Diwrnod, yn y peth iddynt yn mynd i gynnig fания wedi gynnig o'i gynnig y bydd yn ei gydag, dwi'n ymwneud ar maen nhw, ti'n ei drwsio'r tunig, a staff astiwn y dyfyniad yma o gyfliadau, ac efallai wedi'i'n gynhywch. Mynd i'n fuddwch i chi'n gilydd arni i ddwylo pwynt o'i cyhoedd o'i gwymo'i gilydd arbennig gan gwymo'i cyhoeddio'i defnyddol o'u gilydd mewn. I wnaeth eu cymdeilio arbennig y dyfyniadau mewn llawer o wyboddau y free software movement, and the open source software movement operate, and some of the things that the public sector needs to learn, some of the things that government needs to learn about what the free and open source software movement has got to say. I don't have, as I say, a great deal of technical knowledge. I grew up like a lot of people with computers in the house, but the first time I ever met a PC, and for a long time after I met my first PC, I thought PC is equal. I thought PC is equal to Windows, and I think many, many people live a lot of their lives thinking that, and it takes a long time for many, many people to learn that PC doesn't equal Windows, and that there are other options, and that there are choices that they're being denied if they don't think outside of that kind of tight relationship. I went away to university, and I did sign up for a computer course at university, but it was the first of many courses that I managed to completely ignore while I was at uni, so I learned very little about it there. I started eventually using computers at work, as most people do, in various different offices, and eventually a friend of mine who had been using Linux for a long time started to nag me and nag me and nag me, that I should be looking beyond the computer systems I was using. It took him a long time to get me comfortable with the idea, and gently holding my hand through a migration process on my home PC, first of all a dual booting system, and then eventually realising that I was using Windows less and less and less, and I wouldn't really miss it if I freed up the disk space for it. So, nowadays I use Linux at home, have done for quite a long time, and when I got elected to Parliament, it was the first time that I'd worked in an institution that big with an IT system that controlled by somebody else, and I found it a daily frustration having to go back to using Windows, just because I was aware of how much better the systems I was using had become. And so I started to think about why the public sector doesn't use these other systems, which are not always better, but are very often better, and I started to think about some of the political principles involved, and as I did, I started to realise that I had colleagues in other parties, not just Green Party MSP, but other parties, particularly elsewhere in Europe, countries like Germany, who had taken this thinking a lot further. And some of the ideas that they talk about are the same ideas that the movement itself, the free and open source movement talks about. Ideas like the comparison between the computer and the printing press, the idea that if when the printing press had been developed, every single one had been owned and controlled by a single monarch, or in the current analogy that a single company had been controlling and owning and deciding whatever we could use their computers for, that's the situation that we have if we allow a stranglehold by a single product like Windows. But also other ideas like the power of cooperation, and the power of cooperation and concepts like the common good have fallen out of political language in this country over recent years and recent decades. And the collaborative and cooperative process that's going on in the creation of free software and other free systems. Wikipedia is perhaps the best known now of the systems that create by an open process, a collaborative process, and it's become perhaps the single most important reference work on the web. I'm always surprised by the number of MSPs' speeches where I recognise a turn of phrase or I recognise an argument and I think, I read that on Wikipedia last night. So MSPs' researchers are using it and they're recognising the value of it and they're probably contributing to it and collaborating with it as well. So it's about the political aspects and what the public sector can learn from cooperation and collaboration. Particularly in an age when a lot of people feel disconnected from politics and feel that they can't take part or that there's no point in them taking part and contributing to politics. Also some of the economic arguments and the last speaker was at Chris, was talking in answer to a couple of the questions about the jobs and what we've got is a distributed system in economic terms. It's not entirely centralised in terms of where the ideas come from but it's not centralised in terms of where the money goes either. It's a distributed system and if that sort of system is going to take hold and become more prevalent in the public sector there's going to be an economic consequence and the public sector needs to take account of that. There was also when I was thinking about this a parallel with social enterprises and Scotland has got a long tradition of developing concepts of social enterprise like the cooperative movement. But also nowadays the way these organisations turn up new concepts like the idea of the triple bottom line, the idea of a company which is making a profit. It's not a charity but it's doing more than profit. It's not only got a single profit-based bottom line but a social and environmental bottom line as well. I think a movement like the free software movement and the companies and the communities and the individuals who are working in it and collaborating with it, they're doing more than just producing a product which will sell and which will make their name or make the money. They're doing something for other reasons. They have other bottom lines like a better product, like a way to cooperate and communicate with people around the world. Finally, as a Green, as someone from an environmentalist party, there's an environmental aspect to this. I was quite surprised to see that when Vista was being launched, Greenpeace were the first people I put out press releases saying what a problem this was. I thought, Greenpeace, what's that all about? Basically, the argument is making the best use of the hardware resources, not just in this country. If you get Vista being adopted throughout the public sector, you're getting a lot of hardware that's going to be thrown out because of that and probably onto landfill, probably not a very environmentally friendly product to dispose of. Also, in developing countries where they simply don't have access to, they don't have a budget for simply, well, we'll upgrade all our hardware this year because we've got a new operating system. Free and open source products can benefit developing countries where they don't have the money to spend on the hardware as well as the software. So, there was a number of different ideas bubbling away there about how government and the public sector need to take account of what this movement's got to say, not just the products that the free and open source movement creates, but what it's got to say as well about some of these political ideas. And lo and behold, these ideas were immediately adopted by the rest of the party and now we're using Debian to run all our party office systems around the corner on Line Street. Not entirely without problem, it's got to be said, but people seem to be up for taking on those problems and trying to get around them and learn from them. So, once I'd started thinking about these things as an MSP, I fired off a few written questions. One of the main tools that we've got is written parliamentary questions. We fired off them by email and the executive has to come up with an answer, the ministers have to come up with some sort of answer.  How much that's costing the taxpayer and what we're getting for it. It was just maybe half a dozen, I thought, fairly innocent little questions. And just days after I lodged those questions, long before I even got any reply, I got an email from the country manager of Microsoft saying how great it would be if he could take me to dinner. I thought for a few seconds about what a nice dinner Microsoft might be able to afford, but I didn't go to dinner. I didn't close down communication though. What happened was I invited him around to my office for a cup of coffee at my expense and he was happy to do that. I came away after that meeting, he'd been talking about some of these ideas and how Microsoft was really very up for this exciting new change that the open source software and the free software movements got to tell us about. And I almost came away thinking, well, yeah, he's not such a bad bloke, but he's being paid a great deal of money to persuade people like me that he's not such a bad bloke and that Microsoft is open to these ideas. What's very clear is that if the public sector, clear to me anyway, if the public sector continues to be utterly reliant as it is at the moment on a very small number of contracts with its hardware and a very small number of companies for its software, it's not going to be getting the best value for taxpayers' money. And there's also aspects, not just about buying in Windows or buying Dell PCs all the time, there's also aspects about the software that's created with taxpayers' money. When the public sector, when the NHS or the police or whoever else decide that they need some bespoke software produced, why on earth should the ownership of that software that's being produced not benefit the greatest number of people? And if that can be done best to making that free software, not necessarily changing what it is, not necessarily taking any risks with, I mean obviously some police systems, there's a very good reason, not a commercial reason but a security reason why systems might need to be closed. But if there's no reason like that then we should be, as a default position, not just as an exceptional once in a while nice to do extra if there happens to be somebody in that government department that is interested, but it should be a default position that unless there's an overriding security reason not to make something open, it should be. We paid for it as taxpayers, we should be able to use it in our own workplaces and in our own academic institutions to study it as well. There's a huge problem with overcoming perceptions and it's one that I'm sure you've talked about earlier today about what free software actually means. It's that it's not just cost free, that it's not just you don't pay any money for it, but it means something about freedom to use it to learn from it to study it to share it. There's a huge problem overcoming that perception when we're trying to persuade businesses and public sector organisations that they should adopt free software in their own work, but there's also a huge problem in trying to get over to politicians that it means something other than just cost free. We've tried to explore that with MSPs. Some MSPs get it, a few MPs get it as well and we also I think have a real job to do to try and persuade local councillors who are responsible for the part of the public sector that delivers a hell of a lot of public services directly, which MSPs don't do. We need to try and persuade them to be open minded to this as well. Partly, as I say, in delivering their services in running systems, partly in terms of education. I see no reason why the principles of free software, the way that it works shouldn't be taught as part of the curriculum in every school and college where there's IT and computing being studied. I see no reason why any student who's interested in computing should leave school without having had the opportunity to collaborate with other students around the world on free or open source projects. That seems to me like so many different educational aspirations can be achieved through that, not just the computing ones, but also the spirit of cooperation as well as some sense of who the other people that we live on this world with are and how to cooperate with them, how to learn about them. I see no reason why that shouldn't be happening in every school. How to take things forward then? It's clear that Microsoft is a big beast in this jungle and can throw its weight around. It's got a lot of weight and a lot of money. I don't know if you're aware, but last year the Microsoft Government Leaders Conference came to Edinburgh and much to my dismay, the whole Scottish Parliament was turned over to them for a day and a half to run their what they were pleased to call the Government Leaders Conference. What it turned into, I think, was a glorified local or regional Vista launch, a product launch at the taxpayer's expense, giving them the pre-use of what I think is actually quite a nice building, which we all paid a lot of money to build, and allowing them a platform, a very significant and high profile platform, not just in terms of media profile and public profile, but high profile in terms of other governments and politicians around Europe. A high profile platform was given to them from which