tags/dplzack's home pagehttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/tags/dpl/zack's home pageikiwiki2013-04-16T14:52:48Zbits from the DPL for March-April 2013http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2013/04/bits_from_the_DPL_for_March-April_2013/2013-04-16T14:52:48Z2013-04-16T14:52:48Z
<p>Dear Project Members,<br /></p>
<pre><code> "Now that I have your attention, I would like to make the following
delegations:"
</code></pre>
<p>... nah, scrap that. In my last day in office I first of all owe
you a report of DPL activities for the last reporting period of
this term, i.e. March 8th until today. Here it is!</p>
<h1>Highlights</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>At LibrePlanet (see below) I've discussed at length with Karen
Sandler as GNOME representative the possibility of Debian
participation in the <a href=
"https://live.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen">FOSS Outreach
Program for Women</a>. I've then <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-women/2013/03/msg00013.html">proposed</a>
that we do participate and, as you might have read <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/04/msg00001.html">
on d-d-a</a>, we're now doing that. Many thanks to the volunteer
co-organizers for Debian participation in the program: Mònica
Ramírez Arceda, Ana Guerrero López, and Patty Langasek.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>A couple of years of work with the auditors has come together.
At <code>elgar.debian.org:/srv/accounting.debian.org/ledger/</code>
you can now find Debian monetary transactions for the 2010-2013
period. Note that:</p>
<p>1) They are not <em>all</em> of our transactions, most notably
because we haven't yet managed to get access to all our bank
transactions at SPI (while we do have access to other transactions
there, e.g. donations). Given the relevance of the missing
transactions for our budget, this is a blocker for producing
meaningful public periodic reports of Debian finances. This is
clearly annoying, but I'm confident that our feedback to SPI over
the past years has helped them better understand our needs and
improve. I hope this could be finally solved during the next DPL
term. And,</p>
<p>2) Donor names have been anonymized in the ledger files, in wait
of a donation system that allow to express privacy preferences.
Complete donation information is available in the companion
ledger.git repository, which is accessible to auditors only.</p>
<p>I'd like to thank the Debian auditors, and in particular Martin
Michlmayr, for their amazing work on this over the past 3
years.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>As you might have noticed, we now have an <a href=
"http://bits.debian.org/">official Debian Project blog</a>, finally
entering the brave new Web 1.5 era <img src=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/smileys/smile.png" alt=":-)" /> I've only helped
"politically" here and there with this over the years, and I'm
happy to see it live. Your thanks for this should go to the blog
editors---Francesca Ciceri and Ana Guerrero Lopez---and to DSA for
making it real. A proper delegation for the editors is pending and
I'm confident the next DPL will pick it up.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Talks</h1>
<p>Over the past month or so I've attended and spoken on behalf of
Debian in the following occasions:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>"Debian: 20 years and counting" talk at the <a href=
"http://www.nylug.org/">New York Linux User Group</a>; <a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/talks/2013/20130320-nylug.pdf">slides</a>
are available. Many thanks to Brian Gupta and Tom Limoncelli for
inviting me.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>"Debian and GNU" talk at <a href=
"http://libreplanet.org/wiki/LibrePlanet2013">LibrePlanet 2013</a>;
<a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/talks/2013/20130324-libreplanet.pdf">slides</a>
are available. Many thanks to John Sullivan and the Free Software
Foundation for inviting me to talk at their main conference. My
presence there has also been a chance to reassess the status of
collaboration with FSF (see <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/fsf-collab-discuss/2013-March/000383.html">
John's brief summary</a>) and discuss further technical
collaboration with the Trisquel maintainers.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>"Legal issues from a radical community angle" keynote at the
yearly workshop of <a href=
"http://fsfe.org/activities/ftf/ftf.en.html">FSFE's European Legal
Network</a>; <a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/talks/2013/20130404-fsfe-legal.pdf">slides</a>
are available. The talk has also been covered by a <a href=
"https://lwn.net/Articles/546411/">LWN feature article</a> last
week (the link should become unembargoed for non-LWN subscribers
starting tomorrow).</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Assets</h1>
<p>I've approved the budget for the following forthcoming <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/Sprints">sprints</a>:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/GroupwareMeeting2013-04-12to14">6th Debian
Groupware Meeting</a> (~500 EUR)</li>
<li><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Sprints/2013/DSASprint">DSA
sprint</a> (~3'000 EUR)</li>
</ul>
<p>Also, we've bought a 3-year warranty pack for the disk array
that powers ftp-master.d.o (~900 USD).</p>
<p>On the income side, Brian Gupta has started an interesting
<a href=
"http://blog.debconf.org/blog/2013/03/20#dr_dc13_matching_fund">matching
fund experiment</a>, in order to raise funds for the forthcoming
DebConf13. The matching fund will be open until April 30th, so your
help in spreading news would be welcome. Many thanks to Brian for
the idea and to his company, Brandorr Group, for funding it.</p>
<h1>DPL helpers</h1>
<p>Three more DPL helpers IRC meetings have been held; <a href=
"http://meetbot.debian.net/debian-dpl/2013/debian-dpl.2013-03-12-17.59.html">
minutes</a> <a href=
"http://meetbot.debian.net/debian-dpl/2013/debian-dpl.2013-03-26-17.59.html">
are</a> <a href=
"http://meetbot.debian.net/debian-dpl/2013/debian-dpl.2013-04-09-16.59.html">
available</a> at the usual place.</p>
<h1>Legal Spring Cleaning</h1>
<p>I've finally cleaned up the pile of pending legal matters (but
I'm sure new ones will show up for the delight of the next DPL
:-P)</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>one is merely internal for trademark@d.o: our procedures for
(n)acks on incoming requests has now been vetted by our legal
advisors</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>the second one is relevant for our mentors.debian.net service:
one of the blockers to officialize it as mentors.debian.org have
historically been DMCA-related concerns. We now have a DMCA policy
for (wannabe) mentors.d.o, which I've shared with the service
maintainers and DSA. This specific part should no longer be a
concern.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>the last one concerns the possibilities of playing DVDs with
Debian. We now have legal guidelines on how to include
<em>installer</em> packages that allow to do so; that should allow
us to have a decent solution for our users in the Jessie time
frame.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Once again, I'd like to thank SFLC for the pro bono and very
high quality legal advice they keep on offering to Debian.</p>
<h1>Miscellaneous</h1>
<ul>
<li>I've mentioned last month that, as a Debian representative,
I've joined a working group by the Italian public administration
(PA) that should define procurement rules for software in the PA at
large, together with representatives of other well-known FOSS
initiatives (e.g. KDE, FSFE). The first meetings have now been held
and I've participate in some, for the moment on my own budget. I'll
check with the next DPL the feasibility of keep on doing so on in
the future.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<p>Now, before I get sentimental, let me thank Gergely, Lucas, and
Moray for running in the recently concluded DPL election. Only
thinking of running and then go through a campaign denote a very
high commitment to the Project; we should all be thankful to
them.</p>
<p>Then I'd like to congratulate Lucas for his election. I've known
him for a long time, and I can testify about his clear vision of
the role Debian has to play in Free Software and on what Debian
needs to improve to do so. Best wishes for the term ahead,
Lucas!</p>
<p>Finally, I'd like to thank you all for the support you've shown
me over the past 3 years. Serving as DPL is a great honor, but also
a very demanding job. Thank to you all, and to how cool Debian is,
it has been for me an incredibly rewarding experience. I had no
idea what I were doing when I embarked on this adventure, but in
hindsight I don't regret any of it. See you around, as I don't plan
to be anywhere far away from Debian anytime soon.</p>
<p>Cheers.</p>
<hr />
<p>PS the day-to-day activity logs for March and April 2013 are
available at the usual place
<code>master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.txt.20130{3,4}</code></p>
bits from the DPL for February 2013 and a halfhttp://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2013/03/bits_from_the_DPL_for_February_2013_and_a_half/2013-03-16T18:19:12Z2013-03-16T18:19:12Z
<p>Dear project members, here's another report of DPL activities,
this time for a period longer than usual (February + 1st week of
March), so that the next one will be at the very end of the current
DPL term.</p>
<h1>Highlights</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>As you know, we are now well within the DPL election process.
