As the expression goes, "Time flies when you are having fun", meaning you do not normally account for the passage of time when you are distracted and enjoying yourself. The expression is a well established English idiom, though today for a moment the Debian Project pauses to reflect on that expression.

It has been 31 years now that we have been around.

It has been 31 amazing years of fun and amazement in watching the world around us grow and ourselves grow into the world.

Let us tell you, we have had a great time in doing so.

We have been invited to nearly every continent and country for over 25 Debian Developer Conferences, we have contributed to the sciences with our Debian Pure Blends; we have not given up on or discounted aged hardware with Long Term Support (LTS); we have encouraged and sponsored diversity with our Outreach Programs. We have contributed to exploration of this lovely planet and the vast vacuum of space (where no one hears Developers scream).

There is more to what we have done but from a cursory glance, we seem to have done it all.

But we never noticed it.

Time does fly or "escape irretrievably" when having a good time and making progress, though our pause at this moment is that we have also had a few moments of honest self-evaluation and reflection. Over the years the project has lost some significant loved ones who were dear to us - you may have called them Developers while we called them Friends, we called them Mentors, we hurt, we grieved, and in their memories we keep moving forward.

The course of the project has seen a few tragedies, has seen heated discourse in the public domain, has addressed and weathered concerns, and has still continually grown.

And we did that in the public sphere, because at the core this is an open project. Our code is public, our bugs and failings are public, our communications are public, our meetings are public, and our love of FLOSS is most definitely public.

And now more than ever the Debian Project realizes that the "we" that is sprinkled throughout this letter is just another way of saying: "you". You, the user, contributor, sponsor, developer, maintainer, bug squasher; all of you make the WE that is Debian. So what are WE waiting for? Lets celebrate!

Join the worldwide celebration or find an event local to you by visiting our DebianDay events page - see you there!

On Saturday 3 August 2024, the annual Debian Developers and Contributors Conference came to a close.

Over 339 attendees representing 48 countries from around the world came together for a combined 108 events made up of more than 50 Talks and Discussions, 37 Birds of a Feather (BoF – informal meeting between developers and users) sessions, 12 workshops, and activities in support of furthering our distribution and free software (25 patches submitted to the Linux kernel), learning from our mentors and peers, building our community, and having a bit of fun.

The conference was preceded by the annual DebCamp hacking session held July 21st through July 27th where Debian Developers and Contributors convened to focus on their Individual Debian-related projects or work in team sprints geared toward in-person collaboration in developing Debian.

This year featured a BootCamp that was held for newcomers with a GPG Workshop and a focus on Introduction to creating .deb files (Debian packaging) staged by a team of dedicated mentors who shared hands-on experience in Debian and offered a deeper understanding of how to work in and contribute to the community.

The actual Debian Developers Conference started on Sunday July 28 2024.

In addition to the traditional 'Bits from the DPL' talk, the continuous key-signing party, lightning talks and the announcement of next year's DebConf25, there were several update sessions shared by internal projects and teams.

Many of the hosted discussion sessions were presented by our technical core teams with the usual and useful meet the Technical Committee and the ftpteam and a set of BoFs about packaging policy and Debian infrastructure, including talk about APT and Debian Installer and an overview about the first eleven years of Reproducible Builds. Internationalization and localization have been subject of several talks. The Python, Perl, Ruby, and Go programming language teams, as well as Med team, also shared updates on their work and efforts.

More than fifteen BoFs and talks about community, diversity and local outreach highlighted the work of various team involved in the social aspect of our community. This year again, Debian Brazil shared strategy and action to attract and retain new contributors and members and opportunities both in Debian and F/OSS.

The schedule was updated each day with planned and ad-hoc activities introduced by attendees over the course of the conference. Several traditional activities took place: a job fair, a poetry performance, the traditional Cheese and Wine party, the group photos and the Day Trips.

For those who were not able to attend, most of the talks and sessions were broadcast live and recorded and the videos made available through a link in their summary in the schedule. Almost all of the sessions facilitated remote participation via IRC messaging apps or online collaborative text documents which allowed remote attendees to 'be in the room' to ask questions or share comments with the speaker or assembled audience.