they could say, if you want to be a modern government, you need to buy Vista. If you want to be a government that's providing services in the 21st century, you need to buy our products to do it with. And that was a shameless and a shallow sales pitch which we paid for, and I did my best to try and persuade the Parliament that we should allow at least one room to bring in a different group of people to talk about a different message or a different set of ideas. I wasn't able to do it at the time. I would love to try and do something in future. I would love to try and organise some kind of briefing event for MSPs and for several servants, people delivering services, procuring IT systems that brings in some expertise from you and your colleagues, from the businesses who are working in open source and free software, the communities, the academics who are working in it and the individuals. And if any of you have ideas to help me to take that forward, I'd love to hear from you. And that's all I've got to say, so if there are any questions, I'll do my best to have a go at them. Hi, it was going back to what you were saying about teaching children in schools about open source software, and I'm the next teacher myself which can be in a touristy technophobic profession. I do sometimes pass the time of reading old GCSE syllabuses and the current computer science syllabus, I think it's QCA, has pupils need to know that software cannot be copied and I'd highlight they cannot. They need to learn about the work of FAST and there is absolutely no mention of open source or free software whatsoever in any GCSE computer science syllabus that I've ever seen. I just want to go back to what you were saying about trying to get people over the hurdles, getting them into it and everything, and just what you think about that. Yeah, well if you were paranoid, you might think this is some kind of appalling conspiracy again. I try not to be paranoid, but it's very clear that there are some basic ideas, not just about what the legal situation is around. Public licences and the technical aspects of that, but just around the spirit of cooperation and sharing. Why on earth should we be teaching children that they're not allowed to share the toys? I remember seeing a lecture with Richard Stallman and he tells this story about the first time he was told he wasn't allowed to share with his colleagues in the next room. I think he was trying to figure out how to make a printer driver work or something. And he wasn't allowed to tell.  He wasn't allowed to share with his colleagues how to do something. And why on earth should we be teaching children that it's wrong to share? That's how basic this is and if we're saying to children that the only way software can be created is if I lease it to you but I still own it. And I can still tell you what you're allowed to do with it and what you're not allowed to do with it. I think that's profoundly depressing and it also relates to a lot else that's happening in the concepts about intellectual property in academic research as well. I was at a conference down south just at the weekend where the guys from Imperial College were talking about, they were very proudly displaying on a projector their ideas about how they do open research and how they're applying some of the same principles from open source and free software to academic research and intellectual property. And when you see it, when you see these principles just spelled out in black and white and compared with how we do things at the moment in a quite a narrow, individualistic, materialistic kind of society, you just see it in black and white and it makes perfect sense that this is what we should be doing, this should be the default. I saw a hand there and then over there. Do you want to? Hi, I know that there's a UK based website called they work for you, which is aimed to make Parliament more accessible and has sort of linked with the open source community and built on open source tools. I was just wondering what sort of profile that has within government and parliamentary members and whether that's hoping to raise the profile of open source at all or whether they're seen as some quite disconnected things. I wouldn't say it's raised the profile of open source. We are aware of it. A lot of the time we hate these things because they just bombard us with emails which we then go to answer. But we should hate it. If we're really going to be accessible to the people that we represent, we should get bombarded with emails and it is a wee bit annoying sometimes, but that's just the job that we've signed up for. There are opportunities I think to apply the same kind of principles to public policy and how politicians engage with the public. I don't know all the answers about how this should work. I think what we're at at the moment in terms of the development of democracy is quite a difficult stage. I think when political parties had mass movements and their job was to get the vote out, it was very, very simple and direct relationship with the people they represented. Now we have this crash in involvement and participation, not just in voting but in membership of political parties and in faith in politics. If we can apply some of these participative ideas, that means sometimes us not saying, this is my policy and so that's what I'm going to do. It means sometimes being a bit less precious about your own politics and your own policy, not abandoning that but being willing to create ideas with other people rather than simply saying that you've got all the answers. And it also means the public and the media not blaming politicians for changing their mind or for not having all the answers. So if politics is going to become some kind of participative process in the same way that the, I know we're getting a wee bit off topic here, but if politics is going to become a participative process in the same way and create public policy in the same way that free software is created, I think that's a very exciting idea, it's one that I don't know how we make it happen, schemes like, sites like they work for us and a number of others are part of that but they're not the whole of it and I think we need to think again about how we create space for debate in public. There have been a couple of open source political parties that have been attempted where people actually want to create the manifesto purely online as a collaborative project and the party begins with no policy at all. It tends to kind of fall apart because you're bringing together people with no actual predefined common ground, no idea of where they want to go and there needs to be some kind of objective that's set somehow. But well I think it's interesting and worthwhile stuff to explore. The Think Tank Demos a couple of years ago published something about applying open systems to the media review process. We've got media press complaints commission and we've got, you know, range of different bodies to which we're allowed to complain about the media. But if you had an open source system for that, if you had a kind of wiki style or collaborative and participative process for that, you could have a much more responsive public engagement with the media. If we could do the same thing with politics, I think that would be quite a profound thing. There was a question from down here and then there's a lot of hands up at the back so the one here. It's kind of me again because I've been to the war. I've been out there and we have done a lot of promoting free software since 2001. We have met every obstacle that you described correctly but we have done one more thing or two maybe. One is that we have installed free software on schools. When you have an installed base you can ask new questions that you couldn't ask before. Before it was kind of you should do free software. Now we have all these kind of installed machines and people are kind of not getting access to public information. It's like what we use as an example as the ministry of reform, the minister herself uses an example. It has been a surrealistic situation where people are going to use public parking lots and they can just park there with cars from one manufacturer. Because the computing language is so difficult, we need good, sane examples showing the surrealistic examples as I just told you. The other thing that has happened a couple of years ago was the national exams that you needed to use Excel spreadsheet from Microsoft and Microsoft Excel to prepare national exams in math. Then we asked the question why should we be a Microsoft customer because we're using Linux. Then a lot of people said just change the operating system. This went up to the minister of education and she said competition. It took one day after this was announced in the newspaper because we wrote a letter from six months earlier complaining. Then they begged us on the knees never to go to the newspaper again because they will do everything we told them to. We are partners now of the educational directorate that does the preparation of national exams so it should support Linux. If they are not doing it, they are out of business. We put this company that delivered Excel spreadsheet out of business. This is how we should perform. We should use regular reason, good arguments, hard work and we will prevail. This is good examples on the government can't take part in any single company's business but should provide everyone. It's about universal design, universal access especially in schools and it works. I think you are absolutely right. Certainly the first point you make about get these systems installed. Get them out there, get people using them in order to start asking questions and figure out how much they don't know about them is absolutely the first step. I was working a couple of years ago with someone who was trying to persuade public libraries to start distributing burned copies of open office for nothing. He was going to give them hundreds of copies of this thing just so long as they would be willing to be a source for people to access it. If we can jump on every opportunity to get these systems out there, that's job one. This is my point, get it installed. My other point is then you will get into all kinds of trouble. You will, I promise you that. But then they need to explain themselves why they are giving you headache and that's also a problem for them. Getting in trouble can be very creative sometimes. There was a few hands at the back there. Just first to answer the teacher's comment at the front there, I've just sat higher computing and it doesn't get any better with the higher. I think I probably failed it because I answered the right way and not the way they wanted me to. But also you said you'd like the MSPs to get involved if they can. I'm part of the Edinburgh Linux user group and there's a few others of us here today. If you'd like to set up a meeting or something, we'd be quite happy to come down to the parliament and have a chat with you. If that's something you'd be interested in. Absolutely. Thanks very much. I don't have cards with me but I'm sure you can find them. I'll find you at the end. Just drop me an email. That would be great. Okay, will be. Hi, recently there was the Scottish elections which were all e-counted. That was actually done with the proprietary system with closed source code. I was just wondering what you could do to stop spending a small fortune with this company DRS and try and use open systems insofar as we actually need computers to count. I don't think we need computers to have an open system for that. I think we need people at desks with piles of paper counting them physically. I think there's a number of areas where people just jump towards a technical solution. Sometimes simply because they can't think of anything else to spend the money on, which is really sad. We've got a very expensive system that we don't need. It actually took longer to count the votes even in the stations where the systems were working smoothly. It took longer to count them than by hand. There's no evidence that it's a higher degree of accuracy even when they work smoothly. We've seen some of them work very badly indeed. We should just junk them. Thank you. Did your questions to Parliament involve asking how much open or free software was currently in use? I think organisations can often underestimate how much software of this type they're using. When they do realise what's already installed and working very well for them, that brings people together to increase that usage. I didn't ask that specifically. I asked about what the executive's policy was and also the corporate body. The corporate body is the body that runs Parliament as an institution, the executive being the devolved government. I asked what each body has as policy in relation to free and open source software as opposed to proprietary systems. I asked what they spend on software licences and there was another set of questions. I should have looked this up before I came, shouldn't I?  