Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Adrian Bunk]

On Wed, Jun 03, 2020 at 06:39:53PM +, Stefano Rivera wrote:
>...
> It's only a couple of months before the conference that contracts have
> to be finalized, flights booked, and money paid. June 8 was picked as a
> latest possible date for that decision.
>...

The standard procedure for putting such a decision immediately on hold 
is proposing a GR sponsored by 10 developers.

There is a 100% chance this would have happened.

The actual DebConf20 decision would have been the GR result in July.

Martin deserves more appreciation for giving the DebConf organizers
an advance warning that a GR was being prepared.

> SR

cu
Adrian

Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Stefano Rivera]

Hi Steve (2020.06.03_19:19:16_+)
> > Would it be totally unrealistic, and unsafe to bring a large number of
> > people together? Probably, yes. But if the local authorities are saying
> > you can, it's worth considering.
> 
> This is the part that I categorically disagree with.  Even assuming baseline
> competence of the local authorities (which, given that they're not in the
> US, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt), this only speaks to
> the authorities' confidence in their ability to prevent a
> SARS-CoV-2-positive attendee from causing a LOCAL outbreak that is a threat
> to public health.  It says NOTHING about the risk of someone contracting
> COVID in their home country, arriving asymptomatic at the conference, being
> contagious and transmitting it, and sending the virus home to a dozen other
> countries to incubate for a week after the conference before the nature of
> the problem has become clear.

Yes, I think that was the primary point of view of most people who
reacted strongly to this not being called off sooner.

I said "worth considering".

Of course all of the things you describe are part of that consideration.
And becomes pretty unrealistic to imagine happening. Again, early on we
decided to give this some time to see where the leaves would fall.
Things generally got worse, not better.

> If that happened, it would be entirely on the organizers (i.e. Debian), and
> not on the local authorities, because we were inducing people to travel
> internationally for the event.
>
> And if the conference were to manage this risk by imposing broad
> restrictions on countries of origin of physical attendees, then it shouldn't
> carry the DebConf name; it should be treated as a miniconf instead, due to
> the impact it would have on accessibility to the developer community to have
> an even smaller than usual subset of developers attending in person with
> most attending remotely.

I could imagine a scenario where the local team were committed to
continue to organise the event, even though the attendees would be >90%
online. That would have to have minimal inducement to travel, for
attendees. Calling that DebConf sounds entirely reasonable to me.

But, the organisers aren't entirely local, and there would be some level
of inducement for non-local team members, and DebConf completionists.
I don't think that travel would be worth-while.
And I think the event would end up with an under-staffed onsite video
team, which wouldn't make for a great online-first experience.

So... I can imagine something like that, but I don't think it's a useful
path forward.

SR

-- 
Stefano Rivera
  http://tumbleweed.org.za/
  +1 415 683 3272

Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Steve Langasek]

Hi Stefano,

I appreciate you taking the time to lay out the thought process.  Even
though this is indeed now academic, since there is no decision we will
actually be disputing with a GR, I want to reply to one particular subpoint
to make it clear exactly where I'm coming from.

On Wed, Jun 03, 2020 at 06:39:53PM +, Stefano Rivera wrote:
> Would it be totally unrealistic, and unsafe to bring a large number of
> people together? Probably, yes. But if the local authorities are saying
> you can, it's worth considering.

This is the part that I categorically disagree with.  Even assuming baseline
competence of the local authorities (which, given that they're not in the
US, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt), this only speaks to
the authorities' confidence in their ability to prevent a
SARS-CoV-2-positive attendee from causing a LOCAL outbreak that is a threat
to public health.  It says NOTHING about the risk of someone contracting
COVID in their home country, arriving asymptomatic at the conference, being
contagious and transmitting it, and sending the virus home to a dozen other
countries to incubate for a week after the conference before the nature of
the problem has become clear.

If that happened, it would be entirely on the organizers (i.e. Debian), and
not on the local authorities, because we were inducing people to travel
internationally for the event.

And if the conference were to manage this risk by imposing broad
restrictions on countries of origin of physical attendees, then it shouldn't
carry the DebConf name; it should be treated as a miniconf instead, due to
the impact it would have on accessibility to the developer community to have
an even smaller than usual subset of developers attending in person with
most attending remotely.

