Legal stuff
===========

- Webmaster heroes have decided to tackle the long standing issues of
copyright and licensing of the Debian website [1,2]. I’ve accepted to
help them out in reaching consensus with license choice and I’m happy
to report that we’ve managed to pick a DFSG-free license (BSD-ish) for
future contributions. Webmasters will soon contact contributors to
re-license old contributions (or get rid of them), so hopefully will
have a DFSG-free website RSN. Many thanks go to David Prévot for
successfully tackling such a can of worms.

[1] http://bugs.debian.org/238245
[2] http://bugs.debian.org/388141

- I’ve sought a second legal advice on the constraints that trademarks
(might) impose on the work-flow of a distro like Debian. Luckily, it
is coherent with one I’ve sought in the past so I’m now in condition
to wrap up the “trademark vs DFSG” thread on -project [3] with the
missing legal information. Hopefully, I’ll find time to do that
sometime next week.

[3] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/10/msg00028.html

- I’ve restarted discussions with the Debian France association so that
they can become a Debian Trusted Organization (as per Constitution
§9.3). Members of the board of the association seem to be interested
and I’m positive it could happen fairly soon. The importance of this
is that we could use a back-up association in Europe to hold Debian
assets, to complement the services that FFIS are already offering us.

[4] http://france.debian.net/pipermail/asso/2012-January/001614.html
(thread in French)

- Thanks to the contributions of Benjamin Mako Hill and SPI lawyers,
I’ve now what I consider a final draft of a trademark policy for
Debian trademarks. Before proposing it to you, I’m waiting for some
feedback from another umbrella organization for Free Software
projects, that is working on a trademark policy for all their
associated projects. As many Free Software projects are seeking
trademark protection these days, I see benefits in having uniform (and
sane!) policies. I hope to be able to gather the feedback I still miss
this week-end at FOSDEM, and let you know shortly after that. Once
this is done, we’ll also be able to (finally!) relicense all kinds of
Debian logos under a DFSG-free license.

On this front, I’ve also updated http://www.debian.org/trademark with
the information needed to contact us about trademark usage; hopefully
it’ll reduce the burden of answering to such inquiries.

- With the help of Kenshi Muto, Fumitoshi Ukai, Ishikawa Mutsumi, Shuzo
Hatta, and Yasuhiro Araki we’ve started the process to move the Debian
trademark in Japan from individuals (who are present or past members
of the Debian JP association) to SPI. That would help dealing with
these matters, as well as ensure that important Debian assets are held
by Debian Trusted Organizations.

- I remind you that we’ve an ongoing complaint with the current
registrant of debian.eu, domain that we believe Debian should
legitimately own. Lawyers at SPI has now formally contacted the
current owner and hopefully we’ll be able to solve the issue amicably
in the next months.

- Some of the past legal advice I sought for PPA came handy in a
discussion [12] on the legal risks of running a service like
mentors.debian.net, hopefully addressing part of the issues in turning
that into mentors.debian.org

[12] http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2012/01/msg00589.html

- Patent policy for the Debian archive is now ready as well and I also
have a patch for the website ready to be merged. I’m just waiting for
the final blessing from SPI (lawyers) to go ahead and publish it.

Most of the above wouldn’t have been possible without the precious help
of folks at SFLC [13] working for SPI and Debian. Be sure to thank SFLC
for what they’re doing for us and many other Free Software projects.

[13] http://www.softwarefreedom.org/

Coordination
============

Nobody stepped up to coordinate the artwork collection for Wheezy I’ve
mentioned last month [11], so I’ve tried to do a little bit of that
myself. The -publicity team is now preparing the call for artwork and
hopefully we’ll send it out RSN. In case you want to help, there is
still a lot of room for that; just show up on the debian-desktop mailing
list.

[11] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html

Sprints
=======

A Debian Med sprint has happened in January, and Andreas Tille has
provided a nice and detailed report about it [5]. Some more sprints are
forthcoming this spring, how about yours?

[5] http://lists.debian.org/debian-sprints/2012/01/msg00001.html

Money
=====

- We got from SPI a prepaid and rechargeable credit card that we can use
for expenses or other kind of guarantees. Many thanks to Michael
Schulteiss, SPI treasurer, for his help with that. Using it, we’ve
redeemed 10k$ of credits offered to us by Amazon, that (thanks to
ongoing work by Lucas Nussbaum) we’re going to use to make our QA
rebuilds independent from the underlying computing infrastructure.

- Thanks to the help of Luca Capello, we advanced quite a bit on forming
the Debian Event Box kit [6] that should make it easier to set up
Debian booth at FOSS events. We bought the machine for it (for about
~755 CHF) and the box to contain it will soon be on its way as well.
If you’re at FOSDEM, tend to the Debian booth to check it out (and
possibly help out with the technical setup).

[6] http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Events/DebianEventsBox

- We’ve got quite a bit of donations during the December holidays. I’ve
took the chance to thank donors, discuss what we do with donations and
the status of publishing periodic Debian budgets in [7].

[7] http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2012/01/debian_donations-fu/

- Pinged by Yves-Alexis Perez, I’ve now properly documented the fact
that DDs are welcome to apply for hardware sponsoring, in case the
hardware can be used to help/improve their Debian work [9,10]. As
suggested by Yves-Alexis [8], you can also advocate *other* DDs for hw
sponsoring.