But I could maybe give it a go. Right, thanks. Was there somebody else? There was certainly somebody this side, I think. All right, OK. Organisations using Wikipedia for policy decisions. I find that rather disturbing. But yeah, I was wondering, surely the easiest thing to say is money talks. So why not say, look, we can save this amount we could put it towards hospitals, blah, blah, blah. Surely a couple of high profile headlines and papers would get the ball rolling quite nicely. Yeah, I mean, I guess the downside of that or the danger with that is that you end up with, you know, the cost of the Parliament building, for example, spiralled way out of control, but the original estimate was an estimate for a completely different building. If you start off by saying we're going to save this much money, but you end up only applying free software in some circumstances and not others, or you don't account for the running costs and the management costs or whatever. I mean, I think that you can get better just raw value for money, a lot of the time with free or open source software. But that's not the overriding reason for me why we should be using it. I think the freedom is more important than the free-ness. And I think we've got to win that argument before we're going to persuade people that they should adopt it. Yeah, a couple here. In the state of Massachusetts in the U.S., they passed a law, I want to say a year or two ago, about using open document format for their documents for government purposes. And recently some states in the U.S. have also tried to pass similar bills. Is the Scottish Parliament having anything like that that's similar? The situation's got better in the last few years. It used to be that there were quite a few documents that would be put out in complex Word documents that didn't display properly in other packages and so on. That's got better. I wouldn't say that they're perfect, but there's less of that now than there was. I've been told that I should be winding up in some amount of time. I couldn't quite see the number. 15 minutes? All right, okay. We're okay, we're okay. There was a question behind there. How much do you think it's about end-user education, like the MPs that you work with and people in Parliament that just, since you say open source, it's just an alien concept to them? An example being that Iron Ridge did a presentation to a Scottish section of the government for a new website and we said we'd do it in an open source content management system that's very popular and ticked all the boxes. And they were just scared off by the fact that it was open source and eventually they went down the other route of proprietary software where I thought, you know, that's my taxpayer's money. I'd rather be spent on open source. Absolutely. That shouldn't have happened even in terms of current policy. Current government policy does allow open source products to be considered on an equal basis. And I think a lot of the time what you get is, as you say, a kind of instinctive recoil. Simply out of, don't know what that means, not familiar with it. You know, go back to something that's kind of familiar and safe. I think having people use, even just a browser, even just people use on a daily basis a different browser and learn that browsing the internet does not equal using internet explorer. Just having people see that a piece of software that they're going to use on a daily basis is reliable, is often better, is no more confusing or puzzling or difficult. Getting people into that daily habit and seeing that it's real software, it really works and it's not scary. If we can do that, and again, as the colleague down at the front here said, it's just about getting stuff installed. And even if we could get schools to install two or three different browsers and discuss what it means to use them differently and why they're different, that would be a start. There was a hand up at the back there and then down here. Perhaps you or someone else can give me some more information. But as I was looking, I saw that there was a university consortium in this area of the world that made an advanced study and the conclusion was that Microsoft has 75,000 programmers. And if they just put those 75,000 programmers in a catch up mode trying to duplicate what Linux now has, it would take them eight years just to get to where we are in 2007. I would like to know more details about that. I'm sure that that would probably help to have a free open source software day at the parliament. Thank you. Having that kind of event in parliament would certainly help. I'm not familiar with the research that you're talking about there, but I can readily believe it. I think it's an indicator of the power of collaboration and cooperation. That would not have been the expectation when people started talking about I want to create a completely different operating system from scratch and it's not going to be based on anybody making money. I think people would have said, you'll never do that. That will take you decades just to get started. And what we've got now is a situation that's turned those expectations on their head. There was one down here, I think. The company that I work for, we've actually gone in for tenders for government business and so on. And indeed we've won quite a few. There was the GLA London Elect site and that kind of thing, which there were lots and lots of consortium. Most of them are based on proprietary software, which we're tendering and we won the tender because we happen to bring a good guy who answered all the questions well. But it isn't uphill struggle because if I'm being frank, of all the sectors that I meet people involved in computing and IT, the most kind of conservative and, dare I say it, frankly just unintelligent are in government and quasi-government organisations.  So I have to warn you that the dros that you meet is, and it sounds humorous, but actually that's a big problem. You're not getting that many good quality people in your government IT infrastructure and their conservatism and their fear is what keeps them going back to daddy basically. And frankly until that changes, I don't think you're going to get the changes that you want. You may be right. I'd like to point out at this point that I'm not in government. You're probably using stronger language than I would. I think that there are some people that I've met who are working in the public sector and also in the voluntary sector providing public services who are more open to innovation. And as more public services are being provided by the voluntary sector by smaller organisations, by different kinds of people who are drawn from different experience, different backgrounds and so on, I hope that there'll be more openness to innovation. So I think we've got to try and get the best outcome that we can rather than say that we can't do anything in the prior. You're correct about that. I think the voluntary sector is actually very different from the kind of the state let's go and use EDS and Microsoft sort of people because of course they can't. They have to say we are actually using the money we've received from the charity or whatever responsibly and they're beginning to get that point. Absolutely, absolutely. And as I say, more public services are being delivered now and are going to be delivered in the future through the voluntary sector, through organisations which perhaps don't carry that civil service culture or civil service mentality. So maybe that's an opportunity. Any more questions? One up at the back there. You were arguing that software that's paid for by the taxpayers should be open to use by the taxpayers and that's fine but there's a parallel argument about other types of information that's produced by the taxpayers money for instance maps or weather data or various kinds of statistics that's gathered by the government. In the US there is normally data that is produced by the government is not covered by copyright. I'm not sure what the state is in the UK or Scotland but normally you don't have that type of legislation. So what are your thoughts on that? It does vary from different parts of the public sector to different parts of different levels of government as well. I've come up against a similar problem with maps myself and political parties do. Political parties like to have maps of the areas that they want to canvas. So the door knocking and the canvassing can be up to date and taking kind of changes. And sometimes you find that yes you're allowed to have the map but you're not allowed to use it for XYZ purposes. So you have to go in saying I'm going to use it for something else completely. That's a kind of silly example that's the sort of thing that simply shouldn't happen but it does vary from different levels of government. The Scottish Parliament I noticed just about a week ten days ago announced that it was having a consultation on its copyright policy. And hopefully I'll be able to try and nudge them in the right direction in terms of information that Parliament produces. Not just the official records of parliamentary business are all public but there are constraints over. The yellow one says five minutes I think. Sorry about that. There are constraints over what we're allowed to use the video. You can get the streaming video from parliamentary business on the Parliament website. If you use Linux you can download it pretty easily. If you use Windows you can't which is nice. Or at least I haven't found a Windows program that will do it. There probably is one out there isn't there. But there are constraints over what you're allowed to use that video for. And there shouldn't be those kind of constraints. I should be able to use video of myself saying making speeches in the chamber for pretty much any reason, any purpose. I can't think of any reason to restrain that at all. And people should be able to copy and share that information as well because it's public debate and it should be public record. Hello. If I remember rightly from the last election the Greens have policies on community-led government. And I was wondering to what extent in your experience of community-led Linux has shaped those policies. I think there is a strong parallel. I think for me one of the things that the free software movement represents is something which couldn't have been created by a political movement. It was created for a political purpose and someone designed a movement like that and said this is what it's going to achieve. Organically it grew from individuals. But it somewhere sits between the slightly left libertarian ideas that do sit in the Green Party's tradition. But also the individualist tradition which at the moment is kind of co-opted by the political right. A collaborative process is very much about a corporate source and a corporate set of controls about what a product can be used for. It's about what individuals can contribute, what they can get out of it. But it's not about individual ownership and possession and the kind of materialistic individualism which has characterised politics in the last 20 or 30 years in this country certainly. So it kind of sits somewhere between the left and the right concepts of individualism and individual libertarianism for me personally anyway. Does that make any sense or am I rambling? Okay. I think there's probably about time for one more question. We're running out of time but there's one at the back there. I was wondering if you could make a start by hiring researchers who are friendly to the cause rather than simply hiring people that have been in the party for the longest amount of time or have contributed the most money or whatever. Very few people have contributed very much to the Green Party at all but that's one of our problems. For all of our paid positions we do publicly advertise and one of the things that I've found really valuable about that is that we do bring in new people who end up volunteering for the party after they started working for us in the parliamentary group. There's a range to be honest.  Others are much more kind of equal ops about the whole thing and do a full public recruitment process. It's possible that a new set of roles will come in about that because the parliament wants to act as the employer for MSPs staff even though MSPs would recruit. The parliament would be the employer and it would make sure that they got treated a lot better. Some research would get treated pretty badly by their employers. If that was to happen then you might have a single policy on recruitment processes but politicians like anybody else are a range, a broad range of people, some of them very hard working, very disciplined and very committed to their principles and others maybe less so it's just a group of human beings like any other group. I hope some of this has been vaguely interesting. It's probably been a bit different from what you've been hearing for the rest of the day. I hope it's been relevant to what you've been hearing in the rest of the day and if you do want to get in touch and help me take forward my thoughts about how we try and influence government, how we try and influence the wider public sector to be a little better on this. We're right on the button with the red piece of paper saying time up so that's very good. Thanks very much for your questions and for your time.