Cheers,
-- 
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 Developer   https://www.debian.org/
slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org


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Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Shachar Shemesh]

Title: Untitled

  
  

On 02/06/2020 3:55, martin f krafft
  wrote:


  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Regarding the following, written by "Scott
Kitterman" on 2020-06-01 at 20:45 Uhr -0400:
  
It's almost like this discussion
  about a GR was a premature waste of everyone's time.
  
  You should get this framed and sent to
a couple of developers. ;)

I'm definitely making a T-Shirt with this slogan for next
  DebConf, whenever it might be.


In fact, let's make that the _official_ T-Shirt for the
  conference.


Anyone wants to draft a GR?



Shachar

  

Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Stefano Rivera]

Hi Steve (2020.06.02_21:58:05_+)
> The fact that the organizing team's response to the pandemic was anything
> other than a categorical decision not to hold a conference that would put
> people on planes and increase the overall risk of the community of disease
> transmission - and was instead in the nature of a public poll to find out
> whether there was enough *interest* in holding an in-person conference -
> means they had already lost any confidence I might have had in them in this
> matter.

Let me give some context to those decisions, because I don't think they
were communicated sufficiently clearly.

I suspect there isn't much I can say to give you more confidence, though :P

Early on in COVID-19, we saw that there was a pretty good chance that
this was going to have a huge effect on DebConf20. But things were
changing incredibly fast, and we knew we had time to make a decision.

We weren't a large company that had to decide whether to keep an events
department on payroll for the next 2 years. While some of our attendees
already had flights booked and plans like that, it'd be pretty safe that
nobody else would be making commitments to travel, months in the future,
in the early months of COVID-19.

It's only a couple of months before the conference that contracts have
to be finalized, flights booked, and money paid. June 8 was picked as a
latest possible date for that decision.

In the meantime:
1. Preparation largely stalled. People aren't very motivated to work on
   something that seems unlikely to happen.
2. The local team was monitoring the local situation. What would and
   would not be possible.
3. Some members of the video team were working on tools for online
   conferences.
4. A group organised a minidebconf online, to get a feel for how we'd do
   this, and test the tools we had.

More recently, we hit the deadline for the start of the bursary process.
To have to for submission, review, visas, flights, etc. bursaries needed
to open, even thought we'd hadn't opened general registration yet.

Personally, I think the decision to cancel should have been moved up to
before bursaries opened. But it wasn't. And opening registration for
bursaries sent the wrong message to the community.

Why were people still considering doing something in-person?

The situation differs radically by region. Some parts of the world are
relatively unaffected, at the moment. And restrictions are easing in
some. There's a local team that put effort into preparing something
here. And presumably something small and local could still happen.

Would that be worth the effort? Would it be something to call a DebConf?
That would depend on attendance probably more than anything else. Thus
the poll.

Would it be totally unrealistic, and unsafe to bring a large number of
people together? Probably, yes. But if the local authorities are saying
you can, it's worth considering.


When it came to the decision to cancel, this week, I don't think the
poll was a deciding factor. Or the GR threat. The local situation would
just not support a large event, and it seemed to be the right time to
call it, based on that.

SR

-- 
Stefano Rivera
  http://tumbleweed.org.za/
  +1 415 683 3272

Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Steve Langasek]

On Tue, Jun 02, 2020 at 12:44:23AM -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> On Tuesday, June 2, 2020 12:12:21 AM EDT Bdale Garbee wrote:
> > Scott Kitterman  writes:
> > > It's almost like this discussion about a GR was a premature waste of
> > > everyone's time.

> > It's also possible that discussion about a possible GR influenced the
> > ultimate decision in a useful way.

> > [shrug]

> Sure, but doing business by threat of GR is a horrible way to run things.

> What I would have hoped is that project members would trust the people that 
> they have (indirectly) delegated the responsibility to run Debconf to to do a 
> good job and only once there is something that's enough of a problem to 
> require a project wide decision to change their decision consider a GR.

> There's enough to do to make the Debian project go that I don't think we need 
> to engage in project level micromanagement like this.

The fact that the organizing team's response to the pandemic was anything
other than a categorical decision not to hold a conference that would put
people on planes and increase the overall risk of the community of disease
transmission - and was instead in the nature of a public poll to find out
whether there was enough *interest* in holding an in-person conference -
means they had already lost any confidence I might have had in them in this
matter.

In this context, the rationale for the decision is as important as the
decision itself.

I did not trust them to do the right thing because they had already done the
wrong thing.

A GR under those circumstances looks entirely appropriate to me.