And we have 3 valuable candidates running. I encourage all of you
to participate in the discussions on -vote, and ask questions about
project vision, goals, and improvements. It's something that is
rarely as intense as during campaigning, so don't miss the
chance!</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>You might have noticed a sharp decrease in the count of RC bugs
affecting Wheezy; that is largely due to the Release Team, who
started the usual final sweep of RC triaging before release. Please
thank them for their work, ... but don't give up on our collective
work yet! You can still help up in the usual ways (NMUs, severity
adjustments, unblock reviews, etc).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The technical committee had to deal with a rather urgent issue
during last month (<code>#699808</code>). I mention it here only to
applaud their efficiency in doing so: 4 days to reach a decision.
Resorting to tech-ctte shall always remain a last resort in Debian,
but when it comes to that it's useful to know that we can count on
a wise and speedy answer.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Appointments</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>As the previous term was about to end, I've agreed with the Kurt
Roeckx to <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/02/msg00001.html">
re-appoint him</a> as Project Secretary for another year.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Following up to last month news, we've now assembled a team of
admins for Debian participation into Google Summer of Code 2013 and
<a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130301">delegated
them</a> for the task. Many thanks to David, Nicolas, Paul, and
Sukhbir for volunteering, as well as to last year admins for their
help in reaching out to interested volunteers.</p>
<p>On a related note, we've until March 28th to propose <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2013/Projects">projects</a>
and/or volunteer as (co-)mentor for GSoC 2013.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>DPL helpers</h1>
<p>Two more DPL helpers IRC meetings have happened, <a href=
"http://meetbot.debian.net/debian-dpl/2013/debian-dpl.2013-02-12-17.59.html">
minutes</a> and logs <a href=
"http://meetbot.debian.net/debian-dpl/2013/debian-dpl.2013-02-26-17.59.html">
of both</a> are available.</p>
<h1>Assets</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>I've worked with the press and publicity teams to <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130301">announce</a> the new
trademark policy more widely and call for producing Wheezy
merchandise. Apparently, we are now also <a href=
"http://www.worldtrademarkreview.com/daily/detail.aspx?g=e4019b9e-5eec-4110-9660-f60a833a3929">
being cited</a> as a reference on how to strike a balance between
free software and trademark (unfortunately the article is behind a
paywall now).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>In related news, Brian Gupta has volunteered to help with
answering <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2013/02/msg00039.html">trademark@d.o
inquiries</a> and has already helped a lot in streamlining the
process and keeping track of past requests (thanks!)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Following a -project inquiry by Thomas Koch, I've investigated
with SPI the possibility of assigning to them the copyright for
(code) contributions to Debian. The <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2013/02/msg00064.html">bottom
line</a> is that at present there is no safe way to do that with
SPI; that might change in the future.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>As agreed at a DPL helpers meeting, we are trying to federate
interests in Debian sponsoring and fund-raising. Part of the goal
is avoid duplication of efforts DebConf- and sponsoring for other
Debian activities; and part is establishing a more stable income
flow for Debian (to ease long-term budget decisions). If you have
experience and interest in this area, please join the <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-sponsors-discuss">
debian-sponsors-discuss list</a> on Alioth.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Together with auditors, we have updated <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DPL/Reimbursement">reimbursement
procedures</a> to better keep track of both outstanding and past
requests. Main difference is that you'll now have to mail a RT
queue instead of leader@d.o directly. Check the <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DPL/Reimbursement">wiki page</a> for
details.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Events</h1>
<h2>Past</h2>
<p>At the beginning of February, I've attended <a href=
"https://fosdem.org/2013/">FOSDEM 2013</a>, together with many
other Debian people. I didn't have any specific talk this year, but
it's been a chance to talk F2F about several ongoing issues (see
logs), and help mediating in some conflicts. I've also accepted the
invitation to participate in the GNOME Advisory Board meeting,
together with Laurent Bigonville of our GNOME team. No report of
that has been prepared as of yet (sorry about that), but we have
both reported "live" to the rest of the team on IRC.</p>
<h2>Future</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p>It looks like my last month as DPL will be quite busy. Next week
I'll be first in New York City, delivering an invited Debian talk
at <a href="http://www.nylug.org/">NYLUG</a> (thanks a lot to Brian
Gupta and Tom Limoncelli for the invitation). Then I'll head to
<a href="http://libreplanet.org/wiki/LibrePlanet2013">LibrePlanet
2013</a> to talk about the relationship between Debian and GNU
(thanks to John Sullivan for the invitation). Finally, at the
beginning of April, I'll be in Amsterdam to deliver a talk about
Debian experience with various legal issues across the years, at
the yearly <a href=
"http://fsfe.org/activities/ftf/ftf.en.html">FSFE Legal and
Licensing Workshop</a> (thanks to Karsten Gerloff for the
invitation).</p>
<p>Both trips (LibrePlanet and FSFE) will be on Debian budget.
While I usually insist on having travel sponsorship from inviting
entities, in this cases I've accepted to do otherwise given they
are free software non profits like Debian.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I've been invited to represent Debian at <a href=
"https://distro-recipes.org/">Distro Recipes</a>. Due to a conflict
with FSFE workshop I couldn't make, so I've looked for substitutes.