Now tomorrow in this building we will be welcoming back our cabinet, all of our cabinet, all of our Deputy Ministers, all of the First Nations Chiefs in British Columbia to this building for our third annual meeting of First Nations. We call it the All Chiefs Gathering and we're the only place in the country that does this and we are proud of that because we are also proud of the fact that we are home to one third of Canada's First Nations and that is part of finding our way on the road to reconciliation between First Nations and non-First Nations people. It is not a straight road, it's a sometimes a bumpy road but it's a road that we are all determined to travel down together and so today I want to make two announcements that are part of that journey toward reconciliation with First Nations. Government of BC and BC Ferries are now committed to a new seasonal direct ferry service, direct ferry service between Port Hardy and Bella Cula and we are also investing as part of this about $200,000 in the Bella Cula airport to help them build a new terminal that's going to really be able to welcome people from around the world. I want to thank Premier Christie Clark, Transportation Minister Todd Stone and Tourism Minister Shirley Bond for the commitment and trusted place in our mid-coast working group that has dedicated time and attention to creating a new tourism vision for mid-coast British Columbia. The announcement today was created by a collective effort of First Nations and non-aboriginal tourism partners that have agreed to work together to ensure tourism along mid-coast British Columbia grows. Aboriginal tourism doesn't grow in isolation on its own, it grows with partners in the non-aboriginal tourism sector.


Build an incredible chest and an incredible back with this one tip. 20 push-ups five times during the day. This is called greasing the groove or practicing the movement. Let's say you could do 10 pull-ups all at once. Well then why don't you try doing three pull-ups five times a day. Just walk by a pull-up bar, do three pull-ups, and then maybe an hour or two later do it again. Practice all day long. Watch what happens to your strength.


Be afraid. Be very afraid. The developer cup. An epic battle. 12 mighty champions. Strong women. But of course I'm never wrong. I'm Lisa the Functionator. I might be small, but I'm mighty. Nice guys. This is Garrett, the Harbinger of Development Reef. Unique beings. Hi, I'm the Mad Optimizer. Greetings, scrawny humans. I'm Diego Van Cabello, the Steady Piano Ballet Seal. The door for babies. International stars. Hi there. I'm coaching two mini-parameters, a coach. And even a puppy. Hi there. My name is Parran, the notorious ERD Smith. So, you came to see a show? Got your news for you. There will be blood. Oh my. See you in the ring. See you in the ring. See you in the ring. See you in the ring.


I'm an old earth creationist, and I think many times people misunderstand that position. This particular position would argue that Genesis 1 is a historical description of God's creative activity, but that the days of Genesis 1 are not 24 hours, but rather long periods of time. And in the original Hebrew, the word that's translated as day is yom, which can literally mean a period of time. And so you could argue that an old earth perspective, a day-age perspective, is a literal reading of Genesis 1, not figurative or metaphorical. It's a literal reading of Genesis 1. And again, I would look at Genesis 1 as a historical description of God's creative work. It's not telling us everything that God did, but rather highlights. It's selecting certain miracles that God performed and communicating that information to us. So that's how I would understand what Genesis 1 is teaching, and that particular perspective now is compatible with scientific measurements for the antiquity of the earth and the antiquity of the universe at 13.8 billion years and 4.5 billion years with respect to the age of the earth. It also looks to me as if there's been life on the planet for 3.8 billion years as well. So I would see the fossil record as revealing a real history of life on earth, but instead of the fossil record showing an evolutionary history of life, I believe it actually shows a history where God is intervening, orchestrating the history of life to bring glory to himself, but also to prepare the planet for ultimately the arrival of human beings. When you look at the fossil record, instead of seeing gradual evolutionary transformations, you see explosive appearances every time there's biological innovation. In fact, Eugene Kuhn and a scientist at NIH argues that the history of life on earth is a series of biological big bangs, where there are again explosive appearances of new biological capacities at key times in life's history that don't seem to have any intermediate forms. It's just simply going from one level of complexity to another in an explosive manner. That to me looks as if it is a fingerprint for the creator. So an old earth creationist would argue that the age of the earth is indeed old, but would argue that that is compatible with a literal reading of Genesis 1 as history, and this position is also very strongly anti-evolutionary in its viewpoint as well. So it is a creationist position, and actually many of the characteristics of the old earth position are in common with the young earth view in terms of how we understand the origin of humanity, in terms of our criticism of the evolutionary paradigm. The primary difference would be how we understand day in Genesis 1 and whether or not we think the earth is literally young or is in fact old. So there's a lot of agreement between the young earth view and the old earth view, and unfortunately many times people tend to highlight the differences and overlook the fact that there's a lot of similarities these two positions have.