-- 
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 Developer   https://www.debian.org/
slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org


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Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Bdale Garbee]

Scott Kitterman  writes:

> What I would have hoped is that project members would trust the people that 
> they have (indirectly) delegated the responsibility to run Debconf to to do a 
> good job and only once there is something that's enough of a problem to 
> require a project wide decision to change their decision consider a GR.

In this case, the solicitation of registrations for the conference
absolutely felt like "enough of a problem" to at least begin discussing
corrective action.  That said solicitation turned into something more
like a poll on whether we should have the event was sufficiently
corrective for me.

[shrug]  YMMV.

Bdale


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Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Russ Allbery]

Scott Kitterman  writes:

> Sure, but doing business by threat of GR is a horrible way to run things.

I find this so strange.

To me, this is like saying that it's horrible to have the executive branch
of a government have to do business under threat of the legislature
passing laws.  That's literally what it's there for.  It's not a threat;
it's not even adversarial.  It's how governance works in Debian.

> There's enough to do to make the Debian project go that I don't think we
> need to engage in project level micromanagement like this.

Whether or not to hold the flagship conference for the project is not
micromanagement.  Micromanagement would be dictating the front desk hours
or having a GR on the day trip destination.  This is a significant
decision that, among other things, directly impacts a substantial
percentage of the project's funds.

If the project ever wanted to make any of the large, hard decisions I have
to make via GR instead, I'd be *thrilled*.  It's nerve-wracking to try to
weigh input to understand what the project as a whole really wants; by all
means tell me directly any time you want!

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

Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Scott Kitterman]

On Tuesday, June 2, 2020 12:12:21 AM EDT Bdale Garbee wrote:
> Scott Kitterman  writes:
> > It's almost like this discussion about a GR was a premature waste of
> > everyone's time.
> 
> It's also possible that discussion about a possible GR influenced the
> ultimate decision in a useful way.
> 
> [shrug]

Sure, but doing business by threat of GR is a horrible way to run things.

What I would have hoped is that project members would trust the people that 
they have (indirectly) delegated the responsibility to run Debconf to to do a 
good job and only once there is something that's enough of a problem to 
require a project wide decision to change their decision consider a GR.

There's enough to do to make the Debian project go that I don't think we need 
to engage in project level micromanagement like this.

Scott K

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Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Bdale Garbee]

Scott Kitterman  writes:

> It's almost like this discussion about a GR was a premature waste of 
> everyone's time.

It's also possible that discussion about a possible GR influenced the
ultimate decision in a useful way.

[shrug] 

Bdale


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Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[martin f krafft]

Regarding the following, written by "Scott Kitterman" on 2020-06-01 at 20:45 
Uhr -0400:
It's almost like this discussion about a GR was a premature waste of 
everyone's time.


You should get this framed and sent to a couple of developers. ;)

--
 .''`.   martin f. krafft  @martinkrafft
: :'  :  proud Debian developer
`. `'`   http://people.debian.org/~madduck
  `-  Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing systems
 
save the plankton - eat a whale.


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Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Scott Kitterman]

On Monday, June 1, 2020 6:12:30 PM EDT Ivo De Decker wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 5/22/20 2:43 PM, Holger Levsen wrote:
> > On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 02:40:55PM +0200, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote:
> >> This is a draft for a GR I would like to propose.
> >> 
> >> Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20
> > 
> > [...]
> > 
> > I'd second that, thanks. However, I would prefer if the DebConf organizers
> > cancel themselves. (And I would also prefer we would wake up soon and this
> > nightmare is over. I just don't think that this will happen anytime soon.)
> 
> FWIW, it seems the organizers decided it's not happening:
> 
> http://meetbot.debian.net/debconf-team/2020/debconf-team.2020-06-01-18.01.lo
> g.html
> 
> " #action terceiro to send a short announcement that there will
> be no in-person conference in 2020 and further details will follow"
> 
> Ivo

It's almost like this discussion about a GR was a premature waste of 
everyone's time.

Scott K

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Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Ivo De Decker]

Hi,

On 5/22/20 2:43 PM, Holger Levsen wrote:

On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 02:40:55PM +0200, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote:

This is a draft for a GR I would like to propose.

Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[...]

I'd second that, thanks. However, I would prefer if the DebConf organizers
cancel themselves. (And I would also prefer we would wake up soon and this
nightmare is over. I just don't think that this will happen anytime soon.)


