Debian Project News - December 14th, 2011
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The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/
Debian Project News debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
December 14th, 2011 http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2011/15/
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Welcome to this year's fifteenth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the
Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include:
* Volunteers needed for publicity team
* Removal of sun-java6 from the archive
* Debian SDL packaging team revival
* Bits from the DPL
* Ubuntu appreciates Debian
* India mini-DebConf, Mangalore edition
* New mirror in El Salvador
* Debexpo maintainers call for contributions
* Bug Squashing Party marathon started
* Call for talks: FOSDEM 2012
* New s390 buildd at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
* Further interviews
* New Debian Contributors
* Release-critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release
* Important Debian Security Advisories
* New and noteworthy packages
* Work-needing packages
* Want to continue reading DPN?
Volunteers needed for publicity team
------------------------------------
As you may have noticed, it has been quite some time since the last edition
of Debian Project News. To improve the frequency of DPN and expand its other
activities, the Debian Publicity team is looking for new contributors. Did you
ever want to help Debian, but every piece of software you were interested in
was already packaged? You don't consider yourself a "technical person"? You
have basic skills in written English? Perfect! Have you considered joining the
Publicity Team [1]? If you are a Debian member, the Press team is also looking
for new contributors.
1 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/11/msg00055.html
Removal of sun-java6 from the archive
-------------------------------------
The release of Java update 29 from Oracle marks not only security updates, but
a change to the licensing, removing Debian's ability to distribute the non-free
JVM. The clause in the Java license under which we were able to distribute
Java, the DLJ, has been removed. As a result, the sun-java6 package is no
longer suitable for the archive, and has been removed, as documented in Debian
Bug #646524 [2]. Sylvestre Ledru suggests [3] that sun-java6 installs be
migrated to openjdk, the open-source alternative, using the following command:
apt-get --purge remove sun-java6-jre && apt-get install openjdk-7-jre
Kai Wasserbäch has also been pointed out elsewhere [4] that this upgrade path
might not be suitable for all Java programs, and special attention should be
paid to re-testing installed Java applications on OpenJDK.
2 : http://bugs.debian.org/646524
3 : http://sylvestre.ledru.info/blog/sylvestre/2011/10/25/removal_of_sun_java6_from_debian
4 : http://www.carbon-project.org/Removal_of_sun_java6_and_ElsterOnline.html
Debian SDL packaging team revival
---------------------------------
The SDL packaging team [5] has recently been seriously revived [6], with
Dominique Dumont reorganising the team and Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo
joining the effort. Packaging is progressively moving to Git for easier
collaboration, and developers maintaining SDL-related packages not in the
team's repository have been invited to join, too. A lot of old bugs have
already been fixed and new SDL 1.3 and sdl-perl packages have been uploaded to
experimental. SDL 1.3 brings support for newer OpenGL APIs, input improvements
like multi-touch, gestures and force feedback device support, better Unicode
support and support for multiple windows and displays.
5 : http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebianSdlGroup
6 : http://ddumont.wordpress.com/2011/11/19/sdl-team-revival/
Bits from the DPL
-----------------
Stefano Zacchiroli sent his "Bits from the DPL" for October [7] and November [8].
He reminds us that the New Maintainer Process has been renamed as the New
Member Process, and that a list of "easy hacks" is a very effective way of
attracting contributors to teams. He notes that Ubuntu plan to deprecate their
package review platform (REVU) in favour of converging on mentors.debian.net.
This will need some Debexpo changes and also more package sponsorship by Debian
members. Stefano has approved funds for the recent DebConf video team sprint
and also hardware replacements for lists.debian.org and ftp.debian.org, which
have now arrived and are in the process of being set up by DSA. He reports that
Fathi Boudra represented Debian at the Software Freedom Day in Algeria. Stefano
also reported on his trademark-related activities, including a contact point
for inquiries related to the Debian trademark, seeking legal advice on how
trademark law applies to Debian packaging activities, and starting a discussion
on the relationships between the DFSG and trademark restrictions. He is also
working on a statement to make explicit the position of the Debian Project on
software patents. The OSI have invited the Debian Project to their upcoming
affiliation programme. There is also work in progress to have the Debian
Project become a member of the forums for ISC software that we distribute.
Stefano also mentioned his continuing work in creating a discussion forum for
companies that have a strategic interest in Debian.
7 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/11/msg00001.html
8 : https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/12/msg00000.html
Ubuntu appreciates Debian
-------------------------
As part of Ubuntu's recent Community Appreciation Day [9], Michael Hall sent
Debian a message of appreciation [10], stating "Without you we wouldn't be
able to make the contributions we do. Ubuntu is great because Debian is great,
and we appreciate all of the work that goes into making it that way."
