 So this is Marga who's going to be talking about making Debian rule even more than it rules and She has been contributing to Debian for seven years. She's been a Debian developer for five years She's been intimately Involved in organizing dev comp in Argentina So let's give her a big round of applause and welcome and also in New York. She's helped tremendously too So she gets set up we have some raffles, but I need help from the crowd I want a raffle based on a kind of Obscure geeky debbing question who would like to give the question So you don't care about winning and whoever gets the answer will get Unix and Linux system administration handbook the fourth edition Ashish you have a question and then Micah does I mean I can you know decide the winner of that actually so That's a good one Repeat every DPL in order from the start be Dale You can give away the book afterwards Come on. I want to see this. All right Phil is going to try Yeah, okay in Murdoch Bruce parents in Jackson be Dale No My guess is No one else Maybe I should know it too, but All right, who wants to answer the ask the next question, okay be Dale What was the first password used for uploading files to master dot debbie and org? No password No, there was a password There's a common. It looks like we're ready for the talk. So we do have a winner Absolutely It was let's say so this was this was about mirror. So it was Alice and looking glass. That's a good one What oh It was Alice Alice was the log a name Looking glass was the password Okay. Hello Everything's fine. Yeah Okay, so I'm going to talk about how to make debbie and rule as Villa said more than it does Or rule like it used to be I Know that everything is not so bad, but I think it's important to find the problems that we have So once upon a time Deviant was an innovative distribution that Created a lot of things that were copied by a lot of distributions like we were the first to have dependency Intelligent package manager We were the first to have Our policy that is something that makes deviant great because the policy makes Makes everybody know what they are working and what quality they are aiming to so This policy that we had in the past and we still have has been one of the rocks of deviant Well, well, you know deviant was great in the past We had a thriving community that kept growing and growing and growing Now we are mostly copying what others do we don't innovate that much we do innovate But not that much as we used to there's a lot of things that we are copying from other distributions We are copying from other people Our stable distribution is at least perceived to be outdated It's kind of a question of a point of view, but it is perceived to be updated It also is perceived to be not so easy to use Again, it's a question of a point of view, but that's how the public sees deviant and our community shrinking we have less developers now after the Ping that the account manager send we have now less available developers that we used to have and that is Not so apparent. It's real. We have less developers. We do have the deviant maintainers, which is great But we do have less developers that you used to have something to keep in mind. So This is an expression that I learned not so long ago the elephant in the room It means when there's something that Everybody knows everybody has in their mind, but nobody there to speak about it Okay, so our elephant in the room is Ubuntu Ubuntu is taking away Users is taking away developers are taking away Not really taking away Do not I'm not an anti Ubuntu person I just want to say that we have to acknowledge what's going on Ubuntu is Being the point of entry for a lot of people To start getting involved in free software where before deviant was the point of entry for Similar kinds of people. Yeah, so I just want to Mention the elephant in the room and stop going around it Yeah, it's everything fine with Ubuntu, but it's We know how to acknowledge that it's taking away force from deviant So it's a work still meaningful this question was already asked by Zach on his DPL talk and Yes, obviously I work is still meaningful if they were to disappear today Ubuntu would go I don't know flat because they use all our work, right and not only Ubuntu We have a lot of derivatives. We have a scholarly nooks. We have Linux. We have many many other derivatives That use deviant as their base. So if deviant were to stop working if we decided hey Well, if Ubuntu is so much better, let's just stop working on deviant. Well, that would die, right? So we want to do that We we won't stop working on deviant because it's great But there's not the only thing we are we also have users we have a lot of users that still prefer to use deviant And we could have more That's pointed part of what my talk is aiming to but not the only thing and We also still set the standards of quality if you compare the quality of the packages in Ubuntu and the quality of the packages in deviant Deviant is the one that's setting the standards of quality, right? So our policy is still very meaningful So yes, our work in deviant is very meaningful, but we have to work on making it better in making it more meaningful so Once we decide that we have problems, but we are meaningful and we want to make things better What do we do? Well? my answer to that is find the root of our problems and If possible, solve them for this I Sent emails to random people around deviant Developers maintainers contributors users people who posted on mailing list Randomly I tried to make it random. I