On 22/06/12 23:04, Holger Levsen wrote:

Hi,

On Freitag, 22. Juni 2012, Neil Williams wrote:

Bug squashing parties are *social* events where bugs happen to get
fixed.


soon there will be a 14 day BSP, in Central America, in Managua :-D
You'll be able to participate remotly, mostly via IRC


cheers,
Holger

I never said I didn't enjoy a social event - don't get me wrong.
But for those who can't make it, what about
http://www.bigbluebutton.org/ or http://plus.google.com/ too?


It could even hook up several such events around the globe!

Philip


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On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 02:50:21PM +0100, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> As far as I understand, it is entirely true that Google's Hangout,
> or Skype, are easy to use. Of the free variants, I mainly have
> experience with Mumble, which usually works, but requires tweaking
> and configuration to work well.
>
> The other aspect, however, is that Hangout and Skype are not free.
> It is not unacceptable for those developing Debian to use non-free
> software, or non-free services, but it gets problematic if it's
> the common case,

I agree with that,

> or if it is advocated.

but not with that. People can advocate all they want, as long as it's
not made the only way to participate with something, and as long as
people accept that some people will not use it.

--
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pi zz a


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On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 02:50:21PM +0100, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> As far as I understand, it is entirely true that Google's Hangout,
> or Skype, are easy to use. Of the free variants, I mainly have
> experience with Mumble, which usually works, but requires tweaking
> and configuration to work well.

> The other aspect, however, is that Hangout and Skype are not free.
> It is not unacceptable for those developing Debian to use non-free
> software, or non-free services, but it gets problematic if it's
> the common case, or if it is advocated. We, as a project, value
> software freedom, and if we choose tools that are not free, we
> are not living up to our values as a project.

> To find out if a service like this is actually useful for distributed
> bug squashing, by all means, let's use the proprietary services. Then
> we can find or make the free software to do it with freedom.

I think this is a sensible, pragmatic approach. The reality is that there's
all kinds of non-free software that remains an unavoidable part of our
lives, and the only payoff for trying to take a hard line against the use of
non-free software in the pursuit of developing free software is to make
ourselves less effective at achieving our goals. Yes, Debian shouldn't
endorse non-free software solutions; but we also shouldn't engage in
polemics when individuals and groups within the Debian community want to use
non-free tools to improve Debian. (Not that you're being polemic here, but
certainly some people in this thread have been.)

I'm bemused that people are this passionate about the non-freeness of Google
Hangouts in particular for a bug squashing party, because the freeness of
the software seems like the least of the problems with it. Here, in no
particular order, are some reasons not to use Google Hangouts for a BSP:

- it's non-free
- you have to have a google account to connect; despite the fact that it's
all supposed to be SIP on the backend, there's no support for connecting
to a hangout unless you also have an account
- you cannot securely download the software from the google website: their
download link always directs to an http url, which we should presume is
MITMed
- a hangout is limited to a maximum of 10 participants
- the GTalk plugin is a CPU hog: you will not be able to effectively use
your computer both for participating in a GTalk video conference, and for
doing any actual bug squashing work, at the same time.

So yeah, Mumble is actually a much better *practical* choice for
coordinating a virtual BSP.

I would love to see an actual free and usable option for videoconferencing.
If someone feels strongly enough about this to make it happen, that would be
awesome. Doesn't look like that's the case today though.

--
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Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
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On 23/06/12 23:59, Wookey wrote:

+++ Philip Ashmore [2012-06-23 05:45 +0100]:

On 23/06/12 00:53, Wookey wrote:



I'm too busy developing the-next-big-thing(TM), but wanted to
encourage some sort of global social bug-squashing event(s) - it
might even encourage non-debianites to participate, or take more
interest in Debian.


