Fri, 16 Apr 2010
DPL vote
The DPL vote is over. I did not win, apparently. Let me start off by thanking the other candidates for running, and congratulating Stefano for winning.
My own results aren't too bad; I beat 'none of the above' by a comfortable margin of almost 10 to 1, and ended up defeating Charles Plessy by a slightly smaller margin. My margin to NOTA was far better than during the previous DPL election that I participated in, though I did end up defeating more than half of the other candidates back then, which I didn't this time around. All in all, not enough to win, but enough to conclude that I might have a chance some other time. Margarita and Stefano were just better candidates this time around.
My own vote was:
[ 2 ] Stefano Zacchiroli [ 1 ] Wouter Verhelst [ 4 ] Charles Plessy [ 2 ] Margarita Manterola [ 3 ] NOTA
If you run, you have to be serious about running, and support yourself. So I did. After that, I wasn't sure that Stefano would do a better job than Margarita (or vice versa), so I put them at the same spot. Finally, I became convinced during campaigning that Charles has a lot to learn still about what lives in the Debian community, and I am of the opinion that feeling the community is a vital requirement for a DPL; so that ruled him out.
So why did I not win? Obviously because there were better candidates in the election, but the real question is: why is that the case? What did I do, or what did other candidates do, that meant they fared better than I? One possibility was given on IRC:
< svuorela> ol: and "I'm running because no other runs" is also not a good way to get votes ...
Which is fair enough; but I did run with the intention of winning, and I did try to make that clear. I'm hoping that worked out okay, which would imply that there could be other reasons. I'd like to know about those. So if you voted, and did not place me on the top spot, I'd very much appreciate learning about your motivations for doing so—especially so if you were one of the 39 people who would rather have redone the vote than see me win. Comments on this blog post are welcome, or by private e-mail if you'd rather not see them made public.
Wed, 18 Nov 2009
Debian @ FOSDEM '10
As I do every year, this year too I asked for a devroom and a booth at the yearly FOSDEM meeting in Brussels, Belgium.
We've been granted a booth. We've not been granted a devroom.
This is not because the organizers hate Debian, but because the organizers wish to organize things slightly differently this year. As a matter of fact, they've not granted a devroom to any distribution project.
Does that mean we can't hold talks at FOSDEM? Certainly not.
Instead of a bunch of distribution devrooms, there will be a 'distribution miniconf' that the Debian distribution has been invited in. What wasn't clear from the initial mail (at least not to me), however, was that talk proposals can already be sent in.
If you want to hold a talk about a Debian-specific subject, you should subscribe to the relevant FOSDEM mailinglist, and send your proposal there. However, do note that since it will not be a Debian-specific event anymore, that while the talk may be about something related to Debian, it should target people who may be involved with other distributions. The goal is to learn from eachother.
With that out of the way, I guess the booth will gain on importance this year, since there will not be any other Debian-specific bits anymore. As such, if people would like to come up with suggestions on what to do with it, that would be greatly appreciated. These should probably go to debian-events-eu@lists.d.o.
See you at FOSDEM,
Mon, 13 Apr 2009
Not voted
So apparently Steve got re-elected this year. Congrats, also to Luk; and to Zack, who didn't do too bad.
Careful readers may notice that, for the first time since early 2001 when I achieved Debian Developer status, I did not exercise my right to vote. This was not because I didn't care about the vote, but because if I were to vote honestly, I would've done something like '11-', which has mostly the same effect as not voting. The candidates this year were both equal in my opinion, so I just didn't bother.
Tue, 31 Mar 2009
Debconf9 by train
This friday, I had to go to a customer whose office is close to the Brussels South station. As I went back, I missed the train to Mechelen by a few minutes, and had to wait about 20 minutes (IIRC) for the next one.
So rather than sitting there, doing nothing and twiddling my thumbs, I thought I'd go to the ticketing office and ask about prices.
Since trains can only be booked about three months in advance to the actual trip, now is still too early to get a definite price. However, I asked for an estimate, and they were kind enough to get me one.
Looks like a one-way ticket from Belgium to Madrid is going to be €150ish. Of course that doesn't get me to Caceres yet, but since I'll need to get from Madrid to Caceres whether I go there by train or not, that isn't going to make a real difference.
I'm sure it's going to be cheaper if I book a flight with the likes of Ryanair or some such, of course, but €300 isn't too much of an inconvenience; and taking a train rather than a flight is much more appealing to me. So that's what I'll do.
Wed, 14 Jan 2009
FOSDEM Devroom schedule
I just mailed the schedule for the FOSDEM '09 Debian Devroom to the -events-eu mailinglist.
