Debian Weekly News - September 20th, 2005

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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/38/
Debian Weekly News - September 20th, 2005
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 1. http://damog.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=177
 2. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
 3. http://necrotic.deadbeast.net/~branden/blog/exuberance/Debian/trademark.html
 4. http://www.dccalliance.org/
 5. http://www.debian.org/ports/m68k/
 6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2005/09/msg00139.html

Volunteer Participation in Debian. A talk about the [7]evolution of
volunteer participation in Debian was held at the [8]International
Conference on Open Source Systems. It presents a quantitative research
of data of major Debian releases over the last 7 years, as a case
study of volunteer participation in Free Software projects. The
conclusion is that developers tend to maintain more packages and stay
active for a long period of time.

 7. http://oss2005.case.unibz.it/Papers/52.pdf
 8. http://oss2005.case.unibz.it/

Removing non-free Documentation. Frank Lichtenheld [9]announced how
the release team will deal with non-free documentation for the etch
release. The [10]status of packages with such files will be tracked
with the new usertags feature of the [11]bug tracking system. He
advised the maintainers to talk to their upstream authors and document
the decisions in bug reports.

 9. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/09/msg00007.html
 10. http://release.debian.org/removing-non-free-documentation
 11. http://www.debian.org/Bugs/

Honouring the Release Team Work. Barry Hawkins [12]looked at how much
effort it takes to fix bugs, resolve issues and maintain the software
at work with six developers and 18 dependencies to third party
libraries. In comparison with the 10,000 source packages in Debian and
the coordination and effort required to get a release done the more he
is in awe of the Debian release team.

 12. http://www.yepthatsme.com/2005/09/13/the-longer-i-manage-a-technical-team-the-more-i-am-in-awe-of-the-debian-release-team/

Debian-Women Software Freedom Day Activities. On the occasion of this
year's [13]Software Freedom Day the [14]Debian-Women project was
running several [15]activities in order to appeal to all levels of
experience: A new IRC channel, #debian-women-new, was opened for until
then inactive people who would like to get involved with the
Debian-Women project. For more experienced members there was a "help
day" on the usual #debian-women channel. Erinn Clark installed a local
BTS, dak and buildd for people to try out and practice with. Last but
not least a Bug Squashing Party was organised by Hanna Wallach at
#debian-bugs. All three events were well received and many women used
the opportunity to catch up on the Debian-Women project and general
Debian development.

 13. http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/
 14. http://women.alioth.debian.org/
 15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-women/2005/08/msg00189.html

Parallelised Boot Sequence. Petter Reinholdtsen [16]restarted the
[17]discussion about executing init scripts in parallel and provided a
simple patch against rc that will simply execute all scripts with the
same priority in parallel. Based on the [18]LSB he [19]provided an
example for a dependency block in init scripts that could be parsed by
future startup programs.

 16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg01100.html
 17. http://alioth.debian.org/projects/initscripts-ng/
 18. http://refspecs.freestandards.org/LSB_2.1.0/LSB-generic/LSB-generic/initscrcomconv.html
 19. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg01172.html

Improving Init Scripts. Marc Chantreux [20]proposed to write init
scripts more efficiently, i.e. by using features the shell and the
used utilities provide. Miquel van Smoorenburg [21]pointed out that
only POSIX features should be used. David Weinehall [22]added that
[23]busybox does not implement all GNU extensions.

 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg01451.html
 21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg01455.html
 22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg01655.html
 23. http://packages.debian.org/busybox

Closing Bug Reports. Grzegorz Bizon [24]wondered what the preferred
way to close bug reports is. Blars Blarson [25]explained that the bug
will be automatically closed by the upload when it is mentioned in the
changelog. If it is fixed some other way, or the change has already
been uploaded, the nnn-done address with a version pseudo-header needs
to be used.

 24. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg01477.html
 25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg01485.html

New Maintainer Front Desk Report. Marc Brockschmidt [26]reported about
significant changes in the [27]new maintainer process. Contributing to
Debian is now a requirement and lack of it will cause the application
to be removed. The web interface that supports UTF-8 now has also been
moved to a new host and to HTTPS so that secure connections are
possible.

