Debian Weekly News - December 13th, 2005

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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/50/
Debian Weekly News - December 13th, 2005
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 Wouter Verhelst [1]called for talks for the
developer's room at the upcoming [2]FOSDEM conference. Nathanael
Nerode [3]reported that the C++ transitions are processing well and
that he doesn't expect new problems with it.

 1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu/2005/12/msg00000.html
 2. http://www.debian.org/events/2006/0225-fosdem
 3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2005/12/msg00074.html

Interview with Branden Robinson. TuxJournal delivered an [4]interview
with Branden that talks a bit about his background and the advantages
of the Debian distribution. His primary focus as Debian Project Leader
has been to try to resolve some long-standing infrastructural issues
that have been frustrating our developers and users.

 4. http://www.tuxjournal.net/intervista6.html

Joining Skolelinux Forces. Steffen Joeris [5]proposed using
[6]www.skolelinux.org as a debian-edu community base featuring a
[7]Planet RSS feed aggregator as well as email addresses and web
space for project members. This should not only strengthen the
debian-edu community but also facilitate coordination and cooperation
between the different local teams.

 5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2005/12/msg00166.html
 6. http://www.skolelinux.org/
 7. http://planetplanet.org/

Debian stabilising the Linux Landscape. Tom Adelstein [8]explained
how he switched from several other distributions to Debian GNU/Linux
and why it serves him best. The Debian project tends to attract
members with a higher level of technical expertise and a strong
commitment to the Free Software Foundation. According to [9]Netcraft,
Debian is currently the fastest growing GNU/Linux distribution for web
servers, with more than 1.2 million active sites in December.

 8. http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/49490/index.html
 9. http://www.netcraft.com/

DCC Common Core 3.0 released. The [10]DCC Alliance announced the
[11]release of DCC 3.0. This is an [12]LSB 3.0 compliant base set of
packages based on and compatible with Debian [13]sarge. DCC 3.0
contains 237 packages of which 200 are binary packages taken from
Debian sarge and 32 are a backports from [14]etch. The remaining 5
packages provide LSB 3.0 compliance in such a way that the default
application environment is 100 % [15]compatible with standard Debian
sarge.

 10. http://www.dccalliance.org/
 11. http://www.dccalliance.org/pressrelease2.html
 12. http://refspecs.freestandards.org/lsb.shtml
 13. http://www.debian.org/releases/sarge/
 14. http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/
 15. http://www.dccalliance.org/releasenotes.html

New Features on buildd.net. Ingo Jürgensmann [16]announced the
inclusion of [17]armeb, [18]hurd-i386, [19]kfreebsd-i386 and [20]m32r
on [21]buildd.net. Other features include estimations of package
building times on various architectures, more statistics, links to
package information and bugs, and an [22]overview about currently
built packages for those [23]buildd that support this site.

 16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/11/msg01102.html
 17. http://www.debonaras.org/
 18. http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/
 19. http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/
 20. http://www.linux-m32r.org/
 21. http://www.buildd.net/
 22. http://www.buildd.net/cgi/nowbuilding.cgi
 23. http://www.debian.org/devel/buildd/

Mixing different Upstream Packages. Jay Berkenbilt [24]pondered the
inclusion of third party programs from different upstream developers
in a Debian package and was soliciting input. Mark Brown [25]replied
with details about the procedure with NIS packages. Nathanael Nerode
[26]added that the inclusion depends on the size of the new program
and its prospective use.

 24. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/11/msg01140.html
 25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/11/msg01143.html
 26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/11/msg01156.html

Splitting Packages. Bill Allombert [27]asked developers who split
their packages into a normal and a data package to obey to a number of
rules that will help Debian keep the archive sober. These include a
naming scheme, keeping program data in the normal package, the use of
symbolic links and actually moving the shared data into the data
package.

 27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/11/msg01170.html

Configuration Handling. Frank Küster [28]wondered how to treat the
large number of potential configuration files of the TeX system best
in Debian packages. He proposed to use a new directory for local files
that should be preferred. Bill Allombert [29]replied with details on
how the [30]menu package handles its configuration.

