[Debian-np-devel] Debian-NP and CDD talk in Firenze

[Enrico Zini]

--XsQoSWH+UP9D9v3l
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Hello!

I went yesterday giving a talk at Firenze World Vision
(www.firenzeworldvision.it) about Custom Debian Distributions and
Debian-NP.  The slides of my talk are found, as usual, at
http://people.debian.org/~enrico/talks

At the end of the talk, Stefano Zacchiroli made me an interesting and
challenging question:

  "Is Debian-NP something like a meta distro that can be instantiated to
   the various different and diverse NP needs?"

The question struck me.  It was a good question.  It had something
right, and something that was not it, so I started answering:

  "Yes, and no."

But then, damn me, when you answer "yes, and no" then you have to give
not one, but two answers.  So I said, without thinking:

  "Yes, in that we already have a meta distro that can be instantiated
   to the various different and diverse needs of anyone, and that is
   Debian, and Debian-NP is Debian"

  "And no, we are not making a distribution to be instantiated: we are
   more like the ones that instantiate, and teach people how to
   instantiate"

Wow!  I had never thought about it in that way!  Very interesting
answer... I need to talk with that speaker later!  Oh, but it's me...
Oh, my, I'm sick...

  "...by the way, thanks for the question, it's been really helpful to
   me..."

I really like that answer, and I think it's exactly what we should do:
 - Real development, we do it with the Debian hat.
 - With the Debian-NP hat, we forget about being able to write code, and
   we work with people.
  =20
The most technical things we should do with a Debian-NP hat would be
select packages, configure them and burn CDs.

Our work should be make it easier for people to install and maintain
systems in non profits.  If we start with a CD with the right selection
of software in it, starting from there is already easier, because you
spend less time in making selections every time.

Then, as infrastructure develops, we document it, teach people how to
burn custom CDs, make starting points, understand the requirements
better and select different software, and all those things we always
wanted to do.

Plus one thing: with the Debian-NP hat, we also have the task of
representing non-profits and their efforts in the Debian community: we
are the part of Debian that knows (or is supposed to know) about them.

How about a package debian-np-devel that depends on CDD tools,
debpartial-mirror and whatnot, and includes documentation about how we
evaluated and selected packages, experience reports, best practices, CD
building howtos, tips on how to indentify your needs, web links,
contacts of people actively working in building new and interesting
software, directory of what NGOs did what and how, and how to contact
them to ask how it goes; gathers bugs and wishes in the BTS (possibly we
could say "if you don't know where to report your bug, report it to
debian-np, and we take care of triaging and reassigning it"), and so on?


Ciao,

Enrico

--
GPG key: 1024D/797EBFAB 2000-12-05 Enrico Zini <enrico@debian.org>

--XsQoSWH+UP9D9v3l
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc"
Content-Description: Digital signature
Content-Disposition: inline

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFBVY/e9LSwzHl+v6sRAiNFAJ920fMZMI1CFTGd+CK9doIWHSRL+wCfU30M
zD7oavIzHMuWyh7ax5WGdig=
=G7gs
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--XsQoSWH+UP9D9v3l--