path: root/english/News/weekly/2003/07/index.wml

#use wml::debian::weeklynews::header PUBDATE="2003-02-18" SUMMARY="Election, Keyring, Timeserver, libdb, mICQ, old ITPs, Bug Closing, Survey, Events, OpenLDAP, License, Zaurus"
# $Id$

<p>Welcome to this year's seventh issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the
Debian community.  In addition to the <a
href="http://www.infonomics.nl/FLOSS/report/">FLOSS</a> report sponsored by
the European Commission, researchers at Stanford University's Institute for
Economic Policy Research designed another <a
href="http://www.stanford.edu/group/floss-us/">survey</a> and asked the
community for its assistance.  If you have ever wondered whether (GNU/)Linux was the only new
and <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">free</a> operating system
recently begun, take a look at <a href="http://www.reactos.com/">ReactOS</a>,
which aims to implement a free version of NT.</p>

<p><strong>Debian Project Leader Elections.</strong> Manoj Srivastava <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0302/msg00037.html">announced</a>
the final day of the nomination period.  The candidate <a
href="$(HOME)/vote/2003/vote_0001">platforms</a> shall be published on
February 15th and rebuttals shall be published on February 21th.  David
B. Harris and Adam Heath have volunteered to conduct the DPL debate on IRC,
probably towards the end of the month.  So far, Moshe Zadka, Bdale Garbee,
Martin Michlmayr and Branden Robinson chose to <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0302/msg00051.html">run</a>.</p>

<p><strong>Debian Keyring Analysis.</strong> Lars Wirzenius <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-project-0302/msg00001.html">analyzed</a>
the Debian keyrings (GnuPG and PGP).  This reveals that 769 keys are in a so called strongly
connected set, in which all keys are able to reach all others (via
bidirectional signatures).  Unfortunately, his <a
href="http://liw.iki.fi/liw/temp/keyring/">research</a> also discloses that 487
are not part of a strong connected set.  Peter Palfrader mentioned the <a
href="http://people.debian.org/~weasel/weboftrust/">trust analysis</a> 
he is running on the Debian Keyring.</p>

<p><strong>Timeserver Round Robin Project.</strong> Adrian von Bidder <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-project-0301/msg00048.html">asked</a>
people who run a computer with a static IP address to run ntpd and offer it
for public use on the <a href="http://fortytwo.ch/time/">time.fortytwo.ch</a>
DNS round robin.  The reason for this request is that some public time servers
(as listed somewhere on ntp.org) are having problems with too much traffic.
Later he <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-project-0302/msg00018.html">\
reported</a> that he has received several positive answers, but none from
the admins of project machines which already run an NTP server.</p>

<p><strong>Why several Versions of BerkeleyDB?</strong> Will Lowe <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0302/msg00736.html">wondered</a>
why Debian distributes 4 versions of BerkeleyDB.  This will result in
integrity problems when two different versions are indirectly linked into the
same process (e.g. through the chain Apache, mod_perl and
libberkeley-db-perl).  Matthew Wilcox <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0302/msg00738.html">explained</a>
that there are binary file incompatibilities involved and that no tool to
downgrade a database is provided.</p>

<p><strong>Removing mICQ from Debian?</strong> Martin Loschwitz <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0302/msg00771.html">proposed</a> to
remove <a href="http://packages.debian.org/micq">mICQ</a> from Debian entirely
since the upstream author has placed a harmful and <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0302/msg00774.html">obfuscated</a>
easter egg in the code, bypassing the maintainer's testing.  Anthony Towns <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0302/msg00802.html">asked</a> all
maintainers to review upstream changes before packaging code, Branden Robinson
already <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0302/msg00850.html">\
reads</a> every line of diff that gets applied to his XFree86 packages.
Rüdiger Kuhlmann later <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0302/msg01119.html">reported</a>
that the problems were resolved and that the easter egg was replaced.  Martin
Loschwitz also sent an <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0302/msg01125.html">update</a>.</p>

<p><strong>Retitling ITPs Round Two.</strong> Bas Zoetekouw <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa-0302/msg00011.html">announced</a> the
second round of retitling Intent To Package (ITP) bug reports into Request For
Packaging (RFP).  Earlier he <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa-0212/msg00064.html">tried</a> to
contact the submitters but for 143 packages his call was left unanswered.
Luca De Vitis <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa-0302/msg00014.html">\
wondered</a> if it wouldn't be more useful to close these bug reports right
away, since nobody has packaged the corresponding packages in more than a
year.  It could mean that there is no one interested in that package
anymore.</p>

<p><strong>Best Practice Bug Closing through Changelogs.</strong> Joey Hess <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2003/debian-devel-200302/msg00788.html">
reminded</a> developers that Changelog lines should only describe changes to
the content of the package.  Developers should not use lines such as "* This
is not a bug - closes: #XXX" to close bugs.  In these situations, the bug
should be closed by mailing a description to XXX-done@bugs.debian.org.  This
issue has come up <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0302/msg00039.html">before</a>,
but the <a
href="$(HOME)/doc/manuals/developers-reference/pkgs#bug-handling">Developer's
Reference Manual</a> now makes the proper procedure clear.</p>

<p><strong>Debian featured in Case-Study.</strong> Colm MacC&aacute;rthaigh
and Colin Whittaker presented a Debian-centric <a
href="http://www.sage-ie.org/slides/case_study/">paper</a> on best practice
for operating system management at <a
href="http://www.sage-ie.org/">SAGE-IE</a>, the Irish Branch of the System
Administrators Guild.  The paper highlights Debian's strong policy and
consistency, security and reliability, and illustrates how Debian is an
excellent choice for high-availability, low maintenance applications.</p>

