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--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Weekly News http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2004/20/ Debian Weekly News - May 18th, 2004 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to this year's 20th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. In an [1]interview Miguel de Icaza [2]said that Debian's community commitment is fantastic, but it is a very hard platform to support for an independent software vendor. Philip Charles also [3]announced new K6 mini [4]iso [5]images.

1. http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=6989 2. http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=6989&page=2 3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2004/05/msg00034.html 4. http://na.hurd.gnuab.org/pub/debian-cd/K6/ 5. http://eu.hurd.gnuab.org/pub/debian-cd/K6/

Two Debian Developers died. Debian [6]mourns the loss of two project members. Manuel Estrada Sainz (ranty) and Andrés García (ErConde) were killed in a tragic car accident while returning from the [7]Free Software conference held in Valencia, Spain. The Debian Project honors their good work and strong dedication to Debian and Free Software. The contributions of both Manuel and Andrés will not be forgotten, and other developers will continue their work.

6. http://www.debian.org/News/20040515 7. http://www.lliurex.net/congres/cas/

Status of Java to main Effort. Arnaud Vandyck [8]reported on the progress of moving packages that use Java but can be run without the aid of non-free software from contrib to main. A number of packages have been moved to main and new releases of [9]GNU Classpath, [10]SableVM, and [11]Kaffe promise further steps ahead. Two of the major issues currently being looked at are making [12]gjdoc a proper javadoc replacement and building [13]ant with Free Software only. People wanting to help can start by inspecting packages labeled as unknown on the [14]Java to main wiki.

8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-java/2004/05/msg00023.html 9. http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/classpath.html 10. http://www.sablevm.org/ 11. http://www.kaffe.org/ 12. http://packages.debian.org/gjdoc 13. http://packages.debian.org/ant 14. http://java.debian.net/index.php/MovingJavaToMain

Debian powers Binoculars. The world's largest selection of [15]binoculars is powered by Debian GNU/Linux as Jon Thralow [16]reported. The site uses a technology they call dynamically generated HTML. The pages are regenerated every five minutes and pushed to the web server as static pages. This looks similar to the technique used for the Debian website itself with regeneration just more frequently.

15. http://www.binoculars.com/ 16. http://newsvac.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/05/12/157257

Status of GNOME 2.6 for unstable. Sebastien Bacher sent in another [17]status report covering GNOME 2.6 in Debian. The reason is to ask the release team for advice regarding the transition to unstable, given the [18]progress the packages have made in the last few weeks. The packages have been [19]tested by many users without any major issues reported. In response Anthony Towns [20]told him that many architectures are still missing and that GNOME is ready when everything has been uploaded to experimental and only the version number needs to be bumped up for unstable.

17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2004/05/msg00064.html 18. http://pkg-gnome.alioth.debian.org/package-status.html 19. http://wiki.debian.net/index.cgi?GnomeTwoDotSixFAQ 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2004/05/msg00071.html

Should Sun use Debian GNU/Linux? David Edmondson [21]argued that Sun should base their GNU/Linux efforts on Debian. A key advantage of Debian is the breadth and depth of applications just an apt-get away. Glynn Foster [22]agreed with him and noted that for the most part Debian 'Just Works'.

21. http://www.dme.org/log/2004/05/14/linux-debian-bad-news 22. http://www.gnome.org/~gman/blog//15052004

Supporting more Features. Eric Dorland [23]wondered how Debian should handle requests to activate compile-time controlled features. He [24]asked to [25]enable deactivated features or split out packages with these features enabled, but the maintainers were concerned by feature-creep and having to maintain more packages than needed. Matthew Palmer [26]suggested to either create new binary packages, to add the features into the existing packages or to make it very easy for the user to rebuild the package to support the optional feature.

23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg00811.html 24. http://bugs.debian.org/222421 25. http://bugs.debian.org/231472 26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg00813.html

Removing System Accounts. Stephen Gran [27]wondered how system accounts should be treated upon removal if they were created upon package installation. Wouter Verhelst [28]explained that it may be a good idea to leave the system user since arbitrary files could still be owned by it.

27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg01151.html 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg01156.html

Right of Publicity. Branden Robinson [29]explained why he is annoyed by no-advertising clauses in several licenses. In the United States, there are several legal [30]remedies available to people whose names or likenesses are misappropriated for advertising or promotional purposes. In order to prevent similar misuse no special clause is needed. Branden seeks information on how this is handled in other countries in order discourage no-advertising clauses more actively.

29. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00540.html 30. http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/publicity.html

IBM Public License. Frank Lichtenheld [31]stomped over the [32]IBM Public License again and wondered if it is suited for Debian. [33]MJ Ray and [34]Walter Landry raised some concerns. However, this license is already used for [35]postfix as Steven Augart [36]pointed out.

31. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00597.html 32. http://www-124.ibm.com/developerworks/oss/license10.html 33. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00600.html 34. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00603.html 35. http://packages.debian.org/postfix 36. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00617.html

Sendmail Open Source License. Richard Nelson [37]reported that a new license for [38]sendmail is discussed and the authors are seeking feedback. In particular they want to know whether the new license is as acceptable as the sendmail 8 license. [39]Henning Makholm and [40]Nathanael Nerode asserted that a license is non-free if one is forced to go to San Francisco to defend ones innocence.

37. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00598.html 38. http://packages.debian.org/sendmail 39. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00636.html 40. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00742.html

Concerned about new GPL Version. Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho is [41]concerned about the [42]Free Software Foundation (FSF) developing the next generation GNU [43]General Public License (GPL). One of the rumours about potential changes involve a requirement to post sources of GPL'd software that is used to power a website, which would probably fail the [44]Debian Free Software Guidelines. He also wondered whether differences about the GNU [45]Free Documentation License are symptoms of a deeper difference of opinion between Debian and FSF.

41. http://www.kaijanaho.info/antti-juhani/blog/en/debian/gpl-dfsg.html 42. http://www.fsf.org/ 43. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html 44. http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines 45. 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.

* [46]mah-jong -- Denial of service. * [47]heimdal -- Potential buffer overflow.

46. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-503 47. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-504

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive [48]recently or contain important updates.

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

* [49]amavis-stats -- Virus statistics RRDtool frontend for Amavis. * [50]aspell-bn -- Bengali Wordlist for Aspell. * [51]bittornado -- Bittorrent client with enhanced GUI and curses mode. * [52]diogenes -- Web content management system. * [53]hspell-gui -- Graphical front-end for the hspell hebrew spell checker. * [54]kstreamripper -- KDE frontend for streamripper. * [55]lksctp-tools -- User-space access to Linux Kernel SCTP - command-line tools. * [56]mtink -- Status monitor and configuration tool for Epson inkjet printers. * [57]perlindex -- Index and query Perl manual pages. * [58]siproxd -- SIP proxy/redirect/registrar. * [59]tcng -- Linux traffic control language interpreter.

49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/amavis-stats 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/aspell-bn 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/bittornado 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/diogenes 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/hspell-gui 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/kstreamripper 55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/lksctp-tools 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/mtink 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/perl/perlindex 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/siproxd 59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/tcng

Debian Packages introduced last Week. Every day, a different Debian package is [60]featured from the testing distribution. If you know about an obscure package you think others should also know about, send it to [61]Andrew Sweger. Debian package a day introduced the following packages last week.

60. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/ 61. http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=debaday

* [62]binclock -- binary clock for console with color support. * [63]mywiki -- Personal wiki on GNUstep or Cocoa environment. * [64]srs -- Command-line Sender Rewriting Scheme client. * [65]telnet -- The telnet client. * [66]procmail -- Versatile e-mail processor. * [67]whitespace -- Programming language where only whitespace counts. * [68]regexplorer -- Visual regular expression explorer.

62. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/13221.html 63. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/13432.html 64. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/13601.html 65. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/13874.html 66. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/14220.html 67. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/14410.html 68. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/14835.html

Orphaned Packages. 2 packages were orphaned this week and require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 159 orphaned packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software community. Please see the [69]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.

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

* [70]imwheel -- Program to support the "wheel" on most new mice. ([71]Bug#249533) * [72]libmail-audit-perl -- Perl library for creating easy mail filters. ([73]Bug#248606)

70. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/imwheel 71. http://bugs.debian.org/249533 72. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/perl/libmail-audit-perl 73. http://bugs.debian.org/248606

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 [74]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [75]dwn@debian.org.

74. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing 75. mailto:dwn@debian.org

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