Debian Weekly News - March 22nd, 2005

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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/12/
Debian Weekly News - March 22nd, 2005
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Welcome to this year's 12th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. The [1]proposal from the meeting of release and
ftpmaster teams was discussed controversial on the [2]debian-devel
list by many developers with more than 1000 mails. Many people don't
appreciate to drop several architectures since supporting them was one
big benefit of the Debian system.

 1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/03/msg00012.html
 2. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/

Restricting the License to GPLv2. Daniel Carrera [3]pondered about
the restriction of the Linux kernel to version 2 of the GNU
[4]General Public License. Looking at the large number of
contributors, this would make it nearly impossible to migrate to
version 3 when it is available. Matthew Palmer [5]fears for a lot of
unpleasant forking action when the new license doesn't look like what
developers expect.

 3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/03/msg00312.html
 4. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
 5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/03/msg00314.html

Debian-Installer Release Candidate 3. Joey Hess [6]began to [7]work
on the next release candidate of the new [8]debian-installer. Most
tests ran [9]fine. He reported that they seem to be on schedule for
the release on March 23rd, which will be 3 months since the rc2
release.

 6. http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/rc3-2005-02-28-23-05.html
 7. http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/d-i_rc3_progress-2005-03-11-21-35.html
 8. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
 9. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2005/03/msg00538.html

Creative Commons 2.0 Licenses. Evan Prodromou [10]worked on the final
revision to the draft summary of the Creative Commons 2.0 (CC)
licenses. This document gives a summary of the opinion of debian-legal
members on the six licenses that make up the CC license suite.
Allegedly, there are already over 1 million works released under a CC
license.

 10. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/03/msg00406.html

PC Resurrection with Debian. Richard White [11]reported about his
effort of providing computers for the economically disadvantaged.
After he tried several live CDs he decided to use pure Debian Sarge.
Afterwards he upgraded the [12]Xfcs package and used the pinning
feature of APT to keep sarge for the other packages.

 11. http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=9973
 12. http://packages.debian.org/xfce

Debian Use Survey Results. Enrico Zini [13]announced the [14]results
of a [15]survey on the purposes for which Debian is being used. The
results include [16]use cases and a [17]list of features that users
considered helpful. Another [18]list contains results the users have
achieved with their Debian installation.

 13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/03/msg00019.html
 14. http://people.debian.org/~enrico/survey/survey.php
 15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/04/msg01508.html
 16. http://people.debian.org/~enrico/survey/survey.php?field=SCEN
 17. http://people.debian.org/~enrico/survey/survey.php?field=INT
 18. http://people.debian.org/~enrico/survey/survey.php?field=DEED

300000th Bug Report opened. A few days ago the 300000th bug was
[19]opened by Noèl Köthe in the [20]bug tracking system. This
overwhelming number can be seen as a dedication from our users and
developers to improve their favourite system. Developers interested in
improving the quality of Debian should take a look at the list of
[21]old bugs.

 19. http://bugs.debian.org/300000
 20. http://www.debian.org/Bugs/
 21. http://master.debian.org/~ajt/oldbugs.html

Project Leader Election Vote Period. Manoj Srivastava [22]called for
votes for this year's Debian project leader [23]election. Votes must
be received by 23:59:59 UTC on April 10th, 2005. The vote must be GPG
signed (or PGP signed) with your key that is in the Debian keyring. He
also [24]added that votes should not be encrypted, since devotee does
not yet deal with encrypted ballots and they would just ignored.

 22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/03/msg00021.html
 23. http://www.debian.org/vote/vote_001
 24. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/03/msg00022.html

Autoconf Usage. Martin Krafft [25]wanted to hear reasons for calling
the autoconf utilities at package built time, even though the general
rule is that they should only used by the maintainer and not at build
time. Calling them while building could e.g. [26]reduce the source
size but [27]risk to render the package not buildable anymore when
autoconf was changed.

 25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/msg00425.html
 26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/msg00433.html
 27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/msg00604.html

Automatic OpenLDAP Upgrade. Torsten Landschoff [28]asked for comments
on his proposal for an automatic upgrade path from OpenLDAP 2.0 to
version 2.1. When the Debian package is updated and the data should be
available afterwards, several precautionary steps need to be taken.

 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/msg01135.html

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

 * DSA 694: [29]xloadimage -- Several vulnerabilities.
 * DSA 695: [30]xli -- Several vulnerabilities.
 * DSA 696: [31]perl -- Privilege escalation.

 29. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-694
 30. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-695
 31. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-696

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive [32]recently or contain important updates.