[8] http://www.corsac.net/?rub=blog&post=1541
[9] http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2012/01/hardware_sponsorship_for_Debian_Developers/
[10] http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DPL/SponsoringGuidelines#Hardware_Guidelines

- Given hardware invariably age and that we can afford it, I’ve prodded
DSA to prepare a general hardware replacement plan for our
machines. Planning will go on this week-end and FOSDEM (thanks to
Martin Zobel-Helas and Faidon Liambotis for their presence here) and I
hope to have an approved machine replacement plan well before the end
of the current DPL term (although I’m usually optimist…).

Important stuff going on
========================

Other important stuff has been going on in various area of the project
in January. I’d like to point your attention to a couple of things:

- People active on debian-mentors have proposed an improved work-flow to
deal with sponsoring/mentoring requests [14], based on the usage of a
new pseudo package “sponsorship-requests”. Thanks to Ansgar Burchardt,
Jakub Wilk, Arno Töll, and Gregor Herrmann for working on this.

[14] http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2012/01/msg00365.html

- Raphael Hertzog has kickstarted work on DEP-2 [15], as a way to
rationalize the flow of package-related information that
(co-)maintainers get. Discussion about the idea are ongoing on the
debian-qa mailing list.

[15] http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep2/

Miscellanea
===========

- Work has further progressed in reaching out to companies with an
interest in giving support for, and contributing to Debian. Thanks to
Alexander Wirt the technical work is now done and some sort of
governance policy has been decided. Further step for me is to announce
it properly hoping to reach out to as many interested companies as
possible. I hope to finalize that in the next month. (If you’re
working for such a company and you happen to read this, feel free to
reach out to me already.)

[16] http://bugs.debian.org/650082

- I’ve completed an old todo item setting up and documenting
titanpad.debian.net [17,18], service that has been requested for
collaborative work during various kinds of online events. Help is
welcome to help administering the service (see [18]).

[17] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/01/msg00072.html
[18] http://wiki.debian.org/TitanpadDebianNet

- SPI has clarified the role of project representatives and, as a
consequence of that, I (as DPL) no longer receive SPI board
discussions addressed to board@spi. That is good not only for the
sanity of my inbox, but also because it puts all projects affiliated
to SPI at the same level of communication within SPI. Thanks to Robert
Brockway for his work on this.

In the unlikely case you’ve read thus far, thanks for your attention!
Happy Debian hacking.

PS as usual, the boring day-to-day activity log is available at

–

Call for help: Wheezy artwork organization
——————————————

On the -desktop and -publicity lists, we’ve been discussing [1] how to
organize the activities that will bring us a coherent visual identity
for the Wheezy desktop, as the -desktop folks did for past releases. We
should start well in advance, to have enough time to explore all
possibilities and invite artwork contributions from the broader Debian
community. Yves-Alexis Perez did an amazing job at organizing that for
Squeeze, but has made clear he is not available to do the same for
Wheezy [2]. After discussing with him, it seems that nobody has yet
volunteered to do that for Wheezy yet.

I’m hereby calling for volunteers willing to work on that. I’ve
subscribed to the -desktop list and I’ll try to help myself, but I feel
we need someone willing to pick up the organization part. It will likely
include stuff like: help the -publicity team to write a call for
artwork, organize a poll to choose, etc. Please contact me or simply
show up on debian-desktop@lists.d.o if you can help with this.

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-desktop/2011/12/msg00002.html
[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-desktop/2011/10/msg00010.html

Auditor work ramping up
———————–

We’ve almost always been struggling for transparency in Debian budgets.
The money dealings we do at SPI are quite visible, but other assets, as
well as money hosted at other trusted organizations, are too scattered
and not always as accessible as they should. … which is close to
unacceptable for a project soliciting donations. Historically, we’ve
always had trouble finding people capable and willing to work on
non-technical stuff, and accounting / auditing work is a perfect example
of that.

During December I’ve raised again the issue with the current auditors to
discover, with great pleasure!, that work is ramping up. In particular,
in December I’ve spent quite some time helping Martin Michlmayr (in his
capacity of Debian Auditor) to reconstruct expenses I’ve approved since
I’ve became DPL, while he was injecting them in *ledger. Martin is now
positive we can aim at publishing detailed and comprehensive budgets,
spanning all Debian trusted organizations, in the coming months.

Money
—–

While I’m on the subject of money, in December I’ve approved usage of
very little Debian money (< 70 USD) to provide sbuild instances to
attendees of the Portland BSP [3] (credits for the idea goes to Steve
Langasek and Kees Cook). Despite the low amount of money, I mention this
as an example of how the resources we have can be used to improve the
experience of people trying to improve Debian. Feel free to come forward
to me with similar ideas!

I’ve also authorized the payment of the machines we’ve bought to replace
the venerable kassia and liszt, for a grand total of 11’792.9 EUR.

[3] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/11/msg00003.html

Relationships with others
————————-

The Creative Commons process for version 4.0 of their pool of licenses
has started. Has observed by Paul Wise [4], we should better follow it
to ensure that CC license flavors who are currently compatible with DFSG
(as CC BY-SA 3.0), stay so in their new versions. Gunnar Wolf has kindly
volunteered to monitor the discussion on behalf of Debian. Thanks to
him, and to Paul Wise for the heads up.

