Dear Debian community,

this is bits from DPL for February.

Ftpmaster team is seeking for new team members

In December, Scott Kitterman announced his retirement from the project. I personally regret this, as I vividly remember his invaluable support during the Debian Med sprint at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. He even took time off to ensure new packages cleared the queue in under 24 hours. I want to take this opportunity to personally thank Scott for his contributions during that sprint and for all his work in Debian.

With one fewer FTP assistant, I am concerned about the increased workload on the remaining team. I encourage anyone in the Debian community who is interested to consider reaching out to the FTP masters about joining their team.

If you're wondering about the role of the FTP masters, I'd like to share a fellow developer's perspective:

"My read on the FTP masters is:

• In truth, they are the heart of the project.
• They know it.
• They do a fantastic job."

I fully agree and see it as part of my role as DPL to ensure this remains true for Debian's future.

If you're looking for a way to support Debian in a critical role where many developers will deeply appreciate your work, consider reaching out to the team. It's a great opportunity for any Debian Developer to contribute to a key part of the project.

Project Status: Six Months of Bug of the Day

In my Bits from the DPL talk at DebConf24, I announced the Tiny Tasks effort, which I intended to start with a Bug of the Day project. Another idea was an Autopkgtest of the Day, but this has been postponed due to limited time resources-I cannot run both projects in parallel.

The original goal was to provide small, time-bound examples for newcomers. To put it bluntly: in terms of attracting new contributors, it has been a failure so far. My offer to explain individual bug-fixing commits in detail, if needed, received no response, and despite my efforts to encourage questions, none were asked.

However, the project has several positive aspects: experienced developers actively exchange ideas, collaborate on fixing bugs, assess whether packages are worth fixing or should be removed, and work together to find technical solutions for non-trivial problems.

So far, the project has been engaging and rewarding every day, bringing new discoveries and challenges-not just technical, but also social. Fortunately, in the vast majority of cases, I receive positive responses and appreciation from maintainers. Even in the few instances where help was declined, it was encouraging to see that in two cases, maintainers used the ping as motivation to work on their packages themselves. This reflects the dedication and high standards of maintainers, whose work is essential to the project's success.

I once used the metaphor that this project is like wandering through a dark basement with a lone flashlight-exploring aimlessly and discovering a wide variety of things that have accumulated over the years. Among them are true marvels with popcon >10,000, ingenious tools, and delightful games that I only recently learned about. There are also some packages whose time may have come to an end-but each of them reflects the dedication and effort of those who maintained them, and that deserves the utmost respect.

Leaving aside the challenge of attracting newcomers, what have we achieved since August 1st last year?

• Fixed more than one package per day, typically addressing multiple bugs.
• Added and corrected numerous Homepage fields and watch files.
• The most frequently patched issue was "Fails To Cross-Build From Source" (all including patches).
• Migrated several packages from cdbs/debhelper to dh.
• Rewrote many d/copyright files to DEP5 format and thoroughly reviewed them.
• Integrated all affected packages into Salsa and enabled Salsa CI.
• Approximately half of the packages were moved to appropriate teams, while the rest are maintained within the Debian or Salvage teams.
• Regularly performed team uploads, ITS, NMUs, or QA uploads.
• Filed several RoQA bugs to propose package removals where appropriate.
• Reported multiple maintainers to the MIA team when necessary.

With some goodwill, you can see a slight impact on the trends.debian.net graphs (thank you Lucas for the graphs), but I would never claim that this project alone is responsible for the progress. What I have also observed is the steady stream of daily uploads to the delayed queue, demonstrating the continuous efforts of many contributors. This ongoing work often remains unseen by most-including myself, if not for my regular check-ins on this list. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to everyone pushing fixes there, contributing to the overall quality and progress of Debian's QA efforts.

If you examine the graphs for "Version Control System" and "VCS Hosting" with the goodwill mentioned above, you might notice a positive trend since mid-last year. The "Package Smells" category has also seen reductions in several areas: "no git", "no DEP5 copyright", "compat <9", and "not salsa". I'd also like to acknowledge the NMUers who have been working hard to address the "format != 3.0" issue. Thanks to all their efforts, this specific issue never surfaced in the Bug of the Day effort, but their contributions deserve recognition here.

The experience I gathered in this project taught me a lot and inspired me to some followup we should discuss at a Sprint at DebCamp this year.

Finally, if any newcomer finds this information interesting, I'd be happy to slow down and patiently explain individual steps as needed. All it takes is asking questions on the Matrix channel to turn this into a "teaching by example" session.

By the way, for newcomers who are interested, I used quite a few abbreviations-all of which are explained in the Debian Glossary.

Sneak Peek at Upcoming Conferences

I will join two conferences in March-feel free to talk to me if you spot me there.

1. FOSSASIA Summit 2025 (March 13-15, Bangkok, Thailand) Schedule: https://eventyay.com/e/4c0e0c27/schedule

2. Chemnitzer Linux-Tage (March 22-23, Chemnitz, Germany) Schedule: https://chemnitzer.linux-tage.de/2025/de/programm/vortraege

Both events will have a Debian booth-come say hi!

Kind regards Andreas.

Last November, the DebConf25 Team asked the community to help design the logo for the 25th Debian Developers' Conference and the results are in! The logo contest received 23 submissions and we thank all the 295 people who took the time to participate in the survey. There were several amazing proposals, so choosing was not easy.

