Bits from the Debian Project Leader (January 2019)

To: debian-devel-announce@lists.debian.org

Subject: Bits from the Debian Project Leader (January 2019)

From: "Chris Lamb " <lamby@debian.org>

Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2019 09:06:32 +0100

Message-id: <[🔎] 1548921992.1584440.1647611464.336B8FFA@webmail.messagingengine.com>

Mail-followup-to: debian-devel@lists.debian.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 Dear developers, Greetings from a snowy Europe. ⛄ "Buster is coming…" Here follows a brief overview of what I've been getting up to as your Project Leader during the past month. For those interested in the numbers, January was another busy month in the DPL inbox with just shy of 500 non-spam mails received and — including this one — just over 100 emails sent. ~ § ~ * I updated the delegation for the Release Team [0]. As I wrote in my redelegation text [1] this represents Paul Gevers (elbrus) joining as a Release Assistant — welcome. * On behalf on the Debian Project I co-signed an affirmation of the "Open Source Definition" [2] (based on our own Free Software Guidelines [3]) and the OSI's role as a steward of said Definition. This will be published in early February. * I was also delighted to furnish Software in the Public Interest, Inc. [4] with a brief overview of Debian's activities throughout 2018 for their annual report. SPI is Debian's primary holder of substantial legal assets such as domain names, funds and trademarks, etc. * Finalised arrangements for a Bug Squashing Party [5] in Gothenburg, Sweden during April 2019 as part of the foss-north [6] conference. I subsequently posted an announcement [7] and briefly assisted in the announcements of the Austin [8] and Berlin [9] BSPs. * I made a call for potential nominations for the 2019 Open Source Initiative [10] board elections. As an "affiliate" of the OSI, Debian may nominate a candidate in such an election [11]. * Issued signed "DD certificates" [12] for a number of Developers and maintainers as part of new employment or positions in academic institutions, etc. If you are a DD, a DM or a Debian Contributor and you'd like official certification of that, you may ask the DPL to generate one for you; please email leader@debian.org. * "Attended" a number of conference calls on a currently-embargoed trademark issue, the Server Side Public License [13] as well as further follow-ups the "Commons Clause" [14] license amendment. * Replied to to an generalised invitation for a developers to attend the WeAreDevelopers "World Congress" [15] in Berlin 2019 and responded to a company who are using Debian for their embedded product who wished to check "the correct usage of the GPL", pointing them towards a competent copyright attorney. * Assisted a Debian Developer by physically authoring a recommendation for an immigration application, provided some quick assistance regarding announcing a large donation, and responded to a invitation to attend the New York Linux Users Group (NYLUG) [16]. * Responded to a number of responses to my previous "Bits from the DPL" and redirected the usual requests for private support, including one enquiry on the "freeness" of the firmware in non-free. [ 0] https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/ReleaseTeam [ 1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2019/01/msg00009.html [ 2] https://opensource.org/osd [ 3] https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines [ 4] https://spi-inc.org [ 5] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP [ 6] http://foss-north.se/ [ 7] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2019/01/msg00006.html [ 8] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2019/01/msg00004.html [ 9] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2019/01/msg00003.html [10] https://opensource.org/ [11] https://opensource.org/node/963 [12] https://wiki.debian.org/DDCertificate [13] https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-public-license [14] https://lwn.net/Articles/763179/ [15] https://www.wearedevelopers.com/world-congress/ [16] https://www.meetup.com/nylug-meetings/ ~ § ~ We have a huge number of events coming up in the month(s) ahead, including: * February 2nd → February 3rd: FOSDEM. [17] * February 9th → February 10th: Berlin, Germany. [18] * February 9th → February 10th: Bratislava, Slovakia. [19] * February 22nd → February 24th: Bonn, Germany. [20] * February 28th → March 3rd: Laveno, Italy. [21] * March 8th → March 10th: Cambridge, United Kingdom. [22] * April 5th → April 8th: Salzburg, Austria. [23] * April 7th: