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Dear listeners, thank you very much for listening to the Software Freedom Podcast.
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The Software Freedom Podcast is brought to you by the Free Software Foundation Europe.
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We are a charity that empowers users to control technology.
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I'm Bonnie Merring and today we have a dedicated I Love Free Software Day episode.
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Each year on the 14th of February we celebrate all the contributors, developers,
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maintainers of free software projects. I would love if this would be a regular thing and
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if you would not need a dedicated date for it. But so far we have the I Love Free Software Day
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and on this day we say thank you so much for your contribution to Software Freedom.
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This year on the I Love Free Software Day we highlight the extremely important work
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done by countless of maintainers out there. And for this I'm very happy to talk with Lorenz's
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K, one of the maintainers from the monitoring platforms. Lorenz, thank you so much for making
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the time and thank you so much for joining me in the Software Freedom Podcast.
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Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.
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Hi you coming to the I Love Free Software Day celebration in Nürnbeck.
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I sure am. Yes. Already planted in.
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Very happy. Can you very very briefly summarize for me and our listeners what the monitoring
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plugins are? Okay briefly might be hard because I have to add some context. So there is a family
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of free software systems monitoring software. So the software which helps an administrator to
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monitor the actual computers which are in a company institution or whatever.
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And we started in 90s with Nagios and they had the idea of putting the actual monitoring.
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So the knowledge about how things work into separate little programs which are called
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monitoring plugins. So they were separate from the main program and this principle this interface
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was kept by forks and follow ups and the monitoring plugins project is a collection of those
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monitoring plugins which do the actual monitoring. This is I guess quite a far collection.
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So there are a lot of plugins probably in it. Yes I mean the specific programs that this
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collection are like maintained by the project itself and they have like 30 thing different plugins
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which more or less provide like a basic system functionality test mostly.
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All right how did you get involved with the monitoring plugins?
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Well I started a shop at a company which provides professional services.
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So I encountered the monitoring plugins there and of course at some point I discovered that back
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was something I didn't like and well as you do in the good free software world to be a good citizen
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you go there you complain in the issue tracker and then nothing happens then you start up with a
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pool request and then nothing happens and then you start annoying the maintainers about your pool
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request and then they say hey how about you become proud of the project and then you're in.
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That's basically it. So you got sucked in. Yes you know you start up with the one thing and then
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you already have the code open in the editor and think that that doesn't look good or maybe I would
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like to have that differently and you have a second pool request then and after a few of those
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somebody approaches you and says hey since you're already here do you want to be part of this?
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Do you also try to serve others?
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Not successfully. No it did not happen recently.
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Okay should I keep fingers crossed that you get more people?
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I mean why not? That would might help.
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Okay. How did you then like you found us back right and you were like proposing a fix to it
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and making sure that everything is updated but what keeps you motivated to continue with this?
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Like is there something that you say oh I find this very interesting and I should really
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keep doing that. That's I think there's not one easy answer to that.
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Partially it's just it's a little bit my project now and I have some strong opinions about
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things should work and how the code should look like. This is partially an aesthetic thing,
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partially a functionality thing so part of my motivation now is I want to have good things
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so things should be proper and well and well done. I mean if I'm correct with the
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how how to do it well is another metaphor discussion but now I am okay I've scrolled through
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the code and every time I think oh that doesn't look I want to change that and I want to make
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better I want to have good software in a way and that keeps me motivated.
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Partially it's also I mean this is software that works mostly well but if you have used it
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for time you think okay why are we doing this this way? Can we not make it better?
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So not only keep it up internally but also improve the functionality, improve
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the the interfaces
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and yeah so it's yeah basically it's I want to have good software in the end and I want to make
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good software and somehow this keeps me keeps me at a project still after years and after the
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that one bug I found. But is there also a human connection for you?
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All right that does not have to exist is it more about technical things that you want to fix?
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I mean there's some human connection inside the project but like all the the other people are not
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locally here so and we don't have that much communication in itself but of course I have
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communication downstream so I I feel now responsible for software which is actually in use
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heavily in use and is used by a lot of people so in a way I communicate the downstream if I make
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less than optimal error message then people the the action monitoring somewhere works bad because people
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can't think or can't recognize what I try to tell them and what what their server is not doing well.
