On Sun, Feb 14, 2016 at 03:33:16PM +0100, Adam Borowski wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 14, 2016 at 02:31:34PM +0100, Ole Streicher wrote:
> > There are some problems why Debian is not soo widely used in the science
> > analysis (yet): One is that due to our long freeze many important
> > packages are already outdated when the stable release comes out.
>
> Well, they're using oldoldstable and old^3stable, so it doesn't appears as
> if they rely on newest versions of packaged tools.
It is probably not so much about latest versions of tools inside
old*stable. Its rather about tools that are not yet packaged in
old*stable. So Ole has a point and in the Debian Med team we started
(heavily) backporting for Jessie which is basically solving many issues
(at least those I'm aware of).
At the Debian Med sprint in Copenhagen eight days ago we came to the
conclusion that at least in the field of Biology we made quite a move
from Debian as a facilitating into the direction of a indispensable at
least for well informed people in the field.
As far as I can see Debian GIS, Debian Astro and DebiChem are working in
this direction. I'd strongly suggest to organise sprints as in the
Debian Med team (if you keep on wondering about the effects feel free to
check out the latest teammetrics graphs I assembled in my sprint
intro[1] and keep an eye on the difference in activity before and after
2011 when we did our first sprint).
The key to success is to directly involve users by either dragging them
into Debian directly by proper mentoring or getting them involved by
their need to find proper software which our last sprint was dedicated
to by finding proper categorisations of bio tools. People who are
working on an ontology of bio tools (EDAM) where overwhelmed by the
amount of easily accessible metadata (via UDD) of lots of ready to
install software.
In short try to reach out to your target users and get them involved.
In other words: Run a Blend in your personal field and find friends
doing the same.
Kind regards
Andreas.
[1]
https://people.debian.org/~tille/talks/20160204_debian-med-sprint/sprints+mentoring.pdf
--
http://fam-tille.de
