blog/archives/2011/12zack's home pagehttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/archives/2011/12/zack's home pageikiwiki2011-12-15T11:07:19Zdebian call for tender by the french governmenthttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2011/12/debian_call_for_tender_by_the_french_government/2011-12-15T11:07:19Z2011-12-15T11:07:19Z
<p>The French government has published a <a href=
"https://www.marches-publics.gouv.fr/index.php5?page=entreprise.EntrepriseDetailConsultation&refConsultation=8460&orgAcronyme=g6l">
<strong>call for tender</strong></a> for a <strong>2 million euro
contract to support Debian</strong> and CentOS systems throughout
the French public administration. The news is a month old, but the
call for bids is open until 9 January 2012.</p>
<p>There is more coverage on a <a href=
"https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/fr-government-procuring-two-million-euro-worth-open-source-support">
EC blog post</a> as well as on <a href=
"http://www.lemondeinformatique.fr/actualites/lire-l-etat-lance-un-appel-d-offres-sur-la-maintenance-des-logiciels-libres-46661.html">
Le Monde Informatique</a> (in French).</p>
<p>"Customers" of the bid winner will be almost all ministries of
the French administration --- from prime minister to justice, from
defense to sports, from education to culture --- for a 3-year
period. The call requires ability to support most of the "usual
suspects" among popular FOSS applications, but <strong>explicitly
focuses on Debian</strong> and CentOS as distributions.</p>
<p>It is by far not the first time it has happened, but it is
always great for me to see major public administrations choosing
community based distros (and Debian in particular <img src=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/smileys/tongue.png" alt=":-P" /> ).</p>
bits from the DPL for November 2011http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2011/12/bits_from_the_DPL_for_November_2011/2011-12-11T22:13:30Z2011-12-11T21:50:46Z
<p><a href="http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20111120-00">Mako's
IronBlogger</a> is a great idea. I often find myself postponing
blog posts for a very long time, simply out of laziness.
IronBlogger provides a nice community incentive to counter (my)
laziness and blogging more often.</p>
<p>As a related challenge, we have to face the fact that different
subsets of our communities use different media to stay informed:
mailing lists, blog (aggregators), social media, IRC, etc.
Disparities in how they stay informed are a pity and can be
countered using multiple medias at a time. Although I haven't
blogged very often as of lately, I managed to keep the Debian
(Developer) community informed of what happens in "DPL land" on a
monthly basis, by the means of <em>bits from the DPL</em> mails
sent to <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce">d-d-a</a>. While
the target of bits mails perfectly fits d-d-a, there is no reason
to exclude a broader public from them. After all, who knows, maybe
we'll find the next DPL victim<sup>W</sup> candidate among Planet
readers!</p>
<p>Bonus point: blogging this also helped me realize that my mails
are not as <a href=
"http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax">markdown</a>-clean
as I thought they were.</p>
<p>I still have no IronBlogger squad, though. (And sharing beers
with folks in the Boston area is not terribly handy for me…).
Anyone interested in setting up a <em>BloggeurDeFer</em> in the
Paris area? (SCNR)</p>
<hr />
<p>Dear Project Members,<br />
another month has passed, it's time to bother you again about what
has happened in DPL land in November (this time, with even less
delay than the last one, ah!).</p>
<h1>Call for Help: press/publicity team</h1>
<p>I'd like to highlight the call for help by the press / publicity
teams. They are "hiring" and have sent out a call for new members
<a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/11/msg00055.html">a
couple of weeks ago</a>. The work they do is amazing and is very
important for Debian, as important as maintaining packages or
fixing RC bugs during a freeze. It is only by letting the world
know what Debian is and what we do, that we can keep the Project
thriving. And letting the world know is exactly what the <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Publicity">publicity and press
teams</a> do. If you're into writing, blogging, or simply have a
crush for social media, please read the call and "apply"!</p>
<h1>Interviews</h1>
<p>November has apparently been the "let's interview the DPL"
month. I've spent quite some time giving interviews to interested
journalists about various topics. For both my embarrassment and
transparency on what I've said on behalf of Debian, here are the
relevant links:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://faif.us/cast/2011/nov/29/0x1D/">audio
interviewwith Karen Sandler</a> for the <a href=
"http://faif.us/">Free as in Freedom oggcast</a> by herself and
Bradley M. Kuhn</li>
<li><a href=
"http://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/11/22/people-behind-debian-stefano-zacchiroli-debian-project-leader/">
text interview with Raphael Hertzog</a> for the People behind
Debian series</li>
<li><a href=
"http://interview.lici.it/2011/11/15/an-interview-for-linux-to-stefano-zacchiroli/">
text interview for the Linux Certification Institute Italy</a>
(LICI) (note: the original of this one is <a href=
"http://interview.lici.it/it/2011/11/15/an-interview-for-linux-to-stefano-zacchiroli/">
in Italian</a>; the English version is a translation by LICI)</li>