Lucas Nussbaum and Jonas Smedegaard have kindly accepted to go in
my stead and deliver two talks, one about QA and the other about
Pure Blends; thanks folks!</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Miscellaneous</h1>
<p>A couple of months ago I've <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/01/msg00001.html">
mentioned</a> that I had filed an application, as Debian
representative, to participate in a <a href=
"https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/eupl/news/ad-hoc-working-table-write-new-evaluation-criteria-acquiring-software-public-sec">
working table</a> to define software procurement rules for the
Italian public administration. Good news: my application has been
accepted, together with those of other well-known FOSS communities
and organizations (e.g. KDE, FSFE). I'll keep you posted of how it
goes.</p>
<p>Let's go back to elect a new DPL and release Wheezy now,<br />
Cheers.</p>
<hr />
<p>PS the day-to-day activity logs for February and March 2013 are
available at the usual place
<code>master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.txt.20130{2,3}</code></p>
bits from the DPL for January 2013http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2013/02/bits_from_the_DPL_for_January_2013/2013-03-16T13:10:46Z2013-02-10T17:36:41Z
<p>(insert here: <em>I've been to FOSDEM</em>, <em>I got a nasty
flu</em>, and other <code>$lame_excuses</code> for the delay in
sending out this report)</p>
<p>Dear Project Members, here's the monthly DPL activity report,
this time for January 2013.</p>
<h1>About the next DPL</h1>
<p>This is the last DPL report before the start of the election
process for the next term: around early March, about 20 days from
now, the Secretary will send out the call for nominations. I'd like
to respond (also) here to inquiries I'm receiving these days: I
will not run again as DPL. So you have about 20 days to
mob^Wconvince other DDs to run, or decide to run yourself. Do not
to wait for the vary last minute, as that makes for lousy
campaigns. I'm available to give feedback about my DPL experience
to prospective candidates, ... and also to join mobbing^Wconvincing
actions toward potential candidates. Just contact me.</p>
<h1>Call for helps</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00006.html">
Last year delegation</a> for Google Summer of Code Admins has
expired and the program for 2013 will likely start soon. I'm
looking for volunteer admins for this year, to organize Debian
activities in the program. If you're interested, please contact
me.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>In January we had a couple of related discussions on -project
about <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2013/01/msg00019.html">DFSG
§10</a> and maintaining an authoritative <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2013/01/msg00023.html">list
of DFSG-free licenses</a>. The latter would be an important
contribution to the Free Software "political" ecosystem. An
ikiwiki-based infrastructure to maintain such a list has been
created by ftp-masters but needs to be populated. At this point we
need volunteers willing to review licenses already present in main
and fill them in. If you're interested, please review the <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2013/01/msg00023.html">discussion</a>
and manifest yourself on <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-dak/">debian-dak@lists.d.o</a>,
where coordination about this work will happen.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Assets</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>The long standing issue of writing a proper (outbound) trademark
policy for Debian marks has been completed. I've <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2013/01/msg00024.html">reviewed</a>
on -project outstanding items from the last discussion, and
documented how they've been implemented in a new policy draft.
Later on, I've published the <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/trademark">updated policy draft</a> on our
website.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Complementary to the above, Ian Jackson has <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2013/01/msg00037.html">summarized</a>
the state of the discussion about our (inbound) trademark policy,
i.e. what to do when accepting in the Debian archive software
subject to trademark. It looks like we are close to conclusion on
that front too.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I've worked with representatives of <a href=
"http://france.debian.net/">Debian France</a>, on the shared
interest in having the association become a Debian Trusted
Organization (per Constitution §9.3). We're not yet ready to start
the 2 weeks discussion period to accept the orga as such (see
Constitution §5.1.11), but I'd like to do that soon. So I encourage
all of you to find out about the association, which is run by
well-known project members.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Cloud Images</h1>
<p>Work has gone on also on the front of supporting Debian
installation in public "clouds". Thanks to Arnaud Patard, Jose
Miguel Parrella Romero, Pierre Couzy, and Gianugo Rabellino, we now
have Debian testing <a href=
"http://vmdepot.msopentech.com/List/Index?search=Debian">images for
Microsoft Azure</a>. Together with Amazon EC2, this is the second
large provider supporting Debian via images maintained by Debian
Developers. More providers are welcome, exactly as more hardware/CD
vendors shipping Debian are always welcome. If you want to
contribute support for other providers just show up on the -cloud
mailing list and say so. Some documentation effort in view of
Wheezy are in need of help too, in order to let our users know
about "cloud" options, see <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/695681">#695681</a>.</p>
<h1>DPL helpers</h1>
<p>The DPL helpers experiment goes on. We have had 2 more IRC
meetings in January (see <a href=
"http://meetbot.debian.net/debian-dpl/2013/debian-dpl.2013-01-08-18.02.html">
the</a> <a href=
"http://meetbot.debian.net/debian-dpl/2013/debian-dpl.2013-01-22-17.59.html">
minutes</a>). Documentation of the "team" communication channels
(mailing list, IRC, Git, etc.) is now available from the <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DPL">DPL wiki page</a>.</p>
<h1>Talks</h1>
<p>I've given an invited Debian talk at Polytech'Grenoble, as part
of a <a href=
"http://moais.imag.fr/membres/vincent.danjean/Conf-LL/">free
software event</a> organized for students of local universities.
