09:59:50 <highvoltage> #startmeeting
09:59:50 <MeetBot> Meeting started Fri May 10 09:59:50 2019 UTC.  The chair is highvoltage. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
09:59:50 <MeetBot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #help #info #idea #link #topic.
09:59:58 <highvoltage> #chair hartmans
09:59:58 <MeetBot> Current chairs: hartmans highvoltage
10:00:03 <highvoltage> #topic Welcome
10:00:15 <highvoltage> Welcome! This is the first time in a long time that we're using #debian-meeting. We hope that there will be many more sessions to follow.
10:00:25 <highvoltage> In this session, we'll meet our new project leader and you will get a chance to ask him about anything that you've been wondering about.
10:00:40 <highvoltage> Our DPL, Sam Hartman, will provide a quick introduction and then we can move over to the questions. When it's time for questions, start your question with "QUESTION: ", you can ask that directly in this channel.
10:01:01 <highvoltage> If there are many questions, Sam might have to cherry pick or combine some answers, be patient. Also be mindful of any noise that you generate, if you'd like to go into an in-depth discussion on something, rather save it for after the meeting.
10:01:20 <highvoltage> So, with all of that out the way, on to our new DPL for a self-introduction!
10:01:26 <highvoltage> #topic DPL Introduction
10:01:49 <highvoltage> Over to you, hartmans
10:02:19 <hartmans> hi.  As the sun rises here in Boston, I'm realizing that I'm not the best at timezone planning:-)
10:02:32 <hartmans> But it promises to be a plesant day and I'm looking forward to chatting with you all.
10:02:51 <hartmans> A little about me.
10:03:14 <hartmans> I've been using Debian since Buzz, and have been a member of the project since late 2000.
10:03:41 <hartmans> I'm blind.  However, I think of myself more as a computer security and networking person than as someone focused on accessibility
10:03:51 <hartmans> And a little about being DPL.
10:04:07 <hartmans> It's an interesting mix of crazy, frustrating, exciting and touching.
10:04:56 <hartmans> Within my first two days of being DPL, the Internet had decided to critique my sex life and psychoanalyze it for why I wanted to take on the DPL role.  I'd managed to ruffle feathers within the project.
10:05:36 <hartmans> When you become DPL, you just get dropped into it.  One moment you are waiting for the votes to close, and the next you're trying to follow a bunch of transition procedures you hopefully found on the wiki.
10:05:53 <hartmans> If things had continued that way, I'd be really nervous by now.
10:06:20 <hartmans> Instead though, a bunch of people reached out and offered help.  And a bunch of people reached out and welcomed me to parts of the project I hadn't had a chance to follow before.
10:06:30 <hartmans> we have a great team and it's been really wonderful to be part of it.
10:06:49 <hartmans> I'd like to share two highlights of the kind of cool stuff you get to do as DPL.
10:07:08 <hartmans> Someone wrote to debian-project talking about how much Debian meant to them and how it helped them.
10:07:37 <hartmans> As DPL, you get to read messages like that and respond and honor on behalf of the entire project how we've helped someone.
10:07:56 <hartmans> Similarly, as DPL you get to acknowledge the great work people in our community do.  Few things feel that wonderful.
10:08:07 <hartmans> highvoltage:  want to open up for questions?
10:08:17 <highvoltage> #topic Ask the DPL anything
10:08:25 <highvoltage> Here's your chance to ask questions, start your question with QUESTION:
10:08:41 <highvoltage> And thanks for that nice intro :)
10:09:09 <hartmans> I'll warn that it's possible I'll miss something because of the way my screen reader setup works.  If I seem to have dropped something and not gotten back to it feel free to gently remind.
10:09:54 <highvoltage> I'm not sure how many people are actively following, perhaps next time we can start with a roll call, but since it's quiet I guess I'll kick it off...
10:10:27 <highvoltage> QUESTION: What is the one thing that you'd like to achieve or take on over the next year if you knew you would succeed as port of your role as DPL?
10:10:59 <hartmans> I'd love to  set up some sort of sustainable mediation something--team, procedure, whatever.
10:11:07 <hartmans> Emotions matter.
10:11:36 <hartmans> We focus so much on technical stuff, but we often don't take count of how we frustrate, excite, annoy, or challenge each other.
10:11:51 <hartmans> Other than as something that's part of doing business in free software.
10:12:19 <hartmans> And yet, by actually working through that and making it part of how we interact, I think we could grow closer--more resilient as a community.
