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Longtime Slashdot reader BeaverCleaver shares a report from the BBC: The wreckage of a Pan American Airways plane has been found 74 years after it plunged into the Atlantic Ocean in a crash that prompted mandatory airline safety briefings. The Clipper Endeavor was found 2,000ft (610m) below sea level off the coast of Puerto Rico with a sonar-equipped drone. It went down on April 11, 1952, following multiple-engine failure shortly after take-off. Everyone onboard survived the impact -- but passengers struggled to locate life vests and rafts as the plane rapidly sank. Of the 69 passengers and crew onboard, just 17 survived. The disaster led to sweeping reforms in aviation safety, including compulsory pre-flight safety briefings on every commercial flight. [...] Today, before every commercial flight, cabin crew are required to outline where a plane's exits are, as well as the location of life vests and how to inflate them.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Most Linux teams don't struggle to find vulnerabilities anymore. They struggle to decide which ones deserve attention first. Between daily scanner results, vendor advisories, and hundreds of new CVEs each month, the challenge isn't visibility—it's prioritization.

When Felipe first emailed us about the GUADEC 2026 travel grant, we were thrilled to learn that we were going to have the opportunity to attend the conference in person.

This was my first GUADEC, and it was a pleasure to meet the GNOME community and put faces to names. The conference was held in A Coruña, Spain, which turned out to be an amazing city with great food, friendly people, and beautiful views along the coast.

Community

The first thing I would like to mention was how patient and open the community was to both my fiancée Laureen and me. We knew going into the conference that we were much more junior than many of the developers attending, but everyone was incredibly approachable.

I received a great deal of help debugging issues in my local development environment, as well as guidance on some of the more difficult parts of my GSoC project.

Talks

The talks were very informative and I took way too many notes to include them all here without turning this into a novel. That said, I wanted to write a short summary of a couple of talks that I found interesting:

Varlink for System Components

Sebastian Wick gave a talk about modernizing the system component stack. His proposed idea for allowing more memory safety and zero cost abstractions was to write components in Rust, however this introduces the issue of introspection. For asynchronous functionality, Tokio and Glib both have main loops, and moving data between the loops can introduce a lot of overhead. GObject bindings can also make Rust's memory safety essentially moot.

Sebastian spoke about potentially not using GObject in some cases, and instead exposing more functionality over IPC using Varlink. Varlink is language agnostic, and services could be consumed from many languages without requiring GObject bindings. This process also would be very simple, allowing signals to occur as JSON strings that are easily observable. This would require some new crates to replace Glib functionality, and some more complicated functionality like file thrashing and sftp could be particularly difficult.

It is early, the ecosystem is still being built, but Sebastian argued that usage patterns will evolve and getting involved now will help shape the future of GNOME and Rust.

Using GTK in C++ with Peel

Sergey Bugaev hosted a workshop on using GTK from C++ with Peel. Peel is a library that allows you to use GTK in C++ to make GTK applications and widgets. Sergey made a simple widget that can draw using stylus input, and he walked us through the process of creating a simple application using Peel. The workshop was very informative.

I really regret not coding his example myself, I wish a recording of the lecture had been taken. That said, his repo can be found at https://gitlab.gnome.org/bugaevc/peel and his readme has instructions for usage and a basic code example.

Debugging with Tracy

Ivan Molodetskikh gave a talk that seemed really handy to me about using Tracy to profile performance for Mutter, GNOME shell, and applications. I had never heard of Tracy before this talk, however the capabilities seemed very handy. Tracy visualizes "zones" on a timeline, allowing you to see exactly where execution time is being spent across threads. The Tracy zones must nest correctly, where parent zones cannot end before their child zones. It can also show where threads are waiting. This allows for a very clear visualization of where time is being spent in the application, and can help identify bottlenecks or bugs.

The major downside to Tracy is that it requires a lot of setup, and the application must be compiled with the Tracy client library. Ivan gave a fairly in-depth breakdown of how to add Tracy profiling to an application, and I will go back to the recording of his talk to actually implement it in the future.

Technical Take Aways for My Project

• Sergey Bugaev helped me get the GIR generation for my C API working correctly. We also improved the FFI by exposing PitiviTimelineRuler directly in the public header rather than accepting a generic GtkWidget* and performing a runtime type check. This makes the API more type-safe and simplifies the Rust implementation. The GIR generation currently works after calling gtk::init() from pitivi_timeline_ruler_get_type(), but Sergey pointed out that this approach will likely fail in CI because the generated scanner shouldn't require GTK to be initialized this way. I'm still trying to build a solid mental model of how GIR generation and introspection work, so if anyone has experience with bindings, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

• Federico also spent some time reviewing my project with me. He suggested refactoring PitiviTimelineRuler so all of the mutable drawing state lives inside a single RefCell rather than several individual ones, I think the result would look something like this:

#[derive(Default)] struct DrawingState { cache: BTreeMap<...>, font: Option<...>, handler_id: Option<...>, } #[derive(Properties)] #[properties(wrapper_type = super::MyWidget)] pub struct MyWidget { #[property(get, set)] zoom_level: Cell<u64>, state: RefCell<DrawingState>, } Thanks to GNOME Foundation

I want to give a special thanks to the GNOME Foundation for granting us the travel grant to attend GUADEC 2026. It was a wonderful experience and I look forward to attending future conferences in person!