Gothenburg, Sweden. [24] … and there will naturally a large number of developers and contributors Belgium in early February for other FOSDEM-related roles/events such as CopyleftConf [25], Config Management Camp [26], etc. [17] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEvents/be/2019/FOSDEM [18] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2019/02/de/Berlin [19] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2019/02/sk/Bratislava [20] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2019/02/de/Bonn [21] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEvents/it/2019/SnowCamp [22] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2019/03/gb/Cambridge [23] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2019/04/Salzburg [24] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2019/04/se/Gothenburg [25] https://sfconservancy.org/news/2018/apr/30/copyleft-conf/ [26] https://cfgmgmtcamp.eu/ If there are no Bug Squashing Parties (BSP) planned near you, both in time and space, please do consider organising one [27][28] — Debian is willing to reimburse 100 USD (or equivalent) to attend BSPs [29] which can help encourage people to come. [27] https://wiki.debian.org/BSPPlanning [28] https://wiki.debian.org/HostingBSP [29] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP ~ § ~ In financial matters, I approved: * A significant expense to replace our DSA-maintained [30] core mirroring infrastructure. This would — inter alia — separate the public-facing and backend roles and improve the uplink connection from 1Gbps to 10Gbps. * Expenses for two Developers to perform a reconnaissance of likely DebConf20 [31] locations (Lisbon & Haifa). This resulted in a report being sent to the debconf-team mailing list [32]. In addition, I asked some initial questions on a preliminary budget for DebConf19 [33]. * Funding for a DebianMed [34] sprint that planned to take place in March 2019 in Vilnius, Lithuania [35]. * Travel expenses for an additional Developer to attend the DebConf Video Team [36] Sprint [37] at Linux Belgium [38] in Diegem. * Funding for Debian Ports [39] to purchase some replacement drives as the previous systems' drives were outdated and physically did not fit. * Food expenses for the Bug Squashing Party (BSP) that took place in Montreal, Canada [40] and for parallel expenses for the BSP in Bratislava, Slovakia [41]. [30] https://dsa.debian.org/ [31] https://wiki.debian.org/DebConf/20 [32] https://lists.debian.org/debconf-team/2019/01/msg00008.html [33] https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf19 [34] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMed [35] https://wiki.debian.org/Sprints/2019/DebianMed2019 [36] https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebConf/Video [37] https://wiki.debian.org/Sprints/2019/DebConf%20Video%20team%20sprint%20@%20FOSDEM%202019 [38] http://linuxbe.com/ [39] https://www.ports.debian.org/ [40] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2019/01/ca/Montreal [41] https://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2019/02/sk/Bratislava Finally, I followed up on a company requesting a receipt for their donation, responding to a developer requesting travel sponsorship to PyCon Namibia [42] and handled some travel reimbursements around the recent Reproducible Builds summit [43] in Paris, France. [42] https://na.pycon.org/ [43] https://reproducible-builds.org/events/paris2018/ ~ § ~ Just in case you missed it, the Debian 10 'buster' freeze has very much begun ☃! [44] Here's to "Buster" in 2019 and see you all next month… [44] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2019/01/msg00008.html Best wishes, - -- ,''`. : :' : Chris Lamb `. `'` lamby@debian.org 🍥 chris-lamb.co.uk `- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAEBCAAdFiEEwv5L0nHBObhsUz5GHpU+J9QxHlgFAlxSrGkACgkQHpU+J9Qx HlgoEA/9HELnyaYrSyBRPy50DNzqmHAgUZygno6IuPy1Y0r4BXpZSGFQgFoZxqEL m9jCj8I27QLx5FPwpX7ngdmzhiT3/ru1VxP6/ztpzGpMt5PH+PA6EIZrcSDMsTzn 6EFe/eRMOhd2ts/K+yGanOw9dDP8rxEuD0VGKqX+57XQ0Lb07ZKXwb9PYSWx1D4E HJuCSIryyBx7TsS04j+20mlXPvpEXzKjL91Yzs2CKDTnLttKRz0wpntBd53D1iw+ 6ikpP4gmxxxW+MjXqO1kekUe4etBf+U5C5gN1DIGR3NOkTQIDcdflFlQ3/3ZBeEM Gjtp42desK/2vSfVYX/mp6/wV5utOldYzB3WsBoZkgdtkPIjX3VL65LizLi5u3xi X7WB45m64DLeHNc/QrcO+1p3uSwCup5FVdpcGUn74ZdeGxz3iVLgUUGOz12+stf+ F7xvkUvRczZdwE+PGhgwV0eJiHETMzDCUHoUHL0sYpvWZ9SbxKas9bjl3AZ2qpA5 QdqEBCenARPU1ilb1qz0lGHCLE3xsz7EWoYQsFuSOkO6wrLlHhC/iOJUTT/eV4Tn Z6shf+Z+maYiuJk+LaZKD2Ww/dTx7RrZRM/mb4qaRGaIMTN0gohnCXUHZ9NtXAUB /aFEB+uic9EeAWa+3flW84Iw7J5yH/mA9PGdvrY4rnHlJxz+Xso= =IvaW -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----