apt-get install debian-wizard

First Flattr FOSS Suggestions

August 1, 2010 by Raphaël Hertzog

The Flattr FOSS project is quite young so very few free software are currently listed in the dedicated directories. It’s still advocacy time: if there are free software that you’d like to flattr, please tell them and point them to Flattr FOSS.

It’s too early for any conclusion, but the feedback from users is good and it looks like that people using flattr to support free software are more generous than the average flattr user. You’re great people! 🙂

Anyway, it’s time for me to give a few suggestions of projects to flattr.

My first recommendation is Project Hamster, it’s a time-tracking application for GNOME but it has come a long way thanks to the work of Toms Bauģis. I use everyday and it rocks.
My second recommendation is Överallt, it’s a Firefox extension that allows usage of Flattr even in places where it was not designed to be used: forums, mailing list archives, etc. The persons using Flattr just put [Flattr=20693] in their signature and the Firefox extension automatically replaces this text with a real Flattr button ready to be clicked. Thanks to Paul Da Silva for the nice idea and the first implementation!
My third recommendation is Mustard, it’s a StatusNet client for the Android platform. More concretely you can install it on your Android phone to send updates to identi.ca while traveling. I have no Android phone but Mustard seems to be popular among owners of such phones!
My fourth recommendation is moreutils from Joey Hess. It’s set of unix (command line) tools that “nobody else thought of writing when unix was young” (according to Joey himself). They are all very useful, I use more or less regularly isutf8 (verify if a file is UTF-8 compliant), combine (logical operations on lines of two files), pee (send standard input to two programs, very useful in git hooks when you want to run two programs that both consume the same data), sponge (ever tried “grep -v foo file >file” and lost your data? now you can use “grep -v foo file | sponge file”). And Joey is a long time Debian developer who has truly shaped Debian, he’s behind several major Debian projects (debconf, debian-installer, debhelper, …). Big kudos to him!
My last recommendation is to flattr Andreas Gohr for his work as dokuwiki lead developer. There’s no flattr button on dokuwiki’s website but you’ll find some in Andreas’ blog, just pick a dokuwiki related article like this one: Dokuwiki Birthday Bughunting Weekend. Dokuwiki is a simple wiki that works without any database (the pages are stored in flat files) and it’s even commonly used to setup simple websites thanks to the numerous themes available.

Okay, that’s it for this month. I’ll try to keep a broad panel of software (desktop, command line, mobile, web, etc.). Since I have promoted a GNOME desktop application, I would like to be able to promote a KDE or XFCE application next month but I did not discover any KDE/XFCE project using Flattr… do you know any? Please share in the comments if you find some.

Also I wonder if you have decided of a flattr strategy… Personally I’m likely to flattr my favorites projects/persons each month and to flattr a few other occasionally as I discover them. What’s your own strategy?

Do You Want a Free Debian Book? Read on.

July 28, 2010 by Raphaël Hertzog

Cover of my French Debian Book While I have made good progress on many of my Debian goals for this year, it’s not the case for the goal number #1: translating my Debian book into English. The picture on the left is the cover of the current French version based on Debian Lenny (450 pages). But the translation would be based on the next edition that we’re currently preparing and it’s based on Debian Squeeze of course! We have already translated the table of contents so that you can get an idea of what’s in the book. Note that many parts of the book apply to Ubuntu as well.

It’s quite difficult for Roland and me to allocate several months of our life to such a huge task without any income in that period and without knowing if our book will sell enough to cover for the time invested. For those reasons, we’re considering using a service like kickstarter.com or ulule.com or yooook.net to get this project funded.

If you don’t know those services, they allow you to present your project and to collect pledges so that you can safely complete your project. The money pledged is distributed only if the total amount pledged exceeds the minimal funding level (set by the project creator). Furthermore you can select nice rewards depending on the amount of money pledged.