This is a worthy goal. But nothing about that ideal _requires_ using
google+ rather than any other chat service. I think you'd get a lot
more traction if you separated those two ideas. Nearly everyone would
agree that a global bug-squashing party is a good thing (although
time-zones do impose limits on how well that works). Fewer would
favour using google+ to synchronise it, as you have discovered.


And again, I'm more in favour of Google+ as they provide the
hardware+bandwidth now - I can't really see how an open source
alternative could compete.


It doesn't have to 'compete', it just has to be available, and there
are plenty of open source chat services that would work for
co-ordinating a bug-squashing party.


And I don't really buy the "use open source at all costs" argument
either


That is obvious :-)


- I don't know what software the network hubs use between me
and the WWW, even the router I use pays half-assed lip-service by
providing a download for some libraries it might have used - not
enough to pimp it.


My router runs openWRT (which makes it a lot more useful than the
software that came with it). The packets out on the net may travel
through some proprietary software but that's not something under my
control. Yes it's almost impossible not to use _some_ proprietary
software (PC bioses are hard to get away from for example, as is
google's search engine), but there is value in only using the stuff
you need to because there is no other sensible way (and people on what
constitutes 'sensible'.
Bug-squashing party co-ordination software does not come into that
category IMHO, which is why you are finding your google+ suggestion
less than enthusiasticaly received.


I say, gauge the demand first, write an open source alternative if
you can do it as well or better later.


As I say - try to separate the ideas of global bug-squashing, from the
service used to co-ordinate it, when gauging enthusiasm. It'll
certainly help with an audience of Debian users and developers. It may
make less difference to 'new people'.

Wookey

Somehow we went off-list - I know I do that sometimes accidentally.

Anyway, I guess what I would look for, to share the bug squashing
atmosphere with others, is a YouTube video summarising the event, maybe
magazine style - it doesn't have to show someone actually squashing a
bug, but it might help highlight the community spirit, and a video
would be something I would click on to take a break from reading text.


Philip


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On 12-06-24 at 05:24pm, Philip Ashmore wrote:
> Anyway, I guess what I would look for, to share the bug squashing
> atmosphere with others, is a YouTube video summarising the event,
> maybe magazine style - it doesn't have to show someone actually
> squashing a bug, but it might help highlight the community spirit, and
> a video would be something I would click on to take a break from
> reading text.

Sounds like a great idea.

Please consider contacting the Debian video team to instead/also
distribute video content via http://vide.debian.net/ - and coordinate
with them which formats to use (to avoid loosing quality from too many
lossy conversions if initially published files are in formats
inappropriate for Debian redistribution).


- Jonas

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On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 05:24:28PM +0100, Philip Ashmore wrote:
> Anyway, I guess what I would look for, to share the bug squashing
> atmosphere with others, is a YouTube video summarising the event,
> maybe magazine style - it doesn't have to show someone actually
> squashing a bug, but it might help highlight the community spirit,
> and a video would be something I would click on to take a break from
> reading text.

That's not a bad idea, but... Video production takes quite a lot of
effort, both human and CPU. If you would like to participate in a bug
squashing party and do that, please do.

On the whole, however, Debian already has its full share of people
with ideas. What we chronically have a shortage of is people who do
things. Suggesting new things for others to do is orders of magnitude
less useful than fixing or attempting to reproduce any of the reported
bugs, writing even a barebones tutorial on the wiki, or helping someone
with whatever problem they may have when using Debian.

Could we perhaps entice you, Philip, to make a change to Debian instead
of suggesting things for us to do?

--
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On 24/06/12 17:54, Lars Wirzenius wrote:

On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 05:24:28PM +0100, Philip Ashmore wrote:

Anyway, I guess what I would look for, to share the bug squashing
atmosphere with others, is a YouTube video summarising the event,
maybe magazine style - it doesn't have to show someone actually
squashing a bug, but it might help highlight the community spirit,
and a video would be something I would click on to take a break from
reading text.


