 We got a special guest. I mean, I'm where'd he go? He's the Debian project leader the guy in charge of the whole thing, okay Thank you. Good afternoon. Love is to see everyone. Hey, okay. Great Love is to see so many people here again Of course can only start with greetings from Hot and humid Taiwan Well, thank you very much for inviting me and for the local organization team Perhaps that can be done on the microphone Yes, very much a hot and humid Taiwan. I mean on that subject. I Was recovering after my second shower of the day in my room sort of half falling asleep in sort of Afternoon haze and I was suddenly awoken by a Sounded like a bird stuck somewhere or maybe on a balcony Okay, what's going on and it and it was quite insistent You know about half a minute later heard the same bird, you know, what's going on? Then I realized it was it seemed to be coming from the wall just behind me So maybe there's sort of panels and pipes coming through the wall And there's a bird skip just got stuck in there. I've heard it happen before So I am call on the concierge telephone saying There seems to be it seems to be a bird stuck in the wall. You know, it's making these sort of loud sounds. What can you? Can you see what's going on? Sure? Certainly, sir. We'll send someone up Wait about five minutes does off again and the bird kicks off again and no one would come up So I ring back terribly sorry terrible. It's just a There's the bird seems to be here. Yeah. Oh, did no one come up? No, okay, we'll send someone up straight away No problem again sort of sort of fall off in the in the humidity and Wake up again and woken up by the bird again. What what how what's going on like? Hi, yeah, really sorry to disturb you But the bird seems to be there and it actually seems to be quite distressed I mean, I don't think you can get out and things like that. I'm really sorry about this I don't know what happened We sent someone up. I don't I'll come up myself right away wait a few more minutes again just hacking away or something and Still no no no one comes and I'm just thinking what okay. What's really going on here? So I call for the final time. I okay. I'm just I'm gonna go back to the venue now But yeah, no one's come up. I don't know what's going on. You got the right room number and They're like, oh, I'm sorry, sir. Just for a second just checking. You do know that our doorbell chimes are birdsong There you go, there you go. Anyway, greetings from lovely to see you so many people here Great so I mean every time I stand up here or I'm around Debian Developers I get this question. So What's it like being DPL? it's almost a sort of a Almost a cliche question. I'm never really sure how to how to answer it really. I mean because obviously people are When people ask these questions, they're sometimes looking for an answer or maybe I don't want to put them off running themselves But it's very difficult to answer because it's not really a position That has any Parallel in any other free software project, I think I mean you can I can just make jokes all day about it I mean Debian project leader what outsiders think I do I mean if you speak to other people, they think oh, it's just me You know decreeing that I think we're gonna use this thing over here, and you're gonna do this or you're gonna do this What are the Debian developers think I do I mean everyone thinks I travel the world like some sort of itinerant Something or other Yeah, what my parents think I do Yes, very is true Distributions think I do Or let's think what we do anyway, yeah What I think I do I'm the boss the head head chump show But what I really do is read and read and read a lot of email and things like that Yeah, so yeah means always life in a day and I can also deflect the question with humor Which I've done here and referenced self-referentially so I can get away with it as well So what is the DPR? What is the project leader? I mean is it a dictator? No I mean in our Constitution we say we explicitly state that you You can't you know a blinds to do anything To undertake any tasks that you're told to not that that would even need to be written because if I told you To go and do something you would evaluate on your own merits whether you would end up doing that So it's not a dictator and it's it doesn't have the final the vote on technical matters and things like this which is quite Confusing to outside but sometimes and they'd like well what so what do you really do and it certainly isn't a benevolent dictator for life like in Say the python circle things like that. It's certainly not for life. Thank goodness But yeah, although sometimes feels like it. No, I'm joking. I'm joking. Is it a secretary? I mean, of course we have a project secretary, but sometimes it's like a receptionist in a way You know people come in and they sort of expect They come to the project and they expect someone to be sort of sort of on the front desk as it were And to be sort of you know all connect you with that person or maybe I'll maybe need to speak to that person or I'm not really sure who to contact and they don't perhaps know the exact name of the team to contact He's like, ah, you want the cloud team because they were looking for something else Is it a figurehead well sort of but again as it doesn't as the project leader doesn't Direct in a technical sense. It's not it can't really sort of forge ahead in on that kind of angle It can't say right. We're putting all our money behind app armor. Let's go guys. That's not how it That's not really how it works. It's not really a that kind of lead us into battle kind of