Last 10 blog posts
«Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic are more excessive than his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic.
This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled— whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others—to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant.
Closely related instances arise from the widespread conviction that it is the responsibility of a citizen in a democracy to have opinions about everything, or at least everything that pertains to the conduct of his country’s affairs.
The lack of any significant connection between a person’s opinions and his apprehension of reality will be even more severe, needless to say, for someone who believes it his responsibility, as a conscientious moral agent, to evaluate events and conditions in all parts of the world.»
Opinion Sort
In a world where it is more important to have a quick opinion than a thorough understanding, I propose this novel sorting algoritihm.
def opinion_sort(list: List[Any], post: Callable[List]): """ list: a list of elements to sort in place post: a callable that requires a sorted list as input and does proper error checking, as they should do """ if list[0] > list[1]: swap(list[0], list[1]) while True: try: # Assert opinion: "It is a sorted list!" post(list) except NotSortedException as e: # Someone disagrees, and they have a good point swap(list[e.unsorted_idx_1], list[e.unsorted_idx_2]) else: break # The list is now sorted, and the callable has to agree
This algorithm is the most efficient sorting algorithm, because it can sort a list by only looking at the first two elements.
I might have accidentally forked live-wrapper.
I sometimes need to build Debian live iso images for work, and some time ago got into an inconvenient situation in which live-wrapper required software not available in Debian anymore, and there was no obvious replacement for it, so I forked it and tried to forward-port things and fill the gaps.
Over time this kind of grew: I ported it to python3, removed difficult dependencies, added several new features that I needed, and removed several that I didn't need.
I recently had a chance to document the result, which makes it good enough to be announced, so here it is. The README has an introduction and links to documentation, recipes and examples.
I'm not actively maintaining this except when work requires, so if there's anything extra you need for it, the best way to get it is via a merge request.
I'm not sure how much of live-wrapper is still left in the fork. If anyone starts using it, we should probably look into a new name.
Updated: re-run 2019-04-02
Updated: re-run after merging Andreas Tille's addresses
Updated: re-run after fixing a bug in the code that skips signatures
Updated: re-run on a mailbox with only the post-nomination discussion.
I made a script to compute some statistics on debian-vote's election discussions.
Here are the result as of 2019-04-02 12:00 UTC+1:
These are the number of mails sent by people who posted more than 2 messages:
Name Mails ======================================= Jonathan Carter 33 Joerg Jaspert 31 Martin Michlmayr 20 Sam Hartman 18 Andreas Tille 11 Lucas Nussbaum 8 Stefano Zacchiroli 8 Sean Whitton 7 Jose Miguel Parrella 6 Jonas Meurer 5 Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana 5 Laura Arjona Reina 4 martin f krafft 4 Louis-Philippe_Véronneau 3 Alexander Wirt 3 Ansgar 3 Ian Jackson 3 Paul Wise 3 Raphael Hertzog 3
These are sum and averages of lines of non-quoted message text sent by people:
Name Sum Avg ============================================= Jonathan Carter 1475 45 Sam Hartman 799 44 Joerg Jaspert 684 22 Martin Michlmayr 665 33 Andreas Tille 287 26 Lucas Nussbaum 204 26 Jose Miguel Parrella 167 28 Ian Jackson 140 47 Stefano Zacchiroli 127 16 Sean Whitton 109 16 Jonas Meurer 96 19 Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana 89 18 Laura Arjona Reina 80 20 Ansgar 68 23 martin f krafft 68 17 Louis-Philippe Véronneau 67 22 Raphael Hertzog 43 14 Alexander Wirt 36 12 Paul Wise 23 8
These are the top keywords of messages sent by the candidates so far, scored by an improvised TFIDF metric:
Sam Hartman valuable, people, helping, things, consensus, project, think Jonathan Carter software, think, make, help, time, free, project Joerg Jaspert thats, nice, whatever, stuff, people, simple, need Martin Michlmayr believe, foss, where, maybe, people, world, these
A little gitpython recipe to list the paths of all files in a commit:
#!/usr/bin/python3 import git from pathlib import Path import sys def list_paths(root_tree, path=Path(".")): for blob in root_tree.blobs: yield path / blob.name for tree in root_tree.trees: yield from list_paths(tree, path / tree.name) repo = git.Repo(".", search_parent_directories=True) commit = repo.commit(sys.argv[1]) for path in list_paths(commit.tree): print(path)
It can be a good base, for example, for writing a script that, given two git branches, shows which django migrations are in one and not in the other, without doing any git checkout of the code.
