Check Mike. Good morning. If you coast down with rack space. I'm a private cloud evangelista, and I decided to turn my session into a panel Partially to drive attendance, but partially because there are a lot of great things happening in an open stack career-wise and One of the great things about open stack is it's helping old companies become new and helping new companies get off the ground And I think it's a really really exciting time. So I'm gonna take you through a few slides and then We'll have our panelists share their stories and their career path. I think Another great thing that's happening in open stack today is not just creating technical jobs, but it's creating jobs That kind of run the gamut.  There's PR. There's Sales there's all kinds of great things happening that isn't just limited to a technical scope So my legal department wants me to display this fine statement since we're gonna talk about careers Barbara if you're watching at home, that's for you All right, so let's look at cloud job postings and what I did is I did a quick search on Simply Hired and I'm not gonna really say much because I think it speaks for itself But congratulations to all of you because you're doing it, right? Oh, I see people taking pictures all paws on that So you can tweet that tell Peter. I love them You might be watching this too. Hi, Peter all right, so It's not just the US right I did a search. There were 901 job postings in the US Just for open-stack related careers If I looks globally, it's simply hired. There are more than 20 there's about 23 countries represented that have postings that have open-stack in them So it's not just limited to the US There's you know tons of things that are happening all over the world and there's traction in almost every major country that you can think of And that's that's exciting. It's it's truly a global effort. You want to take a picture of that Jeff? Well, I can send this to you. All right, so now that's all the way I'm going to introduce our awesome panelists to their Twitter's are up here. We'll go ahead and start with Gretchen But the question is Tell me about your career path to open-stack And I know they've been kind of different. I have a lot of folks here representing a lot of different things There's a common denominator with three of these folks as to where former rackers and Mike is a current backer But we'll we'll start with Gretchen down at the end. I'm sure how I got here Literature major having a background in sorts of that sort of segwayed into To's for IT me it seems like it's kind of this this mysterious space agency that you know has you know big walls around it What was that like? It was thanks Gretchen. Anyone have any questions for Gretchen? I have another follow-up question for you here in a minute. Let's turn it over to John Purrier. Hi guys So I didn't actually know who was gonna be on this panel until I showed up today I've now figured out why Nikki asked me to be on here because I'm the great there for seven years I went to Microsoft. I was there for 40 exchange server open source This is this is the the wave of the future and so startups around a zealot if you will for open source 2007 so this is what the Texas my friends thought I was crazy but It's worked out pretty well rack space to run the conversations with the decision Fertuitously we saw the announcement from the NASA guys saying that they were gonna do a compute project Based on Python got the teams together And basically launched open stack with sitting there with this is like my specific things for open stack The open source project worked for me and that was that was fun I became a doesn't exist anymore Service the question is once you know once all these 6,000 people that are in the open stack foundation actually stand up the clouds and they have them I don't see any end in sight quite as a convoluted as with stack is my third professional I started I Grew up in Texas and I went to school in central Texas and after I graduated Looking for computer for personal reasons I was looking to stay in that area for the time being in 2002 looking jobs right after the tech crunch in central Texas And that didn't go really well, so I ended up installing cable for a year But after that I I did get a job in a life insurance company in central Texas and Learned an incredible amount there far as learning how to take things from start to finish Developing a lot of and even still to this day when I think of use case and the user for Open stack and all of the things that we do policy calculations being able to do computing resources Very large storage needs as far as some lots of unstructured data, which is I like here because I decided to move on from there and I was applying around and saw a job posting at rack space and applied and Was hired and it turned out the first day. I started at rack space was the first day that coding began on Swift and Was able to jump in from the very beginning about files team at rack space Tremendously amazing experience as some of the smartest people have ever worked for were on that team are still on the team at rack space Worked with John a little bit as he came in After I joined rack space and then use a the develop production and then open stack happens And especially on our clouds our cloud division And so we suddenly saw that there were so many people being excited about what was going on This was this was we we had the tools and the technologies to provide Everyone with this the great solution to real problems that people had and so I've always been Developer that's not just focused on the developer stuff I've always enjoyed talking to people getting and so when I as I had those opportunities at rack space to Go to different conferences to get involved here at the design summits I really enjoyed that and through there. I was You know seeing other small companies start up People like piston nebula and finally Swift stack Starting and focusing on this product that I've been involved in since the beginning It was an opportunity that I found was incredibly exciting and so This summer I moved on to Swift stack and out to San Francisco from Texas Your journey's kind of still relatively fresh and new I guess yes. Yes. It is. Yeah. Tell us about about your journey So first off. Good morning. My name is Mike Metron and I'm a solutions architect at rack space in our private cloud division My background is computer science. I kind of got started into the whole cloud business If you will want to pipe research for distributed systems and so because of that I was back in 2006 2007 These so you know the recession if you will didn't really lend itself to a lot of open job opportunities So I got recruited by the US government, which was my previous employer Specifically I was with the Department of Energy working for Sandy and national laboratories, which is a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin While I was there a lot of my key responsibilities include performing cloud technological assessments building up a general knowledge base and At the same time just doing a lot of technological vulnerability analysis on these systems for government adoption and usage And I think you know kind of in the same period Everyone was kind of trying to define what cloud was and even the government It's funny to hear directions and touch that with regards to NASA A lot of the government also interested in cloud But we don't know if we should stand up our own or if we should you know learn from what was currently out there or part of the People so a lot of the same, you know similar problems that people were encountering but I'm a much distributed and Way more red tape if you will so my journey in towards towards rack space is actually kind of interesting because What happened was I started Playing around with a lot of you know cloud technologies as I was normally doing In an open stack camp on my radar about a year bit of a year ago and You know, I thought whatever source I could find in the dogs on there on the web So I kicked the tire so to speak but it still wasn't enough, you know still an early phase for open stack So I looked for any training that I could find just to kind of fill the gaps that I had And I stumbled upon rack spaces website. They were offering a training course That looked great, you know, I had a deep dive into Nova and to Swift I signed up for and I joined the class and while they are our teacher Tony Campbell is actually sitting in this room He's a director of training at open stack at rack space and He just had just literally Every single question that I you know that I had he had the right answer for it And he did it with a smile and on top of that he just had this very upbeat and positive vibe about open stack Which you know, it's almost What's the word? It's it's almost enchanting in the sense that he can he can speak so positive about a project That's so open and so that got me excited that got me very interested in and as the class went on you know, my engagements just kind of went from you know Usual participant took you know trying to promote and help the class out and I enjoyed doing it and Ironically enough I happened to cash attention to Scott Sanchez who's sitting here in the audience as well And he's a director of strategy and just overall business development for product cloud at rack space and overall badass business and cloud ninja so we got the talking and About the