tags/planet-debianzack's home pagehttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/tags/planet-debian/zack's home pageikiwiki2017-02-25T15:15:10ZSoftware Freedom Conservancy matchinghttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2017/02/Software_Freedom_Conservancy_matching/2017-02-25T15:15:10Z2017-02-25T15:15:10Z
<h1>become a Conservancy supporter by February 28th and have your
donation matched</h1>
<p>Non-profits that provide project support have proven themselves
to be necessary for the success and advancement of individual
projects and Free Software as a whole. The <a href=
"https://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a> (founded in
1985) serves as a home to GNU projects and a canonical list of Free
Software licenses. The <a href="https://opensource.org/">Open
Source Initiative</a> came about in 1998, maintaining the Open
Source Definition, based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines,
with affiliate members including Debian, Mozilla, and the Wikimedia
Foundation. <a href="https://www.spi-inc.org/">Software in the
Public Interest (SPI)</a> was created in the late 90s largely to
act as a fiscal sponsor for projects like Debian, enabling it to do
things like accept donations and handle other financial
transactions.</p>
<p>More recently (2006), the <a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/">Software Freedom Conservancy</a> was
formed. Among other activities—like serving as a fiscal sponsor,
infrastructure provider, and support organization for a number of
free software projects including Git, Outreachy, and the <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/News/2015/20150817">Debian Copyright
Aggregation Project</a>—they protect user freedom via copyleft
compliance and GPL enforcement work. Without a willingness to act
when licenses are violated, copyleft has no power. Through
communication, collaboration, and—<a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.html">only
as last resort</a>—litigation, the Conservancy helps everyone who
uses a freedom respecting license.</p>
<p>The Conservancy has been aggressively fundraising in order to
not just continue its current operations, but expand their work,
staff, and efforts. They recently launched a <a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/"><strong>donation matching
campaign</strong></a> thanks to the generosity and dedication of an
anonymous donor. Everyone who joins the Conservancy as a annual
Supporter <strong>by February 28th</strong> will have their
donation matched.</p>
<p>A number of us are already <a href=
"https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">supporters</a>,
and hope you will join us in supporting the world of an
organization that supports us.</p>
Opening the Software Heritage archivehttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2017/02/Opening_the_Software_Heritage_archive/2017-02-12T14:03:29Z2017-02-12T14:03:29Z
<h1>... one API (and one FOSDEM) at a time</h1>
<p><small>[ originally <a href=
"https://www.softwareheritage.org/2017/02/04/archive-api/">posted</a>
on the <a href="https://www.softwareheritage.org/blog/">Software
Heritage blog</a>, reposted here with minor adaptations
]</small></p>
<p><strong>Last Saturday at FOSDEM we have opened up the <a href=
"https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/">public API</a> of
<a href="https://www.softwareheritage.org/">Software Heritage</a>,
allowing to programmatically browse its <a href=
"https://www.softwareheritage.org/archive/">archive</a>.</strong></p>
<p>We posted this while I was keynoting with <a href=
"https://www.softwareheritage.org/people/">Roberto</a> at <a href=
"https://fosdem.org/2017/">FOSDEM 2017</a>, to discuss the role
Software Heritage plays in <a href=
"https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/software_heritage/">preserving
the Free Software commons</a>. To accompany the talk we released
our first public API, which allows to navigate the entire content
of the Software Heritage archive as a graph of connected
development objects (e.g., blobs, directories, commits, releases,
etc.).</p>
<p>Over the past months we have been busy working on getting source
code (with full development history) into the archive, to minimize
the risk that important bits of Free/Open Sources Software that are
publicly available today disappear forever from the net, due to
whatever reason --- crashes, black hat hacking, business decisions,
you name it. As a result, our archive is already one of the largest
collections of source code in existence, spanning a <a href=
"https://help.github.com/articles/about-archiving-content-and-data-on-github/">
GitHub mirror</a>, injections of important Free Software
collections such as Debian and GNU, and an ongoing import of all
Google Code and Gitorious repositories.</p>
<p>Up to now, however, the archive was deposit-only. There was no
way for the public to access its content. While there is a lot of
value in archival <em>per se</em>, our mission is to Collect,
Preserve, and <strong>Share all the material we collect</strong>
with everybody. Plus, we totally get that a deposit-only library is
much less exciting than a store-and-retrieve one! Last Saturday we
took a first important step towards providing full access to the
content of our archive: <strong>we released <a href=
"https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/">version 1 of our
public API</a>, which allows to navigate the Software Heritage
archive</strong> programmatically.</p>
<p>You can have a look at the <a href=
"https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/">API documentation</a>
for full details about how it works. But to briefly recap:
conceptually, our archive is a giant <a href=
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree">Merkle DAG</a>
connecting together all development-related objects we encounter
while crawling public VCS repositories, source code releases, and
GNU/Linux distribution packages. Examples of the objects we store
are: file contents, directories, commits, releases; as well as
their metadata, such as: log messages, author information,
permission bits, etc.</p>
<p>The API we have just released allows to pointwise navigate this
huge graph. Using the API you can <strong>lookup individual objects
by their IDs</strong>, retrieve their metadata, and <strong>jump
from one object to another following links</strong> --- e.g., from
a commit to the corresponding directory or parent commits, from a
release to the annotated commit, etc. Additionally, you can
retrieve crawling-related information, such as the software origins
we track (usually as VCS clone/checkout URLs), and the <strong>full
list of visits we have done on any known software origin</strong>.