The Jack Benny Program, presented by Lucky Strike.  If you've been missing smoking joy and really want some fast, try better tasting Lucky Strike for pleasure that will last. Yes, Lucky's taste better than any other cigarette. Yes, Lucky's taste better than any other cigarette. So many folks don't like their smokes and that is really sad. For Lucky's mildness and rich taste would make them very glad. Sure, because Lucky's taste better than any other cigarette. Friends, when we say Lucky's taste better than any other cigarette, we mean just that. Not just as good, but better. For Lucky's always give you real mildness and rich, true tobacco taste. A perfect blending that fine tobacco and only fine tobacco can give you. And LS MFT, Lucky Strike means fine tobacco. That's important because a recent 38 city survey shows that millions of smokers are not happy with their present brand. Now those smokers and any smoker who's the least bit discontented should switch to Lucky Strike.  Because Lucky's taste better than any other cigarette. Be happy, go lucky, go lucky, strike today. Remember, Lucky's taste better than any other cigarette. Program starring Jack Bed, Rochester Dynasty and yours truly done. Well, ladies and gentlemen, let's go out to Jack Benny's house in Beverly Hills. I know he's home because his car is in the garage. Now, if you just follow me, we'll go in and pay Jack a visit. And you needn't ask me to leave because you're going to sit there and listen to what I've got to say. Oh, better not go in. Seems to be some sort of a commotion going on.  And believe me, I'm talking for everybody in this neighborhood. Why, when you first moved in, we thought you were a nice, gentle, kindly old man. But before we knew it, you had the mortgages on all our houses. I don't blame you for not saying anything.  And why? But you know that that last trick you pulled was the cheapest, most abominable thing anybody ever did. Imagine putting a woman with seven children out on the sidewalk because she missed one payment. Rochester, turn off that radio. You have just heard another episode in that thrilling story, The Mean Old Man. In tomorrow's episode, you will hear the truth. Thanks, Rochester. I don't know why you listen to that program, boss. It always upsets you. Well, I don't know where they get those fantastic ideas. I mean, nobody can be that cheap. Well... And that corny title, The Mean Old Man, it's ridiculous. Mr. Benning's resident star of stage, screen, radio, and the only laundry service that was wasted a commercial on you. Livingston, boss. Thanks. Hey, how do you feel? What? I'm great. Mary, that's awful. Oh, your temperature. I thought you meant the doctor, Bill. You're feeling better. And Mary, what? Oh, you're welcome, Mary. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Now, I'll call you tomorrow, honey. Goodbye. What you thinking for, boss? Well, everybody's been sending her flowers and fruit and candies, so... I just thought I'd be a little different. What did you send her? A bowl of chili. You know, it's good in this nippy weather. Anyway, it looks like Miss Livingston will be back on the program next week. That's good. If you don't need me anymore now, boss, I'll go in the library and finish working on your scrapbook. Oh, fine, fine, Rochester.  I know, boss. That's why I put the picture of you shaking hands with the King of England right on the front cover. Good, good. What's on the back cover? An ad, you sold the space to Manushevitz. Manushevitz is wild. I had a hunch all day. The face, I went over it with him a thousand times. Manushevitz is Manushevitz. Rochester, paste that picture of me playing the violin on the inside cover. Oh, I can't. We've got that reserved for certain. What are you laughing at? You've got the only scrapbook that's been handled by Baton, Barson, Durstin and Osborne. Well, you go in the library and paste all my reviews in it. Yes, sir. I'll get it. Be my love, da-dee-da-dee-da-da-da-do. Be my love, da-da-da-da-dee-da-do. Well, hello, Mr. Brown. Hello, Mr. Benny. I'm sorry I'm three days late with a rent on our house. But here it is. Oh, thank you. By the way, Mr. Benny, our hot water heater is leaking. Do you think maybe you could have it fixed? Well, see, plumbing costs are awfully high now, you know. I guess they are. But it's been months since you promised to paint the living room. Well... I fixed the hole in the roof myself. Well, good, good. Well, I guess I'll be running along. Goodbye, Mr. Benny.  I mean, what's she doing now? Oh, haven't you heard? She writes that radio program, The Mean Old Man. Yes, I listen to it every day. Your wife has quite an imagination. Yeah, yeah, imagination. Goodbye, Mr. Benny. Goodbye. Who was it, boss? Mr. Brown from Long Beach. Oh, you know, he's been complaining a long time about a hole in the roof. It's fixed. It's fixed. But, boss, I don't remember you sending anyone down to fix it. If I say it's fixed, it's fixed. If you don't believe me, listen to tomorrow's episode and you'll find out. By the way, Rochester, is my television script arrived from CBS? No, not yet, boss. I don't know what's holding it up. I've got so much memorizing to do. Now, that must be it now. Come in. Oh, hello, Mr. Benny. Oh, it's you, Dennis. Come on in. Thank you. How do you feel, kid? Oh, fine, thanks. How are your folks? They're fine, too. That's good. Especially my father. After six months, they finally took the cast off his foot. In a cast for six months? Uh-huh. Dennis, what was wrong with your father's foot? Oh, nothing. He stepped in a bucket of cement. For heaven's sake, look, kid, I can understand your father stepping in a bucket of cement. I can almost understand him standing there and letting the cement dry. But why? I mean, why would he keep it on his foot for six months? Well, my mother made him. What? When he stayed out late at night, he couldn't tiptoe into the house.   Oh, two weeks ago, it came in handy. How? I was invited to a masquerade, and Papa went as a potted palm. Do me a favor, will ya? What? As long as you've got your mouth open, sing. Don't talk. Okay. Man of chevets is one. Gee, thank you. You know, I can't understand you, kid.  And then you sing. And when you sing, you're a completely different person. What are you, a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Uh-huh, and each one has its own show. Long, Mr. Benny. Oh, say, Mr. Benny. Now what? Can I have your permission to do a guest spot tomorrow in a dramatic program? Dramatic program? What's the name of it? The mean old man. They got a wonderful part for me where I fix a hole in the roof. Do it, do it. Remember my television script hasn't arrived yet? Not yet. Well, I'm gonna call CBS and see what's holding it up. To me, there's something bothering you. What is it? First one, quartet, there, man, because I'm here. Well, that's ridiculous. Commercial. Haven't you, boys? And you should get more money than the quartet. You've been with me 17 years. But Jack Sentiment shouldn't enter into this. After all, there are four of them. But, Don, every year you've been picked as Radio's outstanding announcer. I know, Jack, but now let's be fair about it. They should get the same salary I get. Don, if you feel that strongly about it, there should be an adjustment. I mean, how much am I paying the quartet now? $100 a week. Well, Don, if it'll make you feel better starting next week, I'll cut you down to the same. It's amazing that I didn't think of that myself. Well, Don, now that it's all settled, what's this song the boys have? Well, Jack, you know, in the past few weeks everybody seems to be catching cold. So they're a little worried about you and they want you to take care of yourself. Oh, isn't that sweet. Let's hear it, fellas. Well, I saved a little money by cutting down salary. But I lost a little, too. After all, I'm his agent. Yes, sir, how'd you know I was gonna call it? Beverly Hills Beaver, Joey, Stevie, and Bud. I'm Mrs. Broderick. Won't you come in? Thank you. I hope we're not intruding, Mr. Benny, but the boys insisted I come here. You see, Butch idolizes you so much and... And what, Mrs. Broderick? It's like this, Mr. Benny. Butch has a tooth with a cavity in it. It's gotta be pulled. And he's afraid to go to the dentist. Is that right, Butch? I'm sure if you told him to go, he would. You see, you're his hero. I am? I'm kind of thrilled myself. Talking to the man who used to play football under the name of Red Grange. You want to be just like Mr. Benny. Maybe someday you, too, will be on the Harvard rowing team. Let me see your tooth. Oh, Mr. Benny, were you on the Harvard rowing team? Butch. Butch, let me see your tooth. Mr. Benny, tell Butch's mother about the day you... Butch. Butch, let me look at your tooth. They won the rowing regatta, knocked a home run at the Yankee Stadium at the same time. Please, let me look at your tooth. Wing, and still hit a home run in the Yankee Stadium. Well, uh... Rochester, what are you doing here? I'm coming down to the dentist's office with this. It's just around the corner, Dr. Kerns. Oh, oh, Dr. Kerns. Anyway, I'll get Butch in the dentist's chair. Well, I'll be glad to go along. Oh, by the way, Mrs. Broderick, how much... do you expect to pay to have Butch's tooth pulled? Well, I'd say about five dollars. Five dollars. Oh, Rochester. No, no, boss. The plight is a rusty. I just wanted to tell you I'm taking Butch to the dentist. Now, come on, Butch. Yes, yes. Which one is to have the tooth pulled? The one with the yo-yo. The one with the propeller is Mr. Benny. You in a moment. Thank you. Now, look, Butch.  Remember that, Butch, and you'll never have any more trouble. Hey, Butch, be sure the dentist gives you some of that stuff Mr. Benny invented, that penicillin. Look, Butch, there's really nothing to it. Having a tooth pulled is a very simple... Next, please. You may take him in now, Mrs. Broderick. Come, Butch. I'll be right back. Certainly. Now, look, Doc, I want to show Butch that having a tooth pulled doesn't hurt at all. Well, it really doesn't. I know, but we've got to convince Butch. So I'll sit in the chair, you make the lead that you're pulling my tooth, and I'll make a big nothing out of it. That's an excellent idea. All right. Come, sit right down in the dentist chair. I'm going to have my tooth pulled. Mr. Benny, open your mouth. Watch this, Butch. Nothing to it. Would you please open your mouth again, Mr. Benny? The bicuspid, it has to come out. The doctor doesn't hurt. I don't want to get my tooth pulled. Pulling your tooth, that will be $5. You can deduct it from next month's rent. Come on, kids, let's get out. Now, let's listen as our happy-go-lucky singer salute the month of March. Lucky's taste better than any other cigarette. In rain or shine or snow this Lucky's taste better than any other cigarette. Lucky's taste better than any other cigarette. Now that is a fact. For fine tobacco and only fine tobacco always gives you that perfect combination of real mildness and rich taste. And LS-MFT, Lucky Strike means fine tobacco. So if for any reason, you're not completely happy with your present cigarette. If it's too mild or too strong, switch to Lucky Strike for complete smoking enjoyment. You'll get mildness, smoothness and taste. All in one great cigarette, Lucky Strike. You'll agree, Lucky's taste better than any other cigarette. So be happy, go lucky. Make your next carton, Lucky Strike. Be happy, go lucky, go mine. Lucky's taste better than any other cigarette. Ice bag. Yes, sir. Then get me two more aspirins. Yes, sir. You know, boss, never mind that. Get me the ice bag.


