Debian Weekly News - March 22nd, 2005
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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/12/
Debian Weekly News - March 22nd, 2005
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Welcome to this year's 12th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. The [1]proposal from the meeting of release and
ftpmaster teams was discussed controversial on the [2]debian-devel
list by many developers with more than 1000 mails. Many people don't
appreciate to drop several architectures since supporting them was one
big benefit of the Debian system.
1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/03/msg00012.html
2. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/
Restricting the License to GPLv2. Daniel Carrera [3]pondered about
the restriction of the Linux kernel to version 2 of the GNU
[4]General Public License. Looking at the large number of
contributors, this would make it nearly impossible to migrate to
version 3 when it is available. Matthew Palmer [5]fears for a lot of
unpleasant forking action when the new license doesn't look like what
developers expect.
3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/03/msg00312.html
4. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/03/msg00314.html
Debian-Installer Release Candidate 3. Joey Hess [6]began to [7]work
on the next release candidate of the new [8]debian-installer. Most
tests ran [9]fine. He reported that they seem to be on schedule for
the release on March 23rd, which will be 3 months since the rc2
release.
6. http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/rc3-2005-02-28-23-05.html
7. http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/d-i_rc3_progress-2005-03-11-21-35.html
8. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
9. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2005/03/msg00538.html
Creative Commons 2.0 Licenses. Evan Prodromou [10]worked on the final
revision to the draft summary of the Creative Commons 2.0 (CC)
licenses. This document gives a summary of the opinion of debian-legal
members on the six licenses that make up the CC license suite.
Allegedly, there are already over 1 million works released under a CC
license.
10. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/03/msg00406.html
PC Resurrection with Debian. Richard White [11]reported about his
effort of providing computers for the economically disadvantaged.
After he tried several live CDs he decided to use pure Debian Sarge.
Afterwards he upgraded the [12]Xfcs package and used the pinning
feature of APT to keep sarge for the other packages.
11. http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=9973
12. http://packages.debian.org/xfce
Debian Use Survey Results. Enrico Zini [13]announced the [14]results
of a [15]survey on the purposes for which Debian is being used. The
results include [16]use cases and a [17]list of features that users
considered helpful. Another [18]list contains results the users have
achieved with their Debian installation.
13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/03/msg00019.html
14. http://people.debian.org/~enrico/survey/survey.php
15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/04/msg01508.html
16. http://people.debian.org/~enrico/survey/survey.php?field=SCEN
17. http://people.debian.org/~enrico/survey/survey.php?field=INT
18. http://people.debian.org/~enrico/survey/survey.php?field=DEED
300000th Bug Report opened. A few days ago the 300000th bug was
[19]opened by Noèl Köthe in the [20]bug tracking system. This
overwhelming number can be seen as a dedication from our users and
developers to improve their favourite system. Developers interested in
improving the quality of Debian should take a look at the list of
[21]old bugs.
19. http://bugs.debian.org/300000
20. http://www.debian.org/Bugs/
21. http://master.debian.org/~ajt/oldbugs.html
Project Leader Election Vote Period. Manoj Srivastava [22]called for
votes for this year's Debian project leader [23]election. Votes must
be received by 23:59:59 UTC on April 10th, 2005. The vote must be GPG
signed (or PGP signed) with your key that is in the Debian keyring. He
also [24]added that votes should not be encrypted, since devotee does
not yet deal with encrypted ballots and they would just ignored.
22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/03/msg00021.html
23. http://www.debian.org/vote/vote_001
24. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/03/msg00022.html
Autoconf Usage. Martin Krafft [25]wanted to hear reasons for calling
the autoconf utilities at package built time, even though the general
rule is that they should only used by the maintainer and not at build
time. Calling them while building could e.g. [26]reduce the source
size but [27]risk to render the package not buildable anymore when
autoconf was changed.
25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/msg00425.html
26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/msg00433.html
27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/msg00604.html
Automatic OpenLDAP Upgrade. Torsten Landschoff [28]asked for comments
on his proposal for an automatic upgrade path from OpenLDAP 2.0 to
version 2.1. When the Debian package is updated and the data should be
available afterwards, several precautionary steps need to be taken.
28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/msg01135.html
Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update
your systems if you have any of these packages installed.
* DSA 694: [29]xloadimage -- Several vulnerabilities.
* DSA 695: [30]xli -- Several vulnerabilities.
* DSA 696: [31]perl -- Privilege escalation.
29. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-694
30. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-695
31. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-696
New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive [32]recently or contain important updates.
32. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main
* [33]backup-manager -- Command-line backup tool for GNU Linux.
* [34]cramfsswap -- Swap endianess of a cram filesystem (cramfs).
* [35]cssed -- Graphical CSS editor.
* [36]geotoad -- Geocaching query tool.
* [37]gnupg-agent -- GNU privacy guard - password agent.
* [38]gnupg2 -- GNU privacy guard - a free PGP replacement.
* [39]gpgsm -- GNU privacy guard - password agent.
* [40]matchbox-nest -- Graphical wrapper around xnest.
* [41]metar -- Utility to download/decode METAR reports.
* [42]qalc -- Powerful and easy to use command line calculator.
* [43]swami -- SoundFont editor.
* [44]xnee -- X event recorder/replayer.
33. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/backup-manager
34. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/cramfsswap
35. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/editors/cssed
36. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/geotoad
37. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/gnupg-agent
38. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/gnupg2
39. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/gpgsm
40. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/matchbox-nest
41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/metar
42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/qalc
43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/swami
44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/xnee
Orphaned Packages. 18 packages were orphaned this week and require a
new maintainer. This makes a total of 235 orphaned packages. Many
thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free
Software community. Please see the [45]WNPP pages for the full list,
and please add a note to the bug report and retitle it to ITA: if you
plan to take over a package.
45. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
* [46]bwbasic -- Bywater BASIC Interpreter. ([47]Bug#300650)
* [48]cvs-syncmail -- Notification program for CVS checkins.
([49]Bug#300564)
* [50]electric -- Electrical CAD system. ([51]Bug#300096)
* [52]fonter -- Interactive font editor for the console.
([53]Bug#300591)
* [54]guitar -- GTK+ archive extraction/viewing tool.
([55]Bug#300627)
* [56]hp48cc -- C-like compiler which produces HP48 RPN.
([57]Bug#300099)
* [58]lingoteach-lesson -- Language teaching program (vocabulary
data). ([59]Bug#300561)
* [60]lingoteach-sound -- Sound files for LingoTeach (English,
Spanish, German). ([61]Bug#300563)
* [62]lingoteach-ui -- Language teaching program. ([63]Bug#300565)
* [64]luxman -- Pac-Man clone (svgalib based). ([65]Bug#300590)
* [66]vipec -- Network analyser for electrical networks.
([67]Bug#300100)
* [68]webmin-exim -- Exim mail server control module for webmin.
([69]Bug#300566)
* [70]webmin-snort -- Snort control module for webmin.
([71]Bug#300567)
* [72]webmin-virtual-server -- Virtual hosting management module for
webmin (virtualmin). ([73]Bug#300568)
* [74]xt-aterm -- Documentation and Examples for xt-aterm.
([75]Bug#300570)
* [76]xt-sdf2 -- Development headers and Libraries for xt-sdf2.
([77]Bug#300569)
* [78]xt-toolbus -- Documentation and Examples for xt-toolbus.
([79]Bug#300572)
* [80]xt-toolbuslib -- C Libraries needed to connect to the ToolBus.
([81]Bug#300571)
46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/interpreters/bwbasic
47. http://bugs.debian.org/300650
48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/cvs-syncmail
49. http://bugs.debian.org/300564
50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/electronics/electric
51. http://bugs.debian.org/300096
52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/editors/fonter
53. http://bugs.debian.org/300591
54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/guitar
55. http://bugs.debian.org/300627
56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/hp48cc
57. http://bugs.debian.org/300099
58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/lingoteach-lesson
59. http://bugs.debian.org/300561
60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/lingoteach-sound-english
61. http://bugs.debian.org/300563
62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/lingoteach-ui
63. http://bugs.debian.org/300565
64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/luxman
65. http://bugs.debian.org/300590
66. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/electronics/vipec
67. http://bugs.debian.org/300100
68. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/webmin-exim
69. http://bugs.debian.org/300566
70. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/webmin-snort
71. http://bugs.debian.org/300567
72. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/webmin-virtual-server
73. http://bugs.debian.org/300568
74. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/xt-aterm
75. http://bugs.debian.org/300570
76. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/xt-sdf2
77. http://bugs.debian.org/300569
78. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/xt-toolbus
79. http://bugs.debian.org/300572
80. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/xt-toolbuslib
81. http://bugs.debian.org/300571
Want to continue reading DWN? Please help us create this newsletter.
We still need more volunteer writers who watch the Debian community
and report about what is going on. Please see the [82]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [83]dwn@debian.org.
82. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
83. mailto:dwn@debian.org
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