This allows, for instance, to know when we took snapshots of a Git
repository you care about and, for each visit, <strong>where each
branch of the repo was pointing to at that time</strong>.</p>
<p>Our resources for offering the API as a public service are still
quite limited. This is the reason why you will encounter a couple
of limitations. First, no download of the actual content of files
we have stored is possible yet --- you can retrieve all
content-related metadata (e.g., checksums, detected file types and
languages, etc.), but not the actual content as a byte sequence.
Second, some pretty severe rate limits apply; API access is
entirely anonymous and users are identified by their IP address,
each "user" will be able to do a little bit more than 100
requests/hour. This is to keep our infrastructure sane while we
grow in capacity and focus our attention to developing other
archive features.</p>
<p>If you're interested in having rate limits lifted for a specific
use case or experiment, please <a href=
"https://www.softwareheritage.org/contact/">contact us</a> and we
will see what we can do to help.</p>
<p>If you'd like to <strong>contribute to increase our resource
pool</strong>, have a look at our <a href=
"https://www.softwareheritage.org/support/sponsors/program/">sponsorship
program</a>!</p>
last week to take part in the Debian Contributors Surveyhttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2016/11/last_week_to_take_part_in_the_Debian_Contributors_Survey/2016-11-28T10:27:43Z2016-11-28T10:27:43Z
<h1>Debian Contributors Survey 2016</h1>
<p>About 3 weeks ago, together with Molly and Mathieu, we launched
the first edition of the Debian Contributors Survey. I won't harp
on it any further, because you can find all relevant information
about it <a href=
"https://bits.debian.org/2016/11/debian-contributors-survey-2016.html">
on the Debian blog</a> or as part of the <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2016/11/msg00003.html">
original announcement</a>.</p>
<p>But it's worth noting that you've now only <strong>one week left
to participate</strong> if you want to: the deadline for
participation is <strong>4 December 2016, at 23:59
UTC</strong>.</p>
<p>If you're a Debian contributor and would like to participate,
just go to the <a href=
"http://debian.limequery.org/696747"><strong>survey participation
page</strong></a> and fill in!</p>
guest lecture Overthrowing the Tyranny of Software by John Sullivanhttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2016/02/guest_lecture_Overthrowing_the_Tyranny_of_Software_by_John_Sullivan/2016-02-01T07:56:52Z2016-02-01T07:56:52Z
<p>As part of my master class on Free and Open Source (FOSS)
Software at University Paris Diderot, I invite guest lecturers to
present to my students the point of views of various actors of the
FOSS ecosystem --- companies, non-profits, activists, lawyers,
etc.</p>
<p>Tomorrow, Tuesday 2 February 2016, the students will have the
pleasure to have as guest lecturer John Sullivan, Executive
Director of the Free Software Foundation, talking about
<em>Overthrowing the tyranny of software: Why (and how) free
societies respect computer user freedom</em>.</p>
<p>The lecture is open to everyone interested, but registration is
recommended. Logistic and registration information, as well as the
lecture abstract in both English and French is reported below.</p>
<hr />
<p><strong>John Sullivan's Lecture at University Paris Diderot -
Overthrowing the tyranny of software: Why (and how) free societies
respect computer user freedom</strong></p>
<p>John Sullivan, Executive Director of the Free Software
Foundation will give a lecture titled "Overthrowing the tyranny of
software: Why (and how) free societies respect computer user
freedom" at University Paris Diderot next Tuesday, 2 February 2016,
at 12:30 in the Amphi 3B, Halle aux Farines building, Paris 75013.