10:12:42 <hartmans> EOA
10:13:04 <DLange> QUESTION: On the screen reader you mentioned ... how many lines of text can you feel(?) at the same time? Can we adjust communication patterns to make life easier for you? If so, what's "best practices" we can follow?
10:13:13 <hartmans> (It's fine to interrupt with the next question or two), but I will mark end of answer if I empty the queue
10:13:26 <hartmans> DLange:  0
10:13:31 <hartmans> It's speech not braille.
10:14:03 <hartmans> It's more a matter of actions I'm taking override actions It's wanting to take.  So If I manually scroll it will interrupt it reading new text.
10:14:24 <DLange> QUESTION: follow-up. So one of those fast-speak things where I wouldn't understand a word?
10:14:26 <hartmans> The only thing I'd ask for is to be understanding if something like that happens.
10:14:48 <hartmans> Espeak at 500+ wpm or so.
10:15:13 <DLange> kudos. I shall never try to read a book at the same time as you :)
10:15:16 <hartmans> Both as a privacy thing to some extent and also because it's faster and might as well get info as fast as you can without interrupting processing.
10:16:23 <hartmans> question to the audience: What are the things that most challenge you in doing your job as a contributor in our community?
10:16:54 <highvoltage> for me it's information overflow and E_NOT_ENOUGH_TIME (probably some time management too)
10:17:01 <hartmans> Either challenge as in challenge you to grow or challenge as in boy you'd like that to get better.
10:17:02 <h01ger> DLange: debconfX (9?) had two blind developers showing their screen readers to many people. to me (and many others, i believe) this was a very interesting learning experience. i'm not sure there was a video'ed session though. basically the slowest speed was quite fast to me and the faster speeds were almost just noise to me...
10:17:23 <hartmans> h01ger:  There's a video.
10:17:32 <h01ger> oh nice
10:17:50 <DLange> hartmans: the level of cruft in Debian. Every documentation is outdated. You need to know $person to get a recent answer or do something and then you wait().
10:18:48 <hartmans> I find the waiting particularly frustrating.  Every time I can't do it now, it slows me down both literally, but also because it gets in the way of motivation.
10:19:21 <pjain> hartmans, I think that information is too much scattered here and there. It gets difficult to learn and get things done easily. You are mostly going from one link (or wiki page) to another.
10:19:50 <DLange> yes, and you have the constant struggle between reminding people enough to move things forward and not coming across as too pushy, 'cause we're still all volunteers and it should stay fun for the receiving side, too
10:19:56 <ansgar> I find most demotivating that when you rpose to change X to improve Y that some people just say Y is not a real problem; or say your proposal is just utterly broken without giving any details (even when asked)
10:20:01 <pjain> which makes everything looks so difficult and scary enough to bring motivation down
10:20:07 <h01ger> there are so many interesting areas and there's so much useful stuff to do and so many bugs to fix.
10:20:55 <highvoltage> h01ger: that is true. you end up having to learn to say "no" to things that you find really interesting and would really have wanted to do, and there's too much of that
10:20:58 <hartmans> #link http://penta.debconf.org/dc9_schedule/events/524.en.html (the talk on accessibility with demos)
10:21:03 <h01ger> highvoltage: you can use #save so olasd can read backlog on https://meetbot.debian.net
10:21:15 <highvoltage> #save
10:21:28 <hartmans> ansgar:  I'd really like to work on the rejecting proposals without explaining why/without giving reasons.
10:21:54 <h01ger> hartmans: thanks for the link
10:22:03 <hartmans> If that's taken too far it can feel like a lack of respect.  To me it sometimes feels like my proposal wasn't worth a serious evaluation.
10:22:42 <hartmans> pjain:  Are you familiar with the welcome team?
10:22:59 <hartmans> I think that navigating some of that initial where do I find things etec is something they try to do.
10:23:00 <pjain> hartmans, Yes, I am. We talked about it few days ago via mail too :)
10:23:11 <hartmans> O, right:-(
10:23:24 <hartmans> Sorry,  I forget sometimes woh I've talked to about what.
10:24:08 <pjain> Anyone would given the number of messages/email you must be receiving per day (50+?)
10:24:23 <hartmans> Actually, leader@ really isn't that bad itself.
10:25:02 <hartmans> 374 non-spam messages so far.  However, then I follow debian lists a lot more closely and have picked up several lists I was not following before.
