs that are release blockers, or bugs that affect leaf
   packages that could be removed.

> Maybe that's something that's already done by the release team too, in
> which case I am happy. :)
> 
> A.
> 
> [1] 38569, to be more exact, kudos to UDD:
> 
> SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT(package)) FROM packages WHERE release = 'wheezy';
> 
> [2] I had trouble with my SQL there, I could only list the packages:
> 
> SELECT distinct(packages.package), packages.priority, bugs.id FROM bugs
>   LEFT JOIN packages ON bugs.package = packages.package
>   WHERE severity >= 'serious' 
> AND NOT (id IN (SELECT id FROM bugs_merged_with WHERE id > merged_with))
> AND id IN (SELECT id FROM bugs_rt_affects_testing)
> AND id NOT IN (SELECT id FROM bugs_rt_affects_unstable)
>   ORDER BY packages.priority;

SELECT count(distinct(packages.package)) FROM bugs
LEFT JOIN packages ON bugs.package = packages.package
WHERE severity >= 'serious' 
AND NOT (id IN (SELECT id FROM bugs_merged_with WHERE id >
merged_with))
AND id IN (SELECT id FROM bugs_rt_affects_testing)
AND id NOT IN (SELECT id FROM bugs_rt_affects_unstable);

That would work, but then you have a problem with bugs filed against
source packages (what's the priority for a source package?).

Lucas


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Re: [to all candidates] Accessible software in Debian

[Lucas Nussbaum]

Hi Mario,

On 18/03/13 at 12:37 +0100, Mario Lang wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> To make a rather complicated and long story short: Accessibility of
> graphical user interfaces in Debian has taken a slight step backward
> with the GNOME 3 rewrite.  Squeeze was more stable regarding this.
> 
> While discussing this topic on IRC with other Debian people I was kind
> of shocked to read that basically every feature can be dropped anytime,
> and since accessibility is for a very small user group, that user group
> suffering from big rewrites is "normal" and acceptable.
> 
> I'd like to know your opinion on this.  Are people with disabilities
> something that we want to support, or is it just luck if "they" get a
> working system.  As a Free Software community, should we make sure that
> the digital divide is not going to increase, or is accessibility just
> margin topic which we as a community do not really care about?
> 
> If you think we should make sure to provide maximum accessibility to our
> users, do you have any idea what to do to ensure that?
> 
> I realize the provokativeness of this mail.  However, I feel I really
> have to ask this question publicly.  When I read the reactions "quoted"
> above on IRC, my heart felt heavy, and I was seriously considering for
> a moment to leave Debian, since the attitude I've read there was really very
> discouraging to me personally.  Actually, I didn't expect a rteaction
> like this from fellow DDs.
> 
> I realize that accessibility is suffering from the same lack of manpower
> issues that most other free software projects have.  But I am still
> enthusiastic enough to hope for some sort of solution that will work
> around the "small margin group" problem in one or another way.
> 
> Do you have any ideas what we could do to raise awareness of
> accessibility issues, and maybe motivate developers who are currently
> not into accessibiility work in any way, to start caring about various
> issues around accessibility for people with disabilities.
> 
> After all, we will all grow old, and our eyes and ears will eventually
> start to fail slightly.  I guess at least then people will enjoy if
> their favourite desktops on Linux would help them to still be able to do
> quality work with their computers.  And I dont mean just reading and
> replying mail, I mean everything else that people without diminished
> vision or hearing or mobility would want to do.
> 
> If you wait until your body fails you, it might be too late to catch up then.

First, I think accessibility is extremely important.

Now, a few points:

In Debian, we often have no real choice but to follow upstream projects
decisions. A good example is GNOME 3, another good example is systemd
(and how it could [not] support kfreebsd). It's sometimes possible for
Debian to maintain patches or its own branch, but it's often too much
work.

And as you rightfully pointed out, accessibility suffers from the same
lack of manpower than the rest of the project.

So yes, we should work on increasing awareness. I can imagine two main ways
to do that:

- communication. Most of us rarely have the chance to engage with people
  with disabilities. Some of us might not know what it's like to use a
  computer in that case. More talks or demos on this topic during DebConf,
  or more blog articles, etc. would be very useful so that the
  community understands the needs and current limitations.

- have an "accessibility" release goal to leverage the increased expose
  (display in the PTS, etc.) and have a way to generally check the
  status of accessibility in Debian.

Lucas


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