Bits from Debian

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

• Sven Bartscher (kritzefitz)
• Harlan Lieberman-Berg (hlieberman)

Congratulations!

Petter Reinholdtsen recently blogged about ZFS availability in Debian. Many people have worked hard on getting ZFS support available in Debian and we would like to thank everyone involved in getting to this point and explain what ZFS in Debian means.

The landing of ZFS in the Debian archive was blocked for years due to licensing problems. Finally, the inclusion of ZFS was announced slightly more than a year ago, on April 2015 by the DPL at the time, Lucas Nussbaum who wrote "We received legal advice from Software Freedom Law Center about the inclusion of libdvdcss and ZFS in Debian, which should unblock the situation in both cases and enable us to ship them in Debian soon.". In January this year, the following DPL, Neil McGovern blogged with a lot of more details about the legal situation behind this and summarized it as "TLDR: It’s going in contrib, as a source only dkms module."

ZFS is not available exactly in Debian, since Debian is only what's included in the "main" section archive. What people really meant here is that ZFS code is now in included in "contrib" and it's available for users using DKMS.

Many people also mixed this with Ubuntu now including ZFS. However, Debian and Ubuntu are not doing the same, Ubuntu is shipping directly pre-built kernel modules, something that is considered to be a GPL violation. As the Software Freedom Conservancy wrote "while licensed under an acceptable license for Debian's Free Software Guidelines, also has a default use that can cause licensing problems for downstream Debian users".

We're excited to announce that Debian has selected 29 interns to work with us this summer: 4 in Outreachy, and 25 in the Google Summer of Code.

Here is the list of projects and the interns who will work on them:

Android SDK tools in Debian:

• Chirayu Desai
• Kai-Chung Yan
• Mouaad Aallam

APT - dpkg communications rework:

• David Kalnischkies

Continuous Integration for Debian-Med packages:

• Canberk Koç
• Tatiana Malygina

Extending the Debian Developer Horizon:

• Harsh Daftary

Improving and extending AppRecommender:

• Lucas Albuquerque Medeiros de Moura
• Luciano Prestes Cavalcanti

Improving the debsources frontend:

• Aaron Delaney

Improving voice, video and chat communication with Free Software:

• Alok Anand
• Balram P
• Jaminy Prabaharan
• Keerthana Krishnan
• Kévin Avignon
• Mateus Bellomo
• Mesut Can Gurle
• Nicolas Reynaud
• Nik Vaessen
• Olivier Grégoire
• Pranav Jain
• Simon Désaulniers
• Udit Raikwar

MIPS and MIPSEL ports improvements:

• Jonathan Jackson

Reproducible Builds for Debian and Free Software:

• ceridwen
• Satyam Zode
• Scarlett Clark
• Valerie Young

Support for KLEE in Debile:

• Marko Dimjašević

The Google Summer of Code and Outreachy programs are possible in Debian thanks to the effort of Debian developers and contributors that dedicate part of their free time to mentor students and outreach tasks.

Join us and help extend Debian! You can follow the students weekly reports on the debian-outreach mailing-list, chat with us on our IRC channel or on each project's team mailing lists.

Congratulations to all of them!

The Debian Project Leader elections finished yesterday and the winner is Mehdi Dogguy! Of a total of 1023 developers, 282 developers voted using the Condorcet method.

More information about the result is available in the Debian Project Leader Elections 2016 page.

The new term for the project leader starts today April 17th and expire on April 17th 2017.

Last year we started to push more of Debian news and information away the single news source of the DPN into other media services. Debian has been more active than ever on our many IRC channels, free software based social networks, and unofficial Twitter and Facebook feeds. Today we have decided to announce the next stage in keeping Debian at the forefront of media by sub-contracting publicity and press to an outside marketing agency.

The marketing agency (name will be disclosed soon) has provided an AI system (running entirely with free software) which will be fed with all the content of Debian mailing lists and sources.debian.net to understand the character of the Debian community and then better customize future articles, interviews, and event news.

