Strengths: * Strong shared common ideals/goals among contributors * Widespread agreement with foundation documents & procedures * Everybody cares about Debian, likes it (even when not using it) * Large, active community of (dedicated) volunteers and users * Independence, and we don’t compromise with it + No corporate bindings + Financially independent * Social contract * History of the project: We've been doing this for over two decades now. We have accumulated a lot of experience and showed that our work is relevant to the Free Software and Open Source community. * Largest number of derivatives based on Debian, comparing to other popular distributions. * Largest package repositories * Known for its philosophy of technical excellence and commitment to free software. * Strong reputation for stability * Community Opportunities: * One of the few remaining large community projects? * Post-Snowden hostility towards some big corporate players - Bring trust back into computing - Reproducibility * Reproducible online services (not just one machine) * Cloud services -> Packaging effort for cloud services -> Advertize better built cloud images in the official "Download Debian" page -> Page about criteria to apply for cloud images to be able to promote them as official images -> provide testing images on other public clouds -> certification of Debian cloud images (link?) -> (certification of hardware?) * Potential new contributors from Arabic-speaking countries (maybe non north america and europe?) -> DebConf obviously, but requires local team. Consider outreach events organised by professionals where we send attendees to meet local folk and get them engaged -> sponsorship to confs (FOSSASIA, GNOME.Asia etc) -> Identify more confs -> Openhatch comes to campus * Debian as middleman: influence on upstream and users -> have our say in flatpak/snappy/etc application bundling solution -> Upstream Guide not advertised enough? * "Apps" -> auto-create flatpak/snappy/etc from Debian packages -> Item for Debian's Roadmap * Libre CPU architectures -> Creating ports for those architectures (?) * Year of the Linux desktop ? :-( -> Who cares? What about mobile though? * Visual appeal of Debian website -> Contact DC16's designer to work on a new design for debian.org website -> Make a call for help to recruit new volunteers in -www * Work in the definition of "Free Service" and promote its work within Debian retaking Zach talk in Debian DC14 "Debian in the Dark Ages of Free Software" * Debian on devices (beagleboard, raspberry, etc.) Weaknesses: * Dispersion of manpower, lack of staffing on core things * Lack of interest & contributors for non-technical tasks * Fragmentation: lack of common technical practices in some areas * Packaging is difficult – this limits use of packages as a standard software distribution mechanism * It’s difficult to get started as contributor? (lack of sponsors, high requirements) * Disconnection from upstream * Age-average is growing; where's the young guard? -> get in touch with universities (even in primary and high schools) and organize a small Debian event -> short internships for young students (how it would be this different from GSoC?) -> getting younger users should lead to have younger developers :? * Not easy to get started as user? ** fragmented web presence ** torn on modern centralized social media (twitter, facebook) presences * Web Site design. * Complex processes (or sometimes, not well known) * No roadmap * Financial status not clear: We have money but we don't spend it. I guess I'll be more verbose on this subject when replying about the question on fundraising. -> Work with TOs on some financial periodic reports ** hard to know how to donate to debian, some people say... (WHO? Names?!) :-) don't know the name, met at some open source events, and I guess it is because of our legacy website ;) * Non-traditional and specialised hardware: mobile, IoT, routers, BMCs etc -> promote upstream development on Linux/bootloader/etc support for them -> promote derivatives and other libre projects targetting these * Outside impression is that you need to be a DD to contribute to Debian * mail-centric development. It is good for current developers, but - we're in github age. Hard to know how to start contribution. * Unclear decision-making processes in parts of the project -> Documentation from the "How can I help you to get you to work" * Reluctantness towards "entrepreneurial" initiatives (that may well fail) -> partners programme, events * Discourage innovation -> Encourage new experiments (maybe in test-bed) and promote them Threats: * Innovation capacity declining (Debian used to be at the forefront of tech innovation in the sysadmin space). * The end of the desktop * We aren’t cool anymore – distributions are solved problems -> so to where can we lift the project and apply our values? -> what