Debian Weekly News - March 2nd, 2004
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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2004/09/
Debian Weekly News - March 2nd, 2004
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Welcome to this year's ninth issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. On March 13th there's going to be a bug squish
[1]fest at the Sydney University by is local [2]user group. Isaac
Jones [3]described that reporting and fixing bugs in software one
uses frequently is one of the easiest ways to get involved in Free
Software. Bradley Kuhn reminded us of the [4]GIF patent that IBM
holds until 2006, even though the Unisys patent will expire soon.
1. http://linuxpr.com/releases/6695.html
2. http://debian.slug.org.au/
3. http://blog.syntaxpolice.org/isaac/index.cgi/technology/contributingToFS.html
4. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html
Debian Project Leader Election. Manoj Srivastava [5]reported that the
nomination period is at an end. Three candidates have nominated
themselves: [6]Martin Michlmayr, [7]Gergely Nagy and [8]Branden
Robinson. The [9]platforms from these candidates shall be published
over the weekend. The three week campaigning period has begun.
5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0402/msg00185.html
6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0402/msg00026.html
7. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0402/msg00183.html
8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0402/msg00184.html
9. http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/
New kind of GNU/Linux Distribution? LinuxWorld [10]reports on Ian
Murdock's [11]weblog discussion, where he proposed a new kind of
"component-oriented distribution". He explains that Progeny is
building such a distribution from which users may build platforms from
the bottom up, including only the features and technologies their
products require. Progeny's [12]component-oriented Linux is being
built in the open as a community project, with components currently
based on Debian sarge. The LSB 1.3-certified [13]core runtime is
available now, with more components and a component-aware,
[14]Anaconda-based installation mechanism to be added in the coming
weeks.
10. http://www.linuxworld.com/story/43857.htm
11. http://platform.progeny.com/weblogs/000005.html
12. http://platform.progeny.com/componentized-linux/
13. http://platform.progeny.com/componentized-linux/releases/status-2004-01-22.html
14. http://platform.progeny.com/anaconda/
Root on LVM on RAID with Debian. Charles Steinkuehler [15]explained
how, using Massimiliano Ferrero's [16]Howto, he got Debian running
with root on LVM on RAID. He got the mkinitrd script working with root
on LVM on RAID by using the hooks provided to support LVM (RAID is
already supported). This allows the use of apt-get to install kernel
upgrades from the Debian archives. Charles detailed the settings he
used for i386 architecture, which should work for other architectures
using the same initial Debian ramdisk scripts as well.
15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-user-0402/msg05104.html
16. http://www.midhgard.it/docs/index_en.html
New multi-arch Proposal. Tollef Fog Heen [17]reported about a new
multi-arch [18]proposal aiming at supporting the AMD64 architecture.
Of course, it caused a lot of debate on the #debian-devel channel, but
that was just as expected. Comments are of course welcome.
17. http://raw.no/personal/blog/tech/Debian/2004-02-25-01-32_multiarch.html
18. http://raw.no/debian/amd64-multiarch-2
Proposed non-free General Resolution. Manoj Srivastava [19]sent a
proposed draft of the ballot for vote that covers future handling of
the non-free section. The voting period for this issue is from March
7th to 21st. Every [20]registered Debian developer can rate two
choices and "further discussion". Manoj solicits comments.
19. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0402/msg00193.html
20. http://www.debian.org/devel/join/
Firefox Trademark Problem. Eric Dorland [21]reported about trademark
problems with including the official icon and name of Firefox. André
Dahlqvist informed him that this doesn't seem to be [22]allowed
upstream. Nathanael Nerode [23]advised him to ask the Mozilla
Foundation to explicitly permit naming unofficial builds "Mozilla" and
"Firefox" provided they are clearly labelled as unofficial builds, or
alternatively to provide alternative names for unofficial builds.
21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0402/msg01877.html
22. http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=50876
23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0402/msg01882.html
Including Vendor PPD Files. Roger Leigh has been [24]contacted by
Seiko-Epson to include their free laser printer PPD files in Debian.
Bernd Eckenfels would rather like to have them [25]included in the
upstream package as well. Siggy Brentrup [26]explained why this is
unlikely to happen and Francesco Lovergine [27]added a list of
packages for vendor-provided PPD files.
24. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0402/msg02023.html
25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0402/msg02060.html
26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0403/msg00002.html
27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0403/msg00016.html
Apache License Problems? Chris Waters [28]discussed the new [29]Apache
Source License 2.0 which the [30]Free Software Foundation claims to be
[31]incompatible with the GNU [32]General Public License, contrary to
the [33]Apache Software Foundation. Chris is [34]concerned about
people who might waste time starting projects that could turn out to
be undistributable.
28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0402/msg00249.html
29. http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
30. http://www.fsf.org/
31. http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/04/02/18/215242.shtml
32. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
33. http://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility
34. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0402/msg00267.html
Open Publication License. Oleksandr Moskalenko [35]wondered if the
[36]Open Publication License complies to the [37]Debian Free Software
Guidelines. Henning Makholm and Nathanael Nerode [38]consider one
clause non-free, like a similar clause in the GNU [39]Free
Documentation License.
35. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0402/msg00278.html
36. http://opencontent.org/openpub/
37. http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
38. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0402/msg00283.html
39. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update
your systems if you have any of these packages installed.
* [40]Linux 2.4.19 (mips) -- Local root exploits.
* [41]xboing -- Buffer overflows.
* [42]libapache-mod-python -- Denial of service.
* [43]Linux 2.2.20 (i386+m68k+powerpc) -- Local root exploit.
* [44]Linux 2.2.22 (alpha) -- Local root exploit.
40. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-450
41. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-451
42. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-452
43. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-453
44. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-454
New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive [45]recently or contain important updates.
45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main
* [46]addressmanager -- Personal Address Manager for GNUstep.
* [47]grubconf -- GNOME2 based GNU GRUB configuration editor.
* [48]kdevelop3 -- IDE for Unix/X11 - development version.
* [49]kmag -- Screen Magnifier for KDE.
* [50]kmd -- Komodo Manchester Debugger.
* [51]kmousetool -- KDE mouse manipulation tool for disabled people.
* [52]kmouth -- Type-and-say KDE front end for speech synthesizers.
* [53]vcsweb -- HTTP interface to VCS-controlled repositories.
* [54]wmdiskmon -- Dockapp to display disk usage.
46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/addressmanager
47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/grubconf
48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/kdevelop3
49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/kmag
50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/kmd
51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/kmousetool
52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/kmouth
53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/perl/vcsweb
54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/wmdiskmon
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 [55]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [56]dwn@debian.org.
55. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
56. mailto:dwn@debian.org
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