Map at: <a href=
"http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/62378611#map=19/48.82928/2.38183">
http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/62378611#map=19/48.82928/2.38183</a></p>
<p>The lecture will be in English and open to everyone, but
registration is recommended at <a href=
"https://framadate.org/iPqfjNTz2535F8u4">https://framadate.org/iPqfjNTz2535F8u4</a>
or via email writing to <a href=
"mailto:zack@pps.univ-paris-diderot.fr">zack@pps.univ-paris-diderot.fr</a>.</p>
<p>Abstract:</p>
<p>Anyone who has used a computer for long has at least sometimes
felt like a helpless subject under the tyrant of software,
screaming (uselessly) in frustration at the screen to try and get
the desired results. But with driverless cars, appliances which
eavesdrop on conversations in our homes, mobile devices that
transmit our location when we are out and about, and computers with
unexpected hidden "features", our inability to control the software
supposedly in our possession has become a much more serious problem
than the superficial blue-screen-of-death irritations of the
past.</p>
<p>Software which is free "as in freedom" allows anyone who has it
to inspect the code and even modify it -- or ask someone trained in
the dark arts of computer programming to do it for them -- so that
undesirable behaviors can be removed or defused. This
characteristic, applied to all software, should be a major part of
foundation of free societies moving forward. To get there, we'll
need individual developers, nonprofit organizations, governments,
and companies all working together -- with the first two groups
leading the way.</p>
<hr />
<p><strong>Cours Magistral de John Sullivan à l'Université Paris
Diderot - Surmonter la tyrannie du logiciel: pourquoi (et comment)
les sociétés libres respectent les libertés des
utilisateurs</strong></p>
<p>John Sullivan, Directeur Exécutif de la Free Software Foundation
donnera un cours magistral ayant pour titre "Surmonter la tyrannie
du logiciel: pourquoi (et comment) les sociétés libres respectent
les libertés des utilisateurs" à l'Université Paris Diderot Mardi
prochain, 2 février 2016, à 12h30 dans l'Amphi 3B de la Halle aux
Farines, Paris 75013. Plan: <a href=
"http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/62378611#map=19/48.82928/2.38183">
http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/62378611#map=19/48.82928/2.38183</a></p>
<p>Le cours (en langue Anglaise) sera ouvert à toutes et à tous,
mais l'inscription est recommandé via le formulaire <a href=
"https://framadate.org/iPqfjNTz2535F8u4">https://framadate.org/iPqfjNTz2535F8u4</a>
ou par mail à l'adresse <a href=
"mailto:zack@pps.univ-paris-diderot.fr">zack@pps.univ-paris-diderot.fr</a>.</p>
<p>Résumé:</p>
<p>Chacun de nous, au moins une fois dans sa vie, a pesté contre
son ordinateur dans l'espoir (vain) d'obtenir un résultat attendu,
se sentant dépossède par un tyran logiciel. Mais au jour
d'aujourd'hui - avec des voitures autonomes, des dispositifs
"intelligents" que nous écoutent chez nous, des portables qui
transmettent notre position quand nous nous baladons, et des
ordinateurs pleins des fonctionnalités cachées - notre incapacité
de contrôler nos biens devient une question beaucoup plus sérieuse
par rapport a l'irritation qu'auparavant nous causait l'écran bleu
de la mort.</p>
<p>Le logiciel libre permet à chaque utilisateur d'étudier son
fonctionnement et de le modifier --- ou de demander à des experts
dans la magie noire de la programmation de le faire a sa place ---
supprimant, ou du moins réduisant, les comportements indésirés du
logiciel. Cette caractéristique du logiciel libre devrait être
appliquée à chaque type de logiciel et devrait constituer un pilier
des sociétés se prétendant libres. Pour achever cet idéal,
développeurs, organisations à but non lucratif, gouvernements et
