Debian Weekly News - August 2nd, 2005

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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/31/
Debian Weekly News - August 2nd, 2005
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Welcome to this year's 31st issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. Geert Stappers [1]noted that the twelfth
[2]birthday of the Debian project will take place this month. Simon
Wright [3]reported that the Debian [4]swirl is shipped as standard
brush in a proprietary commercial drawing program.

 1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu/2005/07/msg00064.html
 2. http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.development/msg/a32d4e2ef3bcdcc6?output=gplain
 3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/06/msg00340.html
 4. http://www.debian.org/logos/

Reviewing Package Descriptions. Wolfgang Borgert [5]asked whether it
was appropriate for package descriptions to include technical and
extraneous details. While both sides were argued for, Lars Wirzenius
[6]noted that many package descriptions contain other errors, and
suggested that a group should wade through the descriptions and
improve them. Clément Stenac [7]followed up with a Wiki page
[8]documenting procedures and calling for volunteers.

 5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/07/msg01074.html
 6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/07/msg01095.html
 7. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/07/msg01395.html
 8. http://wiki.debian.net/?PackagesDescriptionsReview

Services back up! Ryan Murray [9]announced that the temporary
migration of two important Debian machines to HP has been completed
successfully and their services have been restored. All hosting offers
received will now be evaluated in order to decide on a more permanent
home for the two machines. The ftp-master service has been moved to
spohr and developers can upload packages again.

 9. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/07/msg00018.html

Popularity Contest. Petter Reinholdtsen [10]asked users to participate
in the [11]popularity contest by installing the [12]popularity-contest
package and saying "yes" to participation. The results are used to
produce Debian CDs and map the usage of packages and architecture
distribution. Erik Schanze [13]suggested that reports be zipped in
order to ease the stress on low-bandwidth machines. Petter
[14]responded that reports sent using HTTP already implement this, and
that e-mail compression is being worked on.

 10. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/07/msg01269.html
 11. http://popcon.debian.org/
 12. http://packages.debian.org/popularity-contest
 13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/07/msg01297.html
 14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/07/msg01431.html

Debian Accessibility Call for Help. Mario Lang [15]called for help
with the maintenance of accessibility related packages in Debian. He
is searching co-maintainers for the [16]emacspeak and
[17]kernel-patch-speakup packages. He is also looking for developers
to help with specific tasks like developing a framework for building
drivers for proprietary software speech synthesisers, researching the
status of [18]gnopernicus with respect to Java based applications and
[19]OpenOffice.org, and providing an accessibility initrd for the
Debian Installer CDs.

 15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/07/msg01330.html
 16. http://packages.debian.org/emacspeak
 17. http://packages.debian.org/kernel-patch-speakup
 18. http://packages.debian.org/gnopernicus
 19. http://packages.debian.org/openoffice.org

Next Generation Init Scripts. Henrique de Moraes Holschuh
[20]announced a new [21]project on [22]Alioth to foster the
development, reference implementation and deployment of new init
script engines. All maintainers of init script subsystem packages and
init replacements are invited to participate as well as
representatives from derivated distributions that have an interest on
the topic. This project intends to continue the work [23]started
during [24]DebConf2, and rehashed during [25]DebConf5.

 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/07/msg00017.html
 21. http://alioth.debian.org/projects/initscripts-ng/
 22. http://alioth.debian.org/
 23. http://people.debian.org/~hmh/debconf2/debconf2-initscripts-bkg.ps.gz
 24. http://www.debian.org/events/2002/0705-debconf
 25. http://www.debian.org/events/2002/0710-debconf

Full Debian ARM for under $200. Peter Korsgaard [26]announced a
[27]howto about installing Debian on a Linksys [28]NSLU2. The NSLU2 is
a cheap consumer device containing a 266 MHz ARM processor, Ethernet,
USB 2.0, 8 MB flash and 32 MB SDRAM. The installation includes
adjusting the [29]endianness of the machine and the kernel and using
the [30]Debian installer image for LART machines. Attaching a USB hard
disk makes it a nice server.

 26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2005/07/msg00040.html
 27. http://peter.korsgaard.com/articles/debian-nslu2.php
 28. http://www1.linksys.com/products/product.asp?prid=640&scid=43
 29. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness
 30. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

Report Mail as Spam. From now on there is another possibility for the
normal user to help the Debian project. A button has been added to all
mail pages of the [31]mailing list archive to report this mail as
spam. Everybody who finds a spam message can click on the button to
report it back to the listserver. This will help to improve the spam
filter and to clean up the mailing lists from unwanted messages.

 31. http://lists.debian.org/

Alioth Documentation. Raphaël Hertzog started to write some
[32]documentation on [33]Alioth since its users often [34]ask for
documentation and noticed the lack of it. Users are invited to
contribute to this piece of documentation. He pointed to the source of
the modified version of Gforge and invited people to contribute
patches.

