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

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A Debian LTS logo

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

Debian project funding

In April, we put aside 5775 EUR to fund Debian projects. There was no proposals for new projects received, thus we’re looking forward to receive more projects from various Debian teams! Please do not hesitate to submit a proposal, if there is a project that could benefit from the funding!

Debian LTS contributors

In April, 11 contributors have been paid to work on Debian LTS, their reports are available:

  • Abhijith PA did 14.0h (out of 14h assigned and 12h from March), thus carrying over 12h to May.
  • Anton Gladky did 12h (out of 12h assigned).
  • Ben Hutchings did 14h (out of 16h assigned and 2.5h from March), thus carrying over 4.5h to May.
  • Chris Lamb did 18h (out of 18h assigned).
  • Holger Levsen‘s work was coordinating/managing the LTS team, he did 10h (out of 12h assigned), and gave 2h back to the pool.
  • Markus Koschany did 15.0h (out of 30h assigned), thus carrying over 15h to May.
  • Ola Lundqvist did 7.5h (out of 12h assigned), thus carrying over 4.5h to May.
  • Roberto C. Sánchez did 9.5h (out of 32h assigned and 4.5h from March), thus carrying over 27h to May.
  • 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 April we released 33 DLAs and held a LTS team meeting using video conferencing.

The security tracker currently lists 53 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file has 26 packages needing an update.

We are please to welcome VyOS as a new gold sponsor!

Thanks to our sponsors

Sponsors that joined recently are in bold.

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

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A Debian LTS logo

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

Debian project funding

In March, we put aside 3225 EUR to fund Debian projects but sadly nobody picked up anything, so this one of the many reasons Raphael posted as series of blog posts titled “Challenging times for Freexian”, posted in 4 parts on the last two days of March and the first two of April. [Part one, two, three and four]

So we’re still 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 March, 11 contributors have been paid to work on Debian LTS, their reports are available:

Evolution of the situation

In March we released 28 DLAs and held our second LTS team meeting for 2021 on IRC, with the next public IRC meeting coming up at the end of May.

At that meeting Holger announced that after 2.5 years he wanted to step back from his role helping Raphaël in coordinating/managing the LTS team. We would like to thank Holger for his continuous work on Debian LTS (which goes back to 2014) and are happy to report that we already found a successor which we will introduce in the upcoming April report from Freexian.

Finally, we would like to remark once again that we are constantly looking for new contributors. For a last time, please contact Holger if you are interested!

The security tracker currently lists 42 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file has 28 packages needing an update.

We are also pleased to report that we got 4 new sponsors over the last 2 months : thanks to sipgate GmbH, OVH US LLC, Tilburg University and Observatoire des Sciences de l’Univers de Grenoble !

Thanks to our sponsors

Sponsors that joined recently are in bold.

Challenging times for Freexian (4/4)

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Note: This is the continuation of part 1, part 2 and part 3. You can get the full document as a single PDF. Feel free to share this document to anyone that might be interested to work towards the goals outlined.

Conclusion

I’m very excited by the perspective that I outlined in this document. It really resonates with my own mission statement as a Debian developer (written a long time ago):

My main role in Debian is to help Debian to evolve so that it’s always able to face the new challenges that are showing up.

My approach is both corrective and proactive, I work to solve current problems and prepare for tomorrow’s. This requires to remain sufficiently involved to identify new trends, see the deficiencies and be a force of proposition.

Most of the changes require to interact with many people, and problems are often more relational than technical. I will ensure to follow the habits of interdependence (Think Win-Win, Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood, Synergize) to find a solution acceptable to all and to inspire others to do the same.

The easiest changes to implement are technical (such as improvements to distro-tracker) and require little interaction. This work is used to recharge me by offering me an immediate reward for my efforts.

Finally, and this is a substantive effort, I want to create in the project working conditions that allow all contributors to give their best. It starts with developing a common vision …

But I can’t achieve this alone, I need help from passionate individuals sharing this vision. Let me know if you want to be one of those persons.

Challenging times for Freexian (3/4)

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Note: This is the continuation of part 1 and part 2.

Going forward: growing Freexian

Part 2: Extending the team

By all accounts, Freexian is still a small company which relies largely on me in many aspects. The growth of its business is however providing enough financial margin to allow looking into ways to recruit external help, be it through direct hiring (for French residents) or  via long term contracting (for people based in other countries). If you believe you could be the right person for one of the roles listed below, or if you know someone that we should contact, please reach out to raphael@freexian.com.

Project manager

I’m looking for someone that cares about Debian and that has the following skills:

  • knows how to manage developers and software projects
    • bonus points for any experience in environments mixing volunteers and paid contributors
  • is fluent and experienced enough in Python to be able to do software design and code reviews
    • bonus points for experience with: Django, Test Driven Development

That person would handle (some of) the following tasks:

  • lead the “Debian project funding” initiative to a success
    • find useful projects to fund, for example by
      • discussing with various Debian teams / contributors (including the DPL)
      • running a survey among Debian developers
      • doing your own analysis
    • help with drafting and specifying the various projects
    • help to find someone to implement and review the projects
    • coordinate with those persons during execution
  • manage other free software projects that Freexian would like to pursue
    • debusine: a software factory tailored for Debian packages
      • participate in design discussions, set milestones and goals
        • start with the short term needs of Freexian
        • but take into account the needs of Debian so that it can replace some aging infrastructure within Debian
      • coordinate with contractors, possibly implement some parts
    • infrastructure to run the various Freexian services and automate most of the administrative work (see “Part2: From Debian LTS to Debian for the Enterprise”)
  • maybe coordinate the team of paid LTS/ELTS contributors

Debian/Python Developer

While the current priority is on the above role, there could also be room for a “developer” role with the following tasks:

  • Creation and maintenance of Debian packages
  • Technical support
  • Software development in Python (debusine, internal infrastructure)
  • Security support (contributor to Debian LTS)

Sales manager / sales representative

Up until now, the growth of Freexian has mostly been organic, through “word of mouth” and increased awareness of Debian LTS within the Debian community. We never spent a single euro on advertising, except for one promotional video and for Debconf sponsorship (with a flyer and stickers).

But if we can manage to make a positive impact on Debian through the funding that Freexian brings, then I’m interested to grow the company so that we can pay more people to work on Debian. That growth likely would have to go through some more active sales work. At the same time, it is an opportunity for me to delegate (some of) the administrative work that lies solely on my shoulders (invoicing, day to day customer relationship, etc.).

I assume it will be hard to find a member of the Debian community that has an interest in those areas, but who knows…

This article is to be continued in an upcoming post. Stay tuned!

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