More on Debian as a social, quasi-familiar project

I have long wanted to echo Gregor’s beautiful Debian Advent Calendar posts. Gregor is a dear project member and a dear friend to many of us Debianers, who has shown an amount of stamina and care for the project that inspires everybody; this year, after many harsh flamefests in the project (despite which we are moving at a great rate towards a great release!), many people have felt the need to echo how Debian –even as often seen from the outside as a hostile mass of blabbering geeks– is actually a great place to work together and to create a deep, strong social fabric — And that’s quite probably what binds the project together and ensures it will continue existing and excelling for a long time.

As for the personal part: This year, my Debian involvement has –once again– reduced. Not because I care less about Debian, much to the contrary, but because I have taken several responsabilities which require my attention and time. Technically, I’m basically maintaining a couple of PHP-based packages I use for work (most prominently, Drupal7). I have stepped back of most of my DebConf responsabilities, although I stay (and will stay, as it’s an area of the project I deeply enjoy doing) involved. And, of course, my current main area of involvement is keyring-maint (for which I have posted here several status updates).

I have to say that we expected having a much harder time (read: Stronger opposition and discussions) regarding the expiry of 1024D keys. Of course, many people do have a hard time connecting anew to the web of trust, and we will still face quite a bit of work after January 1st, but the migration has been a mostly pleasant (although clearly intensive) work. Jonathan has just told me we are down to only 306 1024D keys in the keyring (which almost exactly matches the “200-300” I expected back at DC14).

Anyway: People predicting doomsday scenarios for Debian do it because they are not familiar with how deep the project runs in us, how important it is socially, almost at a family level, to us that have been long involved in it. Debian is stronger than a technical or political discussion, no matter how harsh it is.

And, as a personal thank-you: Gregor, your actions (the GDAC, the RC bug reports) inspire us to stay active, to do our volunteer work better, and remind us of how great is it to be a part of a global, distributed will to Do It Right. Thanks a lot!

Comments

Andy Cater 2014-12-24 10:32:00

Feliz Navidad para tu y toda la famila de Debian

Y que todos sean felices :)

Raquel Chestnut 2015-01-05 02:43:00

Yes, in this year we all

Yes, in this year we all supposed to be more happier than before with more positive energy.. Thanks Gregor and Debian.