[4] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/12/msg00030.html

I’ve gladly accepted an invite by representatives of other distributions
to join a panel at FOSDEM 2012 about local user groups (e.g. Fedora
ambassadors, LoCo groups for Ubuntu, etc). As you might remember, I
think we should have similarly organized initiatives in Debian as well,
because they are very useful in training future generations of Debian
project members. I’ve gladly accepted the invite and I’ll try to present
before then some ideas on how a similar organization could work for
Debian. Thanks a lot to Wouter Verhelst, for getting me in the loop of
this cross-distro discussion.

Progress
——–

The rest of my DPL activities for December 2011 can be summarized as
“steady progress” on a variety of topics such as: the -companies list,
the patent policy for Debian archive, the trademark policy, and a couple
of long running “disputes” about Debian trademark. None of them have
reached yet a point worth any sort of announcement. If you care about
the gory details, please have a look at the DPL daily logs on
master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.*

Happy Debian hacking!
– Stefano Zacchiroli

Call for Help: press/publicity team
===================================

I’d like to highlight the call for help by the press / publicity
teams. They are “hiring” and have sent out a call for new members a
couple of weeks ago [1]. The work they do is amazing and is very
important for Debian, as important as maintaining packages or fixing RC
bugs during a freeze. It is only by letting the world know what Debian
is and what we do, that we can keep the Project thriving. And letting
the world know is exactly what the publicity and press teams [2] do. If
you’re into writing, blogging, or simply have a crush for social media,
please read the call and “apply”!

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/11/msg00055.html
[2] http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Publicity

Interviews
==========

November has apparently been the “let’s interview the DPL” month. I’ve
spent quite some time giving interviews to interested journalists about
various topics. For both my embarrassment and transparency on what I’ve
said on behalf of Debian, here are the relevant links:

- audio interview with Karen Sandler [3] for the Free as in Freedom [4]
oggcast by herself and Bradley M. Kuhn
- text interview with Raphael Hertzog for the People behind Debian
series [5]
- text interview for the Linux Certification Institute Italy (LICI) [6]
(note: the original of this one is in Italian [7]; the English version
is a translation by LICI)
- video interview with Amber Granger during last UDS [8]

[3] http://faif.us/cast/2011/nov/29/0x1D/
[4] http://faif.us/
[5] http://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/11/22/people-behind-debian-stefano-zacchiroli-debian-project-leader/
[6] http://interview.lici.it/2011/11/15/an-interview-for-linux-to-stefano-zacchiroli/
[7] http://interview.lici.it/it/2011/11/15/an-interview-for-linux-to-stefano-zacchiroli/
[8] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p64OUfcfe5M

Assets
======

- the Video Team sprint [9] approved in October has happened at
beginning of November; report is still pending but the organizers are
on it

- Christian Perrier reported [10] about his trip to India mini-DebConf,
even that he attended on behalf of the Project. I find amazing both
the outcome of the event and Christian’s report, a very good example
of how to inform the Project when acting on behalf of it

- the hardware replacement for {ftp,lists}.d.o I’ve mentioned last month
has been ordered, has arrived, and DSA have already put their hands on
it for the setup. Many thanks to DSA and in particular to Martin
Zobel-Helas for the logistics

- as an administratrivia, I’ve asked SPI to setup for Debian a “gift”
credit card, i.e. a credit card with a limited, refillable budget. It
is needed for using (with a safeguard) credits offered to the Project
by public cloud providers (e.g. [11]), as well as to use various kinds
of services that we need from time to time

[9] http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Videoteam/Sprint2011
[10] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/11/msg00009.html
[11] http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2011/10/msg00056.html

Legal advice (work in progress)
============

- I’ve sought and got from a former SPI lawyer a first legal advice on
the relationships among trademark law and the procedures of a Free
Software distro like Debian when distributing software subject to
trademarks. I’m still waiting to seek a second advice from the current
SPI lawyers (whom I’ve been keeping busy with other stuff). In the
meantime I’ve pending a summary of what I’ve got thus far in the
trademark-vs-DFSG thread [12]. Stay tuned there!

- I’ve been working with SPI lawyers on a proposal of software patent
policy that I think we should advertise to make explicit the position
of the Debian Project on software patents. I see it as a
continuation/completion of the FAQ we have already published on the
subject [13]. I’ll let you know as soon as we reach a stable draft,
that should be pretty soon.

[12] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/10/msg00028.html
[13] http://www.debian.org/reports/patent-faq

Relationships with others
=========================

- I’ve been approached by members of the board of the OpenSource
Initiative (OSI), about the soon to be open OSI affiliation program.
They’d like to know if Debian is interested in being affiliated to
OSI. I think we should and I’ll eventually start a discussion on this
topic. In the meantime, I welcome feedback from anyone who is
interested in the topic.

- Thanks to the interest of Andrew Pollock, LaMont Jones, Florian Weimer
and the Security Team, we are discussing with ISC to have Debian —
as a project, rather than as individuals who just happen to maintain
ISC software in Debian — become member of all forums relevant for
software we distribute (BIND, NTP, DHCP). They are doing all the
coordination work, but I’ve anticipated I’ll be happy to pledge for
Debian membership.

- I’ve taken the first step to reach out to companies that have a
strategic interest in Debian. According to discussion I’ve had with
representative of such companies, they often face similar challenges
in offering Debian support and in contributing back to Debian. I think
we should offer a forum for them to discuss and find synergies, as
well as explain our needs to them. An official mailing list [14] might
be such a place.