thing So it's a sort of mixture of lots of different things at all at once Yeah, yeah, it's very interesting Which means it's very difficult to judge one's own success and things like that So what's it like being DPR? How would those kind of questions are quite subjective like what kind of how do you feel you're doing at it? Or those kind of questions are often difficult to answer. So To put some stats on the email volume This is current of about 15 minutes ago in since my last bits on the DPL in Montreal I the leader inbox. This is not counting spam I the spam just disappears. You just can't even bother with that 5000 emails coming in which I probably have read them all How many months have I sent? 1200 and yeah, this is I say up to date one more time, please Ah, can't click the odds of getting a reply there. Yeah Depend it depends who you are it depends who you If a joke needs explaining it's not funny, right? There's something like that We'll wait for the microphones to come around next time Okay, so so what's actually been happening in the project since last time I stood up and bored you for an hour So this is from August the 7th, which was the last bits on the DPL in in in Montreal So, I mean, let's go through some stats. So how many bugs this is again current about 15 minutes ago I couldn't get the JavaScript to be live But it could have been it could have been so I'm thirty-three thousand bugs filed isn't too bad Some of them might even been closed by now And I hope you can see that Anyone on the high score here? Anyone else? No, I managed to Yeah, so no, but I think my docu is here, right? Yeah, you got to take credit for some of those brilliant and We've had 40,000 uploads to unstable, which is probably what I would guess We've got a little high scoring table here. I don't seem to have snuck into this one And 750 non-maintainer uploads. I'm not really sure what I would have guessed for that Hi, so a question No, cool And high score table for that again. I sneak in there that wasn't deliberate But I I think I just snuck in a couple of days ago on on the top 10 We've had quarter of a million builds according to want to build Again, that sort of happens behind our backs. So that's kind of fine and 10,000 auto package test runs. Hopefully we'll have more of these in the next year. That'd be kind of good Great quote stats are sawdust in the mouth of readers So like what's actually you can tout numbers all day and Compare this year to last year have really nice graphs But what's actually sort of been happening in a meaningful sense in the project? So perhaps if we go through month by month so in August we had a big bumper policy release encapsulating a whole bunch of stuff that had been Sort of for the cracks or been waiting around I'd like to thank Sean for pushing forward with that getting policy out And I think it became a DD around this time as well. I think so. Yeah, we had a Sprint to deprecate Ali off Which I think was that in Hamburg? I think so. Yeah, and we also double the number of outreach in terms that we just are sponsoring this year. So Represents a dramatic increase in the number in the in our outreach initiatives and things like that September we I've really I did the outreach team So how duplicated the doubling of the outreach interns get doubles right October saw the release of nine point two point release a bug swatching party in Austria And also Debbie and signed the free software foundation Europe's Public money public code. We also had a cloud sprint which I believe was in Washington in the Microsoft offices Is that right getting a nod somewhere? Yeah, which is yeah, when weren't quite well I believe and a really nice write-up Was sent to the announcement list November saw two mini dev comps. I put a prize out for anyone who managed to attend both and We finally started disabling some old protocols. So the ftp protocol At least on security On security masters now disabled get lab also moved from their contributor license agreement to the certificate of origin which was blocking on us sort of moving south or to it and things like that and There was a new ftp team delegation to mirror new members and old members becoming alumni of that team December saw compact level 11, which I know you all waiting for I know I was It was a great Christmas present for me and Debbie 9.3 another Just another good Stable release no problems there January saw the lovely specter meltdown blar happening Which was which still seems to be happening. I hear there's a new one yesterday net net something net specter presumably not named after net BSD, but We'll see we'll see free specter soon Yeah, so I mean we've all been dealing with that to some degree since then February kicked off Google summer of code and we had a huge number of applicants and and really interesting project proposals and Really good turnout for people willing to be The what are they calling them the mentors of the team, which I thought I thought was really good Secretary appointment. We also had at least Three sprints and things like that throughout the month. Some of those were attached to Fosden, which was again another big Debbie meet-up in general and free software meet-up in general, which is really good March saw more delegations saw windows Debbie and come to Windows subsystem for Linux I'm not sure anything else managed to give that a go yet, but it's puts us at least on parity with At least a bunch of and things like that on that platform We had bug squashing parties in Albania and Curitiba Another point release always pretty good. And of course the most important thing