One of the software I maintain for work is a GUI data browser that uses Tornado as a backend and a web browser as a front-end.
It is quite convenient to start the command and have the browser open automatically on the right URL. It's quite annoying to start the command and be told that the default port is already in use.
I've needed this trick quite often, also when writing unit tests, and it's time I note it down somewhere, so it's easier to find than going through Tornado's unittest code where I found it the first time.
This is how to start Tornado on a free random port:
from tornado.options import define, options import tornado.netutil import tornado.httpserver define("web_port", type=int, default=None, help="listening port for web interface") application = Application(self.db_url) if options.web_port is None: sockets = tornado.netutil.bind_sockets(0, '127.0.0.1') self.web_port = sockets[0].getsockname()[:2][1] server = tornado.httpserver.HTTPServer(application) server.add_sockets(sockets) else: server = tornado.httpserver.HTTPServer(application) server.listen(options.web_port)
I am writing a little application server for microservices written as compiled
binaries, and I would like to log execution statistics from getrusage(2).
The application server is written using asyncio, and processes are managed using asyncio subprocesses.
Unfortunately, asyncio uses os.waitpid instead of os.wait4 to reap child
processes, and to get rusage information one has to delve into the asyncio
innards, and provide a custom ChildWatcher implementation. Here's how I did
it:
import asyncio from asyncio.log import logger from contextlib import contextmanager import os class ExtendedResults: def __init__(self): self.rusage = None self.returncode = None class SafeChildWatcherWithRusage(asyncio.SafeChildWatcher): """ SafeChildWatcher that uses os.wait4 to also get rusage information. """ rusage_results = {} @classmethod @contextmanager def monitor(cls, proc): """ Return an ExtendedResults that gets filled when the process exits """ assert proc.pid > 0 pid = proc.pid extended_results = ExtendedResults() cls.rusage_results[pid] = extended_results try: yield extended_results finally: cls.rusage_results.pop(pid, None) def _do_waitpid(self, expected_pid): # The original is in asyncio/unix_events.py; on new python versions, it # makes sense to check changes to it and port them here assert expected_pid > 0 try: pid, status, rusage = os.wait4(expected_pid, os.WNOHANG) except ChildProcessError: # The child process is already reaped # (may happen if waitpid() is called elsewhere). pid = expected_pid returncode = 255 logger.warning( "Unknown child process pid %d, will report returncode 255", pid) else: if pid == 0: # The child process is still alive. return returncode = self._compute_returncode(status) if self._loop.get_debug(): logger.debug('process %s exited with returncode %s', expected_pid, returncode) extended_results = self.rusage_results.get(pid) if extended_results is not None: extended_results.rusage = rusage extended_results.returncode = returncode try: callback, args = self._callbacks.pop(pid) except KeyError: # pragma: no cover # May happen if .remove_child_handler() is called # after os.waitpid() returns. if self._loop.get_debug(): logger.warning("Child watcher got an unexpected pid: %r", pid, exc_info=True) else: callback(pid, returncode, *args) @classmethod def install(cls): loop = asyncio.get_event_loop() child_watcher = cls() child_watcher.attach_loop(loop) asyncio.set_child_watcher(child_watcher)
To use it:
from .hacks import SafeChildWatcherWithRusage SafeChildWatcherWithRusage.install() ... @coroutine def run(self, *args, **kw): kw["stdin"] = asyncio.subprocess.PIPE kw["stdout"] = asyncio.subprocess.PIPE kw["stderr"] = asyncio.subprocess.PIPE self.started = time.time() self.proc = yield from asyncio.create_subprocess_exec(*args, **kw) from .hacks import SafeChildWatcherWithRusage with SafeChildWatcherWithRusage.monitor(self.proc) as results: yield from asyncio.tasks.gather( self.write_stdin(self.proc.stdin), self.read_stdout(self.proc.stdout), self.read_stderr(self.proc.stderr) ) self.returncode = yield from self.proc.wait() self.rusage = results.rusage self.ended = time.time()
Debian conveniently distribute JavaScript libraries, and expects packaged software to use them rather than embedding their own copy.
