Bits from Debian

Today, Sunday 5 August 2018, the annual Debian Developers and Contributors Conference came to a close. With over 306 people attending from all over the world, and 137 events including 100 talks, 25 discussion sessions or BoFs, 5 workshops and 7 other activities, DebConf18 has been hailed as a success.

Highlights included DebCamp with more than 90 participants, the Open Day, where events of interest to a broader audience were offered, plenaries like the traditional Bits from the DPL, a Questions and Answers session with Minister Audrey Tang, a panel discussion about "Ignoring negativity" with Bdale Garbee, Chris Lamb, Enrico Zini and Steve McIntyre, the talk "That's a free software issue!!" given by Molly de Blanc and Karen Sandler, lightning talks and live demos and the announcement of next year's DebConf (DebConf19 in Curitiba, Brazil).

The schedule has been updated every day, including 27 ad-hoc new activities, planned by attendees during the whole conference.

For those not able to attend, most talks and sessions were recorded and live streamed, and videos are being made available at the Debian meetings archive website. Many sessions also facilitated remote participation via IRC or a collaborative text document.

The DebConf18 website will remain active for archive purposes, and will continue to offer links to the presentations and videos of talks and events.

Next year, DebConf19 will be held in Curitiba, Brazil, from 21 July to 28 July, 2019. It will be the second DebConf held in Brazil (first one was DebConf4 in Porto Alegre. For the days before DebConf the local organisers will again set up DebCamp (13 July – 19 July), a session for some intense work on improving the distribution, and organise the Open Day on 20 July 2019, open to the general public.

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the DebConf Code of Conduct and the Debian Code of Conduct for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf18, particularly our Platinum Sponsor Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

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.

About DebConf

DebConf is the Debian Project's developer conference. In addition to a full schedule of technical, social and policy talks, DebConf provides an opportunity for developers, contributors and other interested people to meet in person and work together more closely. It has taken place annually since 2000 in locations as varied as Scotland, Argentina, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. More information about DebConf is available from https://debconf.org/.

About Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is an industry-leading technology company providing a comprehensive portfolio of products such as integrated systems, servers, storage, networking and software. The company offers consulting, operational support, financial services, and complete solutions for many different industries: mobile and IoT, data & analytics and the manufacturing or public sectors among others.

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

Contact Information

For further information, please visit the DebConf18 web page at https://debconf18.debconf.org/ or send mail to press@debian.org.

DebConf18 is taking place in Hsinchu, Taiwan, from July 29th to August 5th, 2018. It is the first Debian Annual Conference in Asia, with over 300 attendees and major advances for Debian and for Free Software in general.

Thirty-two companies have committed to sponsor DebConf18! With a warm "thank you", we'd like to introduce them to you.

Our Platinum sponsor is Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). HPE is an industry-leading technology company providing a comprehensive portfolio of products such as integrated systems, servers, storage, networking and software. The company offers consulting, operational support, financial services, and complete solutions for many different industries: mobile and IoT, data & analytics and the manufacturing or public sectors among others.

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

We have four Gold sponsors:

• Google, a technology company specialized in Internet-related services as online advertising and search engine,
• Infomaniak, Switzerland's largest web-hosting company, also offering live-streaming and video on demand services,
• Collabora, which offers a comprehensive range of services to help its clients to navigate the ever-evolving world of Open Source, and
• Microsoft, the American multinational technology company developing, licensing and selling computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers and related services.

As Silver sponsors we have credativ (a service-oriented company focusing on open-source software and also a Debian development partner), Gandi (a French company providing domain name registration, web hosting, and related services), Skymizer (a Taiwanese company focused on compiler and virtual machine technology), Civil Infrastructure Platform, (a collaborative project hosted by the Linux Foundation, establishing an open source “base layer” of industrial grade software), Brandorr Group, (a company that develops, deploys and manages new or existing infrastructure in the cloud for customers of all sizes), 3CX, (a software-based, open standards IP PBX that offers complete unified communications), Free Software Initiative Japan, (a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting Free Software growth and development), Texas Instruments (the global semiconductor company), the Bern University of Applied Sciences (with over 6,800 students enrolled, located in the Swiss capital), ARM, (a multinational semiconductor and software design company, designers of the ARM processors), Ubuntu, (the Operating System delivered by Canonical), Cumulus Networks, (a company building web-scale networks using innovative, open networking technology), Roche, (a major international pharmaceutical provider and research company dedicated to personalized healthcare) and Hudson-Trading, (a company researching and developing automated trading algorithms using advanced mathematical techniques).