that month was the General resolution about the DPL title, which I'm sure Excuse me one more time, please No, this is the DPL title, which I got no seconds But it was to rename the official title of the DPL of the official way of speaking to them as your Majesty It did not receive any seconds unfortunately, but it's there on the Curiosa list April's saw a secure boot sprint another great report Sent and there's some on work ongoing this this week. I believe I'm on secure boot a bug squashing party in Bratislava May saw a huge turnout in mini-dead from Hamburg, which was amazing. It's a really really good Really good event and really afford to that happening next year Debin was invited to join the KD the advisory board that matches up with our membership on the Nome advisory board and this is quite a small select group of stakeholders that use the debt of the operating system and they try and For example the desktop environment say we're thinking of this is what we did over the past year This is what we're thinking of doing this with direction. We're sort of going in of course. There isn't a top-down leadership Thing going on there, but it's like how about you know, does this work for any of you guys? This is does any of your engineering resources want to go into that particular area of this particular area? How can we sort of connect and just stay Just to sort of stay on the same page in terms of like the visions for the project and things like that So that's really good. May also saw the introduction of auto package tests Testing migration of packages from unstable to testing, which I think it's really good and really promotes their use It's pretty good and re-delegation of the public city June saw the introduction of the GD Gp dr. I keep getting the acronym wrong team the the European Union Data Protection and Privacy legislation Which is all you know fascinating keeps me up at night. I know that but very important for the project And thank you very much for all those who helped set that up and are running that because it's pretty Thankless job there and things like that and will the the number of requests will probably only ramp up and things like that It's also June also saw the the death the noble death of Ali off Long live long live the King And it's slow SSH terminals And everyone's on Salton now, and I'm really enjoying More on that later, but I'm really enjoying the collaboration that I'm seeing now There are on south something like that And there's also a bug swatting party in New York, which was apparently quite well attended and got a lot of stuff done July New features in the package tracker and other point release and of course we're now in in at Debconv 18 So yeah, that's sort of the year in in words at least things like that So moving on a little bit What are the future plans? What's coming up for Debian in the next year or so? The first most important thing is Debian's 25th birthday We were born on August the 16th 1993, so we'll be celebrating our 25th birthday next month So there are some plans afoot But get your cake recipes ready Birthday cake recipes whatever local events and perhaps start playing them now because you know it'd be good to have a little birthday party January we'll see our the first the least from the schedule the release team schedule The first of three freezes that make part of a Debian release First the transition freeze in January then the soft freeze in February The hard freeze in March just to tease you and then around mid 2019 we're gonna have the release of Debian Buster which will be great and very very much looking forward to that Sure, you are as well July we'll see amazing Debconv in Brazil Seeing a lot of t-shirts already Advertising the event and hope to see many of you there and Lake 2020 early 2021 will probably see bookworm judging by the the dates if you add up the Out of the months. That's the kind of thing. We're Roughly looking at at this point things like that So, yeah, how will we get that? How will we get to a good Buster? How will we get to a good bookworm? What kind of things do you need to keep on our radar and things like that? So what does Debian need to keep on doing? What does Debian need to? What would you call it double down on what do we get things like that? What are we doing? Well, we should continue to be doing. I think the first thing we should do is stick to our guiding principles So these are things that have served us well in the past Throughout a massively changing environment Go back 25 years. The free software environment was obviously clearly different I was just born off things like that And what served us well has got us here and will continue to keep us Where we are in the free software ecosystem. In other words, this linchpin this reliable base So, yeah, things like that. I mean, it's a bit of a bit of a cliche Perhaps it's the Godwin's law of the Debian mailing list to say our Priorities are our users and our free software and this can be used to justify almost anything, you know Well, I use this one that so we must give it to them. Yeah, okay, but But if we if we stick to this guiding principle, I think this will serve us perhaps for another 25 years And particularly on on the angle of free software It's if we start to compromise on that if we like well, you know, we'll we'll just put this thing in here And we'll compromise on that area. I think it'll really Whilst it might have some short-term benefits in the long term Being keeping to our strength on free software and and software freedom We'll really stand us in good stead for the next 25 years And and we should