entreprises doivent travailler ensemble. Et les développeurs et les
ONG doivent se positionner au premier rang dans ce combat.</p>
Shuttleworth Foundation Flash Grant - 2015 reporthttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2015/12/Shuttleworth_Foundation_Flash_Grant_-_2015_report/2015-12-29T13:06:34Z2015-12-29T13:04:58Z
<h1>1 year of Shuttleworth Foundation Flash Grant</h1>
<p>As <a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2014/12/Shuttleworth_Foundation_Flash_Grant/">announced
last year</a>, starting January 2015 I've benefited from a "Flash
Grant" kindly awarded to me by the <a href=
"https://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/">Shuttleworth
Foundation</a>. This post reports publicly about how I've used the
money to promote Free Software via my own activism, over the period
January-December 2015.</p>
<p>I'm lucky to have a full-time academic job that provides me with
a salary and basic computer hardware. But Free Software not being
the only focus of my job, it gets difficult at times to get travel
funding to specific Free Software events. So that is what I've
mostly used the grant money for: attend Free Software events that I
wouldn't have been able to attend otherwise.</p>
<p>On grant money I've attended <a href=
"https://www.libreplanet.org/2015/">LibrePlanet 2015</a>
(<code>2015-03-19-boston-libreplanet</code> label in the financial
reports below), where I've given the talk <a href=
"https://upsilon.cc/~zack/talks/2015/20150322-libreplanet-cloud.pdf">
Distributions and the Free "Cloud"</a>, and FSFE's <a href=
"https://fsfe.org/activities/ftf/legal-conference.en.html">LLW
2015</a> (<code>2015-04-15-barcelona-fsfe-legal</code>) workshop.
Furthermore I've used the grant to reimburse otherwise not
reimbursed out of pocket expenses in a trip to San Francisco
(<code>2015-11-06-san-francisco-gsoc+osi</code>) that have been
otherwise sponsored by Google (to attend the Summer of Code Mentor
Summit) and OSI (to attend a F2F meeting of the Board of
Directors). Finally, I've used grant money to offer lunch to
invited lecturers in my master-level Free Software class at the
university (label <code>2015-foss-class</code>).</p>
<p>Actual financial reports are reported below, in <a href=
"http://ledger-cli.org">ledger</a> format. It should be noted that,
contrary to the usual expected 6-month duration of flash grants,
I've used only about half the grant amount over a 12-month period;
I do not plan to pocket what remains, but rather keep on using it
over the next year, reporting again publicly at the end of the
period. Also, I did not breakdown further out of pocket expenses,
but they invariably stand for public transport tickets and
meals.</p>
<h3>Balance sheet</h3>
<p>Overall:</p>
<pre><code> 1966,11 EUR Assets:Funds
-4052,52 EUR Equity:Opening balances
2086,41 EUR Expenses
15,90 EUR Bank:Commissions
424,00 EUR Conference:Registration
56,50 EUR Teaching:Speaker-invitation
1590,01 EUR Travel
249,02 EUR Lodgement
562,51 EUR Out-of-pocket
778,48 EUR Plane
--------------------
0
</code></pre>
<p>Breakdown by purpose:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>2015-03-19-boston-libreplanet</p>
<pre><code> -1265,22 EUR Assets:Funds
1265,22 EUR Expenses
424,00 EUR Conference:Registration
841,22 EUR Travel
213,38 EUR Out-of-pocket
627,84 EUR Plane
--------------------
0
</code></pre></li>
<li>
<p>2015-04-15-barcelona-fsfe-legal</p>
<pre><code> -479,66 EUR Assets:Funds
479,66 EUR Expenses:Travel
249,02 EUR Lodgement
80,00 EUR Out-of-pocket
150,64 EUR Plane
--------------------
0
</code></pre></li>
<li>
<p>2015-11-06-san-francisco-gsoc+osi</p>
<pre><code> -269,13 EUR Assets:Funds
269,13 EUR Expenses:Travel:Out-of-pocket
--------------------
0
</code></pre></li>
<li>
<p>2015-foss-class</p>
<pre><code> -56,50 EUR Assets:Funds
56,50 EUR Expenses:Teaching:Speaker-invitation
--------------------
0
</code></pre></li>
</ul>
<h3>Journal</h3>