 32. http://wiki.debian.net/?Alioth
 33. http://alioth.debian.org/
 34. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/07/msg00404.html

Linux Trademark Issues. Bruce Perens [35]wrote that the [36]UserLinux
project has been approached by the [37]Linux Mark Institute and that
their [38]license doesn't seem to be compatible with Debian. Stephen
Frost, however, [39]pondered whether Debian's use wouldn't fall under
the [40]descriptive use since it refers to Linux as the kernel. Bruce'
main [41]concern is that the license doesn't serve the community and
its efforts but only commercial entities.

 35. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/06/msg00277.html
 36. http://www.userlinux.com/
 37. http://www.linuxmark.org/
 38. http://www.linuxmark.org/forms/linux_licence_doc.html
 39. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/06/msg00278.html
 40. http://www.linuxmark.org/who_needs.html
 41. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/06/msg00300.html

Patent Infringements. Daniel James [42]reported that [43]XMMS contains
a library that implements a patent-encumbered algorithm that requires
a [44]license. Steve Langasek [45]answered that Debian includes this
library because its patents are not actively enforced.

 42. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/07/msg00081.html
 43. http://packages.debian.org/xmms
 44. http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/software.html
 45. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/07/msg00082.html

Skills and Rights of a Debian Developer. Bartosz Fenski [46]pondered
whether Debian should split duties and rights instead of requiring
every registered developer to be a package maintainer, especially if
they only want to work on documentation and translations. Maybe a good
approach would be to better integrate people who are not packaging
software and hence don't require [47]upload permission.

 46. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/07/msg00692.html
 47. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/07/msg00693.html

Debian at the ApacheCon Europe 2005. Meike Reichle wrote a [48]report
about the Debian presence at this year's [49]ApacheCon Europe that was
held in Stuttgart, Germany. She had also taken the liberty to
reproduce the long lost [50]Mike [51]poster. Most attendees of this
conference were professionals who have known Debian already but the
need for sarge DVDs was still high.

 48. http://www.debian.org/events/2005/0718-apachecon-report
 49. http://www.debian.org/events/2005/0718-apachecon
 50. http://www.infodrom.org/Debian/mike.html
 51. http://www.youam.de/~alphascorpii/ApacheCon2005/slides/booth1.html

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

 * DSA 767: [52]ekg -- Arbitrary code execution.
 * DSA 768: [53]phpbb2 -- Cross-site scripting.
 * DSA 769: [54]gaim -- Denial of service.
 * DSA 770: [55]gopher -- Insecure temporary file creation.
 * DSA 771: [56]pdns -- Denial of service.

 52. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-767
 53. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-768
 54. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-769
 55. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-770
 56. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-771

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive [57]recently or contain important updates.

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

 * [58]baobab -- Graphical tool to analyse directory trees.
 * [59]bcron -- Bruce's cron system (programs).
 * [60]bum -- Tool to manage bootup scripts.
 * [61]gobby -- Collaborative text editor.
 * [62]hsffig -- Haskell Binding Auto-Generation Utility.
 * [63]httperf -- HTTP server performance tester.
 * [64]hyperestraier -- Full-text search system for communities.
 * [65]iaxcomm -- Portable IAX(2) protocol telephony client.
 * [66]mipe -- Tools to store PCR-derived data.
 * [67]mysql-server-5.0 -- MySQL database server binaries Version
   5.0.
 * [68]ocfs2-tools -- Tools for managing OCFS2 cluster filesystems.
 * [69]php-pear -- PEAR - PHP Extension and Application Repository.
 * [70]php5 -- Server-side, HTML-embedded scripting language
   (meta-package).
 * [71]pilrcui -- Graphical viewer for PalmOS resource files.
 * [72]pioneers-ai -- Pioneers computer player - a game for GNOME.

 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/baobab
 59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/bcron
 60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/bum
 61. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/gobby
 62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/hsffig
 63. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/httperf
 64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/hyperestraier
 65. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/comm/iaxcomm
 66. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/science/mipe
 67. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/mysql-server-5.0
 68. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/ocfs2-tools
 69. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/php-pear
 70. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/php5
 71. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/pilrcui
 72. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/pioneers-ai

Orphaned Packages. 1 package was orphaned this week and requires a new
maintainer. This makes a total of 153 orphaned packages. Many thanks
to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software
community. Please see the [73]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.

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

 * [74]falconseye -- Data files for Falcon's Eye. ([75]Bug#320075)

 74. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/falconseye
 75. http://bugs.debian.org/320075

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 [76]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [77]dwn@debian.org.

 76. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
 77. mailto:dwn@debian.org