Re: non-free?

2014-03-25 Thread Russ Allbery
Stefano Zacchiroli z...@debian.org writes:
 On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 04:58:22PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:

 If one of our upstreams said that they wanted to rename a public API in
 a widely-used shared library because they thought the old name wasn't
 very accurate, we would almost certainly beg them not to, due to all of
 the pain this would cause for marginal benefit.  I encourage people to
 think of the archive URLs in the same light.  If anything, the pain is
 even worse.

 Just a side comment on this: your reasoning here is valid for full blown
 API renames, because they break backward compatibility.  But the
 reasoning does not apply to: add a new public API, document it, preserve
 backward compatibility for the old API, drop the documentation for the
 old API --- in your analogy, it is this second option the closest to my
 (very) long term evil plan behind non-free.org.

I think the analogy holds, though.  With a shared library, you don't drop
the old API until you have to do an ABI break for other reasons, which
means that old binaries won't work against the new library anyway.  At
that point, you have a pretty clean break point where, provided people
have addressed deprecation warnings, you lose nothing by dropping the old
interface.

For our archives, there is no such thing as an ABI break (or at least
hopefully there won't be), so there is no point at which doing this would
stop being painful.

It's similar to dropping an interface from libc6.  The right thing to do
is just never do that, unless there's something so serious and so
problematic you don't have any other choice.

 You will probably disagree that there is value in such an exercise,
 which is merely at the communication level, and which had never even
 been really promoted (yet). But this second criticism is definitely not
 in the realm of inflicting pain to existing users.

I understand that inflicting pain isn't the goal, but that's what this
actually does, whether intended or not.  You have to go change
sources.list on a bunch of systems, redo mirroring, find and change all
your documentation, and so on.  Plus, many of us have internal archives
that parallel the same main/contrib/non-free setup for much the same
reason, so now it's harder to explain to users how that works since we can
no longer parallel what Debian is doing unless we set up completely
separate repository hosts, for no particularly good technical reason.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/


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Re: non-free?

2014-03-25 Thread Stefano Zacchiroli
On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 11:13:38PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
 I think the analogy holds, though.  With a shared library, you don't
 drop the old API until you have to do an ABI break for other reasons,
 which means that old binaries won't work against the new library
 anyway.  At that point, you have a pretty clean break point where,
 provided people have addressed deprecation warnings, you lose nothing
 by dropping the old interface.

What I'm saying is that there is no need of dropping the old API in any
foreseeable future. Just stop documenting it.

Because as long as we document it, it's very hard to claim that
non-free is not part of Debian, when you could just add it as a
keyword side-by-side with main in your sources.list.

The point is not dropping the current interface. The point is stop
teaching new users, generation after generation, that non-free is just
one word away from main. At least make it one domain away! :-) And I
understand that if we ever start documenting non-free.org (not that I
think it'll ever happen, but just for the sake of discussion) there will
be zealous sysadmins which will patch their sources.list because it's
the right thing™ to do. I'll probably be in that set myself. But a) it
will be their choice, and b) I personally think it would be an
acceptable trade-off if in exchange we start putting some distance
between ourselves and the current non-free is not part of Debian
hypocrisy.

Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli  . . . . . . .  z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Former Debian Project Leader  . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »


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Re: non-free?

2014-03-25 Thread Russ Allbery
Stefano Zacchiroli z...@debian.org writes:

 What I'm saying is that there is no need of dropping the old API in any
 foreseeable future. Just stop documenting it.

Ah, I see what you're saying.  Okay, that probably minimizes the pain for
everyone else, although I still don't really see the point.

 Because as long as we document it, it's very hard to claim that
 non-free is not part of Debian, when you could just add it as a
 keyword side-by-side with main in your sources.list.

That's for a good reason: non-free is maintained by the Debian project.
It's just not part of the Debian distribution.

Yes, this is to some extent hair-splitting, but, well, welcome to free
software.  :)  Doing this stuff requires a lot of hair-splitting, since it
involves quite a bit of, as the saying goes, tepid change for the
somewhat better.

I think we should continue to maintain contrib and non-free as part of the
Debian project because, by doing so, we enable people to use more free
software than they otherwise would be able to do.  So I'm not particularly
upset by the fact that the repository system we uses clearly identifies
contrib and non-free as maintained by the Debian project.  That's honest.