<p><strong>Results from the Security Survey.</strong> The <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0302/msg00010.html">\
results</a> were published from the security <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0211/msg00001.html">\
survey</a> last year.  The highlight (or rather worst incident) is one person
who maintains about 4000 potato machines that he cannot easily upgrade.  In
general it seems that many Debian administrators would rather like to stay
with the old stable release before upgrading to the new one -- for about one year after a new
stable version has been released.  The security team will therefore try to
support potato until end of June 2003.</p>

<p><strong>Debian project at Desktop Linux Summit.</strong> The Debian project
<a href="$(HOME)/News/2003/20030215">announced</a> its participation at the
upcoming <a href="$(HOME)/events/2003/0220-desktopsummit">Desktop Linux
Summit</a> in San Diego next week.  Regardless of <a
href="http://lwn.net/Articles/20312/">recent</a> <a
href="http://lwn.net/Articles/20352/">withdraws</a> of companies and
organisations from the Desktop Linux Summit, the Debian project will maintain a
booth in the exhibition area.  Bdale Garbee will also participate in a panel
discussion about the future of GNU/Linux on the Desktop.</p>

<p><strong>Work on OpenLDAP 2.1.</strong> Alexey Chetroi wanted to <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0302/msg00919.html">know</a> if
time is being spent on packaging OpenLDAP 2.1 since the current version 2.0 has some
problems with support for TLS connections.  Roland Bauerschmidt <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0302/msg00924.html">revealed</a>
that a group of maintainers is working on it, but the packages need more testing
before they can upload packages.</p>

<p><strong>Maintaining Multilingual Documentation.</strong> Craig Sanders <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0302/msg01025.html">noted</a> that
an increasing number of large language-specific packages is entering the
Debian archives.  He suggested that those packages would be collected in a
language-specific subdirectory of the <code>/doc/</code> directory.  However,
since he would like this to happen beneath the pool directory instead of the
(virtual) package section, it's rather unlikely to happen.</p>

<p><strong>License or Copyright?</strong> Antoine Mathys <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0302/msg00025.html">wondered</a>
what the real difference between a license and a copyright is.  Sean Perry <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0302/msg00029.html">clarified</a>
that the license is the document which states the permissions granted or
withheld.  Branden Robinson further <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0302/msg00037.html">stated</a> that
a copyright is a legal concept that grants (negotiable) monopoly privileges to
authors to duplicate, modify, and distribute physical forms of the "work".</p>

<p><strong>Debian Zaurus Update.</strong> Matt Zimmerman released an <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-handheld-0302/msg00044.html">update</a>
report about Debian on handhelds in general and the Zaurus
in particular.  He added a brief record of where we've been and where we
stand on current development.  <a href="http://opie.handhelds.org/">Opie</a>
packages for example are coming along wonderfully, and are progressing into
Debian unstable.  Phil Blundell has further packaged some parts of <a
href="http://gpe.handhelds.org/">GPE</a> for Debian, an X11- and GTK-based
desktop project.</p>

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

<ul>
<li><a href="$(HOME)/security/2003/dsa-250">w3mmee-ssl</a> --
    Cookie information leak.
<li><a href="$(HOME)/security/2003/dsa-251">w3m</a> --
    Cookie information leak.
</ul>

<p><strong>New or Noteworthy Packages.</strong> The following packages were
added to the unstable Debian archive recently or contain important updates.</p>

<ul>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/atlantik">atlantik</a>
    -- KDE client for monopd.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/ccze">ccze</a>
    -- Roboust, modular log coloriser.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/kaboodle">kaboodle</a>
    -- Embedded media player for KDE.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/kaudiocreator">kaudiocreator</a>
    -- CD ripper and audio encoder frontend.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/kbounce">kbounce</a>
    -- Jezzball clone for the K Desktop Environment.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/kenolaba">kenolaba</a>
    -- Enolaba board game for KDE.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/kfouleggs">kfouleggs</a>
    -- KDE clone of the Japanese PuyoPuy game.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/tex/kile">kile</a>
    -- The KDE Integrated LaTeX Environment.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/klickety">klickety</a>
    -- Clickomania-like game for KDE.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/klineakconfig">klineakconfig</a>
    -- KDE configurator for lineakd.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/kolf">kolf</a>
    -- Minigolf game for KDE.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/ksocrat">ksocrat</a>
    -- English/Russian and Russian/English Dictionary.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/megami">megami</a>
    -- Blackjack game for KDE.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/sip">sip</a>
    -- Python/C++ Bindings Generator.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/doc/subproject-howto">subproject-howto</a>
    -- Debian Subproject HOWTO.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/w3c-dtd-xhtml">w3c-dtd-xhtml</a>
    -- W3C eXtensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) DTD.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/wflogs">wflogs</a>
    -- The modular firewall log analyzer of the WallFire project.
</ul>

<p><strong>Orphaned Packages.</strong> 1 package was orphaned this week and
requires a new maintainer.  This makes a total of 158 orphaned packages.  Many
thanks to the previous maintainer who contributed to the Free Software
community.  Please see the <a href="$(HOME)/devel/wnpp/">WNPP pages</a> 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.</p>

<ul>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/kernel-patch-ck">kernel-patch-ck</a>
     -- Con Kolivas' patch to improve system responsiveness.
     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/181425">Bug#181425</a>)</li>
</ul>

<p><strong>Want to continue reading DWN?</strong> Please help us create this
newsletter.  Several people are submitting items already, but we are
still in need of volunteer writers who prepare items.
Please see the <a href="$(HOME)/News/weekly/contributing">contributing
page</a> to find out how to help.  We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at <a href="mailto:dwn@debian.org">dwn@debian.org</a>.</p>

#use wml::debian::weeklynews::footer editor="Matt Black, Colm MacCárthaigh, Martin 'Joey' Schulze"