 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/11/msg01239.html
 29. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/11/msg01254.html
 30. http://packages.debian.org/menu

GPLv3 Development Process. Francesco Poli [31]reported that the
[32]Free Software Foundation has recently disclosed details about the
drafting [33]process that will be adopted for the upcoming version 3
of the [34]GNU GPL. The final text is scheduled to be released between
September 2006 and March 2007 with at least two draft versions to be
released in January and June 2006.

 31. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/12/msg00005.html
 32. http://www.fsf.org/
 33. http://gplv3.fsf.org/process-definition
 34. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

Debian Task Descriptions. Andreas Schuldei [35]called for volunteers
to document descriptions of various [36]tasks within the Debian
project. The goal of these descriptions is to separate names and
persons from tasks that should lead to more objective discussion in
the future.

 35. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2005/11/msg00132.html
 36. http://wiki.debian.org/JobDescription

GameBoy Emulators. Robert Millan [37]wondered whether GameBoy
emulators that are released under the [38]GNU GPL should be placed in
main or contrib since they require potentially non-free games.
However, [39]gngb is in main while [40]gnuboy is in contrib. Andrew
Suffield [41]added that there is a thriving community of developers of
free gameboy [42]games.

 37. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/12/msg00024.html
 38. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
 39. http://packages.debian.org/gngb
 40. http://packages.debian.org/gnuboy
 41. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/12/msg00029.html
 42. http://sourceforge.net/projects/opengbgames

Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update
your systems if you have any of these packages installed.

 * DSA 916: [43]inkscape -- Arbitrary code execution.
 * DSA 917: [44]courier -- Unauthorised access.
 * DSA 918: [45]osh -- Privilege escalation.
 * DSA 919: [46]curl -- Potential security problem.
 * DSA 920: [47]ethereal -- Arbitrary code execution.

 43. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-916
 44. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-917
 45. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-918
 46. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-919
 47. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-920

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive [48]recently or contain important updates.

 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main

 * [49]bmp-crossfade -- Beep-Media-Player Plugin for crossfading /
   continuous output.
 * [50]gwsetup -- Utilities to configure and manipulate Geneweb
   databases.
 * [51]hocr-gtk -- GTK+ frontend for Hebrew OCR.
 * [52]kanjisaver -- Japanese kanji screensaver.
 * [53]os-prober -- Utility to detect other OSes on a set of drives.
 * [54]pcmciautils -- PCMCIA utilities for Linux 2.6.
 * [55]pfb2t1c2pfb -- Convert PFB into more compressible format and
   back.
 * [56]pybaz -- Python bindings for the bazaar revision control
   system.
 * [57]remctl-client -- Client for Kerberos-authenticated command
   execution.
 * [58]remctl-server -- Server for Kerberos-authenticated command
   execution.
 * [59]sword-comm-tdavid -- C. H. Spurgeon's Treasury of David for
   SWORD.
 * [60]xhtml2ps -- HTML to PostScript converter - Tcl/Tk GUI
   frontend.

 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/bmp-crossfade
 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/gwsetup
 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/hocr-gtk
 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/kanjisaver
 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/debian-installer/os-prober
 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/pcmciautils
 55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/tex/pfb2t1c2pfb
 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/python/pybaz
 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/remctl-client
 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/remctl-server
 59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/sword-comm-tdavid
 60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/xhtml2ps

Orphaned Packages. 2 packages were orphaned this week and require a
new maintainer. This makes a total of 190 orphaned packages. Many
thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free
Software community. Please see the [61]WNPP pages for the full list,
and please add a note to the bug report and retitle it to ITA: if you
plan to take over a package.

 61. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/

 * [62]gtk-engines-begtk -- BeOS-like theme for GTK+.
   ([63]Bug#342454)
 * [64]manderlbot -- IRC bot, written in Erlang. ([65]Bug#342918)

 62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/gtk-engines-begtk
 63. http://bugs.debian.org/342454
 64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/manderlbot
 65. http://bugs.debian.org/342918

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 [66]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [67]dwn@debian.org.

 66. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
 67. mailto:dwn@debian.org


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