<a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/talks/2013/20130128-grenoble.pdf">Slides</a>
of the talk are available. I'd like to thank Vincent Danjean for
the event organization.</p>
<p>Let's release Wheezy now!<br />
Cheers.</p>
<hr />
<p>PS the day-to-day activity log for January 2013 is available at
the usual place
<code>master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.txt.201301</code></p>
bits from the DPL for December 2012http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2013/01/bits_from_the_DPL_for_December_2012/2013-01-06T08:50:56Z2013-01-04T16:37:01Z
<p>Happy new year, Debian!</p>
<p>To celebrate, here are some <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/01/msg00001.html">
freshly posted</a>, bits from the DPL for December 2012.</p>
<hr />
<p>Dear Project Members, happy new year!</p>
<p>Here goes another report of DPL activities, this time for
December 2012. This issue of the DPL-monthly is skinnier than
usual: during the past month I've been struck by the catastrophe
also known as "family holiday season", enjoying a solid 10 day
break from computer-related activities.</p>
<h1>Talks</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>I've been invited to talk about Debian and its opportunities in
the field of education (for both students and teachers) at the
<a href="http://fossa.inria.fr/">fOSSa conference</a> in Lille,
France. <a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/talks/2012/20121205-fossa.pdf">Slides</a>
of the talk I delivered there are available.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>On related news, I've gladly accepted an invitation to talk at
the next <a href=
"http://libreplanet.org/wiki/LibrePlanet:Conference/2013">LibrePlanet
conference</a> in Boston, next March. It will be the occasion to
discuss the status of collaboration with the FSF and the GNU
Project. <small>(FWIW, I'm trying to secure travel sponsorship with
the conference organizers, but if that won't turn out to be
possible I plan to go on Debian funds, as I consider this event
important enough to do so.)</small></p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Assets</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>The debian.eu saga is over! DNS is now under control of DSA,
currently as a redirection to debian.org as for many other ccTLD,
and we have now paid the corresponding transfer costs.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The saga about the relicensing of www.d.o content, on the other
hand, is still ongoing. But we made progress! Bradley Kuhn has
kindly offered his experience to complete the relicensing part ---
and most notably for dealing with contributions from people we
haven't been able to contact. Due to busy-ness we will proceed
further only in a few months, but in the meantime there is some
work to do on our side, as <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=388141#356">documented
in #388141</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>In conformance with the periodic hardware maintenance plan (the
goal of which is, I remind you, having all Debian hardware under
warranty) we have bought extended warranty for the storage array
that serves project machines hosted at UBC ECE (~830 CAD). Thanks
goes to Luca Filipozzi for taking care of the order part.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>As <a href="http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=718">they did
last year</a>, Amazon kindly renewed their offer of AWS credit to
be used for Debian related purposes, such as QA rebuilds. This year
they offered us 8'000 USD of credit which, according to projections
from last year usage, should be enough for QA rebuilds and buildd
usage for events like BSP. Many thanks to Lucas Nussbaum and James
Bromberger for reaching out to Amazon contacts and making this
possible.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>DPL helpers</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>The experiment of sharing the load of DPL responsibilities
within a larger team still ongoing. We held one more IRC meeting in
December (and skipped one due to holiday season…). <a href=
"http://meetbot.debian.net/debian-dpl/2012/debian-dpl.2012-12-11-17.59.html">
Logs</a> are available at the usual place.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Also, I've now started moving the DPL-related part of my own
TODO list to the dpl-helpers.git repository. The idea is to further
reduce SPOF and ease the transition to the next DPL.</p>
<p>BTW: this is my <strong>last-3 report as DPL</strong>. If you
haven't yet started encouraging project members you think could do
a good job as DPL to apply, you should better hurry up!</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Collaboration with the outer world</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>I've signed the OSI affiliate membership agreement on behalf of
Debian. This is just a long overdue formalization of the decision
to join of a few months ago. The signed version is available in the
DPL document archive on master.d.o, and it has been publicly
discussed with other projects on the OSI affiliates mailing
list.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>As requested, I've provided a quote for FSF's <a href=
"http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot/statement">
restricted boot campaign</a>, that we have subscribed as a project
a while ago.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Thanks to the prod of various people (hi, Sune!), I've noticed
an <a href=
"http://www.digitpa.gov.it/notizie/avviso-partecipazione-tavolo-lavoro-redazione-linee-guida-criteri-valutazioni-comparative-ai">
interesting call</a> by the Italian government to representatives
of FOSS communities, to form a group of experts that will have to
decide the criteria to adopt in the public administration. The call
is in Italian, but <a href=
"http://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/registration-closes-today-helping-italy-draft-open-source-criteria">
an article in English</a> on the matter has been posted on the
Joinup website of the European Commission. I've therefore submitted
an application as Debian representative and, if accepted, I'll be
happy to push for criteria that too often leaves high quality and
well reputed community-based distributions out of the door for
futile reasons (e.g. corporate "certifications").</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>That's all for last year, enjoy the new one, which will soon see
a new Debian release out of the door. And to make it happen sooner,
let's go back fix RC bugs!</p>
<p>Cheers.</p>
<hr />
<p>PS the day-to-day activity log for December 2012 is available at
the usual place
<code>master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.txt.201212</code></p>
bits 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>
bits from the DPL for October 2012http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2012/11/bits_from_the_DPL_for_October_2012/2012-11-06T18:10:57Z2012-11-06T18:10:57Z
<p><a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/11/msg00000.html">
Freshly baked</a>, bits from the DPL for October 2012.</p>
<hr />
<p>Dear Project Members,<br />
another month, another periodic report of DPL-ish activities, this
time for October 2012.</p>
<h1>Highlights</h1>
<h2>Debian on public clouds</h2>
<p>I've spent quite some time to improve Debian presence on the so
called "public clouds". Following up to an inquiry of a fellow
developer, I've reached out to Microsoft to investigate the
possibility of having Debian as an option on Windows Azure. Around
the same time, I've been approached by Amazon to have Debian as an
option on the AWS marketplace. In both cases, we will need to
overcome challenges of various kinds, at the technical (e.g. image
preparation), bureaucratic (e.g. terms of the agreements we'll need
to accept to be present), and political (e.g. chain of trust,
platform freedom) levels.</p>
<p>Up to now, discussions have been going on mostly in private,
simply because they started as 1-to-1 inquiries and continued from
there, but there is no good reason they should remain so. Hence,
thanks to the listmasters and in particular Alexander Wirt, we have
setup the new <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-cloud/">debian-cloud mailing
list</a>. If you are interested in these topics please join the
list.</p>
<p>For both Azure and AWS there is good progress on the technical
part already; summaries will soon be posted on the list so that we
are all on the same page. Similarly, I'll post there status reports
about the bureaucratic requirements. And of course there is no
reason to focus on specific clouds, if you'd like to support others
and are willing to put some work to that end, please join the list
and let us know.</p>
<h2>DPL helpers meeting</h2>
<p>I've already bothered you—at least in my last platform and
<a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/talks/2012/20120708-dc12-dpl.pdf">DebConf13
talk</a>—with observations about how non-scalable the DPL job is.