don't know how random it was I'm not a sociologist, so I Might have been biased when I sent my email, but I Paul a number of people and To ask them what they thought were the problems in deviant and what they thought we could do about it so Before showing you the results. This is my own sorting off the problems in deviant before getting these answers For me the first thing was before getting these answers. The first thing was user unfriendliness stuff like what happened with my computer Before the beginning of the talk then was communication then lack of workforce then lack of visibility and quite lower their release issues like Why it takes so long to release and that stuff? but after I ask about I got about 40 answers to my email The two main problems are motivation and communication Motivation meaning getting not only more people into deviant But also retaining the people that already are in deviant both things keeping people motivated both new people and old people and the other one they were always Competing one with the other in who was first when I was getting the results the other one is communication is Sending your message to the project and getting the feedback that you should get both both Those stages are problematic both the sending and the receiving of the feedback And then third but very close is visibility and Yeah, I think this one is it's one problem that maybe it's not so easy to see but That we should work on it's easy to fix This one is the one that is more easily easily fixable, so we should work on it Yeah, okay with visibility it means that there's a lot of people out there that think deviant is difficult to use and If you give them deviant and they use it. They don't realize It's it's not to want to write they don't realize it's not to want to Also, there's people that have never in their lives heard about deviant And have heard about the one too and we should try to reach that that kind of market So now I'm going to go through the these three main elephants, so The first two phrases are from Enrico the third is from a person that has to be anonymous so As I said communication is a problem that it's not Just one thing it's many things one of the things is that sometimes you don't get information from the other Person you send the bag you get no risk no response from the bag and maybe it will be fixed maybe not you don't know or Something happening in a team in a or a maintainer is working on something, but you don't hear about it There's a lack of information of the good stuff. The good stuff is usually not Communicated people work and do a lot of good work and don't communicate about it And then there's the bad stuff that is people who have nothing to say and fail to say nothing People who keep repeating over and over again the same things on a flamethrower or that's not called a flamethrower But a thread that has 60 answers, right? So when you reach 60 answers Probably means that something is wrong there that there shouldn't be a need to Keep replying and replying and replying it but probably what you are going to say has already been said by someone else There's no gain in it being said by you as well There's also the core teams in Debian have started communicating more Since a few years back But we could still work a bit more on that Yeah, well this the overall tone of discussion is still bad even if they communicate well The discussions don't beat To the places that should be So what can we do about it? With communication the most important thing is that we need to do a cultural change. I've been told for example that Well, you all know that in Ubuntu there's a code of conduct and there's People that work in Ubuntu that when communicating in Ubuntu mailing list Follow the code of conduct but when communicating in Debian mailing list they don't so Yeah, we need to have a cultural change We need to say well, it's not okay to be bad in the Debian mailing list It doesn't matter if we have a code of conduct or not. It's still not okay, too so These are some points that I like you and everyone that's watching and everyone that hears about this talk to keep in mind For your work in Debian from now on Whenever you sell do something you could tell the community about it if you you can blog it You can use Twitter or whatever Or you can send it to a mailing list But if you do something that other people will be interested in knowing Tell the community about it. Do not work in silence in your basement, right? Tell the community about it When you find someone that has done something useful that you didn't know about thank them Okay, we have a question or something. Could we get a microphone? I know I'm using one Hi there you first You say that I mean Malton You said you mentioned earlier that it's difficult to get acts And that communication is very important I think it's also very important to communicate what you're not doing as well as what you are doing If I haven't got time to work on something I don't want people to be left thinking well somebody might be fixing this I want people to know that I'm not fixing it so somebody else can do it. I Can't work on everything at once. Yes. Yes. You are very right. There's There's a feeling in Debian that when you acquire some kind of responsibility being it being a part of the team Being it maintaining a package being doing whatever you do in Debian You have to do it and if you don't have time to do it, it's like a big shame but it shouldn't be like that because If you don't have time to do it as you say you have to communicate