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the logo survey is 'Tower with red Debian Swirl originating from blue water' (option L), by Juliana Camargo and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

Juliana also shared with us a bit of her motivation, creative process and inspiration when designing her logo:

The idea for this logo came from the city's landscape, the place where the medieval tower looks over the river that meets the sea, almost like guarding it. The Debian red swirl comes out of the blue water splash as a continuous stroke, and they are also the French flag colours. I tried to combine elements from the city when I was sketching in the notebook, which is an important step for me as I feel that ideas flow much more easily, but the swirl + water with the tower was the most refreshing combination, so I jumped to the computer to design it properly. The water bit was the most difficult element, and I used the Debian swirl as a base for it, so both would look consistent. The city name font is a modern calligraphy style and the overall composition is not symmetric but balanced with the different elements. I am glad that the Debian community felt represented with this logo idea!

Congratulations, Juliana, and thank you very much for your contribution to Debian!

The DebConf25 Team would like to take this opportunity to remind you that DebConf, the annual international Debian Developers Conference, needs your help. If you want to help with the DebConf 25 organization, don't hesitate to reach out to us via the #debconf-team channel on OFTC.

Furthermore, we are always looking for sponsors. DebConf is run on a non-profit basis, and all financial contributions allow us to bring together a large number of contributors from all over the globe to work collectively on Debian. Detailed information about the sponsorship opportunities is available on the DebConf 25 website.

See you in Brest!

We are pleased to announce that Proxmox has committed to sponsor DebConf25 as a Platinum Sponsor.

Proxmox develops powerful, yet easy-to-use Open Source server software. The product portfolio from Proxmox, including server virtualization, backup, and email security, helps companies of any size, sector, or industry to simplify their IT infrastructures. The Proxmox solutions are based on the great Debian platform, and we are happy that we can give back to the community by sponsoring DebConf25.

With this commitment as Platinum Sponsor, Proxmox is contributing to the Debian annual Developers' conference, directly supporting the progress of Debian and Free Software. Proxmox contributes to strengthen the community that collaborates on Debian projects from all around the world throughout all of the year.

Thank you very much, Proxmox, for your support of DebConf25!

Become a sponsor too!

DebConf25 will take place from 14 to 20 July 2025 in Brest, France, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from 7 to 13 July 2025.

DebConf25 is accepting sponsors! Interested companies and organizations may contact the DebConf team through sponsors@debconf.org, and visit the DebConf25 website at https://debconf25.debconf.org/sponsors /become-a-sponsor/.

Dear Debian community,

this is bits from DPL for January.

Sovereign Tech Agency

I was recently pointed to Technologies and Projects supported by the Sovereign Tech Agency which is financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. It is a subsidiary of the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation, SPRIND GmbH.

It is worth sending applications there for distinct projects as that is their preferred method of funding. Distinguished developers can also apply for a fellowship position that pays up to 40hrs / week (32hrs when freelancing) for a year. This is esp. open to maintainers of larger numbers of packages in Debian (or any other Linux distribution).

There might be a chance that some of the Debian-related projects submitted to the Google Summer of Code that did not get funded could be retried with those foundations. As per the FAQ of the project: "The Sovereign Tech Agency focuses on securing and strengthening open and foundational digital technologies. These communities working on these are distributed all around the world, so we work with people, companies, and FOSS communities everywhere."

Similar funding organizations include the Open Technology Fund and FLOSS/fund. If you have a Debian-related project that fits these funding programs, they might be interesting options. This list is by no means exhaustive—just some hints I’ve received and wanted to share. More suggestions for such opportunities are welcome.

Year of code reviews

On the debian-devel mailing list, there was a long thread titled "Let's make 2025 a year when code reviews became common in Debian". It initially suggested something along the lines of: "Let's review MRs in Salsa." The discussion quickly expanded to include patches that have been sitting in the BTS for years, which deserve at least the same attention. One idea I'd like to emphasize is that associating BTS bugs with MRs could be very convenient. It’s not only helpful for documentation but also the easiest way to apply patches.

I’d like to emphasize that no matter what workflow we use—BTS, MRs, or a mix—it is crucial to uphold Debian’s reputation for high quality. However, this reputation is at risk as more and more old issues accumulate. While Debian is known for its technical excellence, long-standing bugs and orphaned packages remain a challenge. If we don’t address these, we risk weakening the high standards that Debian is valued for. Revisiting old issues and ensuring that unmaintained packages receive attention is especially important as we prepare for the Trixie release.

Debian Publicity Team will no longer post on X/Twitter

The Press Team has my full support in its decision to stop posting on X. As per the Publicity delegation:

• The team is in charge of deciding the most suitable publication venue or venues for announcements and when they are published.

the team once decided to join Twitter, but circumstances have since changed. The current Press delegates have the institutional authority to leave X, just as their predecessors had the authority to join. I appreciate that the team carefully considered the matter, reinforced by the arguments developed on the debian-publicity list, and communicated its reasoning openly.

Kind regards,

Andreas.

The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

• Ananthu C V (weepingclown)
• Andrea Pappacoda (tachi)
• Athos Coimbra Ribeiro (athos)
• Gioele Barabucci (gioele)
• Jongmin Kim (jmkim)
• Shengqi Chen (harry)
• Frans Spiesschaert (frans)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

• Tianyu Chen
• Emmanuel FARHI
• наб
• Nicolas Schodet

Congratulations!