However, some bits of personal information are also needed. Please install the "publicity" package and you'll be presented a form to fill in your data: name, surname, phone, snail mail address, place of birth, names of family members, employers or employees. Each person providing their data to the agency will receive coupon for a 20% discount in the download (purchase) of next Debian release (valid only for downloads from the official site www.debian.org).

We kindly ask every Debian community member to sign up in, at least, one of theses services: Twitter, Whatsapp, Slack or Facebook (IRC, mailing lists, and free software based RTC are allegedly not so 'cool'). Users need not be concerned with losing the features that the IRC bots provide (so long KGB!) as they will be replaced by Tay-like AI systems. The most visible change will be that MeetBot will no longer log the meetings anymore, but we have bribed an NSA employee so they pass the relevant messages to us.

"If this 'centralization, outsourcing and pay-and-forget' approach goes well with publicity, I'm considering running for DPL in 2017 to extend this model to other areas of Debian" said Laura Arjona Reina, (now) former publicity delegate.

A new logo and mascot has been designed too, as a symbol of this new era embracing the standards of branding and corporate messaging. Please consider voting in favor of it, in the General Resolution that will be proposed soon:

DebConf16 will take place in Cape Town, South Africa in July 2016. We strive to provide an intense working environment and enable good progress for Debian and for Free Software in general. We extend an invitation to everyone to join us and to support this event. As a volunteer-run non-profit conference, we depend on our sponsors.

Nine companies have already committed to sponsor DebConf16! Let's introduce them:

Our first Platinum sponsor is Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). HPE is one of the largest computer companies in the world, providing a wide range of products and services, such as servers, storage, networking, consulting and support, software, and financial services.

HPE is also a development partner of Debian, and provides hardware for port development, Debian mirrors, and other Debian services (hardware donations are listed in the Debian machines page).

Our first Gold sponsor is Valve, a company developing games, social entertainment platform, and game engine technologies.

Our second Gold sponsor is Google, the technology company specialized in Internet-related services as online advertising and search engine.

Rusbitech (developers of the Astra Linux Debian derivative), credativ (a service-oriented company focusing on open-source software and also a Debian development partner), Catalyst (a company offering IT solutions using open source software), the Bern University of Applied Sciences (with over 7,000 students enrolled, located in the Swiss capital), and Texas Instruments (the global semiconductor company) are our four Silver sponsors.

And last but not least, the open source company Univention has agreed to support us as Bronze-level.

Become a sponsor too!

Would you like to become a sponsor? Do you know of or work in a company or organization that may consider sponsorship?

Please have a look at our sponsorship brochure (or a summarized flyer), in which we outline all the details and describe the sponsor benefits.

For further details, feel free to contact us through sponsors@debconf.org, and visit the DebConf16 website at https://debconf16.debconf.org.

It's that time of year again for the Debian Project: the elections of its Project Leader!

Neil McGovern who has held the office for the last year will not be seeking reelection. Debian Developers will have to choose between voting for the only candidate running Mehdi Dogguy or None Of The Above. If None Of The Above wins the election then the election procedure is repeated, many times if necessary.

Mehdi Dogguy was a candidate for the DPL position last year, finishing second with a close amount of votes to the winner Neil McGovern.

We are in the middle of the campaigning period that will last until April 2nd. The candidate and Debian contributors are expected to engage in debates and discussions on the debian-vote mailing list.

The voting period starts on April 3rd, and during the following two weeks, Debian Developers will vote to choose the person who will guide the project for one year. The results will be published on April 17th with the term for new the project leader starting immediately that same day.

The DebConf Content team is pleased to announce the Call for Proposals for the DebConf16 conference, to be held in Cape Town, South Africa from 2 through 9 July 2016.

Submitting an Event

In order to submit an event, go to "Submit a talk" on your profile page in the DebConf16 website and describe your proposal. Please note, events are not limited to traditional presentations or informal sessions (BoFs). We welcome submissions of tutorials, performances, art installations, debates, or any other format of event that you think would be beneficial to the Debian community.