about it You have to say hey, I'm sorry. I don't have time. I have other issues Real life because Debian is also real life Right. We are here in the real world We are working in a real distribution Debian is also real life, but it's perfectly fine to have other real life issues not real life, but other issues So yes, you should say I know I know I give you the word You should say I can't work on this. Yes. I totally agree Help me. Yes. Yes. Do us for help. Yes Hi, I'm Ashish So I'm really really glad you're giving this talk and I think that all of these points are Crucial and I think that a lot of us do them and a lot of us sometimes forget about them and it's good to be reminded but I want to Talk about how possible these are right now and to see if we need to change some Structures about how we communicate to make these things more likely so With requesting for help. There's actually an RFH You can file requests for help bugs and of course you're laughing because no one uses RFH bugs as far as I know hardly And when you when people filed them, I feel like it's an act of desperation And we need to have some middle ground We're like I would be nice if I had help, but I've not you're not trying to say I can't work on my package Right, okay, and it's not even clear. They existed. I'm So and as far as telling the community about nice things. I've done. I mean, what are you talking about? I put it in my package change log Okay, so so my point here is that Where is an appropriate place for me to write about something cool? I've done maybe my blog, but maybe people won't read it Sorry Okay, yeah, so it depends on what you are communicating. Yes. We have the there's a new site for the avian There's your blog there's mailing list it depends on what exactly you are communicating But yeah, it's important that you communicate somewhere that if the message gets out, right? And I think that a lot of us don't have the instinct to to think oh, I did something cool I should mail Devin weekly news and I guess what I would like to see is a communication team We're like if I did something cool, and I don't know how I should write about it Then I should tell them and help them help me figure it out So the team in fact exists. There is this wonderful Debian publicity mailing list, which is very very very active since Various month, I would say maybe even a year so you can post their news about what you're doing They usually look out for news on the let's say the usual media So the mailing list the announcement Planet Debian, but you can post stuff there, and it will be part of the next Debian project news That's all very cool And if you want or need help with these things those are great resources to have but I'd also point out that Part of the visibility thing is really as simple as the distinction between whether you put in a Twitter feed or a blog Fixed two bugs and uploaded version 13 which is semantically Content-free or whether you say spent the afternoon fixing two interesting bugs in the Debian blah blah blah package and uploaded version such and such That ends up changing the aggregation scores of everything related to that package related to Debian and so forth when the spiders walk across your Blogs or pick up your microblog entries, and that's the kind of stuff that fundamentally changes this so You don't necessarily have to make it into Debian weekly news or into some kind of a press release Just put useful semantic content into the things that you you know Spend three more seconds typing four more words in your Twitter entries, and it'll make all the difference Do you want to keep going that you want to okay? Yeah? Bdell that's a really good point about making your communication easier understand by robots But it's also really more important to make our communication easy to understand by humans Who aren't Debian developers and actually the same thing that you said like writing that I spent the afternoon working on Debian That makes people who read that think that it's interesting who aren't in this room And if I say I finally wrote some documentation to fix bug number four or five nine one two That's not so interesting to people who aren't in the room I'm at some moment. I just wanted to also point out that it's okay to Tell the world about something cool that someone else has done So You don't always need to be the one to speak up and some people aren't always comfortable trumpeting their own their own accomplishments And you know we see it even here and how it's how it's described When you do something useful tell the community about it when someone else does something useful You thank them, which is usually something you do privately so you know people can help to shoulder that burden for each other Okay, we we had a message on IRC Suggestion mainly for yeah You could also use the misc news that comes on the Debian devil announce That's mainly for other developers, but that also works Also, maybe we should just never wait to need to have more people in helping maybe in a package to actually Make it easy for people to contribute and to come and help some people in each bug reports are very can't to bug reporters and Really try to have people help start in a package even though they don't need help because every package can Use more manpower. So why wait to a need to have more manpower to ask for more So the other two Instructions or no suggestions that I have here are if you are angry stay away from email It has happened to me in the past that I was angry and I wrote an ugly ugly email And