FWIW, it seems the organizers decided it's not happening:

http://meetbot.debian.net/debconf-team/2020/debconf-team.2020-06-01-18.01.log.html

" #action terceiro to send a short announcement that there will 
be no in-person conference in 2020 and further details will follow"


Ivo

Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Roger Shimizu]

On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 9:41 PM Martin Zobel-Helas  wrote:
>
> This is a draft for a GR I would like to propose.
>
> Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20
> --
>
> ### Whereas
>
> 1. the World Health organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 as a global
>pandemic [1] as of March 11th and has not yet lifted this.

I cannot imagine that there would be a GR to prevent other people
doing volunteer work.
If you don't want to join, just ignore it.

And personally I don't believe anything from WHO, since they just
repeat the fake information from fake source.

Cheers,
-- 
Roger Shimizu, GMT +9 Tokyo
PGP/GPG: 4096R/6C6ACD6417B3ACB1

Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Jonathan Carter]

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On 2020/05/22 20:08, Jonathan Carter wrote:
> (and besides, the India team has already won for next year). If
> they get

Correction: I mean of course, Kosovo.

- -Jonathan

- -- 
  ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀  Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) 
  ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁  https://wiki.debian.org/highvoltage
  ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋   https://debian.org | https://jonathancarter.org
  ⠈⠳⣄  Debian, the universal operating system.
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Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Jonathan Carter]

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Hi zobel

On 2020/05/22 14:40, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote:
> This is a draft for a GR I would like to propose.


I can't block you from doing a GR (and I certainly wouldn't want to!),
but I'd like you to consider the variables and consequences one last
time before posting such a GR.

First, the Isreal local team are made up of highly competent Debian
members. I trust them, and believe that they are able to make a good
decision based on the available information. Yesterday in the DC20
announcement, they made it clear that they're putting feelers out there
to gauge how many people feel confident that they'd actually be
attending in person. As far as I understand, they intend to make a final
decision on whether (or to which extent) DC20 will be an in-person event
in about two weeks from now. I believe that this GR is putting the cart
before the horse, and while I 100% understand (and to large extents
agree) with its content, I do think that the DC team will end up making
a good decision and that using such a GR to take that decision away from
will just cause unnecessary anguish.

Secondly, so far this month they're infection rate has been really low.
Low enough so that they can still effectively do contact tracing and
cluster control (which is basically a lost cause in most countries at
the moment). They have a very good chance of having this virus under
control very soon. There are other countries that are doing well too,
for example New Zealand who are in the single digits with new
infections, and China, which was the original epicenter, has learned to
deal with this virus quite well too. I acknowledge that it's too soon to
tell, but there is still a possibility that at least people from
countries like that might be able to travel, and maybe DC20 ends up
being really small, maybe just a few dozen people in person with mostly
locals, but is that so bad? We're planning an online minidebconf for the
end of the month, there might be another before DC20 is supposed to
happen. This gives us a good oppertunity to hammer away at our online
participation tools so that those who can't or do not wish to travel can
still participate remotes. And I realise that this experience will never
be the 1st class experience that a full in-person DebConf is, but at
least we can have some form of annual event together, and forcing us to
improve remote participation will help future DebConfs be better like
that. It's currently a sore issue and more and more people choose not to
travel for environmental reasons, so it's something we'll have to be
better at in the future.

*Phew*, I'm just going to take a breath and say sorry for all the text
so far... but there's more...

Thirdly, if the specific event is totally cancelled, do you feel that
the DC20 team should just lose their slot? Even if you move it to next
year, the situation might still be somewhat similar to this year by then
(and besides, the India team has already won for next year). If they get
postponed (to 2022) instead of cancelled, do you realise that the
political debates surrounding a DebConf in Israel will start afresh and
that many people really don't want to be dragged through that again?

I want to state again that I 100% agree with your sentiment regarding
physical meetings, but DC20 was initially planned before the epidemic
started. If they can manage to do a nano-scale DebConf and do it safely,
why not let them? Or if they decide to let them do it online only, let
it be their choice and responsibility to make. I think the chances of
people from Africa, Europe, India, South America or North America being
able to travel to Israel before the end of the year is super slim
anyway, so I'd ask you to reconsider this GR and at least see what the
DebConf team comes up with first.

If they manage to either figure out the details to do either a tiny
scale DebConf or an online DebConf, then we might still preserve most of
the secured sponsorship, enjoy some level of interaction and problem
solving online, and be able to wrap up DebConf in Israel this year and
start to worry about the situation in India instead.

So again, I'd ask you to consider the above at least one more time
before posting that GR.