Please include a short title, suitable for a compact schedule, and an engaging description of the event. You should use the field "Notes" to provide us information such as additional speakers, scheduling restrictions, or any special requirements we should consider for your event.

Regular sessions may either be 20 or 45 minutes long (including time for questions), other kinds of sessions (like workshops) could have different durations. Please choose the most suitable duration for your event and explain any special requests.

Timeline

The first batch of accepted proposals will be announced in April. If you depend on having your proposal accepted in order to attend the conference, please submit it as soon as possible so that it can be considered during this first evaluation period.

All proposals must be submitted before Sunday 1 May 2016 to be evaluated for the official schedule.

Topics and Tracks

Though we invite proposals on any Debian or FLOSS related subject, we have some broad topics on which we encourage people to submit proposals, including:

• Debian Packaging, Policy, and Infrastructure
• Security, Safety, and Hacking
• Debian System Administration, Automation and Orchestration
• Containers and Cloud Computing with Debian
• Debian Success Stories
• Debian in the Social, Ethical, Legal, and Political Context
• Blends, Subprojects, Derivatives, and Projects using Debian
• Embedded Debian and Hardware-Level Systems

Video Coverage

Providing video of sessions amplifies DebConf achievements and is one of the conference goals. Unless speakers opt-out, official events will be streamed live over the Internet to promote remote participation. Recordings will be published later under the DebConf license, as well as presentation slides and papers whenever available.

Contact and Thanks to Sponsors

DebConf would not be possible without the generous support of all our sponsors, especially our platinum sponsor HPE. DebConf16 is still accepting sponsors; if you are interested, please get in touch!

You are welcome to contact the Content Team with any concerns about your event, or with any ideas or questions about DebConf events in general. You can reach us at content@debconf.org.

Registration Reminder

Registration for DebConf is open. Please log into the DebConf16 website and register from your profile page.

To request bursaries (sponsorship) for food, accommodation, or travel, you must be registered by Sunday, 10 April 2016.

After this date, registrations will still be accepted in any of the basic, professional, and corporate categories. However, accommodation on the campus will no longer be guaranteed, and requests for sponsorship will no longer be accepted.

Even if you are not certain you will be able to attend, we recommend registering now. You can always cancel your registration, before the deadline. We do suggest that attendees begin making travel arrangements as soon as possible, of course.

We hope to see you all in Cape Town!

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

• Otto Kekäläinen (otto)
• Dariusz Dwornikowski (darek)
• Daniel Stender (stender)
• Afif Elghraoui (afif)
• Victor Seva (vseva)
• James Cowgill (jcowgill)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

• Giovani Augusto Ferreira
• Ondřej Nový
• Jason Pleau
• Michael Robin Crusoe
• Ferenc Wágner
• Enrico Rossi
• Christian Seiler
• Daniel Echeverry
• Ilias Tsitsimpis
• James Clarke
• Luca Boccassi

Congratulations!

For the tenth time running, Debian has been selected as a mentoring organization for the Google Summer of Code (Debian-specific program page), an internship program open to university students aged 18 and up.

Our team of amazing mentors has cooked up an exciting list of projects this year, and we would be glad to have you on board with Debian for one of those summer internships. The student application period will open on March 14 (and close on March 25), but feel free to subscribe to our mailing list and get in touch with our mentors. You can also catch us on our IRC channel #debian-soc.

announce, outreachy Status: published

As part of its diversity outreach initiatives, Debian will be participating in the upcoming 12th round (May - August 2016) of Outreachy, an internship program open worldwide to women (cis and trans), trans men and genderqueer people, as well as nationals and residents of the United States of any gender who are Black/African American, Hispanic/Latin@, American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander.

Thanks to the generosity of our donors, and specifically of our sponsor Intel who has given us funds specifically for one intern, Debian will be able to welcome three interns this round.