10:25:09 <olasd> h01ger: <3 and thanks
10:25:12 <DLange> QUESTION: What are some pro-active things that you want to improve in Debian? (as in not fixing things that are wrong but making sure we all trot in the right direction)
10:25:32 <pjain> QUESTION: What do you think is needed to done to have upcoming generation Z to be interested more in FOSS projects like Debian? How can we make them understand the advantage/power of FOSS over those shiny and glittery 'paid with data/advertisements' softwares.
10:25:59 <hartmans> DLange:  I actually think the emotional stuff counts in that category.  I don't think it's a wrong so much as I see potential for even better.  But that's not really what you meant.
10:26:10 <hartmans> I think improving developer workflows is the biggest area.
10:27:07 <hartmans> Or hmm, you could argue that's no proactive too.
10:28:02 <hartmans> I'd love to see us embrace application containers and really proactively find our place as we relate to language specific repositories.
10:28:15 <hartmans> I'd love to see us do cool mobile  stuff.
10:28:40 <highvoltage> QUESTION: Have you identified any developer workflows yet as a high priority for fixing? Or any that comes to mind as being particularly important in the immediate future?
10:28:47 <DLange> I'd love us to stay relevant and what you say is all parts of it, I guess.
10:29:14 * hartmans is pondering pjain's question
10:29:55 <hartmans> One of the cool things about attending Libreplanet was that I ran across a bunch of younger people who totally got Debian.
10:30:16 <hartmans> Their challenge was not that they didn't understand why we mattered.  It was they were intimidated thinking of contributing to us.
10:30:30 <hartmans> now perhaps my idea of younger is skewed as I age:-)
10:31:06 <hartmans> Although  for example Mo Zhou is clearly in a younger generation
10:31:15 <pjain> I agree, most of the younger people are not very comfortable contributing because of the entry barrier (IRC, Wiki, Mailing Lists etc)
10:31:20 <hartmans> And let's take the gsoc blog post you pointed me at the other day.
10:32:01 <hartmans> But I think that as people age, and realize the implications of privacy stuff, they will be open to us.  The challenge in my mind is making it easy for them to help out
10:32:43 <hartmans> highvoltage:   Obviously it's not my decision to decide what to fix.  Only to decide what discussions to foster that might lead to us deciding to fix something.
10:33:14 <hartmans> I think my three top priorities are the ones I outlined in my bits mail: (using dh; requiring git on salsa; exploring push to upload)
10:33:23 <hartmans> there is a theme under most of those that is important.
10:33:39 <hartmans> I think we've reached a maturity level where some more uniformity is valuable.
10:33:40 <paddatrapper> The barrier to entry is high. It took me sitting down with highvoltage and a job that required me to package software before I started to understand what and how
10:34:03 <hartmans> we always want to be open to experimentation, but I think we want to go back and close out some of the deadends and refactor based on successes.
10:34:24 <hartmans> and accept that we're more of a team than we used to be and that sometimes global preferences may be more important than maintainer preferences.
10:34:34 <hartmans> But it's a balance--not a huge shift, just a little one
10:35:05 <pjain> paddatrapper, and this is the exact reason why I am still afraid to start with packaging. I always motivate myself to pick it up again and again but couldn't succeed (may DebConf will help?)
10:35:08 <hartmans> Did I miss any questions in that set of answer?
10:35:33 <hartmans> pjain:  debconf can be really good for that.
10:35:55 <joostvb> debconf is where busy people have time
10:36:33 <highvoltage> QUESTION: another follow-up to a previous question, regarding debian on mobile devices (something that increasingly seems widely understood as being important), do you think that it's important for us as a project to formally reach out to organisations like Librem and work together on some projects? (whether it's marketing, hardware enablement, getting more hardware in the hands of developers,
10:36:40 <highvoltage> etc)?
10:36:57 <highvoltage> joostvb: last year there were packaging workshops at DebConf and they were fantastic!
10:37:20 <joostvb> nice :)
10:37:23 <hartmans> In general yes.
10:37:27 <hartmans> marketing is complex.
10:37:37 <hartmans> in terms of whether we should fund it.
10:38:05 <hartmans> If you're asking should interested people in our project work with interested people in related projects, the yes to that is really loud.
10:38:19 <hartmans> If you're asking should we spend some resources helping people find each other absolutely.
10:38:29 <hartmans> There's something critical missing from your list though.
10:38:40 <hartmans> Our current desktops and UIs really aren't a good fit for mobile.