is the "distribution" of the future? * Required skills (mix of dev and sysadmin) are rare and typically not taught in typical university curriculums (see GSOC, gift bugs) * Competition with emerging language-specific packaging solutions (rubygems, python eggs, OCAML OPAM, ...) -> opportunity to make packaging easier or completely automatic https://wiki.debian.org/AutomaticPackagingTools -> opportunity to encourage them to work on porting efforts and integration * "Free" (no fee) services: People externalized some part of their computation and started relying more on more on online services for their daily tasks (mails, calendars, storage, text editors, ...). * Containers as a solution to deploy applications and services. -> automatic-backports (maybe relying on containers) * Non-free hardware more and more common. Even our CPUs require a microcode that we are invited to update blindly! * Complexity of new software stacks: Who's really able to debug his Gnome installation and understand all dbus-triggered stuff? It became so much complex that even power users can't without learning the new stuff. * Disparition of RedHat -> have more Debian people involved in the parts that RedHat maintains largely nowadays * Not finding new DPLs =================================================================== Debian's SWOT done in the past: Lucas at DC14: Strengths: * Strong shared common ideals/goals among contributors * Widespread agreement with foundation documents & procedures * Everybody cares about Debian, likes it (even when not using it) * Large, active community of volunteers * Independence, and we don’t compromise with it Opportunities: * One of the few remaining large community projects? * Post-Snowden hostility towards some big corporate players Weaknesses: * Dispersion of manpower, lack of manpower on core things * Lack of interest & contributors for non-technical tasks * Fragmentation: lack of common technical practices in some areas * Packaging is difficult – this limits use of packages as a standard software distribution mechanism * It’s difficult to get started (lack of sponsors, high requirements) * Disconnection from upstream Threats: * We aren’t cool anymore – distributions are solved problems * Required skills (mix of dev and sysadmin) are rare and typically not taught in typical university curriculums (see GSOC, gift bugs) * Competition with emerging language-specific packaging solutions (rubygems, python eggs, OCAML OPAM, ...) 2015 DPL Campaign: https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2015/03/msg00009.html Neil: ===== Strengths: * Social contract Weaknesses: * the variety of packages we have in the archive Mehdi: ====== Strengths: - History of the project: We've been doing this for over two decades now. We have accumulated a lot of experience and showed that our work is relevant to the Free Software and Open Source community. - Strong and large community: We have thousands of contributors and millions of users. - Largest number of derivatives based on Debian, comparing to other popular distributions. - Largest package repositories - Known for its philosophy of technical excellence and commitment to free software. - Independence Weaknesses: - Lack of manpower in some areas - Generally, no interest of contributors for non-technical tasks - Not easy to get started - Complex processes (or sometimes, not well known) - No roadmap - Financial status not clear: We have money but we don't spend it. I guess I'll be more verbose on this subject when replying about the question on fundraising. Threats: - "Free" (no fee) services: People externalized some part of their computation and started relying more on more on online services for their daily tasks (mails, calendars, storage, text editors, ...). - Containers as a solution to deploy applications and services. - Non-free hardware more and more common. Even our CPUs require a microcode that we are invited update blindly! - Complexity of new software stacks: Who's really able to debug his Gnome installation and understand all dbus-triggered stuff? It became so much complex that even power users have troubles finding answers. And this is not an isolated example. Opportunities: - Cloud services - Potential new contributors from Arabic-speaking countries - Post-Snowden era -Continue definition of "Free Service" and promote its work within Debian retaking Zach talk in Debian DC14 "Debian in the Dark Ages of Free Software", due the context of Cloud Computing, IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. -Consider transform the official web site www.debian.org with less textual interface to generate more visual appeal and thereby facilitating access and read content to the general public and potential collaborators. -Attract more users, new collaborators and developers through the above two points as well as other possible activities.