Also note that Bdale Garbee will be doing a Debian keynote talk on saturday morning.
Mon, 12 Jan 2009
Hackergochi 'meme'
Christian, you forgot my (not so) recent hackergochi redo :-)
Anyway, the picture I took of you back in Argentina isn't great hackergochi material; it cuts off part of your chin and the top of your head, which will get you a very very ugly hackergochi if you try to use it. Trust me—been there, done that. In addition, it's very likely that you like the picture because of the somewhat dark background, even if only subconsciously; by turning it into a hackergochi, you cut out that background, so the appeal of the picture gets lost somewhat.
Since you won't be at FOSDEM, I can't offer to take another picture of you. And since the picture you refer to is mostly great because of the lighting (which will no doubt be completely different, it freezing right now over here and everything) and the lens I used (which wasn't mine, but belonged to someone else; I just borrowed it for a few hours), I seriously doubt that I'll be able to get a picture that's in any way similar to the one you seem to like so much.
Having said that, taking a good hackergochi picture isn't too hard; just think of a few basic things while taking it. If you're not happy with any of the pictures you already have, then take a new one! The following might help you with that:
- You'll need a halfway decent camera. Webcams probably won't do, but your el cheapo digital camera will likely cut it.
- Good lighting. Try to use sunlight if at all possible; at any rate, try to avoid the use of a flash (except if you have one of those extremely expensive flashes that will simulate sunlight, but you probably don't).
- Turn yourself so that the sun casts some interesting shadows. Do not move at a 90-degree angle, because such long shadows are not interesting anymore; Something like 45-degree would probably be nice. At any rate, make sure the sun is not in the background of the picture, unless you want to see a black hackergochi.
- Frame the picture well. The more pixels you have for your head, the better. Make sure your head and neck fill as much as possible of the picture's frame, but do not zoom in too much—you do not want to have any part of your head and/or neck even touch the edge of the frame.
- Find a bland background. Something monochromatic is the best; think 'bluescreen'. Make sure you get a wall that is not near the colortones of human flesh.
After that, just cut out the head and add a dropshadow. Even if you're not very familiar with The Gimp, that shouldn't take you a very long time; andn The Gimp is fun enough to play with anyway. Hints: Look for 'scissors select'; the dropshadow is in 'filters' -> 'light and shadow' -> 'dropshadow'
Good luck :-)
Sun, 11 Jan 2009
FOSDEM 2009: Debian talk schedule almost ready
Lessons learned: using the phrase third, final, and slightly desperate is an excellent way to motivate people into reacting to your Call for Talks. I've even had to reject some people now, unfortunately.
Maybe next year, I'll use that phrase in my first call for talks.
Then again, maybe not.
Anyway, of course that does mean that there are no slots available anymore. If you wanted to hold a talk in the Debian devroom, you've had plenty of opportunity and will now have to wait until next year.
There are still some minor loose ends that need to be filled in (of course there are always people who will wait until the very last moment to send mails they need to send... including me), but once that's done, I'll announce the schedule on the -events-eu mailinglist, and probably here too. And if you're worried that the word 'desperate' perhaps got us some boring talks in the end, don't be; the talks that are on the schedule are, I hope, all very interesting. Watch this space!
So, things left to do, in no particular order:
- Do a schedule for talk announcers. There's enough volunteers now, I only need to assign slots.
- Come up with something cool for the booth. There's going to be T-shirts, as always, but more things are always welcome.
- Booth volunteers. Since I haven't been at the booth much during these past few FOSDEMs, and since two years ago it turned out that my 'great idea' about organising that wasn't such a great idea after all, I did the right thing and decided to delegate organising the volunteers to someone else. That someone else is Nattie; so if you want to help out at the booth, be sure to contact her.
That's it for now, I guess. Back to your regularly-scheduled flamewar.
Fri, 02 Jan 2009
Sven Luther and Debian mailinglists
A few days ago, I forwarded a mail from Sven Luther to the debian-vote and debian-project mailinglists. The reason I did so was that, apart from the last two paragraphs, the mail's tone was reasonable, polite, and did not try to rehash the old arguments. Also, and more importantly, I thought it was a useful contribution to the discussion at hand. I then received a private email in response to that forward from someone—who shall remain nameless—that expressed disapproval of this forwarding. Not because of the content (which i could understand), but because of the person whose mail I forwarded.
