Welcome back to the Vermont House Human Services Committee and we are continuing our testimony on S74 an act relating to modifications in Vermont's patient choice at end of life law. And we have with us two witnesses to respond to some more of the technical or other aspects of the bill. And let's start with Charity Clark who's Chief of Staff for the Attorney General's Office. Welcome. Thank you very much for having us today. I don't think I'll be very long but I just wanted to briefly say a couple of things. The first is that we support this bill as written. We did work with the committee on the Senate side on a suggested change that we'd like. So I wanted to point that out too so that you'll know the change that we had suggested. And it was for Section 5283A5A which is under the requirements getting the position determined that the patient and we had suggested that the language and a physician's physical examination of the patient be included. And we got that from our criminal division just so you know where it's coming from. The idea being that at some point in the journey of this patient and doctor or medical professional there was a physical examination. Not that NEC made it a certain time but that the diagnosis did involve some sort of physical examination. And I listened today to Dr. Maybe I'm moving at a very really insightful and often moving testimony that she gives. And she so articulately pointed out that she usually is making diagnoses based on using her eyes and her ears. And this is more to provide context and those things that just eyes and ears maybe aren't gonna be able to do on telemedicine. So we asked that to be added. We're happy the way that it looks now so we would ask that it remain there but happy to answer questions about that or if there's any concerns. I'm not sure if it's come up in the course of your testimony but one of the things that had come up was whether or not, was a legal question and whether or not and you started out your testimony saying that the AG's office supports this as long as we keep certain language which is already in that well and that's language on page two. Yes, four, sorry. Well, sorry, I have the official so I don't know what page it's on for you. Page two of ours where it says the physician determines that the patient and then suffering a terminal condition based on the physician's review of the patient's relevant medical records and a physician's physical examination of the patient. So at some point in time there has to be a physical examination. Patient is what I understand you wanted to have clarified. Yes. At this point I was trying to make about the column about both being telemedicine, both of them. Both of those could be there at some point in time whether it is the, I think before because, how's this? You come to me and I'm a doctor and I'm not, I choose not to participate in this and so I do not want to have the conversation with you about exercising. I've done the physical exam and there has been a physical exam. So I think that, so it, I believe it maintains one, that there is a physical exam at some point in this process and two, it respects the ability that we are not forcing anyone to participate who does not want to. It also is, the moment in time is a diagnosis. So the physician determined that the patient was suffering a terminal condition based on the review of the patient's relevant medical records and a physical exam. So that's the diagnosis portion. So yeah. So when I first read this, I'm like why is it crossing it out in one spot and putting it in another? And then on closer reading I think I understand what it says, but I think it's open to misinterpretation. How so? Well, it feels like it's open to misinterpretation that has to be a prescribing position of the medication. It seems, I mean, I know that that's not what your intent is. I think what I'm, we're envisioning and, you know, having heard the testimony that others have provided in this committee and across the whole way, if you will. I think the idea is say I have a, you know, a patient, I'm a doctor and I have a physician-patient relationship and I diagnosed my patient with terminal illness three years ago for the physical exam. And then we're in COVID and my imagination, we're in COVID and I don't physically see them although I'm treating them through telemedicine for years, but I was there, I had the context and I performed the physical exam and I'm, you know, I've checked that box. It doesn't need to happen, you know, the month before this person is going to, you know, reach a point when they wanna take the medicine, you know, it doesn't have to be at that point in time, it's just some point in time that that physical exam has occurred. And I'm presuming that there's ellipsis here so I know there's something that comes before it, but that it has to be related to the qualifying condition, the terminal illness. Well, I think that that's already in there. Yeah, it was suffering a terminal illness and then it goes on from there, the determination. There's, yeah, necessarily a relationship between illness and the next steps that are taken. I still have a question mark on my head, but thank you. Are there other, represent version? Just a question, pretty much a legal question, I guess. I mean, if somebody totally apart from this belt, if somebody commits suicide, doesn't get an insurance that the person may have, as to my knowledge, that's denied because the person took their own life, is that true or maybe that's changed over the course? Like life insurance, I would have to, I would wanna look at the policy. A good lawyer would read the policy, I'm not, I did not come prepared to answer that question, I'm sorry. Sure, I see, I know, apparently in 39, we have a provision where somebody can't be denied their insurance as a result of participating in this program. It's my, I was just curious about somebody taking suicide at random, you know, whether my understanding was that it negated their, but I was just curious. I don't have the top of my head, it sounds like you're familiar with the statute, but. Yeah, thank you. I don't know if Legislative Council wants to comment, I believe in the underlying law, the first certificate does not, this is not death by suicide, this is the diagnosis is the medical condition. Right, the death certificate would state the underlying medical condition, but I think it sounds like representative or some question is not in the context of the bill so much as life insurance generally and whether suicide, death by suicide, just qualifies. Yeah, I was looking at the differentiation there, I mean, there's a whole body. Yeah, I think it depends on, it probably depends on the policy and you may want to hear from the Department of Financial Regulation, I can connect you with folks at the Department of Financial Regulation who would be familiar with life insurance policy terms. That'd be helpful. Thank you. There was one other area that I wanted to touch on, this more an observation that I wanted to make, I did make an understanding side, the change wasn't made, that's fine, but I just wanted to make the observation so that if you folks wanted to look at it, I would be remiss if I didn't mention it. There are a number of steps that the position has to do, it's like a checklist and if these things are done, then there's no liability. But the bill adds, in my reading of it, an extra step and the step is good faith. I'm sorry, good faith. Good faith is implicit. Now the bill introduces it as an explicit consideration and I wonder whether that is meant to, that was the legislature's intention. So for example, I'm in a position that I have my checklist, I've made the diagnosis, I've done this, the time has passed, check, check, check, check, check, and then there's good faith. Does that have to be proven somehow before I'm free of liability? Why did the legislature introduce the good faith language explicitly rather than just having it remain implicit? And I just, I don't know if it was intentional to add like an extra step that all these things were done and then next box, they were done in good faith. Does that need to be proven as the medical examiner looking at it? You know what I mean? Rather than it just being implicit. So if I get free, I don't know that it needs to be changed but it's just something that, you know, we noticed and I would be remiss if I didn't mention. Good question, I would agree 100%. And you brought this up and you started your, because not everyone was in the room when you started your initial testimony and what was your initial testimony? That we support the bill as written. And just for kicks, I did pull out my ancient copy of Black's Law Dictionary and I put a copy of Good Faith. So if you're curious, I just thought, well, I was here next to the photocopier which I am not always am because I'm at home usually when I testify, I thought I would just bring that over. So I'll leave it free if you're curious but I wanted to just flag it but yes, we support the bill. Thank you. We have a question from Representative McFawn. Thank you, Madam Chair. I could not, I do not understand what was just said. I couldn't understand what the witness said. To use some term that I couldn't hear. Right. The term is Good Faith. And where was that in the new version of S74? It's very close to the end under limitations on actions. Topper, you'll find that on page, on the bottom of page four and section three. That's the last sentence on page four. Okay. So for example, if it just said, blah, blah, blah, blah or professional disciplinary action for acting in compliance with the provisions of this chapter instead of in Good Faith Compliance. Good Faith, I would argue is implicit right now and just sort of introduces it as an explicit thing. It just made me wonder. How are you doing? The bill looks great as it is to go so far. Okay, thank you. And I think those are good, that's a good, sorry, Topper, continue. So that answers, there must be some legal meaning with Good Faith that I don't know. So. I could read this to you to give you a sense but I don't know that how clarifying it will be. Okay. Me too. Wait guys, I got old in the pandemic and now I wear glasses. Good Faith is an intangible and abstract quality with no technical meaning or statutory definition and it encompasses, among other things, an honest belief, the absence of malice and the absence of design to defraud or to seek an unconscionable advantage and on an individual's personal good faith is a concept of his own mind and inner spirit and therefore may not conclusively be determined by his protestations alone. And everyone wishes they went to law school so they could write flowery language like that but there you have it. Good Faith. And thank you and perhaps you could leave that with us so that we could scan it and put it on our webpage so that we know where it's from if we have further questions or want to make changes to that. Because I of course was gonna run and ask the doctors what that meant. There was something in terms of their process that they go through that there is something related to what I would say medical ethics and whether that is what is being referenced here. But thank you. And other questions for the Attorney General's office? The Attorney General's office. I think Theresa. Oh, you did. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Okay. There was somebody to your left. Yeah. I'm not presenting for it. So in that same paragraph where we're referencing Good Faith. So would you, do you believe that the phrase no physician, nurse, pharmacist or other person licensed, certified or otherwise authorized to deliver law authorized by law to deliver healthcare services? That, that is a sufficient clause to capture nurse practitioners, advanced practice nurses, you know, essentially people who, I guess one of the questions that I have is that well, I guess they're bad. Sorry, I'm talking out loud. I'm asking questions in my head. They're also bound by their license in terms of what they're able to practice. So I think I've answered my own question. You're good. Okay. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yes. Legislative counsel. Let's take the conversation. Let's take the counsel again. So the existing statute that this one would be that this section would be amending is the 18th, the 17th, the 22nd, 85th and then subsection B of that section and already introduces this concept of good faith. So in existing law and healthcare facility or healthcare provider, shall not subject a physician, nurse, pharmacist or other person to discipline, suspension, laws of license, laws of privileges or other penalty for actions taken in good faith reliance on the provisions of this chapter or refusal to act under this chapter. So I think having the reason that this language is in here is it's consistent with what's already in this section. So it's reliance instead of compliance. It's good faith compliance in the bill and good faith reliance in the statute. So interesting, I didn't realize it was in there. Well, we'll look to like to say I actually didn't hear that. I'm having trouble with my hearing. Okay, yes, representative Wood. Jen, so since that's in this part of the statute already is there a reason to say it again? Subsection B is really about what somebody called employees. So I help care facility or healthcare provider not subjecting their employees to negative outcomes. The language that would be added is about civil or criminal liability or professional disciplinary action from a regulatory board. So I do think it's addressing something that is missing from the existing law. The language in subsection, new subsection C is talking about good faith compliance. So complying with the provisions as opposed to relying on the provisions is looking at it from a slightly different perspective because it's about liability as opposed to employment related provisions. But you could change the word compliance or to reliance or reliance to compliance if you want to be consistent. But I just wanted to flag that good faith was not a new concept in this statute. Thank you. Thank you. And are there other, this has been helpful. Thank you very much. Thank you. And Carl, I want to say you didn't say, you didn't do anything but I have just gotten, and if you want DFR to come in, they're happy to. And I will post to this email. It is from DFR and section five, two, eight, seven and five, two, nine, two. The Department of Finance. Department of Financial Regulation. Regulation. DFR. DFR, regulation, yes, R, regulation. And I say it was somewhat unrelated. In the bell, it's clear, okay. Or this procedure. Anyway, they would, if you would like them to come in, they're offering to come in. The language is an important protection and clarification on how the medical aid and dying law interacts with insurance underwriting practices. I will have this, I will post this, you know, cut from this. I don't know how other people feel. I mean, I was just curious about the question, but I, Well, we can try to answer your question. I said, we try to answer your questions, or at least. I know, I appreciate that. Yeah, so if you, do you want DFR to come in? If we have time, that'd be great, but I don't want to prolong the whole process here either, so. Okay, thank you. Our next, we have Theo Kennedy. Well, good morning, Madam Chairwoman and members of the committee. It's an honor to be here. I just have a brief contribution on behalf of the Vermont Retail Drugists on S74. And also in my capacity as a private attorney, during which time I represented Smiling Steve Pharmacies and drafted the agreement that's been used since the passage of Act 39 when the language in 5285, Limitations on Actions, was written as it currently is. So, I think you had requested that Smiling Steve be here in person. He regrets not being able to be here. What I, what he asked me to do was read his letter into the record and then maybe speak just briefly to our support. And I'm here on a very narrow part of this, specifically the Limitations on Actions on page four of five of your draft that we were just discussing. Does that sound all right? So I'll read a letter in and then refer briefly to why we support that language and then see if there are any questions. Does that sound proper, Madam Chairwoman? Mr. Kennedy, that sounds perfect. If we do not already have a copy of the letter, if you could forward that to the committee through Julie Tucker, that would be appreciative. Yes, thank you. I'd ask for it to be sent and I don't think it was sent yet. So I'll make sure it is. Thank you. Okay, so the letter reads as follows, dated today, Dear Representative Pugh, on behalf of Vermont, and I'm gonna now read a several paragraph letter. On behalf of Vermont Smiling Steves Pharmacies, I am writing regarding Senate Bill 74 related to the immunity provision of Act 39. Together with my sons, Jason and Jeffrey Hochberg, our pharmacy has worked with the patients who choose to use Act 39 for over three years. We have witnessed the suffering of patients at the end of their lives and I've heard gratitude from patients and families only provide a means to end that suffering. We believe that Act 39 is helping to improve the quality of end of life care through personal choice. However, the anticipated end of life is difficult for an individual to bear and the Act 39 limitations add to that stressful situation. The current text of Act 39 limits participation by registered pharmacists, which necessitates that the prescribing physician must sign an indemnity agreement in all cases. The result is that fewer physicians are willing to prescribe aid in dying to their patients and fewer pharmacists are willing to be involved. When we receive an Act 39 call, we must have the physician and the patient sign an indemnity agreement before we can move forward. This delay adds a level of stress to an already stressed situation. When the pharmacy receives the indemnity agreement, we call the patient to discuss the details of the prescription and arrange for me to deliver their medication. I do this personally, I do not mail the medication. Instead, I travel the state to hand deliver the medication and meet with the family and the patients. I spend time with the patient and the family to thoroughly review the medication, the instructions and answer any questions. This duty requires knowledge, compassion, caring and support. Supporting an individual who chooses to utilize Act 39 requires a healthcare team approach between the doctor, nurses, pharmacists and families. All the participants in this healthcare team need to be protected and supported by the state of Vermont. Currently, only physicians enjoy that protection and support. Passing S74 will remove the need for the indemnity agreement. It would allow more healthcare professionals to serve their patient's end of life care needs. The focus should be on meeting the patient's needs at this time, and it is not the time to be concerned about personal liability. Thank you for your consideration and support of Senate Bill 74, including the correction to the immunity provision of Act 39, which supports Vermonters in the end of life care that they choose. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me. Sincerely, Steve Hockbird, RPH, smiling Steve Pharmacies, end quote. So that's his submission, and I'll make sure it gets to the committee, Madam Chairwoman, in briefer form, I'm here on their behalf, and as their attorney in this indemnity agreement process that's been underway for a few years to say we wholly support the new section C in 5285. Which clearly includes a pharmacist and protects other practitioners as well. Again, I'm here not selfishly, but on behalf of pharmacists, I'm not speaking for other healthcare providers, but we think it will be using the way he described it. It'll take a stress point out of the process. And pharmacists and perhaps other practitioners will I think be more, if they're inclined to provide these services, willing to do so. I just might add that over these few years, I've had conversations with the general counsel from various institutions that have suggested that the indemnity agreement wasn't necessary. In the end, we didn't concur and have required an indemnity agreement to date. So we support this change to the language. I don't have any other comments here today. We're thankful that you've taken this up and that I think that's it, unless there are any questions, Madam Chairman. Thank you. I am going to look around the room to see if there are any questions. So if I could just add and close. Oh, sorry. Was there something else? It's not necessarily for him. It's a general question. Probably an applicant. Okay, go ahead. Or reading of the bill that has to do with, of course, we're trying to help people here that are seeing no other way out of a situation that they're in. And yet my understanding is that the person himself has to inject this material. What do they do in the case of AMS or, you know, lateral sclerosis and all that? As far as I understand it, people become totally unable to move or do anything. They would not be able to. So what happens with people? They are not able to, they are not able to, given the law as written, they're not able to participate. Some, as I think the doctors said, this law is passed. It's a balancing act between providing access to those people who want to use medical aid in dying and to protect those who, and, one of the balancing acts that has been done is that the person needs to be able to take the medication themselves. And that protects, you know, it's a level of protection around. No, I understand that. I'm just surprised that because people are trying to increase access, that hasn't been one of the tasks that under some circumstances, somebody else could administer the drug. Okay, I'm just curious because it seems like it leads up a whole segment of people that are, in many cases, probably more likely to want to use this to end their life than others. So just a comment. And we could probably have a long discussion about that and about the balancing between. I'm not saying I'm for it. No, I know that. I know that. I know that. But in terms of ensuring that this is of someone's own free will and that it is that they are doing it that way. Representative McFawn. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to reinforce what you just said. When this bill was passed originally, there was a lot of testimony around this subject. And this is- I'm sorry, I apologize. It's all from the wider list, Carol. Oh, my gosh. Sorry. That's okay. Let's go ahead, Tapper. Well, I was just gonna say that there was a lot of testimony around this particular subject of the individual being able to take it themselves. So this is where we ended up. I just want to reinforce what you said. Thank you, Tapper. Yeah. We have- Let me- Let's have a discussion, but let me first, before we have more of a discussion, check to see if we have any further questions for Theo Kennedy. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Mr. Kennedy, for being here. This question might be better suited to the- Mr. Steve, who you read the letter that he delivered, but just from a pharmacy's perspective, I'm just curious on a couple of these questions. The first one being, if you're able to answer just a little bit more about the pharmacology of this medication, if you can provide any information on that yourself. And second of all, I'm curious about, we've heard of some cases in which an individual chooses not to administer the medication and wondering about the follow-up of that. I mean, it was promising to hear that the pharmacist that you'd read the letter from was hand-delivering medication. It seemed like a very involved process with the patient and the family. But I think that's a question that, happy to hear that Mr. Steve gave his invitation for us to reach out with any questions, but I was wondering if you could speak to that as well as a representative. Well, thank you for that question, Representative. I most certainly am not. But I'm very happy to follow up and have Steve answer any more specific question, both on the pharmacological aspect and the question with regards to reluctance or choice not to at the point of administration. But those are important questions. And I apologize, that's not in my wheelhouse. I don't want to misspeak, but I'd be happy to follow up as quickly as reasonably possible. That would be very helpful. And if you could put those responses in writing, and so then we can share them in our discussion and post them. Thank you so much. And if it were possible just to write them, I think I took notes as I was hearing them, but we certainly will try to do that promptly, Madam Chair. I just wanted to add one thing that, because it came up in the conversation with the, this is an attorney general, that we very much want the word compliance in that section and not reliance. I do think as just an ordinary practitioner, good faith is implicit in the law, I agree with that comment. I don't mind its use here. It's really not my role to have a position on that. But I think it's important that compliance be the word in the new section C and not reliance. As legislative council, I think indicated it, there's a different section than the, what's currently five, two, eight, five B or remain five, two, eight, five B. Anyway, thank you for your time today. A lot of political courage to open this back up, but it's gonna make a big difference for pharmacists who choose to participate to have this new language. And thank you for your work. Well, thank you Theo and you're welcome to stay on as we have a discussion or if you have other things to do, we appreciate your time. Thank you and have a good day. I'll probably go to off video and listen in. Have a good afternoon, good morning, thank you. Thank you, thank you.  And I've now lost the thread of what I interrupted. Well, I guess I brought up that issue of somebody other than the patient themselves rejecting the drop in the heart and talk for a few of the patients that there was a lot of discussion about this. I wasn't here at the time. Right, and that's why I- And after my talk, right?  So are Dames that relate to the law as it was passed because you weren't here. And so how, you know, I think it's perfectly appropriate and helpful for those who were not here for whom this is not something, even for those of us who were here to understand what this is amending. And, you know, so I think that that's- Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you for enabling us to sort of think about the totality because the rest of the committee wasn't here. So it's helpful, although I do remember coming to the public hearing with my disability rights hat on and thinking about this was, you know, at the outset very much opposed by disability advocates. And for some of the reasons that sort of kind of like you were starting to get into, Karl, other people, the fear of other people being able to give the drug the fear about the rights of people with disabilities and ability to have substituted judgment about that. So I appreciate the way the law ended up being written and you'll see posted from the Vermont DD council that they have no concerns with the changes in the law as opposed amendments. And I feel like this is some relatively modest things that we can do to make things easier for people who are already making difficult decisions in their life and with their families and the people that surround them at that time of their life. So yeah, I mean, I would not personally be in favor of changing anything with regard to other people being able to assist. I wouldn't either. And I was here two years or whatever. I've been here since the beginning when it came to the floor more than once. But I think this at present time, this is an appropriate balance of three points of freedom and of free will and protection. Can I ask you a question? If anybody else reads it the way I do or not or the question I was asking about the position and the, let me see, for the one here. H2. And maybe it's just because it was in the context of seeing the cross out and then seeing the language, similar language reinserted. I think the same language. Yeah, it didn't seem to me to be clarifying. I don't know. I'm wondering if legislative counsel. Wait, wait just a second. There's multiple people talking and I'm just. Sorry, page two of the bell. We're talking about 5A here where it crosses out physical examinations. And then it adds in the patient in the same. And so what I have just called legislative counsel to the witness chair, because there's those three little dots, the ellipsics. So don't actually the ellipses don't matter in this particular instance because we're really looking at the leading language of the physician determined that the patient and then a is suffering a terminal condition and that is based on an existing law. It's based on the physician's physical examination of the patient and review of the patient's relevant medical records. The change would be that the physician determined that the patient was suffering a terminal condition based on the physician's review of the patients relevant medical records and a physician's physical examination of the patient. Doesn't have to be the prescribing physician, but it does have to be a physician's physical examination. as part of what the prescribing physician is relying on to determine that the patient was suffering a terminal condition. So this goes back to then Carl, your question to Dr. Barnard and she was saying that the two can be telemedicine, but there needs to have been at some point in time a physical examination. Separate from telemedicine or possibly, right? Correct. All right. Somebody has to have done a physical examination of the patient to determine that they are suffering a terminal condition. That's it. Yeah. I mean, I can read it. I can read what it says. If I'm the only one that has that like question mark then that it not being heard. I have the question mark there, but when you read the piece of that simple, as we know just one shift in language from the physician to a physician helps separate that piece of not having and have to be the same physician that there's a physician who determines the terminal illness. And then the prescribing physician can be a different provider. So that's clarified for me, I would just say. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Carl. Can I just follow up on that? Absolutely. Is your concern that it is not, now it does not have to be the prescribing physician and the intimate relationship that there might be between the physician and the patient? I'm gonna say intimate, I mean it's not. I know what you meant. No, I don't have a concern. I don't have a concern about who the physician is who prescribes the medication. I just don't want physicians to not be clear that it is not they who have to have a physical presence with it. And everybody else seems to be clear about it. It only seems to be a question mark for me. I'm not at all concerned that it's that the prescribing physician that they're changing the requirements that the prescribing physician does not now need to physically see the person. I really believe that people will be practicing their medical ethics, right? When they're doing that. I mean, it was very clear to me, the people who specialize in end-of-life care are very in tune with evaluating people at that stage of their life. And so I don't have any problem with the change in that. I don't have any problem with the change in that. I was just wanting to ensure that other physicians who maybe have not been as in tune or who have been hesitant to participate in the program. And this is about actually increasing access to people by not having to hunt down a Dr. Barnard or another doctor who may be willing to do it that they would see this as a, I want to make sure they don't see it as a barrier. That's all. And that seems to be clear to everybody. So I'm good, Madam Chair. This will be important in close reading as to what is in, if we vote this out what is put on the calendar and make sure that there's the a and the the. Yes, in the proper place. Yes, yes. And somebody will ask you that question on the floor, Madam Chair.  They will ask you to email. I knew that that's not what was happening. If I could. Absolutely. My concern when I was first reading this was what I was trying to get out with. You're thinking you have the same concern I have is that there was that more intimate, our audience had a relationship of the doctor with the patient doing, he's doing the physical and he's really part of this process. Okay, and now you're separate, taking one level of separation away from that. He's not the one that's actually doing in all likelihood the physical exam. So I was just a concern of mine when I first read this. Yeah, yeah. But apparently that's not a concern. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, I think. I was thinking actually. You were thinking. I know you thought I was like right there with you. I'm sorry, Carl. But I think this actually may help to address your concern because I think this for the physician who has the personal relationship but who has been reluctant maybe in the past, I think this provides a more of an opening for that person. But you're still gonna have some physicians who they are not going to want to do this. But I hope that they avail themselves of the continuing education opportunities and the training that's available and out there because it's really kind of heartbreaking to hear stories that I think everybody's gotten emails and stuff about the people who live, their doctor said no, their doctor that they had that personal relationship and they thought that was the end of it. And they didn't get any further information and that was sad to me. Do we need legislative counsel in the, I'm seeing your feelings over here, Tapper. I'm wondering, Madam Chair, if we're at number five, if we said the prescribing physician determined that the patient was suffering a terminal condition based on that physician's review of the patient's relevant medical records and a physician's physical examination. It's not, they didn't have anything to do with the records and they didn't have anything to do with the physical examination, but they've reviewed all of that and they've determined that the person has a terminal condition. I see, I'm now gonna owe, I may have to consult people in the room or Jen, I don't think the prescribing, this is not necessarily referring to the prescribing physician, the prescribing physician. Well, it is the prescribing physician who's making a determination, but they refer to throughout this, I mean that the beginning of the section is that a physician shall not be subject to any civil or criminal liability or professional disciplinary action if the physician prescribes to the patient and then it goes on and just the physician documents in the patient's medical record that all of the following occurred and then we're referring to this physician as the physician throughout. So I'd be concerned about starting to call them the prescribing physician without making that change throughout. I think if there's interest in making this language different or clearer, we can look at doing that, but I wouldn't wanna introduce new terminology yet one place. You see what she's talking about there, Topper. I thought we were talking about the prescribing physician. I didn't think we were talking about just any physician. We are in all cases except in this new language about who has done the physical examination of the patient that the physician who is doing the prescribing is basing their determination that the patient is suffering a terminal condition on. Yeah, I think the rely or the physician, actually the physician can rely on another doctor's physical. Exactly, that's exactly what this is saying. I guess I wanna sort of go back to what we're thinking of, what we have, but I have tentatively scheduled in terms of some more information, some more testimony would be next week, which is the first time they could come. Saren Toburg, who's the policy analyst from Vermont Right to Life, she's actually confirmed the Department of Health, David Englender and Sarah Teachout from the Medical Society. No, from Blue Cross Blue Shield, I'm sorry. Sarah Teachout from Blue Cross Blue Shield, Willem Jewett's wife as well as we are, because she, the family and then Mr. John Gelmore whose wife recently utilized the procedure and so that we could hear from, people said they wanted to hear from family members and that kind of thing. So I believe that is, I mean, that's right now who I have reached out to based on the information that people said they wanted to have, AG's office for the lawyer, that kind of thing. Topper. Kyle talked about the life insurance. Maybe we need a statement from financial regulation agency. I can try to, I have gotten an email statement that or an email response to a question that was asked and let me figure out whether a written statement or whether do you want her to come in? She's welcome to, she has offered to come in as well. Would you like her to come in, Topper? I don't know if she needs to come in, if it's a simple question is, if somebody does use this process, is their life insurance negated? That's all, that was the question Kyle asked. I don't think that's the question that they made. That's what's already addressed in the statute. The statute already says it has no impact on somebody's life insurance. I think the question I understood from Representative Rosa-Quist was, outside of the context of this, if a person dies by a suicide, what is the effect on their life insurance? Correct, that is the question. Which I understood that the insurance was still enforced if they used this procedure. We're just surprised to be quite frankly, but I mean, that's all. We have a question from James. Really a comment, which is an interesting question. I understand where it's coming from, but because it isn't related to this bill, it's not relevant to this bill. I don't, you shouldn't be talking about that. That's my opinion and I know events, but like it doesn't, this bill, the existing bill takes care of that issue in context of what's happening based on this bill. What happens outside of the context of this bill is not relevant at all to what's happening in this bill. Only in the context of what constitutes suicide. I guess that's what I am and how, why it's a different community. Okay, I mean, that's the way I would, that's really the basis of my question. I guess, and I hear that in the policy decision that was made back when the law first was passed that utilizing this process is not considered suicide. And that was a policy decision that the legislature made. Understood, and I'm not saying we're right or wrong. I'm just saying I just, and I think the rationale was they're already assumed to be at the end of life. So, it shouldn't really have any ultimate consequence on the payout of an insurance policy. I mean, that's the way I take it that it was rationalized. Okay. Anyway, I'd be happy with just a written comment on whether suicide by itself, that life insurance would pay out given. And I think we got a partial answer from the Attorney General's office because she said it all depends. I didn't realize I love pretty much. That was a no, no, and almost an insurance policy. I think it does all depend. And Carl, I'm gonna take this under advisement because two of the members of the committee have sort of said this is your question. Well, interesting, it's not related to what is before us. That's true. Can I work with Representative Rosalist and BFR to get an answer to this question? Absolutely. So you have sort of, I mean, I'm trying to let folks know where we are and hearing from who or what types of witnesses people wanna hear. And Carl, you had earlier asked if we were going to hear from any religious folks and I just wanna repeat. I appreciate that answer. And this is, we would have a laundry list of people coming in with different perspectives. And I think this is one of those decisions. If you are curious or wondering what your particular pastor or group that you are affiliated with, I would talk to them because there's going to be, even within certain denominations, there's not, there's going to be a different perspective. And yeah. I get obviously the big problem with me on this bill and the initial one, if I've been there to vote on is basically relative to your belief system. And many, many people believe life is a gift from God and that we shouldn't tamper with it. I guess the best thing to describe. Okay. So obviously I'm having a hard time on this. Absolutely. And this is something, I am not going to ask anyone to vote for this or to vote against it. I mean, this is something we have to decide for ourselves. The only thing that I would say, which may not be persuasive, is that this is making the existing, what is existing law? Right. And that's what I'm wrestling with too. In a way, it's- But I go with this because it's making the existing law for those people who have availed themselves of it better. Right. It's just the fact that I'm opposed to the concept. Exactly. Exactly. And so what I'm not hearing right now that folks want to hear from anybody else kind of thing. Other than who you have, right? Right. Right. Great lineup. Yeah. And there's some more, some individuals and what I have done and they're all posted, people have submitted some written comments or that they've wanted to and I've, you know, welcome to them all. And we post them and we also, we, Roy, Julie, or I, sends them out so that you get them individually. You don't have to, as a committee member, remember to go on the site. You will have gotten that on your email. So we have at this point, I received one or two people supporting it and a couple of people not supporting the changes based on the same sort of place that you are coming from. I'm just saying that's my... Yeah. Absolutely. That's my dilemma. Yeah. Absolutely. And the one factor probably apart from my belief system, but is discriminatory? Well, I mean, the initial law anyway, to not allowing somebody that is unable to inject themselves to not recover. Okay. So that to me is a, you know, a open question whether it could be seen as discriminatory because any of those people are in the worship or I would say the worship, but their desire to terminate their life might be greater than somebody suffering from a criminal cancer or something like that. Because they can't interact with the world at all. I mean, they're either, I would say, obviously they interact because they signed up for the process, but they can't do the final thing themselves. Can you just comment? Yeah. No, absolutely. We have to wrestle with these and with the choices and the balancing of rights versus responsibility versus personal and protection of people who are more vulnerable, more vulnerable perhaps to people more vulnerable to perhaps states of this is too hard. And so maybe not meeting the criteria ramp more vulnerable to people persuading them and perhaps more vulnerable for something happening that they don't, that was not their choice. So those are some of the things and good questions. Where are any thoughts right now or is, where are we? Okay. We are going to then break, we'll have lunch and other things and come back at 1.15 with a whole different subject. I do hope James you're gonna be here because it is an act relating to the interstate compact on the placement of children. Where else would I be? Well, I'm just saying because in case you hadn't gathered I really hope that you will be presenting this bill as an encore. I was picking up what you're putting down. And so that is I think where we are right now. Topper, do you wanna say anything before we leave? Okay. Thank you. Thank you all very much. I would just say one thing. Absolutely. Keep up the good work. Thank you, Topper. You're handling this very well. Thank you, Topper. I appreciate that.