ISG.EE, Univention Private Internet Access, Logilab, Dropbox and IBM are our Bronze sponsors.

And finally, SLAT (Software Liberty Association of Taiwan), The Linux foundation, deepin, Altus Metrum, Evolix, BerryNet and Purism are our supporter sponsors.

Thanks to all our sponsors for their support! Their contributions made possible that a large number of Debian contributors from all over the globe work together, help and learn from each other in DebConf18.

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

• Andre Bianchi
• Simon Quigley
• Andrius Merkys
• Tong Sun
• James Lu
• Raphaël Halimi
• Paul Seyfert
• Dustin Kirkland
• Yanhao Mo
• Paride Legovini

Congratulations!

Application managers are needed to help contributors get their Debian Developer accounts. See the call from New Member Front Desk for details.

DebConf18, the 19th annual Debian Conference, is taking place in Hsinchu, Taiwan from July 29th to August 5th, 2018.

Debian contributors from all over the world have come together at National Chiao Tung University, Microelectronics and Information Research Center (NCTU MIRC) during the preceding week for DebCamp (focused on individual work and team sprints for in-person collaboration developing Debian), and the Open Day on July 28th (with presentations and workshops of interest to a wide audience).

Today the main conference starts with over 300 attendants and 118 activities scheduled, including 45- and 20-minute talks and team meetings, workshops, a job fair, talks from invited speakers, as well as a variety of other events.

The full schedule at https://debconf18.debconf.org/schedule/ is updated every day, including activities planned ad-hoc by attendees during the whole conference.

If you want to engage remotely, you can follow the video streaming available from the DebConf18 website of the events happening in the three talk rooms: Yushan (玉山) (the main auditorium), Xueshan (雪山), and Zhongyangjianshan (中央尖山), or join the conversation about what is happening in the talk rooms: #debconf18-y, #debconf18-x and #debconf18-z (all those channels in the OFTC IRC network).

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the DebConf Code of Conduct and the Debian Code of Conduct for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf18, particularly our Platinum Sponsor Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

We are very pleased to announce that Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has committed to support DebConf18 as a Platinum sponsor.

"Hewlett Packard Enterprise is excited to support Debian's annual developer conference for the third consecutive year," said Steve Geary, Senior Director R&D, Advanced Software Development, Hewlett Packard Labs. "The Debian community and open distribution are true innovation enablers for our Memory-Driven Computing work and products all across HPE."

HPE is an industry-leading technology company providing a comprehensive portfolio of products such as integrated systems, servers, storage, networking and software. The company offers consulting, operational support, financial services, and complete solutions for many different industries: mobile and IoT, data & analytics and the manufacturing or public sectors among others.

HPE is also a development partner of Debian, and providing 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 DebConf18!

DebConf, the annual conference for Debian contributors and users interested in improving the Debian operating system, will be held in National Chiao Tung University, Microelectronics and Information Research Center (NCTU MIRC) in Hsinchu, Taiwan, from July 29th to August 5th, 2018. The conference is preceded by DebCamp, July 21th to July 27th, and the DebConf18 Open Day on July 28th.

Debian is an operating system consisting entirely of free and open source software, and is known for its adherence to the Unix and Free Software philosophies and for its extensiveness. Thousands of volunteers from all over the world work together to create and maintain Debian software, and more than 400 are expected to attend DebConf18 to meet in person and work together more closely.

The conference features presentations and workshops, and video streams are made available in real-time and archived.

The DebConf18 Open Day, Saturday, July 28, is open to the public with events of interest to a wide audience.

The detailed schedule of the Open Day's events include, among others:

• Questions and Answers Session with Minister Audrey Tang,
• Debian Meets Smart City Applications with SZ Lin
• a Debian Packaging Workshop,
• panel discussion: Story of Debian contributors around the world,
• sessions in English or Chinese about different aspects of the Debian project and community, and other free software projects like LibreOffice, Clonezilla and DRBL, LXDE/LXQt desktops, EzGo...

Everyone is welcome to attend, attendance is free, and it is a great possibility for interested users to meet the Debian community.

The full schedule for Open Day's events and the rest of the conference is at https://debconf18.debconf.org/schedule and the video streaming will be available at the DebConf18 website

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the DebConf Code of Conduct and the Debian Code of Conduct for more details on this.