Yeah, so hi So Niels and I began this project about I don't know three quarters of a years ago to try to improve the culture of the debut mentors mailing list and mostly I'm just going to talk about what we did and why and Afterwards in Q&A. I can talk a bit more about how it applies to other projects or what we were inspired by so First I hopefully you all know what you've gotten yourself into By coming here if you want to reach me You should email me as a shisha at a shisha org or I'm Paul Proteus on IRC and at Debian and this is me I want to know a little bit about you guys. I guess can I get a mic runner? like For you folks are Can I just get some introduction as to why you came to this talk or your relationship with the debut mentors list? Someone give me a hand. I Know who I am. You know who he is great. I wouldn't go so far as to say I know who I am, but I'm actually organizing a sponsors buff Tomorrow at 5 so I'm trying to think What to minimize overlap or somehow? Oh, yeah, I'll be there right so so you asked why I'm here So I'm sorry. It's a boring answer, but I'm here to make sure that our two things go together. Well, cool anyone else like Yeah Hi, I'm a rico Vini from from desk and I think Mentors is an very important part of joining Debian and so I'm happy to be here cool I'm Jimmy Kaplow. It's and Enough of my And I know enough people who write software that they may want to get into Debian and I'm trying to just get a sense of the current and Desired future State of Debian mentors to figure out a good way to maybe induce them to be involved directly cool, so I'll take a second to say what led me to begin this effort in fact where I came from in Debian in general So my history with Debian was that I started out by lurking on the Debian mentors list six years ago And I was really excited about Debian. I thought after a few years of using after like five six years at that point using Debian and More and some number of years of using Ubuntu I thought I want to become a Debian developer and I think now I can so I made some packages I emailed the Debian mentors mailing list and I got some pretty helpful responses one of my packages had a Conflict that I hadn't declared with a different package and somebody helped me with that Nobody actually sponsored my package, but they did review it So I found people off-list to help with that and it wasn't so I was sort of Slowly getting involved. It took another year for me to find somebody who was consistently willing to sponsor my uploads and review my work and And I think that this process for me is a really important piece of the motivation of why I wanted to Look at the way that I've been mentors list work. It seems like a lot of the time Well, it seems like it doesn't always quite work. I had to sort of go outside it to find somebody and when people When people sponsored my packages, they didn't actually email the list back to say so so Then a year ago. I ran this brids of a feather session, which I'm running again soon called Debian for shy people and It was a general discussion of cultural problems in Debian and how we can get more contributions from people and So Nils and I talked for a while after that and we thought what are we going to do? Well, maybe we can just fix the entire mentorship process as a whole not just the mailing list but connecting people and Getting people to communicate with people who want to review their work and We decided that was a bit of a lot to do so we thought we would just focus on the Debian mentors mailing list so Then Nils PMed me a lot during July and August to try to follow up with me and I ignored his pms Because I wasn't sure I had time to fix all the mentorship and I wasn't even doing much sponsorship or review on the list at all and So I thought about what the problem was and I realized that for me for me I read the Debian mentors mailing list and I saw Things like this where there's almost 300 mailing and messages every month. That's good There's a lot of activity but 10% of those messages are unanswered threads They're messages where someone says I did this great work for Debian I tried my best here it is would anyone even take a look and if it's good, maybe upload it into Debian and about one of these messages a day comes through that nobody ever responds to and for me that was a big problem because It wasn't just that I I wasn't just unhappy that we were failing the new contributors and the Debian was slowing down in growth I was thinking more about how those people are Trying their best and we're just ignoring them and That's When you think about one person a day of practically showing up having done work for Debian and then us Saying nothing that just made me feel so bad times 28 people a month So I didn't even want to do packaging on the Debian mentors list because it's such a sad place and in addition In addition, I know that if I just do one or two or three extra reviews a month It's not going to have a huge impact in this 28 un-reviewed mail un-reviewed RFS's per month so I sent an email to the Debian mentors list explaining what I just told you and I figured that Neil's and I discussed this and we figured that Even if we just reply to people Even if we just reply saying sorry Nobody answered your mail, but it's not because we don't care about you. It's just because we're all busy That would probably be nicer than hearing nothing and So we set ourselves this goal that we would do that within four days that every message would get a reply within four days Who know who cares what the content to the reply is Hopefully it's a review But if it's not at least we're not leaving people on the floor so that's what we set out to do and We got some positive responses on the mailing list David DeLoe is somebody who on the Debian mentors list he only he submits a package once and if he Hopes as a reviewer and if not he just waits until there's new upstream release at which point he submits another package Hoping to get review Other people have figured out that you can submit packages multiple times So on the list you often see the second try third try thing But there's categories of people like David that just don't do that And so we're missing out on their contribution to Debian There were some enthusiastic responses like this one by Holger which basically says Go ahead What the way that we structured this was that Niels and I said that we were going to set this goal for ourselves we hope we'll succeed and If you want to help out that's cool, but this is really about us working on the list We're not saying everybody you must reply within four days and There were some other males that suggested that the problem was real This person is now a DM But at that point He suffered the same he was one of the people I was rightfully worried about I guess So one question you might have at this point is how we came up how we came up with this number of four days That's just sort of the average between two things that seem too small and too large To expect a reply one day seems too fast to expect or to get here nothing for a week seems like too long so for and and so I'll tell you now that it worked and then I'll tell you about five minutes how it didn't work but There's something we saw some really good progress so during November The number of unanswered messages was less than 1% which is a big change from 10% and crucially is only four over the whole month and This is especially remarkable because I actually didn't do any Review during November even though I said that I would sorry deals Leaving Niels holding the bag but also other people picked up from the hopeful enthusiasm that we set on the list There were lots of other people doing reviews and there always are lots of other people doing reviews But it just seemed like there's more reason to be realistically hopeful if you submit a package and So the number of messages also doubled and that stayed through that stayed true through December basically so about 2% of the messages went unanswered and much fewer than one per day and So I like to use this slide when I talk about this publicly outside of debcon, of course, we're being videoed So it's all over now But yeah, so we double the number of messages that unanswered threads went down 90% like success right and so I gave this talk at the Python conference and talked about how great this worked and Somebody actually left a comment on the video saying That he really appreciated My work doing this. This is actually the person who left who left a positive note in the beginning I realized recently And you know, it really did work that we got more package review and We like I I don't have a good way of tracking I would really like to know if more people during those successful months Have become DMs and DDs than on an average month because sort of that's the real metric of progress Not just how many packages get reviewed But the other thing is that a lot of other people on the mailing list showed up with their own ideas about how to improve the Debbie mentors culture and That was a good thing and the other thing that I actually did eventually by December start doing more package review So crucially for me, I solved the problem for myself Like I was scared of this list and I wasn't anymore So there were a bunch of naysayers on the mailing list Some people talked about how The The wall tabs in particular said that we need more people willing to do review We can't just solve the surface level problem of people being scared of the mailing list Michael Towschnig, I think is how you pronounce his name talked about how We need to get we can use the Debian mentees themselves as reviewers and that was a really good strategy and actually worked really well He's been apparently the one there's been this huge surge in review traffic recently on the list and that's from his mentees But I do want to cover some of the ways in which I failed so the I talked about how great it was that we decreased unanswered threads by 90% but By December it was going pretty well by January It's back up to almost one per day and actually in February it's even worse than it was in September 40 unanswered messages We got more traffic, but somehow lots of unanswered mail still and yeah, that continues through March I Think that the big reason that we that this We lost the momentum that we gained was that well there were two one of that we stopped saying we would succeed And the others that we didn't actually succeed I think that if we had if we set ourselves this four days goal again and Try to and hold ourselves to it and announce it and maybe maybe make it part of the fact that You should ping the list again when your mails don't get an answer in four days and mentors You should make sure that people get an answer in four days. I think we can go back to the November and December figures so the That's how he failed the things that I learned was that what I sort of already knew years ago But I forgot a lot of sponsorship happens off the list So a lot of the reason I'm worrying about these contributors whose mails don't get replied to is that for a handful of them They get reviews off list. They get uploads off list and nobody tells the list But it's great for that Mentee and great for that sponsor and great for the for Debbie as a whole You have it's bad for me because I look at the list and I worry about all the people not getting answers to their mails The other thing is that it did in fact take a little more effort than I thought I mean surely when I put in no effort during November that was bad, but The other thing is that we set up a script to Neal's wrote a script. I think to monitor which threads