Once we have a suitable forum ready, I’ll propose to the press team to
send out a corresponding call for companies. In the meantime, if you
happen to know, or even work for, companies that might be interested,
please ask them to get in touch with me.

[14] http://bugs.debian.org/650082

Miscellanea
===========

- I’ve had a chance to discuss with the editors of the SPDX
specification about its relationship with DEP-5. Thanks to the help of
Dominique Dumont work is already in progress to have a mutual
converter among the two formats. Also, although with some bumps, work
on finalizing DEP-5 has finally restarted.

- an interesting thread of a while ago is in need of some work to
produce a useful outcome, i.e. a set of security guidelines for
DDs. If you’re willing to help, have a look at [15,16]

- some more mediation-fu has been going on during November; have a look
at my daily logs below if you care about the details

[15] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/10/msg00066.html
[16] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/11/msg00073.html

Thanks for reading thus far,
and happy hacking.

PS as usual, the boring day-to-day activity log is available at

– Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o . Maître de conférences …… http://upsilon.cc/zack …… . . o Debian Project Leader ……. @zack on identi.ca ……. o o o « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »

October 2011 has indeed been a quite demanding month in DPL-land, both
in terms of the activities described in the report below and of more
ordinary day-to-day activities such as mediations and the like. See the
daily logs on for the gory
details.

Highlights
==========

New Member Process
——————

As you’ve probably read on d-d-a already [1], I’ve suggested to rename
the NM Process to “New Member” Process and the NM Front Desk has gladly
accepted (and implemented!, thanks a lot) the change. This is a
coherent step, among others announced by Enrico, with our former choice
of welcoming contributions of any kind as valid assets to become members
of our Project.

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/10/msg00004.html

UDS
—

As anticipated in the last bits mail of mine, I’ve attended the Ubuntu
Developer Summit at the end of October / beginning of November. To that
end, I’ve sent out a call for feedback [2] on the evolution of the
relationships among Debian and Ubuntu since my first UDS participation
about 1.5 years ago. On the basis of the feedback I’ve got (mostly on
list + some extras in private mail) I’ve prepared my plenary talk
“Collaboration Between Debian and Ubuntu — Four Animals Later”; slides
are available at [3] and a video should be available as well (dunno
where though). I’ve summarized the content of my talk and of the
“[Relationship with] Debian health check” session in a “bits from UDS”
mail to the -derivatives list [4].

[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/10/msg00057.html
[3] http://upsilon.cc/~zack/talks/2011/20111031-uds.pdf
[4] http://lists.debian.org/debian-derivatives/2011/11/msg00005.html

Another interesting evolution on that front is that Ubuntu is going to
deprecate their (universe) package review platform (REVU) and converge
with us on mentors.d.n. That is a great step in encouraging all
derivatives, thanks to the example of Ubuntu, to have their packages and
changes in Debian _first_. To help them out some maintenance efforts are
needed on debexpo (the software powering mentors.d.n); if you’re
interested to help on that front please manifest yourself on the
-derivatives list.

“Easy Hacks” and Google Code-In
——————————-

As a project, We’ve applied to enter the Google Code-In initiative for
2011-2012 [5]. (I’d like to hereby thank Ana, for prodding me about the
need and urgency to do so, and all the volunteer who suggested tasks.)
Sadly, we have not been retained [6]. This is unfortunate, but somehow
expected, given that we have had hard time collecting a list of simple
“tasks” that students could work on to help Debian.

As I’ve mentioned in [5], several FOSS projects have shown that having a
list of such tasks, AKA “easy hacks” by other projects, is a very
effective way of attracting contributors. I think Debian would benefit a
lot of such a list. I encourage anyone interested in augmenting the
attractiveness of Debian to new contributors to think about how to
prepare and maintain such a list. It will be useful not only for future
Google Code-In applications, but to increase our volunteer basis in
general. Show up on the soc-coordination list on Alioth if you’ve
suggestions!

[5] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/10/msg00056.html
[6] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/soc-coordination/2011-November/001137.html

Discussions
———–

I’ve started a long overdue discussion on the relationships among the
DFSG criteria and trademark restrictions [7]. This is a fairly important
discussion that I expect to become more and more relevant in the future,
as FOSS projects become more keen of defending their identities (like it
or not, that seems to be happening). Some useful pointers on the
historical spirit of DFGS has been posted in the thread, as well as
diverging opinions.

I took the action item of seeking legal advice on which trademark law
restrictions apply “by default” to our packaging activities. I’ll get
back to you on this point ASAP (we’re keeping the pipe of our friendly
neighborhood lawyers quite full, so I’m looking for alternative
venues). In the meantime, your opinion on this subject is highly welcome
in [7].

[7] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/10/msg00028.html

Representing Debian: talks & co
===============================

- I’ve attended the [GNU/]Linux Day (yearly country-wide event organized
by LUGs in Italy) event in Parma talking about Debian with my
“classic” talk “Debian: 18 years of Free Software, do-ocracy, and
democracy”. Slides are available at [8]

- We’ve been asked for the presence of a Debian representative at the
forthcoming Software Freedom Day Algeria, at the end of November. I
won’t be able to attend myself, but Fathi Boudra has kindly accepted
to be there and talk about Debian to foster the growth of a local
Debian community. Thanks a lot!

[8] http://upsilon.cc/~zack/talks/2011/20111021-linuxday.pdf

Expenses and other assets
=========================

Sprints
——-

I’ve been happy to authorize the use of Debian money to have a Debian
Video Team sprint [9]. At the time this report goes out, the sprint has
already happened and you will soon hear back from the organizers with a
report of their hacking week-end. I remind you all that yur can haz a
zprint az well!, just check the doc at [10].