Michael will be joining [11] Canonical's Community Team, focusing on projects
that are upstream for Ubuntu.
9 : http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UCADay
10 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/11/msg00626.html
11 : http://www.jonobacon.org/2011/11/17/welcoming-our-new-horseman-michael-hall/
India mini-DebConf, Mangalore edition
-------------------------------------
Christian Perrier reported [12] on his participation in the mini-DebConf in
Mangalore, south-west India [13]. The conference was held at Nitte MahaLinga
Adyanthaya Memorial Institute of Technology and organised by Vasudev Kamath and
a team of computer-science students from the college with support from staff,
including the college principal, Dr. S. Y. Kulakarni. Christian gave the
opening talk, introducing Debian, how to contribute, and information about
Debian internationalisation and localisation. Later Jonas Smedegaard presented
a talk about Debian Pure Blends, focusing on how distributions derived from
Debian can work inside Debian instead of outside of it. This was part of his
trip [14] promoting Debian and Debian Pure Blends in Asia. The talks were
followed on the second day with sessions on localisation, packaging, OpenPGP
keys and contributing to Debian. The event was publicised in one of the major
newspapers in India, namely "The Hindu". Events such as these are vital to
local communities. The participation of "international" contributors in these
events often brings more attention to them and is highly appreciated by the
local community.
12 : http://lists.debian.org/20111105184310.GD4138@mykerinos.kheops.frmug.org
13 : http://wiki.debian.org/DebianIndia/MiniDebConf2011/MangaloreEdition
14 : http://dr.jones.dk/blog/debianasia2011/
New mirror in El Salvador
-------------------------
The Debian mirrors team is happy to announce the first mirror in El Salvador [15],
sponsored by the Ministry of Health [16], with the help of René Mayorga
and Carlos Juan Martín Pérez. Salvadorian Debian users are invited to update
their /etc/apt/sources.list in order to use ftp.sv.debian.org. To quote Carlos
Juan Martín Pérez "For us, the Ministry of Health, and as members of the
Salvadorian Community of Free Software, is an honour to belong to the great
Debian family." For other countries, the full list of mirrors [17] is available
online. There are still many countries lacking good connectivity to a Debian
mirror; sponsors interested in hosting are invited to contact the mirrors team.
15 : http://ftp.sv.debian.org/debian/
16 : http://www.salud.gob.sv/
17 : http://www.debian.org/mirror/list
Debexpo maintainers call for contributions
------------------------------------------
Discussing the potential integration of packaging teams into Debexpo, the
software behind the mentors.debian.net [18] service, Arno Töll issued a call
for contributions [19], since the current team members are busy.
18 : http://mentors.debian.net/
19 : http://lists.debian.org/4ECD5330.40104@toell.net
Debexpo [20] is maintained as an Alioth project [21].
20 : http://wiki.debian.org/Debexpo
21 : https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debexpo/
Bug Squashing Party marathon started
------------------------------------
Similarly to previous releases [22,23,24,25], a marathon of Bug Squashing
Parties (BSPs) has been started with concurrent BSPs being held in
Hildesheim [26], Germany and Portland [27], OR, USA. While the first one
concentrated on fixing Release Critical bugs, the second concentrated on
creating multiarch patches for different libraries.
22 : http://wiki.debian.org/BSPMarathon
23 : http://wiki.debian.org/BSPMarathonEtch
24 : http://wiki.debian.org/BSPMarathonLenny
25 : http://wiki.debian.org/BSPMarathonSqueeze
26 : http://www.debian.org/events/2011/1202-hildesheim-bsp
27 : http://www.debian.org/events/2011/1204-ubulocjam-debbsp
Both BSPs were quite successful. In Hildesheim 60 Release Critical bugs were
addressed [28] and several improvements to the archive software [29]
introduced, while in Portland 14 multiarch patches [30] were created! They also
noted down how to prepare cloud instances [31] in preparation for Bug Squashing
Parties.
28 : http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/events/bsp-hi-2011-3
29 : http://blog.ganneff.de/blog/2011/12/04/bsp-hildesheim.html
30 : http://web.dodds.net/~vorlon/wiki/blog/Making_jam_from_bugs/
31 : http://www.outflux.net/blog/archives/2011/12/05/ec2-instances-in-support-of-a-bsp/
The next Bug Squashing Parties in Mönchengladbach, Germany (January
or February) and Paris, France (17 to 19 February) are already being
organised [32]. The Debian Wiki has more information about organising a
BSP [33], should you consider organising your own.