had not been responded to yet and the number of days that they have been waiting and Then I deployed the script, but then I failed to maintain it properly. So I kept showing results from the from the previous month and So that's the kind of thing where It would be nicer to have concerted effort and maybe more of a team So thanks Yeah, so That's sort of all I have for you in terms of how that went I can talk more about I Can talk more outside of the slides about where I got the idea to just Run this but I think that's pretty clear at this point What I really want to do I hope and maybe I can get a few more people involved in this in the next few days here at DevConf is to Create some sort of team of people who want to maybe trade off Making sure that people get answers to these mails so that it's not just Neal's and me holding the line But maybe it's Neal's and me for two weeks and then it's two other people for two different weeks So I think I want to end here and ask if any of you have questions or if you want to change other parts of the culture Or if you want to help me So thank you Well first, thank you for your effort. I mean, that's really appreciated. I think I Personally have problems with the Debian mentors made mailing list because it has too high traffic I mean it's more than 15 to 20 mails to read a day And that's I think something like eight to ten packages that have to be reviewed every day So it's it's huge and I I wonder about the idea of Refactoring the whole mentoring process because you said that when someone comes to the Debian Mentors mailing list with a package and with some work. That's work for Debian But I wonder and and if that's really work for Debian We all know that having more leave packages that are only maintained by one person for personal reasons Doesn't help Debian much so I wonder if we should not refactor the mentoring process to to Also have people avoid making work for nothing So because if we know from the start that well packaging This is not useful any in any case or you should do this in a team in which you can get sponsorship For your package that helps much even before that the work on the package has started and the problem of the Debian Mentors Mailing list is that you get the work once it's almost completely done and this filtering process and Directlying people to teams and maybe just tell them well you should not package this or Something more polite Yeah, and this work happens off-list or doesn't happen. So I mean I mean I think we should fix that Well, I guess I don't want it totally still for your buff So you should certainly bring that up tomorrow at the Debian Mentors buff, but just talk. Okay. Okay, cool Yeah, just to know a little more Approximately how many How many okay answers per month? Did you had to do in the golden days of November and December? So just to evaluate How okay how how much load the this project put on you like between two and five emails a month or something Maybe a few more, but sorry between two and ten. Okay emails a month and more over how many I'm I must admit I feel a bit guilty because I never helped the Debian Mentors mailing list and maybe somehow Someday I'll do but how many of the packages that That are Okay, that we have requests for sponsorships for in Debian Mentors mailing list could be Ham Okay moved to other specific mailing lists because in my opinion, this is an important issue too if we manage to Okay, so parade the RFS by Category by team work is More efficient and finds more people interested into so I'd like to know with which percentage in your opinion could Could be optimized with this idea. Thank you So I think I think the question with optimization is how What percent of the list could you move to other lists? Basically? At least 20% probably more You do a matter to that in particular Okay, well then the other thing I wanted to say is that a lot of the in the like 30 or total mails I sent in this four days effort, which you know, I've probably spent more time Preparing for this talk than I did it actually typing emails. It wasn't actually very much investment. It was more about the commitment the a Lot of those males were sending people to other mailing lists So what I find really surprising about well, what strikes me about the Debian Mentors is that you are You need some kind of systematic process to avoid having some mail getting lost and the way you implemented Fourth day's limit Basically is by distributing that process so that every reviewer look at the males and hopes that doesn't leave one goes through And I think that's the kind of stuff where we really you really need to move the process to somewhere else like a website With a really nice workflow, so you can track with responding to women. What's the status for each? Package and so on and I'm really surprised you don't mention expo because yeah That's exactly what you are doing with expo Debian net and I think that's moving Most of the content of Debian Mentors to that to that website. I would be well really change The way we deal with that. Yeah, I can quickly show that you should just talk about it for two minutes to give an idea of what people yeah Well, I'll quickly summarize what the expo is It's a product that was created about three years ago in summer of code and the summer of code project didn't quite finish successfully But it's been sort of half revived Well, the point of the summer of code project is to make a new code base for the mentor of that devine net website so in the beautiful future you'll be able to when you upload your source package the lintine output will be there on the web and You can Maybe do things like deb diffs between different revisions of the same package You can leave you can leave comments on the web not just on the mailing list Which might help traffic be more relevant on the mailing list Well, so basically shortly after this effort I started reviving the deb expo and We it's ready for use now So I can quickly show it But all it really is in a more a more colorful version of the mentors out Demi net site it does have a few new features like you can leave comments on a package on the web and The lintine output is on the web and there's a few other quality assurance checks But the other exciting thing is that the code is actually maintainable So it's really easy for people to add new quality assurance checks that are part of the package upload process And we could if we want to move a lot of package review to that and you could just leave comments on the web We could even have the unpacked source tar ball be viewable on the web so that you don't have to de-get at all you just To review you just read what's there I don't know if people want to alter the mentors workflow that dramatically, but maybe they do And the other thing we could do is yes Anyway, then then we could actually use a mentor's mailing list for questions not for a request for sponsorship basically So first of all thanks a lot because this kind of activities I find a really brilliant So as I mentioned sponsoring is often the first thing that someone encounter when he wants to work for that So giving an experience which is not frustrating or which is not like you know You're doing stuff that nobody wants. It's very very important for us That said to change the culture you essentially seems to have been doing that up to now the part Which is visible to applicants which is of course the first part because we have already given the experience to them that in Four days someone will will reply to them and someone will you know let them know that their work is not being ignored But then you need a second part So right now as you said you've done that only in two person and need to scale because otherwise we will be back at the same problem I know one years from now and what you have been doing in some sense reminded me of the use net days where you know Newsgroups used to you know set their own FAQ which were for all the participants So I've seen you have an FAQ on for the mentors at least it's mentioned on the website on the mailing list page But it seems it's mostly oriented to our You know applicants and not our mentors So maybe what you need to do is actually you know generalize this FAQ saying okay If you want to be a good citizen on the mentors list Well, you are every now and then please keep track of those mails so that all together we make it You know we we collaborate and we make the process less painful for everybody including mentors Just to make sure I understand it sounds like what you're saying is that you're suggesting that We optimize the mentors FAQ to help mentors not just mentees In addition. Yeah Okay a few questions from IRC The first one is regarding the static statistics you showed earlier The static statistics were on answers to messages not ERIFUS Receiving review, right? Did that happen or was the reduction in unanswered RFCs just Through sorry, I can't help you right now, but thanks anyway messages. I think most One of the things that Don Armstrong brought up in that thread was that in the initial four-day thread where I Proposed the idea with Niels was that it's important that we have a way to tell Perspective packages and mentors is good. You did this work, but we don't actually want that package, which is kind of like what you were saying and So to actually answer the question from IRC, I think that most of those emails were Some it's hard to tell which which ones You know in September there were what 26 or so unanswered threads and then in November there were three or four or five or something Which so then there's like 120 threads which one of those do I point at and say these are the ones that my four days effort caused the reply to There very very few of the total number of messages though were about us being too busy Most of it was I think like one or two or three were like that. Most of them were actually review or Saying this you your email your email will be better off on the other list Okay Another question. Well, actually it will be two questions baked into one Observing the current mentors culture I see a large technical variance on requirements Sponsors require from them from their sponsors and the time varying probability of getting sponsored There is a chance a good package which shows up at a wrong time Not getting sponsored while others occasionally perhaps of not so much a good quality Benefit from a mess fly by sponsoring which seems to happen every once in a while How to address this problem to provide everyone the same chance and Related to this There is a varying Well, there are many sponsors and they all have different standards on what they accept For example, some sponsors require depth five formats copyright files while others just Suggested Is there perhaps a way to arrive at Something common. Well, you can do it to answer you can use a second question to partially answer the first So if you just you know, hypothetically if you want the maximum chance of sponsorship You should comply with the most stringent guidelines mostly People are happy to sponsor DH seven or eight packages that like check all the boxes Depth five readable copyright Clean linchin I try to remember what the other Uncommon requirements are by sponsors. I don't think there's that much divergence in the requirements It's just sort of how stringent are they mostly is that they don't disagree. Is that a fair assessment? Well, the other thing about well, you should have to move them like this direction, but the other thing about Getting a fair chance like you said, there's so many emails. I don't know A second and third try emails are probably the best way So I think the idea