Debian Weekly News - October 19th, 2004

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2004/41/
Debian Weekly News - October 19th, 2004
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to this year's 41st issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. Raphaël Hertzog has written the first French
[1]book about Debian to honour the growing French speaking Debian
community with a sample chapter online. Joey Hess has [2]contacted
submitters of older installation reports to retry and received a lot
of promising responses. Carla Schroder [3]reported about using
[4]Knoppix for system recovery.

 1. http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/
 2. http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/random-2004-10-13-21-29.html
 3. http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-knopx.html?ca=dgr-lnxw03-obg-SysRecover
 4. http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/

Debian GIS Sub-Project started. Francesco Lovergine [5]announced the
launch of DebianGis as new Debian sub-project. The goal is to create a
[6]custom Debian distribution oriented to serious [7]Geographical
Information Systems (GIS) users and applications. Coordination
currently takes place on [8]Alioth.

 5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004/10/msg00007.html
 6. http://wiki.debian.net/index.cgi?CustomDebian
 7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gis
 8. http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/pkg-grass-general

Academic Free License. Carlos Laviola noted that the [9]FIGlet
developers are considering to change the license of the entire
distribution from the [10]Artistic License to the [11]Academic Free
License 2.1 and [12]wondered if it was DFSG-free. Andrew Suffield
[13]asserted it was clearly non-free, including a number of
problematic clauses. MJ Ray [14]observed that a clause requiring a
reasonable effort to obtain the express assent of recipients to the
terms of the license might be a practical problem for debian mirrors,
regardless of the DFSG.

 9. http://packages.debian.org/stable/source/figlet
 10. http://www.opensource.org/licenses/artistic-license.php
 11. http://www.opensource.org/licenses/afl-2.1.php
 12. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/10/msg00230.html
 13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/10/msg00237.html
 14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/10/msg00240.html

Debian in New York City. Benjamin Mako Hill [15]announced he has
created a new email list for Debian developers in the New York City
area. The list will be used to schedule social get-togethers and
key-signing parties. Other cities with similar groups are [16]listed
in the unofficial Debian [17]wiki.

 15. http://mako.yukidoke.org/copyrighteous/freesoftware/20041014-00.html
 16. http://wiki.debian.net/index.cgi?LocalGroups
 17. http://wiki.debian.net/

Debian Project at Conferences. The Debian project [18]announced that
it will participate in seven events in several cities in Europe. Last
weekend a [19]mini conference took place in Italy. This week Debian is
present at the [20]systems exhibition in Munich, Germany. Next weekend
the project will participate in [21]Berlinux in Berlin, Germany and in
[22]OS 04 in Graz, Austria. Several Debian related talks and workshops
will be held during these events.

 18. http://www.debian.org/News/2004/20041015
 19. http://www.debian.org/events/2004/1016-minidebconf
 20. http://www.debian.org/events/2004/1018-systems
 21. http://www.debian.org/events/2004/1022-berlinux
 22. http://www.debian.org/events/2004/1022-os04

Ubuntu Development Model. Michael Banck took a [23]look at how
[24]Ubuntu Linux works. He observed that apparently they managed to
pull off with a tiny workforce what Debian was not able to do with a
thousand volunteers and listed key development areas. Michael pondered
whether all of their work will flow back upstream, whether they will
branch off unstable again and whether the employees will find time to
work on their non-packaging related tasks for Debian.

 23. http://www.advogato.org/person/mbanck/diary.html?start=24
 24. http://www.ubuntulinux.com/

Generic XTerm Move? Martin Krafft is quite [25]annoyed at times by
softwares that has [26]xterm hard-coded and proposed to move to an
alternatives-based approach. Peter Eisentraut however [27]reported
that he has written scripts that explicitly call xterm because other
terminal emulator programs under X couldn't handle certain programs.
Frank Lichtenheld [28]suggested to file bug reports on packages that
don't use x-terminal-emulator instead.