 26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/09/msg00010.html
 27. http://nm.debian.org/

Restricting the GNU GPL. Harri Järvi [28]noticed that the license of
[29]linuxsampler restricts the [30]GNU GPL and explicitly
[31]prohibits commercial use. Justin Pryzby [32]wondered if it
wouldn't have to be removed since it is linked against a free
[33]library.

 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/09/msg00268.html
 29. http://packages.debian.org/linuxsampler
 30. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
 31. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/09/msg00329.html
 32. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/09/msg00344.html
 33. http://packages.debian.org/libasound2

Accidental Distributed Denial of Service Attack. On Monday a
distributed denial of service attack was [34]initiated by the security
team. They have installed 1.7 GB of packages with the latest
[35]xfree86 update. Due to the large number of users and the size of
XFree86 packages, this caused a constant 97 MBit/s output-rate on the
security host. There are ongoing discussions on how to avoid this in
the future.

 34. http://lists.debian.org/debian-curiosa/2005/09/msg00018.html
 35. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-816

Publically exposing the Developer Location? Robert Lemmen [36]proposed
to make public the location of all developers. Ben Armstrong [37]noted
that developers have already access to this information, and added
that he would not be happy if the location would be exposed together
with his name. Wolfgang Borgert [38]suggested to use a new field
instead.

 36. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg01529.html
 37. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg01540.html
 38. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg01584.html

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

 * DSA 811: [39]common-lisp-controller -- Arbitrary code injection.
 * DSA 812: [40]turqstat -- Buffer overflow.
 * DSA 813: [41]centericq -- Several vulnerabilities.
 * DSA 814: [42]lm-sensors -- Insecure temporary file.
 * DSA 815: [43]kdebase -- Local root vulnerability.
 * DSA 816: [44]xfree86 -- Arbitrary code execution.

 39. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-811
 40. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-812
 41. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-813
 42. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-814
 43. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-815
 44. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-816

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]bandwidthd -- Tracks usage of TCP/IP and builds HTML files
   with graphs.
 * [47]cedilla -- Best-effort Unicode text printer.
 * [48]eiciel -- Graphical editor for POSIX ACLs.
 * [49]exiv2 -- EXIF/IPTC metadata manipulation tool.
 * [50]hsetroot -- Tool for compose root-pixmaps for X11.
 * [51]hula -- Integrated mail & calendar system with simple
   interface.
 * [52]kkbswitch -- Keyboard layout indicator for KDE.
 * [53]klibido -- Usenet binary grabber for KDE.
 * [54]knowledgetree -- Web-based Knowledge Management.
 * [55]osgcal -- Cal3d to OpenSceneGraph adapter development
   environment.
 * [56]pugs -- Perl 6 Implementation.
 * [57]rkhunter -- Rootkit, backdoor, sniffer and exploit scanner.
 * [58]sigscheme -- Scheme Interpreter.
 * [59]taskjuggler -- Project management application.
 * [60]wcalc -- Flexible command-line scientific calculator.
 * [61]xoo -- Graphical wrapper around Xnest.
 * [62]xorsa -- Tool for Celestial Mechanics investigations.
 * [63]zope3 -- Open Source Web Application Server.

 46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/bandwidthd
 47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/cedilla
 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/eiciel
 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/exiv2
 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/hsetroot
 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/hula
 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/kkbswitch
 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/klibido
 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/knowledgetree
 55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/osgcal
 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/interpreters/pugs
 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/rkhunter
 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/interpreters/sigscheme
 59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/taskjuggler
 60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/wcalc
 61. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/xoo
 62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/science/xorsa
 63. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/python/zope3

Orphaned Packages. 4 packages were orphaned this week and require a
new maintainer. This makes a total of 195 orphaned packages. Many
thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free
Software community. Please see the [64]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.

