blog/archives/2010/10zack's home pagehttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/archives/2010/10/zack's home pageikiwiki2011-07-22T16:05:09Zmini debconf paris - successhttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/10/mini_debconf_paris_-_success/2011-07-22T16:05:09Z2010-10-31T18:54:30Z
<p>I'm just back home after <a href=
"http://fr2010.mini.debconf.org/">Paris mini-DebConf</a>. I'm
happy, excited, and exhausted almost as if it had been a full
fledged DebConf. That's enough in my book to consider the event a
complete success.</p>
<p>As far as I know, it has been the first mini-DebConf held in
Paris and about 150 people have come to attend the event from all
over Europe. Off the top of my head I've met friends from at least:
Spain, UK, France (obviously!), Italy, Germany, Austria,
Switzerland, Greece. I'm still very much impressed by such a
diverse attendance.</p>
<p>Initially, I had planned the first "DPL strike" ever (i.e. not
doing anything DPL-related) for the duration of the conference, in
order to take part into the <a href=
"http://fr2010.mini.debconf.org/">BSP</a>. That agenda has been
pretty much subverted by a last minute emergency, by chatting with
loads of people, and by actually finalizing the <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/Sprints">Debian Sprint Program</a>, which
had been at the top of my Debian TODO list for quite a while now.
Nonetheless, I've managed to advance a bit on a couple of RC bugs,
which belong to the "annoying/pointless/but-still-valid" category.
They are not solved yet, but I hope to have good news to share
soon.</p>
<p>Bottom line: <strong>I loved the event</strong>. … and I've even
managed to avoid getting killed by my (local) family for taking
part in a Debian-weekend after an almost full week of Debian
traveling, which is another success on its own right <img src=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/smileys/smile.png" alt=":-)" /></p>
<p>Closing advice: beside some last minute legwork, I did
essentially nothing to organize this mini-DebConf, your kudos
should be better directed to <a href=
"http://carlchenet.wordpress.com/"><strong>Carl Chenet</strong></a>
and <a href="http://blog.dogguy.org/"><strong>Mehdi
Dogguy</strong></a> for the organization. Other gifts such as bug
fixes can be directed to the speakers, sponsors, and loads of other
helpers from <a href="http://france.debian.net">Debian France</a>
and not—in particular Xavier Oswald, Valessio Brito, Tanguy Ortolo,
Nattie Mayer-Hutchings, Luca Capello, Stephane Glondu, and others
which surely I'm forgetting to mention here (sorry about that).</p>
<p>Kudos folks ... let's do it again next year! (SCNR)</p>
ocaml-http has movedhttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/10/ocaml-http_has_moved/2010-10-20T09:09:22Z2010-10-20T09:09:22Z
<h1>OCaml HTTP is now on the OCaml forge</h1>
<p>It's been a <a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2009/03/ocaml-http_is_looking_for_a_new_maintainer/">
long time</a>. But finally OCaml HTTP has a <a href=
"http://ocaml-http.forge.ocamlcore.org/">new home</a> and a new
maintainer.</p>
<p>Please welcome me in thanking <a href="http://arlen.co/">Arlen
Cuss</a> who has kindly agreed to become the new maintainer.</p>
midterm feedback soughthttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/10/midterm_feedback_sought/2010-10-18T18:28:53Z2010-10-18T16:04:48Z
<h1>time flies when you're (busy) having fun</h1>
<p>If you could excuse me for an off-by-one (day) error,
<strong>exactly 6 months ago</strong> I cried «<a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/04/oh_my/">OH MY!</a>» in reaction to DPL
election results. Time flies when you're (busy) having fun.</p>
<p>6 months it's a long time, lots of stuff can happen in such a
time frame. But 6 months is also a relatively <em>short</em> time
frame to get up to speed in a new job. 6 months, finally, also
corresponds to the <strong>midterm</strong> of any given <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution#item-5">DPL term</a>.