<pre><code>2014-12-03 Shuttleworth Foundation flash grant Equity:Opening balances -4052,52 EUR -4052,52 EUR
Assets:Funds 4052,52 EUR 0
2014-12-04 bank commissions on incoming transfer Expenses:Bank:Commissions 15,90 EUR 15,90 EUR
Assets:Funds -15,90 EUR 0
2014-12-24 plane tickets Paris-Boston round trip to attend LibrePlanet 2015 Expenses:Travel:Plane 627,84 EUR 627,84 EUR
Assets:Funds -627,84 EUR 0
2015-01-02 LibrePlanet 2015 registration + travel fund contribution Expenses:Conference:Registration 424,00 EUR 424,00 EUR
Assets:Funds -424,00 EUR 0
2015-03-02 plane tickets Paris-Barcelona round trip to attend LLW 2015 Expenses:Travel:Plane 150,64 EUR 150,64 EUR
Assets:Funds -150,64 EUR 0
2015-03-19 lunch with invited speaker for lecture about FOSS release management Expenses:Teaching:Speaker-invitation 28,00 EUR 28,00 EUR
Assets:Funds -28,00 EUR 0
2015-03-25 lunch with invited speaker for lecture about FOSS business models Expenses:Teaching:Speaker-invitation 28,50 EUR 28,50 EUR
Assets:Funds -28,50 EUR 0
2015-04-03 LibrePlanet 2015 out of pocket expenses Expenses:Travel:Out-of-pocket 213,38 EUR 213,38 EUR
Assets:Funds -213,38 EUR 0
2015-04-15 LLW 2015 out of pocket expenses Expenses:Travel:Out-of-pocket 80,00 EUR 80,00 EUR
Assets:Funds -80,00 EUR 0
2015-05-06 hotel in Barcelona for LLW 2015 (3 nights) Expenses:Travel:Lodgement 249,02 EUR 249,02 EUR
Assets:Funds -249,02 EUR 0
2015-11-29 OSI F2F Fall 2015 out of pocket expenses Expenses:Travel:Out-of-pocket 269,13 EUR 269,13 EUR
Assets:Funds -269,13 EUR 0
</code></pre>
interview for The Setuphttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2015/03/interview_for_The_Setup/2015-03-09T09:21:47Z2015-03-09T09:21:47Z
<h1>my setup, take #2</h1>
<p>Look Ma, I've been <a href=
"http://stefano.zacchiroli.usesthis.com/">interviewed</a> by
<a href="http://usesthis.com/">The Setup</a>, a popular blog with
<em>"interviews asking people from all walks of life what they use
to get the job done"</em>; so I now sport a fancy <a href=
"http://stefano.zacchiroli.usesthis.com">http://stefano.zacchiroli.usesthis.com</a>
too.</p>
<p>While there is overlap with <a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2014/09/interview_for_the_gnu_linux_setup/">my
previous take</a> on my setup, the questions are different so most
of the content is novel. In particular, I quite enjoyed the
question about what would be my "dream setup", and indulged in free
software/hardware desiderata.</p>
<p>Many thanks to Daniel Bogan for running the blog and kudos for
his editing work: while it's just a detail, such an abundance and
quality of link titles is not easy to come by on the Web.</p>
#JeSuisCharlie - RIP Bernard Marishttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2015/01/JeSuisCharlie_RIP_Bernard_Maris/2015-01-08T14:09:41Z2015-01-08T12:21:40Z
<h1>R.I.P. Bernard Maris and his thoughts on research and the
sharing economy</h1>
<p>via <a href=
"http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2014/09/16/surmonter-la-crise-politique-grace-a-une-economie-de-la-gratuite_4488343_3232.html">
Le Monde</a>, 16 Sep 2014:</p>
<p><strong>Le Monde</strong>: <q>Que devrait être une politique de
gauche? Une régulation du capitalisme ou une politique de rupture
radicale avec ce système économique?</q></p>
<p><strong>B.M.</strong>: <q>[…] Nous allons vers une
<strong>économie de partage</strong>, de la gratuité, <strong>du
logiciel libre</strong> en effet. <strong>La figure centrale de
demain sera le chercheur qui, lorsqu'il donne quelque chose à la
communauté, ne le perd pas</strong>. Le chercheur répond aux
besoins fondamentaux de l'homme: la création, la curiosité, le
changement, le progrès. Il est obligé de coopérer. <strong>La
coopération canalise la violence</strong>, que le libéralisme
espérait canaliser par le doux commerce! <strong>L'au-delà du
capitalisme sera une économie solidaire et fraternelle</strong>.