possible opportunities that could exist between rack space and myself and six months later, which was this past June I became a racker officially so I was drinking the magical support Kool-Aid I was a I was you know highly highly motivated to work with open stack and you know And now I'm you know sitting here being hugely honor and privilege to sit amongst this panel of great cloud experts And for me, it's very nice, especially Given the fact that I was government for about four years We did a lot of great work, but at the end of the day It's very it's very tight in it, right? There's a reason that we do great work, but no one hears about it and given the fact that The precautionary stuff to have to take it kind of created a black hole if you will on my career So being able to be with rack space has opened up a whole new world. So I'm almost a born-again cloud computer person So it's nice because you know, I'm getting to be Such as this one and just participate more publicly and try to get my voice out there. So it's been great I know I've had a great success in just four months with rack space and I'm highly looking forward to you know No, where you were but kind of where you've worked in the past Tell me about the culture at your companies. I know piston has a tremendous brand I mean, they're the hats. They're very well dressed the bow ties Josh McKinty socks matches his tie Tell tell me a little bit about about the culture at the companies that you work at or the companies that you're building When you're starting a company cues from stashes, they have monos we work with groups inside NASA What about you John at a fog? I know you guys kind of work in a distributed fashion. You guys are kind of all over the place right exactly right so I think I'd reiterate a lot of what Gretchen said in terms of These that are excited about what you're doing space, which is very Interesting we basically take the open source Infrastructure players like open stack and then we layer source project over the top of it. So business For instance, you know, our main our main Texas San Antonio, Texas We have a couple of continuous integration continuous qa continuous deployment. We're pushing code all the time You know, so we're really accused of being shy our space, which is platform as a service Swift stack is in a slightly earlier position than both at fog and piston a little bit of a newer company And so we're still building that out but what I found at Swift stack is that the people who are there are very Very intense and very focused on making sure that we get stuff done They come from a background One of the things I really like is that there's not a lot of inbreeding at Swiss stack Most of the people and I'm not saying that necessarily always is a bad thing There's a there's a lot of a lot to be gained from sharing responsibility in the and and loading from one other in the open stack community But most of the people at Swiss stack Before working at Swiss stack actually had zero involvement with open stack And so what they're able to do is bring in their previous career history of building scale building Production products building things that are done in a distributed manner interfacing with customers building teams and so I think that what we've done right now is brought together people who are Sealerly focused on building excellent products very well with that And it's actually very similar to what I found at rack space And so you look at the team I was on at rack space versus the team of that is the company at Swiss stack I find a lot of similarities there When I was at rack space, I always told people that I work. I'm working with the smartest people I've ever worked with now that I'm at Swiss stack. I have to say I'm working with Those are I've been working with some of the smartest people because the people I've met at Swiss stack have been Blown me away quite as just as much And so we're focusing on on building out our team is focusing on other people who are willing to dive in intensely focus on the code iterate and Accept a broad range of responsibility to to get stuff done So as we as we build our team as we're growing over the next year and so I mean we'll more solidify what our Culture is and it probably won't be hats and bow ties But you know, it'll it'll reflect the team that we're on it's something that I'm so It's it's everything. You know as Gretchen said it's it's everything old rumors are true. It's very office basis It's darkly lit a lot of buildings. I spent numerous days in actually don't have windows For various security precaution reasons So that that really that gets to you after you do it for about four years. You kind of forget what the sun looks like But coming to a rack space Wow, that is night and day for me It's just so energetic and vibrant and fun At the castle. It's it's like an adult Disneyland And the castles are our headquarters in San Antonio. I know it's just different There's videos out there of a lot of Lanham. I think talking about about the castle how special it is There's there's no concept of offices or cubicles and you know and there's windows and sun comes in from the roof and all sides Oh, you know, I'm a happy camper sometimes or suntan lotion into how much how much sun I'm getting and The the exciting part is like that goes across the board for all the employees for all the high-level up executives And and that makes you know executives like to see all the CTOs all those very powerful people even just you know My own manager it makes them very Reachable and in government. There's a lot of red tape And I couldn't just talk to my director if I needed to and a rack space That's actually encouraged and and it's set up for you to do so But the same time it's it's Almost required nowadays the Googles and the Amazons they've set a standard For for how our business operates and and in a business filled with so many smart people They're gonna manage themselves So you should give them the proper environment to to be able to relax to work comfortably because when you're in these buildings for eight To twelve hours you need the right environment to support you because if not you're gonna go crazy And and so I'm just very appreciative because it's it's a whole new world for me And and and I'm excited and and for being forty five hundred plus people that rack spaces There's so many start-up emotions and start of feelings and just customs For example the cows we have a slide that goes from one floor to the other People design their their areas with all sorts of personal stuff from home.  We have kegs on tap We have wine in the fridge We have you know, we're not as formal as piston We have formal Fridays every every third Friday of the month where we see people in tuxedos and tuxedo t-shirts So it's it really plays in the culture that you know, everyone's unique and and that should that should be a part of you Not just you know at home, but also at work and and and that's that's that's that's great for me because again We work with a lot of smart people some of the smartest people in the industry and there's no reason We should limit them in terms of you know what they need to get their job done to produce the best results that they can Possibly accomplish so a rack space. I think breaks the mold for for having enterprise-sized company and And they say they stay true to that and they're always up for for opinions they want to hear with you know what you have to say and For a company of that size that is you know That is world is a way different from your your government departments and agencies are just you know So there's there's ticklers for policies and for rules and and procedures and it's just it's new It's it's awesome and that's the way it should be So I'm I'm hugely excited to be a part of them You know be able to be exposed as such an environment You know these guys are obviously saying the standards and they're on the way and that's how it should be Running out of time here very quickly if you want to start with Gretchen again. I noticed all of you guys have open recs Posted on your websites. We are hiring all the people tell tell the people in the camera who are watching Art at this conference What are you hiring for all the jobs?  