While I've been doing a sort of personal "self assessment" of my
DPL activities (and sooner or later I will take the time to put
that down into public writing), this seems to be the perfect moment
to <strong>ask others for feedback</strong>. 6 more months of the
current term are ahead of us, and there is still time to change or
adapt <em>what</em> I've been doing and <em>how</em> I've been
doing it.</p>
<p>So, in case you care about what a DPL can do to make your
staying in Debian more fun and useful for the Project, then this is
your turn to <strong>let me know</strong>. Feel free to mention not
only what you think I've been doing <em>right</em>, but also—and in
fact more importantly—what you think I've been doing
<em>wrong</em>. (Tip of the day: as usual in volunteer communities,
lingering on the side of <em>constructive criticism</em> will
maximize the chances of having your suggestions implemented.)</p>
<p>I would very much appreciate if you could take a moment to think
about it and get back to me, via the medium you prefer: <a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/cgi-bin/ikiwiki.cgi?page=blog/posts/2010/10/midterm_feedback_sought&do=comment">
leave a comment</a> here, <a href="mailto:leader@debian.org">mail
me</a>, or whatever else you please. Remember that a good deal of
DPL day to day activities is about <strong>representing the Debian
Project</strong> and it's entirely up to you, project members, to
say how that should best be done. So … many thanks in advance for
your invaluable feedback, I'm looking forward to it!</p>
Bug Squashing Party: Paris 2010 - October 30-31http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/10/Bug_Squashing_Party:_Paris_2010_-_October_30-31/2010-10-08T11:13:52Z2010-10-08T11:10:55Z
<h1>BSP Paris 2010, during mini-DebConf</h1>
<p>The first <a href="http://fr2010.mini.debconf.org/">mini-DebConf
in Paris, France</a> is just a few weeks away and about 150 persons
have signed up as attendees (wow!). The days of the conference
(October 30th-31st, 2010) will most likely see the Debian Squeeze
release in its deepest possible freeze, fighting with the very very
very few remaining RC bugs (right? … right!).</p>
<p>What's the most useful thing that a crowd of Debian hackers can
do that close to a release?<br />
A <strong>Bug Squashing Party</strong>, of course! Therefore please
welcome:</p>
<div class="center"><big><strong><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/BSP2010/Paris">BSP Paris
2010</a></strong></big><br />
to be run during Paris mini-DebConf</div>
<p>We now need to arrange a room for the BSP, in parallel with the
talk rooms of the conference. Hence please sign-up on the wiki page
<strong>if you plan to attend the BSP</strong>. Please do so even
if you're already signed up as a conference attendee, as the rooms
will be different.</p>
<div class="right">Mehdi Dogguy<br />
Stefano Zacchiroli<br /></div>
<!-- LocalWords: BSP DebConf Mehdi Dogguy Zacchiroli
-->
Debian squeezes Chromium back inhttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/10/Debian_squeezes_Chromium_back_in/2010-10-05T10:32:03Z2010-10-05T10:32:03Z
<h1>does it?</h1>
<p>You might have read elsewhere that <a href=
"http://lwn.net/Articles/404050/">Debian has squeezed out
Chromium</a>. As of today, Debian has <em>also</em> <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/chromium-browser/news/20101003T163912Z.html">
<strong>squeezed Chromium back in</strong></a>. Does that mean that
Debian Developers change their mind too often? Surely not. Rather,
it means that the noise around the "squeeze out" has been a bit
exaggerated and it would be similarly exaggerated to make noise
about the "squeeze in" now.</p>
<p>To avoid being incoherent with the latter intention, let me move
to my main point here. As I've <a href=
"http://lwn.net/Articles/408345/">commented yesterday</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The lesson to learn here is that, as long as Squeeze (or any
other Debian suite, FWIW) is not released, there is still <strong>a
margin of variability in the software it contains</strong>. If that
margin weren't there, then the suite would have been released in
the first place. The point of a freeze, in Debian, is to stop
package acceptance in the suite <em>by default</em> and undergo a
thorough scrutiny of what goes in and what gets out.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Such a scrutiny helps stabilize a release fixing <a href=
"http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi">RC bugs</a> affecting it and
improves Debian quality. You really need to <strong>thank the
<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/ReleaseTeam">Release
Team</a></strong> for such a thorough scrutiny work.</p>