It doesn't sit right with me to hide that fact artificially.  If we're
going to actually stop maintaining those archives as part of our project,
that's one thing.  I think that would be a mistake, but at least it would
be consistent.  But I don't see much real hypocrisy in our current stance.
I think we're honest about what we're doing: as a project, we have some
additional work products outside of the Debian system that are designed to
work alongside it.

-- 
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Re: non-free?

2014-03-25 Thread Stephen Gran
This one time, at band camp, Paul Wise said:
 On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 11:51 PM, Neil McGovern wrote:
  I don't think that splitting this up helps our users. Using debian.org
  provides a trusted distribution mechanism. I think it's better that
  people get trusted non-free packages from us, than get them from a
  random third party by burying our heads in the sand and pretending
  non-free software doesn't exist.
 
 I agree with the last sentence there and note that this doesn't seem
 to preclude a split between non-free.org and debian.org (a split in
 name only).

I'd rather we didn't split the archive this way.  In the .rpm world,
people are used to the idea that, for most useful software, you have to
look outside the repo.  The result is a million not particularly well
done .rpms for a given piece of software, and no particular thing to
recommend EPEL over lolrpms.cx to a newcomer.

Let's not make the .deb world look like that.

Cheers,
-- 
 -
|   ,''`.Stephen Gran |
|  : :' :sg...@debian.org |
|  `. `'Debian user, admin, and developer |
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Re: All DPL candidates: Debian assets

2014-03-25 Thread Steve Langasek
Hi Lucas,

Since I am one of the local organizers this year for DebConf, which is
Debian's single largest annual expense; and in light of the ongoing
discussion you and I are having about DebConf budgeting; it should be no
surprise that I have opinions on the question of Debian asset management.
;)

So I'm going to pile on this thread with some questions to both candidates
about their view of the DPL's role in responsibly managing Debian funds.

On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 05:37:04PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
 On 20/03/14 at 22:44 +0100, Neil McGovern wrote:
  I don’t think there’s an “if” here. Ever since I was secretary of SPI,
  I’ve been concerned about the amount of money that Debian has
  earmarked. Again, I disagree with Lucas here - I don’t think that
  saving donors money is a good plan, our donators expect their
  donations to be spent to progress the project.

  At the moment, in just SPI, we have  100k USD awaiting being spent.
  As an indication, that’s enough for a DebConf without any sponsors!
  Our donations should be spent. Be that better porter boxes, or a
  better backup service, or simply making sure our core machines are
  replaced regularly.

 I would put it differently: in SPI, we have ~$100k. That's barely
 enough for a DebConf for which fundraising would mostly fail, or for
 which many unexpected expenses would need to be made!  (the amount of
 sponsorship raised for DC13 was ~ $160k; the deficit for DC10 was $50k
 despite $90k of fundraising)

(To Lucas) Why should Debian need to hold a reserve with its TOs to fully
fund a DebConf for which fundraising has failed?  I believe the operating
principle is that the DebConf organization should never spend money that it
doesn't already have - i.e., never more than the sum of confirmed DebConf
sponsorship plus money from Debian's general fund that the DPL has approved
(with the possibility, but not the guarantee, that it will be returned at
the end of the conference).  Do you disagree with this principle?  If so -
why, and what are the criteria you would use to decide a DebConf has
failed at fundraising and dip into these reserves?  If not - why does
Debian need to worry about reserves to cover DebConf?

(To both) What kinds of unexpected expenses do you think Debian should keep
funds available to cover?  What do you think is the appropriate level of
cash reserves for the project to hold, and why?

 We need some amount of savings to care for all the unexpected problems
 that could happen, and at the same time, we need to spend money where
 needed to support Debian's goals.
 The really hard problem is to find a good balance between saving money
 for the unexpected, and spending more money. We need to be careful with
 that, and build a good understanding of Debian's historical needs so
 that we can spend more money if needed without jeopardizing the future.
 So, yeah, it seems that Neil and I disagree on that, because I don't
 think that it's as simple as 'our donations should be spent'.

(To both) Management of Debian's assets is one of the key duties of the DPL.
What principles guide you in deciding how to balance the use of Debian's
assets (infrastructure, DebConf, other Debian sprints, other expenses)?  If
elected, what will you do to ensure transparency to the project about how
Debian money is being spent, and how these expenses affect our overall cash
reserves?

