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bits from the DPL: August 2012



Dear project members, August has been a month with a good deal of
vacations for many of us, including yours truly. Therefore the monthly
report of DPL activities will be briefer than usual. Which is good, as
it'll leave all my readers more time to do NMUs and fix RC bugs!


Ongoing discussions
===================

- [Discussion][1] about the new trademark policy has continued on
  -project. I've collected quite some feedback and summarized it in a
  request for change that I've passed on to SFLC. I'm waiting for a
  second draft from them, before reviving the thread.

- on the long-running issue of de-duplicating DebConf infrastructure wrt
  Debian's, I've been happy to support the [proposal][2] of moving
  DebConf's list to Debian's software and infrastructure. There seems to
  be interest and consensus, but the DebConf team could probably use a
  couple more helping hands to make it real

- starting from the practical need of dealing with minified JavaScript
  files, an interesting [discussion][3] sparkled on -devel. It quickly
  turned in both musing on the notion of archive-wide DFSG-freeness and
  some new devscript tooling by Andreas Tille. AFAIU some extra testing
  would be welcome

[1]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/07/msg00047.html
[2]: http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20120820.110812.1ec7d44b.en.html
[3]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/08/msg00365.html


Assets
======

- The DFGS-free logo relicensing I've mentioned last month is now on its
  way. Following advice from SFLC, I've slightly patched the current
  trademark policy (mainly to clarify scope), just enough to decouple
  logo relicensing under LGPLv3/CC-BY-SA 3.0 from the finalization of a
  new trademark policy (see above). I've also verified that the license
  choice is fine with teams that regularly deal with the logos. Ball is
  now in SPI camp (as copyright holder). They should finalize the
  relicensing during the forthcoming board meeting, on September 13th.

- We heard back from the trademark office in Japan, who accepted our
  request to transfer it from local Debian contributors to SPI. That
  being mainly a bureaucratic acknowledgement, we'll now need to way for
  a while until they confirm the transfer has been finalized. My eternal
  thanks for help with this matter goes to Kenshi Muto.


Core teams
==========

- Manoj Srivastava has stepped down as tech-ctte member. I hereby thank
  him for his long and valuable service in that capacity.  The tech-ctte
  has now one vacant seat, and I've encouraged present tech-ctte members
  to propose to me a suitable candidate. In an attempt to promote
  diversity of views within the tech-ctte, they are now considering
  various ways to solicit candidatures. You'll here from them about this
  soon, I suspect.

- In the meantime, monthly IRC meetings of the tech-ctte are continuing,
  as you might have noticed from tech-ctte decision reports posted on
  this list.  As it seemed to be lingering, at the last meeting I've
  solicited progress on the [Python maintenance issue][4].

- The auditors have noticed the unclear situation of the Policy Editor
  delegation, which seems to rely on a "base" delegation dating back to
  Antony Towns' office and various subsequent delegation "patches".
  After discussion with Russ Allbery I've then proceeded to a [public
  "ping"][5] to assess the interest of current editors in continuing
  their work in such capacity, and encourage new volunteers to apply as
  editors. Based on the feedback I've got, I'm now preparing a new
  Policy Editor delegation.

[4]: http://bugs.debian.org/573745
[5]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-policy/2012/08/msg00058.html


Legal and RC fun
================

- Solicited by Jonathan Nieder and Helge Kreutzmann, I've looked into
  #555168 and sought legal advice to answer various questions related to
  the non-copyrightability of locale data. Aaron Williamson of SFLC has
  been blazing fast in answering them (thanks!), and Jonathan and Helge
  has now all the needed information to help addressing that (RC) issue.
  Keep an eye on the [bug log][6] for more details.

[6]: http://bugs.debian.org/555168


Hardware
========

- I've approved buying 6 console servers to improve DSA ability to act
  on remote machines, without having to bother^Wrely on local admins
  when not strictly needed. ~550 USD well spent.


See? It's been quick(er)!

Talk to you here next month, with a much lower count of Wheezy RC Bugs
on the horizon, hopefully.  Cheers.


PS the boring day-to-day activity log for August 2012 is available at
   <master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.txt.201208>
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli  . . . . . . .  zack@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »

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