I am shocked beyond words that such a thing is possible. Mind you, I'm not supporting at this point that we just allow Sven back in the project; the decision to throw him out was based on solid arguments, and though I am sad that it was necessary, I do support the decision that has been made. However, I would think we would have expelled him because of the problems that resolved around his person, rather than because we didn't like his name, background, or, say, the color of his skin.
Problems can be solved. Personalities can change. Throwing a person out of the project because of interpersonal problems is one thing. Forbidding him to ever join it again is quite another.
I'm not saying we should just forget the whole thing, pretend it never happened, and move on. However, I do not think that just because the man has a history, we should ignore his useful contributions.
Although I disagree with some of the suggestions he made, I do happen to think that this particular contribution was useful, and so I forwarded it. I do disapprove of some of the things he's done, but that doesn't mean I disapprove of the person; I do believe any person deserves a minimum of respect.
Apparently some people in this project disagree with me on that, however. I'm not sure what I'll do about that, but suffice to say that I will not be part of a project that considers a person's history to be of more importance than a person's current behaviour.
Let's hope this is just the opinion of one person...
Wed, 23 Apr 2008
Planet installations
Funny how technical people always seem to search for technical solutions to social problems.
"Some people think there's too much content on Planet Debian. Let's create another Planet with less content, that will solve the issue"
Allow me to just say: "Hah"
Planet Debian is a website with a lot of content. If you read such a site, inevitably there's going to be some content you're not going to like. This is a fact of life. Reducing that content so that it no longer carries the content you personally don't like might solve the issue for you, but there's no guarantee that it will also solve the issue for everyone else. For instance, I know I don't generally like Russel's writing style, but I don't assume that's the case for everyone else. It would be silly for me to request his removal from Planet Debian for that reason alone.
If there's stuff on Planet Debian you don't like, then just don't read it. That's easy enough... and if it isn't, fix that!
Tue, 05 Feb 2008
DebPants
In Edinburgh, a Debian Tartan was created. Many people ordered kilts in that tartan; but, knowing I'd never use a kilt anyway, I didn't feel like spending too much money on that. Instead, I ordered 5 yards of the raw material, and asked my mother to make pants out of them.
They're not ready yet, but I had an initial fitting today, and it seems a perfect fit. Now I want one of these to go with it :-)
Wed, 25 Jul 2007
Fun game
- Go to nm.debian.org/maintainers.php
- Find your name in the list
- Read upwards
- Be amazed at the amount of people who apparently aren't a DD as long as you are, but whom you thought would be.
No, really.
Obviously that only works for Debian Developers. But it's still fun.
Thu, 19 Apr 2007
Etch release party in Leuven
I was informed that there's an Etch release party in Leuven, tonight. I've added it to the wiki; if you can still make it, you're welcome to join us. I'll be there, as will (hopefully) a number of other Belgian debian people.
Fri, 03 Nov 2006
FOSDEM Call For Talks for the Debian Devroom
I just (well, over an hour ago by now) sent out the Call for Talks for the Debian Devroom at the upcoming FOSDEM. If you're interested in giving a talk there, now would be a good time to let me know.
Sun, 29 Oct 2006
Sharing a Developer's room with Ubuntu at the next FOSDEM?
I've been asked whether the Debian project would agree to sharing a Devroom with the Ubuntu folks at the next FOSDEM in Brussels.
If you have an opinion on that, please reply to the mail I just sent to the debian-events-eu mailinglist about that subject.
Sat, 28 Oct 2006
Will I or won't I?
I've been looking at this for a while now:
Subject: Proposal for general resolution. From: wouter@debian.org To: debian-vote@lists.debian.org I propose a vote on the following general resolution as a position statement on an issue of the day, as described under §4.1.5 of the Debian constitution. =============Begin resolution text============ Debian has gone insane. =============End resolution text============== I am looking for seconds.
Eventually I decided that it wouldn't help, so I didn't send it. But the constant bickering has gone past mere annoyance, past being just "bothersome", past even "silly". It's pure insanity. It'd only be fair if we'd admit it.
Thu, 26 Oct 2006
US$ 6000
There's a bit of commotion around the amount of 6000 US dollars that's being paid to the RMs for a month of work; some people seem to think that this is a lot of money for one month of work.
My guess is that these people have never had to run a business.
Steve does run one; I don't know about aba.
But let's just make some calculations here, shall we? I'd make them with the US system in mind, but as I have a business in Belgium, that's kinda hard to do. So I'll make them with the Belgian system in mind instead.
- First, you have to pay VAT. On computer services, the amount of VAT in Belgium to be paid is 21%. That's roughly one-fifth, or 1200 US dollars. Had dunc-tank been a registered company (like, say, SPI) then they could get that money back. As it is, this is 1200 US dollars that goes to the government and stays there. So that's 4800 left.