[9] http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Videoteam/Sprint2011
[10] http://wiki.debian.org/Sprints

Hardware replacement
——————–

I’ve been happy also to authorize usage of Debian money (for ~10k€) for
two rather significant hardware replacements: those of lists.d.o (AKA
liszt) and ftp.d.o (AKA kassia). The material has already been shipped
to us and DSA is working on the setup. I’d like to thank DSA not only
for that, but also for the tireless work of collecting the needed quotes
and use at best the money we receive as generous donations.

Trademarks
———-

The new contact point for inquiries related to the Debian trademark,
“trademark@debian.org” is now up and running (I’ve already got some
inquiries there) and documented at .

Talk to you for the November report in a couple of weeks, in the
meantime: happy Debian hacking!

Cheers.

Wheezy
——

Before that, let me highlight that this is the right moment to ramp up
our efforts for Wheezy. The planned freeze date [1] is June 2012 —
only 6 months away — and there are quite a few [2] RC bugs to squash
before then. In parallel with the amazing transition tracking work done
by the release team [3], we need all of you to take care of fixing RC
bugs in both the packages you maintain and anywhere else in the archive
(via *properly done* NMUs, as documented in the Developer’s
Reference). Sharing the responsibility of releasing is the only way to
freeze Wheezy as planned, and then to deliver it up to our usual
standards.

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/06/msg00003.html
[2] http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/
[3] http://release.debian.org/transitions/

Discussions
===========

There have been quite some discussions I’d like to point your attention
to:

- On maintainers/porters responsibilities [9]. I’ve tried, with little
success TBH, to give a summary of it in [10]. The best bottom line I
can draw from it is that maintainers and porters should work together,
trying to leave traces of their interactions in bug logs. As an
extreme solution, only after everything else has been attempted and
having informed the release team, maintainers could go ahead and file
removal request for binary packages on specific architectures.

- I’ve made the “private email aliases considered harmful” point [10],
in a somehow unrelated thread. I ask you to watch out for interactions
in Debian that could happen only through private email addresses.
There are some cases where they are warranted (e.g. security or
privacy concerns), but having regular activities of a team going
through private email aliases harms us in so many ways. Please point
me to project areas that could benefit from improvements on this
front, … unless you can just go ahead and fix the issue!

- The long running discussion about the length of DPL has progressed
quite a bit; a new summary is at [12].

- I’ve proposed [13] a minimal change to the naming of the NM process,
trying to reduce confusion and at the same time being more fair with
people willing to join Debian to work on tasks other than packaging.
Final choice on this front is in the hands of Front Desk.

- Ubuntu people have been discussing their mentoring and sponsoring
procedures [14]. As there is room for many synergies with Debian in
those areas, I’ve been happy to provide some feedback and put them in
touch with active -mentors and debexpo people. Many thanks to Allison
Randal for getting me into the loop.

- Following up my exchanges with GNU Hackers, a proposal to improve the
experience of upstreams when dealing with debbugs has been posted to
-devel [19]. It is quite consensual, it just needs a wannabe debbugs
hacker to make it real!

[9] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/08/msg00685.html
[10] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/09/msg00133.html
[11] http://lists.debian.org/debian-www/2011/09/msg00062.html
[12] http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2011/09/msg00002.html
[13] http://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint/2011/09/msg00071.html
[14] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2011-September/034105.html
[19] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/09/msg00224.html

Sprints
=======

The sprint documentation [15] has been update to point to
debian-sprints@lists.d.o (the list you should contact if you want to
have a Debian sprint) instead of pointing to a bottleneck-ish DPL.
Also, we have started collecting a list of Debian-friendly venues to
have sprints at [16]; I’d appreciate if someone could go through that
page and add missing venues (for instance, the fact that Linux Hotel is
missing from that page is a bit of a shame…). Finally, I’ve prepared a
“reimbursement HOWTO” at [17]. That document needs a bit of help [18] as
well, in particular by filling in details about SPI and Debian UK
reimbursements.

Forthcoming sprints I’ve recently approved are: a video team sprint in
November, a Debian Med sprint in January, [ADD YOURS HERE].

[15] http://wiki.debian.org/Sprints
[16] http://wiki.debian.org/Sprints/Venues
[17] http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DPL/Reimbursement
[18] http://lists.debian.org/debian-sprints/2011/09/msg00004.html

Legal-ish stuff
===============

I’ve answered various questions from our lawyers in order to progress
towards a first new draft of our trademark policy. Unfortunately,
things have slowed down a bit recently and we haven’t yet a first draft
to propose. I’ll try to relaunch it for the next months. In the
meantime, we’ve setup
, that is meant to become the
contact point for Debian trademark permissions and other inquiries.

I’ve also shared with SPI the results of our internal “trademark
poll”. Everything is now also available at [19]. Thanks a lot to Robert
Brockway of the SPI board for his help on this. For what concerns
official documents and the like, I’ve shared them with SPI for long term
storage (as they are the legal owners of trademarks); DDs can access all
of it as part of the DPL archive at .