A full-resolution album of these photos is available under CC BY 4.0 for anyone in the GNOME community to reuse. https://www.flickr.com/photos/204880226@N08/albums/72177720334807665/

"General Motors has been pulling a Tim Cook and boosting its software and subscription business," reports Business Insider. During the automaker's Tuesday earnings call, executives said they're increasingly leaning on software subscriptions like OnStar and Super Cruise to generate high-margin recurring revenue long after customers buy their vehicles. GM says OnStar brought in about $800 million in the second quarter, while Super Cruise revenue grew about 70% year over year. From the report: GM says its software business keeps roughly 70 cents of every dollar it brings in. That's a rare level of profitability in the auto industry, as many car sales generate just four to 10 cents per sales dollar. [...] GM expects to add about 1 million OnStar subscribers this year, bringing the total close to 13 million. Super Cruise, GM's hands-free, eyes-on driving system, is growing even faster. GM added about 70,000 subscribers during the quarter and expects to end the year with more than 850,000. Revenue from the service increased about 70% from a year earlier. And a lot of drivers are sticking around after the free period ends. GM said between 30% and 40% of eligible owners continue paying after their included three-year Super Cruise subscription expires. [..] "We do think we have tremendous levers, multiple levers of growth," Barra said on the call. "We definitely think there's a lot of opportunity at GM to grow, improve margins, and become less cyclical." "Software and services are becoming increasingly important to how customers experience GM vehicles and how we deliver value beyond the initial purchase," a spokesperson previously told Business Insider. "As vehicles become more software-defined, we can introduce new digital experiences through updates and optional services rather than hardware changes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Code found in the iOS 27 beta suggests Apple is developing a system that could restrict leased iPhones when customers fall behind on payments. The discovery follows a recent Bloomberg report that Apple may soon launch a new "Apple Upgrade" leasing program, allowing customers to pay for hardware through monthly installments. 9to5Mac reports: The code describes a system called App Managed Features, which allows an authorized financing or provider app to enroll an iPhone and perform ongoing status checks. If the contract is no longer in good standing, Apple's system services can place the iPhone in "Restricted Mode," which blocks access to most apps until the payment or contract issue is resolved, while keeping a small set of apps available. The fixed allowlist currently found in the iOS 27 beta includes: Accessibility Reader, App Store, Health, Magnifier, Phone, Clock, Settings, Wallet, Passwords, and the Restricted Mode interface itself. Apps that can send critical alerts, such as Messages, Home, and certain medication or safety apps, may also remain accessible. However, the provider appears to have some control over those exceptions. The code does not appear to cancel, suspend, or otherwise modify App Store subscriptions associated with blocked apps. As a result, a subscription could continue billing even while access to its app is restricted. Additionally, there isn't a fixed number of missed payments that automatically triggers the restrictions. The financing provider's app decides when to lock the device based on its own policies. Finally, the new framework also introduces a new type of activation lock called "Partner Finance Lock," which is meant to prevent users from erasing, reselling, or stripping a restricted device for parts.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• Up early, sync with Stephan, Pranam, Laser, all-hands call, snatched lunch, Collabora quarterly mgmt meeting.
• Published the next strip: An interview with Maurice: digging into organizations
• Pleased to see FLOSS Weekly Episode 879: Collabora published - great to chat with Jonathan.
• More quarterly management meeting until late. Poked at a potential child setup thread delay in COOL at the same time. J. cleared shed and garage in the evening for final sealing coat.

