[Talk meister] Grab a seat please, there's lots of seats around here, or there.
It's my pleasure to introduce our current and new DPL,
Neil McGovern for his annual bits from the DPL
[Applause]
[Neil] Thanks very much, hi everyone.
I'm aware that this talk is due to cut in to lunch so I'll try and keep it slightly
... in to dinner, so I'll keep it slightly more refined [laughter]
so people can get their food early.
Hopefully everyone's ok with that anyway.
I'm also kind of glad that it's in this slot when it was originally proposed
and I got my initial time slot it was going to be a 9am slot just after the
cheese and wine party so I [laughter]
probably wouldn't expect quite so many people as we have here today.
So, welcome everyone, this final day of the open weekend. Anyone who isn't a
regular person, hi and welcome to Debian!
Welcome to the huge Debian family which is certainly growing all the time and
is something that's really good to see.
It's quite fantastic that there's just so many people involved, especially this year
When I last checked the stats I think we had 383 people who had so far checked in
slightly less than for DebConf 7, but I'm certain... [laughter]
I'm certain over the next few days that'll go up and definitely surpass us.
I just want to remind everyone what the size of the project we are.
It's such a huge effort, one of the biggest open source and free software
projects in the world.
Combining around 1000 developers, a few thousand maintainers and contributors as
well, and also our users.
It's really a huge effort that we manage to still be here after 22 years and still
be going strong.
Hopefully a DebConf in future will look a little bit like that
I think the orga team might be slightly more stressed if we end up with numbers
but what a fantastic thing.
Also over the last few years we've had 42 new project members have joined us.
This is over the last year, we've had all these people.
Huge welcome to everyone there. [Applause]
Especially one or two on there which I decided to get back into doing application
management, especially for our non- uploading developers as well, which has
been a huge boost to really grow where we're going.
Also welcome back. I've noticed a few people this year who I haven't seen in a
few years, so stand up if you've been away for a few years and you're returning
I know there's certainly some people, excellent,
Tolimar? [laughter] There he is! [Applause]
Kris Rose? Is he here? [points] Excellent.
Was active before I even joined Debian, and essentially has come back again, so
it's great to see everyone back and thanks very much for remembering us.
There's been a few new people as well.
Very, very new people who I haven't kinda seen around before in previous DebConfs
Where did all these children come from? I think there must have been something...
[laughter]
I think the Switzerland DebConf, there might have been something in the water,
because it's suddenly been a huge... it's absolutely fantastic to see not only
our usual developers around, but their families as well, and new people being
introduced to Debian and to technology.
The TecKids workshops I think are absolutely fantastic initiative I think
that really helps broaden Debian and what we do.
So, when I first became DPL, I always knew Debian was a big thing in free software,
in the communities and things we do.
I went along to my running club
and we went for a run,
went to the pub afterwards as you do in the UK,
you can't have sport without excessive alcohol consumption afterwards so it seems
and about 7 or 8 people all came up to me
and said "Hey, congratulations on being DPL, I'm going to buy you a pint!", which
[laughter]
which is great
So if anyone wants to run for DPL you get free beer, this is a good thing.
But it did really impress on me that
Debian's a big deal, it's a really huge deal.
If you have a look at some of the latest server stats for web servers,
Debian's number one.
It's about 32% of Linux distributions, and and if you combine Ubuntu as well, and
all our derivatives, we're about 62% of all linux servers out there
Basically Debian really does run the world
Not only that, but the amount of embedded devices that Debian's involved with
from, as mentioned before, the HP talk, running huge teleco systems
to assistive devices. I know Andy's around somewhere.
That product is essentially being based on Debian and it's a speak and spell type
device.
It's for people who can't talk.
You have a little keyboard, you type in what you want to say, it has predictive
technology in there, and then it gives people a voice.
Debian is literally being used to give people voices who can't speak.
This is the sort of impact that Debian have, and free software can have
on the world.
A few things happened, certainly over the last year.
Apparently we released.
I was only DPL for about a week, but I'm going to take credit for this
like any good politician, anyway. [laughter]
I've already had a stable release.
This has hugely welcomed.
I don't know if anyone followed the DevOps Reactions tumblr page, but they were
following along and huge cheers from everyone when Debian releases.
It is a big deal.
Strangely I also saw a press release that that said they're
having a party to celebrate the release of Debian 8 at Linux Fest North West,
But this press release was from Microsoft [laughter]
I thought it might be a spoof at first, but I diligently checked the certificates
and domains and made sure it went back.
I think people, certainly large organisations are realising now that this
open source, free software thing isn't going away
This isn't something that they can just ignore, or they can fight against.
This is something that they have to embrace
Certainly for someone like Microsoft to throw away a load of cake and do a press
release because Debian's released is something I never thought I'd see when I
first joined the Debian Project.
We've had some new good things which have started recently as well
Fantastic areas if anyone knows what this might be for a current initiative that's
going on?