go even further on that. So we should start to look at the contraband non-free areas Try to start to look at firmware and things like that and just see whether they They are really part of what makes Debbie and Debbie and then things like that things like that We should also continue to cultivate technical excellence. So, I mean technical Being good technically being a great technical distribution that people can rely on is our best defense against any I'm gonna say competitors, but you know what I mean But anyone trying to eat our lunch won't Won't really be able to because it just can't compete technically. It's well, it's it's Debian. You know, what did you go with? Oh, we went with Debian. Okay. Yeah, you know just going to keep that kind of thing and It's sort of difficult to criticize any decision that sort of made on a Technical basis like well, why did you go with this technology over this technology? It's not because it was funded by X or funded by Y, but it's just the better technology Okay Moving on, you know, there's nothing Nothing really to discuss there So if we continue to do that and maintain our great technical base and you know releasing when it's ready within reason But not just sort of getting things out the door because they match a calendar or they match the extent expediency of What we've promised or we always said may but it's not ready. You know when we just We'll wait. It's good Number three be as many as things as many people as possible So this is one of Debian's great strengths in that some its parts of its underlies so many other derivative distributions Including the all the blends that we have A whole bunch of embedded devices the entire of Raspberry Pi ecosystem and we're in that position because we are just Yeah, we can just be so many things to different people that people can take The base of Debian and and turn it to and make make it what they want and apply it to Their particularly use case and things like that And as long as we continue to not hyper focus say on any one particular area I think we'll still be able to to be the basis of many other projects and things like that and now encourages not only new contributions, but also a diverse viewpoints of Technical input as well. So for example Embedded folks will say oh, this is really useful in for Debbie and we'll incorporate that or people from mainframes from the safe from the other From top-down can say oh, this is very useful here and things like that All the way down all the way to desktop users and laptop users etc etc or Debian on phones or Kindles Being as many things as many people as possible means that we have get a wide variety of input and Contributions to the distribution and this will be another reason why we'll still be here in 25 years And it's sort of viral in it in itself as well Yeah, but hold ourselves and others to high standards. So this is not only means technically I mean in terms of what it really means to be a developer as well I mean if someone says oh, he's a DD you kind of know what that means in a technical sense I mean you can upload stuff to your machine and route you but it also just is sort of a You know sort of a nod that that person is a kind of good person and we should maintain this very high standard of ourselves and others in of Developers and contributors and things like that but not knowing to that in a sort of Not only in the way we are Technically competent in a high standard, but also just in in dealings with others, you know So when we speak to other people from other From in other free software projects, you know, they're Debian developer They're their reputation is sort of on the line and Debian's reputation is on the line And so we should maintain that kind of high standard and that again will will help us a journey to the next 25 and Speaking to this people don't tend to be sort of accidentally successful or famous or have high respect sort of excellence is something that You sort of have to practice and do every day and focus Focus on so if you it's not just oh well I'll I'll sort of behave myself when talking to outsiders, but within the project. I'll be Not so friendly or amicable. You really have to sort of be that kind of person all the time Collaboration naturally we've been collaborating for the past 24 and a half years, but to to see through the next five or 25 Continue to do so. So I mean these are things like we typically Love to do things upstream first. I mean local patches sort of considered a little bit ugly, you know If something can be done upstream well, we'll poke it upstream instead You know just how how things are best done and that's that speaks to our innate and no one really always needs to be told This so this speaks to our innate viewpoint on collaboration and things along those lines Salsa is particularly helping this. I know that I myself have increased the number of particularly small changes small but meaningful changes That have been much easier to make with with the salsa system The salsa and get lab systems like oh this thing is slightly annoying me And then when you just can create a merge request very quickly You can see a lot of collaboration And it gets accepted very quickly. So the more more of this that we do I think the better as well Things like that Ross to think I think we should also increase the and continue to work with our pure blends and derivative distributions there are a source of great input and energy Particularly ones that are focused on say a particular area sort of like it for example appliance devices or a blend that's aimed at a particular country or