After having collected applications of DPL helpers for a while,
I've finally sat down and tried to put those applications into good
use. The idea is simple: to the extend of possible, we should shift
from a one-man-band job to a more "board-like" job, with people
sharing an agenda, a list of outstanding tasks, and public
communication. We have started slowly, setting up the #debian-dpl
IRC channel and running periodic bi-weekly meetings there. You can
find the meeting minutes and full logs at the <a href=
"http://meetbot.debian.net">usual place</a>.</p>
<p>We are still ramping up, so we don't have yet "fancy" stuff like
a mailing list or an issue tracker entry, but they're in the
working. Some of the outcome are starting to show, too (e.g. as
part of recent discussions on 3rd party orphaning, or on our
inbound trademark policy, or even in the forthcoming DMCA policy to
make mentors.d.n an official project service).</p>
<p>It's an experiment and a big challenge. I'm, for one thing, not
yet convinced there are enough people interested in sharing the
load of DPL duties (that look boring, for many tech geeks) in the
long run. But I'm also convinced that the sustainability of the
Debian organization model depends on this, so it's worth trying. If
you're interested in the challenge and willing to volunteer some of
your time, please join us on #debian-dpl . I'll take care of
keeping the project informed of further evolution, in particular
about the communication channels we will pick for day to day
activities and accountability.</p>
<h1>Events / public communication</h1>
<p>I've spent most of my remaining Debian time in October attending
events on behalf of the Project, in particular:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>I've attended and delivered a Debian speech at ACM <a href=
"http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/conference/2012/index.php">Reflections
Projections conference</a> in Urbana-Champaign, USA. <a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/talks/2012/20121006-uuic.pdf">Slides</a>
and even a <a href=
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huAREHKaUDE">video</a> of my talk
there are available.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I've attended and delivered a Debian speech at the yearly
LinuxDay event in Turin, Italy. <a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/talks/2012/20121027-linuxday.pdf">Slides</a>
of my talk are available</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I've then attended the by-yearly Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS)
in Copenhagen, representing Debian there. I've met a bunch of
people there, generally vouching for more (and more (and more…))
collaborating at the Debian-Ubuntu border. I've also attended the
traditional Debian-Ubuntu "health check" session, presenting there
the topics <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-derivatives/2012/10/msg00015.html">
I've collected</a> on the -derivatives list. A report of the
session is pending, but I should have successfully talked Stefano
Rivera into posting it to -derivatives soon <em>g</em>.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>On the topic of public communication, I've also coordinated with
the press team an answer to a press inquiry about Secure Boot
(which has become part of <a href=
"http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/57003-debian-undecided-on-method-for-secure-boot">
this article</a>), and happily <a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2012/10/put_some_Debian_salt_in_the_Ubuntu_charity_marathon/">
vouched</a> for the Ubuntu charity marathon, adding some Debian
challenges to it.</p>
<h1>Delegations</h1>
<p>As largely overdue matters, I've finalized the delegations
mentioned last month, namely: <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/10/msg00004.html">
FTP masters</a>, <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/10/msg00005.html">
New Members Front Desk</a>, and <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/10/msg00006.html">
Policy editors</a>.</p>
<h1>Assets and legal stuff</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>on the logo relicensing, one pending matter from last month was
the non-free-ness of the so called "official" logo. <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/10/msg00002.html">Discussion</a>
continued, but we had no consensus in ditching it completely.
Rather, I've proposed to bless as "official" Debian logo the free
one, and rename the other for what it is, a "restricted" Debian
logo. The change was consensual and has been implemented</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>our account creation request to softchoice.com has been
approved, meaning that we can now more easily buy hardware in North
America, reducing a bit the bureaucratic burden associated to
individual purchases. Thanks to DSA, and Luca Filipozzi in
particular, for his help with this matter</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>there are a couple of legal matters on which there have been
progress, but still inconclusive. Just to mention that they haven't
been forgotten, they are the DMCA policy for mentors.d.o and the
appropriate presentation for a forthcoming libdvdcss installer
package in the archive</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Miscellanea</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>sadly, we have found no volunteer admin for the Google Code-In
initiative, so we won't participate this year</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>the end of 2012 is approaching, <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/Sprints">sprint</a>-wise, we have had
roughly the same number of sprints than the previous year (8 vs 9).
Please start planning your sprints for 2013, so that we can
minimize travel costs and bring more people at the event!</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Now let's all go back to RC Bug squashing to make Wheezy a
reality. SPAM-my link of the month is <a href=
"http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi">http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi</a>
and its various "views" at the bottom of the page.</p>
<p>Cheers.</p>
<hr />
<p>PS the day-to-day activity log for October 2012 is available at
the usual place
<code>master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.txt.201210</code></p>
bits from the DPL for September 2012http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2012/10/bits_from_the_DPL_for_September_2012/2012-10-10T06:39:26Z2012-10-09T13:02:34Z
<p>Just <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/10/msg00001.html">
posted to d-d-a</a>, bits from the DPL for Septemer 2012.</p>
<hr />
<p>Heya,<br />
here is the periodic report of DPL activities, this time related to
September 2012 (posted here with some delay, as I've been traveling
oversea on behalf of Debian for the past few days).</p>
<h1>Help needed: Google Code-In</h1>
<p>The <a href=
"http://code.google.com/opensource/gci/2012/index.html">Google
Code-In (GCI)</a> initiative is about to start again. We don't have
a great track record of participating into it, and that's a pity.
The initiative revolves around small tasks that other Free Software
projects have come to call "easy hacks", showing how effective
they're in attracting new volunteers. To participate, we need both
mentors and admins. If you're interested see Ana's <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/soc-coordination/2012-September/001361.html">
call for help</a> and please volunteer on the soc-coordination
list.</p>
<p>Related to this, you've probably seen the <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/09/msg00011.html">
report</a> of our participation in GSoC 2012. I'd like to thank all
students, mentors, and admins for a very well organized
edition.</p>
<h1>Logo relicensing & other assets</h1>
<p>The DFSG-relicensing of the <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/logos/">Debian logo</a>, which I've
mentioned in recent updates, <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/10/msg00000.html">has
now happened</a>. The so called Debian "Open Use" logo, in both
variants (with and without "Debian") is now dually licensed under
LGPL3+ / CC-BY-SA 3.0. The change has been made effective with a
<a href=
"http://www.spi-inc.org/corporate/resolutions/2012/2012-09-07.rtb.1/">
resolution</a> of the SPI Board of Directors.</p>
<p>Note that the so called "official" logo, which we seem to use
very little, is still released under the terms of a non-free
license. <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/10/msg00002.html">Discussion</a>
is ongoing on -project to stop promoting it. If you're using it or
if you've arguments in favor of against that, please participate in
the discussion.</p>
<p>I've got from SFLC an updated draft of the new proposed
trademark policy, implementing most of the changes requested during
related August discussions on -project. I'll post it for review
there shortly.</p>
<p>The Japanese Trademark Office (JPO) has sent us the final
confirmation that trademark transfer request (from individuals
Debian contributors in the area to SPI) has happened. We've paid
the needed fee of 457 CHF to conclude the transaction.</p>
<p>We finally settled a domain transfer agreement with the current
owner of the debian.eu. Technically, the domain will be transferred
to FFIS in the coming weeks.</p>
<h1>Core teams (non-)news</h1>
<p>Quite some core teams are in the process of changing their
formations these weeks, but most are still pending proper
delegation (or equivalent). So here are just a few "teasers":</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>as you might have read in the <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/09/msg00012.html">
ftp-master sprint report</a>, we have a new ftp-master: congrats
Ansgar! (delegation update pending, but no suspense here)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>we have a new front-desk member (delegation pending +
suspense)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>we have a new debian policy team (delegation pending +
suspense)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>the tech-ctte is <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/09/msg00004.html">
in the process</a> of selecting a new candidate to fill the vacant
seat. I've nominated a couple of candidates myself, and I'm now
waiting for tech-ctte recommendations as per Constitution §6.2.</p>
<p>On related news, the tech-ctte has now <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/10/msg00000.html">
dealt with</a> the conflict on Python interpreter maintenership,
which was also the longest standing issue brought before them.
