Hey all! I said back in August I was going to split what I wanted to say into two parts; and since the first part was "Looking back", naturally enough the second one is "Looking forward". With all the controversy recently, you might think there's not all that much to look forward to -- but you'd be wrong. Let's have a look. First, let's take the release. As you might have read in the recent release update, most of the major release blockers are now either finished or in the process of being completed. Something you might not have realised is that the discussions on how to deal with firmware seem to have reached something approaching a consensus with Manoj's recent amendment to Frederik's proposal [0], which seems to have support from the release managers, the kernel team, and -legal folks. Some of the more interesting release goals seems to still be well on track as well, thanks to the efforts of teams like -boot, SELinux and the X Strike Force doing such an excellent job on their respective packages. And that's all the excuse I need to mention the coolness that is compiz, which has finally made it's way to unstable -- kudos to Thierry Reding, and his sponsor David Nusinow; it's always nice when someone else does the work to make your campaign promises [1] happen. :) [0] http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2006/09/msg00566.html [1] http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/platforms/ajt We should be able to look forward to a few more bits of niftyness like that making its way into etch and being stabilised for release shortly; but probably the most important release activities over the next little while will be bug fixing. In aid of that there are a number of bugsquash parties planned -- and not just virtual ones, either. This past weekend, eg, there was a BSP in Utrecht in the Netherlands [2], thanks to the support of NLnet, Universiteit Utrecht, and Study Association A-Eskwadraat. In the past month there have been BSPs in Vienna (Switzerland) [3], Julich (Germany) [4], and San Cristobal (Venezuela) [5]. And still to come are BSPs in Zurich (Switzerland) [6] and Dijon (France) [7]. Many of these events have been sponsored, either to provide a venue and networking, or to help people travel to the venue, which is both really helpful to getting the event off the ground, and is both an excellent and a cheap way of helping Debian. If you're interested in helping to organise a BSP, you probably want to see the BSP hosting wiki page [8], or the BSP Marathon wiki page [9] for more information, and start talking to local Debianites to get something off the ground. [2] http://wiki.debian.org/BSP_Utrecht_2006 [3] http://wiki.debian.org/BSP2006Vienna [4] http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/de/credativ [5] http://wiki.debian.org/BSPVenezuela [6] http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/ch/Marathon [7] http://wiki.debian.org/TanneriesBSP [8] http://wiki.debian.org/HostingBSP [9] http://wiki.debian.org/BSPMarathon Debian's not just about getting a release out on time though (luckily, some would say :), and BSPs aren't the only excuse Debian hackers have to get together. If you've been following d-d-a or DWN, you'll have heard about the Latin-American Debian miniconfs in Colombia in August [10] and Venezuela [11] coming up in a little over a week, or the meeting in Cuba from June [12], or Steve's visit to La Laguna, Tenerife on Debian's behalf for their free software conference last month [13], or the internationalisation meeting in Extremadura, Spain also in September [14], or other various events [15] that have had a Debian presence. [10] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/08/msg00002.html http://wiki.debian.org/DebianColombia/MiniDebconf2006 http://times.debian.net/1015-First-Colombian-Mini-DebConf [11] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/09/msg00019.html [12] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/08/msg00010.html [13] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/09/msg00009.html http://blog.einval.com/2006/09/19#tenerife http://blog.einval.com/2006/09/23#tenerife2 [14] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/09/msg00012.html [15] http://www.debian.org/events/ Beyond that, the plans for next year's DebConf in Edinburgh are also well underway, with final negotiations with the venue for things like 24/7 access and cabling being just about complete [16] -- so hopefully there'll be an official announcement with dates and more information pretty soon. There's a whole bunch of neat stuff comming from the DC7 team, none of which they'll let me mention until they're ready. :) Of course, even while that's being organised, people are getting serious about where DebConf will be held in 2008 [17]. AIUI, the theory is that DebConf will change continents each year, and there's been interest shown from Japan [18], Argentina and Venezuela [19], as well a thoughts about holding the 2009 DebConf in Canada [20] or Thailand [21]. [16] http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20060926.202139.f5a73674.en.html [17] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/09/msg00137.html [18] http://wiki.debian.org/DebConf/Japan [19] http://wiki.debian.org/DebConf8 [20] http://wiki.debian.org/DebConf/Montreal [21] http://wiki.debian.org/DebConf/Thailand As more people from more countries get involved in Debian, it's become more important to have local ways of dealing with local activities -- and that's resulted in the formation of Debian-specific groups like Debian JP [22], Debian UK [23] or Debian France [24]. These groups are great both for actually holding money and helping sponsors support Debian, but also for actually getting stuff happening locally too -- whether it be conferences or BSPs or dinners or whatever else; and there are a few more in the works at the moment too. [22] http://www.debian.or.jp/index.html.en [23] http://wiki.earth.li/DebianUKSociety [24] http://france.debian.net/ Of course, the main entity providing corporate/structural support for Debian has always been Software in the Public Interest; which has always had the goal of being about more than just Debian. Over the past year it's taken some major steps towards that goal, with the active participation of PostgreSQL as well as Debian and OFTC, as well as the recent addition of other projects such as the Open Voting Foundation and FreeDesktop.org. SPI has also been working on improving its handling for donations and other financial responsibilities; both to avoid repeating mistakes like losing donations or not being able to provide detailed statements of accounts, and to avoid problems in the future by making sure that all their processes can be fully audited and are financially sound; all of which will hopefully justify the faith that Debian and other projects have put in SPI over the years. Beyond that, the recent constitutional change [25] moves us towards encouraging donations to more organisations than SPI, which should hopefully mean we end up with money available nearer the people who are actually organising meetings and otherwise improving Debian, rather than having most of it centralised in the US. This sort of organisational decentralisation makes it difficult to know what's going on, which makes it difficult for people to know whether or not they can or should use Debian funds for activities -- whether that be organising meetings, or getting reimbursements for travel costs, or other activities that improve Debian. In aid of making that less of a problem, Kalle Kivimaa has volunteered to act as Debian Auditor [26], and keep track of all the various assets being held for Debian by different organisations and in different countries, and how it gets spent. That's a pretty big task, so initially Kalle's focussing on Europe, but even that's going to be a major undertaking. Hopefully we can look forward to a first report in the next few months anyway, though. :) [25] http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_003 [26] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/08/msg00149.html Hrm. Well, I don't know about you, but "writing long emails to d-d-a" isn't actually that high on my list of things to look forward to, so I think I might stop already. :) Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns Debian Project Leader
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