- Steve has a company; I presume he rents an office somewhere. Rental prices for floorspace in office buildings is insanely expensive when compared to private apartments. 500US$ per person per month would seem to be approximately right. So, 4300 left.
- You'll be having to pay for utilities, such as phone, water, heating, electricity, Internet, and so on. In my experience, this is a few hundred each month. Say, 400? 3900 left.
- If you don't want to pay too much taxes and fines at the end of the year because you didn't fill out the right paperwork at the right time and in the right way, you'll want to pay an accountant. These people are not cheap; 300 each month (on average) would seem to be right. 3600.
- in Belgium, if you work as an "independent", you have to pay an amount of money to social security, which gives me basic health benefits. In addition to that, you pretty much have to pay an amount of money to a private institution for additional health benefits if you don't want to be left in the cold in case something happens that the basic health care doesn't cover. The amount you need to pay each quarter depends on your income; a guess could be somewhere around 500US$ each month. 3100.
- There's going to be insurance. This will involve both hardware insurance, and something to fall back on in case you make a terrible mistake and need to pay someone some compensation. The former depends on the amount of hardware your company has; the latter depends on the amount of invoices you get to write each year, i.e., the amount of money you make. I can't guess how much this is for Steve, but let's say 700? So we've got 2400 left.
And now if you want to pay yourself, you get to do the above dance all over again. You get to pay income taxes, insurance, rent or mortgage, Internet, phone, water, and whatnot. Plus food.
In addition to all of the above, I don't know how much Steve has to drive around to talk to his customers, but if that's "quite a bit", then he may be leasing a car. I don't know whether he's got an ad running somewhere to attract more customers for the months after his paid Debian work, but if he is, he may have to pay a considerable amount of money to do so. And there can be any number of things that I've forgotten to include, but for which you still need to pay.
In addition, if you want to run a business in a sane way, you need to ask a bit more than what your costs are, because there'll always be a few days that are not billable, and on which you need to live and pay expenses, too; but I could imagine that these were dropped for this particular month.
Obviously the above numbers all involve some guesswork. I've been running a business for quite a while now, but it's only recently become profitable; many of these numbers will go up when your business is profitable for a long time.
6000 is nothing. I've had customers tell me you're
cheap
five seconds after I asked nearly twice as much.
Trust me, that's no fun.
It's one of the things I've had to learn while running a business: some amounts of money that seem hugely expensive in a private capacity are next to nothing in the business world. That's just the way it works...
Finally, let me note that this is not meant to take any position one way or another in the matter. I did feel that experimenting with paying fellow developers was a good idea, but not at all costs; and certainly, I don't feel that going ahead with this by setting up something of the likes of dunc-tank is a very bright idea. I just thought it good to put some numbers into perspective.
Update: Set the numbers straight. 6000 - 1200 is 4800, not 5800. Whoops. Yes, usually I do use a calculator :)
DPL?
Little me, DPL?
Christoph Berg had a shortlist in his blog about people whom he'd like to see become DPL on the next election (which is in spring, so still quite some time). I was surprised, to asked him about it.
16:25 < Yoe> Myon: me? 16:25 < Yoe> (re: your blog post) 16:26 < Myon> why not? 16:27 < Myon> you are visible in the project, and have ideas I like 16:27 < Yoe> actually, I /have/ been pondering to send in my candidacy for at least the last three elections or so 16:27 < Yoe> I just didn't expect other people would want that 16:27 * Myon reads Yoe mind 16:28 < Yoe> heh
Of course it's a bit early to start campaigning, but then that's not at all what I'm doing here (this pushed me a bit, but the real-life issues that made me not do it last time still exist). I'm just surprised.
Fri, 13 Oct 2006
FOSDEM 2007
So it's autumn again, which means that the organization of FOSDEM is going to start its work again. I haven't been doing much in the central organization; however, I have been organizing the Debian presence there since 2004.
This year, organizing FOSDEM will have an extra interesting
edge, since they had a rather dramatic disc failure on their webserver
and no backups, meaning, they'll have to build a new website. Apparently
they chose to use Drupal (a project which occasionally was started by
fellow Antwerp developer Dries
Buytaert) rather than reinstalling their homebrewn CMS again.
Anyway. A few weeks back I sent an SMS to the guy who did the Devrooms on FOSDEM side last year, asking whether I could get one for Debian this year, seen how their site was down and that they might've lost my contact information. Yesterday, I received a reply that he wanted an email instead. Fair enough, so I did that immediately. Haven't received a reply or an acknowledgement yet, though; that may not have been unexpected.