Here is a convenient custom StaticFileHandler for Tornado that looks for the Debian-distributed versions of JavaScript libraries, and falls back to the vendored versions if they are not found:
from tornado import web import pathlib class StaticFileHandler(web.StaticFileHandler): """ StaticFileHandler that allows overriding paths in the static directory with system provided versions """ SYSTEM_ASSET_PATH = pathlib.Path("/usr/share/javascript") @classmethod def get_absolute_path(self, root, path): path = pathlib.PurePath(path) if not path.parts: return super().get_absolute_path(root, path) system_dir = self.SYSTEM_ASSET_PATH.joinpath(path.parts[0]) if system_dir.is_dir(): # If that asset directory exists in the system, look for things in # there return self.SYSTEM_ASSET_PATH.joinpath(path) else: # Else go ahead with the default static dir return super().get_absolute_path(root, path) def validate_absolute_path(self, root, absolute_path): """ Rewrite of tornado's validate_absolute_path not to raise an error for paths in /usr/share/javascript/ """ root = pathlib.Path(root) absolute_path = pathlib.Path(absolute_path) is_system_root = absolute_path.parts[:len(self.SYSTEM_ASSET_PATH.parts)] == self.SYSTEM_ASSET_PATH.parts is_static_root = absolute_path.parts[:len(root.parts)] == root.parts if not is_system_root and not is_static_root: raise web.HTTPError(403, "%s is not in root static directory or system assets path", self.path) if absolute_path.is_dir() and self.default_filename is not None: # need to look at the request.path here for when path is empty # but there is some prefix to the path that was already # trimmed by the routing if not self.request.path.endswith("/"): self.redirect(self.request.path + "/", permanent=True) return absolute_path = absolute_path.joinpath(self.default_filename) if not absolute_path.exists(): raise web.HTTPError(404) if not absolute_path.is_file(): raise web.HTTPError(403, "%s is not a file", self.path) return str(absolute_path)
This is how to use it:
class DebianApplication(tornado.web.Application): def __init__(self, *args, **settings): from .static import StaticFileHandler settings.setdefault("static_handler_class", StaticFileHandler) super().__init__(*args, **settings)
And from HTML it's simply a matter of matching the first path component to what
is used by Debian's packages under /usr/share/javascript:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{static_url('bootstrap4/css/bootstrap.min.css')}}"> <script src="{{static_url('jquery/jquery.min.js')}}"></script> <script src="{{static_url('popper.js/umd/popper.min.js')}}"></script> <script src="{{static_url('bootstrap4/js/bootstrap.min.js')}}"></script>
I find it quite convenient: this way I can start writing prototype code without worrying about fetching javascript libraries to bundle.
I only need to start worrying about it if I need to deploy outside of Debian,
or to old stable versions of Debian that don't contain the required JavaScript
dependencies. In that case, I just cp -r from a working
/usr/share/javascript into Tornado's static directory, and I'm done.
Python mailbox.mbox is not good at opening compressed mailboxes:
>>> import mailbox >>> print(len(mailbox.mbox("/tmp/test.mbox"))) 9 >>> print(len(mailbox.mbox("/tmp/test.mbox.gz"))) 0 >>> print(len(mailbox.mbox("/tmp/test1.mbox.xz"))) 0
For a prototype rewrite of the MIA team's Echelon (the engine behind mia-query), I needed to scan compressed mailboxes, and I had to work around this limitation.
Here is the alternative mailbox.mbox implementation:
import lzma import gzip import bz2 import mailbox class StreamMbox(mailbox.mbox): """ mailbox.mbox does not support opening a stream, which is sad. This is a subclass that works around it """ def __init__(self, fd: BinaryIO, factory=None, create: bool = True): # Do not call parent __init__, just redo everything here to be able to # open a stream. This will need to be re-reviewed for every new version # of python's stdlib. # Mailbox constructor self._path = None self._factory = factory # _singlefileMailbox constructor self._file = fd self._toc = None self._next_key = 0 self._pending = False # No changes require rewriting the file. self._pending_sync = False # No need to sync the file self._locked = False self._file_length = None # Used to record mailbox size # mbox constructor self._message_factory = mailbox.mboxMessage def flush(self): raise NotImplementedError("StreamMbox is a readonly class") class UsageExample: DECOMPRESS = { ".xz": lzma.open, ".gz": gzip.open, ".bz2": bz2.open, } @classmethod def scan(cls, path: Path) -> Generator[ScannedEmail, None, None]: decompress = cls.DECOMPRESS.get(path.suffix) if decompress is None: with open(path.as_posix(), "rb") as fd: yield from cls.scan_fd(path, fd) else: with decompress(path.as_posix(), "rb") as fd: yield from cls.scan_fd(path, fd) @classmethod def scan_fd(cls, path: Path, fd: BinaryIO) -> Generator[ScannedEmail, None, None]: mbox = StreamMbox(fd) for msg in mbox: ...