Thanks,
-- 
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: non-free?

2014-03-25 Thread Frank Lin PIAT
On Tue, 2014-03-25 at 15:29 +0900, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
 Because as long as we document it, it's very hard to claim that
 non-free is not part of Debian, when you could just add it as a
 keyword side-by-side with main in your sources.list.

The firmware have been moved from main to non-free a few years ago. The
unintended consequences is that almost every system now use the non-free
suite.
Therefore users are more likely to install non-free packages.

Aren't you afraid that we end-up with unintended consequences, where
users become prone to add foreign repository... that eventually break
their system (the dependency hell...)?

Aren't you afraid that users become prone to add various repository...
including closed-source/proprietary software?

 The point is not dropping the current interface. The point is stop
 teaching new users, generation after generation, that non-free is just
 one word away from main.
 At least make it one domain away! :-)

What's the workload on various teams and package maintainers for that
fancy difference ? Is it really worth the time spent?

Regards,

Franklin



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Re: non-free?

2014-03-25 Thread Stefano Zacchiroli
On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 11:55:56PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
 I think we should continue to maintain contrib and non-free as part of the
 Debian project because, by doing so, we enable people to use more free
 software than they otherwise would be able to do.  So I'm not particularly
 upset by the fact that the repository system we uses clearly identifies
 contrib and non-free as maintained by the Debian project.  That's honest.
 
 It doesn't sit right with me to hide that fact artificially.  If we're
 going to actually stop maintaining those archives as part of our project,
 that's one thing.

That's a very interesting viewpoint for me, because it's kinda dual to
mine. I understand what you're saying and it has its own merits. But
OTOH I see another part of our *current* stance as non honest, the part
where we say that contrib and non-free are not part of Debian, because
for many practical purposes that's simply not true.

Essentially, that statement is true only for who has read it in the
social contract, in a weird sort of self-fulfilling way. What is true
--- and we should pride ourselves with it --- is that contrib and
non-free are not enabled by default. But aside from that choice, often
done once and for all, many of our users would have a hard time
distinguishing which packages (that they use or otherwise) are from main
and which are not.

This is essentially why I'm in favor of communicating more and more
clearly about where the red line between main (oops, I should have
written Debian here instead of main, right?) and the rest is, as
well as augmenting our tooling so that user are informed on a package by
package basis about the freeness of what they use. An idea I've been
toying with, which is up for grab due to the usual ENOTIME problem, is:

- add debtags facets to classify non-free packages in terms of which
  freedom you give up when using it (is it non-redistribution? is it
  restriction of use? etc.)

- make vrms ship APT hooks that tell the user about that

Other ideas discussed in this thread goes in similar directions,
including a refinement of non-free components, or making our APT
frontend be more clear about the fact that the user is about to install
non Debian software. (This time it sounds more scary, right?)

Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli  . . . . . . .  z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Former Debian Project Leader  . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
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Re: non-free?

2014-03-25 Thread Steve McIntyre
On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 09:32:26AM +0100, Frank Lin PIAT wrote:
On Tue, 2014-03-25 at 15:29 +0900, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
 Because as long as we document it, it's very hard to claim that
 non-free is not part of Debian, when you could just add it as a
 keyword side-by-side with main in your sources.list.

The firmware have been moved from main to non-free a few years ago. The
unintended consequences is that almost every system now use the non-free
suite.
Therefore users are more likely to install non-free packages.

Yup. Various conversations have happened around firmware in the last
few years, but this is an effect that some people may not be aware
of. So...

Neil and Lucas: what do you have to say on this front? Of all the
things that *could* be done here, what would you like to see
personally?

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com
  Getting a SCSI chain working is perfectly simple if you remember that there
  must be exactly three terminations: one on one end of the cable, one on the
  far end, and the goat, terminated over the SCSI chain with a silver-handled
  knife whilst burning *black* candles. --- Anthony DeBoer


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Re: non-free?

2014-03-25 Thread Russ Allbery
Stefano Zacchiroli z...@debian.org writes:

 That's a very interesting viewpoint for me, because it's kinda dual to
 mine. I understand what you're saying and it has its own merits. But
 OTOH I see another part of our *current* stance as non honest, the part
 where we say that contrib and non-free are not part of Debian, because
 for many practical purposes that's simply not true.

It's a compromise, and as such neither side is happy with it.

