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You are here: Home / Archives for Raphaël Hertzog

Challenging times for Freexian (1/4)

March 30, 2021 by Raphaël Hertzog

TLDR: Freexian’s success means that we have resources to invest into Debian projects. Plainly offering money has not worked so far, so I am looking to hire a “project manager” whose work would be to help spend that money in useful ways. At the same time, Freexian needs to adapt to cope with the growth: with new employees, with new infrastructure and a new offering. I want to give an idea of where we are headed, to try to inspire persons that share our values and our desire to improve Debian. Read on if you are interested.

Note: The original text has been split into 4 blog posts that will be published over a few days.

Introduction

Freexian is an IT service company specialized in Debian. We provide technical support by email on Debian, we create and maintain Debian packages requested by our customers, we also help organizations run an entire Debian derivative (Kali Linux being the most notable one).

On top of this, it runs the commercial part of the Debian LTS service : Freexian invoices many sponsors that need long term support, and uses the money to pay Debian contributors (about 12 currently) to make sure that Debian releases are supported for 5 years instead of 3. With the Extended LTS service, we push that further to 7 years, however only for a smaller subset of packages and in a repository that is hosted outside of debian.org.

Freexian’s purpose

When I created Freexian, it was out of a desire to be paid to work on Debian, and to be able to contribute during work time to the project that was so important to me. That goal has been met a long time ago.

But ultimately what I strive to achieve for Debian is not entirely aligned with the work that Freexian’s customers are requesting. That’s why, in the “long term projects” of Freexian, I always kept “find a business model that can fund the Debian projects that I would like to do”, as well as “if that model works for me, build something so that other can benefit from it too”. The first occasion to experiment something appeared when Debian discussed Long Term Support and when I stepped up to setup a commercial offer to pay Debian contributors.

Step 1: Paying Debian contributors for LTS work

When we started the Debian LTS service, I voluntarily opted to use an hourly rate that was rather high so that any Debian developer regardless of their geographical location,  could participate and not earn (much) less than what they would have from working on other tasks. This choice did imply paying a very high rate for some countries, but I didn’t see that as a problem, quite the contrary: if a Debian developer can earn enough money to cover their cost of living with 15h of Debian LTS, and then spend the rest of their month contributing on Debian, all the better! I’m not sure if anyone made this choice, but that was a dream of my younger self…

From a personal standpoint, the launch of Debian LTS has meant less free time, more administrative work, new duties to coordinate a team of paid contributors, more communication with many Debian-using companies, and many new opportunities too! This ultimately resulted in the launch of Extended LTS and PHP LTS, both of which have been rather successful so far.

Step 2: Funding Debian projects

With the growth of the Debian LTS service, and given that we have reached the required funding level, we decided to put a small share of the revenues aside and use that to fund useful Debian projects, typically in areas that were affected by our Debian LTS work. This effort was fully formalized in the project-funding git repository. We announced this process in November 2020, and we have kept mentioning it in our monthly LTS reports ever since, but so far only a single project has benefited from this. 

This is really the dream offer that I wish had existed when I was younger and was still struggling to get enough customers: hence I don’t really understand this lack of interest. You can find some discussions over the reasons why this offer has not (yet) found its target audience in this debian-vote thread.

I was hoping that spending money would be easy, but I now realize I was wrong! I’m positive that I could find dozens of useful projects to fund, but I just don’t have the time for this extra effort on top of my regular Freexian duties. I still really want to put this money to good use, which is why I’m looking into some solutions.

This article is to be continued in another upcoming post, stay tuned!

Freexian’s report about Debian Long Term Support, February 2021

March 22, 2021 by Raphaël Hertzog

A Debian LTS logo

Like each month, have a look at the work funded by Freexian’s Debian LTS offering.

Debian project funding

In February, we put aside 5475 EUR to fund Debian projects. The first project from this initiative was finished and thus Carles Pina was able to issue the first invoice!

We are looking forward to receive more projects from various Debian teams and contributors. Learn more about the rationale behind this initiative in this article.

Debian LTS contributors

In February, 12 contributors have been paid to work on Debian LTS, their reports are available:

  • Abhijith PA did 19.0h (out of 7h assigned and 12h from January).
  • Ben Hutchings did 19h (out of 16h assigned and 15.25h from January), thus carrying over 12.25h to March.
  • Brian May did 10h (out of 10h assigned).
  • Chris Lamb did 18h (out of 18h assigned).
  • Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did not report back about their work so for now we assume they did nothing (out of 28h assigned plus 35.5h from January), thus is carrying over 63.5h for March.
  • Holger Levsen did 6h coordinating/managing the LTS team.
  • Markus Koschany did 23.25h (out of 23.25h assigned).
  • Ola Lundqvist did 7h (out of 12h assigned and 10h from January) and gave back 5h, thus carrying over 10h to March.
  • Roberto C. Sánchez did 10.5h (out of 32h assigned), thus carrying over 21.5h to March.
  • Sylvain Beucler did 30h (out of 30h assigned).
  • Thorsten Alteholz did 30h (out of 30h assigned).
  • Utkarsh Gupta did 60h (out of 60h assigned).