<li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p64OUfcfe5M">video
interview with Amber Granger</a> during last UDS</li>
</ul>
<h1>Assets</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Videoteam/Sprint2011">the
Video Team sprint</a> approved in October has happened at beginning
of November; report is still pending but the organizers are on
it</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/11/msg00009.html">Christian
Perrier reported</a> about his trip to India mini-DebConf, even
that he attended on behalf of the Project. I find amazing both the
outcome of the event and Christian's report, a very good example of
how to inform the Project when acting on behalf of it</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>the hardware replacement for {ftp,lists}.d.o I've mentioned last
month has been ordered, has arrived, and DSA have already put their
hands on it for the setup. Many thanks to DSA and in particular to
Martin Zobel-Helas for the logistics</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>as an administratrivia, I've asked SPI to setup for Debian a
"gift" credit card, i.e. a credit card with a limited, refillable
budget. It is needed for using (with a safeguard) credits offered
to the Project by public cloud providers (e.g. <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2011/10/msg00056.html">AWS'
donation</a>), as well as to use various kinds of services that we
need from time to time</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Legal advice (work in progress)</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>I've sought and got from a former SPI lawyer a first legal
advice on the relationships among trademark law and the procedures
of a Free Software distro like Debian when distributing software
subject to trademarks. I'm still waiting to seek a second advice
from the current SPI lawyers (whom I've been keeping busy with
other stuff). In the meantime I've pending a summary of what I've
got thus far in the <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/10/msg00028.html">trademark-vs-DFSG
thread</a>. Stay tuned there!</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I've been working with SPI lawyers on a proposal of software
patent policy that I think we should advertise to make explicit the
position of the Debian Project on software patents. I see it as a
continuation/completion of <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/reports/patent-faq">the FAQ</a> we have
already published on the subject. I'll let you know as soon as we
reach a stable draft, that should be pretty soon.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Relationships with others</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>I've been approached by members of the board of the OpenSource
Initiative (OSI), about the soon to be open OSI affiliation
program. They'd like to know if Debian is interested in being
affiliated to OSI. I think we should and I'll eventually start a
discussion on this topic. In the meantime, I welcome feedback from
anyone who is interested in the topic.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Thanks to the interest of Andrew Pollock, LaMont Jones, Florian
Weimer and the Security Team, we are discussing with ISC to have
Debian --- as a project, rather than as individuals who just happen
to maintain ISC software in Debian --- become member of all forums
relevant for software we distribute (BIND, NTP, DHCP). They are
doing all the coordination work, but I've anticipated I'll be happy
to pledge for Debian membership.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I've taken the first step to reach out to companies that have a
strategic interest in Debian. According to discussion I've had with
representative of such companies, they often face similar
challenges in offering Debian support and in contributing back to
Debian. I think we should offer a forum for them to discuss and
find synergies, as well as explain our needs to them. An <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/650082">official mailing list</a> might be
such a place.</p>
<p>Once we have a suitable forum ready, I'll propose to the press
team to send out a corresponding call for companies. In the
meantime, if you happen to know, or even work for, companies that
might be interested, please ask them to get in touch with me.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Miscellanea</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>I've had a chance to discuss with the editors of the SPDX
specification about its relationship with DEP-5. Thanks to the help
of Dominique Dumont work is already in progress to have a mutual
converter among the two formats. Also, although with some bumps,
work on finalizing DEP-5 has finally restarted.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>an interesting thread of a while ago is in need of some work to
produce a useful outcome, i.e. a set of security guidelines for
DDs. If you're willing to help, have a look at <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/10/msg00066.html">the</a>
<a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/11/msg00073.html">thread</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>some more mediation-fu has been going on during November; have a
look at my daily logs below if you care about the details</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Thanks for reading thus far,<br />
and happy hacking.</p>
<hr />
<p>PS as usual, the boring day-to-day activity log is available at
<code>master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.*</code></p>