Debian Weekly News - 19 to 25 Jan 1999
[ Also available at http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/1999/4/ ]
Debian Weekly News - 19 to 25 Jan 1999
Welcome to the fourth edition Debian Weekly News, a newsletter for the
Debian developer community. As you can see, this is now part of the
main Debian web site.
The license for the Debian logo has [8]expired again. We need to come
up with and ratify a permanent license. There has been some talk about
a new logo, too -- one possibility would be to use a gimp logo
contest, which has produced excellent results in the past for projects
like Gnome.
Bruce Perens asked us what we think about the [9]license of [10]Zope.
The license has a requirement that you must add a "powered by Zope"
button to your web pages if you use it. Everyone agrees this is
obnoxious, but it may still be allowed by the DFSG. One thing this
[11]discussion highlighted is that point 6 of the DFSG ("No
Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor") is too vague and too
easily misinterpreted. One way this might be fixed is if we ratify a
new version of the DFSG, such as the draft version Darren Benham
[12]posted this week.
Should all Debian developers be required to agree with the DFSG? A
thread about this started in debian-private and later [13]escaped to
the debian-devel mailing list. Everyone agrees developers must
understand and abide by the DFSG when working on Debian, but there is
no consensus that they must also agree with it. One commonly held
opinion is that developers should at least believe in the spirit of
the DFSG, but may disagree with specific points of it. Another common
opinion is that it doesn't matter what developer's private opinions of
the document are.
On the conferences front, [14]LinuxTag '99, "the largest German Linux
user show" (and probably the largest Linux event in Europe), has
[15]invited Debian to attend. Many European developers have expressed
interest, and there is now a [16]mailing list devoted to organizing
Debian's presence there. Also, [17]LinuxCentral has donated to Debian
a booth on the LinuxWorld Expo show floor and volunteers are needed to
man the booth. For more information about this event see the [18]entry
in the Debian events page.
Good news for French developers: the French Prime Minister [19]has
announced that cryptography will become legal in France. This will
finally allow signing of Debian packages in France with standard
tools.
Last week with excitement growing about the imminent linux 2.2
release, Joey Hess [20]proposed that Debian add a source package for
kernel 2.2 to frozen as a convenience to our users so they can easily
get it on CD. Even though we're in the deep freeze, this idea met with
a lot of approval, and our release manager, Brian White, is cautiously
[21]agreeing with to allow it in. Now that 2.2 is finally released,
preliminary packages are [22]available.
Branden Robinson posted an [23]explanation of the Great X
Reorganization, to go into the release notes for Debian 2.1. If you
haven't dealt with the Reorganization yet it's a useful document to
read. A few problems with the renamed font packages are still being
hashed out.
Steven Baker [24]started a thread about the names used for debian
packages, which increasingly have to contain part of the version
number of the package. This is ugly, but it can be hard for
experienced debianites to see this as a problem until they step back
and look at things from a new user's perspective. One solution could
be to modify dpkg so it can install multiple versions of the same
package. Some people [25]pointed out that RPM can do exactly this.
However, such a change to dpkg would be a lot of work, for relatively
little gain, and could introduce worse problems.
New packages added to Debian this week include:
* [26]vrms, a "Virtual Richard M. Stallman", it will report all
non-free packages you have installed.
* [27]rolldice, a computerized dice roller for the RPG'ers out
there. (Judging by the [28]enthusiastic discussion about this new
package, a fair number of developers are into Role Playing Games.)
* [29]wmglobe, xearth shrunk into a 64x64 icon.
* [30]nestra, a free Nintendo emulator.
Help wanted:
* Scott Hanson [31]needs a co-maintainer for the mysql packages.
* Barak Pearlmutter [32]informed us about a large Debian Beowulf
cluster to be set up at UNM in Albuquerque New Mexico; he is
looking for a Debian developer to admin it.
Followups to previous news items:
* Dan Quinlan [33]responded to the concerns about the LSB test
suite. According to Dan, "...the TOG is *not* defining LSB. Linux
people are defining it -- and if a company passes every hurdle we
insist that they pass, why shouldn't we allow them to help?"
* More information about the Project Leader candidates is available
now. Richard Braakman's interview has been added to the [34]page
of interviews, and platform statements for some of the candidates
are available [35]here.
* The Hurd port is continuing to move along, progress this week
includes a [36]working X, and lots of updated packages.
_________________________________________________________________
To receive this newsletter weekly in your mailbox, [37]subscribe to
the debian-devel-announce mailing list.
[38]Back issues of this newsletter are available.
Debian weekly news is edited by [39]Joey Hess.
_________________________________________________________________
References
8. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/1999/4/mail.html#2
9. http://www.zope.org/License
10. http://www.zope.org/
11. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-legal-9901/msg00088.html
12. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/1999/4/mail.html#1
13. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9901/msg01263.html
14. http://www.linuxtag.org/
15. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9901/msg01254.html
16. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9901/msg01648.html
17. http://www.linuxcentral.com/
18. http://www.debian.org/events/1999/0301-linworldexpo
19. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9901/msg01333.html
20. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9901/msg01635.html
21. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9901/msg01753.html
22. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/1999/4/mail.html#4
23. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9901/msg01722.html
24. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9901/msg01527.html
25. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9901/msg01572.html
26. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/admin/vrms.html
27. http://packages.debian.org/rolldice
28. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9901/msg01590.html
29. http://packages.debian.org/wmglobe
30. http://packages.debian.org/nestra
31. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-mentors-9901/msg00073.html
32. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-alpha-9901/msg00210.html
33. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9901/msg01448.html
34. http://www.debian.org/~lalo/
35. http://www.debian.org/vote/1999/vote_0001
36. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-hurd-9901/msg00286.html
37. http://www.debian.org/MailingLists/subscribe
38. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/
39. mailto:joeyh@debian.org
--
see shy jo
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