[Picture of four similar potted plants]
I was trying to do reproducible builds.
They all sort of look the same, so near enough [laughter]
It's the nearest I could find on Flickr to something being reproducible.
These are all CC by the way.
So this is perhaps a bit of a better slide to explain just how impressive it is
where we've got.
I don't know if everyone here's aware of reproducible builds and what this is
trying to do, and the importance of it.
When you get a source package
and you produce a binary from that
there hasn't traditionally been a way of knowing that what you've produced here
comes from this source package and it hasn't been tampered with.
This is incredibly important for the trust that people have in Debian
and how we produce things
So if we're able to say "Look, this thing here has definitely come from here,
look we've rebuilt it again, you can check for yourself, it comes from here.",
then people can trust Debian as this platform for where we run everyone's
computers.
I'm quite impressed with the remarkable progress we've seen here.
From zero to a huge share of things being reproducable and that work I'm sure will
continue, especially thanks to the Linux Foundation's grants as well in supporting
this progress.
I did a "ask me anything" recently and it was one of the things that came up as
being a hugely popular thing that Debian is doing and that we're driving forward.
Not just for Debian itself but for all distributions and making sure we're
able to do that.
Interestingly I was also asked what I'm most jealous of other distributions and
I think I said the Arch wiki because it is pretty good. [laughter]
Often when I'm on #debian and answering questions then it comes up with the best
answers a lot of the time.
But, hey, I'm rubbish at writing documentation so...
Another effort we've come up with is ddebs
Ability to automatically have debug symbols
Something which a few other distributions have had for a while and it's really,
really good to see that this sort of effort is happening as well.
If Niels is around.... well done! [applause]
Not the only one but.
So, what's next?
What's the next things that Debian can do?
Where can we go from here and what sort of ideas can we have?
There's a whole range of things we can do
but I'm just going to pick up two or three
that we want to kinda concentrate on and see where we're going.
First, PPAs. [picture of a parcel]
It's near enough a package, that'll do me.
I've got a BoF scheduled on Friday, to try and look at what we're doing with this and
trying to finish it off.
It was in my platform as something I want push and it's something I believe will
really help the development of Debian.
Now, it's slightly different from Ubuntu PPAs as they're well known.
It's not going to be somewhere that you can just dump random software and people
install various quality packages.
This is going to be a very useful tool to aid Debian development itself.
As far as I remember, most of the work is actually done now.
Huge thanks to the FTP Masters and DSA etc for this.
So the actual code is there in DAK.
The only missing bits is the control functions,
how you create new PPAs and the wannabuild system and we build stuff and
touch releases.
So it is going to, hopefully, come any minute now
and something that we will hopefully be able to use and will ease the,
sometimes the pain of when we freeze.
Sometimes the ability to easily create backports
or even to ease library transitions.
If you can create a PPA where you stage your library, check everything works and
you can fix all your breakages then that should help unstable and testing as well.
One on outreach I guess is near enough.
It's kinda interesting, I've mentioned that Debian is in a huge position to touch
many people's lives and it was slightly worrying that compared to the amount of
Jessie release parties we had all over the world,
I video called into one in India for example and it was globally popular.
But all of our sprints have been in Europe.
So we haven't had some in North America.
We haven't had any in South America.
And there's huge areas here we can really try and push and bring free software
and really help push Debian to be the go to place in various countries rather
thank keeping it a Europe or sometimes even North American market.
And Debian's in a great place because we are a community distribution.
We try and aim to be the universal operating system.
Someone that anyone can come along, join, help out in whatever way they want to,
be it packaging, or doing wonderful press work for example.
[pointed look to the side] Not mentioning that press work at all.
She's not even looking at me. [Francesca] Hey!
[Laughter]
[Neil] She's going to volunteer to do more press work in future again.
So it's an area people can get involved in really easily and because we're
distributed, because we work online, it is natural that people can come and join us
and we should encourage that, and we should try and reach out and try and reach
more people.
Third area, the final one here is around accessibility.
It's kind of a sad fact that free software is about 10 years behind proprietary and
commercial offerings.
There's a reason that iPhones are hugely popular with people who need accessibility
options - they are just fantastic compared with what you can get normally.
I don't believe that it is right that people should have to use proprietary
software, which they pay for, to access computing, and to access the web, and to
be able to explore what we all have.
We should be able to put in effort, so there's certainly an area which we can
really make a difference to people and try and drive forward.
To bring computing to everyone, rather than those who are fortunate enough to be
able to see a screen well, or be rich enough to be able to pay for a license or
buy a computer or system from a proprietary company.
There is no reason why we shouldn't be able to do this.
We are able to speak and work directly with people who require accessibility
features, and let those people design it in a way that is much easier than any
proprietary company.
So it's an area I think we can try and try and sort of push quite a bit.
Finally, a bit of a huge thank you from me really.
It was about... So I've been involved with Debian since about 2001 or so, and doing
loads of different roles.