then when I read read it the next day, I was why on earth did I send this right? so Just try to have this rule that when you are angry you stay away from email you if possible stay away from IRC Wait until the anger has passed at least a little bit So that you can write Something that you will not regret in the future, right? So and remember to treat everybody with respect It doesn't matter if it's an FTP master or if it's a bug submitter or whatever, right? We are all people we are all Trying to make the beyond better. So everybody deserves to be treated with the same respect. So Even if you are angry, even if you're exploding with anger Remember to treat everyone with respect and if possible stay away from email So these are some suggestions that I want to propose to Work on the problems the first one the deviant appreciation day. I'm going to work on it myself with the help of Raphael that I think it's not here For deviant's birthday that is next week or so So we are a bit too close to it but we want to do it which is thanking everybody for their work having a web page and some Infrastructure to allow all the users from all over the world to say thanks last year in the news site when the deviant birthday news came up a lot of users went to that site and said thank you I know if you've seen it because you have to go to the blog and go to the comments But it's really nice. It makes you happy to see so many people saying. Thank you I think it would be nicer even if this thank you could go to could reach More could not be hidden in the comment section of one blog post. So well, that's my own Project to make this better, but this other two are to think about with you I think we could give more emphasis to the deviant community guidance Let's see how many of you have read the deviant community guidelines written by Enrico Okay. Well, everybody else go read them I think we would really It would really be good if we could make more emphasis in that if we could point more people to them I think they are a bit long and geeks Tend to get bored after a while Maybe we could make a summary version for the people that are in a hurry, but I think they are very good well, the other thing that We would have to think about are Either social or technical ways to stop flame words one is the code of conduct that it's pretty much not liked by anti-wuntu people and the other is Implementing technical measures like you can't post two emails in the same hour or to the same mailing list What in the same thread well in the same thread it's a bit more complicated, but yeah Well, I don't know other opinions on that people that are very against it people that are in favor of it Russ Hallbury on the social side of stopping flame wars So one of the things I did before I worked in Demian was I was active on use net and I was active in use net newsgroup creation And those people who have gone through that process have some idea of how how bad that is um, let me put it this way We're way more polite But one of the things that that you find out after many years of going through this is um It is in the power of every individual person to not always, but quite frequently Stop flame wars when you have a heated message where someone's clearly really upset and you reply to that message And you don't react and you calm down and you deescalate and you're in your polite and you back the conversation down It's amazing how often the person who was really upset when they wrote their first message We'll come back with something much more reasonable And I'm I'm I really think this is a big thing that's driving people away from Debian is the flame wars and the people getting really upset on mailing lists and I mean I really think that we should all think of when we start writing one of those Mails and we back it down and we calm it down and we find a way to be to be technical or to be Specific or to talk about real issues. You just solved an RC bug And I think you should think of it that way, you know that that you are doing real work in Debian by backing the conversation down And making it calm Yeah, I fully agree and they have a document to suggest on Sorry, Stefan of the caroling. I have a document to suggest on how to do that. Just take Debian develop archives Filter on the mail sent by your ass Albury read them and that will be an how to do that. So, thanks This is not worth the effort that that I Just went to but Carl Rom the I we just need to Sort of spread the meme that to write a really good flame. You have to be calm And if it doesn't seem like it's worth flaming at that point don't bother So I BDL I think you make an excellent point earlier when you talk about the fact that if you're angry You shouldn't get close to an email or an IRC channel. I've Generalize this a bunch of times in the past by pointing out to people that I think the way email is supposed to work Is that you read? Contemplate and then write and the problem is it's too easy when you get emotional about something to rush to the first part skip over the second and go straight to the third and That's when things get completely out of hand So a simple little rule that I think you should apply is you should never respond instantly to anything that you read Because if you do you completely skip over the possibility of contemplating what you've read and thinking about what you really want I am Dave Crossens and there's a guy called Marshall Rosenberg who has made a career out of something he calls nonviolent communication The website is cnvc.org and he works with