Debian Weekly News - March 2nd, 2004

Posted by dave on Mar 3, 2004 8:54 AM EDT
Mailing list
Mail this story
Print this story

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.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Weekly News http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2004/09/ Debian Weekly News - March 2nd, 2004 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

-- 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]

  Nav
» Read more about: Story Type: Newsletter; Groups: Debian

« Return to the newswire homepage

This topic does not have any threads posted yet!

You cannot post until you login.