put some Debian salt in the Ubuntu charity marathon

Fellow geeks of the Canonical community team will be doing something pretty weird this week. They're fund-raising for charity, for causes ranging from environment to autism, from homeless support to kids education, from poverty fight to water supplies. But that's not weird. What's weird is that the fund-raising will culminate in a 24-hour work marathon stream live, which will kick off tomorrow (Thursday) at 10:00 UTC.

As I like charity, and as I like contributing to Free Software, I gladly accepted to rely here a challenge to the Debian community by one of the marathon "horsemen", Michael Hall:

if Michael receives at least 5 Debian-tagged donations for the cause he has chosen to support (Autism Research Trust - donate), he'll do his marathon day wearing a Debian t-shirt (which apparently is also the first Free Software t-shirt he has ever owned).

I've already donated, so that makes only 4 donations to go to add some Debian promotion salt to an Ubuntu marathon . To "tag" your donation as originating from the Debian community, just leave a message containing the word "debian" at the end of the donation process.

The work Michael will be doing tomorrow is not entirely Debian-specific, but Michael is Canonical's responsible for relationship with upstream. I've worked with him in the past on a range of topics, and I can testify that part of his work is generally useful to Debian.

Raising the stakes, Nick Skaggs has decided to propose a similar challenge:

for every 5 Debian-tagged donations to Nick's cause (WaterAid - donate), Nick will write a manpage for a Debian package that is in dire need of one.

As above, just mention "debian" in your post-donation message to tag your donation as originating from the Debian community.

Wanna take the challenge?

And how about the other 4 horsemen? No challenges to the Debian community? Feel free to leave a comment and I'll raise the stakes even more, updating the list above.

Update 4/10/2012, 13:35 +0200: Daniel Holbach added his own challenge to the Debian community:

for every Debian-tagged donation to Daniel's cause (Oxfam - donate), Daniel will (triage and) forward a patch from Ubuntu to the Debian BTS.

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Count me in!

I'd like to do something, but I'm moving house and my Debian tshirts are all packed.

Any recommendations for something I should do that doesn't involve manpages?

Comment by jorge — Wed 03 Oct 2012 04:55:09 PM CEST

re: Count me in!

I'd like to do something, but I'm moving house and my Debian tshirts are all packed.

Any recommendations for something I should do that doesn't involve manpages?

Whatever observable contribution would be welcome. Dunno, triaging/forwarding patches to the Debian BTS. For instance, the easy targets derived from lintian you're attacking with https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/BugFixingInitiative sounds great. Only for the braves, patches to fix RC bugs http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi , but I suspect you'll already have your plate full for mere 24 hourse of work ;-)