Finally, I’ve asked legal advice about a couple of topics. The first
one has been about the risks of including _specific_ DMCA-encumbered
software in the archive and they seem to be pretty severe (unless we
want to resurrect something like non-us, $god forbids!); I’m available
to proxy similar requests of legal advice when needed. The second one
has been about the legal responsibilities of ftp-masters on the content
of the archive. This is still going on, but I’m trying to ensure our
procedures put responsibilities on individual developers doing “bad
stuff” (e.g. shipping copyright-infringing material) rather than
concentrating those risks on a few people.

[19] http://www.spi-inc.org/corporate/trademarks/

Miscellanea
===========

As another news related to our interactions with GNU Hackers last month,
GNU’s debbugs instance has been opened up to project hosted on Savannah
[20]. That should potentially ease the pain of DDs that reported issues
in dealing with Savannah’s BTS. Many thanks to Paul Wise who reached out
to GNU’s debbugs maintainers on this topic.

[20] http://debbugs.gnu.org/Using.html

Delegations
===========

I’ve gladly ratified with a delegation the addition of Jan Hauke Rahm to
the NM Front Desk [4].

[4] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/09/msg00002.html

Communications and events
=========================

A while ago I’ve been interview on the subject of the amount of Debian
Derivatives and the reasons of their existence. I’ve recently published
that interview on my blog and I share it here for disclosure [5].

Looking forward, I will attend a couple of events on behalf of Debian in
October:

- on October 22nd I’ll be in Parma, Italy, for the annual “Linux Day”
event organized by LUGs all around the country [6]

- starting October 31st, I’ll be in Orlando, Florida, for the Ubuntu
Developer Summit [7], where I’ve been invited. I’d like to present
there Debian’s point of view on the evolution of Debian-Ubuntu
relationships since the last time I’ve spoken there about it [8]. To
that end I’ll need your input and I’ll send a separate call for
feedback. But if you already have thoughts to share, by all means mail
them to me!

[5] http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2011/09/why_there_are_so_many_debian_derivatives/
[6] http://parma.linux.it/news/2011/09/gnulinux-day-2011
[7] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UDS-P
[8] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2010/05/msg00084.html

Happy Debian hacking.

PS as usual, the boring day-to-day activity log is available at

Highlight: service maintenance
==============================

We’ve a lot of “services” in Debian, with a wide range of targets: users
(e.g. BTS, forums, screenshots, Q/A sites, etc), developers (e.g. PTS,
DEHS, DDPO, UDD, etc.), upstreams (e.g. patch-tracker), and many more.
The current state of service maintenance is rather disperse. While we
have DSA as a central team to maintain the infrastructure on which
Debian services run, the maintenance of services itself is scattered
among many people. That poses several problem, from duplication of work
and scattering of contact points, to the risk of services getting
unmaintained (or unmaintainable) without anybody noticing.

Starting from an idea by Enrico discussed at DebConf11, we are now
trying to streamline service maintenance, in an attempt to counter the
above problems. The first visible step has been announced by Enrico [1]
and is the creation of the debian-services-admin list [2].

If you’re maintaining some kind of service within Debian, I warmly
encourage you to join the list and followup to the introductory mail
there [3] and/or help up with the service census on the wiki [4]. Keep
in mind that many of those services are an important part of Debian
life, and that their maintenance status can make the difference among
having fun developing Debian and become frustrated because something you
need to do so is not working.

A mildly related discussion has happened on -devel [5]. The bottom line
is simple: if you’re maintaining a service which has some kind of web
interface, please ensure the page footer has links to the source and
relevant BTS page. It’s a small step but fundamental step to: 1) invite
contributions to our infrastructure (e.g. from people willing to help
Debian via sw development contributions); and 2) show that our
infrastructure is Free.

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/08/msg00005.html
[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-services-admin/
[3] http://lists.debian.org/debian-services-admin/2011/08/msg00001.html
[4] http://wiki.debian.org/Services
[5] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/08/threads.html#00394

GNU Hackers Meeting
===================

As previously announced, I’ve attended the GNU Hackers Meeting (GHM) [6]
and delivered an invited speech there. I’ve also took part in a
discussion session on the relationships among Debian and GNU, where I’ve
presented the results of my call for feedback [7] to the Debian
community on that specific topic.

I’ve just posted a report [8] about my GHM attendance to -project. You
can find there a summary of my talk, digested results of my call for
feedback, as well as notes from the discussion with GNU hackers. For the
impatient, slides of the talk are available at [9].

[6] http://www.gnu.org/ghm/2011/paris/
[7] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/06/msg00036.html
[8] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/09/msg00004.html
[9] http://upsilon.cc/~zack/talks/2011/20110826-ghm.pdf

Other Public Relations
======================

- I’ve been giving an interview for an article to appear on the “Linux
User & Developer” magazine about the history of Debian. Unfortunately
the magazine is paper only; I’ve asked, but not yet obtained, a PDF
version of the article to share with you (for transparency).

- I’ve accepted an invitation to next UDS (Ubuntu Developer Summit,
scheduled Oct 31-Nov 4), where I’d like to look back at what has
happened in the collaboration with derivatives in the past few years
(I’ll probably look for your input about this…, be prepared!).

Debian Trademark
================

With the help of SPI lawyers and of people who have worked in the past
within SPI on Debian trademark policy, I’ve started working on a draft
for a new trademark policy. The goals are roughly those put forward by
an old draft by Mako and Greg Pomerantz [10]. There is essentially no
readable draft yet, we’re at the stage where SPI lawyers are trying to
understand our needs, in order to “compile” them down to a legally valid
policy. My intention on this is to work with them in this phase and to
share an early draft on -project for comments, as soon as something more
than a bunch of vague ideas comes into existence.

