boss.da

BOSS - Barath Operating System Solutions

Siri og jeg er på rejse gennem Indien og Nepal, med det mål at lære om Debian-aflæggeres behov, for at forbedre Debian og tilskynde tættere integration.

C-DAC og BOSS

Center for udvikling af avancerede beregninger (C-DAC) er en stor organisation der understøtter landsdækkende og statslige institutioner i India, med kontorer og kursus-steder i flere større byer. I Chennai har C-DAC en stab af 25 udviklere som arbejder fuld tid på Barath Operating System Solutions (BOSS).

BOSS er en aflægger af Debian med flere varianter - en desktop til brug ved grundskoler (EduBOSS), en desktop til offentlige kontorer (BOSS), og en række af server-orientede anvendelser baseret på samme grundstamme som desktop-systemerne med diverse (ikke-indpakket) kode og tilretning ovenpå.

Grundstammen i alle BOSS varianter er en aflægger af Debian. Meget arbejde har handlet om at styrke lokale sprog or relateret kode - bl.a. udviklingen af en skrift som dækker alle officielt understøttede indiske scripts, tilretnin af indtastningsstyrings-opsætning, og fejlretning af LibreOffice's håndtering af komplekse scripts. Alt det arbejde er givet tilbage direkte til de originale kodeprojekter (noget af det fremgår som aflægger-arbejde indtil det siver ned igen ind i Debian).

Udover lokalisering, indeholder BOSS i øjeblikket 11 pakker som endnu ikke er i Debian - en miks af pakke-afhængigheder, visuel identitet, og tilrettet opsætning. Ser ud til at det meste og måske det hele kan komme ind i Debian med en smule tilretningsarbejde.

small computers

As some of you know, I always had a special interest in low-resource (yet general purpose) computers (partly driven by my lack of money to spend on shinier hardware), and since ~2009 particularly in ARM-based computers.

After 4 days of meetings and discussion with C-DAC, - literally few minutes before departure - I casually mentioned my interest in small computers, and much to my surprise it turned out that C-DAC also works on that, just didn't get around to mention it yet at the Debian wiki page.

C-DAC have worked for a year on tuning BOSS to work on the Vidyut laptop (successor to the Aakash tablet). All except builtin camera is allegedly working.

C-DAC is also looking into Olimex boards - my favorites - possibly for use with small server setups…

…but our time was up, we had to leave for our train to Pune, so details on that we will have to figure out through mail.

collaboration

In the past, C-DAC have kept in touch with their users through BOSS-specific places like a dedicated IRC channel. Recent changes in management style at the development office have caused less attention available to that communication, however.

C-DAC have politely offered their code changes upstram for years, but maybe "too polite": Maybe they have offered only polished fixes, being less loud about "interesting problems".

I suggested, as way to improve while limiting (ideally avoiding) extra work, is to mentally take a step up the stream: Treat BOSS not as a derivative but a subset of Debian itself, hang out and discuss issues and ideas at debian irc channels, and maintain your packages directly in Debian.

Only parts unfit for Debian - secret stuff done for India military, and dirty configuration hacks not yet possible within Debian Policy - really need to be kept away from Debian.

C-DAC agreed, and Debian now has a BOSS team!

Anyone interested to follow BOSS as a Debian blend, and perhaps even contribute with opinions and/or code, is quite welcome to join the newly created mailinglist on Debian Alioth: https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/boss-devel.

Our meetings with BOSS developers have been very pleasant. Even those working at the top of cloud or big data stacks - furthest away from our mindset of tightly "locking down" all parts as packages - were patient with us.

Thanks in particular to Prema S and Prathibha B, working on packaging of BOSS for the past 5+ years, and both likely to enter the Debian New Maintainer Queue before long