of peer review is great I mean, I think that's got to be part of the culture or it will collapse But it is already no, I mean not I mean that that people submitting packages to be sponsored should also Yeah, helping with reviewing but unfortunately It's not It also adds I'm noise is not the right word, but it makes it harder for mentees to know what are the real requirements and What are the things that other mentees are repeating? That you know the sort of the rage of the newly converted So in fact the advice from mentees tends to be even stricter Then then then I would give myself. Yeah, you know, they tend to interpret every suggestion as policy must and So so I mean, I don't know what the right answer is it but it but it's part of what's going on here the the feeling of you know a Plethora of requirements that that mentees are seeing so I can give you a Let me tell you about how a different project handles this in a way that Debian probably will never accept But works pretty well for them So memo my mo memo They have an extra's repository and in that repository anyone can submit packages your They have a review process though like sort of like what we do There's though is very clear so When you submit a package there are some clear rules as to when it will migrate into the actual extras repository And out of the staging ground those rules are it has to have been there for ten days It has to have a karma of ten or higher and a karma means a karma is a review of somebody a user actually trying the program trying to resolve the deb Running the program making sure the program actually works and that's not a package quality quality required check so much it is a well, it's not about The details of the package quality so much as that the package at least works And you have to get at least ten upvotes to meet that jump and the other is that You have to have three people who are actually on the QA team of my mo extras to give you a plus one so the I've met the one of people who's involved in my mo and In October and he was super enthusiastic about this really clear mechanism and of course we have nothing like that So yeah, obviously we should just say if your package has been on mentors that I mean not net for ten days And it's had ten positive votes and at least three developers say this seems okay You should automatically move in unstable, right? maybe not so the Debian Mentors mailing list is is really for review of Packages packaging or is it better done elsewhere? I mean the mailing list doesn't seem like a great place for coordinating Reviews in an efficient manner. If I was going to review a package. It might take me a day or two and In that time somebody else might be reviewing it as well Maybe it would be better if we were both reviewing different packages and we wanted some coordination between us and is Does is that sort of thing a problem? I? Don't really think so. I mean sometimes people say I'll review this and then they're viewed in a day or two, right? But what do you guys think? Sorry the latency is so high with the mic So essentially you're making a point of the risk of some race condition, but actually if you have two concurrent reviews It's not necessarily bad I mean You're right You're right I'm gonna confuse the video team dramatically by so this is Mike also on That is an ambience Mike just Noise and it only goes to the stream not the speakers then I wonder if people can share my headset Mike and then we can have two simultaneous Mike things okay, we can move the mic around, but the other question in terms of your statistics Yeah, when You were saying males were unanswered. I assume that you cut off four days prior to the end of the month. I I sort of eyeballed it like I Looked at the last blob of the month, and then I checked the following month and didn't count them if they have replies okay, I Just took a look at the our EVU Tool from Ubuntu do we have some first-hand information about this because it just seems like Mentors that they've ended net on steroids. I mean You can access and an unpacked source version you can have access to the DSC the changes file you can comment on So and you can mark the package as reviewed once as advocated etc So I wonder if we could just or additionally adopt this tool for us or for our needs Because it just seems like it's collaborative review and you can add comments specifically on packages and files That's right. So I wonder if we have some more information on the fact on if it's doable or not and by whom Danny you have first-hand information. Otherwise, I can relay second-hand information in practice. I guess you may also You may also use review Okay, right So review doesn't work very well in practice because in Ubuntu we don't have enough people reviewing stuff on review and People some people are very persistent and keep coming on to IRC is saying can you please review my package and often? It's a package that we really don't want in the archive We're all it might be okay and Debian But there's there's no particular reason to get it into Ubuntu where no one's ever going to maintain it in the future So these packages go with our review for years at a time and it's probably pretty demotivating to everyone involved on the other hand if there's a package that does need to get into the Ubuntu archive say it's something related to it's an indicator or something Ubuntu specific and the reviewer with the Mentory can persuade a Ubuntu developer that this should get into the archive and that personal come back and repeatedly review it Then I think it works quite well because you can see all the history of the review you can see that every change that was made and It's a bunch of developers have a button. They can press to advocate. It's a little shield will appear saying this was advocated So that that echoes some second some things that I heard from other Ubuntu people earlier at the conference and But at the one of the key things that they were telling me is that? Ubuntu doesn't really want to keep using review for new sort of leaf packages Unless it's crucial to Ubuntu. Yeah, I'm gonna get her stuff We've been talking about putting a banner on it saying please don't use this unless you really need to yeah something else about it because the comments on it are Restricted to the website and aren't on a mailing list You just don't notice when your packages appear unless you go looking for them It might be really useful to bridge website comments with the mailing list somehow so So DebExpo does about half of that you can see that at expo.debian.net I Can show you it's gonna be kind of wobbly and Let's see Very exciting Pardon me. Okay good Yeah, oh unless I'm not very online And this is the part where my Privacy later proxy settings slow me down There yeah The look is likely to change But the difference between this and mentors.debian.net in particular is that this is maintainable so we can add features like that to it What I've wanted to do is bring this up to the point where we can deploy it to replace mentors.debian.net And it's basically at that point now. I need to finish figuring out exactly what server it'll be on But after that point, I kind of want to step back and let other people Mostly be patching it and deciding what features it should have so if you want if you like writing Python and making web apps then Really really we need help with this and I'm also very willing to tell people Exactly what lines to change or what part of the code to change and I will deploy patches quickly Just to look at a package for example If dim and keeper on IRC is watching then hi and also thanks for your work on expo too This is his package and you can see there's the linty not put at least and It does things like check the watch file to make sure that The newest version is the one we're using and actually in this case there's a new upstream so I imagine he'll be giving me a new package to upload soon and You can leave comments There's no state changing like the review app has for like when a developer marks it as advocating for the package But of course that would be easy to add Was there anything else you wanted me to point out about this Lucas? Anything else in particular to say about expo or just to show it Besides it looks really promising. I don't have anything else Yeah Lucas also proposed a feature which I really hope somebody is willing to implement and if you are then I will find you Want to talk about it. You're going to talk about when you talk about the okay, so the first thing that I'd like is Currently we have something like debian mentors on one side and teams on the other side and most teams Reviewing process is suboptimal means people Ask for sponsoring and then get Get forgotten even on teams and it would be nice if actually team could teams could use expo To manage their own sponsorship queue. That is if you could propose a package on expo and have a box that says okay this Package is probably something that the you as a ruby team could sponsor and then the team could have a special Special expo view where all the package of interest to that team would be listed We could even do something crazy like have it automatically email the RFS to that team list Do you want that would be fine? Okay to get notified in some way or? And the other thing that's the one that I wanted that thing is awesome because that'll move a lot of traffic and the other things that I interested I'm interested in on is Turning this into a kind of social website where every user can review as a package get Karma points if they do good reviews and stuff like that just want to reach Also none did these to do reviews and get their packages ranked higher because they are listed as a more Experienced more experienced package or and stuff like that. I think there's a huge potential once we have a clean code base and I Guess in brother grudge the Ubuntu experience for review It seems like you had this tool that did a bunch of the things that Lucas described except for notifying teams But you still didn't that people didn't end up using the web tool to do a package review Is that because people don't like filling in web forms or is it? For some other is just because the packages are of stupid leaf things that it doesn't want Yeah, he just said that people were using review for review, but it was hard to know to come back again Apparently I have a minute but you all okay one one of the idea had thought for the Review process that I'm not going to subscribe to the mentors mainly because as it said way too much mail But I'm willing to do a review now and then so in spite of these Dating websites. I saw that actually we could have some come kind of automated met match system They would match a package pending for review and some Gds that works in similar fields and Yeah, and thanks and Rico has shown shown me a script that is doing that similarly for NM and I'm writing it right now So probably I could have something to have to expose that could automatically send emails to Gds I could would be interested in doing some reviewing like being bugged bugged a little bit, but That's one idea there to encourage the process. Yeah While walk them while you walk the mic to pads. I hope you will unless we're out of time You can imagine on expo signing up to say I'm willing to be randomly assigned one thing per week And then it'll email you in particular So so Jeremy's idea was basically one of the reasons that their bexbow was started So we could add that sort of thing to mentors Which wasn't maintainable Right and perhaps is one of the people who has been working on expo here and there. So thanks to him too All right. Thank you. Sheesh Thanks