DebConf24 saw over 6.8 TiB (4.3 TiB in 2023) of data streamed, 91.25 hours (55 in 2023) of scheduled talks, 20 network access points, 1.6 km fibers (1 broken fiber...) and 2.2 km UTP cable deployed, more than 20 country Geoip viewers, 354 T-shirts, 3 day trips, and up to 200 meals planned per day.

All of these events, activities, conversations, and streams coupled with our love, interest, and participation in Debian and F/OSS certainly made this conference an overall success both here in Busan, South Korea and online around the world.

The DebConf24 website will remain active for archival purposes and will continue to offer links to the presentations and videos of talks and events.

Next year, DebConf25 will be held in Brest, France, from Monday, July 7 to Monday, July 21, 2025. As tradition follows before the next DebConf the local organizers in France will start the conference activities with DebCamp with particular focus on individual and team work towards improving the distribution.

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the web page about the Code of Conduct in DebConf24 website for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf24, particularly our Platinum Sponsors: Infomaniak, Proxmox, and Wind River.

We also wish to thank our Video and Infrastructure teams, the DebConf24 and DebConf committees, our host nation of South Korea, and each and every person who helped contribute to this event and to Debian overall.

Thank you all for your work in helping Debian continue to be "The Universal Operating System".

See you next year!

About Debian

The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of volunteers from all over the world work together to create and maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal operating system.

About DebConf

DebConf is the Debian Project's developer conference. In addition to a full schedule of technical, social and policy talks, DebConf provides an opportunity for developers, contributors and other interested people to meet in person and work together more closely. It has taken place annually since 2000 in locations as varied as Scotland, Argentina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and India. More information about DebConf is available from https://debconf.org/.

About Infomaniak

Infomaniak is an independent cloud service provider recognized throughout Europe for its commitment to privacy, the local economy and the environment. Recording growth of 18% in 2023, the company is developing a suite of online collaborative tools and cloud hosting, streaming, marketing and events solutions. Infomaniak uses exclusively renewable energy, builds its own data centers and develops its solutions in Switzerland, without relocating. The company powers the website of the Belgian radio and TV service (RTBF) and provides streaming for more than 3,000 TV and radio stations in Europe.

About Proxmox

Proxmox provides powerful and user-friendly Open Source server software. Enterprises of all sizes and industries use Proxmox solutions to deploy efficient and simplified IT infrastructures, minimize total cost of ownership, and avoid vendor lock-in. Proxmox also offers commercial support, training services, and an extensive partner ecosystem to ensure business continuity for its customers. Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH was established in 2005 and is headquartered in Vienna, Austria. Proxmox builds its product offerings on top of the Debian operating system.

About Wind River

Wind River For nearly 20 years, Wind River has led in commercial Open Source Linux solutions for mission-critical enterprise edge computing. With expertise across aerospace, automotive, industrial, telecom, and more, the company is committed to Open Source through initiatives like eLxr, Yocto, Zephyr, and StarlingX.

Contact Information

For further information, please visit the DebConf24 web page at https://debconf24.debconf.org/ or send mail to press@debian.org.

Dear Debian community,

this are my bits from DPL written at my last day at another great DebConf.

DebConf attendance

At the beginning of July, there was some discussion with the bursary and content team about sponsoring attendees. The discussion continued at DebConf. I do not have much experience with these discussions. My summary is that while there is an honest attempt to be fair to everyone, it did not seem to work for all, and some critical points for future discussion remained. In any case, I'm thankful to the bursary team for doing such a time-draining and tedious job.

Popular packages not yet on Salsa at all

Otto Kekäläinen did some interesting investigation about Popular packages not yet on Salsa at all. I think I might provide some more up to date list soon by some UDD query which considers more recent uploads than the trends data soon. For instance wget was meanwhile moved to Salsa (thanks to Noël Köthe for this).

Keep on contacting more teams

I kept on contacting teams in July. Despite I managed to contact way less teams than I was hoping I was able to present some conclusions in the Debian Teams exchange BoF and Slide 16/23 of my Bits from the DPL talk. I intend to do further contacts next months.

Nominating Jeremy Bícha for GNOME Advisory Board

I've nominated Jeremy Bícha to GNOME Advisory Board. Jeremy has volunteered to represent Debian at GUADEC in Denver.