32 : http://wiki.debian.org/BSPMarathonWheezy
33 : http://wiki.debian.org/HostingBSP
Debian would like to thank Pengutronix [34] (in Hildesheim) and PuppetsLabs [35]
(in Portland) for their support in organising these two events.
34 : http://pengutronix.com/index_en.html
35 : http://puppetlabs.com/
Call for talks: FOSDEM 2012
---------------------------
Wouter Verhelst sent a call for talks for the distribution developers room [36]
at the upcoming FOSDEM 2012 [37], the Free and Open Source Software Developers'
European Meeting. The FOSDEM takes place in Brussels, Belgium in early February
2012. Acceptable sessions can be any wide range of things, including talks, BoF
sessions, and round tables. Two cross-distributions devrooms are intended to be
for people from any participating distribution project, and may cover
Debian-specific subjects, or indeed targeted at Debian developers only.
36 : http://lists.debian.org/20111111113115.GZ17352@grep.be
37 : http://www.debian.org/events/2012/0204-fosdem
New s390 buildd at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
----------------------------------------------------
Philipp Kern announced [38] that zemlinsky [39], a new Debian buildd hosted at
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology [40], is now available to support the s390(x)
ports [41]. Thanks to this new host, s390x is progressing pretty quickly [42]:
this new fast builder is one of the reasons why the slope is so steep.
38 : http://debblog.philkern.de/2011/12/new-debian-buildd-at-karlsruhe.html
39 : http://db.debian.org/machines.cgi?host=zemlinsky
40 : http://www.iic.kit.edu/nachrichten/einzelansicht/article/iic-foerdert-debian-fuer-ibm-system-z/
41 : http://www.debian.org/ports/s390/
42 : http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eANKNSQ7zvg/Tt1XNDpjMaI/AAAAAAAAAX8/EwUsFR8LImU/s1600/graph-week-big.pngp
Further interviews
------------------
There have been three further "People behind Debian" interviews: with Raphaël
Hertzog [43], dpkg maintainer, book author; with Mark Shuttleworth [44],
Ubuntu's founder; and with Stefano Zacchiroli [45], Debian Project Leader.
43 : http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2011/11/05#interview-raphael
44 : http://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/11/17/people-behind-debian-mark-shuttleworth-ubuntus-founder/
45 : http://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/11/22/people-behind-debian-stefano-zacchiroli-debian-project-leader/
Stefano Zacchiroli was also interviewed by Karen Sandler on the FaiF
oggcast [46], by Amber Granger during the Ubuntu Developer Summit [47] and by
Lici.it [48] (original in Italian [49]). In addition the NeuroDebian team [50]
were interviewed [51] by FLOSS for Science.
46 : http://faif.us/cast/2011/nov/29/0x1D/
47 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p64OUfcfe5M
48 : http://interview.lici.it/2011/11/15/an-interview-for-linux-to-stefano-zacchiroli/
49 : http://interview.lici.it/it/2011/11/15/an-interview-for-linux-to-stefano-zacchiroli/
50 : http://neuro.debian.net/
51 : http://www.floss4science.com/interview-neurodebian/
New Debian Contributors
-----------------------
Four applicants have been accepted [52] as Debian Developers, thirteen
applicants [53,54] have been accepted as Debian Maintainer, and twenty-five
people have started to maintain packages [55] since the previous issue of the
Debian Project News. Please welcome Nicholas Breen, Vincent Legout, Antoine
Beaupré, Gergely Nagy, Wolodja Wentland, Vasudev Kamath, Matthias Klumpp,
José Manuel Santamaría Lema, Floris Bruynooghe, Cédric Boutillier,
Christophe Trophime, Tobias Hansen, Nicolas Dandrimont, Simone Rosetto, Jonas
Genannt, Laszlo Kajan, James Page, Mikolaj Izdebski, Félix Arreola Rodríguez,
Henry Velez, Gastón Ramos, Stephen M. Webb, Miguel de Val Borro, Simon Chopin,
Paolo Greppi, B. Clausius, Mateusz Kijowski, José Luis Segura Lucas, Marcin
Kulisz (kuLa), Teus Benschop, Ole Streicher, Paolo Rotolo, Martin Erik Werner,
Raoul Gunnar Borenius, Geoffrey Thomas, Alkis Georgopoulos, Jerome Kieffer,
Christopher Gervais, Håkon Nessjøen, David Stone, Nicolas Bourdaud and
Mathias Ertl into our project!