Hello, I'm Chris Erickson. In July, I made a little video on CCTV.org in Burlington, Vermont to explain that I sent a letter to the court in Miami, the federal court, because I wanted to join the lawsuit of Trump versus Facebook, but I wanted to be in a separate class. It's a class action lawsuit. And the reason I wanted to be in a separate class is I'm not a Republican. And I was on the ballot in Vermont as a progressive candidate, but I was kicked off of Facebook in October 2020 prior to the November 3rd, 2020 election. So I felt that my circumstances were different than the other plaintiffs and I wanted a separate class. So what happened after I sent a letter to the court? Well, the clerk of the court docketed my letter. The judge marked it stricken from the record. I sent another letter. The court clerk docketed it. The judge marked it stricken from the record. I docketed another letter and the court clerk docketed it, but she removed three pages and the judge marked it stricken from the record. Meanwhile, President Trump filed an amended complaint and also the judge certified his question to the U.S. Attorney General's Office Civil Division. And they have to get the U.S. solicitor involved, so it's going to take a while to get a response. Before the judge certified the question to the U.S. Attorney General's Civil Division, I also sent a letter to the U.S. Attorney's Civil Division. And I will read you some of that. Okay, I'm trying to read on the other side of my computer screen. To Joshua Kolsky, trial attorney, United States Department of Justice, Civil Division, federal programs. I say this is in reference to President Donald Trump versus Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg and that I have my own constitutional question. Is Title 47 USC Section 230 unconstitutional because Title 47 USC Code Section 230 is being used to violate federal election laws, specifically Title 18 USC Section 600 and Title 52 USC Section 30121A1A. Dear Mr. Kolsky, in the document of 8, 19, 2021, wherein the U.S. government responds to plaintiffs, that's Donald Trump, constitutional issue, I would like to point out an error of omission. This is from the government to the court. The United States is unaware of any motion or other filing in this action that contains the arguments citing pertinent authorities on which plaintiff's constitutional challenge is based. Such a filing would assist the United States in deciding whether intervention is warranted in this matter. Well, Mr. Kolsky, I sent the court in this matter several letters. And in one of them, it said open internet letter on my blog to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Gardland sent August 6, 2021. And it was certified and the court docketed it about August 16, 2021. And then the judge marked it stricken. I also sent some copies to all or some of the attorneys for former President Donald Trump by email, I discussed my opinions with Attorney John P. Cole on the telephone that's one of former President Donald Trump's attorneys. And he stated that this was a civil case and that essentially I was making a criminal complaint is Title 47 USC Section 230 unconstitutional because Title 47 USC Code Section 230 is being used to violate federal election laws Title 18 USC Section 600 and Title 52 USC Section 30121A1A. Now then I point out the docket where over and over again, I file a complaint, the judge marks it stricken, I send another letter, it's on the court record, it is filed, it's marked as filed, the judge marks it stricken, I send another letter, it is filed, the judge marks it as stricken. So also I wanted to say to Mr. Kolsky as of August 21, 2021, the Post Office has not delivered a letter I sent to the court with a lot of additional facts and information on August 2nd. That's over three weeks. The Postal Service repeatedly claims it is not lost, they just move it from one facility to another and do not deliver it. Well, I got a couple voicemail messages from the Postal Service and I called one of President Donald Trump's attorneys and I left him a voicemail message and I played the recording of the Postal Service saying, oh, it's not lost, they just moved it to another facility. Okay, now I'm going to try to show you what I received in the mail, the order denying motion to join is plaintive. I received a whole bunch of mail from the court, they like to send things, these are all mail from the court, they like to send bunches of stuff, they're all kinds of things, whatever. So then I wanted to go over something that the judge marked stricken after it was sent, which I didn't think was fair, but that's just my opinion. Okay, and I want to point out that some of what I'm going to read to you, the court clerk struck, she struck three pages of one of the letters, I mean she just deleted it, but it's on my blog and on every page that I send the court, I give my blog address politics2022.org because I'm going to run again in 2022. Okay, so one of the things I'm explaining to the court is I tried to find another candidate like me who had won a primary election in 2020 and then was kicked out of Facebook prior to the November 3rd election in 2020, which is totally unfair in my opinion. So I found this candidate Laura Loomer was on the Republican ballot for US Congress in a district of Florida and she was kicked out of Facebook and she won the Republican primary for US Congress in her area of Florida and after winning the primary she was still kicked off of Facebook prior to the 2020 November 3rd election, which I don't think was fair and I don't think she thinks it was fair. So I believe Laura Loomer and I with similar circumstances, I was on the statewide election ballot as a progressive candidate and I was kicked out of Facebook in October 2020 before the November 3rd 2020 election, Laura Loomer was on the Republican ballot in Florida for US Congress. She was kicked out of Facebook before the November 3rd 2020 election. So I believe Laura Loomer and I are victims of crime. Under title 18, United States Code section 600. Where's the court clerk do? She removes that part of my letter, removes all whole bunch, three pages. Okay, now what is left in on the court record? Now, I don't know what's at pacer.com, but what happens is court listener.com moves the court records from the government to their website. They are a non-profit and court listener.com is a non-profit. So as soon as the things come on the government website, they scoop them up and they put them on their website. So it's still there. You can still read it minus the three pages the clerk wiped out. Okay, so what you can see is title 18, United States Code section 600, whoever directly or indirectly promises any benefit provided for a made possible in whole or in part by any act of Congress to any person, keep in mind Facebook.com is a corporate person as consideration for any political activity in opposition to any candidate or any political party in connection with any primary or general election to any political office shall be fined under this title. So then I go on to explain that Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have millions of followers worldwide. They make billions of dollars. And I don't see any indication that all this money they're making worldwide is separated and segregated into different funds. So it also appears that Laura Lumer and I are victims of crime under federal election law title 52 United States Code section 30121 a prohibition it shall be unlawful for one a foreign national directly or indirectly to make a contribution or other thing of value in connection with a federal state or local election. Now most people don't know that there's a federal election law title 52 United States Code section 30121 that prohibits foreign nationals from making any contribution directly or indirectly in connection with a federal state or local election. Allowing some political candidates to be promoted by Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg while Mark Zuckerberg brags about his having his worldwide court of people who are foreign nationals who are doing this dirty work of getting rid of candidates and banning them from Facebook. It sounds to me like that he's using foreign money to pay foreign people to kick candidates off of Facebook. And I think that's a violation of federal law. That's my opinion. And let's see what else. Oh the court struck all that. Well basically so when I'm saying is because federal election law addresses the wrongful use of foreign funds in state federal and local elections there could be people all over the United States of America who were kicked off of Facebook prior to the November 3rd 2020 election even though they were on the ballot. After all I was targeted. I was targeted and permanently banned from Facebook in October 2020 prior to the November 3rd 2020 election even though I was on the official election ballot even though I had won a primary election in Vermont. Same for Laura Loomer as a Republican candidate winning a Republican primary in Florida and she's kicked off of Facebook and not let back on prior to the November 3rd 2020 election. Now because the federal law Title 52 United States Code Section 30121 prohibits foreign nationals directly or indirectly making any contribution or other thing of value. It's another type of contribution. It's another thing of value for Mark Zuckerberg's foreign court in his cyber government to kick candidates out. That's of value to the opposing party in other words to the Democrats because I didn't run as a Democrat. I ran as a progressive Laura Loomer ran as a Republican. So it was a thing of value. It was a contribution or thing of value to the Democrats by foreigners and Mark Zuckerberg's foreign court where he uses foreign money to pay his employees to kick us off. I think that was wrong. I think that was a crime. That's my opinion. So because the judge in Trump versus Facebook marked all of my documents that I filed. She struck them from the ballot. She marked them stricken. So what did I do? I wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice and said that I think that my constitutional question should be considered and that's about where we're at right now. Now the U.S. Department of Justice has to get the U.S. solicitor involved and they have to decide whether or not they are going to respond to Donald Trump's constitutional question, which is his constitutional question is United title 47 United States code section 230, which is allows for censoring. Is that unconstitutional when I'm addressing is title 47 section 230, but you scroll down the law and you scroll down to where it says section 230 gives you no right to violate any criminal law. So because I think I'm the victim of crime, I think they had no right to censor me. Again, section what United title 47 United States code section 230 gives entities the right to censor. But if you scroll down the law and read the whole thing, it says you still don't have any right to violate any federal criminal law. And I feel that Laura Loomer and I were victims of crime by Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. I think they violated two federal criminal laws title 18 United States code section 600 and title 52 United States code section 30121. That's my opinion. Now I do not know if the United States Department of Justice Civil Division is going to take any concern with my letters that I've sent them. I don't know if the US Solicitor General will be given the letters I sent them asking my constitutional question. But that's where we're at right now. And I'll keep you updated. Thank you very much for listening. And thanks a lot. My name's Chris Erickson politics 2022.org and I'll run again.