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

 * [65]doc-debian-ko -- Debian FAQ and other documents to Korean.
   ([66]Bug#327764)
 * [67]irmp3 -- A Multimedia Audio Jukebox application.
   ([68]Bug#327776)
 * [69]rhdb-admin -- Graphical tool to administer PostgreSQL/RHDB
   Databases. ([70]Bug#327775)
 * [71]zorroutils -- Zorro bus utilities for Amigas running 2.1 and
   later kernels. ([72]Bug#328650)

 65. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/doc/doc-debian-ko
 66. http://bugs.debian.org/327764
 67. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/irmp3
 68. http://bugs.debian.org/327776
 69. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/rhdb-admin
 70. http://bugs.debian.org/327775
 71. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/zorroutils
 72. http://bugs.debian.org/328650

Removed Packages. 38 packages have been [73]removed from the Debian
archive during the past week:

 73. http://ftp-master.debian.org/removals.txt

 * diskless -- Generate NFS file structure for diskless boot.
   [74]Bug#107808: Request of QA, buggy, unmaintained, better
   alternative available (lessdisks)
 * chos -- Easy Boot loader with a Boot-Menu
   [75]Bug#263868: Request of QA, rc-bugs, alternatives exist like
   grub
 * fenris -- Program execution path analysis tool
   [76]Bug#322601: Request of QA, has never been part of a stable
   release, rc bug, dead upstream
 * libyaml-ruby -- YAML for Ruby 1.6
   [77]Bug#323772: Request of maintainer, functionality now provided
   by ruby1.8 and ruby-defaults
 * aeromail -- Web-based e-mail client
   [78]Bug#326164: Request of QA, orphaned, rc-buggy with no activity
 * gswitchit -- Keyboard layout switcher
   [79]Bug#326215: Request of maintainer, superseded by
   gnome-applet's keyboardlayoutswitcher
 * thoughttracker -- Nonhierarchical, hyperlinked knowledge base
   [80]Bug#327149: Request of Maintainer, dead upstream, better
   alternatives exist
 * konq-speaker -- Text-to-speech plugins for Konqueror and Kate
   [81]Bug#327156: Request of maintainer, dead upstream, no longer
   needed, kdeaccessibility has alternative
 * netjuke -- Web-Based Audio Streaming Jukebox
   [82]Bug#327678: Request of QA, orphaned, dead upstream
 * akregator -- RSS feed aggregator for KDE
   [83]Bug#327879: Request of maintainer, superseded by kdepim and
   kdeaddons
 * tutos -- Ultimate Team Organisation Software
   [84]Bug#321647: Request of maintainer, outdated, security issues,
   superseded by tutos2
 * jftw -- Joel's File Tree Walk library
   [85]Bug#326702: Request of maintainer, obsolete, hardly used
 * gxedit -- GTK-based pop-up command to get user input
   [86]Bug#286959: Request of maintainer, buggy, hardly used, plenty
   of alternatives
 * zope-popyda -- Database Adapter connecting Zope and PostgreSQL
   [87]Bug#327626: Request of maintainer, old, rc-buggy and
   superseded by python-psycopg / sql-relay
 * icukrell -- GKrellm plugin which shows the status of GnomeICU
   [88]Bug#327650: Request of maintainer, old, rc-buggy
 * dedit -- Editor Tool with Japanese extension for beginners
   [89]Bug#327662: Request of maintainer, old, rc-buggy and
   unmaintained
 * matchbox-nest -- Graphical wrapper around xnest
   [90]Bug#328068: Request of maintainer, renamed to xoo
 * grunch -- Merge partial scans into a larger image
   [91]Bug#327636: Request of maintainer, has never been part of a
   stable release, rc-buggy
 * gnuradio -- Software Defined Radio
   [92]Bug#328127: Request of maintainer, superseded by
   gnuradio-core
 * howl -- Tools for use with Howl (mDNSPublish and mDNSBrowse)
   [93]Bug#302462: Request of maintainer, license issues (APSL 2.0)
 * kcdlabel -- CD cover creator for KDE
   [94]Bug#328144: Request of maintainer, dead upstream, superseded
 * daapd -- Serves music files using the Apple DAA protocol
   [95]Bug#294934: Request of maintainer, Buggy, serious design
   issue
 * slpim -- Personal Information Manager for the console
   [96]Bug#328536: Request of maintainer, outdated, no users
 * npadmin -- Query information from SNMP featured printer
   [97]Bug#328593: Request of maintainer, very old, obsolete
 * oaklisp -- Object-oriented dialect of Scheme.
   [98]Bug#328597: Request of maintainer, very old, obsolete
 * zope2.6-verbosesecurity -- Helps to explain the reason for denied
   access
   [99]Bug#328617: Request of maintainer, obsolete; only works with
   to-be-removed zope2.6; superseded by zope-verbosesecurity
 * tclexpat -- Tcl interface to expat XML parser.
   [100]Bug#328653: Request of maintainer, very old, obsolete
 * umsdos -- Utilities for controlling a umsdos filesystem
   [101]Bug#328656: Request of maintainer, old, unused, broken
 * gopherweblink -- Generate web link files for gopher servers
   [102]Bug#328693: Request of maintainer, only useful with no longer
   supported gopherd
 * cfe -- Console Font Editor
   [103]Bug#328801: Request of maintainer, old, unused
 * vmnet -- Simple virtual networking program
   [104]Bug#328813: Request of maintainer, old, superseded
 * vgagamespack -- SVGAlib games ConnectN, Othello, and Mines
   [105]Bug#328816: Request of maintainer, old, unused, superseded
 * bloksi -- Sliding-blocks puzzle (glotski written in perl)
   [106]Bug#328817: Request of maintainer, old, alternatives
   available
 * pcrd -- PCR-1000 Control Daemon / Command Line Interface
   [107]Bug#328818: Request of QA, old, superseded by icomlib
 * math3d -- Spatial geometry math C++ runtime library
   [108]Bug#328819: Request of maintainer, old, unused
 * regex -- GNU regular expression library, run time libraries.
   [libc5]
   [109]Bug#328839: Request of maintainer, old, broken, unused
 * libhs -- HighScore Library (run-time library)
   [110]Bug#328860: Request of maintainer, unused
 * gidic -- Simple GTK Dictionary
   [111]Bug#328862: Request of maintainer, old, unused, gtk1.2