So if you have a passion for this and you want to start looking toward the future, right? And the future is after we've built these clouds. What do you do with providing a solution to that? We're just looking for smart people and I love the comment that liked I will say that Open-source developers that are very passionate about that that want to you know be involved with open stack that want to Take it to the next level. Why is we at Swift stack are hiring like everyone in open stack? We're currently Acquiring customers growing out to meet those demands. We're looking for developers. We're looking for sales people We're looking for people with ops experience I think I think the general rule that everything I've seen in in open stack is There's a ton of smart people for is people who have experience of getting stuff. You need to be smart and get stuff done and Being able to demonstrate that there's not there's not a place in I don't think any of these companies for people who Who want to come along and say hey look? There's this open stack and it seems popular. Let's ride the coattails but let's demonstrate The ability to actually solve problems for customers and that's what we're focusing on at Swift stack We realized that there are there's an enormous need of solving storage problems Swift solves a good subset of that of those problems extremely well and So what we're looking meeting those needs the world do you swift make all the world use use open stack? I truly believe that the Storage is the foundation upon which our entire technology Stack is based you've got to be able to store your data before you can do the interesting delivery things that the entirety of open Stack delivers So let's solve that problem. Let's do it extremely well Let's strive for excellence and that's what we're looking for at Swift stack So I'd be happy to talk. We've got a table out up front as well grow a company and solve real-world problems at very exciting scales Awesome I'm gonna wrap up here very quickly anyone have any quick questions for these guys Of course, this wouldn't be a session without a shameless plug. So I'm gonna Give a shout out to Tony there in the back who's built out a rack space Certification for open stack the certification exams begin in December so you can become a rack space certified technician for open stack And the first round will start in December in San Antonio with plans to have global classes available in the very near future There's public training courses there as well So for those of you who aren't here or those of you who are here who are new to open stack if you want a four-day intensive course to get Familiar with open stack and learn how to build and troubleshoot and administer open stack powered clouds Definitely take a training course If you want to get involved in open stack, I encourage it There's meet-up groups all over the place if there's not one in your city start one We're seeing a tremendous amount of participation and specifically as San Francisco has a huge Meetup group Austin has a huge meet-up group. I got to give props to a tool in Traveled on a bus for 14 hours on his own dime to to start a meet-up group So a lot of cool things happening again, I encourage you to participate in your your local meet-ups It's a good way to stay connected to the community and find career opportunities as well If you're new to open stack or you're looking into for a career in open stack My guess is that you'll be able to network with people and find some opportunities Last but not least if you are interested in a career at rack space where we've got like 30 postings up as of today with Probably another 15 that are gonna get loaded here in the next couple days Where's Dave and Blake Dave and Blake there they are those two guys over there have offer letters ready to go if you guys are interested so It's true. We've we've extended a few offers this week So and for those of you who we might have annoyed our recruitment team might have annoyed my sincerest apologies Great things happening in open sack super pumps. The future looks bright There's tons of opportunities in open sack for those of you who are watching the videotape definitely get involved I mean, there's you know, you're in a recession or people say we're in a session the unemployment rate is high But obviously this is one place where we're not really feeling that it's Supplying in demand issue. I think at this point So just to quickly add it opens up is real, you know, this is no longer an incubated project It's only changing enterprises and saving enterprises money is changing people's careers. So leave the hype The hype is real. Thank you all for attending. Thank you panelists awesome panelists


Thank you very much. My name is Trond Jörgengall and I'm representing the Norwegian Tax Administration. It's very interesting and encouraging to see research and studies on tax administration and by tax administration looking at change and development and the impact on tax revenue. I've learned a lot, so thank you very much for your contribution and presentation today. As mentioned several times today as well, we live in a time where domestic revenue mobilisation is crucial, it's all about this, the conference is all about that. However, I'm representing a country and maybe an area of countries with tax authorities for different and reasons are more concerned with compliance, benefits for society and reduced cost of administration than tax revenues itself. I'm mentioning this because it's important to recognise the tax administration are different and find themselves in different stages of development. So developing countries might have similar challenges, but tax authorities are definitely have these similarities. So I might be knocking on open doors here, but still it's important to keep it in mind. It's both important and encouraging to see that all these three presentations are country specific studies that found in the base for adequate and some policy implementation in those particular countries. To Chris's presentation on audits and compliance in Uganda showing some very encouraging results when he finds a positive relation between audit and compliance. Not surprising to me maybe based on the focus at least many western countries have had two decades where they build up competence, at least believed that we have built up compliance as well. But at Chris's point out himself these studies are crucial to be done in the countries we look at and working specifically. Also the correlation seems familiar. I wonder a bit about the finding that result are not depending on the outcome of the audits. This is just my intuition and I know you mentioned it yourself that you might be a little bit surprised. But maybe there will be more about that later on I don't know. I also like to dwell on some possible drivers here. A famous psychologist Eric Kischler working in Stensly on taxes actually found in studies some years back, I believe that correlation between audits and control and compliance after control given that the level of compliance was relatively high to start with. On the contrary found that the correlation between audit and control and compliance to be negative if the compliance initially was good. So could the level of compliance among the auditing companies in Uganda be crucial for your findings? Secondly is the fact that the companies are selective for audits as a sufficient condition alone for the outcome? In order that you Chris has told me the other day as well and you showed as well that you've been doing some research in Rwanda Revenue Authority where they found a negative correlation between desk audits and compliance. I have to say it surprised me a little bit as working with Rwanda Revenue Authority it's among the better tax administration with working it to be honest. But nevertheless it also illustrates that the way we select, we do the audit and possibly how we communicate as well with the companies might have an impact on the relation between audit and compliance. There might be room for more research and follow up here for more clear policy implications for instance by looking at the differences in audits and maybe even examinations to see possible differences. The positive effects though from audits should make URI to keep the focus on comprehensive audits and proper risk selection. So and then of course how often should the companies be audited, how long does the effect last and so on. And all this as Chris mentioned as well should be weighted against the capacity and alternative gains and alternative projects as well. Ezekiel Swemer and Tira's pilot on more risk-based approaches to tax elimination shows a significant increase in the revenues of 10 to 15 percent. It's impressive. Toro risk selection plays a crucial role in targeting audits and examination in order to maximize impact on compliance and revenues. I mentioned the study that Tira see has done in Rwanda where they found the desk audits to have a negative impact on compliance. Such a result may assumingly be caused by less Toro risk selection. And then I also have some questions to you Ezekiel. You are saying that the numbers of companies with adjusted taxable income is the same before and after introduction of optimized control. That's also surprised me a little bit as I would believe that such adequate controls would lead to more flags and more selected firms that are more likely to get the tax adjusted. You're also saying at the end that introducing this risk-based approach is more efficient than introducing more examination. It might be a likely consumption but have you actually control for that in the pilot. It's encouraging results as mentioned and many of us know that establishing such control mechanism in a big core tax system and link a risk module with data from e-filing is a long way to go for many countries. Introducing this risk in an extra treats shows that it's possible to achieve results with more simple approaches in shorter time even while you are planning a broader or new tax system. It will be interesting to see in future how both compliance and revenues develop. And Jenda and the colleague here, using bigger companies as VAT agents is a creative solution and as you mentioned as well is used in some developing countries now. The results are also convincing leading to a significant increase in sales and VAT. I believe the results are driven by the fact that agents has no or less reason to underport or to deal with the supplier. That leads me to a question as well. Apart from being serious, maintaining the positive reputation ETC, what's in it for the agents? If