- -Jonathan

- -- 
  ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀  Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) 
  ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁  https://wiki.debian.org/highvoltage
  ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋   https://debian.org | https://jonathancarter.org
  ⠈⠳⣄  Debian, the universal operating system.
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Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Gunnar Wolf]

Hello Martin,

Martin Zobel-Helas dijo [Fri, May 22, 2020 at 02:40:55PM +0200]:
> This is a draft for a GR I would like to propose.
> 
> Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

As a member of the DebConf Committee, as a very-long-time organizer of
DebConf, and just as yet another fellow Debian Developer, I feel this
GR is out of line.

No decision has been made, even though the call for registration is
open. A date for the decision to be held (June 8) has been announced,
and we are all weighting in many factors. We have been discussing this
quite a bit within the team.

The decision should not be unifactorial --- Do we want to protect DDs
from infecting one another? From being vectors that bring an infection
back to their countries? Are we worried about the use of Debian funds?
Are we trying to protect the local organizing team from burning out
for "too little"? Do we want to protect the local organizing team from
burning out due to having to walk what they have already done, but
again for next year? Do we know if they are able (and willing) to
repeat their work commitment for next year?

There are many aspects to this decision, and we are gathering
information to be able to better decide. Rest assured, we will
announce this explaining as much as possible our reasoning.

If you disagree fundamentally with our reasoning, of course, you can
proceed with the GR. But presenting a GR before we even discuss it
with the people doing the work sounds somewhat entering the room and
kicking the table. Please, don't.

Cordially,

- Gunnar Wolf.


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Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Aigars Mahinovs]

On Fri, 22 May 2020 at 18:08, Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana <
p...@debian.org> wrote:

> In my opinion, the best solution would be postpone DC20 in Israel to 2021.
> And push Kosovo to 2022 and India to 2023.
>

I believe this choice should be on the table when DC20 team takes the
decision on the conference. Naturally it is not up to the local team to
decide such a thing, but with the blessing of the global Debconf team and
the DPL (and with Kosovo and India team consent) that should be a
possibility. It would also not preclude holding a virtual online Debconf
this year as well where volunteers from any place in the world could take
up responsibilities.

 In fact, if we do it the maximum fun way we could even involve volunteers
and speakers from around the world to have a week long 24/7 Debconf that
just never stops (until we run out of topics for talks). So instead of
multiple talk streams in parallel we would have them in succession. And
also have a party stream / chillout lounge running the whole time in
parallel as well. We can take this challenge and come up with something new
that Debconf as such could have never been. :)

-- 
Best regards,
Aigars Mahinovsmailto:aigar...@debian.org
 #--#
 | .''`.Debian GNU/Linux (http://www.debian.org)|
 | : :' :   Latvian Open Source Assoc. (http://www.laka.lv) |
 | `. `'Linux Administration and Free Software Consulting   |
 |   `- (http://www.aiteki.com) |
 #--#

Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana]

Hi,

In my opinion, the best solution would be postpone DC20 in Israel to 2021.
And push Kosovo to 2022 and India to 2023.

Best regards,


-- 
Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana (phls)
Curitiba - Brasil
Debian Developer
Diretor do Instituto para Conservação de Tecnologias Livres
Site: http://www.phls.com.br
GNU/Linux user: 228719  GPG ID: 0443C450



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Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Stefano Rivera]

Hi Sam (2020.05.22_14:51:42_+)
> The interesting thing is what the WHO says about travel and minimizing
> international travel.

FWIW: 
https://www.who.int/publications-detail/key-planning-recommendations-for-mass-gatherings-in-the-context-of-the-current-covid-19-outbreak
A couple of months old now, but doesn't seem to have been superseded.

I was surprised that it doesn't try to dissuade the events entirely.
What it does say is:
1. Work with your local authorities.
2. Have a plan for dealing with an outbreak at your event.

SR

-- 
Stefano Rivera
  http://tumbleweed.org.za/
  +1 415 683 3272

Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Daniel Lenharo de Souza]

Why we need this GR?

Can't we just wait the DebConf team decided?

If they decide to have in-person conference, and you are not able (don't
want or can't) to go. Just don't do that.



Em 22/05/2020 09:40, Martin Zobel-Helas escreveu:
> This is a draft for a GR I would like to propose.
> 
> Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20
> --
> 
Best Regards!

-- 
Daniel Lenharo de Souza
Curitiba - Brasil



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Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Sam Hartman]

Hi.

