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Donec elit nulla, pulvinar nec porta sed, hendrerit eget metus. Suspendisse porttitor ligula non felis volutpat pretium? Praesent laoreet nisl a eros ultricies in lacinia I had the great honor to interview Mr. Jonas Smedegaard while we participated in the Mini Deb Conference 2011 India at NITTE college, Nitte near Mangalore this October. Simple outfit, humorous talk, and the friendly behavior of his captured everybody's attention. After the second tiring session at supper, Jonas and Isat down in his room to explore his views on Debian, Freedombox, the community and other cool topics. Along with us, there were a few developers present from FSMK (free software movement karnataka) and Pune.
Here is the synopsis of what we heard from him for about an hour.
It took an anonymous mail from an Australian developer to turn a Danish technologist, Jonas Smedegaard, to switch to Debian packaging. We know extracting a Debian package is a default option with ArchiveExplorer, and its quite simple as par with other packaging methods ,.tar.bz , tar.gz to name a few.
“It was around 2000-2001 when I moved to Debian, before that I tried my luck with Red Hat and Suse with lesser degrees of success, even Debian was a bit strange for the “First time”.
Debian is for ?
Students or developers who enjoy change and wish to explore the flexibility of their system should be encouraged to use Debian
Students or developers who enjoy tweaking their system and wish to explore the flexibility of their system should be encouraged to use Debian. It’s amazing for those who enjoy and love hacking …I strongly recommend to those who love to hack.
Only Hackers? I asked ; he says , see we are very free and strong freedom means strong ties which gives podium to a strong community in the making. I like the values that Debian holds and love my freedom with it. I would say these things to people who are not into debian. For those who says” I already use this “, then I would respond a bit differently, either technically or philosophically to tailor the message to that individual. I would see first where they are slanted to then I would go with my explanation. Even on during my journey I met some enthusiast , tried to figure out what they use their system for and recommended them UBUNTU.
Debain developers from India...
“Now it is clear to see where the benefit is in the free software movement. Such as finding the possible ways to gain with investing our money; both in personal level taking time to learn about free software instead of learning about how to get a job at Microsoft”.
“Now it is clear to see where the benefit is in the free software movement. Such as finding the possible ways to gain with investing our money; both in personal level taking time to learn about free software instead of learning about how to get a job at Microsoft”. He thinks that it’s easy now, for the most part, to make a living by working with free software. It’s also the same for both larger, commercially oriented, organizations and government organizations.There are also other benefits because its now stabilized and more concrete how free software is working. Now it is stable running on desktops and it is being massively used on servers so there are other benefits for third world places. We are using a lot of things from other countries and we are outsourcing a lot of industries. But in some developing countries you can have the benefit of not having to lean on or depend on other countries. So, when you exchange money with other countries,you lose every time. Keep in mind I’m just talking broadly,however. I don’t know India enough to compare directly. But when I'd to India, it’s crazy the differences in values of money compared to places like Denmark: what I buy here may cost something very different in Denmark. Coca-Cola for instance costs many times more than what you would pay for here in India. This illustrates that anything you can pay for and produce locally would be a big gain. The rest of the world doesn’t care about this, but this is an area you can really gain! I hope that in next coming year this problem is stable and actually you move faster gain and growth of users in of free software in the developing countries.
Work at Debian..
We have a cell based development:what I am doing, I might inspire others, but its not the whole crowd who is moving along. It’s not populism, we have small fractions and each of the fraction is encouraged to work as fraction
When asked about how they take their work at Debian he replies,” there is no specific goal for Debian and they don’t work like that in Debian. There are passionate people in debian, all working towards it. We don’t have strong leadership. You can say that we have very weak leadership but that’s the wrong perception, that’s the wrong way to explain the whole situation. We have a cell based development:what I am doing, I might inspire others, but its not the whole crowd who is moving along. It’s not populism, we have small fractions and each of the fraction is encouraged to work as fraction, so that each of the fractions put their passion to optimize the area then we try to mingle and place everything together and that’s one of the reasons. Also, it takes a lot of time. We focus primarily on whatever we want to focus on and, secondarily, we try to make everything fit together. So it is a big, big patch work. So, if you say what is the main field of the patch work then well nobody is knitting the patchwork together as a hierarchy. It’s all the pieces that are knitting themselves and attaching to each other. So you cannot ask “what is the main theme of the Debian team?” We are a big organism and each part of the organism is growing at its own pace and its ownstyle.
