Welcome Address – DebConf 2025 Academic Track

So, dear colleague, welcome to Brest. I am pleased to to welcome you to France and I expect you found in Brittany a good place to do research, particularly here in the empty Britain. Um Debian is widely used in industrial environment. As you see in some of the other conference room here, some industrial IoT use it. Um Debian and its derivative, I think here is Ubuntu, are extensively deployed across IPC cluster. Uh unfortunately, we have only a few researcher uh that are that work and publish on Debian. The main one is Zack. Zack has the best H-factor on all Debian maintainer. Uh and unfortunately, a few academic study are centered on Debian. So, we have a big gap between the industrial world and the academic world. So, with Olivier Barre, we plan to do something. Uh and we we went to have a place to discuss between the industrial world, that is Debian, and the academic world. Olivier Barre was responsible for the back office. Uh he was the guy he was the professor of the full professor that run the review website and and was responsible of the um of the review. Uh Zack was in charge of the share co-chair of this session. And myself was also co-chair. First paper will be a paper by Gunnar, a ritual augmented generation pipeline to help user query system provided. Second paper presented will be integrating knowledge graph into Debian ecosystem from Alexandre Belikov. Third paper will be guideline for boosting long-lasting floss contributor from David. And last paper before break will be Debian in research ecosystem, a bibliometric analysis for João Nuno Marques da Costa. Then a break. Then I will present a paper about static linking. Next paper will be about something more about social engineering from from a fish and how to release uh fish data. Uh third paper will be Greeks from Tasmania and verifiable long-term reproducible research from Simon Tournier that do a big work on Greeks about reproducible science. Last paper before break will be package ontology build factor taxonomy from Emanuele Rocca, then a break. Last paper, two last paper will be for uh about Arcanjo for finding some duplication on binary from David Todocoro and last paper of this day will be from Alister about a new Fortran policy applicable from HPC. I will be really thanks our host and sponsor. First, I will thanks Irizar laboratory that made this session possible. Uh La Secondly, I will really thank the French government that sponsor directly this event through the poll open source and common numeric occur. France has a dedicated government services in charge of sponsoring external event and pick to make this kind of events. So a big thanks to our government. And finally, I wish thanks IMT Atlantique for hosting these events. Gunnar, it's up to you. >> Hello. Any ideas about repeating this in the next Debian conference? >> I think good idea will be to repeat this session as a workshop on the next Debian conference. And the long-term goal is to have mini DebConf on academics. But we have some problem about how to be registered in Scopus. My goal is to have the Debian conference academic track to be on Scopus. If we are not on Scopus, we have no we have no acknowledged by your government because they use Scopus. And so and we have some not really nice condition is that a few session we must repeat the DebConf in the same place with the same kind of share with the same kind of paper in order to get in Scopus. So uh yes, we will repeat it. But in order to be a full conference, we will need I think at least 3 years of repeat. >> Does that repetitive thing does that need to be a physical? Is that why you are saying mini DebConf or or could it be a digital thing like they >> There are two stuff. There theoretically, it doesn't need to be physical. It could be online. The problem is that if we have no physical place, it is not the best from Scopus point of view. So it need to be on hybrid. And we do not have more than 50% of paper online. So in fact, we could do something online, but it's not really good for us. >> Okay. Can you give an overview of the publication after the conference? Is it using open access for the papers and what's what's the plans there? >> As noticed on on the share website, it will be published on all on open access with a license that you accept when submitting. If you read correctly, I don't I think it's CC by something but I do not remember exactly. And uh I really dislike plagiarism. As an academics, so uh we will print every act. We will get an ISBN. And we will um add this act depo deposit on the national library. For archival purpose. >> Yeah, so well my opinion on this and I'm really happy we're starting this experiment because that's what this is in the end. My opinion on this is that first of all it's great that that we could get well nine papers I think to to be written to be submitted specifically about well applications regarding Debian regarding free software. We are usually as a free software community we're not that much into as Bastien said into formal publishing. So I I think it's great to to to bridge between a a practical community as DevConf and an group of academics that we sit here. And I mean of course I want this to have a high impact and be indexed everywhere. Of course it's good for all of us. It's a good for our curricula and whatever. But the first thing is that make just making the exercise to to formally writing about our experiences formally getting our things in paper is something very good for us. I mean I have been discussing about this with Bastien. I think that even if we don't achieve in the first couple of years to be recognized by Scopus or any given database, just having this uh uh collected and archived and and all that is a great precedent and I think uh uh I I really hope that DebConf can become something that as a matter of practice uses to have an academic publication and not only gets us academics to publish, but also pulls other people to consider writing a paper, maybe not as formal, maybe not as uh uh finished as uh oh, because we know how to do it very well. But but but bringing more people to publish, even if that's not their main job, will also be very good and will be a I hope an important contribution to to to the professionalization of our people. >> Um Another stuff that I really want to keep is the double review. >> Mhm. >> First from Debian community, that said it is acceptable for the community. And the second one from an academic committee. I think it's the best for my trust because it it create bridges between the two community. And but it's a really hard because it I think it's the first time that we have a double review. One from the industrial world, another one from the academic world. And however, it take times to organize this kind of stuff. >> So, uh does it have to be Scopus? You you mentioned it's because of your government, they only look at Scopus. >> I In fact >> I'm I'm asking because Scopus seems to belong to Elsevier and Elsevier, I don't like Elsevier, so there's a boycott in some places uh against Elsevier. If you're just looking for a publisher to publish scientific journals, so my university has their own publisher and they publish open access and if I'm involved in that it can even be free for us. We don't have to pay. It doesn't have the impact probably as Scopus. >> It's It's not It's not the problem. It's not the publisher. The publisher here will be Iresa. What is University of Lorraine? Okay? The problem is what? When we want to get European project we are ranked and the administrative at the academic project use Scopus. They pay for Scopus. We will not pay Scopus. It is only to get on the index of Scopus in order to get better funding. It's not I dislike Scopus. I think it's a bad idea to use a index from mentality issue. It's a disaster to your young people. But if you have no fund it is worse. But I really dislike Scopus. You really >> Uh you talk about two bubbles see the being bubble and the academic bubble and I think there's a bubble between it. It's a free software bubble which do also do some academic research um especially in laws. What a free What is a free software license and so on? So we have to take our view also um in that bubble. >> I know. >> [snorts] >> Uh by law if I can do if my software my research also so I made some research also way. But by law I must It's It's It's the French law. I must try to put on free software license. Okay. The problem is in the academic world it's due to some recent change of funding we do one shot. We release a software you put we put on GitHub and we do not do maintenance. For instance uh in my paper you will see that I will cite really good software that is called Mantis. from CVI University Mantis is a tool that was developed funded by European Union so by all the taxpayer in order to detect some bad binary part on complete binary. This software was developed as a one shot for a few paper and when the PhD student quit the university it will be not maintained. So it's not it's not only free software is that my work is to create new thing. But for now we do not have we could not increase the technical readiness level at the university level on free software because we do not have uh means to increase we do not have place to meet the university and the industrial world. It's pretty hard. But I need to do free software by law. >> Uh I I want to to talk to you about legal aspects. It It was only an example. Uh but, I want to Uh uh one sentence. Okay. Uh but, I want to say if we if we make such a conference track, we can also look to the other free software projects. Uh whether there are persons who does also be in the academic bubble and in the free software bubble, you see? What I mean? >> I perfectly know. But, the problem is that if we we must begin from somewhere. >> Yes. >> And and it's the end and the uh the if we do not to be is we will fail.