During August, we’ve also received certification of registration from
the International Bureau of WIPO about our Madrid Protocol application,
that de facto extends the “DEBIAN” trademark to the Europe Union, China,
and Japan. I’ve updated our trademark page [11] to reflect this new
status (the old link on that page pointing to USPTO also reflects it
already).

Debian trademark registration will expire, if not renewed, on
20/06/2021. I’ve verified with auditors that the infrastructure they are
setting up to keep track of Debian assets will be able to notify us
before that happens.

[10] http://wiki.mako.cc/TrademarkFreedom
[11] http://www.debian.org/trademark

Formalities
===========

Colin Watson has been appointed [12] as member of the Technical
Committee. Good luck and many thanks to him for this new task!

[12] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/08/msg00004.html

Happy Debian hacking.

Highlight
=========

DebConf
——-

The main highlight for July is, of course, DebConf11 [1]. It’s been a
blast: hundreds of Debian Developers and contributors have flocked
together in Banja Luka to have fun improving Debian. If you haven’t
attended, no problem, you could catch up with what happened at DebConf11
by perusing the videos of all events [2] that the Video Team has made
available since the very end of DebConf11.

I’ve myself hosted several DPL-related events at DebConf. I list some of
there here and other further down this mail, to let you know what I’ve
been working on:

- bits from the DPL [4]: my take on the present role of Debian in the
world and what we could do to be up to it

- ask the leader [5], a session chaired by Neil McGovern where I’ve been
tortured^W interviewed for about 1 hour

- DPL wannabe BoF [6], panel discussion with several (ex-)DPLs about
what the DPL does and how you should better prepare to be the next
one! (hint, hint)

- DEX and derivatives [20]: review and discussion of a couple of years
of activities aimed at improving collaboration with derivatives

Of course, the DebConf11 events I’ll mention are not the only relevant
events of the conference, and for sure not the most interesting one. I
encourage you to have a look at the schedule [3] of the whole conference
and check the outcome of every event relevant to your Debian activities.

DebConf11 has also been the occasion to meet with Government of
Republika Srpska minister of science and technology, Bakir Ajanovic, to
discuss Free Software benefits for public administrations, as well as
how public administrations can interact with Free Software communities
such as ours.

[1] http://debconf11.debconf.org/
[2] http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2011/debconf11/
[3] http://penta.debconf.org/dc11_schedule/events.en.html
[4] http://penta.debconf.org/dc11_schedule/events/720.en.html
[5] http://penta.debconf.org/dc11_schedule/events/707.en.html
[6] http://penta.debconf.org/dc11_schedule/events/767.en.html
[20] http://penta.debconf.org/dc11_schedule/events/761.en.html

Software Patents
—————-

The other highlight for July is the first milestone of collaboration
with SFLC [7] on the topic of software patents (swpat) and their impact
on community distribution. The collaboration started one year ago, as
announced during a swpat-related event at DebConf10 [8]. The first
visible outcome is a document titled “Community Distribution Patent
Policy FAQ” [9,10,11]. With it, instead of only doing swpat risk
assessment in private (which is unfortunately the rule in the swpat
world), we have tried to provide guidelines on how to deal with swpat,
considering the specificities of non-commercial, community-driven
distribution such as Debian. The document is recommended reading for all
of us, as it both explains swpat risks and addresses some swpat
FUD. Even though we consider Debian to be a rather uninteresting target
for patent trolls and the like, I’m available to help out proxying
specific requests of legal advice through Debian/SPI lawyers, if the
need arises.

I’d like to take this chance to thank Don Armstrong, for his inputs on
this matter.

[7] http://www.softwarefreedom.org/
[8] http://penta.debconf.org/dc10_schedule/events/613.en.html
[9] http://www.debian.org/reports/patent-faq
[10] http://www.debian.org/News/2011/20110709
[11] http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2011/aug/18/debian-patent-faq/

Call for help: hardware coordination team
—————————————–

As briefly discussed on -devel, DSA is looking for help in forming a
hardware _coordination_ team, which should subsume the role of the
current hardware _donation_ contact point. Check the (sub-)thread at
[12] for a brief task description and please contact me if you are
interest in helping out with that.

[12] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/08/msg00504.html

Trademark “Fun”
===============

GNOME trademark
—————

During July, we have had even more trademark fun. As part of #607839, we
have discovered that (a strict interpretation of) the GNOME trademark
guidelines would have inhibited Debian to redistribute GNOME without
changing its name. Both myself, ftp-masters, and several members of the
GNOME board have took part in the discussion, a partial summary of which
can be found in a -project mail from ftp-masters [13]. During DebConf,
I’ve had a long phone call on the subject with Karen Sandler, in her
capacity of Executive Director of the GNOME foundation.

As a result, I’m happy to share the good news that the GNOME-specific
part of the issue is on its way to be solved. Not only the GNOME
foundation is not interested in enforcing the current policy, but they
are also aware that their current policy is too strict and are working
in improving it [14].

Debian-side, though, I agree with ftpmasters [13] that we should have a
project wide discussion on which stance we take on too restrictive
trademark policies and what interaction there is (if there is one) among
those policies and DFSG. I plan to launch that discussion on -project
and I’m working on an initial proposal; I’d appreciate if you can follow
the discussion on -project as soon as it starts and provide your input
there.