Culture and things like that They inject a lot of very positive energy into the project through the the blend and so the more we can Accumulate that but incorporate that into Debbie and itself then then the better and things like that And what do we need to do better? So I mean there are some sort of things that we can immediately We already know So we can always do with more manpower on the core teams And they're always understaffed and things like that Yeah, these are things we sort of know about we're not We're going to question Of course we can of course we can thank you My mistake We're not so not so great at making archive impacting changes. So if we want to Universally change how the Debbie in works as a whole we're still not good at making those changes. I mean, that's partly good in that we are And there's sort of small C conservative in nature But say we wanted to Everything must happen. I make it up a app armor profile That's not that easy to get through those kind of changes. That's perhaps a bad example Those kind of changes we need to get better at and particularly reaching consensus on these archive wide changes because there's always negatives to any particular Any change of when it affects so many packages and they and the distribution as a whole Even things that people are in broad agreement with like reproducer builds No one's really against them, but sort of getting them through and just getting all of the Domino's in line and things like that Can can be quite difficult from a technical and some procedural administration point of view simply because it touches so many parts of the project We also need to address the Popularity of the the new software store. So this is like there the flat pack hub and snap things like that they're Good technologies and things like that. But What's the story, how do they fit into Debbie and if at all? I mean, we don't really have I'm not going to say a policy, but we are quite widely divergent Some of our users really love them. What are we going to do here? We don't seem to have a We don't really even seem to be talking about this particular issue particularly because it impacts Security of the system as well if you're downloading Random stuff, but also from a free software and principles point of view some of this Some of the software available on these stores is not free software and that that really affects our Guiding principles of our social contract things like that. So it's very important and this is not just snap and and that have this is where you have sort of quasi stores or plug-in kits so Browsers typically have an extension or application store built into them which can naturally download Any sort of code that you want again with security and freedom concerns there. So, yeah These dilutes the sort of the Debbie and packages a whole And we're thinking we need to have We need to be starting to look at these over the next At least the next year and things like that But in terms of some concrete things we can all be doing I mean one one thing we can definitely do is to assign credit a little bit better I mean we've all had an experience where Someone has sort of neglected to actually be a patch or We you know you spend a lot of work on something and it was sort of Dismissed in a in an outright way. This isn't great. You know, that's kind of thing People don't require credit for work, but it certainly helps and things like that and It establishes sort of trust within a team as well So if you if you if you provide a patch and then everyone's working together You know, everyone just feels a little bit better about working on things and sort of things get done and Any further disagreements get smoothed over and things like that. So I think that's very important and something I think we could all be addressing a bit a little bit better It's sort of win-win It's not giving someone Saying thank you for a patch explicitly Not only makes them feel good It sort of makes you feel like you're part of the team at better So I mean from even from a selfish point of view it makes you look good for giving credit and things like that So if you can't be convinced it will make someone else feel better. Perhaps just do it for yourself, you know, whatever On this topic notice people who are particularly lower in self-confidence or Or who generally don't do that much self-promotion of themselves So I mean the loud people are easy to spot and give credit to but perhaps that that quiet developer who doesn't He doesn't make a big noise and sends a patch. Just say, you know, you're Fanking them explicitly will be particularly welcome and goes out a lot a lot further than you think For example, here's my very very first contribution to Debian in 2006 One thing to notice is that I screw up the tags So I needed to send a separate the for the BTS The BTS is controlled by email for people who don't know and you can set some headers at the very top That's changed various things various attributes of the the bug So for example, you can tag whether it has a patch or not and in my very first contribution I screw it up. So yeah, it's all bit So I sent this patch along to a this was a RC bug for the edge distribution the X the edge release which was around to which was released eventually in April 2007 and I got a reply back very quickly saying rock on many. Thanks. I'll upload this and It eventually ended up in edge and this this thank you and I ended up in the the changelog of of the of this particular package Was sort of meaningless because it was just my name in some not a very important package But it was amazing and it