Ubuntu, a challenge for debian?
It feels that the whole birth of Ubuntu has had a major impact on the Debian. The whole relationship between Debian and Ubuntu has been a struggle, but he also feels today that there have been a tolerance and acceptance of Ubuntu. There are also things that Debian forgets to give back to their upstreams, so this is wholly dynamic. The ecosystem of free software is wholly dynamic and is maturing as its gets more and more complex. Further to add to this he says ,”You cannot say anymore that there’s an author, than there is the distributor, than there’s the user because in the old days it was never called Fedora, it was called Redhat and Debian and some others and we were the distributors with the authors shouting at us because we were messing up with their code because they thought we were getting in between the users and them.
Message to Cannonical...
Ubuntu is helping us a lot, but its sometimes frustrating how they do it, but it is helpful and the funny thing is Ubuntu is our user. They are using our distribution, and fundamentally all of our Debian developers have made an oath to the community that we work for free software and our users.”Now as distributors, we feel that the re distributors are getting in the way between us and our users, so it’s like history repeating itself. We have to get over that and realize that there is clearly a need for Ubuntu obviously because they wouldn't have been successful if there was no need for them. So, we have to swallow the bitter pill and we have to accept that we are not directly in dialogue with all of our users,only a small fraction of them. Probably because we are in dialogue with users which are more hard core and are able to become developers at some point. Not actually the Debian developers with capital D, but those who want to give back. They don’t need to be mentored like Ubuntu to give back to us. Ubuntu is helping us a lot, but its sometimes frustrating how they do it, but it is helpful and the funny thing is Ubuntu is our user. They are using our distribution, and fundamentally all of our Debian developers have made an oath to the community that we work for free software and our users.”
Message to Cannonical...
“Stop doing this! Stop doing that”, was the first reaction of JasonSmedeggerd to Canonical but, later he just wishes good luck to the Canonical team for whatever they are doing.
Ubuntu is Debian’s child who has left home and that’s painful, frustrating, but its good.He asserts that Debian team doesn’t have any kids, but he supposes that the only thing to say is to be his kid to be home. You can try to educate them, you can help guide the child while at home, but when they leave home well good luck with whatever they are doing. Ubuntu is Debian’s child who has left home and that’s painful, frustrating, but its good.
Handful number of linux distributions, good or bad?
When asked about confusion to a user on which one to choose, he puts his thoughts this way; Life is tricky and challenging and that is good. I would be worried if life is too simple. You grow fat if you have chosen a simple life. That’s not healthy. He finds no concrete example to support his idea and he straightforwardly clears that don’t choose Linux if you can’t handle complexity.
But, there are simple ones like Ubuntu, and that worries him. He encourages people to explore personally believes Debian is a place to explore and again- if you don’t want to explore then don’t use Debian because it would go against what you want to use with your tool. Further, he urges people to use Windows to carry out businesses and if they want to be creative, but without being creative with computers then use a Macintosh.
If you want to peruse the business world then I would recommend you to use windows.
If you want to be creative, but without being creative with computers then you should use a Macintosh.
But, there are simple ones like Ubuntu, and that worries him. He encourages people to explore personally believes Debian is a place to explore and again- if you don’t want to explore then don’t use Debian because it would go against what you want to use with your tool. Further, he urges people to use Windows to carry out businesses and if they want to be creative, but without being creative with computers then use a Macintosh.
Freedombox..
As a geek, you would pick your tool OS that you are sure he is the right person you are talking to. And you will be sure that he is talking to you and not the rest of world because you want him to open the curtain of talk.