Ancient Slashdot reader alanw shares a post from the OSS Security mailing list, where sysadmin Jan Schaumann wonders what to do after the Linux kernel cranked out 432 CVEs in a little over 24 hours: "I understand the position that CVEs were always a flawed way to track or prioritize security changes... But this onslaught really shows it's not feasible to attempt to prioritize individual kernel changes. I'm not sure what to do here going forward." The Register reports: The nixCraft team speculated on social media that AI bug reports are a likely reason for all those kernel CVEs, which wouldn't be without precedent - Linus Torvalds himself said in May that the Linux kernel security mailing list had become "almost entirely unmanageable" due to AI-assisted bug hunting. Nonetheless, Torvalds has described AI as a useful tool for Linux development while still noting it can be a drag for maintainers, both from a workload standpoint and the fact "it keeps finding embarrassing bugs." [...] Unfortunately for Linux sysadmins, the position in which they find themselves in this current mess isn't one that's readily solved. CVEs might be a messy way to track and prioritize security updates, especially when hundreds of them are published over a short period, but without something better, it falls to IT and security teams to determine which vulnerabilities affect their systems and which kernel updates they need to deploy. Senior kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman replied to Jan's post, pushing back on the idea that the kernel's CVE volume is uniquely unmanageable. The kernel isn't special, he argues -- companies everywhere are finally realizing they need to re-evaluate how they update all of their systems and devices, something that's traditionally been "woefully ignored." On the "just always update" approach, Greg says that's precisely what the kernel community endorses: "This is what the kernel developer community recommends and supports. If you want support from us, do this." Can't manage it yourself? Pay a company for support, or "just use Debian or Yocto as their security practices are amazing." He points to Android as proof the approach scales, calling it "the largest deployment of software in the world" -- billions of devices kept updated "with one very-overworked developer guiding it all." As for reviewing every CVE individually, he notes this can be largely automated by intersecting the files a CVE touches with the files you actually build, which typically trims the relevant set "down to about 10% of the overall total" -- the approach enterprise distros already take for their customers. Panic-mode selective patching gets a blunt "Good luck with that!" -- regulations like the EU's Cyber Resilience Act are set to legislate that habit away ("rightfully so," in his view), and "your insurance company might wish to have a talk with you as well." Greg also warns the flood isn't over: "The number of llm-found issues is only on the rise right now, it's going to be a very long 18 months at the least to dig ourselves out of this mess, and people had BETTER be updating their systems all along the way if they expect to be secure in any way." As for the 432-CVE burst itself, he explains it was simply him catching up on a weeks-old, publicly visible review queue over the weekend -- delayed by "a perfect storm of 6 weeks straight of conferences and vacations" -- so it shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone watching the public git repo.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is reportedly launching a Klarna financing deal that will let U.S. customers spread the cost of devices over up to three years, pushing the company closer to a hardware-as-a-service model. "The only thing you don't get under the new arrangement is AppleCare, for which you'll allegedly need to pay extra," notes Computerworld. From the report: The introduction of the scheme gives consumers a way to purchase the company's popular high-end devices when they are introduced -- no doubt,at higher cost -- this fall. [...] A combination of changed customer habits and external threat means the stars are now aligned for hardware-as-a-service models. "Reframing a device as a low monthly payment protects that [upgrade] cadence and allows Apple to start marketing their products as device-as-a-service to consumers, which no other vendor was ever able to do," [IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo] wrote to me. There is a one-more-thing aspect to this: the products are effectively being leased, a new approach that will give Apple a stronger grip on EOL devices, helping it grab more of them for refurbishment, resale, and recycling. Over time, this will give the company a much stronger grip on the lucrative second-user market that exists around Apple equipment, even while for almost every consumer product we find the life we want is something we can rent, but probably can't afford to own. The other solid reason to take a partnership approach is risk management. Apple had intended to develop its own buy-now, pay-later scheme via Apple Pay Later, but abandoned that plan as it became riskier with rising bank rates. "Also, by backing the program with Klarna rather than reviving the in-house subscription plan it shelved in 2024, Apple captures the demand upside without taking the credit risk onto its own balance sheet," Jeronimo said. "Apple Upgrade lands at precisely the moment Apple needs it," Jeronimo wrote in a note seen by Computerworld. "Having just pushed Mac and iPad prices up on the back of the memory shortage, with iPhone increases widely expected in September -- as well as the new iPhone foldable expected at $2,500 -- Apple's real risk is that rising prices even further can impact the upgrade cycle."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A little over a month after the Department of Defense (DOD) bragged that nearly half of its 3.5 million employees were using AI at work, members of the Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) received an email informing them that they were burning through tokens, and needed to limit use. "Although the Army CIO announced in May 2026 that they were offering unlimited tokens, by mid-June the Army CIO pool was exhausted of tokens and had to re-establish limits," the email reads. The email goes on to say that although the Army has chosen to renew token usage at "its current levels," it's unclear "if the Army CIO pool will be renewed after 1 Oct." The Army uses Ask Sage, a multimodal generative AI platform where users can run different large language models (LLMs), including Alphabet's Gemini, Meta's Llama, and OpenAI's ChatGPT. "Apparently the whole Army burned through the whole year of tokens for just one service," says an Army employee who spoke to WIRED [...]. The Army employee says that the Army has been pushing its workers to lean into using generative AI. Employees were given an allotment of at least 200,000 tokens per month, according to emails viewed by WIRED, and were automatically allocated more if they burned through their initial allotment. Employees who had signed up for Ask Sage but were not regularly using it would receive emails encouraging them to use more of their allocated tokens. In order to use Ask Sage, the Army had access to 100,000,000 tokens as part of an annual subscription to an "enterprise pack." Tokens represent a unit of output, either in text or image, from an LLM. For the Ask Sage tool, a single token equates to about 3.7 characters, according to documents viewed by WIRED. The Defense Department burned through some 20 billion tokens per day during the 38-day Operation Epic Fury in Iran, according to Breaking Defense. It's unclear if the tokens used by regular DOD employees are drawn from the same pool as those who might be using AI tools on classified or secret information.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has announced Xbox Backward Compatibility for PC, a new preservation program that will let players run select classic Xbox games on Windows PCs and handhelds like the ROG Xbox Ally. Tom's Hardware reports: "This marks the beginning of a broader effort to preserve XBOX games from the past and bring them to PC over time," the company said in a blog post authored by Xbox "VP next generation" Jason Ronald. Alongside backward compatibility, the company says games will also include new features. The four titles in the announcement are: BLiNX: The Time Sweeper; Conker: Live and Reloaded; Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge; and Fuzion Frenzy. You can now buy all of these games on PC, and they're also included in all Xbox Game Pass plans. Anyone who already owns these titles digitally on console can also now play them on PC or handheld, with support for Xbox Play Anywhere and Xbox Cloud Gaming. Crucially, this appears to be a digital-only preservation effort, so it won't help anyone who only owns physical copies of these games. Xbox has reportedly been testing a way to digitize physical games as far back as Xbox One, but that hasn't yet materialized yet. Alongside the preserved original gameplay, Xbox claims these games will let users customize graphics settings, with up to 4x resolution scaling, VSync support, Fullscreen and Windowed modes, anisotropic filtering, and enhanced anti-aliasing, with more features to come in the future. Notably, Xbox will add achievements to select original Xbox games on console and PC.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At a Galaxy Unpacked event in London today, Samsung unveiled a new foldable smartphone designed to compete with the still-unannounced iPhone Fold. Called the Galaxy Z Fold 8, it features a wider 4:3 form factor with a 7.6-inch inner AMOLED display, Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chip, up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. "The inner display has enough extra real estate for multi-tasking and entertainment," reports Mashable, which got a chance to try the new foldable ahead of the event. "And if you're worried about a crease in the middle of the display, don't be. We got up close with the device, and the crease fully disappears when the display is activated." From the report: As stated above, the main distinguishing factor of the new Z Fold 8 is its wider 4:3 proportions compared to the Z Fold 8 Ultra. If the latter is a book-style foldable, the former can almost be called a tablet-style foldable, instead. We think the wide screen will serve even better for reading books or multi-tasking with several apps open at once. Also, at 201g, Samsung is really emphasizing how light the device is. The company is calling it the "world's lightest fold ever." And while the device may be light, its no lightweight. Samsung's newest foldable features Flex Titanium technology, which makes the Galaxy Z Fold 8 more durable. Speaking of durability, it also boasts Samsung's advantage hinge technology, Armor Flexhinge. The Z Fold 8 feels like a solid middle point between the premium Z Fold 8 Ultra and the comparatively affordable Z Flip 8. All three phones use the same chip, but the Z Fold 8's 4,800mAh battery is smaller than that of the Z Fold 8 Ultra. However, the Z Fold 8 does have an option for 16GB RAM and 1TB of storage, similar to the Ultra.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Each release of Debian has a shiny new theme, which is visible on the boot screen, the login screen and, most prominently, on the desktop wallpaper. Debian plans to release Trixie, the next release, next year. As ever, we need your help in creating its theme! You have the opportunity to design a theme that will inspire thousands of people while working in their Debian systems.