Hey guys welcome back to my YouTube channel Daniel Rosel here. I'm going to do a video today regarding Amazon's free shipping to Israel deal. You'll hear it talked about a lot if you're an immigrant to Israel You'll hear about the VAT law talked about how much you can buy before you have to pay VAT of 17% It's really not that complicated But I'm going to make a video nonetheless to show you how you can sort of Maximize this deal now Amazon doesn't ship a lot of stuff to Israel In the broad scheme of things, but it does ship a decent amount of products, right? So not everything will ship, but Certain things will ship and they've had this deal for ages now. You see on my In the center of the screen free shipping to Israel and qualifying orders over 49 bucks Asterix restrictions apply. So I'm going to explain what those restrictions are basically so Here's the deal Amazon have Qualifying items in this free shipping to Israel deal So, you know what? Let me just search for Audio mixer, okay And we're going to get some products now. There's a difference between ships to Israel You see here ships to Israel and free shipping to Israel so For Amazon the traditional problem of buying stuff to Israel has been that the shipping has been really expensive And a lot more sometimes like more than the value of the item So to incentivize people to actually buy from Amazon They introduced a free shipping deal in which the shipping is free Now that doesn't mean that just because the shipping's free doesn't mean that it's going to be that free So let's start by getting by listing here. What is eligible for free shipping top left hand corner Firstly, make sure your address is set to your Israeli address if you have a foreign address in the account You can see in the top left. I have delivered to Daniel Jerusalem Free shipping by Amazon So I'm going to go ahead now and take this on and one to 49 of over 2000 results versus over 4000 results So he just excluded 2000 products like half The audio mixers because they weren't included in the free shipping deal Now we're you can order stuff. That's over the vat free limit just to clarify what that means The vat free limit is you can order stuff up to 75 dollars Goods value vat free. Okay The shipping so long as the shipping is itemized separately You can order stuff might be 75 dollars shipping and fifth. Sorry 75 dollars for let's say your audio mixer $15 for shipping so your bill is 90, but you should still get that for Sorry, bad example because 75 is 75 and over. Let's say your audio mixer was 74 dollars, right? Just under the limits, but $15 shipping you should still only that you should still have no vat to pay on that audio mixer By contrary, if you order, let's say this yamaha mixer, it's 140 bucks. Those are shipping is going to be free But you can see here 41 dollars for your import fee deposit So in other words because so the good thing about ordering from amazon is that they calculate the Israeli taxes So we have a situation here in which we're getting free shipping But we're still going to have to pay 40 dollars on top of the good value in order to get it here to Israel Now let's say for whatever reason you are intent on not paying anything more So what you would do here is there's a min and max operator here on the left And what I would do is specify the maximum value as 74 Dollars I wouldn't even do 74 99 just in case they round up. So I'm going to do 74 as my Maximum and your minimum you could you could either Put together a few small low value items or you could set the floor to 49 dollars Per the terms of the offer. So this is really the kind of uh, I wouldn't say hack But this is a way to really squeeze out the best Value from this deal. So I'm going to click on go now and now we only have 291 results, right? So the reason I I actually do use this filter is because You know the the value in amazon is their customer service is great. The stuff arrives quickly. So I may as you may as well get Halfway decent goods For that hassle, right? By the way, Israel will aggregate successive orders made within a 72 hour window So if you're or if you are ordering multiple amazon items, my advice would be to order them one week apart So the tax people don't aggregate them. I know you're thinking this guy is a complete Scamming the system, but look, what can I say? It's tough to live here. So here's a great item I would totally buy in fact I'm resisting the urge to buy this thing currently because I have a audio interface But this one has is a is a usb interface and you've also got some eq effects on it, right? Now this is to my mind a great thing to order to israel from amazon Why because it's 69 dollars. So it's just under the tax-free cutoff It's free delivery to israel. So if I were to order this now, I would only pay 69 dollars. So i'm effectively getting free shipping and getting a product that is, you know Worse a little bit and it's going to come to my door in israel for no additional costs on this So I hope that explains how it works What the deal is um, what might what is kind of worth buying? Just make sure you have your delivery address Configured correctly in amazon because I've heard of people in different parts of israel Getting, you know, some stuff will ship to jerusalem, but not to somewhere, you know, the sticks So you just have to make sure that you've got that set up correctly Hope this video is useful if you are looking to buy stuff to amazon for israel But you're not quite sure about all this talk about free shipping and Vass and 75 dollars means if you do want to get more videos for me about living in israel for the moment Follow the living in israel playlist. I'll pop a link in the description and thank you for watching this video


Okay, everyone, welcome to Exploring Our Bugs. I'm Ben Cotton, the Fedora Program Manager. Before we get into the meat of the talk, I do wanna share a little bit of housekeeping notes. I use he, him pronouns. This talk, which is linked in the hop and chat if you're watching live as this is happening. The slides are there. This talk is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Like 4.0 license. So do with it what you will subject to those license. If you have nice things to say, which include like constructive criticism, I know I'm not perfect, there's my Twitter handle. It's also on every slide. If you have not nice things to say, you are of course welcome to keep those to yourself. I will ask for questions at the end. Hopefully we'll have time. Did cut a lot of slides out of this to make room. So feel free to use the Q&A tab. I'm gonna try and ignore the chat unless it's to say, hey, Ben, your audio has fallen apart, in which case I'll refresh real quick in the middle of the talk. So what is this talk? Well, it's kind of what it says. It's a look at the bugs filed from Fedora Linux 19 through Fedora Linux 34. And you might say, why that range? And the answer is Fedora Linux 19 was the first one where we use the end of life closure on bugs. And so that really felt like a good sort of modern era of starting point. We could certainly go all the way back to Fedora Core one, but just because we've handled things differently over time, it might make comparisons a little hard to really draw conclusions from. And of course, Fedora Linux 34 is the most recently end of life version. I stuck with those because it's a lot easier to get the CSV file when all the bugs are closed and theoretically they will remain that way. And then to try and dynamically redo this every few weeks with our open bugs. If you watched last year's talk, you'll remember that I excluded raw hide. Now some of the graphs have raw hide and I'll talk a bit more at the end about the future incorporating raw hide bugs. But for now, some of them do, I think I've called them all out when raw hide is included. But like last year's version, this is really based on curiosity, not convincing. I wanted to look at like, what do we see from the bugzilla data and what kind of conclusions can we draw? I didn't really come into it with like, I wanna prove to the community that we should, you know, whatever. And I think this is probably gonna ask more questions than it answers, although maybe not explicitly, but it should be at least get us thinking about things as opposed to saying, you know, prescriptively what we should do. So, quick, some quick notes on raw hide. Right now the Jupyter Notebook, which there's a link to in the last slide, raw hide is separate. As I started working on this, I realized there are actually a lot of places where I'm basically making the same thing, just one with raw hide and one without. So in the post nest deep breath moment before the release process really starts ramping up in like four days, I'll probably go through and consolidate that into one notebook so people can share it and do their own analysis or interpretation anyway. But the way I lumped the raw hide bugs in with a release is it's basically based on branch dates. And so like there's a little bit of edge case, like, you know, did the bug get closed before after that particular bug got branched because it takes a time to iterate through all of them. For what we're doing here, we don't need that level of precision. And like I said, not all of the data and the graphs and the tables and stuff will include raw hide. All right, so let's look at stuff. Some basic things are like, how many bug reports do we get for a release? That seems like the most obvious question to ask. And as you can see, we had a lot and then kind of dropped and now it's coming back up again. And you might be like, oh no, we're getting a lot more bug reports, but Carl Fogel in his book, Producing Open Source Software, which is a great book, says an accessible bug database is one of the strongest signs that a project should be taken seriously and the higher the number of bugs in the database, the better the project looks. Basically, the more people who are using Fedora Linux, the more bugs they're gonna