Debian thanks the numerous sponsors for their commitment to DebConf18, particularly its Platinum Sponsor Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the Bureau of Foreign Trade, Ministry of Economic Affairs via the MEET TAIWAN program, and its venue sponsors, the National Chiao Tung University 國立交通大學 and the National Center for High-performance Computing 國家高速網路與計算中心.

For media contacts, please contact DebConf organization: 林上智 (SZ Lin), Cell: 0911-162297

Three members of the Debian Perl team met in Hamburg between May 16 and May 20 2018 as part of the Mini-DebConf Hamburg to continue perl development work for Buster and to work on QA tasks across our 3500+ packages.

The participants had a good time and met other Debian friends. The sprint was productive:

• 21 bugs were filed or worked on, many uploads were accepted.
• The transition to Perl 5.28 was prepared, and versioned provides were again worked on.
• Several cleanup tasks were performed, especially around the move from Alioth to Salsa in documentation, website, and wiki.
• For src:perl, autopkgtests were enabled, and work on Versioned Provides has been resumed.

The full report was posted to the relevant Debian mailing lists.

The participants would like to thank the Mini-DebConf Hamburg organizers for providing the framework for our sprint, and all donors to the Debian project who helped to cover a large part of our expenses.

This is the official call for artwork proposals for the Buster cycle.

For the most up to date details, please refer to the wiki.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank Juliette Taka Belin for doing the Softwaves theme for stretch.

The deadlines for submissions is: 2018-09-05

The artwork is usually picked based on which themes look the most:

• ''Debian'': admittedly not the most defined concept, since everyone has their own take on what Debian means to them.
• ''plausible to integrate without patching core software'': as much as we love some of the insanely hot looking themes, some would require heavy GTK+ theming and patching GDM/GNOME.
• ''clean / well designed'': without becoming something that gets annoying to look at a year down the road. Examples of good themes include Joy, Lines and Softwaves.

If you'd like more information, please use the Debian Desktop mailing list.

We're excited to announce that Debian has selected twenty-six interns to work with us during the next months: one person for Outreachy, and twenty-five for the Google Summer of Code.

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

A calendar database of social events and conferences

• Doğukan Çelik

Android SDK Tools in Debian

• Saif Abdul Cassim (GSoC 2018 Android SDK tools in Debian)
• Chandramouli Rajagopalan (Packaging and Updating Android SDK Tools)
• Umang Parmar (Android SDK Tools in Debian)

Automatic builds with clang using OBS

• Athos Ribeiro

Automatic Packages for Everything

• Alexandre Viau

Click To Dial Popup Window for the Linux Desktop

• Diellza Shabani
• Sanjay Prajapat
• Vishal Gupta

Design and implementation of a Debian SSO solution

• Birger Schacht

EasyGnuPG Improvements

• Divesh Uttamchandani

Extracting data from PDF invoices and bills for financial accounting

• Harshit Joshi

Firefox and Thunderbird plugin for free software habits

• Enkelena Haxhija

GUI app for EasyGnuPG

• Yugesh Ajit Kothari

Improving Distro Tracker to better support Debian teams

• Arthur Del Esposte

Kanban Board for Debian Bug Tracker and CalDAV servers

• Chikirou Massiwayne

OwnMailbox Improvements

• Georgios Pipilis

P2P Network Boot with BitTorrent

• Shreyansh Khajanchi

PGP Clean Room Live CD

• Jacob Adams

Port Kali Packages to Debian

• Samuel Henrique

Quality assurance for biological applications inside Debian

• Liubov Chuprikova

Reverse Engineering Radiator Bluetooth Thermovalves

• Sergio Alberti

Virtual LTSP Server

• Deepanshu Gajbhiye

Wizard/GUI helping students/interns apply and get started

• Elena Gjevukaj
• Minkush Jain
• Shashank Kumar

Congratulations and welcome to all of them!

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

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

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

• Andreas Boll (aboll)
• Dominik George (natureshadow)
• Julien Puydt (jpuydt)
• Sergio Durigan Junior (sergiodj)
• Robie Basak (rbasak)
• Elena Grandi (valhalla)
• Peter Pentchev (roam)
• Samuel Henrique (samueloph)

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

• Andy Li
• Alexandre Rossi
• David Mohammed
• Tim Lunn
• Rebecca Natalie Palmer
• Andrea Bolognani
• Toke Høiland-Jørgensen
• Gabriel F. T. Gomes
• Bjorn Anders Dolk
• Geoffroy Youri Berret
• Dmitry Eremin-Solenikov

Congratulations!

If you intend to apply for a DebConf18 bursary and have not yet done so, please proceed as soon as possible!

