Debian Weekly News - April 4th, 2006
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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2006/14/
Debian Weekly News - April 4th, 2006
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Welcome to this year's 14th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. Robert Millan [1]reported that he has built a
CD installer images for GNU/kFreeBSD on [2]AMD64. Joey Schulze
earlier [3]announced that the changelog files have been regenerated
on the new [4]packages.debian.org system.
1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-amd64/2006/03/msg00266.html
2. http://www.debian.org/ports/amd64/
3. http://www.infodrom.org/~joey/log/?200603121801
4. http://packages.debian.org/
Moving GFDL Documentation to non-free. After the Debian Project
[5]decided upon the freeness of documentation released under the GNU
Free Documentation [6]license (GFDL), Jérôme Marant [7]wondered
about the best way to move non-free parts from his emacs package to
non-free. Jörg Jaspert [8]answered that the source tarball has to be
split into two parts and that the free source package should not be
renamed.
5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/03/msg00012.html
6. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
7. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/03/msg01061.html
8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/03/msg01072.html
Debian Project Leader Election. Manoj Srivastava [9]called for votes
for the third time for this year's project leader [10]election. Debian
developers can cast their ballots until April 8th and may base their
decision on the [11]platforms of the leader candidates.
9. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/04/msg00000.html
10. http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_002
11. http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/platforms/
Extending Voting Privileges? Clytie Siddall [12]complained about the
fact that only Debian developers are eligible to cast a ballot for the
project leader election. Mako Hill would also [13]like to see those
who have made long-term, sustained, and significant contributions to
be recognised more significantly, maybe through a new enfranchised
category of contributor. Wouter Verhelst [14]asserted that the major
problem is the proper identification of regularly contributors.
12. http://lists.debian.org/debian-i18n/2006/04/msg00007.html
13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-i18n/2006/04/msg00043.html
14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-i18n/2006/04/msg00027.html
DFSG-Free IETF License. Simon Josefsson [15]wondered if the proposed
license of a recently approved IETF document that contains reference
code for SHA-2 is sufficiently free according to Debian's
[16]guidelines (DFSG). Steve Langasek [17]asserted that the license
grants permission to use, copy, redistribute and create derivative
works which makes it clearly DFSG-compliant.
15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2006/02/msg00389.html
16. http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2006/02/msg00390.html
Oracle Repository for Debian. Frits Hoogland [18]reported about
Oracle's [19]apt repository containing Oracle Express Edition. Since
the Oracle database is an important part of the infrastructure of many
companies, this repository simplifies deployment of Debian based
database servers in these environments. At this time, the repository
supports Debian unstable (sid) only.
18. http://frits.homelinux.com/wordpress/?p=9
19. http://oss.oracle.com/debian/
Debian Conference Video License. Holger Levsen [20]proposed to apply
the "by attribution" [21]license, version 2.5, with the changes for
Scottish legislation for past and future conference videos instead of
a MIT-style license. Don Armstrong [22]suggested to postpone any move
from a non-controversially DFSG free license to one that is
controversial until these issues are dealt with.
20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2006/03/msg00076.html
21. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/scotland/
22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2006/03/msg00086.html
Freeness of the NDIS Wrapper. Robert Millan [23]claimed that the
[24]ndiswrapper [25]belongs in the contrib section instead of main
since its purpose is to run non-free drivers. The only a [26]free one
is a port of the driver for Linux. Michael Poole, however,
[27]compared the situation with another package that is useless on its
own but require input from third parties.
23. http://bugs.debian.org/353277
24. http://packages.debian.org/ndiswrapper
25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/02/msg00585.html
26. http://cipe-win32.sourceforge.net/
27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/02/msg00593.html
Testing Sarge to Etch Upgrades. Lars Wirzenius [28]reported about his
effort to test the upgrade path from [29]sarge to [30]etch. This test
basically went fine. Raphaël Hertzog [31]added that tests to install
all packages which are listed in a particular task and then to upgrade
them should be included as well.
28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2006/03/msg00081.html
29. http://www.debian.org/releases/sarge/
30. http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/
31. http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2006/03/msg00087.html
Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update
your systems if you have any of these packages installed.
* DSA 1021: [32]netpbm-free -- Arbitrary command execution.
32. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1021
New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive [33]recently or contain important updates.
33. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main
* [34]brutalchess -- 3D chess with reflection of the chessmen.
* [35]fgfs-atlas -- Flight Gear Map Viewer.
* [36]firefox-greasemonkey -- Firefox extension which enables
customisation of web pages with user scripts.
* [37]freebsd-manpages -- Manual pages for a GNU/kFreeBSD system.
* [38]gcc-4.1 -- The GNU compiler collection.
* [39]ibverbs-utils -- Examples for the libibverbs library.
* [40]kolabd -- Kolab groupware server.
* [41]kplato -- Integrated project management and planning tool.
* [42]littlewizard -- Development environment for children.
* [43]mediawiki1.5 -- Website engine for collaborative work.
* [44]metche -- Configuration monitor to ease collective
administration.
* [45]pitivi -- Non-linear audio/video editor using GStreamer.
* [46]qdacco -- Offline Dacco Catalan <-> English dictionary
frontend.
* [47]scripturechecks -- Bible translation tool - checker.
* [48]sshpass -- Non-interactive SSH password authentication.
34. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/brutalchess
35. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/fgfs-atlas
36. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/firefox-greasemonkey
37. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/doc/freebsd-manpages
38. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/gcc-4.1
39. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/ibverbs-utils
40. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/kolabd
41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/kplato
42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/littlewizard
43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/mediawiki1.5
44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/metche
45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/pitivi
46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/qdacco
47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/scripturechecks
48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/sshpass
Orphaned Packages. 5 packages were orphaned this week and require a
new maintainer. This makes a total of 275 orphaned packages. Many
thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free
Software community. Please see the [49]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.
49. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
* [50]chbg -- Tool for changing the desktop background image in X11.
([51]Bug#360264)
* [52]compilercache -- Caching wrapper around compilers to speed up
compilations. ([53]Bug#360266)
* [54]sanduhr -- Alarm clock, which is designed as a hourglass.
([55]Bug#360269)
* [56]sgf2tex -- Creates TeX files from Go game records.
([57]Bug#360327)
* [58]tkps -- X-based process management tool similar to 'top'.
([59]Bug#360057)
50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/chbg
51. http://bugs.debian.org/360264
52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/compilercache
53. http://bugs.debian.org/360266
54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/sanduhr
55. http://bugs.debian.org/360269
56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/tex/sgf2tex
57. http://bugs.debian.org/360327
58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/tkps
59. http://bugs.debian.org/360057
Removed Packages. 1 package has been [60]removed from the Debian
archive during the past week:
60. http://ftp-master.debian.org/removals.txt
* krb4 -- Clients for Kerberos4 from KTH
[61]Bug#358480: Request of maintainer, superseded by krb5
61. http://bugs.debian.org/358480
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 [62]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [63]dwn@debian.org.
62. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
63. mailto:dwn@debian.org
This issue of Debian Weekly News was edited by Mohammed Adnène
Trojette, Sebastian Feltel, Adrian von Bidder and Martin 'Joey'
Schulze.
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