you could elaborate a little bit on that. It will also be interesting to know if there are challenges related to having such withholding agents. Another challenge to my knowledge relating to withholding agents might be the fact that suppliers selling to agents need to claim refund for VAT on purchases. I'm curious about the experience in Sambia and whether you are able to cope with an increasing number of claims. This is also a potential threat to the trust of the authority if not handled well. I'll relate the question then as it might be as well whether you, based on your experience so far, see yourself broadening or narrowing the use of agents or whether you have found a healthy balance. This might also be a relevant question more for policy makers. When I have the floor here, I also want to say something about the approach to policy changes and domestic revenue mobilization in general. What should tax administration do? Many, many see the urgent need for DRM, domestic revenue mobilization. Due to increased rates, interest on state loans, low revenues due to lower activity and increased costs due to inflation. Research and studies we have seen shown us that relatively narrow projects and more traditional tax revenue approaches to what's improved can increase the revenues. A lot of good initiatives around, but also some thoughts based on my experience on building capacity in many countries. Keep the project simple and narrow rather than big and ambitious. Take into account your capacity. Ask do we have capacity to develop, carry it through and to maintain? Focus on longer and more sustainable effects rather than shorter one. One example is to ask yourself whether the domestic revenue mobilization project actually built trust towards the austerity or reducing it. Is the society and or the government ready for your project? One example of one thought could be is e-filing relevant for all taxpayer groups if they're not so much digitalized. Please also leapfrog but make sure you land and this is also related to the fact that you need to have capacity in order to do that. And saying this is not kind of contradiction to actually having longer strategic development goals for your organization. That is crucial of course. But it's not that this can go hand in hand with smaller and more narrow projects as well. Just mention that capacity is important and you don't need to do everything on the same time. So lastly just one thing I would like to mention is like there's a number of crucial international initiatives out here. Digitalization is one, the BEPS 2 is another one. A lot of resources also on assistance and cooperation with partners in lower middle income countries are currently and most likely also in the next two years linked to these two subjects. No doubt about their importance, digitalization is the way to go. However there is a long horizontal digitalization, it takes time. Global minimum tax is important to come by tax evasion on larger scale from other nations. However not all developing countries will gain significantly revenues from this. We will certainly and talking about NTA contribute and do our part in raising awareness and build capacity on this. But I fear that is other CB, other capacity building and even more crucial matters for some developing countries might get too little resources and too little attention in the coming years. So please ask yourself are these the most urgent matters when you do projects or do the partners have the level of capacity to take this on? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you Trond and thank you to our presenters. I think to kick off the Q&A session I'll allow the presenters to just raise the questions that have been put forward by the discussant and then we can open up to the floor. So Ezekiel do you want to go first? Thank you very much Trond for that highlight on our paper. And basically you touched on the two areas and of course one was just a comment to me that if these simpler risk-based methodologies or interventions can be beneficial and we surely need to capitalise on this area. And I agree with you if we do have very informative risk-surrection criteria that are in place and we really set into our system. We can surely have selecting risk-sensitive taxpayers for the examination purpose. So this is the way to go and of course not only limited to one tax type but I agree also with you that we need to expand now the scope not only to the CIT and the PIT but also the other major tax type like VAT and the like. And of course again to expand the scope and moving forward by automating now these procedures into our system and the system to be telling us by itself. But again the question which you highlighted you mentioned if we tested this group with other group rather than in Dar es Salaam only. Of course I agree with you maybe should be the scope of this study and perhaps in future we may try to test into different groups and again we could again maybe confirm our findings further if it was very effective if we do compare with the rest of the group. So I concur with you and perhaps it could be the area for further improvement. Thank you and I can stop there. Thank you Trot and I'm going to be very brief because I agree with everything you said. I think your point about the subtlety of audits and the need to evaluate these audits I think it's valid and this is one of the messages that we're trying to push through. You know this study and the other studies we have done on this concept. I mean there's the presumption that audits are working effectively but that's not actually true because it has to do with the content of the audit. It has to do with the signal. You know these audits convey to the taxpayer and how these signals are being interpreted by the taxpayer. So we have instances not only from Rwanda. I think this is something that I guess you alluded to but not only from Rwanda that we find a negative impact on the audits of test audits but there's a paper by using US data and they find that narrow scope audits have a negative impact on compliance as well. So I think the point is as you rightly said that we need to be a little bit more careful and we need to be focusing a little bit more on policy evaluation of those initiatives. So thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you Trot. So the one question that I picked up was what would be the benefit to the agents if they engage in these withholding activities and one thing that I would say is the reduction in the audit time. So usually the problem with the audit and the authorities is to reduce the ghost suppliers and in this case where without the withholding mechanism it was a bit difficult for the authority to be able to know where the supplier was coming from. But then in this case they know because of the intervention and then it reduces the audit time for the agent. So that's mainly what I would say on that. In terms of challenges with the VAD system I would link that to the increased number of claims that results because of the intervention. For that I would say that now we're looking at the increase in the number of filers. So the most important thing now is that now we have an increase in the number of filers. Initially they were in there but now we have them. So it might be a bad thing that now we have an increase increase in the number of claims but then we should first look at the positives that we have all these firms who are not filing now filing. So that's a good thing and I believe that the ZRI is putting in place measures to tackle the increased number of claims. Also I agree with you that we need to talk about increasing or decreasing the number of agents. And I believe that it will be good to increase the number of agents in terms of having more with holding agents who would be able to reduce the wait time or the transaction time for these specific VAT transactions. Reducing them won't be the best because I feel that in that case then the ZRI would not meet its target by reducing the by increase in compliance. So I would say that the number of agents should increase but cost wise as we put in their presentation we should look at the cost involved here. So thanks a lot. Thank you so much for those responses. Yes you are Yanda. Do you want to add something quickly maybe just a minute so that we can give a chance for the questions on the floor as well. Yeah maybe I will just go straight to the last question which was whether we, the Xamarin authorities thinking of broadening or narrowing the number of agents. And well as for Ben has put it yes it would be nice to increase the number of participants in the withholding. However we've noticed the cost associated so far which was never thought of in the design at the beginning is some firms. Some withholding firms were beginning to hold on to the withheld VAT instead of remitting it to the authority because the authority owes them VAT refunds. And you know the issue of VAT refunds probably in the African context you can always never be up to date. There's always a backlog here and there due to maybe the risk based orders that have to be done on the claims before you pay and also other factors. So we are finding that now these agents are collecting yes we have the monies in the books we would have collected that VAT which would have otherwise not been collected. However the remittance or compliance by the withholding agents was reducing over