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 Emerald theme for bookworm.

The deadlines for submissions is: 2024-09-19

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, Softwaves and futurePrototype.

If you'd like more information or details, please post to the Debian Desktop mailing list.

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

• Patrick Winnertz (winnie)
• Fabian Gruenbichler (fabiang)

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

• Juri Grabowski
• Tobias Heider
• Jean Charles Delépine
• Guilherme Puida Moreira
• Antoine Le Gonidec
• Arthur Barbosa Diniz

Congratulations!

Hi,

Keeping my promise for monthly bits, here's a quick snapshot of my first ten days as DPL.

Special thanks to Jonathan for an insightful introduction that left less room for questions. His introduction covered my first tasks like expense approval and CTTE member appointments thoroughly. Although I made a visible oversight by forgetting to exclude Simon McVittie <smcv> from the list, whose term has ended , I'm committed to learning from this mistake. In future I'll prioritize thorough proofreading to ensure accuracy.

Part of my "work" was learning what channels I need to subscribe and adjust my .procmailrc and .muttrc took some time.

Recently I had my first press interview. I had to answer a couple of prepared questions for Business IT News. It seems journalists are always on the lookout for unique angles. When asked if humility is a new trait for DPLs, my response would be a resounding "No." In my experience, humility is a common quality among DPLs I've encountered, including Jonathan.

One of my top priorities is reaching out to all our dedicated and appointed teams, including those managing critical infrastructure. I've begun with the CTTE, Salsa Admins and Debian Snapshot. Everything appears to be in order with the CTTE team. I'm waiting for response from Salsa and Snapshot, which is fine given the recent contact.

I was pointed out to the fact that lintian is in an unfortunate state as Axel Beckert confirmed on the lintian maintainers list. It turns out that bug #1069745 of magics-python should not have been undetected for a long time if lintian bug #677078 would have been fixed. It seems obvious to me that lintian needs more work to fulfill its role as reliably policy checker to ensure our high level of packaging quality.

In any case thanks a lot to Axel who is doing his best but it seems urgent to me to find some more person-power for this task. Any volunteer to lend some helping hand in the lintian maintainers team?

On 2024-04-30 I gave my first talk "Bits from greenhorn DPL" online at MiniDebConf Brasil in Belo Horizonte. The Q&A afterwards stired some flavours of the question: "What can Debian Brasil do better?" My answer was always in a way: Given your great activity in now organising the fifth MiniDebConf you are doing pretty well and I have no additional hints for the moment.

Kind regards Andreas.

We are very excited to announce that Debian has selected seven contributors to work under mentorship on a variety of projects with us during the Google Summer of Code.

Here are the list of the projects, students, and details of the tasks to be performed.

Project: Android SDK Tools in Debian

• Student: anuragxone

Deliverables of the project: Make the entire Android toolchain, Android Target Platform Framework, and SDK tools available in the Debian archives.

Project: Benchmarking Parallel Performance of Numerical MPI Packages

• Student: Nikolaos

Deliverables of the project: Deliver an automated method for Debian maintainers to test selected numerical Debian packages for their parallel performance in clusters, in particular to catch performance regressions from updates, and to verify expected performance gains, such as Amdahl’s and Gufstafson’s law, from increased cluster resources.

Project: Debian MobCom

• Student: Nathan D

Deliverables of the project: Update the outdated mobile packages and recreate aged packages due to new dependencies. Bring in more mobile communication tools by adding about 5 new packages.

Project: Improve support of the Rust coreutils in Debian

• Student: Sreehari Prasad TM

Deliverables of the project: Make uutils behave more like GNU’s coreutils by improving compatibility with GNU coreutils test suit.

Project: Improve support of the Rust findutils in Debian

• Student: hanbings

Deliverables of the project: A safer and more performant implementation of the GNU suite's xargs, find, locate and updatedb tools in rust.

Project: Expanding ROCm support within Debian and derivatives

• Student: xuantengh

Deliverables of the project: Building, packaging, and uploading missing ROCm software into Debian repositories, starting with simple tools and progressing to high-level applications like PyTorch, with the final deliverables comprising a series of ROCm packages meeting community quality assurance standards.

Project: procps: Development of System Monitoring, Statistics and Information Tools in Rust

• Student: Krysztal Huang

Deliverables of the project: Improve the usability of the entire Rust-based implementation of the procps utility on Linux.

Congratulations and welcome to all the contributors!

The Google Summer of Code program is possible in Debian thanks to the efforts of Debian Developers and Debian Contributors that dedicate part of their free time to mentor contributors and outreach tasks.

Join us and help extend Debian! You can follow the contributors' weekly reports on the [debian-outreach mailing-list][debian-outreach-ml], chat with us on our [IRC channel][debian-outreach-irc] or reach out to the individual projects' team mailing lists.

[debian-outreach-ml]: http://lists.debian.org/debian-outreach/ (debian-outreach AT lists.debian.org) [debian-outreach-irc]: irc://irc.debian.org/debian-outreach (#debian-outreach on irc.debian.org)

We are pleased to announce that Infomaniak has committed to sponsor DebConf24 as a Platinum Sponsor.

Infomaniak is an independent cloud service provider recognised throughout Europe for its commitment to privacy, the local economy and the environment. Recording growth of 18% in 2023, the company is developing a suite of online collaborative tools and cloud hosting, streaming, marketing and events solutions.

Infomaniak uses exclusively renewable energy, builds its own data centers and develops its solutions in Switzerland at the heart of Europe, without relocating. The company powers the website of the Belgian radio and TV service (RTBF) and provides streaming for more than 3,000 TV and radio stations in Europe.

With this commitment as Platinum Sponsor, Infomaniak is contributing to the Debian annual Developers' conference, directly supporting the progress of Debian and Free Software. Infomaniak contributes to strengthen the community that collaborates on Debian projects from all around the world throughout all of the year.

Thank you very much, Infomaniak, for your support of DebConf24!