Having invested quite some energy in that issue myself, I'm
delighted to see it finally addressed.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>I hope to finalize all the pending tasks above this month.</p>
<h1>Future events</h1>
<p>I've spent quite some time to plan my participation in events
I'll be attending during October on behalf of Debian, such as the
ACM Reflections conference in Urbana-Champaign (at the time of
writing, this has already happened), the Ubuntu Developer Summit in
Copenhagen, and the LinuxDay event in Turin.</p>
<p>Cheers.</p>
<hr />
<p>PS the day-to-day activity log for September 2012 is available
at the usual place
<code>master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.txt.201209</code></p>
bits from the DPL for August 2012http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2012/09/bits_from_the_DPL_for_August_2012/2012-09-20T09:20:44Z2012-09-19T10:06:42Z
<p>DPL August report, <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/09/msg00002.html">
posted on d-d-a</a> a while ago (yep, I forgot to blog it up to
now!, sorry for the oldies).</p>
<hr />
<p>Dear project members, August has been a month with a good deal
of vacations for many of us, including yours truly. Therefore the
monthly report of DPL activities will be briefer than usual. Which
is good, as it'll leave all my readers more time to do NMUs and fix
RC bugs!</p>
<h1>Ongoing discussions</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/07/msg00047.html">Discussion</a>
about the new trademark policy has continued on -project. I've
collected quite some feedback and summarized it in a request for
change that I've passed on to SFLC. I'm waiting for a second draft
from them, before reviving the thread.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>on the long-running issue of de-duplicating DebConf
infrastructure wrt Debian's, I've been happy to support the
<a href="http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20120820.110812.1ec7d44b.en.html">
proposal</a> of moving DebConf's list to Debian's software and
infrastructure. There seems to be interest and consensus, but the
DebConf team could probably use a couple more helping hands to make
it real</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>starting from the practical need of dealing with minified
JavaScript files, an interesting <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/08/msg00365.html">discussion</a>
sparkled on -devel. It quickly turned in both musing on the notion
of archive-wide DFSG-freeness and some new devscript tooling by
Andreas Tille. AFAIU some extra testing would be welcome</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Assets</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>The DFGS-free logo relicensing I've mentioned last month is now
on its way. Following advice from SFLC, I've slightly patched the
current trademark policy (mainly to clarify scope), just enough to
decouple logo relicensing under LGPLv3/CC-BY-SA 3.0 from the
finalization of a new trademark policy (see above). I've also
verified that the license choice is fine with teams that regularly
deal with the logos. Ball is now in SPI camp (as copyright holder).
They should finalize the relicensing during the forthcoming board
meeting, on September 13th.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>We heard back from the trademark office in Japan, who accepted
our request to transfer it from local Debian contributors to SPI.
That being mainly a bureaucratic acknowledgement, we'll now need to
way for a while until they confirm the transfer has been finalized.
My eternal thanks for help with this matter goes to Kenshi
Muto.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Core teams</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Manoj Srivastava has stepped down as tech-ctte member. I hereby
thank him for his long and valuable service in that capacity. The
tech-ctte has now one vacant seat, and I've encouraged present
tech-ctte members to propose to me a suitable candidate. In an
attempt to promote diversity of views within the tech-ctte, they
are now considering various ways to solicit candidatures. You'll
hear from them about this soon, I suspect.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>In the meantime, monthly IRC meetings of the tech-ctte are
continuing, as you might have noticed from tech-ctte decision
reports posted on this list. As it seemed to be lingering, at the
last meeting I've <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2012/08/msg00084.html">solicited</a>
progress on the <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/573745">Python
maintenance issue</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The auditors have noticed the unclear situation of the Policy
Editor delegation, which seems to rely on a "base" delegation
dating back to Antony Towns' office and various subsequent
delegation "patches". After discussion with Russ Allbery I've then
proceeded to a <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-policy/2012/08/msg00058.html">public
"ping"</a> to assess the interest of current editors in continuing
their work in such capacity, and encourage new volunteers to apply
as editors. Based on the feedback I've got, I'm now preparing a new
Policy Editor delegation.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Legal and RC fun</h1>
<ul>
<li>Solicited by Jonathan Nieder and Helge Kreutzmann, I've looked
into #555168 and sought legal advice to answer various questions
related to the non-copyrightability of locale data. Aaron
Williamson of SFLC has been blazing fast in answering them
(thanks!), and Jonathan and Helge has now all the needed
information to help addressing that (RC) issue. Keep an eye on the
<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/555168">bug log</a> for more
details.</li>
</ul>
<h1>Hardware</h1>
<ul>
<li>I've approved buying 6 console servers to improve DSA ability
to act on remote machines, without having to bother^Wrely on local
admins when not strictly needed. ~550 USD well spent.</li>
</ul>
<p>See? It's been quick(er)!</p>
<p>Talk to you here next month, with a much lower count of Wheezy
RC Bugs on the horizon, hopefully.<br />
Cheers.</p>
<hr />
<p>PS the boring day-to-day activity log for August 2012 is
available at
<code>master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.txt.201208</code></p>
bits from the DPL for July 2012http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2012/08/bits_from_the_DPL_for_July_2012/2012-08-05T17:23:39Z2012-08-05T17:23:39Z
<p>Monthly DPL bits, fresh from <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/08/msg00001.html">
the oven</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p>Tip to feel good about the release #476: <em>before</em> reading
this, grab and fix one of the <a href=
"http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi">RC bugs affecting Wheezy</a>.