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So in a way I'm trying to communicate to users but it's maybe yeah and this is everyone but this
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is important for you to keep going this kind of communication or because like with the users it's
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more like you communicate to them and I guess they sometimes communicate back to you if something
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doesn't work. Some definitely do and that's recently has been actually a very enjoyable
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communication and actually that's also yes something that's motivating if you have somebody say hey
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I'm a maintainer of a mainstream Linux distribution and this is not working for me
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and there's a okay let's debug this and maybe person comes up with a fix and says oh yeah cool
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you solved my problem and that's actually really really nice if somebody comes by and says oh cool
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that works for me you really you solved the problem I had and that's cool. I can imagine if it's
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a bit like you're describing what's behind free software when we talk about community because
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this is also this interaction with each other and this exchange of ideas and all and free software
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really really grows from those kind of interactions at least as my feeling.
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Yes it definitely makes this more fun a lot more fun and I probably wouldn't do it for me
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if it wouldn't be like that I mean let's say in a workplace you have if you have find a bug then
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you have to contact support and the support has to find a developer and then as you have
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play email ping pong for
forever and in this project it's just so somebody opens a new issue
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there and says hey this is broken and they say okay how is about this and this oh it is a problem
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and now I fix it and now I have just in a very smooth and efficient way with
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with no hurdles in there helped another human and that's great. Is there something that you
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value a lot if there's some interaction you say oh this is how I prefer things because I guess
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there is sometimes interaction that is not so nice but I also guess that there's interaction
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that keeps you really motivated to be there. I'm lucky in a way that most interaction is actually
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at least okay so I could imagine if you have a front end project you get a lot of people who say
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that's the wrong blue yeah and at least but yes sometimes I have people I mean mostly people
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who opened up the issue previously who said oh great that that really helped and yes that's
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these are moments that I which I value. How many of you are in the maintenance group
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like how many of them are really active because I obviously checked out the gift page
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from monitoring plugins but I have mentioned on the site 153 I guess not 153 people are
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actively maintaining this project as far as I know. Not really I think we are about four people
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who are more or less active and also active in different parts I would say so in recent years
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I have done most of the work in the C part of the project I think we have one or two loose
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recurring individuals who also participate there then we have a package maintainer there
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which is great because he's like a link to a major Linux distribution and the bugs come to us
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and he also managed those those bugs and issues with in the project and then he puts the patches
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up so there's a very good good link to the actual user base so to speak and then other people
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for pro and for organization but it's very a very loose group I mean it's not like we we do a lot
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there so it's a low burning project so to speak but yeah that's I would call this dead core
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group in a way. You mentioned there's one from a Linux distribution that is part of this
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does now brought me to a to a thread or to a line of communication that I also want to touch
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upon is resources because for testing software and all of this kind you need resources to figure out
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if this actually works with this project if this also works with that project and you already
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mentioned monitoring plugins are widely used on various systems so it's not on a Linux based
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systems they are also open the ESD freebies they want ever I'm not mentioning them all but don't
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they're all they're all there and they're very important don't get it wrong that means you missed
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that one on my toaster which one so you know what I mean like there are quite a lot of systems
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operating systems out there all of them equally important but how do you test the software
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then running for this like where do the resources come from well effectively not to be quite
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honest we were we are testing at different things on a few different Linux distributions
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but effectively we are not testing on ourselves on other Unixes
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partially because that's a hassle to get it up on GitHub and partially because this
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yeah would require resources to set up the testing to create a testing setup in itself find out
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how can a compiler how can I introduce tests there and for end-to-end tests what is the appropriate
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software there and so this is just something the group and I did not prioritize until now so
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sadly we rely on we would say end user testing so I have recently especially we had some very good
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contributions from one of the BSDs where people said oh so I said okay we're doing a release candidate
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for for a new release and they said okay let's let's put this in testing on our distribution and
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see what falls out and they then played the the connection between this BSD and us and that was
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very cool but of course it's not ideal so to speak to test it in production but is there something
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that others can do and help you with like the people with the BSD did is this something that you
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as a group of wish for or is this something that would put more burden on you because then there are
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no more issues and people coming to communicate with you and all of that no I would actually appreciate
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that if people if there was a good way to sort of like putting up testing pipelines on different
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unixes but yeah somebody if somebody would like to do that work that'd be really great
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yeah but so far nobody turned up but that would actually be really helpful so if we can test