 74. http://bugs.debian.org/107808
 75. http://bugs.debian.org/263868
 76. http://bugs.debian.org/322601
 77. http://bugs.debian.org/323772
 78. http://bugs.debian.org/326164
 79. http://bugs.debian.org/326215
 80. http://bugs.debian.org/327149
 81. http://bugs.debian.org/327156
 82. http://bugs.debian.org/327678
 83. http://bugs.debian.org/327879
 84. http://bugs.debian.org/321647
 85. http://bugs.debian.org/326702
 86. http://bugs.debian.org/286959
 87. http://bugs.debian.org/327626
 88. http://bugs.debian.org/327650
 89. http://bugs.debian.org/327662
 90. http://bugs.debian.org/328068
 91. http://bugs.debian.org/327636
 92. http://bugs.debian.org/328127
 93. http://bugs.debian.org/302462
 94. http://bugs.debian.org/328144
 95. http://bugs.debian.org/294934
 96. http://bugs.debian.org/328536
 97. http://bugs.debian.org/328593
 98. http://bugs.debian.org/328597
 99. http://bugs.debian.org/328617
 100. http://bugs.debian.org/328653
 101. http://bugs.debian.org/328656
 102. http://bugs.debian.org/328693
 103. http://bugs.debian.org/328801
 104. http://bugs.debian.org/328813
 105. http://bugs.debian.org/328816
 106. http://bugs.debian.org/328817
 107. http://bugs.debian.org/328818
 108. http://bugs.debian.org/328819
 109. http://bugs.debian.org/328839
 110. http://bugs.debian.org/328860
 111. http://bugs.debian.org/328862

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 112. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
 113. mailto:dwn@debian.org