Aujourd'hui, la question incontournable porte sur la nature du
travail.[…]</q></p>
<div class="right">— <a href=
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Maris">Bernard
Maris</a><br />
23 Sep 1946 - 7 Jan 2015<br />
<a href=
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo_shooting">#JeSuisCharlie</a></div>
<p><a href=
"https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fupsilon.cc%2F~zack%2Fblog%2Fposts%2F2015%2F01%2FJeSuisCharlie_RIP_Bernard_Maris%2F">
translate to English</a> (via Google Translate)</p>
Shuttleworth Foundation Flash Granthttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2014/12/Shuttleworth_Foundation_Flash_Grant/2014-12-05T15:56:18Z2014-12-05T15:51:19Z
<h1>Shuttleworth Foundation Flash Grant</h1>
<p>I'm glad to announce that I've been awarded a 5,000 USD "Flash
Grant" by the <a href=
"https://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/">Shuttleworth
Foundation</a>.</p>
<p>Flash grants are an interesting funding model, which I've just
learned about. You don't need to apply for them. Rather, you get
nominated by current <a href=
"https://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/fellows/">fellows</a>, and
then selected and approached by the foundation for funding. The
grant amount is smaller than actual <a href=
"https://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/applications/">fellowships</a>,
but it comes with very few strings attached: furthering open
knowledge (which is the foundation's <a href=
"https://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/about/">core mission</a>)
and being transparent about how you use the money.</p>
<p>I'm lucky enough to already have a full-time job to pay my
bills, and I do my Free Software activism mostly in my spare time.
So I plan to use the money not to pay my bills, but rather to boost
the parts of my Free Software activities that could benefit from
some funding. I don't have a fully detailed budget yet but,
tentatively: some money will go to fund <a href=
"http://sources.debian.net">Debsources</a> development (by others),
some into promoting my <a href=
"http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2014/debconf14/webm/Debian_in_the_Dark_Ages_of_Free_Software.webm">
thoughts on the dark ages of Free Software</a>, and maybe some into
helping the upcoming <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/">release</a> of Debian.
I'll provide a public report at the end of the funding period (~6
months from now).</p>
<p>I'd like to thank the Shuttleworth Foundation for the grant and
foundation's fellow <a href="http://jonasoberg.net/">Jonas
Öberg</a> for making this possible.</p>
CTTE nominationhttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2014/11/CTTE_nomination/2014-11-27T20:43:01Z2014-11-27T20:43:01Z
<p>Apparently, enough fellow developers have been foolish enough to
<a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/11/msg00013.html">
nominate</a> me as a prospective member of the <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/devel/tech-ctte">Debian Technical
Committee</a> (CTTE), that I've been approached to formally
accept/decline the nomination. <small>(Accepted nominees would then
go through a selection process and possibly proposed to the DPL for
nomination.)</small></p>
<p>I'm honored by the nominations and I thank the fellow developers
that have thrown my name in the hat. But I've respectfully declined
the nomination. Given my current involvement in an ongoing <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2014/11/msg00274.html">attempt</a>
to introduce a maximum term limit for CTTE membership, it would
have been highly inappropriate for me to accept the nomination at
this time.</p>
<p>I have no doubt that the current CTTE and the DPL will fill the
empty seats with worthy project members.</p>
Thoughts on the Init System Coupling GRhttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2014/11/Thoughts_on_the_Init_System_Coupling_GR/2014-11-20T11:48:31Z2014-11-20T08:59:15Z
<h1>on perceived hysteria and silent sanity</h1>
<p>As you probably already know by now, the results of the Debian
<a href="https://www.debian.org/vote/2014/vote_003">init system
coupling general resolution (GR)</a> look like this:</p>
<div class="center">
<table class="img">
<caption>Init system coupling GR: results (arrow from A to B means
that voters preferred A to B by that margin)</caption>
<tr>
<td><a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2014/11/Thoughts_on_the_Init_System_Coupling_GR/results.png">
<img src=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2014/11/Thoughts_on_the_Init_System_Coupling_GR/600x-results.png"
width="600" height="313" alt=
"results of the init system coupling GR" class="img" /></a></td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
<p>Some random thoughts about them:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>The <strong>turnout</strong> has been the <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2014/11/msg00192.html">highest</a>
since 2010 DPL elections and the 2nd highest among all GRs (!= DPL
elections) ever. The highest among all GRs dates back to 2004 and
was about <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_002">dropping
<code>non-free</code></a>. In absolute terms this vote scores even