time due to them trying to offset it against what ZRI owes them. So going forward we are thinking I think on this last slide we mentioned that in the design earlier this year we even exempted withholding agents from withholding among themselves. Because the quantums that now we're sticking to the withholding agents were quite huge. And probably going forward a more lasting solution I think in Front's comments I noted that you mentioned we should focus on more long term solutions, long term sustainable solutions to revenue mobilization. And as Zambia were thinking probably stronger fiscalization where we can have cost efficient fiscal devices which can help in the administration of VAT probably software based fiscalization solutions could be a longer term solution. Because then we'll be able to capture the VAT on our own in real time basis depending on the coverage of these fiscal systems. I think that's what I can add for now thank you. Thank you and as someone from the National Treasury myself I love when people have consideration of the fiscal costs that are associated to their recommendations. So if we can open up to the floor if you could just raise your hands I think we'll take three questions at a time. I see one hand at the back and another one here in front so maybe if you can take the gentleman at the back and the gentleman in the front and then I'll allow one online question and then we'll begin the next round with you. Okay thank you for the presentations. Now just one thing which I think is missing from the presentations. What is the cost of compliance from the farm side? Because maybe there are bottlenecks in terms of reporting. If that is the case then there will be no incentive for farms to comply with tax returns. So they only comply when they are audited because now they know they are on the radar. So that is missing from all the presentations. I think that would be important because maybe this infrastructure for reporting is very costly for farms. So they try to avoid that cost by not complying. Thank you. This question is for Ezekiel Suema. How did the tax officers in Tanzania Revenue Authority react to introducing the risk-based engine since this new device may have reduced their self-examination leading them to compete against technology? Thank you. And then we can take one more from the gentleman here in the middle. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you very much. My name is Waselik Gomegam from Malawi. Two questions I think to start with the last one on withholding VAT. I think the most argument against the withholding VAT relates to the taxpayers, the impact it has on the taxpayers. I think the benefits to the tax administration are documented. So I was wondering if it would be beneficial for Zambia and maybe this is just a comment to go the other way to see what has been the impact. And as the discussant has raised the issue of tax refunds because you are withholding 100% as it happens in Zambia and not a fraction of it. What has been the impact on tax refunds? Has that increased and what is the repayment period? I think the discussant did raise that but I didn't hear the response to this. I think this is a very critical issue when you're dealing with withholding VAT because the impact it might have on the businesses might be significant, especially when you're withholding 100%. That's the first issue. The second issue on the issue of CIT audit. I was wondering on the results you got on sector specific and to this I was wondering what did you note in terms of the compliance of two sectors, financial and telecommunication. I want to, if you have any insights on this, because when we're looking at the developing countries, these are the two sectors that are contributing maybe 50% or more of the revenues. So I want to see what the picture is looking like when you look at the audits in these sectors. Thank you. Thank you so much. If we could just try and keep the responses very concise so that we can do another round of questions before our session ends. Because we still have Yanda online, I think I'll let him go first before we lose him and then we can then go over to Ezekiel. Thank you, Yanda. I think I got two questions, which is the cost of compliance, so probably for VAT in this case and also the other one which was on the impact of the withholding on VAT refunds. To start with on the cost of compliance for VAT, the way the requirements for VAT in Zambia are such that companies beyond or firms beyond a certain level of annual turnover are expected to register for VAT. And the major assumption beyond this is that these firms should be able to meet these requirements, these formal requirements for compliant VAT which are premised on keeping proper books of records of accounts. And then below that threshold you have businesses which pay on a presumptive nature to take into account that it may be costly for them to maintain their books and so forth. And only when a firm decides to voluntarily register which falls below this VAT threshold is when they can be allowed to go on to the VAT register. So in short, it's expected that, well, what I can say is it's expected that firms should comply to the requirements. But due to the informal nature of our economy we're observing that it's again easy for smaller firms especially who are on the VAT register to disappear from the VAT chain. That was the fundamental problem. So you would have, because systems are not interconnected, are largely not interconnected in our economies, you find you can't trust them through the banking system because you're not interconnected through the insurance and so forth. So this VAT would be gone. Meanwhile the business has collected the VAT, they are registered for VAT but their demographics on the system are not traceable and so forth. So this was where probably the withholding VAT was coming in. I think that would be my comment on that, maybe Quabena can click and add. On the impact of the withholding on refunds, yes, because now we are collecting VAT essentially from more firms than before. There's more reporting than before the reform. Also the share that has to be claimed by the taxpayers increases at the point of introducing the reform. The only consolation in this case is that in terms of the accounting, because this firm is only appearing on the books because they participated in a transaction which you can observe from another taxpayer. So in terms of the accounting, it's an in-out. It's an in-out in terms of the accounting. Yes, there's an increase in terms of refunds but there's also an increase in terms of gross collections. So it's coming from, I think it's stemming from there. It's an in-out, it's an equal share going in or coming out. Or rather even a bigger share now coming in because there's some gross receipts which are entire based on the value added instead of the inputs. I think I'll end here for now. Thank you. Okay, thanks Yanda. Thank you very much and it was indeed a good question. And I can respond by saying change management is a process. Whenever you're coming up with a new way of doing things, sometimes you might get some challenges. But at least during the period for the intervention, we tried to control and it was faring well. But now moving forward, we now use ways of technology and try to convince the management so that to integrate the intervention through the system so that it can be the only way to go. I can confirm that change management is a process and that's a way to do. And of course the objective of the intervention were clearly said. One is also to reduce the time that we do spend in doing examination procedures. And again, we are looking forward to increase revenue and resources of course are scarce so we need to utilize them effectively. Thanks Ezekiel. Because we had one hand that was left over in the last round, I think I'll let the lady at the back come in because we are out of time. So I'll just go with that question and then we can close the session. Hello everyone, I'm Julia Mascagni from the International Centre of Tax and Development. I'm standing between you and lunch so I will be very, very quick. It is a question for Christos and team which we can discuss later. I was intrigued by your result on audits increasing revenue for both compliant and non-compliant taxpayers. And I'm wondering if we can maybe discuss more separately or if you want to say a few words about why do you think that happens as it say about the audit quality or the kind of signals that the audit process gives aside from just improving compliance. You mentioned the word signals before and I was intrigued by that. Thanks. Thank you. I think I have one minute. It's not enough to go through that but we're trying to understand why this is the case. Clearly as I said, signaling is going to matter. The process by which the tax authority does audit matters is the tick box exercise and we do narrow scope audits later on if they find something they need to comprehensive. We need to look at the process a little bit more carefully. But I completely agree with you that this is quite surprising but at this point in time we can speculate and unfortunately we don't have a good understanding of the mechanism as yet. Thank you for that. Thank you everyone. Thank you for your participation and thank you for the really great questions to the panel. And thank you for stepping in. A round of applause to everyone and off to lunch.