I think we should treat non-free software as part of Debian, but
deprecated and discouraged and with large caveats about how we can't
properly maintain it, it undermines user control over their own hardware,
and we're providing it only because there is no good alternative.

You (and others; I know your opinion is common) would like to push it
farther away from the project and basically make it a separate, parallel
project to Debian.

We currently have a compromise that doesn't make either of us happy, but
which is livable.  I'm going to object to any attempt to move away from
that compromise towards your preferred position, just as you're likely
going to object to any attempt to move away from that compromise towards
my preferred position.  :)

Right now, non-free is part of the project in some respects: it uses the
same upload rights and vetting, the same bug tracking system, the same
developers, to some extent the same buildd network, the same mirror
network, and so forth.  It's not part of the project in some other
respects: no or minimal security support, not considered release-blocking,
not enabled by default, and partially not auto-built.

The reality is that it is part of the project but a second-class citizen.
I think that's what we capture right now by saying that it's maintained by
the project but is not part of our distribution.  We could probably say
that more clearly, but I don't think moving away from that compromise is a
particularly good idea.  (Unless, of course, you all decide that I'm right
and we should just treat it as a deprecated and discouraged part of our
distribution.  *grin*)

Bear in mind my background: I fought tooth and nail to use Debian as the
primary (and fairly close to the only) Linux distribution for central
computing services for Stanford.  Stanford central IT, institutionally,
doesn't really care about free software.  (Well, that's not *completely*
true, but management certainly doesn't care about the ideological argument
for it.)  Now, don't get me wrong: I believe in the ideology of free
software myself, and I'm all in favor of supporting it.  But insofar as I
have to explain or work around practical, concrete problems with running
servers that are created by free software ideology, it constantly reopens
conversations that start with the question why don't we just use Red Hat
like everyone else?  Those conversations are always stressful and never
fun.  So I'm a little defensive around changes that would make my job, as
a Debian advocate in an organization that doesn't have an ideological
committment to our project ideals, even harder.

I understand that you want to do this in a way that won't cause practical
problems, so this is more in the way of explanation for my kneejerk
response rather than a considered objection to your proposal.

 Essentially, that statement is true only for who has read it in the
 social contract, in a weird sort of self-fulfilling way. What is true
 --- and we should pride ourselves with it --- is that contrib and
 non-free are not enabled by default. But aside from that choice, often
 done once and for all, many of our users would have a hard time
 distinguishing which packages (that they use or otherwise) are from main
 and which are not.

I think there is some common ground here.  For example, I think both of
these ideas sound fine:

 - add debtags facets to classify non-free packages in terms of which
   freedom you give up when using it (is it non-redistribution? is it
   restriction of use? etc.)

 - make vrms ship APT hooks that tell the user about that

provided that I can easily disable warning messages with debconf
preseeding, APT configuration, or the like on servers where I just don't
care.  Those sorts of changes feel lower-impact to me than shuffling
everything off to a different domain.

My concern is that, as part of an attempt to be cleaner and clearer about
this, you will recreate all of the annoyances and roadblocks caused by
backports.org being a separate project with a separate archive.  Merging
it with Debian as backports.debian.org was a huge improvement and made my
life considerably easier (and I'm sure I'm not the only one).  I would be
sad to see us intentionally reintroduce that whole class of problems again
in a different place.

This idea:

 making our APT frontend be more clear about the fact that the user is
 about to install non Debian software.

I think is fine in a different form.  I think we want to say something
more specific and concrete than non-Debian.  Just 

Re: Debian Project Leader?

2014-03-25 Thread Neil McGovern
On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 02:23:30PM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
 Please imagine a Debian without the DPL position. How would it be
 better, how would it be worse, how would things work differently,
 would it be desirable?
 

Hi Paul,

I think there's a couple of aspects to this, one from an external
project perspective, and one from an internal one.

Externally, the DPL role is one that's useful for an interface between
Debian and various organisations. This ranges from press, other
organisations, and trusted organisations.

Without a DPL, it would be quite difficult to have some speak on behalf
of Debian in an authoritative way. As press officer, I've issued
statements on behalf of the project for some issues, but this is
restricted to the view of the project as a whole, so can be limited to
the project has made no final decision yet, or developer X says Y.
The DPL has a mandate to say things which allows them to be a bit more
specific.
From a practical point of view, SPI needs someone to approve expenses -
I can't think of a simple way of this happening without a DPL.

