I have to be honest I'm really honored to be here
I don't say that to just every conference I care a lot about Debian
This is my 3rd DebConf I've ever been to.
There have been a lot of them so I obviously haven't been to that many
But I was at DebConf1
I just learned today that it was zero based so that it wasn't the first DebConf
which I should have known but didn't for some reason.
I was at the 2nd DebConf by accident somewhat because I was going to
Libre Software Meeting and just happened to
book my flights so that I could be at DebConf as well
I gave a regular track talk at DebConf10 about the GPL v3
because it was in New York City where I was living at the time
Here I'm giving an invited speaker talk or keynote or whatever else it is called here
That really means a lot to me.
I'm a fan of Debian, I'm a user of Debian.
I don't actually consider myself part of the Debian community
because other than filing a few bugs over the years
I haven't contributed all that much to Debian but I've relied on it and used it
and been a fan of it for so long that I really love your project.
So I am really honored to be invited to speak here
and I really believe that Debian is a very special project for a lot of reasons.
First of all, it has thrived for longer than almost any free software project
in existence in a lot of ways. There are top 10 lists of projects that
Debian is certainly on as far as longevity goes, maybe the top 5
It's governance is one of the few democratically elected and
democratically controlled governance processes in free software
Everyone is a fan of talking about this 'benevolent dictator' stuff
which I think is really horrible The fact that somebody would call
themselves a 'self appointed benevolent dictator for life' is really disturbing.
You are democratic.
You elect your leadership.
You have referendums on major issues that everyone can vote on.
That is amazingly rare, impressive and important for free software.
The other thing that really impresses me,
in particular being somebody from the non-profit world,
is that Debian has been staunchly non-commercial for it's entire existence.
Of course I don't mean that Debian can't be used in commercial settings.
DFSG free means that things can be put into commercial products.
What I mean is that the project itself has always been non-commercial,
meaning that the people that work on it are volunteering,
and, even if their employers are paying them to work on it,
they are part of a community and not doing their work inside Debian as
officially part of some commercial activity.
Most free software projects these days are controlled by
some commercial entity or another.
Debian is not.
I was at Debconf1 which was really exciting for me.
I was a young executive director of Free Software.
I showed this picture to Karen Sandler who I work with and said how different I look.
She said I don't look different at all,
but, speaking as the person that looks at that face in the mirror every morning,
there are a lot more lines on my face than there.
That is a smooth looking baby face that I had 14 years ago that I don't have anymore
I was pretty casual back then. I'm not in short trousers any more.
It's hard to see and you can see it in some of the other photos that I was.
Even in this heat like this I haven't worn short trousers in a very long time.
What's that? [bdale heckles]
Bdale, I was thinking about mentioning you and now I have to because you are heckling
me [laughter]. Bdale is the one adult in the room who can dress like
everybody else but I can't pull it off
I respect Bdale that he can. The tie-dye still works for him.
And I stopped wearing t-shirts years ago at conferences
and here I'm sweating in my long sleeves halfway between hacker and suit attire.
And there [in the photo] I'm talking to Martin Michmayer
I'm going to do questions at the end Lars, if that's ok.
I'm not good with questions because I get off topic easy.
I left 17 minutes at the end for questions which Bdale just took 3 of [laughter]
There I'm talking to Martin Michlmayer when I first met him.
A lot of things have changed since I looked at this photo.
But one thing that hasn't changed, you see this face that Martin is making.
He still makes that face at me every time I talk to him, which sort of says like
"You do not know what you are talking about". That hasn't changed, which is good
[laughter]. I'm glad he is laughing in the back there.
Some things have stayed the same. Martin still thinks I'm full of it.
And I probably am, so that's ok. I like people to keep me honest.
Other than jokes, the thing that hasn't really changed since I was first
introduced to the Debian community, in person, back in 2001,
is the ethos of this community is still the same one that I remember
even though a lot of the developers have changed.