Applications for the program are open until March 22nd, so don't wait up! Debian has a lot of interesting internship opportunities this year. More info about the program is available on the Debian specific program page, as well as on the official website. Feel free to contact the outreach team and mentors on our mailing list or IRC channel #debian-soc in irc.oftc.net

If you want Debian to keep participating in such programs, and expand its outreach efforts, you can donate to one of the organizations supporting the Debian project, or volunteer some time by participating in discussions on our mailing list.

We are very pleased to announce that Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has committed to support DebConf16 as a Platinum sponsor.

"We're excited to support Debian's annual conference which brings together Debian contributors from all around the world. In addition to our sponsorship, we will actively participate in DebConf", said Steve Geary, Senior Director at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

HPE is one of the largest computer companies in the world, providing a wide range of products and services, such as servers, storage, networking, consulting and support, software, and financial services.

HPE is also a development partner of Debian, and provides hardware for port development, Debian mirrors, and other Debian services (hardware donations are listed in the Debian machines page).

With this additional commitment as Platinum Sponsor, HPE contributes to make possible our annual conference, and directly supports the progress of Debian and Free Software helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.

Thank you very much Hewlett Packard Enterprise, for your support of DebConf16!

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf16 is still accepting sponsors. Interested companies and organizations may contact the DebConf team through sponsors@debconf.org, and visit the DebConf16 website at http://debconf16.debconf.org.

Today February 14th, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) celebrates the "I Love Free Software" day. I Love Free Software day is a day for Free Software users to appreciate and thank the contributors of their favourite software applications, projects and organisations.

We take this opportunity to say "thank you" to all the Debian upstreams and downstreams, and all the Debian developers and contributors. Thanks for your work and dedication to free software!

There are many ways to participate in this ILoveFS day and we encourage everybody to join in and celebrate. Show your love to Debian developers, contributors and teams virtually on social networks using the #ilovefs hashtag and spreading the word in your own social media circles, or by visiting the ILoveFS campaign website to find and use some of the promotional materials available such as postcards and banners.

To learn more about the FSFE, you can read their announcement of this campaign or visit their general website.

Tails (The amnesic incognito live system) is a live OS based on Debian GNU/Linux which aims at preserving the user's privacy and anonymity by using the Internet anonymously and circumventing censorship. Installed on a USB device, it is configured to leave no trace on the computer you are using unless asked explicitly.

As of today, the people the most needy for digital security are not computer experts. Being able to get started easily with a new tool is critical to its adoption, and even more in high-risk and stressful environments. That's why we wanted to make it faster, simpler, and more secure to install Tails for new users.

One of the components of Tails, the Tails Installer is now in Debian thanks to the Debian Privacy Tools Maintainers Team.

Tails Installer is a graphical tool to install or upgrade Tails on a USB stick from an ISO image. It aims at making it easier and faster to get Tails up and running.

The previous process for getting started with Tails was very complex and was problematic for less tech-savvy users. It required starting Tails three times, and copying the full ISO image onto a USB stick twice before having a fully functional Tails USB stick with persistence enabled.

This can now be done simply by installing Tails Installer in your existing Debian system, using sid, stretch or jessie-backports, plugging a USB stick and choosing if one wants to update the USB stick or to install Tails using a previously downloaded ISO image.

Tails Installer also helps Tails users to create an encrypted persistent storage for personal files and settings in the rest of the available space.

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

• Stein Magnus Jodal (jodal)
• Prach Pongpanich (prach)
• Markus Koschany (apo)
• Bernhard Schmidt (berni)
• Uwe Kleine-König (ukleinek)
• Timo Weingärtner (tiwe)
• Sebastian Andrzej Siewior (bigeasy)
• Mattia Rizzolo (mattia)
• Alexandre Viau (aviau)
• Lev Lamberov (dogsleg)
• Adam Borowski (kilobyte)
• Chris Boot (bootc)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

• Alf Gaida
• Andrew Ayer
• Marcio de Souza Oliveira
• Alexandre Detiste
• Dave Hibberd
• Andreas Boll
• Punit Agrawal
• Edward Betts
• Shih-Yuan Lee
• Ivan Udovichenko
• Andrew Kelley
• Benda Xu
• Russell Sim
• Paulo Roberto Alves de Oliveira
• Marc Fournier
• Scott Talbert
• Sergio Durigan Junior
• Guillaume Turri
• Michael Lustfield

Congratulations!