just sort of you know everything snowballed from there and throughout that winter I started to contribute a lot more to Debian and things like that. So it just goes to show that these small these small thank yous and these small remarks do go a long way and Keep people around the project longer. So I really recommend really highly recommend them and be more empathetic So empathy is basic. I mean in many ways of defining it But one way is is it's basically understanding Understanding the feelings of others now by this I don't necessarily mean agreeing with them but at least understanding where people are coming from and One thing I like to say is that open conversations read right and not just read only so if you're Listening to people if you're reading a mailing list actually try and read what they're saying and often people whilst they might be saying one thing on paper try and sort of step back and and Really appreciate where they're coming from what angle they're coming from what their history is and things like that And that speaks to the empathy like that There's a lot of users and developers that are rather unfamiliar thus and Sometimes we fail to communicate very well about what the project is really about a number of conversations even this dead comp where people weren't one gentleman wasn't even a wasn't aware of the existence of the unstable distribution thinking it was something Something can't highly separate from Debbie in itself and things like this And so we sort of have this sort of tragedy where we are providing a lot of things to a lot of people But people aren't aware of them due to that's marketing or we've labeled them wrong Or we just not describing them in a very good way And people like when others are not and so our mailing lists are interesting at times and And sometimes it's very very tempting to match someone's energy level Should I put it politically like that? And I think we should all just try and just be a little bit more Be more adult sometimes and just you know things like that be Yeah, yeah, I mean there Another one we could do particularly in teams is to give give them good feedback This would be great in that with We want to sort of move the culture in a place where people are feel free to make mistakes particularly mistakes that are reversible Yeah, yeah Sometimes you may want to ask whether someone would like to receive feedback first depending on who they are a Lot of you I'm not I'm not gonna say I'm an expert at doing this at all So there may be better resources for for good tips on providing feedback, but I mean to focus on the work as much as possible certainly no and I identify Identify concrete potential improvements for the future and of course naturally avoid personal criticism of them as well. So, yeah Clearly identifying what they could improve is very important as well because that provides a An incentive or an avenue they can work out what to do next I think another thing all perhaps developers could do a bit more of is sort of self-care Debbie and I think should be fun It's certainly fun for me and it and it should remain fun for people and people should Should be contributing whilst it remains fun for them As I say in the constitution we explicitly say that a person who doesn't want to do a task doesn't have to do it And that that really is true. I mean if you if Debian stops being fun for you. Why? Don't stick around like really I mean take a break. I mean you don't have to martyr yourself on this product There are people who will step in and and take over the tasks, I mean that yeah, and there are other things in life than Debian And it's really important to keep keep track of those. Debian of course is very important, but one shouldn't Yeah, I think you'll get what I'm going there and keep a supply of spoons So spoon theory is this idea that people have a finite number of resources throughout a day and And it's enumerated by this idea of you have a number of spoons and you can spend them on different tasks Something some tasks might cost more spoons than others So a difficult interaction might cost you a number of spoons and people start the day with a different number So if you'll have a good sleep, you might start with more or if you're suffering from an illness You might have more or you're just low on them generally for whatever reason. Yeah, so just you know keep some spare and Spend them in Debian wisely. I mean it seems to be a little bit of an irony that the swag bag for this conference contains a spoon I'm not sure whether That was deliberate or not, but I certainly found it amusing from this point of view But at least it included chopsticks as well And sometimes just let it go. I mean we've all had these Flame wars or whatever emails that we've got and they've just been bugging us You know, we walk to work and you're just thinking Sometimes you just have to You know just leaving in a box. Maybe you take it out of the box later, but just sometimes Let it go. It's it's it's only Debian. It's only this massively important project But it is only Debian sometimes Nothing we could certainly do better is adopting a sort of growth mindset The stereotypical Debian developer is sort of slightly stuck in their own little world and it's often quite dismissive of Often quite dismissive of new things and this is great from a Debian's point of view Sometimes because as I say we're a sort of small sea conservative operating system And we only release when it's ready and we might we might be slow to adopt technologies Some type relative other distributions, but we adopt them when they have been proven