That's not a bad idea, but... Video production takes quite a lot of
effort, both human and CPU. If you would like to participate in a bug
squashing party and do that, please do.

On the whole, however, Debian already has its full share of people
with ideas. What we chronically have a shortage of is people who do
things. Suggesting new things for others to do is orders of magnitude
less useful than fixing or attempting to reproduce any of the reported
bugs, writing even a barebones tutorial on the wiki, or helping someone
with whatever problem they may have when using Debian.

Could we perhaps entice you, Philip, to make a change to Debian instead
of suggesting things for us to do?

Bug#678854: Acknowledgement (icewm won't start)

I've also got several projects in SourceForge and in Debian Mentors - it
would be great if someone could be a point of contact for me in Debian -
the projects are all related.


Regards,
Philip Ashmore


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On 24/06/12 17:35, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:

On 12-06-24 at 05:24pm, Philip Ashmore wrote:

Anyway, I guess what I would look for, to share the bug squashing
atmosphere with others, is a YouTube video summarising the event,
maybe magazine style - it doesn't have to show someone actually
squashing a bug, but it might help highlight the community spirit, and
a video would be something I would click on to take a break from
reading text.


Sounds like a great idea.

Please consider contacting the Debian video team to instead/also
distribute video content via http://vide.debian.net/ - and coordinate
with them which formats to use (to avoid loosing quality from too many
lossy conversions if initially published files are in formats
inappropriate for Debian redistribution).


- Jonas

That should be http://video.debian.net/

I see an ogv file in
http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2012/bucharest-talk/debian_ceata.ogv
: 370MB - not the friendliest way for people to browse files - some
snippets on YouTube would help with publicity here.


Since I'm not in the position to decide how to trim this down (or even
if it needs trimming) I'm sorry to say that I can't do this myself.


Something like this should be on Debians main web page.

Philip


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On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 07:37:18PM +0100, Philip Ashmore wrote:
> >Could we perhaps entice you, Philip, to make a change to Debian instead
> >of suggesting things for us to do?
> Bug#678854: Acknowledgement (icewm won't start)

That's a good first step: you've found a problem in Debian. Now you should
find a way to help fix it. There are several ways to progress on that: for
example, adding useful information to the bug report so that the problem
can be reproduced by others, giving error messages, etc. Once you've
learnt how to make a useful bug report, you could learn how to debug the
actual problem, by narrowing down to the component or version that
introduces it, for example. After that, if you have the programming
skills, dive into the code to hunt down the exact line where the problem
occurs. If you haven't got the programming skills, maybe you could find
a friend who does, who could debug that with you? (In Debian, we would
call that a bug squashing party.)

Just making a vague bug report is not making a change in Debian, nor is
it improving Debian.

--
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On 12-06-24 at 07:44pm, Philip Ashmore wrote:
> On 24/06/12 17:35, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> >On 12-06-24 at 05:24pm, Philip Ashmore wrote:
> >>Anyway, I guess what I would look for, to share the bug squashing
> >>atmosphere with others, is a YouTube video summarising the event,
> >>maybe magazine style - it doesn't have to show someone actually
> >>squashing a bug, but it might help highlight the community spirit,
> >>and a video would be something I would click on to take a break from
> >>reading text.
> >
> >Sounds like a great idea.
> >
> >Please consider contacting the Debian video team to instead/also
> >distribute video content via http://vide.debian.net/ - and coordinate
> >with them which formats to use (to avoid loosing quality from too many
> >lossy conversions if initially published files are in formats
> >inappropriate for Debian redistribution).
> >
> >
> > - Jonas
> That should be http://video.debian.net/

Correct.


> I see an ogv file in
> http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2012/bucharest-talk/debian_ceata.ogv
> : 370MB - not the friendliest way for people to browse files - some
> snippets on YouTube would help with publicity here.

Please discuss that with the Debian video team. But don't be surprised
if they are unwilling to embrace nonfree services like youtube.


- Jonas

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