The last editions of DebConf, the annual Debian conference, have been in unalike places like Heidelberg (Germany), Cape Town (South Africa) and Montreal (Canada). Next summer DebConf18 will happen in Hsinchu (Taiwan) and the location for DebConf19 is already decided: Curitiba (Brazil). During all these years an idea has been floating in the air (aka the Debian IRC channels) about organising a DebConf in a cruise. Today, the Debian Project is happy to announce that a group of Debian contributors have teamed-up to propose an actual bid for DebConf20 in a cruise.

The Cruise Team is confident about their ability to provide a detailed and strong bid by the end of the year. However, a brief plan and preparation is already done: the conference would happen in July and August 2020, during a trip around the world in a "rolling conference" scheme. This means that Debian contributors could choose when to arrive and leave by embarking/disembarking in one of the harbours the boat will stop. A DebCamp focused in sprinting the development of Debian blends and an "Open Day" with install parties under the sea and other interesting activities for the wide public is also planned.

There will be a sprint to discuss the bid details during DebConf18 in Hsinchu. The team has also initiated conversations with several cruise ship companies and satellite network providers in order to explore the possible venues and connectivity options for the conference. Interested parties can contact press@debian.org to join the Cruise Team in the preparation of the future conference.

We'd like to welcome our three Outreachy interns for this round, lasting from December 2017 to March 2018.

Juliana Oliveira is working on reproducible builds for Debian and free software.

Kira Obrezkova is working on bringing open-source mobile technologies to a new level with Debian (Osmocom).

Renata D'Avila is working on a calendar database of social events and conferences for free software developers.

Congratulations, Juliana, Kira and Renata!

From the official website: Outreachy provides three-month internships for people from groups traditionally underrepresented in tech. Interns work remotely with mentors from Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) communities on projects ranging from programming, user experience, documentation, illustration and graphical design, to data science.

The Outreachy programme is possible in Debian thanks to the efforts of Debian developers and contributors who dedicate their free time to mentor students and outreach tasks, and the Software Freedom Conservancy's administrative support, as well as the continued support of Debian's donors, who provide funding for the internships.

Debian will also participate this summer in the next round for Outreachy, and is currently applying as mentoring organisation for the Google Summer of Code 2018 programme. Have a look at the projects wiki page and contact the Debian Outreach Team mailing list to join as a mentor or welcome applicants into the Outreachy or GSoC programme.

Join us and help extend Debian!

Debian is applying as a mentoring organization for the Google Summer of Code 2018, an internship program open to university students aged 18 and up.

Debian already has a wide range of projects listed but it is not too late to add more or to improve the existing proposals. Google will start reviewing the ideas page over the next two weeks and students will start looking at it in mid-February.

Please join us and help extending Debian! You can consider listing a potential project for interns or listing your name as a possible co-mentor for one of the existing projects on Debian's Google Summer of Code wiki page.

At this stage, mentors are not obliged to commit to accepting an intern but it is important for potential mentors to be listed to get the process started. You will have the opportunity to review student applications in March and April and give the administrators a definite decision if you wish to proceed in early April.

Mentors, co-mentors and other volunteers can follow an intern through the entire process or simply volunteer for one phase of the program, such as helping recruit students in a local university or helping test the work completed by a student at the end of the summer.

Participating in GSoC has many benefits for Debian and the wider free software community. If you have questions, please come and ask us on IRC #debian-outreach or the debian-outreach mailing list.

Debsources is a web application for publishing, browsing and searching an unpacked Debian source mirror on the Web. With Debsources, all the source code of every Debian release is available in https://sources.debian.org, both via an HTML user interface and a JSON API.

This service was first offered in 2013 with the sources.debian.net instance, which was kindly hosted by IRILL, and is now becoming official under sources.debian.org, hosted on the Debian infrastructure.

This new instance offers all the features of the old one (an updater that runs four times a day, various plugins to count lines of code or measure the size of packages, and sub-apps to show lists of patches and copyright files), plus integration with other Debian services such as codesearch.debian.net and the PTS.

The Debsources Team has taken the opportunity of this move of Debsources onto the Debian infrastructure to officially announce the service. Read their message as well as the Debsources documentation page for more details.

Today, Saturday 12 August 2017, the annual Debian Developers and Contributors Conference came to a close. With over 405 people attending from all over the world, and 169 events including 89 talks, 61 discussion sessions or BoFs, 6 workshops and 13 other activities, DebConf17 has been hailed as a success.

Highlights included DebCamp with 117 participants, the Open Day, where events of interest to a broader audience were offered, talks from invited speakers (Deb Nicholson, Matthew Garrett and Katheryn Sutter), the traditional Bits from the DPL, lightning talks and live demos and the announcement of next year's DebConf (DebConf18 in Hsinchu, Taiwan).

The schedule has been updated every day, including 32 ad-hoc new activities, planned by attendees during the whole conference.

For those not able to attend, talks and sessions were recorded and live streamed, and videos are being made available at the Debian meetings archive website. Many sessions also facilitated remote participation via IRC or a collaborative pad.

The DebConf17 website will remain active for archive purposes, and will continue to offer links to the presentations and videos of talks and events.

Next year, DebConf18 will be held in Hsinchu, Taiwan, from 29 July 2018 until 5 August 2018. It will be the first DebConf held in Asia. For the days before DebConf the local organisers will again set up DebCamp (21 July - 27 July), a session for some intense work on improving the distribution, and organise the Open Day on 28 July 2018, aimed at the general public.

DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the DebConf Code of Conduct and the Debian Code of Conduct for more details on this.

Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf17, particularly our Platinum Sponsors Savoir-Faire Linux, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Google.

About Savoir-faire Linux

Savoir-faire Linux is a Montreal-based Free/Open-Source Software company with offices in Quebec City, Toronto, Paris and Lyon. It offers Linux and Free Software integration solutions in order to provide performance, flexibility and independence for its clients. The company actively contributes to many free software projects, and provides mirrors of Debian, Ubuntu, Linux and others.

About Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is one of the largest computer companies in the world, providing a wide range of products and services, such as servers, storage, networking, consulting and support, software, and financial services.

HPE is also a development partner of Debian, and provides hardware for port development, Debian mirrors, and other Debian services.

About Google

Google is one of the largest technology companies in the world, providing a wide range of Internet-related services and products as online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, and hardware.

Google has been supporting Debian by sponsoring DebConf since more than ten years, at gold level since DebConf12, and at platinum level for this DebConf17.