Bursary applications for DebConf18 will be accepted until April 13th at 23:59 UTC. Applications submitted after this deadline will not be considered.

You can apply for a bursary when you register for the conference.

Remember that giving a talk or organising an event is considered towards your bursary; if you have a submission to make, submit it even if it is only sketched-out. You will be able to detail it later. DebCamp plans can be entered in the usual Sprints page at the Debian wiki.

Please make sure to double-check your accommodation choices (dates and venue). Details about accommodation arrangements can be found on the wiki.

See you in Hsinchu!

The last editions of DebConf, the annual Debian conference, have been in unalike places like Heidelberg (Germany), Cape Town (South Africa) and Montreal (Canada). Next summer DebConf18 will happen in Hsinchu (Taiwan) and the location for DebConf19 is already decided: Curitiba (Brazil). During all these years an idea has been floating in the air (aka the Debian IRC channels) about organising a DebConf in a cruise. Today, the Debian Project is happy to announce that a group of Debian contributors have teamed-up to propose an actual bid for DebConf20 in a cruise.

The Cruise Team is confident about their ability to provide a detailed and strong bid by the end of the year. However, a brief plan and preparation is already done: the conference would happen in July and August 2020, during a trip around the world in a "rolling conference" scheme. This means that Debian contributors could choose when to arrive and leave by embarking/disembarking in one of the harbours the boat will stop. A DebCamp focused in sprinting the development of Debian blends and an "Open Day" with install parties under the sea and other interesting activities for the wide public is also planned.

There will be a sprint to discuss the bid details during DebConf18 in Hsinchu. The team has also initiated conversations with several cruise ship companies and satellite network providers in order to explore the possible venues and connectivity options for the conference. Interested parties can contact press@debian.org to join the Cruise Team in the preparation of the future conference.

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

• Alexandre Mestiashvili (mestia)
• Tomasz Rybak (serpent)
• Louis-Philippe Véronneau (pollo)

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

• Teus Benschop
• Kyle John Robbertze
• Maarten van Gompel
• Dennis van Dok
• Innocent De Marchi
• David Rabel

Congratulations!

Debian won Linux Journal's Readers' Choice Award for Best Linux Distribution.

Thank you for all your support!

The DebConf Content team would like to call for proposals in the DebConf18 conference, which will take place in Hsinchu, Taiwan, from 29 July to 5 August 2018.

You can find this Call for Proposals, in its latest form at: https://debconf18.debconf.org/cfp/.

Please refer to this URL for updates on the present information.

Suggesting a Speaker

The content team has a (limited) number of spots for invited speakers and is open to suggestions. Priority will be given to speakers who are not regular DebConf attendees, and who are more likely to bring diverse viewpoints to the conference.

Please keep in mind that some speakers may have very busy schedules and need to be booked far in advance. Therefore, we would like to start inviting speakers as soon as possible.

In order to suggest a speaker, please email content@debconf.org; your email should provide the following information:

• The speaker's preferred name
• Their location (for travel budget considerations)
• Their affiliation (institution and/or project)
• The suggested talk topic
• Brief biography (50-100 words) as it relates to the suggested topic
• The topic's relevance to Debian and/or DebConf

Please, note that the Code of Conduct applies to invited speakers and their talks, and coming to DebConf (incl. accepting an invitation) requires them to accept it.

Submitting an Event

You can now submit an event proposal. 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 of interest to the Debian community.

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

While we cannot offer travel funding for all speakers, DebConf has various bursaries for attendees, including a diversity one, and having your event accepted is something that is taken into account.

You will need to create an account on the site, to submit a talk. We suggest that Debian account holders (including DDs and DMs) to use Debian SSO when creating an account. However, this isn’t required, as you can sign up with an e-mail address and password.

Timeline

If you depend on having your proposal accepted in order to attend the conference, please submit it in a timely fashion so that it can be considered (and potentially accepted) as soon as possible.

All proposals must be submitted before Sunday 17 June 2018 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 but not limited to:

• Blends
• Cloud and containers
• Debian in Science
• Embedded
• Packaging, policy and infrastructure
• Security
• Social context
• Systems administration, automation and orchestration

You are welcome to either suggest more tracks, or to become a coordinator for any of them; please refer to the Content Tracks wiki page for more information on that.

Code of Conduct

Our event is covered by a Code of Conduct designed to ensure everyone’s safety and comfort. The code applies to all attendees, including speakers and the content of their presentations. Do not hesitate to contact us at content@debconf.org if you have any questions or are unsure about certain content you’d like to present.