Internally, the DPL is someone who can coordinate and communicate.
Talking to other developers, and ensuring that teams aren't being
blocked by issues is a key role.

Would this still all be possible without a DPL? Yes, but I think it
would be improbable without someone *acting* in the DPL role, even if
they're not officially elected to it. Recommended reading includes The
Starfish and the Spider[0], I would recommend it for those interested in
decentralised organisations :)

Neil

[0] http://www.starfishandspider.com/
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Re: Debian Project Leader?

2014-03-25 Thread Lucas Nussbaum
Hi Paul,

On 22/03/14 at 14:23 +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
 Please imagine a Debian without the DPL position. How would it be
 better, how would it be worse, how would things work differently,
 would it be desirable?

Someone said that Debian is an extremely functional anarchic project.
I love that quote. What would be the impact of increasing the amount of
anarchism in Debian by removing the DPL? That's a very good question.

I think that the main problem would be with other entities Debian 
interacts with (other big players of the Free Software world, the press, 
etc), because such organizations are used to talking to organizations 
with someone clearly identified as the representative.

For other outsiders (e.g., prospective contributors), it might make 
Debian slightly harder to grasp. Since we are already a quite complex
project, it might not be a good idea to make us even more complex :-)

Internally, we would need to adjust, but I'm quite sure that we would
manage. Actually, the lack of a DPL might make everybody feel more 
enabled/empowered to solve problems that are usually deferred to the
DPL, which could be a good thing.

Lucas


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Re: All DPL candidates: Debian assets

2014-03-25 Thread Lucas Nussbaum
Hi Steve,

On 25/03/14 at 00:57 -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
 (To Lucas) Why should Debian need to hold a reserve with its TOs to fully
 fund a DebConf for which fundraising has failed?  I believe the operating
 principle is that the DebConf organization should never spend money that it
 doesn't already have - i.e., never more than the sum of confirmed DebConf
 sponsorship plus money from Debian's general fund that the DPL has approved
 (with the possibility, but not the guarantee, that it will be returned at
 the end of the conference).  Do you disagree with this principle? If so -
 why, and what are the criteria you would use to decide a DebConf has
 failed at fundraising and dip into these reserves?  If not - why does
 Debian need to worry about reserves to cover DebConf?
 
 (To both) What kinds of unexpected expenses do you think Debian should keep
 funds available to cover?  What do you think is the appropriate level of
 cash reserves for the project to hold, and why?
 
  We need some amount of savings to care for all the unexpected problems
  that could happen, and at the same time, we need to spend money where
  needed to support Debian's goals.
  The really hard problem is to find a good balance between saving money
  for the unexpected, and spending more money. We need to be careful with
  that, and build a good understanding of Debian's historical needs so
  that we can spend more money if needed without jeopardizing the future.
  So, yeah, it seems that Neil and I disagree on that, because I don't
  think that it's as simple as 'our donations should be spent'.
 
 (To both) Management of Debian's assets is one of the key duties of the DPL.
 What principles guide you in deciding how to balance the use of Debian's
 assets (infrastructure, DebConf, other Debian sprints, other expenses)?  If
 elected, what will you do to ensure transparency to the project about how
 Debian money is being spent, and how these expenses affect our overall cash
 reserves?

(I'm answering globally, but I'm trying to cover all questions)

One thing I was quite surprised to discover when I became DPL is the lack
of visibility on Debian's assets. For example, we have no good visibility
of incomes and expenses on the Debian earmark at SPI, besides the monthly
treasurer's reports sent to SPI mailing lists (and those reports have been
lagging a bit: the last one was for October, 2013).

What I am proposing in my platform (3.3.1) is to build an overview of
Debian's incomes and expenses, to make it easier to adjust future expenses
to what we know we can afford based on recent history. Quite likely, that
will mean that we are actually able to spend more for sprints, DebConf, or
infrastructure, because we might currently be too careful due to a lack of
overview of Debian's finances.

However, the main guiding principle / litmus test when deciding about
expenses should remain the same: would our donors agree that this is good
use of their donated money, i.e. does that use of money really helps us
move towards Debian's goals?