Hi, nice to see there are still so many people in talks and awake on Sunday afternoon So I'm flooring on one of the RPM developers and we are talking about Spec files today and packaging. So where are we and why are we talking about this? Like two years ago. We are we are PM upstream rolled out the last two big features that are heavily infecting affecting Spec files there was just a talk about the most prominent about which is scriptlets and file triggers and so For those who have not been to this talk that was just in this room Before this one. So most of the script that's are now replaced new and for yours just about basically to to kick out the last few Few probably doesn't 100 scriptlets and Since then RPM upstream has been doing stuff that has not much impact on the packaging side. So I Say small features, but this was deep again for was changed into Subpackages per package purse. So there's one deep again for sub package per Subpackage and we did a lot of cleanup stuff stuff that packages don't have to care about The one thing we did we added new terms for the rich dependency. So there's new now the new with and without and less operators which work on the same package, which was an issue for especially rust which wave The problem is you can specify like bigger now bigger versions and smaller versions But a match may match different packages. So you're not actually a well not able to match like Version ranges, which is needed for those stuff Anyway So we are now at a point where you think it's time to do something for packaging again with Fedora Hopefully having absorbed the last huge chain chess That's Fedora for those who don't have not seen it yet That's the growth over the last couple of years I don't know if you can see that if you can see that doesn't matter The the blue line at the bottom is the number of source packages and it's growing and growing and growing and growing it's basically a straight line from the humble starts of Fedora core one and So we have to expect that there will be even more packages for the years to come. There's no sign of Fedora bottoming out Or slowing down So the problem is with more and more packages, there's more and more work to do and The question is how how much more work can we actually do and it so we want to take the next Development cycle to look at things that can make packaging actually easier the problem always has been that our PM developers are surprise developers and not packages So we always have a more the focus on the code than on the actual packages because who knows what's out there I mean that 21,000 packages. There's you you couldn't even read them if you wanted to and so we will look into this basically the next cycle and The thing that worked very well with the script that is The question what can we actually remove from the pack from the spec file? So basically every bite that's not in there is a good bite unless it works still That is probably one too much So there are a couple of things that that that we want to look into one is really scriptlets, but it's basically covered by the top before What has come up pretty recently with the I think rust and maybe some of the other new languages is Automatic build dependencies, which I will talk a bit. That's an interesting topic then something that has been discussed Previously, but which is not really which is kind of related to our PM But maybe not a feature in our PM is using this good data within the spec file Which I will talk briefly about there are two big things that might be features for upcoming RPM versions and one is build templates basically Having reusable scripts and help us for for packages and If you know how you build your package you also want to package that into sub packages automatically or semi automatically or at least not by Typing stuff by hand all over again So let's look into this I will go over this only briefly because it fits the topic So we will look at file triggers and how well they work and what's left in the scriptlet area one thing that has come up in the talk previously also That's the only thing I am currently aware of with regards to scriptlets is users and groups and a generation of users and groups and I've been always been on the fence with is this something our PM should do or should not do or is this something that's like Implementation specific for the operating system or distribution your packaging our PM should in my Perspective not care too much how the how the distribution looks like that it packages But the distribution should take care of that but one could argue that if you handling files users and groups are kind of part of the post-extended and maybe it's integral part of files and We should do something about it and we will probably Think about we will think about and probably implement a decorative way This came out better talk previously that may take a while, but it's one of the last Use cases for scriptlets that are kind of legitimate right now and we hope to solve this with that Then there has been talks about using this get data In spec files, this is probably not going to be a feature within our PM because this get is not part of our PM But probably of tooling that wraps around the spec file I've given a Lightning talk on flock about this last year. There's been a lightning talk on this conference yesterday evening That you may want to look up and I'm guessing There are people thinking about this and will probably work on a proposal within fedora so we will from the RPM site be Happy to help if there's any features that make this easier But it's not quite clear if it's anything that really should be done within RPM itself There are two things that that you that will probably yield a house the most benefit one is the change lock Which is always Hathal which could be generated from the from the get change lock The second thing is the release number which could also be just be counting up basically the commit Which would mean you cannot mess it up We have to see if they are What kind of help us you need to to to clean up things that don't work quite well But that's that's a two areas and I think there will be people working on that and we will help with that The main benefit will be will be reducing merge conflicts Which is currently pretty annoying if you try to merge some changes to to one release to another I mean, it's basically yeah, you retype everything or you reshuffle everything in the amount of work that it's saved by the get merges basically zero and the main sources of conflicts are actually Change lock and and the release number and there's a chance of getting rid of that which is probably saving a lot of stupid work Yes, please So so there are a few ideas about us one is basically to have some keywords that you can put into the get commit message and If you want to fix up your get history, you could actually put text on some commits to say well don't show up so that's the two Main mechanisms that can could be used there. So I actually Prototype something like this. It's it's not that Yeah So it's basically it's not really it's basically we need to do the put in the work To to get it done in been pushed in fedora and do it's basically a political thing to actually make it happen It's not it's not like that. They have technical huge issues so now but So that that's just a side. So one thing I When thinking about packages, we'd kind of treat the packages like a huge sea of load a lot of packages They're more or less independent of each other and I think that that's kind of wrong I think there are a lot of packages this cluster together the chair Communalities and but right now there's not really Many mechanisms to actually make this a reality. Yeah, of course We have groups of people that do that, but the only thing that really binds those pictures together are probably shared section of Of packaging guideline and I mean there is some amount of Dealing with this with like common macros and stuff like this, but it's My my understanding is this is on a very low level. There's very little that did That we really share among packages and One Way to get us is basically Pull out common stuff from these packages and put it somewhere and the problem is Where to put it and traditionally there has been basically two Places where to put things are you put it in a package and the package or has full control over it and but also full Responsibility to to make sure everything works All things are handled by rpm upstream Which is great because it's the same for everybody, but it's also not so great because it's very hard to change especially Because most things if you change something just usually you need basically Process in which you change from one way to the other and it's very hard to synchronize this upstream with the distribution and every distribution has its own idea how it should actually look like which is fine from an Operating upstream perspective, but it's not really something That We can have with that So the idea I have which is still very Lofty and and not very much thought through is so I have some templates that can be used by packages for building I found something that some distribution that does something like this already, which is funny enough gentoo Which is very different from rpm, which because they have basically huge they have basically Scripts that build their package and they are there their software. It's a really not really even package But what they do have they have a collection of scripts They can import into packages of a special kind so they have like three different scripts for python they have a script for sea libraries and and All other kinds so they are about a hundred a hundred fifty different scripts They do have which you can import and then can use functions from that so they typically get imported They don't do anything and you as a package job can then just call a function that does stuff like calling make Like like calling configure and make or calling Python setup something and Things like this and it's something that you could do with rpm already if you really wanted hard You could basically put everything in in in in macros and ship a macro file Which is something we kind of already do but it's not really convenient. It's not There's not a real way of doing it Sensibly as a package