This is a quick recap of what happened during my DebConf 18.
24 July:
- after buying a new laptop I didn't set up a build system for Debian on it. I finally did it, with cowbuilder. It was straightforward to set up and works quite fast.
- shopping for electronics. Among other things, I bought myself a new USB-C power supply that I can use for laptop and phone, and now I can have a power supply for home and one always in my backpack for traveling. I also bought a new pair of headphones+microphone, since I cannot wear in-ear, and I only had the in-ear ones that came with my phone.
- while trying out the new headphones, I unexpectedly started playing loud music in the hacklab. I then debugged audio pin mapping on my new laptop and reported #904437
- fixed debtags.debian.org nightly maintenance scripts, which have been mailing me errors for a while.
25 July:
- uploaded new version of wreport
- investigated odd 0-padded
.jpgfiles generated by Open Camera on my phone and bumped severity of #874275; reported https://sourceforge.net/p/opencamera/tickets/465/ upstream. - reviewed multiple people talk notes
- bought new shoes, since the ones I had started digging a hole through the skin of one of my ankles.
26 July:
- I needed to debug a wreport FTBFS on a porterbox, and since the procedure to set up a build system on a porterbox was long and boring, I wrote debug-on-porterbox
- Fixed a wreport FTBFS and replaced it with another FTBFS, that I still haven't managed to track down.
27 July:
- worked on multiple people talk notes, alone and with Rhonda
- informal FD/DAM brainstorming with jmw
- local antiharassment coordination with Tassia and Taowa
- talked to ansgar about how to have debtags tags reach ftp-master automatically, without my manual intervention
- watched a wonderful lunar eclipse
28 July:
- implemented automatic export of debtags data for ftp-master
- local anti-harassment team work
29 July:
- deployed debtags ftp-master override export
- conversations on https://nm.debian.org
- conversations on https://contributors.debian.org
30 July:
- participated in the Ignoring negativity talk with Bdale, Sledge and Lamby.
- gave the autodeploy from salsa talk
- AM-related conversations
31 July:
- Implemented F-Droid antifeatures as privacy:: Debtags tags
01 August:
- Day trip and barbecue
02 August:
- anti-harassment conversation
- worked on multiple people talk contents
03 August:
- Multiple People talk
- Debug Boot of my laptop with UEFI with Steve, and found out that HP firmware updates for it can only be installed using Windows. I am really disappointed with HP for this, given it's a rather high-end business laptop.
04 August:
- Started porting https://debtags.debian.org to Bootstrap 4
- Ignoring negativity followup talk
- New Member BOF
These are the notes from my DebConf18 talk
Slides are available in pdf and odp.
Abtract:
Starting from Debian, I have been for a long time part of various groups where diversity is accepted and valued, and it has been an invaluable supply of inspiration, allowing my identity to grow with unexpected freedom.
During the last year, I have been thinking passionately about things such as diversity, gender identity, sexual orientation, neurodiversity, and preserving identity in a group.
I would like to share some of those thoughts, and some of that passion.
Multiple people
"Debian is a relationship between multiple people", it (I) says at the entrance.
I grew up in a small town, being different was not allowed. Difference attracted "education", well-meaning concern, bullying.
Everyone knew everyone, there was no escape to a more fitting bubble, there was very little choice of bubbles.
I had to learn from a very young age the skill of making myself accepted by my group of peers.
It was an essential survival strategy.
Not being a part of the one group meant becoming a dangerous way of defining the identity of the group: "we are not like him". And one would face the consequences.
"Debian is a relationship between multiple people", it (I) says at the entrance.
Debian was one of the first opportunities for me to directly experience that.
Where I could begin to exist
Where I could experience the value and pleasure of diversity.
Including mine.
I am extremely grateful for that.
I love that.
This talk is also a big thank you to you all for that.