violent criminals in prisons and stuff like that to show them how to be nice and In a kind of structured way and say maybe that's useful for people who I've had a bit of flaming and I just like to that other I'm Stephen Frost. I haven't actually been very active to be honest with you and Debian lately but where I have been active a lot is in the post-credits community and To be honest with you I mean that's a community where they've they've found a way to do this and do it really well And I would love to see Debian do that as well And I will also just like to point out that it it's okay to write Like an apology, you know if you do something that you you know Regret and are not happy with it's okay to come back an hour later and say Sorry, I didn't mean to you know Something took over me. Whatever and it will go a long way. It will go a long long way Hi, I'm a sheesh. I talked too much, but I want to but I'm not here to But I have an idea that I want you all to contemplate which is so we talked about technical measures and They're all kind of slippery like no one wants to say at most one message per hour per thread or something per person That's kind of weird if you're actually having a normal technical discussion So what I propose for you guys to think about is that anyone on the mailing list can email So let's say there's a bad thread on Debian mentors hypothetically You might email Debian hyphen mentors hyphen slow mode at list dot Debian org and at that point a message is sent to all the subscribers saying Saying this thread is in slow mode or maybe the whole list is in slow mode And that means that this will miss the list agent will only deliver mails out once per 15 minutes Which people can still talk But it slows down the conversation to cool it down So wait, so a sheesh proposal is to put the mailing list in slowdown, which means that the mails are Yeah, I delayed right right and it's up, you know, it's well as needed Yeah, well, let's have a raise of hand who agrees with this proposal Seems that it didn't work Yes, I do have more slides Okay Okay So that now we are changing subject Yeah, the visibility problem that as I mentioned is one of the easiest to fix so we should work on fixing it These are some quotes. I didn't put the names because I wasn't sure who wanted to be quoted or not. I'm sorry about that The first and the last are very similar. We are failing at selling our advances well enough We are failing to communicate how wonderful Debian is Debian is great, but we are failing to Get users to know that And then the one in the middle is the one about to want to that says people often say I use Ubuntu because it's so easy But if you actually look at their machines, you'll see that they spend most of their using simply reveal Debian packages So they are using Debian, but they think they're using Ubuntu because it's easier or a Similar anecdote like this that people say oh well if it's a new user he or she should use Ubuntu Because for new users Ubuntu is easier and the fact is that they are exactly the same, right? It's just that you want to it's all that's being easier It's as easy or as difficult as Debian. It's just the question of how we transmit our message Yeah, well maybe so Some actions to change this this is just a question of how people see us so with this part We don't need to change ourselves. We need to change the outside world So the first one is a suggestion to start a campaign like web banner pages images to say Debian is great and have like Look about Debian has this and it's awesome. Look Debian has that and it's awesome. Maybe some videos that shows that Debian actually has that Composite stuff and that people love so much that it's not only in Ubuntu. It's also in Debian Well, I'm not going to start in this campaign because I don't have enough time for everything But if someone would volunteer to do it, I think it would be great Then when squeeze comes out, this is for everybody Hopefully this year Feel every positive publicity channel that you have access to with information about Debian saying how great squeeze is how great squeeze is for everyone because it's great for Servers and it's great for desktops. It will be right And it's great for new users and it's great for all the users because we are the universal operating system So we are great for everyone. So feel whatever publicity channel you have access to with this information, right? Do not rely only on the work of the people of Debian publicity because they are the team working on that But they can't cover the whole world. So Do your piece and feel the world with the news that Debian is awesome Now this is a question that perhaps someone can answer but This was one of the most common suggestions in the mails that were sent to me Why haven't we updated the website? Last year we saw a great suggestion on the website art and there was a great suggestion posted on the blogs with a new Layout of the word website And we thought that it will finally come to happen that we will have a new website. Why? Why haven't it been updated yet? No one did his job We have a comment from from David Folkso is member of the Webmaster team who's saying the reason we're Not there yet is that people rather like him like to pester him when it's updated rather than actually helping him out. So Okay, well, okay, yes Okay, yes, well The staff on Rhonda's blog post is it was covered on the previous communication problem, but There's there's been a lot of work done on the website. I think we should go ahead and implement it and