But, he says, the miniconf will still be an interesting one. "In the end, I think we have an interesting set of presentations, and I have asked each speaker to maintain a cross-distro focus. I am very much looking forward to them, as well as the peripheral discussions on the 'hallway track'.
|
|
"As I said last year, we're still a far way away from achieving cross-distro collaboration in the way vcs-pkg.org envisions it, but progress is being made on all fronts, and that's very motivating."
Krafft attributes the Debian-centric nature of the summit to two things. "Either we didn't get the word out enough (the effort did commence deep in the bowels of Debian, after all), and the contributors to others distros don't see the benefits yet, or only Debian/Ubuntu people see the need for collaborating.
"If the latter is the case, then we should focus first on the hundreds of Debian derivatives, and make sure we are able to collaborate with them. Success will then attract the others."
While he said it was not possible to cite specific benefits from the various forums on cross-distro collaboration, Krafft added: "At DebConf9, we had a very productive meeting, chiefly between Debian and Ubuntu people, in which we formalised the roles in a potential collaboration a bit more.
"We also started to work towards defining metadata for packages which describe the way in which a DVCS is used in maintenance.
"The subject matter is complex, and there's no easy solution. Even though we're about three years into the project, I'd say we're still exploring. While I would like to take the next step, I've been busy finishing my PhD research on Debian - which has now finally been completed - and meanwhile, everyone has been experimenting.
"The solutions we found thus far exemplify once more that there is no One Solution™, so the next step will be a difficult one (for it involves making an executive design decision)."