<p>In "exchange" for that, you might also want to take part in the
Debian gift economy by <strong>help fixing RC bugs</strong>:
<a href="http://upsilon.cc/~zack/hacking/debian/rcbw/">do NMU</a> if you are a
DD, provide patches if you are a developer, help triaging bugs if
you are a user, <strong>organize a <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/BSP">Bug Squashing Party</a></strong> if
you have organization skills, etc. Those are the activities that
will boost the Squeeze release.</p>
Question and Answer support for Debian usershttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/10/Question_and_Answer_support_for_Debian_users/2010-10-06T18:04:13Z2010-10-03T08:20:13Z
<h1>ask.debian.net</h1>
<p>Since a few hours, a <a href=
"http://gitorious.org/shapado">Shapado</a> instance for Debian is
available at:</p>
<div class="center"><big><strong><a href=
"http://ask.debian.net">http://ask.debian.net</a></strong></big></div>
<p>Shapado is a <strong>Question and Answer (QA) website</strong>,
meant to provide <strong>user support to the community, by the
community</strong>.</p>
<p>Another way of seeing it is as a <strong>skill exchange</strong>
website: users can <em>ask questions</em> about stuff they don't
know and other users, possiby more expert on that topic, can
<em>answer</em> those questions; everyone can then use <em>peer
review</em> to evaluate and sort answers.</p>
<p>Several proprietary web applications are based on the above
notions and have proven useful for user support in several
contexts, including other Free Software distributions. Shapado on
the other hand is Free Software released under AGPL; as such it's
the best match to give a try to something similar in the context of
Debian. Shapado has also a couple of other niceties, e.g. offers
login via OpenID and <strong>supports questions/answers in multiple
languages</strong>.</p>
<p>Will it work for us?<br />
Will it not?<br />
It's up to the community. This kind of user support works when it
reaches a critical mass of both "newbie" users in need of help and
of "expert" users willing to help them. No matter your category,
<a href="http://ask.debian.net"><strong>give it a try</strong></a>:
go to the <a href="http://ask.debian.net">website</a> and look
around, you'll probably find a question to ask, a question to
answer, or an answer to evaluate.</p>
<h2>Acknowledgements</h2>
<ul>
<li>the Shapado developers</li>
<li>Patrick Aljord for hosting support</li>
<li>Fernando C. Estrada and Luis Uribe for admin / moderation work
(by the way, <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2010/10/msg00009.html">they
are looking for help</a>)</li>
<li>Jorge Castro for pinging me about this idea</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<p><strong>Update</strong>: add mention of multi-language
support<br />
<strong>Update</strong>: shapado.debian.net is now ask.debian.net
(redirection is in place, don't worry)</p>
new GPG key 6D866396http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/10/new_GPG_key_6D866396/2010-10-01T10:13:10Z2010-10-01T10:13:10Z
<h1>so long and thanks for all the fish, dear old F2C423BC</h1>
<p>It was about time. Last <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2010/09/msg00003.html">
bits from keyring-maint</a> finally convinced me to move away from
my old 1024 DSA to a <span class="createlink"><strong>new 4096 RSA
GPG key</strong></span>. I know <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">it's
bloated</a>, but given that I expect the life time of the new
(master) key to be ≥ 10 years, I saw no reason to switch to any
weaker key.</p>
<p>I'm lucky enough to live in a DD-crowded area and I've
henceforth already collected some signatures ... but I need waaaay
more signatures before even daring to think about asking for a
replacement in the Debian keyring. So ....</p>
<p>... <strong>here's my <span class="createlink">transition
document</span></strong> <small>(shamelessly inspired from <a href=
"http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/">Russ</a>' excellent text)</small>.
If you have signed my old key, you should have a fairly
straightforward trust path to my new key. If that is compatible
with your signing policy, <strong>please sign <span class=
"createlink">my new key</span></strong>.</p>
<p>Having been there, here are a couple of excellent
<strong>recommended readings</strong> for doing the transition
yourself:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://keyring.debian.org/creating-key.html">key
creation guide</a> - by <a href="http://ekaia.org/blog">Ana</a> via
keyring maint</li>
<li><a href=
"http://www.debian-administration.org/users/dkg/weblog/48">migration
howto</a> - by <a href=
"http://debian-administration.org/users/dkg/weblog">Daniel</a></li>
</ul>