[13] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/07/msg00031.html
[14] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/07/msg00061.html

Debian trademark
—————-

Coincidentally, during July we have also advanced a bit on the front of
the Debian trademark. With the help of Jimmy Kaplowitz (in his
capacities of SPI director) and Mishi Choudhary (lawyer at SFLC), we
have completed a survey of existing Debian-related trademark and
finalized the payment (~ 3k$) for the extension of the trademark on the
“DEBIAN” name to the European Union, China, and Japan. Our trademark
page [15] is not yet up to date, but I’ll propose the needed changes
soon.

Work is also ongoing on improving our own trademark policy (also at
[15]), with the goal of making it more liberal and more compatible with
DFSG-free copyright licensing, without posing risks to our assets. This
will be covered in a future report.

[15] http://www.debian.org/trademark

Delegations
===========

To catch up with the status quo, I’ve formalized the delegation of the
backports team [16] (which was long overdue, due to delays of my own).

[16] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/07/msg00000.html

Sprints and money
=================

In the DebConf11 BoF “Sprints and Money” [17] and in an associated blog
post [18], I’ve reviewed the sprints we have had in the past 16 months
and the corresponding budgets. The bottom-line is that sprints as we do
them now are largely sustainable from the financial point of view and
that we could (and should!) have more of them. The main potential
bottleneck at present is at the organization level, thus far run by
yours truly.

I’m therefore happy to report that Neil McGovern and Steve McIntyre have
volunteered to help out with sprint organization and, to that end, have
created the debian-sprints mailing list. It is not a discussion list,
but rather the place where to drop sprint requests and receiving help in
how to have a sprint for your favorite team. Next time you want to have
a sprint, just drop a mail there! If, on the other hand, you’re willing
to help out with sprint organization, please join the list.

On the topic of money and other Debian assets, auditor initiatives are
finally taking off, as you can learn from the event “Care-taking of
Debian finances: assets and processes”, hosted by Martin & Martin
(Michlmayr & Wuertele), which I hereby thank for their work on the
subject.

[17] http://penta.debconf.org/dc11_schedule/events/766.en.html
[18] http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2011/07/16_months_of_debian_sprints/
[19] http://lists.debian.org/debian-sprints/

DebConf in Debian
=================

In the event “DebConf in Debian” [21], together with the DebConf chairs,
we have reviewed about 1 hear of activities for de-duplicating processes
and infrastructure among the DebConf team and other Debian teams.
Summarizing discussions that took place during DebConf11 itself on the
subject, we have also outlined the remaining steps ahead of us.

[21] http://penta.debconf.org/dc11_schedule/events/758.en.html

Other talks
===========

Shortly before DebConf11, I’ve given an invited talk about Debian at a
couple of events in Portugal:

- ACM OSDOC’11 [22]
- MOSS workshop [23]

slides are available [24,25]. As part of the second event, I’ve also
took part in a very interesting roundtable about relationships with
derivatives and how to better push changes upstream, together with the
technical lead of the Caixa Magica distribution.

[22] http://eurosigdoc.acm.org/osdoc2011/
[23] http://moss.dcti.iscte.pt/index.php?s_id=12
[24] http://upsilon.cc/~zack/talks/2011/20110711-osdoc.pdf
[25] http://upsilon.cc/~zack/talks/2011/20110712-moss.pdf

Stay tuned for the forthcoming August report,
Cheers.

PS as usual, the boring day-to-day activity log is available at

–
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Quando anche i santi ti voltano le spalle, | . |. I’ve fans everywhere
ti resta John Fante — V. Capossela …….| ..: |………. — C. Adams

1: http://www.debian.org/reports/patent-faq

The FAQ has been prepared by lawyers at Software Freedom Law Center [2]
(SFLC) at the request of and with input from the Debian Project. While
the document does not constitute legal advice, it provides insights on
dealing with software patents, which might be applicable to other
community-driven Free Software distributions.

2: http://www.softwarefreedom.org

The Debian Project maintains a critical stance towards software patents:
we consider software patents a threat to Free Software and we believe
they provide no advantages in promoting software innovation.

At the same time, given the ‘de facto’ possibility of patenting software
related ideas in several countries around the world, it is important for
Free Software developers and distributors to neither underestimate nor
overestimate software patent issues. “Patent FUD is a serious problem,
as is the risk of patent aggression against Free Software,” said Eben
Moglen, founding director of the Software Freedom Law Center. “SFLC is
pleased to work with Debian to help volunteers for community
distributions everywhere understand the real risks, and real solutions,
without being disheartened by fear, uncertainty, and doubt.”

We believe that the Community Distribution Patent Policy FAQ helps in
that respect and we are glad to make it available to others. “Debian, as
many other community distributions, has often had troubles in assessing
the risks of patent aggression toward volunteer developers. I’m glad and
thrilled about the opportunity we have of collaborating with SFLC to
shed some light on these matters.” said Stefano Zacchiroli, Debian
Project Leader. “We will do our best to disseminate our findings, in a
humble attempt to minimize the damages that software patents, and some
of their myths, cause every day to Free Software.”

About Debian
————
The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly free
community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of the
largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
volunteers from all over the world work together to create and maintain
Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a huge range
of computer types, Debian calls itself the “universal operating system”.

Contact Information
——————-
For further information, please visit the Debian web pages at
http://www.debian.org/ or send mail to .