or so that's something so it's it's it's Also on a borderline where we say well, there are a couple of features that rpm needs to needs to learn But it's probably also a lot of The distribution actually getting together and thinking about what is actually common between which kind of packages And so so my vision is also to get to the point where we have like about a hundred Of these helper scripts that that bind those packages together Of course will be opt-in so it's basically an helper you can use or cannot use and ideas similar with the script That's to to look around for common patterns and replacing them by the global version where possible If this actually gets implemented for a while, which means like ten years It will probably also solved all those special stuff for the distributions because you can basically use the global from this from the release you're actually building on Yeah, of course, that's that's like In ten years, maybe Yeah, but the thing is even if you replace it for the new stuff and keep the old stuff in there It will still yield benefit although if it's not as big as if you just replace the world right now but the thing is the number of of releases of Fedora and well and whatever will only go up. They will not go down So so those lists of ifs will probably get longer and who knows Which distributions will extend their life spans to the decades or centuries in the future so we want to So we want to get rid of that at some point so we will probably Look for some Packages that that are easy targets and we will probably talk to people and see if they have ideas What could actually help them it? That's that that's a two fold thing. There's it's an rpm side. Of course. There's a huge Packature package side and we need to talk about that the thing that's more closer to rpm with regards to features needed is doing sub package templates or It's not quite clear. What name will stick in the end But some packages are also something that you basically copy over and over and over again. They're all basically the same and That could be pulled to a central place and then we reused the nice thing about having having in a central place is That it would also allow the distribution to gain some control over how packages should be So you could make decisions like Do we want to split out all language packages? For example, because if you have a macro that's used throughout you could change this later on if you say Well, now we have 150 sub packages for it for each For each application, that's just too much. Let's come up with a solution that will like squish the most important one into like the the big one and then maybe the exotic one in three other Packages or something as you can then change this in a central place without even bothering the packages Which is also something I think is a huge problem right now whenever you want to do something on a policy level For the whole distribution you basically have to edit 20,000 packages and there are people who have obviously done that and I can only try to to imagine the pain but It's probably not not so much fun and Pulling this out basically does two things at the same time It saves the work for the packages and the responsibility for the packages and also enables the distribution to do more things easy more easily of Course they could be used in combination with the build templates It's something I'm not getting into now too much But of course if you know that supply some package you could basically say well By some packages typically have those sub packages and we just include them there and this happens automatically We don't even have to think what sub packages your type of package actually should have or what the distribution things it should have But that's Left for stage two or five or something The thing that's a bit more complicated here is that these templates work against the way RPM thinks about how spec files should be right now Spec files right now are like to some extent a Quality control for the stuff to get packaged So the idea is you have a file list and it lists all the files and if they are if some file shows up That's not in the list. It's an error and we want to detect that and if some files are missing We also show an error and it's basically you as a package or Looking into the package and making sure they are all fine. It's okay No one got hurt and and and and RPM checks for you that that the things you saw there are still there And of course, it won't work with this kind of templating engine So it requires a change of mind and expectation to say we don't really care. What's in the devil package It's that these files look like they should be there We put them there and if one of them really shouldn't be there Please open a bug and don't rely on RPM telling you this so it's will that requires some like cultural Shift in in how packaging is perceived and we'll see how that works These are some of those basically removed Changes or removed checks that we currently have in place like what to do with the packages empty Of course, you just drop it if it's in template Right now. I probably won't build Oh So don't error out of the missing files You probably need a way to steal files from other packages if you want like a devil if you want this like a sub package You want to split be able to split out like the libraries into a lip package and you disable this you want the lips Go back to the main package and not like looking into what to do then and change the main package to to accommodate for us you We will probably end the way to basically Append to the templates So right now you cannot have like two file sections. That's an error I probably you probably added that that to be an error like a couple of years ago if I remember correctly I might be wrong, but that's something we will probably Change so your bags actually can use the template and say well, but we also have these weird packages Should also go into the devil packages or something like this. So you can append that without copying in the The staff and redoing it There a couple of more complicated things I'm not quite sure how to implement this correctly You want probably at some point have like a sub package per sub package, which sounds like a weird concept and We'll see how we do that the main the major Use case for this is the is the new debug info stuff, which is currently basically hand-coded into rpm code The old one used to be a huge mess of Macro stuff that does things somehow maybe But of course the the way it works like now If in case you don't know we currently have this Debug info sub package for each sub package that does have binaries basically That's something that's more tricky to do because you basically only have to create those packages You also have to put the right files and then they only Have to be the files that match to the sub packages, but they are not the same They are just like related so there needs to be some weird pattern matching thing I'm not sure if that will be in the first iteration but That's the main thing So I just realized I'm much quicker than I thought Which is probably not a bad thing because There's a lot of weird stuff and I'm curious if you have any questions or remarks or things we really shouldn't do They are still faces that are in shock I don't have them here we have We do have some examples on on our wiki page on rpm The for the for the package template stuff My idea is to basically use the normal package syntax and probably add some config options to the package Person package command so you can It's not really spec out yet There are a couple of features that we would add to the to the package command or to the package section basically And that would basically switch all those checks to the right mode and you basically So so that the Template does the right thing Except to the normal packages will of course keep the package sections That we still have the way they are so as always it will package will just continue building Yeah, of course And Yeah, I mean that's that's a point we have to recognize that we are known no longer in the 90s and many many of the concepts that That the build the spec files today have been invented in the 90s And we now have like a lot of more infrastructure that that can cover many things that are the spec file Does no longer have to do with with the two with today's environment more questions I have not thought about this yet the thing is the thing I hope this will work like is that those templates up are Maintained in a central location so not every package has to do their own thing So the thing that's actually going into the package is basically just include this this style or type of package so the Stuff that packages can actually do wrong is hopefully smaller than before Preferably much smaller, but no promises yet that that's a tough question. I think we They will be version somehow But it basically not within the spec file because the spec file also does not really Version the dependencies So there's something that probably needs to be done in tooling around that because you don't want to update your spec files Whenever you change something down there. I Would even argue the opposite is true. You want Those Templates to be the one from the current distribution So if you rebuild a package for distance distribution, it actually applies or Conforms the rules of these distribution So if you would basically rebuild the same package for for an older Fedora release it might have different Subpackages because that's how the distribution should be built But but but we will probably add some hooks to to to to so We'll probably do something like build requires for those templates so they are not completely Unconnected to the package, but but I'm not sure yet how to do it there So it's not it's not like and now there's there's there's a whole topic of of reproducible builds and there's been some work into furthering this course, but we probably will revisit this with this topic in mind, but it is as a first Basic concept. This is the ideas that those templates are not born too closely to the spec file, but it can be swapped out to the right Version that we are building on That doesn't mean that we may say like do some provides or something that that will In the build package signify what was