find and report. So the fact that we're seeing arise is potentially a good thing, especially because really I feel like starting with Fedora Linux 32 and continuing up through the present, that's really when we started seeing some of that organic positive press from a lot of the Linux enthusiast groups. So this really does sort of intuitively correlate to that. All right, so now let's add in Rawhide. So just kind of looking at it, you see, okay, Rawhide is ingrained in the lower part of the bar. The released bugs are in blue and released is kind of weird because it's actually from the branch date forward. So sometimes bugs get fixed between the branch and the GA. There's a lot of caveats of this talk, sorry. But you can kind of look and see, all right, well, Rawhide is a relatively stable-ish percentage, right? So let's just look at the percentage. And the general trend is for Rawhide to make up a higher percentage of bugs over time, but it looks like we might be starting back on a downward trend again. And if we think about it, there's probably a relatively consistent amount of Rawhide bugs we're gonna find through our own internal testing and stuff. And a lot of Rawhide bugs are more process related to things like build failures and stuff like that. So unless we get a lot of people running Rawhide as their daily driver, we're not gonna see a big increase in Rawhide bugs, but we're seeing a drop in total bugs. So it makes sense that that's gonna lead to a higher percentage in Rawhide bugs now that we're seeing a higher number of bug reports again, the Rawhide percentage goes down. One other thing that I kind of thought was interesting, and I don't know what to make of it, is just the number of components with a reported bug, sometime during the release process. And I did throw Rawhide in here because not every component has a bug filed against it every release. And there's sort of a general upward trend, which is probably an increase in components over time. But there is a lot of fluctuation. So what does that mean? No idea. But which components get the most bugs? Well, as you'd kind of expect, it's the stuff that people interact with the most. If Justin Forbes is in the room, he will immediately be not surprised that Colonel is in the top.  So of course, that makes sense. What's the fewest bugs? Well, almost 99% of the components have fewer than 100 bugs over the lifetime of this dataset. So from Fedora Linux 19 through 34. And if a component never had any bugs, it doesn't even show up because I didn't like produce a list of all components and shove it in. So it's basically, there's a hunt, you know, 99% of the components with at least one bug had fewer than 100 and almost 80 or a little over 80% had less than 10. So the work is not evenly distributed. One thing I added this year is I just kind of wanted to see how many bug reports get reopened. Sometimes they're closed a little aggressively and so somebody will reopen them. This also can maybe give us a little bit of a measure of bugs closed end of life and then reopened. There are reasons it's kind of hard to suss that out that I can talk about if we have time. But again, this is based on when the bug was closed. So something that closed in 31 may have actually been originally opened in 26 and how do we interpret that? But anyway, there's a general downward trend and I can think of two plausible explanations off the top of my head. One is that we're getting better at actually fixing the bugs and not being like, oh, oops, it's partially fixed, try again. Or it means that people have given up when it doesn't work the first time.  One is a very happy outcome, the other isn't and I'm not sure which it is just based on this. I'd like to think it's the happy outcome. So another thing we can look at is severity. According to the bugzilla documentation, severity is the user impact. We also have a priority field, which is basically the developer's ranking of how quickly they're gonna fix it. I don't know that people always use those fields the same way, but I wanted to look at it. So this is not much different from last year. The urgent is a small slice and most people never specify a severity. When they do, we kind of see the distribution you expect. Low is actually smaller. I think in terms of actual bugs, there's a lot more low priority or low severity bugs, but people maybe just don't bother reporting them. So it's kind of important to keep in mind these are bug reports, not bugs. Even though I will use the word bugs a lot. So for this year, I did add just a look at the severity over time. And the urgent, which is the bottom line and sort of the magenta is very stable. It really doesn't have a lot of fluctuation compared to some of the bigger fluctuations we've had in just the total number of bug reports. And my suspicion here that I'm gonna go out on a limb and say is a fundamental truth is that we actually catch most of the urgent bugs either in our own testing or through user reports. And so doesn't matter how many more users we add, we're not going to get that many more urgent or even high severity bugs because we've already kind of caught those. So any additional bug reports is gonna come in the medium to low severity. I think that's justifiable. So one of the things to look at and it becomes more important as we expand our user base is the number of duplicate bugs. And you can see over time, the number of duplicate bugs remains relatively steady. I have some theories about like the personal, like the dynamics of how people do that. And I think, basically the percentage of duplicate bug reports isn't particularly correlated to the volume of reports in like certain thresholds. This is more of a, I don't know. One thing that did look interesting to me is sort of how we have these big spikes. Why? Couldn't say. Run through a couple of tables real quick. Fewest duplicates per component. I don't know why these get fewer. Maybe they just don't get marked as duplicate because they have so many bugs. So there are actually many duplicates that never get touched. It's kind of hard to go through without spending time and like digging through the reports and actually post factoed making that determination. What I do find interesting is that 66 components which is three more than last time had nothing but duplicate bugs. So these are either somebody mismarked it or somebody, the bug was filed against another component as well and the one in that component was marked duplicate. I don't know what to do with that other than it's like, hey, that's kind of weird. So if we exclude the 100% duplicates, these are the most. Again, there's no real meaning here that I can suss out. But it was interesting to me that unlike the previous table where about half of the components had an increase and half had a decrease versus last year, this case almost all the components saw a drop in their percentage. All right, so let's talk about the more interesting stuff. Bug resolution. Like last year, I kept the same categories. We have happy resolutions where things get fixed essentially we have resolutions that are sad for the user where it's like, no, we're not gonna fix that go away. We have resolutions that are sad for the maintainer which are basically like, hey, you wasted my time with this bug report, what's going on? And I'm excluding duplicate here because I don't think they actually add to it. And again, we can argue about which of these closure categories belong where or if there should be more resolution buckets. But for now, this is what we're going with. And we can see that over time, we're pretty consistent in our happy resolutions. But that means our sad resolutions are going up recently as we get more bug reports. And in fact, if you look at the percentage of bugs closed end of life, that's really bad the last few releases. I don't have a great solution for how we can fix that but it's bad user experience. And I would love to see us fix that in part because I see, I'm the one who sees a lot of the for do or never fixes my bugs. I'm gonna go switch to something else.  Another thing that was really interesting to me is like it seems up until recently very periodic. And I did some digging last year to try and figure out like how does that correlate to like rel release dates or something like, what's the external factor? And I couldn't find one. So who knows. So we looked at just raw hide bugs because that was for released bugs. As you might expect, raw hide bugs are mostly happy because that's stuff that we've sort of filed for ourselves and are fixing. But it's good to see that. So not only is it important how we close the bug but how quickly we close the bug report. So I looked at time to resolution. And last year I had a lot more slides. I had to cut some down. The Jupiter Notebook has a whole bunch of graphs that didn't make the cut this year. But as you can see, there's a very large spike right at the beginning. There are I think about 30 day bins or so. So it's a lot of bugs, vast majority of bug reports get closed very quickly. Those are probably sort of self-process kind of stuff. But I graphed this on a log scale before and it's very linear. So you do see a very quick decrease. I think a more meaningful thing is looking for the center, so how quickly are we closing bugs over time and we are getting better. We did have a little bit of a regression in 33 but the general trend is that we are closing bug reports faster, which is good. If we look at just the happy ones, so basically are we getting better at fixing them? Yes, we definitely are and that's great to see. But are we breaking people's hearts faster? Yes, we're also getting way faster at closing reports basically won't fix or end of life. I'd say that's a good thing because then we're not languishing, like the bug reports aren't languishing and people don't feel like, oh no, maybe it'll get fixed, maybe it won't like, here's the answer, whether you like it or not. And it's interesting to kind of look at like about the 400 day mark, like that's sort of the longest a bug will be open before it reaches, if it was open on release day to end of life. So we're getting down to the less than a year category. I guess that's good. One thing I added also for this year was looking at our security bugs and brace yourselves. This next slide is gonna look really scary. It's actually not as scary as it looks, even though we have a huge jump in security bugs. I was actually at the scale conference last weekend talking with somebody who happens to work in Red Hat's product security team and they were telling me how product security has gotten really a lot more involved in filing bugs for like every CVE in upstream projects that are shipped in Fedora Linux.  