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

 * [33]backup-manager -- Command-line backup tool for GNU Linux.
 * [34]cramfsswap -- Swap endianess of a cram filesystem (cramfs).
 * [35]cssed -- Graphical CSS editor.
 * [36]geotoad -- Geocaching query tool.
 * [37]gnupg-agent -- GNU privacy guard - password agent.
 * [38]gnupg2 -- GNU privacy guard - a free PGP replacement.
 * [39]gpgsm -- GNU privacy guard - password agent.
 * [40]matchbox-nest -- Graphical wrapper around xnest.
 * [41]metar -- Utility to download/decode METAR reports.
 * [42]qalc -- Powerful and easy to use command line calculator.
 * [43]swami -- SoundFont editor.
 * [44]xnee -- X event recorder/replayer.

 33. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/backup-manager
 34. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/cramfsswap
 35. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/editors/cssed
 36. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/geotoad
 37. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/gnupg-agent
 38. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/gnupg2
 39. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/gpgsm
 40. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/matchbox-nest
 41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/metar
 42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/qalc
 43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/swami
 44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/xnee

Orphaned Packages. 18 packages were orphaned this week and require a
new maintainer. This makes a total of 235 orphaned packages. Many
thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free
Software community. Please see the [45]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.

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

 * [46]bwbasic -- Bywater BASIC Interpreter. ([47]Bug#300650)
 * [48]cvs-syncmail -- Notification program for CVS checkins.
   ([49]Bug#300564)
 * [50]electric -- Electrical CAD system. ([51]Bug#300096)
 * [52]fonter -- Interactive font editor for the console.
   ([53]Bug#300591)
 * [54]guitar -- GTK+ archive extraction/viewing tool.
   ([55]Bug#300627)
 * [56]hp48cc -- C-like compiler which produces HP48 RPN.
   ([57]Bug#300099)
 * [58]lingoteach-lesson -- Language teaching program (vocabulary
   data). ([59]Bug#300561)
 * [60]lingoteach-sound -- Sound files for LingoTeach (English,
   Spanish, German). ([61]Bug#300563)
 * [62]lingoteach-ui -- Language teaching program. ([63]Bug#300565)
 * [64]luxman -- Pac-Man clone (svgalib based). ([65]Bug#300590)
 * [66]vipec -- Network analyser for electrical networks.
   ([67]Bug#300100)
 * [68]webmin-exim -- Exim mail server control module for webmin.
   ([69]Bug#300566)
 * [70]webmin-snort -- Snort control module for webmin.
   ([71]Bug#300567)
 * [72]webmin-virtual-server -- Virtual hosting management module for
   webmin (virtualmin). ([73]Bug#300568)
 * [74]xt-aterm -- Documentation and Examples for xt-aterm.
   ([75]Bug#300570)
 * [76]xt-sdf2 -- Development headers and Libraries for xt-sdf2.
   ([77]Bug#300569)
 * [78]xt-toolbus -- Documentation and Examples for xt-toolbus.
   ([79]Bug#300572)
 * [80]xt-toolbuslib -- C Libraries needed to connect to the ToolBus.
   ([81]Bug#300571)

 46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/interpreters/bwbasic
 47. http://bugs.debian.org/300650
 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/cvs-syncmail
 49. http://bugs.debian.org/300564
 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/electronics/electric
 51. http://bugs.debian.org/300096
 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/editors/fonter
 53. http://bugs.debian.org/300591
 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/guitar
 55. http://bugs.debian.org/300627
 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/hp48cc
 57. http://bugs.debian.org/300099
 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/lingoteach-lesson
 59. http://bugs.debian.org/300561
 60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/lingoteach-sound-english
 61. http://bugs.debian.org/300563
 62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/lingoteach-ui
 63. http://bugs.debian.org/300565
 64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/luxman
 65. http://bugs.debian.org/300590
 66. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/electronics/vipec
 67. http://bugs.debian.org/300100
 68. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/webmin-exim
 69. http://bugs.debian.org/300566
 70. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/webmin-snort
 71. http://bugs.debian.org/300567
 72. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/webmin-virtual-server
 73. http://bugs.debian.org/300568
 74. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/xt-aterm
 75. http://bugs.debian.org/300570
 76. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/xt-sdf2
 77. http://bugs.debian.org/300569
 78. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/xt-toolbus
 79. http://bugs.debian.org/300572
 80. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/xt-toolbuslib
 81. http://bugs.debian.org/300571

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 [82]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [83]dwn@debian.org.

 82. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
 83. mailto:dwn@debian.org


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