When asked about Freedombox, he clearly defines it as a project to isolate/steal the good way to us geek conserving key control of our privacy, and making him do the privacy for our non-technical privacy. To illustrate this he exemplifies this as getting in touch with someone and chatting with them and not getting interrupted. To add more, if you wanted to get in touch with him and you wanted to chat with him to discuss something but not about home, about some real good chatting. As a geek, you would pick your tool OS that you are sure he is the right person you are talking to. And you will make sure that you are talking to you and not the rest of world because you want him to open the curtain of talk. So that you are in control of who you are talking to and verification of whom you are talking to.It’s just like mechanism of personal privacy. What freedom box gives is when two people are talking about their problem they make sure that they are talking only to each other without someone interrupting in between.
Debian and Freedombox’s passion is to making how to make geeky things geekier and they are working on things which are close to themselves
There is a thought that geeks are driven by an attitude to crack. Those things which geeks do are driven by passion. Apparently, very few geeks have a passion in doing something that strives also for perfection. It took us many users to come to the year of Linux desktop because we don't use user friendly desktops. You must have seen that geek’s desktops are very ugly; they use it not because it’s ugly, but because it’s very efficient so they don’t care about policy that much. If you hire someone then they are likely to focus more on what they want. Like Ubuntu, they hire people to do things that we geeks don't do naturally as geeks such as polishing the desktop. Freedombox project is only a project driven by passion.Nobody is taking the task to making it user friendly and none of us are taking responsibility to talking to someone with good design sensibilities because it’s not our passion to make it user friendly. Debian and Freedombox’s passion is to making how to make geeky things geekier and they are working on things which are close to themselves. Maybe half a year after we too could be able to use Freedombox, he hopes.
Debian after 10 years..
Ubuntu can be seen as taking away users, but they are not. They are part of DebianHe sees Debian Blossoming even 10 years after as it’s doing now. He doesn’t foresee much change but he wants things to be improved.Debian has been in very good shape and he, of course, wants it to be in good shape. He expects that Debian will be releasing as frequently in a year or maybe in half a year. His team would start trying to out roll releases. It would not be the same thing that Redhat, Fedora,Ubuntu, etc. Debian team would focus more on free date more than release date. Our style entirely will be the same. His only sure change is on quality rather than looking at the numbers as such.Ubuntu can be seen as taking away users, but they are not. They are a part of Debian. Debian is huge! Debian is passion driven more than any other distribution. He feels Debian is very big today and it’s very clear what their principal is. So he cannot even imagine that it will dry out.
India visit..
Hyderabadfor a week then Mangalore and Bangalore for about a week is his schedule to India.
He finds Hyderabad surprisingly hectic. The expectation was that he had to attend a couple of events but he ended up staying for a week. He chooses to take all possible events and finds these events very fruitful and also very challenging as well as enjoying too. He confronts his invoice to these presentation things. But, after doing few presentations in the past, he has gained a lot of confidence in his ability to communicate and present effectively so not to bore the crowd. Meanwhile, he doesn’t lose track what he was talking about.He loved the crowd and found the audiences to be really nice. But he feels sad that he has not been able to see much of Indian culture and blames his own choice for that. He wanted to meet more people and conduct events rather than sight-seeing or exploring cultures. He was in no mood for tourism, not about exploring India but offering his knowledge and his passion to India. However, he would love to return to India to explore its culture. He doesn’t think he would be able to separate between Indian and European developers like that. He tells he had a great experience with the culture and people of Brazil because he took the time to hangout more than focus on knowledge and
passion of free software. But, here he was focusing on sharing knowledge and passion and doesn’t want to judge it as a culture. We are all equal out there, he exclaims.
passion of free software. But, here he was focusing on sharing knowledge and passion and doesn’t want to judge it as a culture. We are all equal out there, he exclaims.
Message to linux lovers..
At last, he urges Debian non-user to wake up and explore the world to a larger degree, challenge them, challenge their tools through Debian.He wishes Debian to flourish.
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