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The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/
Debian Project News debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
May 12, 2014 http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2014/08/
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Welcome to this year's eighth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the
Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include:
* Debian members vote to accept a code of conduct
* Registration open for DebConf14
* SPARC removed from Jessie
* Promising future for Debian in embedded systems
* Bits from the Release Team
* Bits from the systemd + GNOME sprint
* Other news
* Upcoming events
* New Debian Contributors
* Important Debian Security Advisories
* New and noteworthy packages
* Work-needing packages
* Want to continue reading DPN?
Debian members vote to accept a code of conduct
-----------------------------------------------
Just after the election of the Debian Project Leader, Debian members
were called by Kurt Roeckx [1], Debian secretary, to vote on a general
resolution for a code of conduct proposed by Wouter Verhelst. This code
of conduct [2] promoting respect, good faith, collaboration, conciseness
and openness has been adopted by Debian Members [3]. It can be modified
via further general resolutions. More details about the results of this
vote can be found on the page of the website dedicated to this general
resolution [4].
1: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/04/msg00004.html
2: http://www.debian.org/code_of_conduct
3: https://lists.debian.org/20140428213635.GA10933@roeckx.be
4: http://www.debian.org/vote/2014/vote_002
Registration open for DebConf14
-------------------------------
The Debian Project is pleased to announce that registration is now open
for DebConf14, which will take place in Portland, Oregon, USA from
Saturday, August 23 to Sunday, August 31, 2014. As in previous years,
three different registration options will be available: "Basic",
"Professional" and "Corporate". To request food, accommodation or travel
sponsorship, you must be registered by Thursday, May 15, 2014. After
this date, registrations will still be accepted, but requests for
sponsorship will not. For more detailed information about how to
register, please see the separate announcement from the DebConf
team [5].
5: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/04/msg00010.html
In past years, DebConf has been preceded by a separate DebCamp event,
where developers can gather before the conference and collaborate in
person on Debian. This year the team is trying a different approach,
with a longer conference period allowing for blocks of talks to be mixed
with blocks of coding time throughout the week. More information about
the schedule will be made available when the Call for Papers is posted
in the near future. Furthermore, as mentioned in the latest bits from
the DPL mail [6], there is also an opportunity for Debian teams to
organise sprints around DebConf. Teams who are interested should follow
the process documented on the wiki page [7].
6: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/04/msg00007.html
7: https://wiki.debian.org/Sprints/HowTo
SPARC removed from Jessie
-------------------------
Philipp Kern announced [8] the removal of the SPARC port from testing,
as of April 26. The main reasons were lack of porter commitment,
problems with the toolchain and continued stability issues. The fate of
SPARC in unstable has not been decided yet; it may be removed unless
people commit to working on it. Discussion about this should take place
on bug report #745938 [9]. SPARC support was officially introduced in
Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 (code name "slink") back in March 1999 and was
featured in eight releases.
8: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/04/msg00012.html
9: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=745938
Promising future for Debian in embedded systems
-----------------------------------------------
Tony Mancill reported [10] about his attendance at the EE Live/Embedded
Systems Conference [11], which took place in San Jose, California, on
March 31—April 3, and showed the increasing relevance of Debian in
embedded systems: Bunnie Huang's keynote introduced the Novena open-
hardware laptop [12], which will be shipped with Debian
preinstalled [13]; Ryan Kuester, one of the developers of the Debian-
based Pragmatux [14], presented "Running Android atop a proper embedded
Linux"; and David Reyna presented the Yocto [15] Project [16], which
supports both .rpm and .deb-based package management for embedded targets,
and lists Debian as a supported development workstation environment.
10: https://lists.debian.org/53589FC6.2060805@debian.org
11: http://www.eeliveshow.com/sanjose/
12: http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3657
13: https://www.crowdsupply.com/kosagi/novena-open-laptop
14: http://www.pragmatux.net/
15: http://www.yoctoproject.org/about
16: http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/current/ref-manual/ref-manual.html
Bits from the Release Team
--------------------------
Regular security support for Debian GNU/Linux 6.0, "squeeze", will be
terminated [17] on May 31, 2014. A new suite named "squeeze-lts" and
containing only two architectures, i386 and amd64, will be made
available with support extended until February 2016 to provide a five
year support cycle. A reminder that the scheduled freeze date [18] for
Jessie has been set for six months from now on Wednesday, November 5,
2014. In the same message, Niels Thykier reported on the Release Team's
architecture meeting [19], held on April 12, 2014, about the status of
the architectures and considering their suitability for Jessie.