Video Coverage

Providing video is one of the conference goals, as it makes the content accessible to a wider audience. Unless speakers opt-out, scheduled talks may be streamed live over the Internet to promote remote participation, and recordings will be published later under the DebConf license (MIT/Expat), as well as presentation slides and papers whenever available.

Closing note

DebConf18 is still accepting sponsors; if you are interested, or think you know of others who would be willing to help, please get in touch!

In case of any questions, or if you wanted to bounce some ideas off us first, please do not hesitate to reach out to the content team at content@debconf.org.

We hope to see you in Hsinchu!

The DebConf team

We'd like to welcome our three Outreachy interns for this round, lasting from December 2017 to March 2018.

Juliana Oliveira is working on reproducible builds for Debian and free software.

Kira Obrezkova is working on bringing open-source mobile technologies to a new level with Debian (Osmocom).

Renata D'Avila is working on a calendar database of social events and conferences for free software developers.

Congratulations, Juliana, Kira and Renata!

From the official website: Outreachy provides three-month internships for people from groups traditionally underrepresented in tech. Interns work remotely with mentors from Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) communities on projects ranging from programming, user experience, documentation, illustration and graphical design, to data science.

The Outreachy programme is possible in Debian thanks to the efforts of Debian developers and contributors who dedicate their free time to mentor students and outreach tasks, and the Software Freedom Conservancy's administrative support, as well as the continued support of Debian's donors, who provide funding for the internships.

Debian will also participate this summer in the next round for Outreachy, and is currently applying as mentoring organisation for the Google Summer of Code 2018 programme. Have a look at the projects wiki page and contact the Debian Outreach Team mailing list to join as a mentor or welcome applicants into the Outreachy or GSoC programme.

Join us and help extend Debian!

Debian is applying as a mentoring organization for the Google Summer of Code 2018, an internship program open to university students aged 18 and up.

Debian already has a wide range of projects listed but it is not too late to add more or to improve the existing proposals. Google will start reviewing the ideas page over the next two weeks and students will start looking at it in mid-February.

Please join us and help extending Debian! You can consider listing a potential project for interns or listing your name as a possible co-mentor for one of the existing projects on Debian's Google Summer of Code wiki page.

At this stage, mentors are not obliged to commit to accepting an intern but it is important for potential mentors to be listed to get the process started. You will have the opportunity to review student applications in March and April and give the administrators a definite decision if you wish to proceed in early April.

Mentors, co-mentors and other volunteers can follow an intern through the entire process or simply volunteer for one phase of the program, such as helping recruit students in a local university or helping test the work completed by a student at the end of the summer.

Participating in GSoC has many benefits for Debian and the wider free software community. If you have questions, please come and ask us on IRC #debian-outreach or the debian-outreach mailing list.

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

• Ben Armstrong (synrg)
• Frédéric Bonnard (frediz)
• Jerome Charaoui (lavamind)
• Michael Jeanson (mjeanson)
• Jim Meyering (meyering)
• Christopher Knadle (krait)

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

• Chris West
• Mark Lee Garrett
• Pierre-Elliott Bécue
• Sebastian Humenda
• Stefan Schörghofer
• Stephen Gelman
• Georg Faerber
• Nico Schlömer

Congratulations!

Debsources is a web application for publishing, browsing and searching an unpacked Debian source mirror on the Web. With Debsources, all the source code of every Debian release is available in https://sources.debian.org, both via an HTML user interface and a JSON API.

This service was first offered in 2013 with the sources.debian.net instance, which was kindly hosted by IRILL, and is now becoming official under sources.debian.org, hosted on the Debian infrastructure.

This new instance offers all the features of the old one (an updater that runs four times a day, various plugins to count lines of code or measure the size of packages, and sub-apps to show lists of patches and copyright files), plus integration with other Debian services such as codesearch.debian.net and the PTS.

The Debsources Team has taken the opportunity of this move of Debsources onto the Debian infrastructure to officially announce the service. Read their message as well as the Debsources documentation page for more details.

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

• Allison Randal (wendar)
• Carsten Schoenert (tijuca)
• Jeremy Bicha (jbicha)
• Luca Boccassi (bluca)
• Michael Hudson-Doyle (mwhudson)
• Elana Hashman (ehashman)

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

• Ervin Hegedüs
• Tom Marble
• Lukas Schwaighofer
• Philippe Thierry

Congratulations!