To make things even more exciting we are ready to publish the book under a DFSG-compatible license at the sole condition that we reach 25 000€ of donations. That might look like a lot but in fact it’s only 5€ donated by 5000 persons and then everybody benefits! And for the authors, you have to remove ~10% of fees taken by the funding service (including card processing fees), 16.4% VAT, 9% social taxes and if you consider that the project represents a minimum of 6 months of work, that ends up to at most 2850 €/month. We believe this to be reasonable.

The next step for us is to pick the service to use and setup the fundraising. We need your input. Please answer a few questions by filling this form.

In all cases, we will have those rewards and probably more:

the book in digital format (PDF, HTML, ePub) (between 5€ and 10€, price not fixed yet)
the book as paperback (between 35€ and 50€, price not fixed yet)
the paperback book with a dedication by (one of) the authors

A few considerations about the various services: Kickstarter.com is a great service but it’s restricted to US-residents so it’s complicated for us to use that service since we’re French (and live in France) and the supporters need to have an Amazon (payments) account. Ulule.com is open to anyone for project creation but uses a paypal API to deal with the pledge mechanism and thus imposes that all supporters have a paypal account. Is that requirement likely to scare you away? Yooook.net is specialized in liberation fundraising but the interface is not very polished, they don’t offer (many) social features nor do they give a public listing of the projects hosted.

The choice is difficult and thus we’re seeking your feedback to make the right one, take a few minutes and answer our questions: click here to go to the form.

Thank you for your help and please spread the word so that we get enough answers to have meaningful results.

Update: it has been brought to my attention that kickstarter requires an Amazon (payments) account. I fixed my article and the form to document this.

I have also been asked what license we’re going to use. It’s likely to be dual-licensed GPL2+ / CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Update: The crowfunding campaign is now running on Ulule. Click here to see its project page.

Ubuntu default bookmarks pointing to Debian

July 25, 2010 by Raphaël Hertzog

Just noticed that the default bookmarks in Ubuntu include one entry pointing back to Debian. It even says that Ubuntu is based on Debian.

It’s a small thing but it made my day. It’s nice to see this kind of acknowledgement.

Click on the screenshot to see the picture in full size (and yes, most favicons suck with a dark background). For those wondering, the screenshot is taken on a default install of Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Edition.

Quick news: dpkg, collab-maint, alioth and the future

July 22, 2010 by Raphaël Hertzog

Dpkg got rid of Perl

Let’s start with the interesting part and the great news: dpkg 1.15.8 (to be uploaded soon) will no longer need perl! After my changes to rewrite update-alternatives in C, Guillem recently pushed the rewrite of dpkg-divert/mksplit in C. Please test it out (binary package for i386 or .dsc).

This is rather exciting news for those who would like to use dpkg in embedded contexts. And it’s great to see this completed in time for Squeeze. In Squeeze+1, we might go one step further and merge cdebconf, the C replacement for debconf.

I got rid of some recurring administrative tasks

I have been administrating the Alioth server since its inception (see the announce I sent in 2003) but I’m no longer enjoying the day-to-day administrative work that it represents. That’s why I just retired from the team. We recently recruited Tollef Fog Heen so the number of admins is still the same (that said, Alioth could benefit from some more help, if you’re a DD and interested, drop a mail to admin@alioth.debian.org or come to #alioth).

Same goes for the collab-maint project. I have dealt with hundreds of requests to add new contributors to the project since it’s the central repository where all Debian developers have write access and where they put the VCS for their packages that do not belong to a more specialized team. The new administrator that will approve the requests is Xavier Oswald and he’s doing the work under the umbrella of the New Maintainer’s Front Desk.

The future

I will continue to spend the same amount of time on Debian, the time freed will quickly be reallocated to other Debian and free software related projects. In fact, I even anticipated a bit by launching Flattr FOSS last week but that’s a relatively simple project. 🙂

The other projects that will never all fit in the freed time: I want to spend more time working on dpkg. I do plan to blog more often too, but I’m sure you’ll notice that yourself soon. I would like to see my Debian book translated into English (another post coming on the topic sometimes soon). In my dreams, I could even start yet another software project, I have some ideas that I really would like to see implemented but I don’t see how that could fit in this year’s planning… unless I can convince someone else to implement them! Maybe I should blog about them.

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