Evolution of the situation

In February we released 28 DLAs (including one regression update) and we held an internal team meeting using video chat.
Finally, as every month we would like to remark once again that we are constantly looking for new contributors. Please contact Holger if you are interested!

The security tracker currently lists 46 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file has 34 packages needing an update.

Thanks to our sponsors

Sponsors that joined recently are in bold.

  • Platinum sponsors:
    • TOSHIBA (for 66 months)
    • GitHub (for 56 months)
    • Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) (for 34 months)
  • Gold sponsors:
    • Blablacar (for 81 months)
    • Roche Diagnostics International AG (for 77 months)
    • Linode (for 71 months)
    • Babiel GmbH (for 60 months)
    • Plat’Home (for 59 months)
    • University of Oxford (for 16 months)
    • Deveryware (for 3 months)
  • Silver sponsors:
    • The Positive Internet Company (for 82 months)
    • Domeneshop AS (for 81 months)
    • Nantes Métropole (for 75 months)
    • Univention GmbH (for 67 months)
    • Université Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 67 months)
    • Ribbon Communications, Inc. (for 61 months)
    • Exonet B.V. (for 51 months)
    • Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 45 months)
    • CINECA (for 34 months)
    • Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires Étrangères (for 28 months)
    • Cloudways Ltd (for 17 months)
    • Dinahosting SL (for 15 months)
    • Platform.sh (for 10 months)
    • Bauer Xcel Media Deutschland KG (for 9 months)
    • Moxa Intelligence Co., Ltd. (for 4 months)
    • sipgate GmbH
  • Bronze sponsors:
    • Evolix (for 82 months)
    • Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 82 months)
    • Linuxhotel GmbH (for 79 months)
    • Intevation GmbH (for 78 months)
    • Daevel SARL (for 77 months)
    • Bitfolk LTD (for 76 months)
    • Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 76 months)
    • Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 75 months)
    • NUMLOG (for 75 months)
    • WinGo AG (for 74 months)
    • Ecole Centrale de Nantes – LHEEA (for 71 months)
    • Entr’ouvert (for 66 months)
    • Adfinis AG (for 63 months)
    • Laboratoire LEGI – UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 58 months)
    • Tesorion (for 58 months)
    • GNI MEDIA (for 57 months)
    • Bearstech (for 49 months)
    • LiHAS (for 49 months)
    • People Doc (for 45 months)
    • Catalyst IT Ltd (for 44 months)
    • Supagro (for 39 months)
    • Demarcq SAS (for 38 months)
    • Université Grenoble Alpes (for 24 months)
    • TouchWeb SAS (for 16 months)
    • SPiN AG (for 12 months)
    • CoreFiling (for 8 months)
    • Institut des sciences cognitives Marc Jeannerod (for 3 months)

Freexian’s report about Debian Long Term Support, January 2021

February 15, 2021 by Raphaël Hertzog

A Debian LTS logo Like each month, have a look at the work funded by Freexian’s Debian LTS offering.

Debian project funding

In January, we put aside 2175 EUR to fund Debian projects. As part of this Carles Pina i Estany started to work on better no-dsa support for the PTS which recently resulted in two merge requests which will hopefully be deployed soon.

We’re looking forward to receive more projects from various Debian teams! Learn more about the rationale behind this initiative in this article.

Debian LTS contributors

In January, 13 contributors have been paid to work on Debian LTS, their reports are available:

  • Abhijith PA did 9.0h (out of 14h assigned and 7h from December), thus carrying over 12h to February.
  • Adrian Bunk did 14h (out of 26h assigned), thus carrying over 12h to February, which he then gave back.
  • Ben Hutchings did 0.25h (out of 7h assigned and 8.5h from December), thus carrying over 15.25h to February.
  • Brian May did 10h (out of 10h assigned).
  • Chris Lamb did 18h (out of 18h assigned).
  • Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did not report back about their work so we assume they did nothing (out of 26h assigned plus 9.5h from December), thus is carrying over 35.5h for February.
  • Holger Levsen did 6.5h coordinating/managing the LTS team..
  • Markus Koschany did 36.75h (out of 26h assigned and 10.75h from December).
  • Ola Lundqvist did 2.5h (out of 10.5h assigned and 11.5h from December) and gave back 9.5 hours, thus carrying over 10h to February.
  • Roberto C. Sánchez did 6h (out of 26h assigned), thus carrying over 20h to February, which he then gave back.
  • Sylvain Beucler did 26h (out of 26h assigned).
  • Thorsten Alteholz did 26h (out of 26h assigned).
  • Utkarsh Gupta did 26h (out of 26h assigned).