"Debian is a relationship between multiple people", it (I) says at the entrance.
Multiple people does not mean being all the same kind of person, all doing all the same kind of things.
Each of us is a different individual, each of us brings their unique creativity to Debian.
Classifying people
How would you describe a person?
There are binary definitions:
- Good / Bad
- Smart / Stupid
- Pretty / Ugly
- White / Not white
- Rich / Poor
- From here / immigrant
- Not nerd / Nerd
- Straight / Gay
- Cis / Trans
- Polite / Impolite
- Right handed / left handed (some kids are still being "corrected" for being left handed in Italy)
- Like me / unlike me
Labels: (like package sections)
- Straight
- Gay
- Bi
- Cis
- Trans
- Caucasian
- ...
- Like me / unlike me
Spectra: (like debtags)
- The gender spectrum
- The sexual preference spectrum
- The romantic preference spectrum
- The neurodiversity spectrum
- The skin color spectrum
- The sexual attraction spectrum
We classify packages better than we classify people.
Identity / spectrums
I'm going to show a few examples of spectra; I chose them not because they are more or less important than others, but because they have recently been particularly relevant to me, and it's easier for me to talk about them.
If you wonder where you are in each spectrum, know that every place is ok.
Think about who you are, not about who you should be.
Gender identity
My non binary awareness began with d-w and gender neutral documentation.
Sexual orientation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sexuality_spectrum
Neurodiversity
I'll introduce neurodiversity by introducing allism
An allistic person learns subconsciously that ey is dependent on others for eir emotional experience. Consequently, ey tends to develop the habit of manipulating the form and content of social interactions in order to elicit from others expressions of emotion that ey will find pleasing when incorporated into eir mind.
https://fysh.org/~zefram/allism/allism_intro.txt
The more I reason about this (and I reasoned about this a lot, before, during and after therapy), the more I consider it a very rational adaptation, derived from a very clear message I received since I was a small child: nobody cared whom I was, and to be accepted socially I needed to act a social part, which changed from group to group. Therefore, socially, I was wrong, and I had to work to deserve the right to exist.
What one usually sees of me in large groups or when out of comfort zone, is a social mask of me.
This paper is also interesting: analyzing tweets of people and their social circle, they got to the point of being able to predict what a person will write by running statistics only on what their friends are writing.
Is it measuring identity or social conformance?
Discussion about the autism spectrum tends to get very medical very fast, and the DSM gets often criticised for a tendency of turning diversity into mental health issues.
I stick to my experience from a different end of the spectrum, and there are various resources online to explore if you are interested in more.
Other spectra
I hope you get the idea about spectrum and identity.
There are many more, those were at the top of my head because of my recent experiences.
Skin color, age, wealth, disability, language proficiency, ...
How to deal with diversity
How to deal with my diversity
Let's all assume for a moment that each and every single one of us is ok.
I am ok.
You are ok.
You've been ok since the moment you were born.
Being born is all you need to deserve to exist.
You are ok, and you will always be ok.
Like every single person alive.
I'm ok.
You're ok.
We're all ok.
Hold on to that thought for the next 5 minutes. Hold onto it for the rest of your life.
Ok. A lot of problems are now solved. A lot of energy is not wasted anymore. What next?
Get to know myself
Awareness:
- what do I like / what don't I like?
- what am I interested in?
- what would I like to do?
- what do I know? What would I like to know?
- what do I feel?
- what do I need?
Get in touch with my feelings, get to know my needs.
Here's a simple algorithm to get to know your feelings and needs:
- If you are happy, take this phrase: I feel … because my need of … is being met
- If you are not happy, take this phrase: I feel … because my need of … is not being met
- Fill the first space with one of the words from here
- Fill the second space with one of the words from here
- Done!
To know more about Non-Violent Communication, I suggest this video
This other video I also liked.
Forget absolute truths, center on my own experience. Have a look here for more details.
Learn to communicate and express myself
Communicating/being oneself
- enjoy what I like
- pursue my interests
- do what I want to do
- study and practice what I'm interested in
- let myself be known and seen by those who respect who I am
Find out where to be myself
Look for safe spaces where I can activate parts of myself
- Friends
- Partners (but not just partners)
- Interest groups
- Courses / classes
- Debian
- DebConf!
Learn to protect myself
I will make mistakes acting as myself:
- Mistakes do not invalidate me, Mistakes are opportunity for learning.