if it's not finished Well finish it, but if we keep delaying it, it will never get done I'm sorry, but I'm being pushed and This one is a question for the audience to see what do you think because it was also very much talked about it Would it make sense to rename the suits? Would it make sense to have desktop? Bleeding edge or something like that instead of testing and unstable let Let's raise your hands. Who says it's a good idea We don't have consensus with this either Well, I don't know I don't really think it's a good idea to rename the suits But I think we have to do something so that people don't feel that they've any so what outdated for me It's perfect. I don't mind it being But for some people it's outdated so we should do something about it. I Don't think changing the name would help either, but I just wanted to know what the crowd thought So let's move on to the last problem for the last minutes The last problem that I'm covering is motivation which is all it's both motivations for the new contributors and for the existing contributors the folks are very long so I won't read them but we need to work both on getting more new people more new blood and in Getting the people that are already in deviant to be more involved to be Happier about their work in deviant a lot of people that do work in deviant are Demotivated because they are not happy with the results or happy with how they are Work is seen So they say that they are considering leaving deviant or they actually go out and leave So we don't want that we want people that are already working in deviant to be happy with what they do and We want new people in deviant. So How do we do that? I Think it's it's mainly covered in the two previous topics because with more visibility will reach more people with Better interpersonal communication. We will have happier people that I Do have a few suggestions about motivation So for new contributors having a smoother learning path improving the documentation Yesterday in one of the talks that I was Someone mentioned that when you read the instructions for becoming a new maintainer One of the documents that it says that you should read is the auto tools manual I Haven't read it and I don't intend to read it in the next near future Maybe having like smaller steps Documentation that say well if you want to start contributing read this and this being something short and easy Not the auto tools manual Then there's the deviant contributor stuff Which has led to an interesting flame world last year? But It has almost a year and a half has passed Why aren't we going ahead with it? Why aren't we doing the deviant contributors? Proposal I want to erase of hands again who But the people who have read about it because if you haven't read you you can't Have an opinion, but for the people that have read about it who thinks we should implement it like that or a bit modified But that idea Raise your hands too few hands well Some of the ones that haven't raised your hands want to comment on that. I'm referring to GANF proposal about giving a separating their rights voting rights and uploading rights and translating rights and Not having like you are a DD and you can do everything or you are nothing Okay, okay, well, I think we should go ahead with it, but What The last item here for everybody is maybe our groups need non-technical leaders a like for example Let's say the kernel team Right the kernel team It's a very technical team because they work on the kernel so they don't communicate with the outside world and I think it would be a good idea if the kernel team communicated with the outside world But since they are so technical and they are so involved in the kernel. They don't have time to do that. So maybe it would be a good idea to Have people in the team that are not exactly so involved in the kernel and That do The communication part right and not only the press team because the press team can do it can't do everything we need like non-technical people involved So I think we have time for just one more question. So I'm gonna pass it over to Steve I'm sorry. This has been an amazing talk. I know people have a lot of comments So meet Marga out there and they'll maybe be an informal boss She's still gonna do the raffle afterwards as the next speaker sets up, but I'm gonna have Steve ask Steve Yeah, okay The suggestion of a non-technical leader for a technical group is going to yeah The suggestion of a non-technical leader is going to be a very difficult sell, you know, especially for I mean I know lots of people here work, you know Professionally doing software development, whatever and I've already played with with leaders who have no clue, you know It's going to be very difficult to accept non-technical leaders when you're working on stuff that you for fun in your Own spare time Right. Non-technical doesn't mean that they have no clue just that they have social skills Okay, socially competent leaders then Okay Then we are done. Well, why don't you just wrap up? With a final statement or two and do the raffle and then again we can continue the conversation outside this was an intention to Make you think so if this talk has make you thought of ideas to make they've been better I think you should communicate about them Maybe to mailing list or so and I have to do a raffle. So my question for the raffle It's related to the kernel team Can anyone hear name? The five main members of the kernel team Holger, you know the answer that is congratulations And let's thank Margot once again for a wonderful talk