------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/ Debian Project News debian-public...@lists.debian.org September 19th, 2011 http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2011/13/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to this year's thirteenth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include: * Debian's 18th birthday * Bits from the DPL * Debian Bug Squashing Party at MIT * Squeeze backports for Xorg * Debian feeds on Identi.ca and Twitter * Debian in Myanmar * Further interviews * Other news * New Debian Contributors * Important Debian Security Advisories * New and noteworthy packages * Work-needing packages * Want to continue reading DPN? Debian's 18th birthday ---------------------- On August 16 the Debian Project turned 18 [1]: for that occasion, across the world there were various parties [2] organised by Debian Developers, Maintainers, Contributors and Users. Pictures of these parties can be viewed at the Debian Birthday website [3], where the project has collected 2230 thanks messages! The Debian Project takes this opportunity to thank all its users and contributors, and its upstream developers. The Project has also received some birthday cakes [4] from Polish users: thank you! 1 : http://www.debian.org/News/2011/20110816 2 : http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDay2011 3 : http://thank-you.debian.net/ 4 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/08/msg00023.html Bits from the DPL ----------------- Stefano Zacchiroli sent some Bits from the DPL, reporting his activities for July [5] and August [6]. The first mail includes some interesting news on trademarks: a potential issue with the redistribution of GNOME [7] (according to a strict interpretation of the GNOME trademark) was solved [8] partly during DebConf, with the help of Karen Sandler (Executive Director of the GNOME foundation). With regard to the Debian trademark, thanks to Jimmy Kaplowitz (SPI director) and Mishi Choudhary (lawyer at SFLC) a survey of existing Debian-related trademark was completed and the trademark on the name "DEBIAN" was extended to the European Union, China and Japan. In the second mail, Stefano writes about the services administration initiative, started by Enrico Zini [9], and reports on his participation at the GNU Hackers Meeting. 5 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/08/msg00003.html 6 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/09/msg00000.html 7 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/07/msg00031.html 8 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/07/msg00061.html 9 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-services-admin/2011/08/msg00001.html Debian Bug Squashing Party at MIT --------------------------------- Asheesh Laroia blogged about the Bug Squashing Party held at the MIT in Cambridge, USA [10] on August 21. The event was promoted by Geoffrey Thomas for MIT's student computing group and went quite well: the attendees, some of them having their first experience as Debian contributors, fixed several release-critical bugs with the help of the present developers. And speaking of bugs, Gregor Herrmann resumed work on the Release Critical Bugs of the Week (RCBW) initiative [11], launched in 2009 by Stefano Zacchiroli, which consists of fixing one Release Critical bug per day. Gregor, one of the most active developers in this initiative, observed that in this phase of the development cycle there are plenty of RC bugs, some of them really easy to fix [12]. It's possible to use the UDD bugs page [13] to search in the BTS for RC bugs. If fixing bugs is too much for you, you can help triaging them, as explained in the useful tutorial [14] blogged by Raphaël Hertzog. 10 : http://www.asheesh.org/note/debian/sep-2011-bsp.html 11 : http://upsilon.cc/~zack/hacking/debian/rcbw/ 12 : http://info.comodo.priv.at/blog/archives/2011/09/#e2011-09-11T23_26_22.txt 13 : http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi 14 : http://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/09/16/how-to-triage-bugs-in-the-debian-bug-tracking-system/ Squeeze backports for Xorg -------------------------- Cyril Brulebois announced the availability of X.Org Server backports for Squeeze [15]. These backports are particularly useful for people who need a newer driver, while users with a perfectly working X could stay with its old version. For those interested in the backported Xorg, a documentation page [16] is also available. 15 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports/2011/08/msg00069.html 16 : http://x.debian.net/reference/squeeze-backports.html Debian feeds on Identi.ca and Twitter ------------------------------------- In order to highlight the work done by Debian and to improve the availability of such information, Sylvestre Ledru introduced three new feeds on identi.ca [17]: 17 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-publicity/2011/08/msg00034.html * Debian new packages [18], which shows the new packages submitted to the Debian Archive (also available on Twitter [19]). * Debian bugs [20], which provides a feed of the new bugs (also available on Twitter [21]). * Debian removed packages [22], which provides a feed of the removed packages in the archive (also available on Twitter [23]). 18 : http://identi.ca/debiannew/ 19 : http://twitter.com/debiannew 20 : http://identi.ca/debianbug/ 21 : http://twitter.com/debianbug 22 : http://identi.ca/debianremove/ 23 : http://twitter.com/debianremove Debian in Myanmar ----------------- Theppitak Karoonboonyanan sent a report of his visit to Yangon [24] where he delivered some talks and tutorials on Debian packaging and mirroring. In particular, Theppitak has done the preliminary actions to realise a Debian mirror in Myanmar; sadly, due to Myanmar's internet policy, SSH connections between domestic and international sites are prohibited, so only local people will be able to maintain the mirror. Another interesting initiative was the start of packaging of resources for Myanmar languages support; in addition Thura Hlaing and Ngwe Tun started a translation process for Myanmar in Debian and in GNOME. He also reported that GNU/Linux is not popular in Myanmar due to lack of internet access, which is mostly provided by internet cafés rather than from homes. 24 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-i18n/2011/09/msg00014.html Further interviews ------------------ There have been two "People behind Debian" interviews: with Peter Palfrader [25], Debian System Administrator; and with Enrico Zini [26], member of the New Maintainer Frontdesk. 25 : http://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/08/18/people-behind-debian-peter-palfrader-debian-system-administrator/ 26 : http://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/09/09/people-behind-debian-enrico-zini-member-of-the-new-maintainer-frontdesk/ Other news ---------- Stefano Zacchiroli announced that Colin Watson has been appointed as the eighth member of the Debian Technical Committee [27]. Congratulations, Colin! 