and Hopefully been proven and we can actually justify them from that point of view But we think which is at least keep an open mind about new things one quotes I came across a while ago is if you find yourself showing contempt for technology or community You probably don't understand what they're all about I'm not going to name any particular technologies here to put some examples on but you often see Whole categories of things dismissed just out of hand. Perhaps there are good reasons for doing so But they've just been dismissed out of hand And maybe these people are coming from a different angle that we just don't understand yet or we haven't Haven't been exposed to yet And this is not only in terms of say programming languages But in terms of entire Technology stacks or industries and things like that Just keeping an open mind about these things will certainly mean that we don't Ever get stuck where we are and as I say there's this contradiction in Debbie in between Being slow and conservative being good But it's also one of our weaknesses as well So yeah great Few thank you so much for entertaining my rambling for the past 45 minutes Thank you very much and Yeah, we've got a I think we've got a few Thank you again for inviting me here And I think we've got a quite a few minutes for some questions if there are any so yeah, thank you We have one. Hello. Hello. Hello everyone Thank you for being here. Welcome to DevConf. I hope you enjoy it from your stats But you I was missing how many new developers have joined the devian project Because I see like many old names there like in the least I knew people coming in or it's not or Do you know anything about this? Well, there's certainly new people coming in and it was Terribly remiss of me not to include that number because that is obviously an extremely important number Room for improvement always yeah Thank you Thank you. Yeah Is there someone from front desk that can give a number on that? Maybe someone can find it on Nmdivine.org and shout it out in a few seconds Great any other questions. Oh Hi So What do you think of the things that Debbie and should probably focus on most in the next few years? What are we not doing that we really should be? I think we should probably Looking at some of the adjacent. I'm gonna say competitors and and seeing what their users are The the motivations of their users and things like that. So you see a lot of people What was I encountering earlier just earlier today people a lot of people choose distributions on how good they look Like that's pretty shallow But we should try and see where people are coming from from that point of view But that's just one example of many so I think we can learn a lot from on net a derivatives But we should look for the success of of other distributions things like that I mean, I spoke to some of the things we could be doing slightly better But that's probably not exactly addressing your question Okay, and again, it's difficult as a GPL because it's not like a a technical thing like all we should adopt Technology X of a Y. Yeah, absolutely. Of course. I'm asking you a hard question. You are you are I'm putting me on the spot, and I'm provaricating That's a fair answer. Yeah, I mean we should I think basically just keeping it open mind and just keeping In it as long as we know our options and we are evaluating them sensibly I think that's what we should be doing and we seem to have a fairly good process for doing that Although it does require a volunteer Willing volunteer and enable volunteer to sort of spearhead any particular initiative So, you know if they come with an idea they need to say I mean to go back to a farmer They need to come with a proposal and say Let's try this and that can be evaluated on its own terms So that's a if we could get around not requiring that Somehow that'll be that'll be good because then it wouldn't need I want to say blocker, but it wouldn't need a sort of stakeholder to sort of own that because that's obviously quite difficult Okay, and then the second question, and I guess it's probably a Common thing that people fear every year. So you've already been elected DPL twice. How do you think about a third term? Well I knew Steve was attending you see And he has a bit of a habit of asking this question I it really does depend right now Often I'm quite myopic about It's often, you know the next email in the inbox and it's very difficult to look past that yet alone the next week The next dev conf the next DPL term. So I have Genuinely, I have not Even thought about it beyond making this slide And of course, I wouldn't want to run against you so yeah It's certainly something about and a lot of it and particularly my when I decided to rerun last year was based on how well I thought I had done and I can only really evaluate that Nearer than nearer the time and so yeah Thank you. Hi, not a question more of a comment. I have numbers for you on new contributors. Thank you So 26 uploading DD's to non uploading DD's and 42 Debian maintainers added in the last year for okay. Nice. So DMs by far away Nice. Nice. I think that speaks to the success of the of the DM Process. Yeah, great. Thank you Great Again, unless it's that's it. I'm being waived out by our video team. So thank you very very much Everyone knows my face now, so I can't hide at the conference anymore So yeah, if you have any ever if you ever have anything you want to discuss You can email me at leader at Debian org or you can catch me around the conference I'm here all week and a little bit beyond that and again. Thank you very much and speak to you