Now, DebConf. A successful DebConf is very important to Debian. When
discussing the DebConf budget, the DebConf organizers, the chairs and the
DPL are actually on the same side, trying to answer a difficult question:
how can we build a balanced budget that allows a successful DebConf?
I think that the good way to visualize the DebConf budget is as a
temporary fork of the Debian budget, with quite a lot of pre-approvals.
DebConf is not a separate organization, and Debian will always cover the
deficits (if any) of DebConf. That's why it is so important that we all
agree on a budget early during DebConf organization, something we have
not been doing yet this year, unfortunately.

(more minor points:)
Regarding transparency, I will continue to list approved expenses in the
monthly reports.
Regarding the appropriate level of cash reserves, I hope that we will have
an answer to that question soon, thanks to the work described above.

Lucas


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Re: two questions: fund raising money and publicity

2014-03-25 Thread Neil McGovern
Hi Ana!

On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 10:21:20AM +0100, Ana Guerrero Lopez wrote:
 DebConf is one of the biggest expenses of Debian, every year we look
 for sponsorship and we had (and have) sponsors who were sponsoring
 DebConf as a way of giving their annual donation to Debian and
 not necessarily funding DebConf itself.
 (Do you agree with this part, BTW?)

Yes and no :)
Having written (if my memory serves me correctly!) the first sponsorship
brochure for DebConf 7 I view it as slightly more subtle than that.

If DebConf didn't happen, then I don't believe that would mean that
there would be an equivalent annual donation that would come in. The
funding that's given is committed for a reason - sponsorship of an event
raises the profile of the company for the attendees, enable recruitment
and offer opportunities for contact building, as well as being give
back to the community. I don't think that a general give money to
Debian request has quite the same draw. There's a reason it's much
easier to raise money for a specific goal/thing than in general :)

 In recent years, we have started to invest more Debian money in stuaff
 such like sprints and minidebconfs¹ that sometimes look for external
 founding. This has lead to some  cases where sponsors have been
 contacted for separate teams in Debian which can be confusing.
 If you think this is a problem. How do you think we can improve this?
 

I do view this as a problem, and the short answer is that I support
Brian Gupta's efforts in the debian-sponsors-discuss list[0]. It's
something we should be encouraging, and would potentially draw people
into Debian who have not previously felt able to contribute. A great
article on fund-raising of a talk from Josh Berkus is at [1].

[0] 
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-sponsors-discuss/Week-of-Mon-20140310/79.html
[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/560381/

 * Publicizing Debian
 
 We have several officials ways of publicizing stuff in Debian:
 press releases, identi.ca, bits.d.o and the DPN. We also have the bits
 from the DPL that sometimes overlap with the above sources and announce
 stuff that should be announce somewhere else instead of mixed with the
 DPL activity.
 
 That said, the coordination between the above sources doesn't work very
 well, all of them have a lot of room for improvement (and I say that
 being closely involved in one of them) and I have seen Debian contributors
 lost about what to do when they want to announce something, sometimes
 being played as a ping pong ball between teams.
 I would love to know your vision about how publicizing Debian should work
 and if you think you can do something as DPL to improve the current
 situation.
 

Indeed, with my press officer hat on, I'd say that publicity and press
is just about scraping by. This isn't to denigrate the fantastic work
being done in this area by people, but that I think everyone's
overworked, and could do with more help. When Lucas looked at the press
delegation, a few of the active publicity people were approached to
suggest they may want to become press officers, but unfortunately
weren't able to commit the time to do so.

Ideally, I'd love to see someone with the enthusiasm and time to take
this on, to coordinate our efforts and bring together the different
methods of communication we do.

As for how to solve this issue, I'll be honest: I don't know. I think
that coordination of publicity should go through the debian-publicity
mailing list if at all possible, but the core issue is finding someone
to take the role and drive it forward.

Neil
-- 


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Description: Digital signature


Question on DPL delegations.

2014-03-25 Thread Charles Plessy
Le Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 05:44:55PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum a écrit :
 
 Internally, we would need to adjust, but I'm quite sure that we would
 manage. Actually, the lack of a DPL might make everybody feel more 
 enabled/empowered to solve problems that are usually deferred to the
 DPL, which could be a good thing.

Hi Lucas and Neil,

without DPL, there would be no DPL delegations.  I have a question for you
related to delegations.

When a delegate is completely inactive as a delegate, do you think that his
delegation should be renewed ?

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan


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