- I need to make a distinction between "I did something wrong" and "I am wrong"
Learn to know my boundaries
Learn to recognise when they are being crossed
Negotiate
Use my anger to protect my integrity. I do not need to hurt others to protect myself
How to deal with the diversity of others
Diversity is a good thing
Once I realised I can be ok in my diversity, it was easier to appreciate the diversity of others
Opening to others doesn't need to sacrifice oneself.
- I can embrace my own identity without denying the identity of others.
- Affirming me does not imply destroying you
- If I feel I'm right, it doesn't mean that you are wrong
Curiosity is a good default.
Do not assume. Assume better and I'll be disappointed. Assume worse and I'll miss good interactions
- Listen
- Connect, don't be creepy
- Interact with people, not things
- People are unique like me
- Respect others and myself
- listen to my red flags
- choose my involvement
- choose again
When facing the new and unsettling, use curiosity if I have the energy, or be aware that I don't, and take a step back
The goal of the game is to affirm all identities, especially oneself.
Love freely.
Expect nothing.
Liberate myself from imagined expectations.
YKINMKBYKIOK.
What is not acceptable
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
Use diversity for growth
Identifying where I am gives me more awareness about myself.
Identifying where I am shows me steps I might be interested in making.
Identity can change, evolve, move I like the idea of talking about my identity in the past tense
Diversity as empowerment, spectrum as empowerment
- I'm in the trans* spectrum at least as far as not needing to follow gender expectations, possibly more
- I'm in the autism spectrum at least as far as not needing to follow social expectations, possibly more
- I'm in the asexual spectrum at least as far as not seeing people as sexual objects, possibly more Once I'm in, I'm free to move, I can reason on myself, see other possibilities
Take control of your narrative: what is your narrative? Do you like it? Does it tell you now what you're going to like next year, or in 5 years? Is it a problem if it does?
Conceptual space is not limited. Allocating mental space for new diversity doesn't reduce one's own mental space, but it expands it
Is someone trying to control your narrative? gaslighting, negging, patronising.
Debian and diversity
Impostor syndrome
Entering a new group: impostor syndrome. Am I good enough for this group?
Expectations, perceived expectations, perceived changes in perceived identity, perceived requirements on identity
I worked some months with a therapist to deal with that, to, it turned out, learn to give up the need to work to belong.
In the end, it was all there in the Diversity Statement:
No matter how I identify myself or how others perceive me: I am welcome, as long as I interact constructively with my community.
Ability of the group to grow, evolve, change, adapt, create
And here, according to Trout, was the reason human beings could not reject ideas because they were bad: “Ideas on Earth were badges of friendship or enmity. Their content did not matter. Friends agreed with friends, in order to express friendliness. Enemies disagreed with enemies, in order to express enmity.
“The ideas Earthlings held didn’t matter for hundreds of thousands of years, since they couldn’t do much about them anyway. Ideas might as well be badges as anything.
(Kurt Vonnegut, "Breakfast of Champions", 1973)
Keep one's identity in Debian
If your identity is your identity, and the group changes, it actually extends, because you keep being who you are.
If your identity is a function of the group identity, you become a control freak for where the group is going.
When people define their identity in terms of belonging to a group, that group cannot change anymore, because if it does, it faces resistance from its members, that will see their own perceived identity under threat.
The threat is that rituals, or practices, that validated my existance, that previously used to work, cease to function. systemd?
- can I adapt when facing something new and unexpected?
- do I have the energy to do it?
- do I allow myself to ask for help?
Free software
Us, and our users, we are a diverse ecosystem
Free Software is a diverse ecosystem
Free software can be a spectrum (free hardware, free firmware, free software, free javascript in browsers...)
Vision
Debian exists, and can move in a diverse and constantly changing upstream ecosystem
Vision / non limiting the future of Debian (if your narrative tells you what you're going to like next year, you might have a problem) (but before next year I'd like to get to a point that I can cope with X)
Debian doesn't need to be what people need to define their own identity, but it is defined by the relationship between different, diverse, evolving people
Appreciate diversity, because there's always something you don't know / don't understand, and more in the future.
Nobody can know all of Debian now, and in the future, if we're successful, we're going to get even bigger and more complex.
We're technically complex and diverse, we're socially complex and diverse. We got to learn to deal with with that.
Because we're awesome. We got to learn to deal with with that.