There's probably a lot more digging into this to do, but you know, this isn't like, oh my God, we've just gotten really insecure. It's more that we're more aware of security vulnerabilities. And again, this doesn't break it out by the severity, which would probably be a good addition. So how are we doing it fixing them? Well, like non-security bugs, it's pretty steady, which means we have a whole bunch more unfixed security bugs. And again, it could be that these things were fixed in an upstream release and the maintainer added that new release and either didn't know or just didn't remember to tag that bugzilla in the new release. And so a lot of these may have been fixed up by the work of upstream and just not been updated. There's a whole long conversation we can have about that as well. So if we look at the time to fix, again, we're sort of seeing a general decline. That's good. We're getting faster, we like that. So the last set of bugs I wanted to look at are process bugs that are sort of a part of various development activities we have in the project. And again, this is also new compared to last year. So we have bugs for when a package fails to build from source. And these are often the result of changes to compilers or library packages or things like that. Just basically something that builds no longer builds. You can see it's generally fairly well distributed between raw hide and being closed in raw hide and being closed post branch. It would be nice if more of those were fixed in raw hide, particularly in that window between the mass rebuild and branch day. It doesn't happen right now. More packages are gonna be helpful if we can do that. So how do we resolve these? And again, this is including raw hide. It turns out, it's like we're only fixing about half the fail to build from source. And again, I'm hoping that this is partly an automation error or something where at some point the package does start building and the bug report doesn't get closed. Somebody who knows a little more about that process, Miro, if you're in the room or somebody from RelEng, hopefully this isn't as sad as it looks. Similarly, I wanted to look at the fail to install bugs. So that's basically the package built, but it can't install because of dependency changed and won't resolve for whatever reason. And it turns out we haven't really been tracking this meaningfully until very recently. Fedora Linux 28 is the first time we actually had a fails to install tracker bug, which is kind of interesting, but you can see we really don't have many reports. And this is basically searching for the string FTI or fails to install in the subject of the bug report. So it's an imperfect measure, but really in the last few releases have we apparently started noticing or caring about it or just gotten really bad at it, who knows. And again, we're fixing a lot fewer of these than we want, which basically puts these packages at risk of being dropped from the distribution because if they fail to install, they get retired eventually. So another thing I wanted to look at is blocker bugs. So we have release criteria and we go through before a beta release and the final release and evaluate, does it do these things or not do these things? And we don't ship until all the blockers are resolved. Over time, we are apparently just getting fewer of those. I think it's hopefully because we've had a lot more testing, we're doing a lot more both manual and automated testing earlier in the process. And so we just never get to that point. But we tend to accept a lot more than we reject, which I think is probably a good thing, although I would actually like to see more sort of questionable blockers get proposed because I'd rather decide, no, that's not a blocker than ship with it and be like, oh, we should have blocked the release on that. Similarly, we have freeze exceptions, which these are things where a lot happens to bug that ships on the live media. We don't want to block the release on it, but it'd be really good to fix it if we can. The rejected freeze exceptions, interestingly, are pretty stable. The accepted kind of go up and down. We've seen a lot more recently, which does kind of this correlate to the gut feeling I had about it. I don't know that that's good or bad. I think it does indicate perhaps a little more comfort with our testing so that we're less cautious about what we accept in terms of being a freeze exception because we're less worried that it'll accidentally break something. And then also common bugs or common issues as Matthew has liked to point out. This is basically a sort of known issues list that we generate recently started using Ask Fedora to generate some of these. So it'd be really interesting to see a year from now what this graph looks like. But over time, we are definitely showing fewer common bugs in general. And I don't know if this is that we're getting better at fixing the ones that we would want to highlight people or if we're just worse at highlighting them. I think it's the former, it could be the latter. And then I just wanted to throw in the prioritized bugs graph mostly to remind people that this process exists. There's not much meaningful to be derived from it, but I just wanted to put that in there. Basically the idea is these are for bugs, particularly post release that are just sort of obnoxious, affect a lot of people and just sort of make us look bad that we want to try and have Matthew and I kind of lean on people a little bit more, like, hey, can we move this to the top of the stack? And if the people are, the maintainers happen to be Red Hat employees and we can go to their management and say, hey, please prioritize this for the person or the team. Okay, so what's next? Like last year, I'll do some community blog posts with a summary of some of the points that I wanted to highlight, maybe a few things I left out. I would love in the next few minutes later on in the office hours I do on Wednesdays in the community blog comments, wherever. I'd love to know your theories about why some of these things are. There will be more graphs. I will hopefully do this talk again next year and make it different enough that it's worth attending again. And like I mentioned, I'm gonna unify the Jupyter notebook because I really, it's helpful because then you can download the notebook. You can grab the CSV files out of the repo. You can make the graphs yourself and you can twiddle things if you want to focus on certain areas or just sort of interrogate the data yourself. So with that, I have a couple of minutes left and if there are questions in the Q&A, I will take them now. There are not questions in the Q&A or at least there's no little red dot. There are not. So if you have questions, now's a great time to ask them. And if not, I'll just stand here and act silly and hopefully whoever edits the video will cut this part out. Kevin asks, have you considered also looking at Apple bugs? Honestly, I haven't. I think I talked to maybe Troy or Carl about it at one point. It's certainly something that could do. It'd be easy to add that. I think the longer nature of Apple makes it a little harder to react to things. Matthew asks, what data or metadata that we don't have would be nice to track in a future possible bug tracker? I would love to be able to know how many times the version changed on a bug. Right now, that's something that can be done on an individual bug basis by just querying the bug's history. But that would mean iterating over the 300 something thousand bugs and adding that together. That's very computationally expensive and I feel like the bugzilla maintainers would just disable my IP. So it'd be really nice to be able to just get that as a field on the bug. Jose asks, how could we get better information on some of the important issues you raised? I don't know that we can directly. I think trying to correlate them to user surveys and contributor surveys that we do on an annual basis will help. Starting with Thorolinix 35, I've sent out retrospective surveys and they haven't actually even touched the data for 36 yet. This has been a very hectic summer for me personally. But I think trying to, we pull some, start pulling some conclusions from that and sort of making reasonable inferences based on the developer, the tester experience and then user feedback to sort of see which things we do are affecting the shape of the graphs. On an all, I'm not sure the question is, did you ever consider to check bugs that are asking improvement? I'm not sure what you mean by that. So improving a feature in a certain software package, that's something that we could do. I don't think it was enabled until recently but bugzilla has basically a setting for, is this a bug, a feature request, things like that. But we don't have a lot of good historical data on that. So it'd be really hard to reliably sort out historically the difference between feature requests and bugs versus questions and things like that. But that is an important distinction that we don't really have the ability to make at this point, unfortunately. But it looks like my time is up. So thank you everyone for your attendance and thank you for the questions. I look forward to having more discussions later on. Thank you.