10:38:53 <hartmans> We're a bit bigger than you'd really like for mobile in some cases.
10:39:12 <hartmans> I actually think we need to figure out how to do some important software work to succeed there.
10:39:31 <hartmans> And it's aparently hard.  Canonical spent a lot of money there, and it doesn't look like they succeeded as much as they would like.
10:40:08 <highvoltage> #save
10:40:41 <larjona> QUESTION: will you focus more in the "institutional" role of the DPL (talk to organisations) or try to be more near or moral support of the own Debian teams? (example: would you go to a free software conference as the DPL to give a talk there, or prefer to a Debian MiniDebConf to meet Debian contributors)? (I guess you'll do both in your term but probably will put more emphasis in one type of event than the other...)
10:41:30 <hartmans> I'm likely to focus more internally this year.
10:41:37 <hartmans> There are two factors.
10:42:12 <hartmans> First, I traditionally don't attend a huge number of free software conferences outside of Debian.  I''ve never been a huge conference person.
10:42:42 <hartmans> So, my bar to going to a conference is a bit higher than average.  I'd rather write code or write designs, and most of my travel is non-computer related.
10:42:55 <hartmans> But more importantly I think is my analysis of what Debian needs right now.
10:43:24 <hartmans> In different times, I think that external work would have been more important.
10:43:31 <hartmans> and will be again.
10:43:55 <hartmans> Even so, growing and recognizing teams and empowering teams to go do things has/will always be my style.
10:44:36 <hartmans> That said, I do think that talking in terms of email and phone to external parties and press will be important.
10:46:00 <pjain> QUESTION: What are your thoughts on brining Debian to more school students? I see that many books/schools in countries like India have now switched to Ubuntu. I know that we don't explicitly believe in marketing this way but do you think things like that will help the project in long run? I am worried that we don't have enough new contributors coming up for the next 10-15 years (I might be completely wrong here)
10:46:22 <hartmans> are you familiar with debian-edu?
10:46:37 <pjain> No, my bad
10:47:07 <hartmans> It's kind of cool.
10:47:21 <hartmans> I think it's correct to describe it as a debian blend.
10:47:27 <highvoltage> (it is)
10:47:34 <hartmans> It's a set of packages and practices to make debian more useful for schools.
10:47:48 <hartmans> Everything from education software to infrastructure for installing machines and managing accounts.
10:48:09 <hartmans> And then there is Skolelinux which if I'm understanding things correctly is a group that provides support and advocacy for debian-edu mostly in Germany
10:48:34 <joostvb> and/initially norway
10:48:35 <hartmans> I'm very supportive of efforts like this because they are very close to how I got involved in all this (and because they are good for a lot of reasons)
10:49:01 <hartmans> I'd be interested if someone wanted to take that into India.
10:49:05 <pjain> I think the only missing part here is Outreach. We need to reach to more people from countries like India/Sri Lanka etc to be familiar about it. I am sure most of them haven't heard about it here
10:49:45 <hartmans> That said, I consider Ubuntu part of our greater community.  I don't think we're fighting with them.  If it's Ubuntu that people come to free sfotware through, that's fine in my book.
10:49:59 <highvoltage> QUESTION: If you can, please tell us more about how you got involved in all of this, or involved in Debian in general, it's always an interesting question for me to fellow debianites
10:50:25 <hartmans> highvoltage:  ack
10:50:52 <hartmans> so, back in 1993 or 1994, we got an internet connection at my high school.
10:51:21 <hartmans> We found a 386 with a couple of megabytes of memory and installed Slackware on it and tried to create accounts for people
10:51:43 <hartmans> Around the time I went to MIT as a freshman, someone donated a couple of real workstations to the school to replace the 386 we called abacus.
10:52:15 <hartmans> so, I started helping try to port some of the infrastructure software from MIt (mail handling, Kerberos, account management, IM) back to my highschool.
10:52:26 <hartmans> Then later I got a job and had to do that all over again.
10:52:39 <hartmans> And I was getting fairly good at dealing with packaging and build systems, but also kind of tired of it.
10:53:13 <hartmans> I found Debian, and it was kind of cool because it had a lot of packages, but at that time, ran Linux, which really wasn't ready yet compared to the BSDs.
10:53:36 <hartmans> I ran it on my parents' computer, but for myself found I preferred building things myself on NetBSD.
10:53:49 <hartmans> But eventually Debian got to a point where it was just far easier to deal with.
10:54:14 <hartmans> And  I ended up wanting to try and build out some of the infrastructure stuff I kept dealing with, so I became a developer.