 25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00614.html
 26. http://packages.debian.org/xterm
 27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00617.html
 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00620.html

ppp/ip-up versus network/if-up. A [29]discussion arose about the use
of ppp/ip-up versus network/if-up, since both intend to run scripts
whenever an interface comes up. Marco d'Itri [30]suggested historical
reasons and reported about programs that may have only an interest in
PPP interfaces. Thomas Hood [31]reported that the experimental
ifupdown facility does not currently rerun "up" scripts if pppd
reconnects which [32]means that it cannot replace the PPP mechanism.

 29. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00693.html
 30. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00718.html
 31. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00864.html
 32. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00908.html

Packaging of Driver without Firmware. Aurelien Jarno [33]wondered if a
driver package could go into main if the binary-only firmware blob
would not be included. Marco d'Itri [34]explained that if driver can
be compiled and successfully executed without the firmware, it should
go in main because it's Free Software. The hardware device may not
perform useful work until its firmware has been loaded, though, but
Debian distributes the driver and not the device.

 33. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/10/msg00089.html
 34. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/10/msg00097.html

Dealing with Trademarks. Problems with Abiword and a discussion with
their developers inspired Branden Robinson to post a [35]summary about
Debians concerns over trademark licensing. He concluded that the
biggest question for Debian is whether the default protections that
attach to trademarks, even when unregistered and unmentioned, infringe
upon the freedoms the [36]DFSG purports to defend.

 35. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/10/msg00236.html
 36. http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines

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

 * [37]mpg123 -- Arbitrary code execution.
 * [38]sax -- Buffer overflow.
 * [39]cupsys -- Information leak.
 * [40]tiff -- Remote code execution.
 * [41]cyrus-sasl-mit -- Arbitrary code execution.
 * [42]netkit-telnet-ssl -- Denial of service.

 37. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-564
 38. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-565
 39. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-566
 40. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-567
 41. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-568
 42. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-569

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive [43]recently or contain important updates.

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

 * [44]aircrack -- Wireless WEP cracker.
 * [45]amarok -- Versatile and easy to use audio player for KDE.
 * [46]bamboo -- Website creation tool with wiki-like features.
 * [47]capisuite -- Easy fax and voice box solution for ISDN/CAPI
   capable devices.
 * [48]cpphs -- Simplified cpp-a-like preprocessor for Haskell.
 * [49]gamin -- File and directory monitoring system.
 * [50]gems -- Shows a console session in several terminals.
 * [51]katoob -- Gtk2 light weight multilingual BiDi aware text
   editor.
 * [52]latex-bridge -- LaTeX macros for typesetting bridge game
   diagrams.
 * [53]mdnsresponder -- Howl Rendezvous/mDNS service responder
   daemon.
 * [54]ml-burg -- Code generator generator for Standard ML.
 * [55]nowhere -- Program translator.
 * [56]ntfstools -- Legacy package to install ntfsprogs.
 * [57]pearpc -- Architecture-independent PowerPC platform emulator.
 * [58]phpreports -- XML-based report generator for PHP.
 * [59]schoolbell -- Web server for co-ordinating schedules,
   timetables and calendars.
 * [60]schooltool -- Common architecture independent files for the
   SchoolTool server.
 * [61]sfftobmp -- SFF (Structed Fax File) Converter.
 * [62]sffview -- Structured Fax File (SFF) Viewer.
 * [63]shc -- Shell script compiler.
 * [64]traceproto -- Traceroute replacement that supports TCP, UDP,
   and ICMP.
 * [65]xkbsel -- Tool for defining, selecting, and indicating XKB
   keyboards.

 44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/aircrack
 45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/amarok
 46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/bamboo
 47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/comm/capisuite
 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/cpphs
 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/gamin
 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/gems
 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/katoob
 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/tex/latex-bridge
 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/mdnsresponder
 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/ml-burg
 55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/nowhere
 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/ntfstools
 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/pearpc
 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/phpreports
 59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/schoolbell
 60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/schooltool
 61. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/sfftobmp
 62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/sffview
 63. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/shc
 64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/traceproto
 65. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/xkbsel

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


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [e-mail:debian-news-REQUEST@lists.debian.org]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [e-mail:listmaster@lists.debian.org]