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more and better before we put it in a release then we can smooth out bugs earlier and
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also do would not endanger a running system out in the wild so that also would of course be
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better to to make good work it's just a thing
yeah to to find the time and everything for that
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but if people would show up with that and say okay you you have something that improves the
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quality here then I would love that that's very nice is there something that you would say
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maintain us generally speaking now I know you cannot speak for everybody but from your perspective
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is something that people actually need I know it's a hard question yeah it's a hard question and
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of course that cannot be a single answer to that I mean that the classic is to say a real
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probably financial contribution I mean a lot of infrastructure around the world is free software
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I mean probably everybody knows that it's KZD comic certainly forgot the number
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I will link it in the show notes thank you so an actual recognition and a free software work
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on which role it plays in modern infrastructure would be great here I mean there's some
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lonely initiatives I would say let's say an L-net which is great but like why is there not like
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a a national software development company where say okay I'll just hire 500 people who do the
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open software work in this country and they'll just support them and get them some food
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because they're keeping this the infrastructure and that that would be good because yeah actually
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some of our infrastructure is based on I find the time on a weekend to fix a bug there so that's
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not the most reliable way to have infrastructure apart from that it gets recognition in itself would of
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course be good so to have people come to you and say yeah it's great I like that thank you
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occasionally that's pretty nice and I guess especially for library maintainers that does not
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happen often if you're if you're the maintainer of lip foo nobody comes up to you and says hey I
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last that I have that in 300 programs on my computer running currently that's great work you did
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there this is a short break for our own cause thank you for listening to the software freedom
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podcast working for software freedom and producing podcasts costs money please consider
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supporting us with a donation on the fsfe.org slash donate and then the show notes
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I mean it would be nice of course just as on a human basis yeah so to feel seen you mean yes
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and so a convoyage meant into receiving to have recognition for that work but I guess the the
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extra physical financial aspect should not be you should also be there absolutely I can absolutely
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agree on that but to get the world up is there a project that you really like and would like to say
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thank you to I thought about this for for long and then it should be because of course this is
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very tricky because it's such a huge number of of projects I actually just have on my computer
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so I thought what would be one that actually does not get noticed very often so and I thought
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about a npd the music player demon which is a program to just play music and organize a playlist
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and a music library and it has been working on my systems for 15 years and the only trouble I had
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when I tried to configure the funny things and that plays music for me and it's great
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oh that's very cute no thank you very much last but not least what can the community do to help you
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I guess monitoring plugins and maintaining the maintenance of monitoring plugins of course
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cold contributions are always welcome issues especially notices about how their things are
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breaking or ideas about the improvement are welcome and although both of those create more right
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so things that would help in general I mean of course if people want to contribute long time
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and engage the project itself that would be great but of course a difficult thing but apart from
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that I would welcome things like static analysis and like maybe coding guidelines something they can
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automate which like reduces error rates my C is probably not the best C seen anywhere but so if
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people can come up with something that says me oh no that blind is broken because you did something
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wrong there and we can automate that or if people can actually build more test pipelines and
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build more test cases or documentation which is on my to-do list but you know so all of those
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things would be welcome and valued and I would be happy if people would come by and at least say
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hello in the IFC chat will also be nice I'm a link to IFC chat and I show lots then I just
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keep thinking about the documentation part because you know we have this program in competition for
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teenagers you've actually for freedom and in it we have eight criteria for eventually for the
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sure to evaluate the projects that are submitted and one of this criteria is documentation
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that's very appropriate I think yeah I guess so too anyway thank you very much Lorenzce for
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the time thank you so much for doing this with me and giving me a glamp and glimpse or an inside
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to say this in a better way of how maintaining works and what acts actually needed there thank you
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very much thank you for having me this was the software freedom podcast if you like this episode
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please recommend it to your friends and rated they tune for more inspiring conversations that
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explore the importance of software freedom and its impact on our digital lives I wish you all
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a very pleasant I love free software day there are some events that will be running throughout
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Europe so check out I love of s dot org and see if there's one happening near you and yes thank
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you so much for listening this podcast is presented to you by the free software foundation europe
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there are a charity that works on promoting software freedom if you like our book please consider
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supporting us with a donation you find more information under fsfe.org/donate thank you
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so much until the next episode bye bye