Earthquake, Pandemic, War… (sigh) Well, Life is short, really. It seems that I can be a candidate, so do I. Let’s try.
Self introduction
Some of you may know me, but most are not. Let me introduce myself a bit.
I’m Hideki Yamane (やまねひでき), around 40-50 years old guy, live in Japan. As nm.debian.org says, I became Debian developer 2010 (oh, time flies): my account name is “henrich”.
In the past, what I did:
- some package maintenance (but lazy, sorry)
- translation (English -> Japanese) for some release notes (Debian6 to 11), Developers reference, etc.
- coordinate to put security.debian.org mirror to Japan (thanks, DSAs and Sakura Internet)
- push to convert Debian policy manual to reStructuredText with sphinx from DocBook (thanks, Russ, Sean and others)
- push to use XZ compression in .deb files in DebConf12
- as a tech writer, wrote monthly (and bimonthly later) series “Debian Hot Topics” from 2013 to 2021 (in Japanese)
- organize some local events in Japan, especially Tokyo.
- etc.
Warning! Warning!
Why I am the “worst” candidate as DPL ever:
- I’m not good at English (can use Eng“r”ish ;), so cannot answer complicated questions that some people like.
- I don’t have any skill to mediate fighting between our contributors. Be calm, stay cool, stay safe.
- It means that Debian contributors (yes, “YOU”) need to support me a lot! (much than other candidates)
Motivation
Then, you may want to know what I want to do during DPL period. Yes, here it is.
- Provide better Debian “Experience” for our contributors and users.
We are developing Debian a lot day by day, but it seems that won’t reach most of our users. I’m not sure what is the better way to give more values (providing easy access to testing/unstable in d-i? more updates to stable?), but it’s wonderful if we can.
- Deliver “some tries” to users and hear more voices from them, then discuss among contributors.
More tries, more failures, and get some success during that. We’re in 2020s. Be Agile. Well, that’s not easy, but worth trying since the “rules” are not a physical one that the god specified, it’s just thing that we have decided in the past.
- More infrastructure changes (it may need more donations and efforts)
Well, for the above tries, we may need more changes to our infrastructures - Web, Wiki, BTS, repository, etc. Thanks to Debian System Administrators and other contributors, we enjoy our development now. However, just keeping it works is not enough - I want “Expanding” it for something like moonshot :)
Moonshot - give a most comfortable environment for developers, more stability and less vulnerabilities for admins, a reasonably fresh desktop environment for average users, more i18ned applications and documentations for non-native English people, etc.
- Renewal and transfer of knowledge and technique
To change the current things, we need to know that (just destorying is easy thing). Then, discuss, transfer and imrpove it with new contributors.
In Japan, huge Shinto shrine is renewed each 20 years that way is called as “式年遷宮” (Shikinen Sengu). It retains knowledge and technique (how to create Shinto shrine from scratch) from masters to new engineers. Thereby oldest Shinto shrine that is made with woods are able to be maintained more than 1,000 years long.
Call new contributors and ask admins to transfer current know-how, for the next shiny decades.
Overall
We did good things and can do a better job if we are not afraid of changes.
Bite something a bit. Let’s try.