In any case, I updated the website, which should be enough for now. Let's see what happens.
Fri, 03 Mar 2006
Scientific studies on Open Source
It's strange, but ever since I have been a Debian Developer, people start assuming I'll be interested in any random study. They'll put up a web page (which often doesn't even validate), and then start asking strange questions that have no link with reality whatsoever.
On the one hand, I have better things to do than to cooperate with
random studies from people I've never heard of before and probably never
will hear of again. On the other hand, only by understanding will people
see the light, and only by cooperating with such studies will one help
people understand. But seeing the same mistakes over and over again is
annoying me. So, here's Wouter's HOWTO perform a study on Open
Source or Free Software (and get away with it without annoying
people)
- Make sure you tell people up-front how much time your questionnaire will take. It's annoying as hell to see that after pressing 'submit', there's a second page which is at least as long as the previous one. And a third. And a fourth. Especially if you didn't plan for that, and have to leave soonishly.
- If your questionnaire contains multiple pages, don't break the back button. One questionnaire I participated in did this, resulting in me going back to change the answer to a question, and then suddenly finding that I couldn't go to the final page anymore, because the system thought I was submitting that page.
- If you have multiple choice questions, make sure the answers make
sense. Having a question like
Where do you use Linux?
with possible answersat home
,at work
andat school
is nice, but not if you can not choose more than one of them at the same time. - Additionally for those of you doing multiple choice: make sure you have at least one open question, so that people can leave feedback about things they consider you left out. You're free to ignore that feedback in the final results of your study, but it may help you in better understanding the FLOSS movement.
- If English is not your native language, find someone who is very fluent in English and have them check it out. This is important because if your question is unclear, I might give you the wrong answer—which will make the results of your study rather worthless.
- Test your questionnaire on someone else before you ask hordes and hordes of FLOSS developers to fill it out, especially if you're not too familiar with the FLOSS movement yourself. FLOSS is very popular these days, it must be possible to find someone in your vicinity who's working with it, or who at least has a feel for how the community works. Their feedback may help in avoiding questions that are based on incorrect assumptions, and/or get out little things you didn't see yourself first.
- Do not mail people in private, but instead ask people in public about filling out the questionnaire. Remember the "Open" in "Open Source".
- Finally, be sure to explain what the study is trying to discover, what is going to happen with its findings, and where I can read the results when they're there. Not that I want to see the results of any possible study I participate in, but one never knows—I might be interested.
The best way to do this is to either have all questions on one giant page, or (if that makes it too long) test-drive your questionnaire with a chronometer nearby.
That's the most important bits, I guess. I'll probably add more in
the future, if I see more things that annoy me. But for the time being,
if you break three or more of the above rules, don't expect me to
participate—I have better things to do with my time than to help
every undergraduate on this planet with his or her study
Mon, 16 Jan 2006
On flames.
What's worse?
Making an honest mistake, making fun of someone making an honest mistake, or making a silly fuss about someone making fun of someone making an honest mistake?
The answer to that one is left as an exercise to the reader.
Wed, 24 Aug 2005
Biella's chapter six
I just finished reading the 70-odd pages of chapter six of (now Dr.) Biella Coleman's dissertation (what a word), a chapter which handles (mainly) about the Debian project.
It took me quite a few hours to do this, mainly because English is not my native language, and parts of the text go outside of the technical area in which I feel comfortable, mainly due to the fact that I've been involved with Debian for quite a while now; but also because the text is, at times, consisting of the (IMO) rather complex language that is typical of scientific texts.
Anyway, I must say I'm impressed. Not only has she very well understood and explained the internal culture in the Debian project; she also, and this surprised me, managed to explain things about our internal culture that even I—who's been part of this project for over four years now—had not understood myself; and the idea that crises such as the one around the Vancouver prospectus are necessary if painful, certainly holds some merit.
She certainly has a far better view on the general picture than I guess most of us can ever hope to have. Errors in the document, if any, will be in the little details -- such as the one in the final paragraph on page 20, which indirectly claims that our project secretary (the person who runs our votes) is either a team or a delegate. But those are details, and allowing those to throw a shadow over her accomplishment would be nitpicking.
Again, I'm impressed at her level of understanding; but then again, I guess that's what being an anthropologist is all about. I can only urge you to read it, if you haven't already.
Meantime, I'll consider adopting Yaarr as my nickname. Then again, maybe not.
