[loki at fosdem.org: FOSDEM 2010: Distribution Miniconf]

[martin f krafft]

----- Forwarded message from Pascal Bleser <loki at fosdem.org> -----

Hi all

If you wonder why you receive this email, it's either because you've
been a contact for your respective distribution at FOSDEM in the past,
or because I'm looking for contacts with distribution projects where we
didn't have any in the past ;)

If this email is best sent to another person, please forward it accordingly.

You probably all heard of FOSDEM before. If not, FOSDEM ==
http://fosdem.org ;)

The next edition is 6+7 February 2010, and it's also our 10th edition.
As such, we've been reflecting on the evolution of the event (in the
sense that our mission and what it has become is rather a platform for
FOSS projects, much more than just a conference, or at least that's what
we'd like FOSDEM to become), and we are introducing a change regarding
Developer Rooms for distribution projects.

We would like to push the envelope of our mission even further by
organizing something along the lines of a "distribution summit" during
FOSDEM 2010 (incidentally, I had that idea long before I heard of the
"distrosummit" that will be held at linuxconf.au, a few weeks before
FOSDEM but hey, it's far away, and FOSDEM is the European event of the
year ;D).

The idea is that rather than having several distributions with their own
respective and individual Developer Room, we will host mixed conference
rooms where talks and sessions will be organized _by topic_, with
contributors from all distributions attending and participating.

The reasoning behind it is manifold:

* most distributions have their own events nowadays (FUDcon, debconf,
openSUSE conf, EuroBSDCon, etc...), which are already used for topics
and matters that are specific to each of them

* FOSDEM is an almost unique occasion to meet and exchange with
contributors of many major FOSS projects, given the large amount of
visitors (~5000) and projects present during the weekend — we believe
that not taking profit of that constellation is a bad use of the tool
that is FOSDEM :)

* the number of distributions requesting Developer Rooms at FOSDEM is
very likely to rise in the future, given that Gentoo didn't send a
request in time last edition and that Ubuntu didn't ask until now (but
I'm assuming that it is likely to happen at some point in time ;)), as
well as Mandriva having unfortunately been turned down by us due to lack
of space (and there's really no reason to accept the usual suspects and
having to say no to Mandriva, or almost any other distribution project
for that matter)

To dive into a little more detail:

* 3 (large) rooms will be allocated for that "distro summit"
* sessions will be scheduled by topic (see below)
* every project is welcome to join in :)

Note that stands are not affected in any way and will be handled as
previous editions (i.e. send us a request:
http://fosdem.org/2010/call_for_stands)

Topics are something I need your feedback and ideas on: whatever you
think is appropriate as a topic that is recurring issue for
distributions (governance, feature tracking, trust mechanisms,
ambassadors, ...), or something where you would like to present your
solutions for specific tasks to other distributions (e.g. package
building, translations, bug tracking, community infrastructure, ...),
especially if you're interested in feedback, ideas and collaboration
from and with other projects... we'd love to hear about it :)

Given that, when I'm switching caps, I'm myself deeply involved into a
distribution project (openSUSE), I do have a few proposals in terms of
topics — and please don't shoot if most examples I'm giving are related
to openSUSE, it's just because it happens to be the distribution project
I know best:

* Packaging:
~~~~~~~~~~~~
- present different toolsets for handling the burden of packaging a
distribution as well as additional repositories (e.g. openSUSE Build
Service)
- have a few packaging subsystem sessions, where the current state of
RPM/yum/zypp/..., dpkg/apt, emerge, ports, etc... are presented, as well
as their respective roadmaps for the future
- evolve/adapt repository metadata formats ?

* Localization:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- how to handle collaborative translations ? (e.g. transifex)
- localization of distribution documentation, project wikis, etc...
- how to coordinate with upstream ?

* Community Infrastructure:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- FedoraCommunity, opensourced LaunchPad, Bugzilla extensions, etc...

* Test and QA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* Governance:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- boards, elections, technical control of the distribution, ...
- ambassador programs, LoCo teams, etc...
- legal issues

* Working with upstream:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- have a few sessions with major upstream projects present at FOSDEM
(Mozilla, GNOME, KDE, ...) on how to improve/optimize collaboration
between downstream (distributions) and upstream (developers), e.g. for
patches


Unless somebody has some time to spare and steps up, which would be more
than welcome, we will take care of handling the coordination of the
session proposals, as well as the schedule.

If you're interested in participating, please contact us ASAP at
devrooms at fosdem.org
The most practical option will be to subscribe to a mailing-list:
http://lists.fosdem.org/mailman/listinfo/dist2010
And we will be able to discuss details, ideas, as well as the schedule
there.

If you do want to participate, please echo the event to your respective
contributor community, and poke them to subscribe to the above mentioned
list and make proposals or inquiries there.

Thanks for reading so far, and hopefully we'll see you in Brussels for
FOSDEM 2010 :)

cheers
-- 
  -o) Pascal Bleser <loki at fosdem.org>    http://www.fosdem.org
  /\\     FOSDEM 2010 :: 6 + 7 February 2010 in Brussels
 _\_v Free and Opensource Software Developers European Meeting
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