Evolution of the situation

In January we released 28 DLAs and held our first LTS team meeting for 2021 on IRC, with the next public IRC meeting coming up at the end of March. During that meeting Utkarsh shared that after he rolled out the python-certbot update (on December 8th 2020) the maintainer told him: “I just checked with Let’s Encrypt, and the stats show that you just saved 142,500 people from having their certificates start failing next month. I didn’t know LTS was still that used!”

Finally, we would like to welcome sipgate GmbH as a new silver sponsor. Also remember that we are constantly looking for new contributors. Please contact Holger if you are interested.

The security tracker currently lists 43 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file has 23 packages needing an update.

Thanks to our sponsors

Sponsors that joined recently are in bold.

  • Platinum sponsors:
    • TOSHIBA (for 65 months)
    • GitHub (for 55 months)
    • Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) (for 33 months)
  • Gold sponsors:
    • Blablacar (for 80 months)
    • Roche Diagnostics International AG (for 76 months)
    • Linode (for 70 months)
    • Babiel GmbH (for 59 months)
    • Plat’Home (for 58 months)
    • University of Oxford (for 15 months)
    • Deveryware
  • Silver sponsors:
    • The Positive Internet Company (for 81 months)
    • Domeneshop AS (for 80 months)
    • Nantes Métropole (for 74 months)
    • Univention GmbH (for 66 months)
    • Université Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 66 months)
    • Ribbon Communications, Inc. (for 60 months)
    • Exonet B.V. (for 49 months)
    • Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 43 months)
    • CINECA (for 33 months)
    • Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires Étrangères (for 27 months)
    • Cloudways Ltd (for 16 months)
    • Dinahosting SL (for 14 months)
    • Platform.sh (for 9 months)
    • Bauer Xcel Media Deutschland KG (for 8 months)
    • Moxa Intelligence Co., Ltd.
    • sipgate GmbH
  • Bronze sponsors:
    • Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 81 months)
    • Evolix (for 80 months)
    • Linuxhotel GmbH (for 78 months)
    • Intevation GmbH (for 77 months)
    • Daevel SARL (for 76 months)
    • Bitfolk LTD (for 75 months)
    • Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 75 months)
    • Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 74 months)
    • NUMLOG (for 74 months)
    • WinGo AG (for 73 months)
    • Ecole Centrale de Nantes – LHEEA (for 69 months)
    • Entr’ouvert (for 65 months)
    • Adfinis AG (for 62 months)
    • Tesorion (for 57 months)
    • GNI MEDIA (for 56 months)
    • Laboratoire LEGI – UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 56 months)
    • Bearstech (for 48 months)
    • LiHAS (for 48 months)
    • People Doc (for 44 months)
    • Catalyst IT Ltd (for 42 months)
    • Supagro (for 38 months)
    • Demarcq SAS (for 36 months)
    • Université Grenoble Alpes (for 22 months)
    • TouchWeb SAS (for 14 months)
    • SPiN AG (for 11 months)
    • CoreFiling (for 7 months)
    • Institut des sciences cognitives Marc Jeannerod

Debian on Thinkpad T14

February 1, 2021 by Raphaël Hertzog

I switched my main computer and this time I opted for Lenovo’s Thinkpad T14 that comes with an AMD Processor. It’s the first time that I have 8 cores in my laptop with this AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 4750U CPU and it gives a real performance boost together with the 32GB of RAM.

Despite the fact that it’s a laptop I use it mainly on my desktop where it’s now connected to the “USB-C Dock Gen2” so that I can connect it with a single USB-C cable to power/ethernet/keyboard/mouse and two external displays. I use the display port output and I had some hiccups with the HDMI output where the screen would become blank for a few seconds…

The Linux support of this hardware is rather good so far but I went through a few hiccups when I started using it, in particular I’m not sure what made the external display work as they were not working after the initial install but they ended up working after installing all the packages that I had on my former computer. But the suspend/resume works fine… even when you unplug the laptop from the dock with the lid closed. It might be seen as a given but the suspend/resume was broken on my old X260 (at least on recent kernels, I was able to keep using Linux 4.19 where it worked).

I tried to document relevant information in the wiki, have a look at https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Thinkpad/T14 and I have uploaded a Linux hardware database probe if you want to look the gory details including the firmware version that I upgraded to before starting any setup.

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