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf24 will take place from 28th July to 4th August 2024 in Busan, South Korea, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from 21st to 27th July 2024.

DebConf24 is accepting sponsors! Interested companies and organizations should contact the DebConf team through sponsors@debconf.org, or viisit the DebConf24 website at https://debconf24.debconf.org/sponsors/become-a-sponsor/.

The voting period for the Debian Project Leader election has ended. Please join us in congratulating Andreas Tille as the new Debian Project Leader.

The new term for the project leader started on 2024-04-21.

369 of 1,010 Debian Developers voted using the Condorcet method.

More information about the results of the voting are available on the Debian Project Leader Elections 2024 page.

Many thanks all of our Developers for voting.

The Debian Project Developers will shortly vote for a new Debian Project Leader known as the DPL.

The Project Leader is the official representative of The Debian Project tasked with managing the overall project, its vision, direction, and finances.

The DPL is also responsible for the selection of Delegates, defining areas of responsibility within the project, the coordination of Developers, and making decisions required for the project.

Our outgoing and present DPL Jonathan Carter served 4 terms, from 2020 through 2024. Jonathan shared his last Bits from the DPL post to Debian recently and his hopes for the future of Debian.

Recently, we sat with the two present candidates for the DPL position asking questions to find out who they really are in a series of interviews about their platforms, visions for Debian, lives, and even their favorite text editors. The interviews were conducted by disaster2life (Yashraj Moghe) and made available from video and audio transcriptions:

• Andreas Tille [this document]
• Sruthi Chandran [Interview]

Voting for the position starts on April 6, 2024.

Editors' note: This is our official return to Debian interviews, readers should stay tuned for more upcoming interviews with Developers and other important figures in Debian as part of our "Meet your Debian Developer" series. We used the following tools and services: Turboscribe.ai for the transcription from the audio and video files, IRC: Oftc.net for communication, Jitsi meet for interviews, and Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) for editing and video. While we encountered many technical difficulties in the return to this process, we are still able and proud to present the transcripts of the interviews edited only in a few areas for readability.

2024 Debian Project Leader Candidate: Andrea Tille

Andreas' Interview

Who are you? Tell us a little about yourself.

[Andreas]:

How am I? Well, I'm, as I wrote in my platform, I'm a proud grandfather doing a lot of free software stuff, doing a lot of sports, have some goals in mind which I like to do and hopefully for the best of Debian.

And How are you today?

[Andreas]:

How I'm doing today? Well, actually I have some headaches but it's fine for the interview.

So, usually I feel very good. Spring was coming here and today it's raining and I plan to do a bicycle tour tomorrow and hope that I do not get really sick but yeah, for the interview it's fine.

What do you do in Debian? Could you mention your story here?

[Andreas]:

Yeah, well, I started with Debian kind of an accident because I wanted to have some package salvaged which is called WordNet. It's a monolingual dictionary and I did not really plan to do more than maybe 10 packages or so. I had some kind of training with xTeddy which is totally unimportant, a cute teddy you can put on your desktop.

So, and then well, more or less I thought how can I make Debian attractive for my employer which is a medical institute and so on. It could make sense to package bioinformatics and medicine software and it somehow evolved in a direction I did neither expect it nor wanted to do, that I'm currently the most busy uploader in Debian, created several teams around it.

DebianMate is very well known from me. I created the Blends team to create teams and techniques around what we are doing which was Debian TIS, Debian Edu, Debian Science and so on and I also created the packaging team for R, for the statistics package R which is technically based and not topic based. All these blends are covering a certain topic and R is just needed by lots of these blends.

So, yeah, and to cope with all this I have written a script which is routing an update to manage all these uploads more or less automatically. So, I think I had one day where I uploaded 21 new packages but it's just automatically generated, right? So, it's on one day more than I ever planned to do.

What is the first thing you think of when you think of Debian?

Editors' note: The question was misunderstood as the “worst thing you think of when you think of Debian”

[Andreas]:

The worst thing I think about Debian, it's complicated. I think today on Debian board I was asked about the technical progress I want to make and in my opinion we need to standardize things inside Debian. For instance, bringing all the packages to salsa, follow some common standards, some common workflow which is extremely helpful.

As I said, if I'm that productive with my own packages we can adopt this in general, at least in most cases I think. I made a lot of good experience by the support of well-formed teams. Well-formed teams are those teams where people support each other, help each other.

For instance, how to say, I'm a physicist by profession so I'm not an IT expert. I can tell apart what works and what not but I'm not an expert in those packages. I do and the amount of packages is so high that I do not even understand all the techniques they are covering like Go, Rust and something like this.

And I also don't speak Java and I had a problem once in the middle of the night and I've sent the email to the list and was a Java problem and I woke up in the morning and it was solved. This is what I call a team. I don't call a team some common repository that is used by random people for different packages also but it's working together, don't hesitate to solve other people's problems and permit people to get active.

This is what I call a team and this is also something I observed in, it's hard to give a percentage, in a lot of other teams but we have other people who do not even understand the concept of the team. Why is working together make some advantage and this is also a tough thing. I [would] like to tackle in my term if I get elected to form solid teams using the common workflow. This is one thing.

The other thing is that we have a lot of good people in our infrastructure like FTP masters, DSA and so on. I have the feeling they have a lot of work and are working more or less on their limits, and I like to talk to them [to ask] what kind of change we could do to move that limits or move their personal health to the better side.

The DPL term lasts for a year, What would you do during that you couldn't do now?

[Andreas]:

Yeah, well this is basically what I said are my main issues. I need to admit I have no really clear imagination what kind of tasks will come to me as a DPL because all these financial issues and law issues possible and issues [that] people who are not really friendly to Debian might create. I'm afraid these things might occupy a lot of time and I can't say much about this because I simply don't know.

What are three key terms about you and your candidacy?

[Andreas]:

As I said, I like to work on standards, I’d like to make Debian try [to get it right so] that people don't get overworked, this third key point is be inviting to newcomers, to everybody who wants to come. Yeah, I also mentioned in my term this diversity issue, geographical and from gender point of view. This may be the three points I consider most important.

