Proposals, discussions and announcements

Raphael Hertzog | 30 Mar 2012 22:00

About debian-companies

Hi,

you might have read that Stefano is trying to organize
discussions/collaboration between companies that have a strategic interest
in Debian:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-companies/

Wouter and Gergely, what do you think of this project ? Would you continue
to promote it if elected ?

Stefano, will you continue to try to build that discussion place if you're
not re-elected ? If yes, how do you expect to do it ? (AFAIK you're not a
representative of such a company and as such you will no longer be able to
stay subscribed to this list)

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer

Pre-order a copy of the Debian Administrator's Handbook and help
liberate it: http://debian-handbook.info/liberation/

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Stefano Zacchiroli | 31 Mar 2012 17:50

Re: About debian-companies

On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 10:00:14PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> Stefano, will you continue to try to build that discussion place if you're
> not re-elected ? If yes, how do you expect to do it ? (AFAIK you're not a
> representative of such a company and as such you will no longer be able to
> stay subscribed to this list)

As DPL, I've been listening to the problems of various companies (too
few, unfortunately) who have a strategic interest in Debian and try to
be good Free Software citizens. With that I mean, in particular,
companies that not only try to make a living out of Debian-based
services, but also try to contribute code back to Debian and hire people
to do so.  Especially medium-sides companies that fit that bill have to
face problems that usually volunteers do not want to have to deal with,
e.g. how to convince $proprietary_sw_vendor to "certify" their solutions
for Debian, set up network of like-minded companies so that they could
look more trustworthy in big call for tenders, etc.

While I've got interested in the above topics as DPL, I think it's
important for Debian to help companies solve those problems, and I
suspect my interest in it won't vanish if I won't be re-elected.  If
that happens, what I would do is approach the new DPL and volunteer to
help out with the initiative.

It is worth pointing out that I think the role of Debian as a Project in
it should be marginal and limited to stuff like welcoming the
initiative, communicating about it, and offering a meeting place. As a
Project, we don't have the expertise to do much more than that --- nor
probably the willingness. If the experiment is to succeed, it should
really be up to the companies and their representatives to single out
the problems they're facing and propose solutions that are compatible

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Gergely Nagy | 31 Mar 2012 23:18

Re: About debian-companies

Raphael Hertzog <hertzog <at> debian.org> writes:

> you might have read that Stefano is trying to organize
> discussions/collaboration between companies that have a strategic interest
> in Debian:
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-companies/
>
> Wouter and Gergely, what do you think of this project ? Would you continue
> to promote it if elected ?

To be honest, I'm a little bit torn on this. Not because I have anything
against companies being interested in Debian, especially not if they're
contributing to Debian one way or the other.

The only issue I have, is that the list is not open. I suppose there are
good reasons for that (and off the top of my head, I can think of a
few), but to be able to fully support, and continue to promote this
effort, I'd need to be convinced that these reasons really are good.

That said, I think the effort is a useful one, I'm just not entirely
sure this would be the best way to do it.

--

-- 
|8]

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Wouter Verhelst | 2 Apr 2012 09:58

Re: About debian-companies

On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 10:00:14PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> you might have read that Stefano is trying to organize
> discussions/collaboration between companies that have a strategic interest
> in Debian:
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-companies/
> 
> Wouter and Gergely, what do you think of this project ? Would you continue
> to promote it if elected ?

As a co-owner of a company that offers Debian support (amongst others),
I was initially interested in this. However, the requirements exclude my
company (there's only one DD here, me).

I think it's sad to limit participation to such a list to "companies
that employ multiple Debian Developers", and I don't think that serves
much purpose; Expertise in using and supporting Debian isn't limited to
those who've taken the step to become a Debian Developer.

Having said that, there's an obvious conflict of interest in me changing
the rules of that mailinglist, so I won't interfere. But I'm not very
supportive of it either.

--

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The volume of a pizza of thickness a and radius z can be described by
the following formula:

pi zz a

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