Originally doing the web apps policy, which never really got beyond draft
because web apps are terrible, terrible things that don't really work with
distributions that well.
Then with Joey Hess, doing testing security team and setting up that,
eventually that led in to many, many years of release management. [shakes head]
[heckling]
And then many years of being release manager as well.
And then after that Tolimar found me at DebConf in Banja Luka and found out I
could write a press release and roped me in to doing bits there
but after that I was sort of feeling a bit, I don't know, burned out.
I didn't really know what else to do with the project.
I think this happens to everyone.
It's a huge reminder each time when I come to DebConf and I meet people and how
fortunate I am, and we all are to be involved with such a fantastic project,
something that really is changing people's lives,
something that is breaking the traditional proprietary market
and enabling people to have greater access to computing
and it's really fortunate that I'm in a position to help lead this project
and to do everything for you.
Finally, I think I mentioned, I think Phil Hands - is he around?
He probably has a small child trying to throw-up on him for anyone who saw the
morning announcements today.
He did kind of joke about the next DPL hustings,
he can just write an auto-responder bot to any questions which is
"That sounds interesting, I look forward to seeing the results"
[laughter]
Generally I think that we should be able to try things,
so if anyone has any ideas, stuff they want to do, Debian has the money,
let's go try some stuff.
If we want a sprint to work on accessibility in say, Hong Hong
as there's a huge issue there, or to improve our localisation, then let's
do that.
We have the money to do it.
We have, hopefully, the interest around, so let's go try things.
As promised, I thought I'd keep things nice and short.
As everyone seemed to be getting hungry.
I was going to leave a bit for Q&A, if anyone had any questions,
or wanted to put me on the spot about anything or random thoughts anyone had,
then I'd certainly be very happy to answer any of those.
Someone has to be first.
Otherwise my timing's really, really out.
Oh good. [clappiung]
Lucky me.
Hello! What's your name and where are you from? [laughter]
[Steve] Oh, you want me to say something? [Neil] Yeah, go on.
[Steve] What is your single highest priority thing that you think we should
all be working on?
[Neil] Getting the next stable release out, to be honest.
This is what we do, as a distribution.
We release things.
We make software.
We give it to our users, Debian is famed for its stability.
We backport our security fixes.
People can rely on Debian, they can trust us to produce a rock solid distribution.
Something that people can, in some cases, yes, derive works from.
If they don't like what we're doing they can tweak it.
There was the huge thing that came up when Devuan came up saying that
"Oh, we're going to fork Debian and it's going to be terrible"
It's like fine! There's over 120 forks of Debian out there already, that's fine!
Please, come and do this, we're happy with that.
Being able to produce this reliable, stable operating system that we only
release when we're ready, which happens to apparently be about every two years now
is something that everyone relies on us being able to do,
and they can trust us to produce that for them.
Essentially putting out releases is one of the main reasons we're here.
To get that software into the hands of users.
There's loads of other stuff of course which we can do to try and improve and
push forward free software in general, but we are essentially a distribution.
Our aim is to collect software, and then distribute it,
and one of the best ways to do that is releases.
[Steve] Good answer. [Neil] Good!
[Joshua] What's your favourite thing about Debian?
[laughter]
[Unknown] You're not allowed to say releases.
[Neil] I'm apparently not allowed to say the kilt as well
[Bdale] You also already said free beer so
[Neil] And free beer, yeah.
It has to be the people that I'm involved with.
The project has enabled me to meet so many awesome people and basically have
the career I've had so far as well.
There has always been a thing about being involved visibly with and open source
project that helps you professionally as well.
I got my first job because I was involved with free software.
I then got my next job because I was a Debian developer and could put together
Linux systems easily, and knew how to munge these various crazy different
projects which are written in a hundred different libraries,
using different compatibilities together to make something whole.
Then my current job I got because essentially I was involved in doing
management-y type functions in Debian.
As I say to people when they ask
"Where's the money in free software? How can I create a career with it?"
It's basically fairly easy. Get stuck in.
Go and do something.
Find something interesting that interests you,
and that you're able to be the world expert at, and you can do that.
On an entirely personal view, some of my closest friends are the Debian people I've
worked with for many many years and I certainly wouldn't have moved to my
current city, or know half the people I do if it wasn't for that.
The Debian family is a large one, that occasionally gets together at DebConf
and Christmas, and sometimes has huge blow up arguments,
possibly over the turkey or the init system, something like that [laughter]
but we do all come together.
We have huge contentious decisions
but we're still here.
We've had huge arguments with everyone trying to stab each other, but at the end
of the day we're still here, we're still the Debian project.
And sort of like that it's something we love to be associated with
and it's everyone around that really makes that.
[Joshua] Thank you [Applause]
[Neil] Anyone else? No?
Oh oh.
I'll just stop you there - backups are really really important, [laughter]
so we should definitely concentrate on backups.
[Lars] So what's the biggest risk to Debian you see in the 5-10 year span?
[[[25:48]]]