Recursive auto-removals have returned, with warnings to the maintainers
of the involved packages prior to removal.
17: https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2014/msg00082.html
18: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/10/msg00004.html
19: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/05/msg00000.html
Bits from the systemd + GNOME sprint
------------------------------------
Jordi Mallach sent bits [20] from the Debian sprint where the Debian
GNOME core team and systemd Debian maintainer gathered in Antwerp,
Belgium. Over two days, the ten participants discussed a variety of
topics to do with systemd and GNOME integration in Debian. After some
improvement in the packaging workflow for systemd, version 208 of
systemd has been uploaded to experimental. The GNOME team initiated
several transitions, improved the status of GNOME 3.12 in Debian [21],
and discussed the feasibility of having Debian Jessie shipped with 3.14.
The participants also jointly discussed how to configure and start
display managers, and may have come to a working solution to this
problem, which is complicated by the number of packages providing
display managers and init systems. They also used this opportunity to
sign new, stronger GnuPG keys in order to help the effort to abandon
older and weaker keys [22]. The participants thank the sponsors, most
notably INUITS, which provided the venue, and Debian and its donors for
covering the travel expenses for five of the attendees. A few of the
attendees were kindly sponsored by their employers.
20: https://lists.debian.org/20140501232614.GA29827@oskuro.net
21: http://www.0d.be/debian/debian-gnome-3.12-status.html
22: https://lists.debian.org/20140303181359.GA68761@gwolf.org
Other news
----------
The fifth update of the stable distribution of Debian (codename
"wheezy") was released on April 26 [23].
23: http://www.debian.org/News/2014/20140426
The KDE team needs more manpower, and sent a call for help [24]. People
interested in helping with tasks from triaging bugs to packaging KDE
applications and editing the team's documentation are invited to join
the #debian-qt-kde IRC channel on irc.debian.org, or write a message to
the team's mailing list [25].
24: https://lists.debian.org/20140501181922.GD14582@gnuservers.com.ar
25: https://lists.debian.org/debian-qt-kde/
On behalf of the Debian FTP Masters, Scott Kitterman formally
announced [26] that "source packages [are considered] to be part of the
Debian system and as such all files in source packages must come with
their source as required by the Debian Free Software Guidelines [27] and
be distributable under a free license".
26: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/04/msg00014.html
27: http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
Guido Günther sent a report [28] of the Debian Groupware meeting [29],
held at the end of March at the LinuxHotel [30], in Essen.
28: https://lists.debian.org/20140425192710.GA3033@bogon.m.sigxcpu.org
29: https://wiki.debian.org/GroupwareMeeting2014-03-28to30
30: http://www.linuxhotel.de/community.html
The FreedomBox project [31] is a community project to develop, design
and promote personal servers running free software for private,
personal, communications. Petter Reinholdtsen announced on his blog [32]
that all packages used by the FreedomBox project are now available in
Debian unstable. Petter describes a couple of methods to test the
FreedomBox setup from a Debian installation or a Debian installation CD.
31: https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox
32: http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html
Axel Beckert announced [33] on his blog that the new upstream 4.2.0
version [34] of GNU Screen [35], the first in six years, is already
available in the Debian archive, and just entered the "testing" suite.
33: http://noone.org/blog/English/Computer/Debian/GNU%20Screen%204.2.0%20in%20Debian%20Experimental.futile
34: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/screen-devel/2014-04/msg00024.html
35: http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/screen
The DebConf organisation team met on May 3 to kick off the organisation
of DebConf15, which will take place in Heidelberg, Germany. Minutes of
the meeting [36] are available, as well as a blog post [37] with details
of the prospective venue.
36: https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf15/Germany/Minutes/2014-05-03
37: http://blog.debconf.org/blog/debconf15/2014-05-09_dc15_kicked_off.dc
Upcoming events
---------------
There is one upcoming Debian-related event:
* 17 May, Cesena, Italy — Debian/Ubuntu Community Conference Italia 2014 [38].