Preferred text editor?

[Andreas]:

Yeah, my preferred one? Ah, well, I have no preferred text editor. I'm using the Midnight Commander very frequently which has an internal editor which is convenient for small text. For other things, I usually use VI but I also use Emacs from time to time. So, no, I have not preferred text editor. Whatever works nicely for me.

What is the importance of the community in the Debian Project? How would like to see it evolving over the next few years?

[Andreas]:

Yeah, I think the community is extremely important. So, I was on a lot of DebConfs. I think it's not really 20 but 17 or 18 DebCons and I really enjoyed these events every year because I met so many friends and met so many interesting people that it's really enriching my life and those who I never met in person but have read interesting things and yeah, Debian community makes really a part of my life.

And how do you think it should evolve specifically?

[Andreas]:

Yeah, for instance, last year in Kochi, it became even clearer to me that the geographical diversity is a really strong point. Just discussing with some women from India who is afraid about not coming next year to Busan because there's a problem with Shanghai and so on. I'm not really sure how we can solve this but I think this is a problem at least I wish to tackle and yeah, this is an interesting point, the geographical diversity and I'm running the so-called mentoring of the month.

This is a small project to attract newcomers for the Debian Med team which has the focus on medical packages and I learned that we had always men applying for this and so I said, okay, I dropped the constraint of medical packages.

Any topic is fine, I teach you packaging but it must be someone who does not consider himself a man. I got only two applicants, no, actually, I got one applicant and one response which was kind of strange if I'm hunting for women or so.

I did not understand but I got one response and interestingly, it was for me one of the least expected counters. It was from Iran and I met a very nice woman, very open, very skilled and gifted and did a good job or have even lose contact today and maybe we need more actively approach groups that are underrepresented. I don't know if what's a good means which I did but at least I tried and so I try to think about these kind of things.

What part of Debian has made you smile? What part of the project has kept you going all through the years?

[Andreas]:

Well, the card game which is called Mao on the DebConf made me smile all the time. I admit I joined only two or three times even if I really love this kind of games but I was occupied by other stuff so this made me really smile. I also think the first online DebConf in 2020 made me smile because we had this kind of short video sequences and I tried to make a funny video sequence about every DebConf I attended before. This is really funny moments but yeah, it's not only smile but yeah.

One thing maybe it's totally unconnected to Debian but I learned personally something in Debian that we have a do-ocracy and you can do things which you think that are right if not going in between someone else, right? So respect everybody else but otherwise you can do so.

And in 2020 I also started to take trees which are growing widely in my garden and plant them into the woods because in our woods a lot of trees are dying and so I just do something because I can. I have the resource to do something, take the small tree and bring it into the woods because it does not harm anybody. I asked the forester if it is okay, yes, yes, okay. So everybody can do so but I think the idea to do something like this came also because of the free software idea. You have the resources, you have the computer, you can do something and you do something productive, right? And when thinking about this I think it was also my Debian work.

Meanwhile I have planted more than 3,000 trees so it's not a small number but yeah, I enjoy this.

What part of Debian would you have some criticisms for?

[Andreas]:

Yeah, it's basically the same as I said before. We need more standards to work together. I do not want to repeat this but this is what I think, yeah.

What field in Free Software generally do you think requires the most work to be put into it? What do you think is Debian's part in the field?

[Andreas]:

It's also in general, the thing is the fact that I'm maintaining packages which are usually as modern software is maintained in Git, which is fine but we have some software which is at Sourceport, we have software laying around somewhere, we have software where Debian somehow became Upstream because nobody is caring anymore and free software is very different in several things, ways and well, I in principle like freedom of choice which is the basic of all our work.

Sometimes this freedom goes in the way of productivity because everybody is free to re-implement. You asked me for the most favorite editor. In principle one really good working editor would be great to have and would work and we have maybe 500 in Debian or so, I don't know.

I could imagine if people would concentrate and say five instead of 500 editors, we could get more productive, right? But I know this will not happen, right? But I think this is one thing which goes in the way of making things smooth and productive and we could have more manpower to replace one person who's [having] children, doing some other stuff and can't continue working on something and maybe this is a problem I will not solve, definitely not, but which I see.

What do you think is Debian's part in the field?

[Andreas]:

Yeah, well, okay, we can bring together different Upstreams, so we are building some packages and have some general overview about similar things and can say, oh, you are doing this and some other person is doing more or less the same, do you want to join each other or so, but this is kind of a channel we have to our Upstreams which is probably not very successful.

It starts with code copies of some libraries which are changed a little bit, which is fine license-wise, but not so helpful for different things and so I've tried to convince those Upstreams to forward their patches to the original one, but for this and I think we could do some kind of, yeah, [find] someone who brings Upstream together or to make them stop their forking stuff, but it costs a lot of energy and we probably don't have this and it's also not realistic that we can really help with this problem.

Do you have any questions for me?

[Andreas]:

I enjoyed the interview, I enjoyed seeing you again after half a year or so. Yeah, actually I've seen you in the eating room or cheese and wine party or so, I do not remember we had to really talk together, but yeah, people around, yeah, for sure. Yeah.

The Debian Project Developers will shortly vote for a new Debian Project Leader known as the DPL.

The DPL is the official representative of representative of The Debian Project tasked with managing the overall project, its vision, direction, and finances.

The DPL is also responsible for the selection of Delegates, defining areas of responsibility within the project, the coordination of Developers, and making decisions required for the project.

Our outgoing and present DPL Jonathan Carter served 4 terms, from 2020 through 2024. Jonathan shared his last Bits from the DPL post to Debian recently and his hopes for the future of Debian.

Recently, we sat with the two present candidates for the DPL position asking questions to find out who they really are in a series of interviews about their platforms, visions for Debian, lives, and even their favorite text editors. The interviews were conducted by disaster2life (Yashraj Moghe) and made available from video and audio transcriptions:

• Andreas Tille [Interview]
• Sruthi Chandran [this document]

Voting for the position starts on April 6, 2024.