With a heavy heart Debian mourns the passing of Ian Murdock, stalwart proponent of Free Open Source Software, Father, Son, and the 'ian' in Debian.

Ian started the Debian project in August of 1993, releasing the first versions of Debian later that same year. Debian would go on to become the world's Universal Operating System, running on everything from embedded devices to the space station.

Ian's sharp focus was on creating a Distribution and community culture that did the right thing, be it ethically, or technically. Releases went out when they were ready, and the project's staunch stance on Software Freedom are the gold standards in the Free and Open Source world.

Ian's devotion to the right thing guided his work, both in Debian and in the subsequent years, always working towards the best possible future.

Ian's dream has lived on, the Debian community remains incredibly active, with thousands of developers working untold hours to bring the world a reliable and secure operating system.

The thoughts of the Debian Community are with Ian's family in this hard time.

His family has asked for privacy during this difficult time and we very much wish to respect that. Within our Debian and the larger Linux community condolences may be sent to in-memoriam-ian@debian.org where they will be kept and archived.

"Software Freedom Conservancy helps promote, improve, develop, and defend Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects. Conservancy provides a non-profit home and infrastructure for FLOSS projects.", that is how Software Freedom Conservancy defines itself. Organizations like Conservancy allow free software developers to focus on what they do the best by doing copyleft enforcement, taking care of legal aspects and provide many services to its project members.

Last August, Debian and Conservancy announced a partnership and formed the Copyright Aggregation Project where, among other things, Conservancy will be able to hold copyrights for some Debian works and ensure compliance with copyleft so that those works remain in free software.

Recently, Conservancy launched a major fundraising campaign and needs more individual supporters to gain more sustainable and independent funding. This will allow the Conservancy to continue its efforts towards convincing more companies to comply with free software licenses such as the GPL and take legal actions when dialogue turns out to be unsuccessful. Conservancy needs your support now, more than ever!

Many Debian Developers and Contributors have already become Conservancy supporters. Please consider signing up as a supporter on https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/!

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

• ChangZhuo Chen (czchen)
• Eugene Zhukov (eugene)
• Hugo Lefeuvre (hle)
• Milan Kupcevic (milan)
• Timo Weingärtner (tiwe)
• Uwe Kleine-König (ukleinek)
• Bernhard Schmidt (berni)
• Stein Magnus Jodal (jodal)
• Prach Pongpanich (prach)
• Markus Koschany (apo)
• Andy Simpkins (rattustrattus)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

• Miguel A. Colón Vélez
• Afif Elghraoui
• Bastien Roucariès
• Carsten Schoenert
• Tomasz Nitecki
• Christoph Ulrich Scholler
• Mechtilde Stehmann
• Alexandre Viau
• Daniele Tricoli
• Russell Sim
• Benda Xu
• Andrew Kelley
• Ivan Udovichenko
• Shih-Yuan Lee
• Edward Betts
• Punit Agrawal
• Andreas Boll
• Dave Hibberd
• Alexandre Detiste
• Marcio de Souza Oliveira
• Andrew Ayer
• Alf Gaida

Congratulations!

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

• Gianfranco Costamagna (locutusofborg)
• Graham Inggs (ginggs)
• Ximin Luo (infinity0)
• Christian Kastner (ckk)
• Tianon Gravi (tianon)
• Iain R. Learmonth (irl)
• Laura Arjona Reina (larjona)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

• Senthil Kumaran
• Riley Baird
• Robie Basak
• Alex Muntada
• Johan Van de Wauw
• Benjamin Barenblat
• Paul Novotny
• Jose Luis Rivero
• Chris Knadle
• Lennart Weller

Congratulations!

Sorry for posting so late, we're very busy at DebConf15!

Happy 22nd birthday Debian!