10:54:57 <hartmans> So, we'd roughly talked about making this an hour meeting.  We have a bit over five min left.  We can go a bit over if that happens,
10:55:10 <hartmans> but I want to make a call for any last questions.
10:57:05 <highvoltage> QUESTION: have you found anything in particular during your term so far that you feel you need help with from the larger community?
10:57:26 <hartmans> Understanding Debian:-)
10:57:32 <highvoltage> (or something that we can do to help support you? I suppose it hasn't been that long yet)
10:57:53 <hartmans> So far most of it has been understanding all the parts of us that I didn't know already and people have been great.
10:58:04 <hartmans> Long term...
10:58:44 <hartmans> I think I face the same challenge we all do.  There's a lot going on.
10:58:55 <hartmans> the advantage of decentralization is that people can do a lot.
10:59:04 <hartmans> The disadvantage is coordination and understanding is a lot harder.
10:59:39 <hartmans> I think what is most helpful for our community is if we work together to connect where that makes sense and we help each other out so that we can actually move things forward.
10:59:53 <hartmans> One thing I hope we'll be better at is advocating for Debian with upstreams and other communities.
11:00:16 <hartmans> Debian matters; we have power.  Sometimes I think we forget that when we choose to speak with our full voice people will listen to us.
11:00:23 <hartmans> Not always, and not if we're asses about it.
11:00:41 <highvoltage> Yeah someone once asked me if I understand all of Debian, and I told them that there are over 50000 packages and that I wouldn't even ever be able to read through all those package decription. I think that in the same way, the Debian project as a whole is at a size where it's going to be near-impossible for any single person to understand all the bits that make up the project throroughly
11:00:46 <hartmans> But if we're reasoned and respectful, we can change the world in significant ways.
11:01:17 <hartmans> When I started Debian, every time you installed a system you typically made a yes or no decision on *every package in the archive*
11:01:17 <DLange> what a nice closing line :)
11:01:22 <denisbr> hartmans, I am Brazilian and  was a debian user for long time, but, today I don´t using it I wish very success for you and that I can use Debian again :-) Have very work for contribute to debian for peoples how me,  an wordpress and php developer?
11:01:33 <hartmans> Good luck with that.
11:01:52 <hartmans> denisbr:  I'm not quite sure I understand.
11:02:03 <hartmans> Are you asking how could a php and wordpress developer contribute to Debian?
11:02:09 <denisbr> yes
11:02:14 <hartmans> OK.
11:02:27 <hartmans> If you want to package things, we do package a lot of php modules.
11:02:38 <hartmans> If that's not where you want to focus in contributing, you can still
11:02:47 <hartmans> 1) make sure that Debian is a good base for php development
11:02:50 <hartmans> file bugs, that sort of thing.
11:03:15 <pjain> denisbr, This might motivate you a bit: https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2019/Projects#SummerOfCode2019.2FApprovedProjects.2FDebianPHPPackaging.Debian_PHP_Packaging
11:03:19 <hartmans> 2) Work within the Wordpress community to help them understand why some people actually do want stable versions of wordpress and how that's OK even though others want fast development
11:03:32 <hartmans> 3) Work within Debian to help us understand why a lot of people don't want stable wordpress but want the latest.
11:03:56 <hartmans> last call for questions.
11:04:03 <denisbr> I understand!
11:04:20 <denisbr> pjain, I will see it. Thanks!
11:04:32 <hartmans> thanks everyone.  highvoltage all yours for the closing.
11:04:39 <highvoltage> #topic Closing
11:04:45 <highvoltage> Thank you all for the questions, and thanks to Sam for his time! We hope to cover more topics with the DPL in the future.
11:04:56 <highvoltage> To stay up to date with future meeting announcements, be sure to follow 'Bits from Debian':
11:04:59 <hartmans> At a different time:-)
11:05:01 <highvoltage> #link https://bits.debian.org/
11:05:02 <highvoltage> (rss/atom feeds available)
11:05:09 <highvoltage> hartmans: ack
11:05:24 <DLange> thank you hartmans and thank you highvoltage for organizing!
11:05:25 <pjain> hartmans, Thank you for your time :-)
11:05:32 <highvoltage> hartmans: a better time for people in the americas would certainly be good
11:05:33 <pjain> Thanks highvoltage.
11:05:52 <highvoltage> See you next time!
11:05:52 <highvoltage> #endmeeting