Done? Now you're ready for a slightly less exciting report of DPL
activities.</p>
<h1>Highlights</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>I've <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/07/msg00016.html">wrapped
up</a> a couple of years of discussions with FSF representatives,
proposing a joint working group on FSF' assessment of Debian
Free-ness. Some <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/506250/">news
coverage</a> ensued. The discussion list that has been set up
welcomes participants and, in particular, could use some more DDs,
fond of Debian principles but also interested in external review of
our free/non-free separation.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">DebConf12</a> has
happened!, and many of us attended it. Due to family reasons I've
been able to attend only DebCamp and DebConf day-0, just in time to
deliver the traditional <a href=
"http://penta.debconf.org/dc12_schedule/events/881.en.html">"bits
from the DPL" speech</a>. Among other topics, in the speech I've
discussed governance scaling issues in our governance, and in
particular about the role of the DPL --- issue which I'm partly
trying to address with the "DPL helpers" initiatives. Slides and
videos of the talk <a href=
"http://penta.debconf.org/dc12_schedule/events/881.en.html">are
available</a>.</p>
<p>As many others DebConf people, I took part in Nicaraguan TV
shows about DebConf, showing a good deal of interest by the local
media in our presence. I don't have links to the recordings yet,
but I suspect DebConf orga people will provide them as soon as
they're available.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Many others DebConf12 events are relevant for future Project
directions. I went through many of the <a href=
"http://penta.debconf.org/dc12_schedule/events.en.html">events</a>
I've missed thanks to the work of the video team and of the
<a href="http://gobby.debian.org">gobby</a> note takers. I
recommend doing the same. Some events are particularly relevant to
recent project-wide discussions, such as <a href=
"http://penta.debconf.org/dc12_schedule/events/925.en.html">EFI</a>,
<a href=
"http://penta.debconf.org/dc12_schedule/events/926.en.html">hijacking</a>,
and the <a href=
"http://penta.debconf.org/dc12_schedule/events/857.en.html">release
process</a> … and I'm sure you'll find more <img src=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/smileys/smile.png" alt=":-)" /> If you're a DebConf12
speaker and produced slides, please upload them to penta, so that
they could be used as future reference.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Assets</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>On the hardware front, we bought another server according to
DSA's "5-year plan". It will be used as a ganeti node at the man-da
hosting location. We bought it thanks to <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/donations.html">donated</a> money, for a
total of ~6'600 EUR.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>(After ~8 months of pestering,) we got from SPI a data dump of
Debian financial transactions there. Thanks for this result goes to
the SPI Board and in particular to Robert Brockway and Joerg
Jaspert. This was the last blocker to produce detailed financial
reports for the past couple of years of Debian activities.
Unfortunately, <em>it still is a blocker</em>: Debian auditors
found out that the data dump is not complete. SPI will send us
remaining data soon™, but I don't have an ETA, unfortunately.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>An <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-sprints/2012/07/msg00001.html">ftpmasters
sprint</a> is being organized and I've been happy to approve its
budget. Help is still needed on the -sprints list to keep up with
the organization part of sprints, including activities like
<em>documenting sprints</em> to show donors what we do with their
help.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Logo & trademark</h2>
<ul>
<li>
<p>to stop the absurdity of not using the official logo ("with
Debian") as part of our official theme, I advanced a bit on the
topic of relicensing the logo under a DFSG-free license. I sought a
second legal advice to SFLC (as requested by the SPI board). They
confirm we can safely do the relicensing (without undermining our
rights on contained marks) under a license like dual LGPLv3+ /
CC-BY-SA, provided that a suitable trademark policy is in place
…</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>… which is why I've posted to -project a <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/07/msg00047.html">trademark
policy draft</a>, based on legal advice from SFLC. I've gather
useful feedback already, but more is welcome. Note that, as
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/08/msg00008.html">
Russ very eloquently put it</a>, we do not particularly enjoy
thinking about which <em>restrictions</em> we put on the usage of
our marks. But given we do have (and use) those marks, we should
better empower the legal owners (SPI in this case) to properly
defend them. Our specification for the policy to SFLC has been "as
free as possible", and that is what we're trying to achieve.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Note that the actual logo relicensing should be done by SPI, via
their board, upon request of mine (as Debian Project liaison). We
won't make it for the next SPI board meeting, as it is on 4 days
away. But we can aim for the subsequent meeting, on September 13th.
If all goes well (big "if"), we will enjoy a DFSG-free logo after
that date.</p>
<h1>Internal organization</h1>
<p>Recent flurry of re-organization in the tech-ctte --- which I
somewhat triggered pushing for periodic meetings --- seems to be
proceeding well. I'm very happy about it, as we all need to trust
that tech-ctte decisions will be not only sound, but also prompt.
If you're interested into this topic, some recent evidence of the
ongoing reorganization and its result can be found in their
<a href="http://penta.debconf.org/dc12_schedule/events/850.en.html">
DebConf12 BoF</a>, <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2012/07/msg00360.html">minutes</a>
of the last meeting, a set of <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2012/07/msg00351.html">forthcoming
GRs</a>, and the recent great decision of posting decisions results
to d-d-a (as it happened for <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/07/msg00002.htm">
node/nodejs</a>). Kudos to tech-ctte members for the recent
activism!</p>
<p>I haven't worked on it myself directly, but I highlight Enrico's
work on server side <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint/2012/07/msg00031.html">archival
of NM conversations</a>. It has the potential of enabling automatic
detection of stuck NM processes. I'm a bit rusty as AM now, but I
think missing that ability is one of the main remaining causes of
frustration when joining Debian. So, if you are an AM, please
opt-in and use this feature with your appicants. If you are not an
AM… why not? <img src="http://upsilon.cc/~zack/smileys/smile.png" alt=":-)" /></p>
<h1>Miscellanea</h1>
<p>Some misc legal stuff:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>I got the legal advice we asked about the possibility of turning
mentors.debian.net into an official service. The worry there was
about the potential copyright infringements by mentees. In the end,
we don't need to worry about that, provided we've clear contact
points (and "reasonable" timing…) for removing infringing material
once it's been reported, <em>and</em> that we declare our public
policy about that. I've a draft policy document to start with. I'll
soon contact mentors.d.n to adapt it where needed and have it
vetted by SPI before going live.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I've worked with GNOME maintainers (thanks in particular to
Jordi Mallach) to rework the mixed Debian/GNOME logo on their
alioth project page, to stay on the safe side and avoid any
ambiguity wrt GNOME trademark policy.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>… and some misc "political" stuff:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>we've been happy to accept an invitation to attend the GNOME
Advisory Board meeting at GUADEC: Jord (thanks, again!) kindly
accepted to represent Debian there. An <a href=
"http://oskuro.net/blog/freesoftware/guadec-2012-07-29-16-31">early
report</a> has been posted on his blog, a more detailed one is
forthcoming to -project.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>OSI has discussed with their affiliates the possibility of
signing the <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint/2012/07/msg00031.html">Declaration
of Internet Freedom</a>. On behalf of Debian, I've vouched for it.
