blog/archives/2012/12zack's home pagehttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/archives/2012/12/zack's home pageikiwiki2012-12-09T17:56:09Zbits from the DPL for November 2012http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2012/12/bits_from_the_DPL_for_November_2012/2012-12-09T17:56:09Z2012-12-09T17:53:34Z
<p><a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/12/msg00000.html">
Just posted</a>, bits from the DPL for November 2012.</p>
<hr />
<pre><code> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/ Pop-up advertisement. Breaking news. Help the Release Team [0] by reviewing \
| pending unblock requests. Oh, and by fixing RC bugs too. |
| |
| [0]: http://nthykier.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/wheezy-release-progress-december/ |
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------/
</code></pre>
<p>Dear Project Members, here is another (delayed) monthly report
of DPL activities, this time for November 2012.</p>
<h1>Highlights</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>In November, I've kept on helping the work of the debian-cloud
initiative that I've announced last month. Some work went into
setting up the usual infrastructure pieces (<a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-cloud/">mailing list</a>, <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cloud.debian.org">pseudo-package</a> in the
BTS), some other into paperwork: on behalf of Debian, James
Bromberger has opened an account on the Amazon Marketplace. That
enabled us to deliver the first milestone: <a href=
"https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile/ref=srh_res_product_vendor?ie=UTF8&id=890be55d-32d8-4bc8-9042-2b4fd83064d5">
official Debian Squeeze images</a> for Amazon EC2 (I keep it short
here, but you can find more info in <a href=
"http://blog.james.rcpt.to/2012/12/06/official-debian-images-on-amazon-web-services-ec2/">
various</a> <a href=
"http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2012/11/aws-marketplace-additional-operating-system-support.html)">
places</a>). More work is needed, and ongoing, to support other
public clouds, better document Debian availability there, etc. You
can help! Just show up <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-cloud/">on -cloud</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I've then spent quite some time in November getting up to speed
with the status of DebConf13 organization. For the first time, this
year we have implemented the "budget approval" process that I've
introduced a couple of years ago. The budget I've reviewed looked
good and it's balanced (meaning that the event should be
self-sustained, at least that's the theory); so I've been happy to
<a href=
"http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.conference.team/8996">approve
it</a>. I'm looking forward, once again, to meet many of you in
Switzerland this summer!</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Together with Enrico Zini (with his DAM hat on) I've also
<a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2012/11/Debian_newcomer_experience_survey/">
helped Kevin Carrillo</a>, a PhD student from New Zealand, to
finalize and advertise a survey of newcomer experiences in Debian.
The hope is to learn more about what works and what can be improved
in our NM process, possibly learning from other FOSS projects that
are also participating in the survey.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>As a last highlight, the "dpl-helpers" initiative I've spam-ed
you with several times is keep on going. We held 2 more <a href=
"http://meetbot.debian.net/debian-dpl/2012/debian-dpl.2012-11-13-18.01.html">
IRC</a> <a href=
"http://meetbot.debian.net/debian-dpl/2012/debian-dpl.2012-11-27-18.00.html">
meetings</a> during November and we have also worked on the
infrastructure: we now have a mailing list and a Git repo
associated to the "dpl" project on Alioth. To ease handing over
pending tasks to the next DPL, I'm also working with DSA to set up
some DPL related request tracker queues.</p>
<p>BTW, this is my last-4 report as DPL, if you haven't yet thought
at who you want as next DPL and started bothered him/her, you
better hurry up!</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Events</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>I've <a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2012/11/mini_debconf_paris_2012/">
participated</a> in the <a href=
"http://fr2012.mini.debconf.org/">mini-DebConf Paris</a> and held a
couple of lightning talks there: one about <a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/talks/2012/20121125-minidc-rcbugs.pdf">RC
Bugs squashing for Wheezy</a>, and <a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/talks/2012/20121125-minidc-cloud.pdf">another
about debian-cloud</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I've given an <a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/talks/2012/20121113-orange.pdf">invited
talk</a> about Debian and our relationships with companies at the
yearly FOSS seminar of France Telecom / Orange</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>on related news, the minutes of the Debian/Ubuntu relationship
session at the last UDS have now been <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-derivatives/2012/11/msg00006.html">
posted</a> to -derviatives; some addendum has been discussed in the
resulting thread</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Assets</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>We have finally got the certificate from the Japan Patent
Office, confirming that ownership of Debian trademark there has
been transferred to SPI. Many thanks to Kenshi Muto for his help on
this matter over the past several months.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>We have also finally been transferred ownership of the debian.eu
domain, from its previous owner (formally: the domain is now owned
by FFIS, the Trusted Organization we rely upon the most in
Europe).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>We got our first "donation" from DuckDuckGo for revenue sharing
over the past 3 months. It's about 150 USD, which answers the
worries that excessive profit from this kind of deals might
influence our judgement. The precondition is far from being
satisfied.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I've been happy to approve the tentative budget for the
forthcoming <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/Sprints/2013/DebianMedSprint">DebianMed
sprint</a>, for ~1400 EUR. Reminder: you can haz your sprint too,
just read <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Sprints/HowTo">the fine
manual</a>.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>That's all for now,<br />
let's go back releasing Wheezy,<br />
Cheers.</p>
<hr />
<p>PS the day-to-day activity log for November 2012 is available at
the usual place
<code>master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.txt.201211</code></p>