52 : https://nm.debian.org/nmlist.php#newmaint
53 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/11/msg00012.html
54 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/12/msg00004.html
55 : http://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/new-maintainers.cgi
Release-critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release
---------------------------------------------------------
According to the Bugs Search interface of the Ultimate Debian Database [56],
the upcoming release, Debian 7.0 "Wheezy", is currently affected by 1005
release-critical bugs. Ignoring bugs which are easily solved or on the way to
being solved, roughly speaking, about 849 release-critical bugs remain to be
solved for the release to happen.
56 : http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi
There are also more detailed statistics [57] as well as some hints on
how to interpret [58] these numbers.
57 : http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/rc-stats/7.0-wheezy/2011-49
58 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/RC-Stats
Important Debian Security Advisories
------------------------------------
Moritz Muehlenhoff reminded users that security support [59] for Debian
GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny" will end on 6 February 2012.
59 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2011/msg00238.html
Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages
(among others): moodle [60], nss [61], ffmpeg [62], postgresql [63],
iceweasel [64], iceape [65], openssl [66], python-django-piston [67],
icedove [68], proftpd-dfsg [69], bind9 [70], spip [71], freetype [72],
systemtap [73], wireshark [74], puppet [75], ldns [76], cups [77],
clearsilver [78], openjdk-6 [79], evince [80], openjdk-6 [81] (for "Lenny"),
mojarra [82], chasen [83] and acpid [84]. Please read them carefully and
take the proper measures.
60 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2338
61 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2339
62 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2336
63 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2340
64 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2341
65 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2342
66 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2343
67 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2344
68 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2345
69 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2346
70 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2347
71 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2349
72 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2350
73 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2348
74 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2351
75 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2352
76 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2353
77 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2354
78 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2355
79 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2356
80 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2357
81 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2358
82 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2359
83 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2361
84 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2362
Debian's Backports Team released advisories for these packages:
libvirt [85], libreoffice [86], puppet [87], iceweasel [88],
openssl [89], apache2 [90], libsndfile [91] and nss [92]. Please read
them carefully and take the proper measures.
85 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/2011/11/msg00000.html
86 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/2011/11/msg00001.html
87 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/2011/11/msg00002.html
88 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/2011/11/msg00003.html
89 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/2011/11/msg00004.html
90 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/2011/11/msg00005.html
91 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/2011/11/msg00006.html
92 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/2011/11/msg00007.html
Debian's Stable Release Team released an update announcement for the
package: linux-2.6 [93]. Please read it carefully and take the proper measures.
93 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2011/11/msg00001.html
Please note that these are a selection of the more important security
advisories of the last weeks. If you need to be kept up to date about security
advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please subscribe to the
security mailing list [94] (and the separate backports list [95], and stable
updates list [96] or volatile list [97], for "Lenny" , the oldstable
distribution) for announcements.
94 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
95 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/
96 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/
97 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-volatile-announce/
New and noteworthy packages
---------------------------
761 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among many
others [98] are:
* 4digits -- guess-the-number game, aka Bulls and Cows [99]
* guacamole -- HTML5 web application for accessing remote desktops [100]
* knot -- authoritative domain name server [101]
* mgen -- packet generator for IP network performance tests [102]
* minetest -- InfiniMiner/Minecraft-inspired open game world [103]
* musique -- simple but sophisticated graphical music player [104]
* pinpoint -- hacker-friendly presentation program [105]
* r8168-dkms -- dkms source for the r8168 network driver [106]
* redsocks -- redirect any TCP connection to a SOCKS or HTTPS proxy server [107]
* uhub -- high performance Advanced Direct Connect p2p hub [108]
98 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg
99 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/4digits
100 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/guacamole
101 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/knot
102 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/mgen
103 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/minetest
104 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/musique
105 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/pinpoint
106 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/r8168-dkms
107 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/redsocks
108 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/uhub
Work-needing packages
---------------------
Currently 392 packages are orphaned [109] and 143 packages are up for
adoption [110]: please visit the complete list of packages which need
your help [111].
109 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned
110 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa
111 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested
Want to continue reading DPN?
-----------------------------
Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers to
watch the Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the
contributing page [112] to find out how to help. We're looking forward to
receiving your mail at <debian-publicity@lists.debian.org>.
112 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute
This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Simon Chopin, Sam Hocevar,
Simon Paillard, David Prévot, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl, Alexander Reshetov,
Paul Tagliamonte, Justin B Rye and Paul Wise.
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