By the way, I'm serving pro tempore as Debian liaison at OSI, but
if there are people interested in doing that, I'll be happy to
consider handing over the responsibility to other (it's a quite
lightweight one, at present).</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Happy <a href="http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi">RC bug</a>
squashing,<br />
Cheers.</p>
<hr />
<p>PS the boring day-to-day activity log for July 2012 is available
at
<code>master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.txt.201207</code></p>
bits from the DPL for June 2012http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2012/07/bits_from_the_DPL_for_June_2012/2012-07-04T03:38:56Z2012-07-04T03:38:56Z
<p>Monthly DPL bits, fresh from the oven<code>^W^W^W</code> hot
from DebConf12, and just <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/07/msg00001.html">
posted to d-d-a</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p>Howdy from DebConf12. It's hot, but it's also time to bother you
again with a (not so) brief DPL activity report, this time for June
2012.</p>
<h2>Time-based freeze: DONE, short freeze: TODO</h2>
<p>Two highlights for this month. First, you've probably noticed
Wheezy is now frozen, YAY. This is huge achievement for the
release, but also for the project. It's the first time we do a
time-based freeze, and it took some quite heated discussion at the
beginning of the release cycle to decide to do this. And we did it
properly: respecting the planned month and narrowing down the
period later. This exercise has hopefully helped both DDs in their
package planning and our upstreams in targeting Wheezy with stable
releases of their software. Kudos to the release team for their
coordination work! Now we've the second part still TODO: releasing
Wheezy, without RC bugs, with a freeze period as short as possible.
See the beginning of my <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/06/msg00005.html">
last "bits from the DPL" mail</a> for my usual song and dance
<img src="http://upsilon.cc/~zack/smileys/tongue.png" alt=":-P" /> on how to deliver
that, together.</p>
<h2>DebConf12</h2>
<p>A lot of us will attend DebConf12. Enjoy it! ... and take the
chance to both have fun and make great plans for Debian's future.
But remember that "if it didn't happen on a mailing list, it didn't
happen". Not all of us will be lucky enough to attend DebConf (in
person or remotely). Make sure that those who don't can take part
in your team decisions and get informed of what is going to happen
here.</p>
<h1>Politics</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>After discussion (and consensus) on debian-boot, I've asked to
join <a href=
"http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot/statement">
FSF campaign on secure boot</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Since <a href="http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/">OIN</a> was
seeking comments on their <a href=
"http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/pat_linuxdef.php">Linux System
definition</a> (not really openly though: I learned about it last
minute from people directly in touch with OIN representatives),
I've contacted them proposing to include all "Debian main" packages
in their definition. I haven't yet hear back from them, but I doubt
they'll accept the idea. It'd be nice to have an official answer
about why, though.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Zack's spring tour</h1>
<p>I spent a significant part of June doing Debian talks ins some
sort of "spring tour" between Italy and France. In particular:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>I've taught a lenghty class about the Debian Project at the
<a href="http://www.opensourcesummerschool.com/">Insubria
International Open Source Summer School</a> in Como, Italy (see
<a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/talks/2012/20120621-iiosss.pdf">slides</a>)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I've delivered the opening keynote at the yearly Free Software
conference in Ancona, Italy, <a href=
"http://www.confsl.org/confsl12/">ConfSL'12</a> (see <a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/talks/2012/20120623-confsl.pdf">slides</a>)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I've delivered the opening talk at the <a href=
"http://www.esrf.eu/events/conferences/debian-for-scientific-facilities-days-1/">
Debian for Scientific Facilities Days</a> event organized by the
European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France
(see <a href=
"http://upsilon.cc/~zack/talks/2012/20120625-esrf.pdf">slides</a>)</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Many thanks to the organizers of these events for inviting and
sponsoring me (as well as other Debian people, in the ESRF case)
and for their interest in Debian.</p>
<h1>Sprints</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>I approved (for a budget of ~2'000 EUR) and helped hosting the
<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/I18n/Sprint2012">i18n sprint in
Paris</a>. As a (great!) result of it, the i18n infrastructure has
now been moved on DSA administered machines. A more detailed
<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/I18n/Sprint2012Report">report</a>
is available. Thanks to all attendees and in particular to
Christian Perrier for the organization work.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>as part of the "Debian for Scientific Facilities" event, a
<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Sprints/2012/ScienceSprint">Debian
Science sprint</a> also took place at ESRF. Report is pending</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>a BSP took place in Salzburg in June, see <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/06/msg00645.html">the
report</a> posted by Bernd Zeimetz. I've approved using some Debian
money (~350 EUR) to pay for lodgement of some of the attendees</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Assets</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>DSA have been working on seting up the first machines we bought
as part of the yearly revamping plan of Debian hardware. As one of
the first user visible changes, <a href=
"http://udd.debian.org">UDD</a> has been moved to a new, faster,
machine. I single this out because, if you're doing RC bug
squashing (as you should! :-)), you'll notice that the bugs search
interface is now much faster, hopefully making your release work
less frustrating. Similar improvements are forthcoming for other
machines, while DSA (thanks!) migrate other services to newer
hardware.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Last April I mentioned that we're aiming at publishing
comprehensive Debian budget reports for the past couple of years
and that one of the blocker is access to our transaction
information at SPI. This is still a blocker, unfortunately. And we
still don't have an ETA on when it'll be fixed.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The current owner of debian.eu has let us know that he is
willing to hand over the domain to us. Finally.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The European part of our Madrid protocol application for the
Debian trademark has been vetted by the European trademark office.
Meaning: Debian trademark is now officially protected in
Europe.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>DuckDuckGo sent me a first report of the "donation" they're
ready to make, based on our agreement with them. The aument is
still unclaimed, as we're aiming at invoicing twice per year (to
keep the papwerwork low). It isn't a stellar amount: 32.55 USD for
the month of May.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Discussions</h1>
<p>Some relevant discussions for project evolution has been going
on in June and I took part into them. You might want to have a look
at them:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/06/msg00029.html">proposal</a>
to change the way DM permissions are handled</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/06/msg00125.html">proposal</a>
to change the policy ruling the debian.net domain</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>we've been <a href=
"http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/thread/20120702.184919.b80ea1c1.en.html">
discussing</a> debconf12 budget at length, including how to deal
with travel sponsorship requests in the future:</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>in the "debian account on github" thread, I've proposed a
<a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/06/msg00000.html">general
policy</a> for presence of accounts named "debian" on non-free
services</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>the long quest on how to choose Wheezy artwork has <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-desktop/2012/06/msg00015.html">come
to an end</a>, and we have a very nice theme now, thanks to
contributions by many artist and integration work by Paul
Tagliamonte. Not all went well in the process, but there are useful
lessons for the future.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Misc</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<p>I got quite some feedback about the debate with
debian-multimedia.org I mentioned last month. My take away message
from that feedback is that many users have no idea about the
multimedia capabilities (and in particular of codecs availability)
of recent Debian releases. We should probably invest some
communication energies into that.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>as planned, another tech-ctte IRC meeting has happened. I took
part into it, mostly asking to prioritize long standing issues,
such as the Python maintenance one. <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2012/07/msg00000.html">Minutes</a>
of the meeting are available.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Cheers.</p>
<hr />
<p>PS the boring day-to-day activity log for June is available at
<code>master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.txt.201206</code></p>