used that's something we might be able to to add But it will not be part of the spec file, but what part of the build package Does it answer the question? there was let's say debugability of rpm is limited and independent of of the of this, but we will probably Need to add more features that will make this easier like spitting out a spec file extended or something like this That's Still not not completely thought through but but I am aware that this will make debugging harder that it is already We will probably do something to to to alleviate this as as much as possible It's something on my list Yeah, I've not yet bought into one Implementation of the users and groups and that's that's basically the reason because I'm kind of hesitant to to call some Some program that's part of the distribution to do such a fundamental thing but The question is the problem is you actually need to create the users during the during the Transaction or before the transaction so it's not it's not enough to just say well It would be nice if we had some users. No, you have to have to actually have them Yeah, and but you have to have someone that actually cares about it And that's probably rpm because rpm is the part that's actually running They will probably make this like a config option like sums macro or two so that that we are operating systems That have shown up upstream actually we got people submitting patches for all this too Yeah, that that that's what's my reaction to So, yeah, but we'll figure it out That's something we need to think about a problem with that right now is that there is no Internal representation of that when rpm currently parses the spec file. It's parses them line by line and explode Expands it Item by item by item. So there's never ever an expanded form of the spec file as a whole Which is yeah, I'm sorry. That's how they did it in the 90s like like many other things but So that makes me hesitant for now to just implement something because you're running the risk of having well The version you show the user which we have expanded and you have to version that the rpm users inside But we need I'm with the template system. We probably need to do something like this The question with the template system is if it really is part of rpm or not and I'm not decided yet as we need for the for the Get stuff We need something. That's not rpm But that's wrapped around the spec file and it may be possible to do all the templates also in the same step So you would rpm wouldn't even see that and that would actually make it easier for us to show to expand It's file because then it would exist as an intermediate step and you would just show that Which may be a nice nicer thing of course the holder all the sub-package templates is all all within rpm, but it would not be and Entered into the spec file in rpm, but it's not Not completely decided yet. I'm kind of hesitant to rely on external tools. I'm also There are also those all those kids This get stuff that can't really be part of rpm. So it's It's yeah We need to have a better understanding what's actually going on to to make the decision Yeah, they're all kind of drawbacks and and and and and funny side side things I'm not even sure if you're really if it's really legal to not ship the original spec file because it's kind of sauce So if you if you expand that and ship only the expenditure you could argue if it's like the GPL Do you have to ship the non expanded spec file because it's the actual resource and stuff like this? There are a couple of interesting things to ponder on One could argue that but it it clearly is it clearly isn't It clearly is not Yeah, if you if you want ponies or other large animals you get you Probably not that Difficult, it's actually no you it's actually probably much quiet. I'm not sure It's probably me so there are a couple of macros which get inserted automatically into your Spec file like like the pre and post of the build script and stuff like this Which is which does some things that you may not be aware of that rpm like Battles with your files without you noticing and stuff like this I'm not I'm not sure if there's one of those macros that gets inserted into the To the preamble probably not but that's something that could be done So you basically have a macro in the macro file which has the version which tickets and rendered into the spec file It might need to let like two or three long change To do that So so so the thing that we're probably going to do first is the dynamic build dependencies It's something I've not said that much on it's The problem with that is it's it's not that difficult to do in rpm You basically just have an built require section which is executed after prep The problem is the result of that and the result of that is of obviously that built breaks at this point Because you don't have the dependencies So it means the build system basically needs to read them reinstalled and the new dependencies and then continue building Which is something now build system in the world actually does right now. So it basically breaks all build systems Which is which kind of Make me doing this a bit slower than Maybe I would have done otherwise So so that's that's the main major issue and it's been thinking about through this a couple of times But there's in the end there's no way around it I think having dynamic build dependencies is a valid use case Especially for all those new languages that ship a file which actually have them You just have to read them out there and you don't we actually don't want our packages to look in the file Copy out the the build dependencies reformat them to the way that rpm needs to have them Then copy them in a spec file and the next build they break because if they change and you didn't look into the file That's that's really not not not a sustainable solution But if you do it you need to actually calculate it and you can only calculate it with the sources So it's basically after during build after after prep Which is not a place right now anybody expects the bill to fail on a default kind of build so But that's probably the first thing we will do and then we'll look into the both the two template stuff my guess is from a from a coding point of view that that Subpackage stuff is more straightforward for us to tackle because it's actually coding effort But we will probably So there are a couple of people that will that will push Get this stuff and that's something we will probably look into first and tight try to to forward this because it will Give a First few on how templating on spec files in general Can work can be done or should be done Which will probably help with the other other templating stuff and And if the world goes towards we are Writing tools around the spec file will probably use that if it turns out to be a bad idea We'll probably do something in our PM So that's the roadmap I have for now Someone else had something which I already forgot other questions More more more wishes back We can yeah, that's something you probably can do easily if there are still bits left in that field They used to be Yeah, right Yeah, we can probably do that It's quite possible that it's quite possible that it did this got removed by accident Never heard of him But If anyone is interested in the history of week and rich dependencies and we can talk about this after the talk Okay, one more. I think you currently can't what about putting in Comment at the first line Yeah, that's that's something that's not related to this all but that's something that has been proposed I think by Michael Schoeder mainly The problem we have right now with the script that says it's impossible to fix a broken script let So if you have an broken uninstalled script let You're basically screwed I mean yeah, you can Fix that by hand by running it without with no scripts But that's not kind of the solution you have if you've just rolled out your broken program your broken package to the world And that's that's something That we need to deal with at some point Okay, what's the time


While since the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling in 2010, corporations have had a hand in funding our elections. Reporter Anthony Scott tells us how a group in Brainerd tried to put an end to big money in politics over the weekend. We need to get big money out of politics. And just for that reason, dozens of people protested through downtown Brainerd Saturday afternoon in a non-partisan effort to eliminate corporations' influence in politics. This isn't an issue about one party versus the other party. There's corrupt politicians on both sides. This is about which politicians are going to respond to their constituents and which politicians are responding to the people that pay them the big donations. This protest and movement comes after the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling. The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people and that when corporations give money to politicians, they're just speaking to them, that speech, that money is speech, and that it's not corrupting for them. But we know that that money is corrupting the politicians. Democracy is a competition of ideas and goals and desires that are human. It is not a competition of piles of money. Lakes Area moved to amend, hosted the protest, and invited all of the local candidates in this year's midterms to speak, but only Democrats Dale Mink, Phil Yitzer, and Jovardinovich attended. It's exciting to be out here with people who are dedicated to removing the corrupting influence of money from our political system. I agree with them wholeheartedly. What we've seen is that unfortunately unfettered corporate interests and the interests of the wealthiest people in this country can drown out the voices of those who are interested in democracy. Moved to amend's ultimate goal is to change the Constitution after the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. We want to add an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says that corporations are not persons and money is not a form of free speech. The petition to amend the Constitution on Moved to amend's website has almost reached its goal of 500,000 signatures, reporting from Brandon Anthony Scott, Lakeland News. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.