38: http://www.ducc.it/
You can find more information about Debian-related events and talks on
the events section [39] of the Debian web site, or subscribe to one of
our events mailing lists for different regions: Europe [40],
Netherlands [41], Hispanic America [42], North America [43].
39: http://www.debian.org/events
40: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu
41: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-nl
42: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-ha
43: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-na
Do you want to organise a Debian booth or a Debian install party? Are
you aware of other upcoming Debian-related events? Have you delivered a
Debian talk that you want to link on our talks page [44]? Send an email
to the Debian Events Team [45].
44: http://www.debian.org/events/talks
45: events@debian.org
New Debian Contributors
-----------------------
Two applicants have been accepted [46] as Debian Maintainers, and eleven
people have started to maintain packages [47] since the previous issue
of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Aaron Zauner, Teddy Hogeborn,
Matthias Maier, R. Harish Navnit, Roman Valov, Scott Talbert, Sebastian
Eichelbaum, Stephen Smith, Johannes Brandstätter, Jörg Frings-Fürst,
Cédric Barboiron, Sebastian Andrzej Siewior, and Daniel James, into our
project!
46: https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2014/04/msg00069.html
47: http://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/new-maintainers.cgi
Important Debian Security Advisories
------------------------------------
Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages
(among others): wordpress [48], curl [49], strongswan [50],
virualbox [51], chromium-browser [52], linux-2.6 [53] openssl [54],
qemu [55], qemu-kvm [56], icedove [57], openjdk-6 [58], drupal7 [59],
drupal6 [60], dpkg [61], libmms [62], super [63], iceweasel [64],
mysql-5.5 [65], chromium-browser [66], xbuffy [67], strongswan [68],
openjdk-7 [69], icedove [70], and rxvt-unicode [71]. Please read them
carefully and take the proper measures.
48: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2901
49: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2902
50: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2903
51: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2904
52: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2905
53: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2906
54: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2908
55: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2909
56: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2910
57: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2911
58: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2912
59: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2913
60: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2914
61: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2915
62: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2916
63: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2917
64: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2918
65: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2919
66: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2920
67: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2921
68: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2922
69: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2923
70: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2924
71: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2925
Debian's Backports Team released an advisory for the package
openssh [72]. Please read it carefully and take the proper measures.
72: https://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/2014/04/msg00000.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 [73] (and the separate backports
list [74], and stable updates list [75]) for announcements.
73: https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
74: https://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/
75: https://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/
New and noteworthy packages
---------------------------
601 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among
many others [76] are:
* apt-transport-tor — APT transport for anonymous package downloads via Tor [77]
* closure-compiler — JavaScript optimizing compiler [78]
* debian-security-support — tool to identify installed packages with ended/limited security support [79]
* dnssec-trigger — reconfiguration tool to make DNSSEC work [80]
* dochelp — utility to browse system documentation [81]
* equalx — graphical editor for LaTeX equations [82]
* gummiboot — simple UEFI bootloader [83]
* latex-coffee-stains — coffee stain for LaTeX documents [84]
* netfilter-persistent — boot-time loader for netfilter configuration [85]
* propellor — property-based host configuration management in haskell [86]
* redshift-plasmoid — KDE plasmoid to adjust the color temperature of the screen [87]
* smemstat — memory usage monitoring tool [88]
* sysdig — system-level exploration and troubleshooting tool [89]
* whatmaps — tool to find processes mapping shared objects [90]
76: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg
77: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/apt-transport-tor
78: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/closure-compiler
79: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/debian-security-support
80: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/dnssec-trigger
81: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/dochelp
82: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/equalx
83: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gummiboot
84: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/latex-coffee-stains
85: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/netfilter-persistent
86: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/propellor
87: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/redshift-plasmoid
88: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/smemstat
89: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sysdig
90: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/whatmaps
Work-needing packages
---------------------
Currently [91] 577 packages are orphaned [92] and 137 packages are up
for adoption [93]: please visit the complete list of packages which need
your help [94].
91: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/05/msg00014.html
92: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned
93: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa
94: 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 [95] to find out how to help. We're
looking forward to receiving your mail at
<debian-publicity@lists.debian.org>.
95: https://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute
This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Laura Arjona Reina,
Cédric Boutillier, Jean-Pierre Giraud, Donald Norwood and Justin B Rye.
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