27 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/08/msg00004.html Enrico Zini announced the creation of a new mailing list [28]: debian-services-admin [29], aiming to create a single point of contact for issues with Debian infrastructure services. In addition, Enrico promoted a census of those services: you can consult the first results of the census on the related wiki page [30]. 28 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/08/msg00005.html 29 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-services-admin/ 30 : http://wiki.debian.org/Services Fernando C. Estrada announced the launch of the spam cleaning effort [31] on Spanish language lists. For more information, you can visit the relevant wiki page [32]. 31 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-user-spanish/2011/09/msg00123.html 32 : http://wiki.debian.org/I18n/SpanishSpamClean Niels Thykier sent some bits from the Lintian maintainers [33] in order to announce changes in Lintian 2.5.2. Lintian [34] is a useful (and widely used) tool for checking Debian packages in order to find bugs and policy violations before upload to the Debian archive. This new version includes several new features, including the ability to process related packages together, support for architecture-specific overrides, and test coverage of over 75% of tags. 33 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/08/msg00002.html 34 : http://lintian.debian.org/ New Debian Contributors ----------------------- 22 people have started to maintain packages [35] since the previous issue of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Thomas Bechtold, Theodore Lytras, Ivo De Decker, Tim Booth, Jessica McKellar, Gustavo Goretkin, Andrew O. Shadura, Luis Rivas Vañó, Noah Swartz, Roland Clobus, Jonathan McCrohan, Eric P. Mangold, Enrique Hernández Bello, Igor Pashev, Guido van Steen, Jean-Philippe Mengual, Sebastian Humenda, Yannick Schwartz, Ximin Luo, Haïkel Guémar, Gregory C. Sharp and Georg Koppen into our project! 35 : http://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/new-maintainers.cgi Important Debian Security Advisories ------------------------------------ Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages (among others): iceape [36], iceweasel [37], icedove [38], apache2 [39], ca-certificates [40], nss [41], rails [42], bcfg2 [43], linux-2.6 [44], squid3 [45], vsftpd [46], ffmpeg [47], chromium-browser [48], mantis [49], and openssl [50]. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures. 36 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2295 37 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2296 38 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2297 39 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2298 40 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2299 41 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2300 42 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2301 43 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2302 44 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2303 45 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2304 46 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2305 47 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2306 48 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2307 49 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2308 50 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2309 Debian's Backports Team released advisories for these packages: icedove [51], nss [52], and apache2 [53]. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures. 51 : http://lists.debian.org/20110826202359.gb5...@oxana.chris.lan 52 : http://lists.debian.org/20110906061010.gb3...@glandium.org 53 : http://lists.debian.org/20110905190651.7987c...@queued.net Debian's Stable Release Team released an update announcement for the package: pianobar [54]. Please read it carefully and take the proper measures. 54 : http://lists.debian.org/1313647561.26267.624.ca...@hathi.jungle.funky-badger.org Please note that these are a selection of the more important security advisories of the last weeks. If you need to be kept up to date about security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please subscribe to the security mailing list [55] (and the separate backports list [56], and stable updates list [57] or volatile list [58], for "Lenny" , the oldstable distribution) for announcements. 55 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/ 56 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/ 57 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/ 58 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-volatile-announce/ New and noteworthy packages --------------------------- 100 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among many others [59] are: 59 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg * boinc-cgi-stripchart -- CGI script for plotting basic statistical graphs [60] * fonts-jura -- monospaced, sans-serif font [61] * git-daemon-sysvinit -- fast, scalable, distributed revision control system (git-daemon service) [62] * itstool -- tool for translating XML documents with PO files [63] * jcadencii -- piano roll editor for singing synthesis [64] * vdpauinfo -- video decode and presentation API for UNIX (vdpauinfo utility) [65] * xpra -- tool to detach and reattach running X programs [66] * xul-ext-cookie-monster -- very easy cookies management in a whitelist-based way [67] * xul-ext-status4evar -- status bar widgets and progress indicators [68] 60 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/boinc-cgi-stripchart 61 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/fonts-jura 62 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/git-daemon-sysvinit 63 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/itstool 64 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/jcadencii 65 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/vdpauinfo 66 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xpra 67 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xul-ext-cookie-monster 68 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xul-ext-status4evar Work-needing packages --------------------- Currently 252 packages are orphaned [69] and 126 packages are up for adoption [70]: please visit the complete list of packages which need your help [71]. 69 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned 70 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa 71 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested Want to continue reading DPN? ----------------------------- Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers to watch the Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the contributing page [72] to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at debian-public...@lists.debian.org [73]. 72 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute 73 : mailto:debian-public...@lists.debian.org This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Francesca Ciceri, Fernando C. Estrada, Sylvestre Ledru, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl, Alexander Reshetov and Justin B Rye [74]. 74 : mailto:debian-public...@lists.debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-news-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110920061215.gd17...@melusine.alphascorpii.net