Editors' note: This is our official return to Debian interviews, readers should stay tuned for more upcoming interviews with Developers and other important figures in Debian as part of our "Meet your Debian Developer" series. We used the following tools and services: Turboscribe.ai for the transcription from the audio and video files, IRC: Oftc.net for communication, Jitsi meet for interviews, and Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) for editing and video. While we encountered many technical difficulties in the return to this process, we are still able and proud to present the transcripts of the interviews edited only in a few areas for readability.

2024 Debian Project Leader Candidate: Sruthi Chandran

Sruthi's interview

Hi Sruthi, so for the first question, who are you and could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

[Sruthi]:

I usually talk about me whenever I am talking about answering the question who am I, I usually say like I am a librarian turned free software enthusiast and a Debian Developer. So I had no technical background and I learned, I was introduced to free software through my husband and then I learned Debian packaging, and eventually I became a Debian Developer. So I always give my example to people who say I am not technically inclined, I don't have technical background so I can't contribute to free software.

So yeah, that's what I refer to myself.

For the next question, could you tell me what do you do in Debian, and could you mention your story up until here today?

[Sruthi]:

Okay, so let me start from my initial days in Debian. I started contributing to Debian, my first contribution was a Tibetan font. We went to a Tibetan place and they were saying they didn't have a font in Linux.

So that's how I started contributing. Then I moved on to Ruby packages, then I have some JavaScript and Go packages, all dependencies of GitLab. So I was involved with maintaining GitLab for some time, now I'm not very active there.

But yeah, so GitLab was the main package I was contributing to since I contributed since 2016 to maybe like 2020 or something. Later I have come [over to] packaging. Now I am part of some of the teams, delegated teams, like community team and outreach team, as well as the Debconf committee. And the biggest, I think, my activity in Debian, I would say is organizing Debconf 2023. So it was a great experience and yeah, so that's my story in Debian.

So what are three key terms about you and your candidacy?

[Sruthi]:

Okay, let me first think about it. For candidacy, I can start with diversity is one point I started expressing from the first time I contested for DPL. But to be honest, that's the main point I want to bring.

[Yashraj]:

So for diversity, if you could break down your thoughts on diversity and make them, [about] your three points including diversity.

[Sruthi]:

So in addition to, eventually when starting it was just diversity. Now I have like a bit more ideas, like community, like I want to be a leader for the Debian community. More than, I don't know, maybe people may not agree, but I would say I want to be a leader of Debian community rather than a Debian operating system.

I connect to community more and third point I would say.

The term of a DPL lasts for an year. So what do you think during, what would you try to do during that, that you can't do from your position now?

[Sruthi]:

Okay. So I, like, I am very happy with the structure of Debian and how things work in Debian. Like you can do almost a lot of things, like almost all things without being a DPL.

Whatever change you want to bring about or whatever you want to do, you can do without being a DPL. Anyone, like every DD has the same rights. Only things I feel [the] DPL has hold on are mainly the budget or the funding part, which like, that's where they do the decision making part.

And then comes like, and one advantage of DPL driving some idea is that somehow people tend to listen to that with more, like, tend to give more attention to what DPL is saying rather than a normal DD. So I wanted to, like, I have answered some of the questions on how to, how I plan to do the financial budgeting part, how I want to handle, like, and the other thing is using the extra attention that I get as a DPL, I would like to obviously start with the diversity aspect in Debian. And yeah, like, I, what I want to do is not, like, be a leader and say, like, take Debian to one direction where I want to go, but I would rather take suggestions and inputs from the whole community and go about with that.

So yes, that's what I would say.

And taking a less serious question now, what is your preferred text editor?

[Sruthi]:

Vim.

[Yashraj]:

Vim, wholeheartedly team Vim?

[Sruthi]:

Yes.

[Yashraj]:

Great. Well, this was made in Vim, all the text for this.

[Sruthi]:

So, like, since you mentioned extra data, I'll give my example, like, it's just a fun note, when I started contributing to Debian, as I mentioned, I didn't have any knowledge about free software, like Debian, and I was not used to even using Linux. So, and I didn't have experience with these text editors. So, when I started contributing, I used to do the editing part using gedit.

So, that's how I started. Eventually, I moved to Nano, and once I reached Vim, I didn't move on.

Team Vim. Next question. What, what do you think is the importance of the Debian project in the world today? And where would you like to see it in 10 years, like 10 years into the future?

[Sruthi]:

Okay. So, Debian, as we all know, is referred to as the universal operating system without, like, it is said for a reason. We have hundreds and hundreds of operating systems, like Linux, distributions based on Debian.

So, I believe Debian, like even now, Debian has good influence on the, at least on the Linux or Linux ecosystem. So, what we implement in Debian has, like, is going to affect quite a lot of, like, a very good percentage of people using Linux. So, yes.

So, I think Debian is one of the leading Linux distributions. And I think in 10 years, we should be able to reach a position, like, where we are not, like, even now, like, even these many years after having Linux, we face a lot of problems in newer and newer hardware coming up and installing on them is a big problem. Like, firmwares and all those things are getting more and more complicated.

Like, it should be getting simpler, but it's getting more and more complicated. So, I, one thing I would imagine, like, I don't know if we will ever reach there, but I would imagine that eventually with the Debian, we should be able to have some, at least a few of the hardware developers or hardware producers have Debian pre-installed and those kind of things. Like, not, like, become, I'm not saying it's all, it's also available right now.

What I'm saying is that it becomes prominent enough to be opted as, like, default distro.

What part of Debian has made you And what part of the project has kept you going all through these years?

[Sruthi]:

Okay. So, I started to contribute in 2016, and I was part of the team doing GitLab packaging, and we did have a lot of training workshops and those kind of things within India. And I was, like, I had interacted with some of the Indian DDs, but I never got, like, even through chat or mail.

