Debian Weekly News - 16 to 22 Mar 1999
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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/current/issue/
Debian Weekly News - 16 to 22 Mar 1999
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Debian Weekly News - 16 to 22 Mar 1999
Welcome to Debian Weekly News, a newsletter for the Debian developer
community. It's been a week dominated by a few long threads with vague
conclusions, so there isn't too much to report on for this week.
One of the most important things to happen this week is not even
strictly Debian related, but the project took interest in it as the
guardians of the DFSG and Open Source Definition. Apple has released
the core of [8]Mac OS X Server under the [9]Apple Public Source
License. Their FAQ claims that "the Open Source Initiative has
determined that the Apple Public Source License is *** to the
Open Source Definition". Unfortunately, the license actually fails the
DFSG on [10]two counts. In response to this, Bruce Perens, Wichert
Akkerman, and Ian Jackson issued a [11]joint statement informing the
community of the problem and asking Apple to fix their license. This
was [12]rebutted by Eric Raymond and OSI. To muddy the waters further,
RMS [13]stepped in with more reasons the license is not free.
All Debian developers can now receive two free Debian 2.1 CD's from
Linux Central. You just have to send in a PGP signed email -- details
[14]here.
Richard Braakman has replaced Brian White as our release manager. The
[15]announcement includes a summary of the release manager's powers
and duties.
Wichert Akkerman has released [16]revision 6 of his Configuration
Management specification.
Ian Jackson [17]proposed closing debian-devel to postings from
non-developers. This could [18]half the volume of the list. In
general, people agree that debian-devel has too much volume, but
disagree with Ian's analysis that non-developers are the problem --
and have a large number of other ideas of their own.
Ian also [19]proposed "... a new Priority level distinction, which
subdivides Optional, such that most people will want to install all
packages in the better half' of old Optional." The idea was received
enthusiastically, the only question is what to call this new priority
to make people react to it in the desired way.
When does a document belong in Debian? The upload of The Anarchist FAQ
as a Debian package [20]raised this question. Opinions vary; some
people think that Debian should contain only documents that are
computer related or those like the bible-kjv package which have a
special program to process them. Others think the only important
criteria is if a developer feels the document is important enough to
package. A very long thread developed, starting [21]here.
Steve McIntyre is [22]organizing a Debian get-together in the UK.
There seems to be a lot of interest. Another possible get-together
[23]could happen in Germany sometime between today and the 26th.
New packages added to Debian this week include:
* [24]alevt: An X11 Teletext viewer
* [25]bootp: A bootp server
* [26]jikes: A Fast Java compiler
* [27]ted: An easy-to-use rich-text editor for X
* [28]maint-guide: The Debian New Maintainers' Guide
* [29]queue: A transparent load balancing system
* [30]xfingerd: A BSD-like finger daemon with qmail support
* [31]xgdipc: A graphical GnuDIP client
_________________________________________________________________
[33]Back issues of this newsletter are available.
Debian weekly news is edited by [34]Joey Hess.
_________________________________________________________________
References
8. http://apple.com/macosx/server/
9. http://www.publicsource.apple.com/
10. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-legal-9903/msg00129.html
11. http://perens.com/APSL.html
12. http://lwn.net/1999/0318/a/raymond.html
13. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/1999/12/mail#1
14. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/1999/12/mail#2
15. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-announce-9903/msg00007.html
16. http://www.debian.org/~wakkerma/config6/
17. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9903/msg01554.html
18. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9903/msg01819.html
19. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-policy-9903/msg00048.html
20. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9903/msg01628.html
21. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9903/msg01616.html
22. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9903/msg01528.html
23. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9903/msg01542.html
24. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/x11/alevt.html
25. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/net/bootp.html
26. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/non-free/devel/jikes.html
27. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/editors/ted.html
28. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/doc/maint-guide.html
29. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/admin/queue.html
30. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/net/xfingerd.html
31. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/x11/xgdipc.html
32. http://www.debian.org/MailingLists/subscribe
33. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/
34. mailto:joeyh@debian.org
--
see shy jo
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