I think there is a lack of precision in the text of your GR that I find
highly problematic.
I suspect it will be fairly easy for you to correct this and possibly
even gain my support, so I'd ask you to look for ways to do so.

You say that the WHO has declared Covid-19 to be a pandemic, and has not
lifted that declaration.
I doubt they ever will.  I think that covid-19 will always have been a
pandemic.
The interesting thing is what the WHO says about travel and minimizing
international travel.

so, I'd ask you  to

1) focus on recommendations about travel rather than focusing on whether
Covid-19 is or is not a pandemic.

2) cite specific recommendations on travel as reasons not to have a
conference.

3) If you cannot easily find specific recommendations against travel to
conferences, then do significantly more leg work justifying your
position.

Thanks,

--Sam

Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Adam Borowski]

On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 07:29:39AM -0600, Bdale Garbee wrote:
> They have until the GR is ready for a vote to do the right thing.

Then why make a GR to override the decision?

Everyone is already able to vote with their legs: no one of us can force
another to come.  So if you're not going to go, why would you deny others?


Meow!
-- 
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ in the beginning was the boot and root floppies and they were good.
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀   --  on #linux-sunxi
⠈⠳⣄

Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Bdale Garbee]

They have until the GR is ready for a vote to do the right thing.

Bdale

On May 22, 2020 7:23:08 AM MDT, Antonio Terceiro  wrote:
>On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 02:40:55PM +0200, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote:
>> This is a draft for a GR I would like to propose.
>> 
>> Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20
>> --
>
>As said in the DebConf website, the decision of holding DebConf20
>in-person is yet to be made, and going online is one of the
>possibilities. This decision is going to be made at the beginning of
>June.
>
>Maybe you should wait until after that decision before launching a GR
>to
>override the team.

-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Antonio Terceiro]

On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 02:40:55PM +0200, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote:
> This is a draft for a GR I would like to propose.
> 
> Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20
> --

As said in the DebConf website, the decision of holding DebConf20
in-person is yet to be made, and going online is one of the
possibilities. This decision is going to be made at the beginning of
June.

Maybe you should wait until after that decision before launching a GR to
override the team.


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Re: [draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Holger Levsen]

On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 02:40:55PM +0200, Martin Zobel-Helas wrote:
> This is a draft for a GR I would like to propose.
> 
> Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20
[...]

I'd second that, thanks. However, I would prefer if the DebConf organizers
cancel themselves. (And I would also prefer we would wake up soon and this
nightmare is over. I just don't think that this will happen anytime soon.)


-- 
cheers,
Holger

---
   holger@(debian|reproducible-builds|layer-acht).org
   PGP fingerprint: B8BF 5413 7B09 D35C F026 FE9D 091A B856 069A AA1C


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[draft] Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20

[Martin Zobel-Helas]

This is a draft for a GR I would like to propose.

Cancel this year's in-person Debian Developers Conference DebConf20
--

### Whereas

1. the World Health organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 as a global
   pandemic [1] as of March 11th and has not yet lifted this.
2. the Debian Project has planned its annual Developer's conference
   DebConf20 [2] to take place in Hafia, Israel during August 23rd to 
   29th.
3. the DebConf organizers have opened the registration for this year's
   conference[3].


### The Debian Project resolves

1. that organizing DebConf as an in-person event in August 2020 is
   endangering it's participants **and** others.
2. it persuades the conference organizers to cancel this years
   conference as on-site in-person conference.
3. it encourages all conference organizers to postpone any on-site
   developer gatherings organized in the name of the Debian Project
   until the WHO has declared this global pandemic as being over.
4. that it has the technical expertise to hold such an event on-line.

### Rational

1. During Debian's Developers Conference participants from all over the
   world will gather together from different health systems and 
   different cultures.
2. Debian Developers of all ages and with different health conditions
   will travel to this conference. 
3. Debian as a project wants to ensure the wellbeing of all of its
   Developers and of other participants of such an event, as well as 
   all later contact persons of all participants.
4. The Debian project should be an archetype for technical conferences
   of this kind, both technically and socially.


[1] 
https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---11-march-2020
[2] https://debconf20.debconf.org/
[3] https://lists.debian.org/debconf-announce/2020/05/msg1.html

-- 
 Martin Zobel-Helas Debian System Administrator
 Debian & GNU/Linux Developer   Debian Listmaster
 http://about.me/zobel   Debian Webmaster
 GPG Fingerprint:  6B18 5642 8E41 EC89 3D5D  BDBB 53B1 AC6D B11B 627B 


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