DebCamp / DebConf

I attended DebCamp starting from 22 July evening and had a lot of fun with other attendees. As always DebConf is some important event nearly every year for me. I enjoyed Korean food, Korean bath, nature at the costline and other things.

I had a small event without video coverage Creating web galleries including maps from a geo-tagged photo collection. At least two attendees of this workshop confirmed success in creating their own web galleries.

I used DebCamp and DebConf for several discussions. My main focus was on discussions with FTP master team members Luke Faraone, Sean Whitton, and Utkarsh Gupta. I'm really happy that the four of us absolutely agree on some proposed changes to the structure of the FTP master team, as well as changes that might be fruitful for the work of the FTP master team itself and for Debian developers regarding the processing of new packages.

My explicit thanks go to Luke Faraone, who gave a great introduction to FTP master work in their BoF. It was very instructive for the attending developers to understand how the FTP master team checks licenses and copyright and what workflow is used for accepting new packages.

In the first days of DebConf, I talked to representatives of DebConf platinum sponsor WindRiver, who announced the derivative eLxr. I warmly welcome this new derivative and look forward to some great cooperation. I also talked to the representative of our gold sponsor, Microsoft.

My first own event was the Debian Med BoF. I'd like to repeat that it might not only be interesting for people working in medicine and microbiology but always contains some hints how to work together in a team.

As said above I was trying to summarise some first results of my team contacts and got some further input from other teams in the Debian Teams exchange BoF.

Finally, I had my Bits from DPL talk. I received positive responses from attendees as well as from remote participants, which makes me quite happy. For those who were not able to join the events on-site or remotely, the videos of all events will be available on the DebConf site soon. I'd like to repeat the explicit need for some volunteers to join the Lintian team. I'd also like to point out the "Tiny tasks" initiative I'd like to start (see below).

BTW, if someone might happen to solve my quiz for the background images there is a summary page in my slides which might help to assign every slide to some DebConf. I could assume that if you pool your knowledge you can solve more than just the simple ones. Just let me know if you have some solution. You can add numbers to the rows and letters to the columns and send me:

 2000/2001:  Uv   Wx
 2002: not attended
 2003: Yz
 2004: not attended
 2005:
 2006: not attended
 2007:
 ...
 2024: A1

This list provides some additional information for DebConfs I did not attend and when no video stream was available. It also reminds you about the one I uncovered this year and that I used two images from 2001 since I did not have one from 2000. Have fun reassembling good memories.

Tiny tasks: Bug of the day

As I mentioned in my Bits from DPL talk, I'd like to start a "Tiny tasks" effort within Debian. The first type of tasks will be the Bug of the day initiative. For those who would like to join, please join the corresponding Matrix channel. I'm curious to see how this might work out and am eager to gain some initial experiences with newcomers. I won't be available until next Monday, as I'll start traveling soon and have a family event (which is why I need to leave DebConf today after the formal dinner).

Kind regards from DebConf in Busan Andreas.

DebConf24, the 25th annual Debian Developer Conference, is taking place in Busan, Republic of Korea from July 28th to August 4th, 2024. Debian contributors from all over the world have come together at Pukyong National University, Busan, to participate and work in a conference exclusively ran by volunteers.

Today the main conference starts with around 340 expected attendants and over 100 scheduled activities, including 45-minute and 20-minute talks, Bird of a Feather ("BoF") team meetings, workshops, a job fair, as well as a variety of other events. The full schedule is updated each day, including activities planned ad-hoc by attendees over the course of the conference.

If you would like to engage remotely, you can follow the video streams available from the DebConf24 website for the events happening in the three talk rooms: Bada, Somin and Pado. Or you can join the conversations happening inside the talk rooms via the OFTC IRC network in the #debconf-bada, #debconf-somin, and #debconf-pado channels. Please also join us in the #debconf channel for common discussions related to DebConf.

You can also follow the live coverage of news about DebConf24 provided by our micronews service or the @debian profile on your favorite social network.

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcoming environment for all participants. Please see our Code of Conduct page for more information on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf24, particularly our Platinum Sponsors: Proxmox, Infomaniak and Wind River.

DebConf24, the 25th edition of the Debian conference is taking place in Pukyong National University at Busan, Republic of Korea. Thanks to the hard work of its organizers, it again will be an interesting and fruitful event for attendees.