better: it is the GR with the highest number of voters ever.</p>
<p>Clearly there was <em>a lot</em> of interest <em>within</em> the
project about this vote. The results appear to be as representative
of the views of project members as we have been able to get in the
second half of Debian history.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>There is a total ordering of options (which is not always the
case with <a href=
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method">our voting
system</a>). Starting with the winning option, each option in the
results beats every subsequent option. The winning option ("General
resolution is not required") beats the runner-up ("Support for
other init systems is recommended, i.e., "you <a href=
"https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt">SHOULD NOT</a> require a
specific init") by a <strong>large margin</strong>: 100 votes,
~20.7% of the voters. The winning options wins over further options
by increasingly large margins: 173 votes (~35.8%) against "Packages
may require specific init systems if maintainers decide" (the MAY
option); 176 (~36.4%) against "Packages may not require a specific
init system" (the MUST NOT option); 263 (~54.5%) against "Further
discussion" (the "let's keep on flaming" option).</p>
<p>While judging from Debian mailing lists and news sites you might
have gotten the impression that the project was evenly split on
init system matters, at least w.r.t. the matter on the ballot that
doesn't seem to be the case.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The <strong>winning option</strong> is not as crazy as its label
might imply (voting to declare that the vote was not required?
WTH?). What the winning option actually says is more articulated
than that; quoting from the <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/vote/2014/vote_003#amendmenttextc">ballot</a>
(highlight mine):</p>
<p><em>Regarding the subject of this ballot, the Project affirms
that <strong>the procedures for decision making and conflict
resolution are working adequately</strong> and thus a General
Resolution is not required.</em></p>
<p>With this GR the Debian Project affirms that the procedures we
have used to decide the default init system for Jessie and to
arbitrate the ensuing conflicts are <em>just fine</em>. People
might flame and troll <code>debian-devel</code> as much as they
want (actually, I'm pretty sure we would all like them to stop, but
that matter wasn't on the ballot so you'll have to take my word for
it). People might write blog posts and make headlines corroborating
the impression that Debian is still being torn apart by ongoing
init system battles. But this vote says instead that the large
majority of project members thinks our decision making and
conflict-arbitration procedures, which most prominently include the
<strong>Debian Technical Committee</strong>, have served use
"adequately" well over the past troubled months.</p>
<p>That of course doesn't mean that everyone in Debian is happy
about every single recent decision, otherwise we wouldn't have had
this GR in the first place. But it does mean that we consider our
procedures good enough to (a) avoid getting in their way with a
project-wide vote, and (b) keep on trusting them for the
foreseeable future.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>[ It is not the main focus of this post, but if you care
specifically about the implications of this GR on
<strong>systemd</strong> adoption in Debian, I recommend reading
<a href="http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/journal/2014-11/003.html">this
excellent GR commentary</a> by Russ Allbery. ]</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>My take home message is that we are experiencing a huge gap
between the <strong>public perception</strong> of the state of
Debian (both from within and from without the project) and the
<strong>actual beliefs</strong> of the silent majority of people
that make Debian with their work, day after day.</p>
<p>In part this is old news. The most "senior" members of the
project will remember that the topic of "vocal minorities vs silent
majority" was a recurrent one in Debian 10+ years ago, when flames
were periodically ravaging the project. Since then Debian has grown
a lot though, and we are now part of a much larger and varied
ecosystem. We are now at a scale at which there are plenty of FOSS
"mass-media" covering daily what happens in Debian, inducing
feedback loops with our own perception of ourselves which we do not
fully grok yet. This is a new factor in the perception gap. This
situation is not intrinsically bad, nor there is blame to assign
here: after all influential bloggers, news sites, etc., just do
their job. And their attention also testifies of the huge interest
that there is around Debian and our choices.</p>
<p>But we still need to adapt and learn to take perceived hysteria
with a pinch (or two) of salt. It might just be time for our
decennial check-up. Time to remind ourselves that our ways of doing
things might in fact still be much more sane than sometimes we tend
to believe.</p>
<p>We went on 10+ years ago, after monumental flames. It looks like
we are now ready to move on again, putting The Era of the Great
systemd Histeria™ <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/619992/">behind
us</a>.</p>