I didn't have a lot of interaction with the rest of the world, DDs. And the 2019 Debconf changed my whole perspective about Debian. Before that, I wasn't, like, even, I was interested in free software.

I was doing the technical stuff and all. But after DebConf, my whole idea has been, like, my focus changed to the community. Debian community is a very welcoming, very interesting community to be with.

And so, I believe that, like, 2019 DebConf was a for me. And that kept, from 2019, my focus has been to how to support, like, how, I moved to the community part of Debian from there. Then in 2020 I became part of the community team, and, like, I started being part of other teams.

So, these, I would say, the Debian community is the one, like, aspect of Debian that keeps me whole, keeps me held on to the Debian ecosystem as a whole.

Continuing to speak about Debian, what do you think, what is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of Debian, like, the word, the community, what's the first thing?

[Sruthi]:

I think I may sound like a broken record or something.

[Yashraj]:

No, no.

[Sruthi]:

Again, I would say the Debian community, like, it's the people who makes Debian, that makes Debian special.

Like, apart from that, if I say, I would say I'm very, like, one part of Debian that makes me very happy is the, how the governing system of Debian works, the Debian constitution and all those things, like, it's a very unique thing for Debian. And, and it's like, when people say you can't work without a proper, like, establishment or even somebody deciding everything for you, it's difficult. When people say, like, we have been, Debian has been proving it for quite a long time now, that it's possible.

So, so that's one thing I believe, like, that's one unique point. And I am very proud about that.

What areas do you think Debian is failing in, how can it (that standing) be improved?

[Sruthi]:

So, I think where Debian is failing now is getting new people into Debian. Like, I don't remember, like, exactly the answer. But I remember hearing someone mention, like, the average age of a Debian Developer is, like, above 40 or 45 or something, like, exact age, I don't remember.

But it's like, Debian is getting old. Like, the people in Debian are getting old and we are not getting enough of new people into Debian. And that's very important to have people, like, new people coming up.

Otherwise, eventually, like, after a few years, nobody, like, we won't have enough people to take the project forward. So, yeah, I believe that is where we need to work on. We are doing some efforts, like, being part of GSOC or outreachy and having maybe other events, like, local events. Like, we used to have a lot of Debian packaging workshops in India. And those kind of, I think, in Brazil and all, they all have, like, local communities are doing. But we are not very successful in retaining the people who maybe come and try out things.

But we are not very good at retaining the people, like, retaining people who come. So, we need to work on those things. Right now, I don't have a solid answer for that.

But one thing, like, I was thinking about is, like, having a Debian specific outreach project, wherein the focus will be about the Debian, like, starting will be more on, like, usually what happens in GSOC and outreach is that people come, have the, do the contributions, and they go back. Like, they don't have that connection with the Debian, like, Debian community or Debian project. So, what I envision with these, the Debian outreach, the Debian specific outreach is that we have some part of the internship, like, even before starting the internship, we have some sessions and, like, with the people in Debian having, like, getting them introduced to the Debian philosophy and Debian community and Debian, how Debian works.

And those things, we focus on that. And then we move on to the technical internship parts. So, I believe this could do some good in having, like, when you have people you can connect to, you tend to stay back in a project mode.

When you feel something more than, like, right now, we have so many technical stuff to do, like, the choice for a college student is endless. So, if they want, if they stay back for something, like, maybe for Debian, I would say, we need to have them connected to the Debian project before we go into technical parts. Like, technical parts, like, there are other things as well, where they can go and do the technical part, but, like, they can come here, like, yeah.

So, that's what I was saying. Focused outreach projects is one thing. That's just one.

That's not enough. We need more of, like, more ideas to have more new people come up. And I'm very happy with, like, the DebConf thing. We tend to get more and more people from the places where we have a DebConf. Brazil is an example. After the Debconf, they have quite a good improvement on Debian contributors.

And I think in India also, it did give a good result. Like, we have more people contributing and staying back and those things. So, yeah.

So, these were the things I would say, like, we can do to improve.

For the final question, what field in free software do you, what field in free software generally do you think requires the most work to be put into it? What do you think is Debian's part in that field?

[Sruthi]:

Okay. Like, right now, what comes to my mind is the free software licenses parts. Like, we have a lot of free software licenses, and there are non-free software licenses.

But currently, I feel free software is having a big problem in enforcing these licenses. Like, there are, there may be big corporations or like some people who take up the whole, the code and may not follow the whole, for example, the GPL licenses. Like, we don't know how much of those, how much of the free softwares are used in the bigger things.

Yeah, I agree. There are a lot of corporations who are afraid to touch free software. But there would be good amount of free software, free work that converts into property, things violating the free software licenses and those things.

And we do not have the kind of like, we have SFLC, SFC, etc. But still, we do not have the ability to go behind and trace and implement the licenses. So, enforce those licenses and bring people who are violating the licenses forward and those kind of things is challenging because one thing is it takes time, like, and most importantly, money is required for the legal stuff.

And not always people who like people who make small software, or maybe big, but they may not have the kind of time and money to have these things enforced. So, that's a big challenge free software is facing, especially in our current scenario. I feel we are having those, like, we need to find ways how we can get it sorted.

I don't have an answer right now what to do. But this is a challenge I felt like and Debian's part in that. Yeah, as I said, I don't have a solution for that.

But the Debian, so DFSG and Debian sticking on to the free software licenses is a good support, I think.

So, that was the final question, Do you have anything else you want to mention for anyone watching this?

[Sruthi]:

Not really, like, I am happy, like, I think I was able to answer the questions. And yeah, I would say who is watching. I won't say like, I'm the best DPL candidate, you can't have a better one or something.

I stand for a reason. And if you believe in that, or the Debian community and Debian diversity, and those kinds of things, if you believe it, I hope you would be interested, like, you would want to vote for me. That's it.

Like, I'm not, I'll make it very clear. I'm not doing a technical leadership part here. So, those, I can't convince people who want technical leadership to vote for me.

But I would say people who connect with me, I hope they vote for me.

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