We would like to warmly welcome the sponsors of DebConf24, and introduce them to you.

We have three Platinum sponsors.

• Proxmox is the first Platinum sponsor. Proxmox provides powerful and user-friendly Open Source server software. Enterprises of all sizes and industries use Proxmox solutions to deploy efficient and simplified IT infrastructures, minimize total cost of ownership, and avoid vendor lock-in. Proxmox also offers commercial support, training services, and an extensive partner ecosystem to ensure business continuity for its customers. Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH was established in 2005 and is headquartered in Vienna, Austria. Proxmox builds its product offerings on top of the Debian operating system.

• Our second Platinum sponsor is Infomaniak. Infomaniak is an independent cloud service provider recognised throughout Europe for its commitment to privacy, the local economy and the environment. Recording growth of 18% in 2023, the company is developing a suite of online collaborative tools and cloud hosting, streaming, marketing and events solutions. Infomaniak uses exclusively renewable energy, builds its own data centers and develops its solutions in Switzerland, without relocating. The company powers the website of the Belgian radio and TV service (RTBF) and provides streaming for more than 3,000 TV and radio stations in Europe.

• Wind River is our third Platinum sponsor. For nearly 20 years, Wind River has led in commercial Open Source Linux solutions for mission-critical enterprise edge computing. With expertise across aerospace, automotive, industrial, telecom, and more, the company is committed to Open Source through initiatives like eLxr, Yocto, Zephyr, and StarlingX.

Our Gold sponsors are:

• Ubuntu, the Operating System delivered by Canonical.

• Freexian, a services company specialized in Free Software and in particular Debian GNU/Linux, covering consulting, custom developments, support and training. Freexian has a recognized Debian expertise thanks to the participation of Debian developers.

• Lenovo, a global technology leader manufacturing a wide portfolio of connected products including smartphones, tablets, PCs and workstations as well as AR/VR devices, smart home/office and data center solutions.

• Korea Tourism Organization, which purpose is to advance tourism as a key driver for national economic growth and enhancement of national welfare and intends to be a public organization that makes the Korean people happier; it promotes national wealth through tourism.

• Busan IT Industry Promotion Agency, an industry promotion organization that contributes to the innovation of the digital economy with the power of IT and CT and supports the ecosystem for innovative local startups and companies to grow.

• Microsoft, who enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

• doubleO, a company that specializes in consulting and developing empirical services using big data analysis and artificial intelligence. doubleO provides a variety of data-centered services together with small and medium-sized businesses in Busan/Gyeongnam.

Our Silver sponsors are:

• Roche, a major international pharmaceutical provider and research company dedicated to personalized healthcare.
• Two Sigma, rigorous inquiry, technology data science, and invention to bring science to finance and help solve the toughest challenges across financial services.
• Arm: leading technology provider of processor IP, Arm powered solutions have been supporting innovation for more than 30 years and are deployed in over 280 billion chips to date.
• The Bern University of Applied Sciences with around 7,800 students enrolled, located in the Swiss capital.
• Google, one of the largest technology companies in the world, providing a wide range of Internet-related services and products such as online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, and hardware.
• FSIJ, the Free Software Initiative of Japan, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting Free Software growth and development.
• Busan Tourism Organisation: leading public corporation that generates social and economic values in Busan tourism industry, developing tourism resources in accordance with government policies and invigorate tourism industry.
• Civil Infrastructure Platform, a collaborative project hosted by the Linux Foundation, establishing an open source “base layer” of industrial grade software.
• Collabora, a global consultancy delivering Open Source software solutions to the commercial world.
• Matanel Foundation, which operates in Israel, as its first concern is to preserve the cohesion of a society and a nation plagued by divisions.

Bronze sponsors:

• Altus Metrum,
• Loongson,
• NIPA,
• IPA,

And finally, our Supporter level sponsors:

• evolix,
• ISG,
• Linux Professional Institute.

A special thanks to the Pukyong National University, our Venue Partner and our Network Partners KOREN and KREONET!

Thanks to all our sponsors for their support! Their contributions make it possible for a large number of Debian contributors from all over the globe to work together, help and learn from each other in DebConf24.