path: root/english/News/weekly/2008/02/index.wml

#use wml::debian::projectnews::header PUBDATE="2008-05-09" SUMMARY="Lenny Release, Google Summer of Code, debimg"

<p>Welcome to this year's 2nd issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian
community. We would like to thank everyone for his feedback on the last
issue of the Debian Project News! We didn't reckoned a tiny newsletter
would cause such an sensation &mdash; we were even mentioned in some print
magazines! So many, many thanks! We'll try our very best to come up
and exceed your expectations!</p>

<p>While Stefano Zacchiroli visited the <a href="http://www2008.org/">\
www 2008 conference</a>
in China <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_berners-lee">Sir Tim 
Berners-Lee</a> offered <a 
href="http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2008/04/unexpected_kudos_from_TBL/">\
Debian kudos</a>
for its well thought-out encapsulation/packaging of libraries.
Paul Wise will <a
href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2008/05/msg00006.html">close</a>
his <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2008/03/msg02475.html">Debian 
user</a>
and <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2008/03/msg00030.html">Debian new contributor</a>
surveys on June 1st so that analysis of the results can begin. Please 
participate if you haven't done so yet.</p>

<p><strong>Debian and Google Summer of Code</strong></p>
<p>The Debian Project <a 
href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-news/2008/msg00001.html">announced</a> to
participate again in Google Summer of Code Program. Twelve students will get the
opportunity
to work on different projects during their summer vacation while Google will 
fund them.</p>

<p><strong>Development progress</strong></p>
<p>The development efforts to release the next stable Debian release
codenamed <q>Lenny</q> in September continue. While the transition to Python 2.5
as default python version is already completed, the transition to Perl 5.10
is still ongoing. So the freeze, the phase when developers will concentrate
on fixing bugs instead of adding new features, will be called soon.</p>

<p>Andreas Barth, release manager for Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 <q>Sarge</q> and 
Debian
GNU/Linux 4.0 <q>Etch</q> announced, that Marc Brockschmidt joined the team of
release managers, while he steps back as release wizard.</p>

<p><strong>Debian Project Leader interviews</strong></p>
<p>In two recently published interviews with the new elected Debian Project
Leader, Steve McIntyre presented a bit more about the Debian Project.
The interviews can be found at <a
href="http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39406494,00.htm">ZDNet</a>,
and <a 
href="http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?RSS&amp;entryid=741">\
ComputerWorld UK</a>.</p>

<p><strong>debimg, a new software to replace debian-cd</strong></p>
<p>debimg is a piece of software designed to replace debian-cd. Its current 
feature set is
very limited, but building single disks for i386 and amd64 is possible (netinst
disks build in about 5 seconds). It still lacks many features like disk sets
and multi-arch.</p>

<p><strong>19 new Debian Developers this week: The Debian Project improves its 
New Maintainer process</strong></p>
<p>At Friday the 18th of April 2008, 19 new Debian Developers (DD) accounts were
created.</p>

<p>One of the bottlenecks is the Debian Account Management (DAM), and Sam 
   Hocevar delegated some important tasks to more people, distributing future 
   workload. While the batch of new DD accounts were created, he issued a Debian
   Project Leader (DPL) announcement just before transferring position to the
   new elected DPL, Steve McIntyre.</p>

<p>At Monday the 28th of April 2008, the DPL announced one more DAM to the team,
   distributing workload. <a 
   href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/04/msg00015.html">\
   Read more</a>.</p>

<p>Christoph Berg, who has recently been added to the <a 
   href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/04/msg00015.html">\
   DAM team</a> thanked <a 
   href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint/2008/04/msg00064.html">Martin 
   Michlmayr</a>, who has been Application Manager for more than 120 Applicants
   interested in joining the Debian Project as official Debian Developer.</p>

<p><strong>Planets for Debian Contributors up again, ready for new feeds and 
   languages</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://layer-acht.org/blog/debian/#1-165">Holger Levsen reported</a> 
that after a
severe hardware failure, now all <a 
href="http://wiki.debian-community.org/planets/">local planets for Debian
contributors</a> are up again. Currently there are only
<a href="http://wiki.debian-community.org/planets/en/">English</a>,
<a href="http://wiki.debian-community.org/planets/it/">Italian</a> and
<a href="http://wiki.debian-community.org/planets/de/">German planets</a>, but
the guys at
<a href="http://debian-community.org">Debian-community.org</a> are doing a
great job and
encourage new contributors to submit their feeds or request new localized
planets.</p>

<p><strong>Debian Project will be at Swiss Linux Days 2008</strong></p>
<p>From Wednesday the 21st of May 2008 to Thursday the 22nd of May 2008,
Geneva, Switzerland, Debian Project will participate with a booth at
Swiss Linux Days 2008. Debian-Med will also be presented at a talk.
Please see <a href="http://www.debian.org/events/2008/0521-swiss-linuxdays">\
our events page</a>
for further details.</p>

<p><strong>Debian Project will be at LinuxTag 2008</strong></p>
<p>From Wednesday the 28th of May 2008 to Saturday the 31st of May 2008,
Berlin, Germany, the Debian Project will participate with a booth at LinuxTag 
2008.
Please see <a href="http://www.debian.org/events/2008/0528-linuxtag">our events page</a> for further
details.</p>

<p><strong>Other news</strong></p>
<p>Lior Kaplan <a 
   href="http://liorkaplan.wordpress.com/2008/05/02/firefox-triage-has-ended-300-bugs-processed/">\
   reported</a>, that he finished triage of over 300 bugs reported
against the iceweasel / firefox packages. Of those 300 bugs only 70 are still 
valid for a version of firefox shipped in a Debian release.</p>

<p>Christian Perrier <a 
   href="http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2008/04/23#l10n-nmu-lenny-2">\
   reported</a>
progress in his campaign to fix outstanding bugs related to
internationalization. Three languages finished translating more than 90% of the
Debconf translation (and two might reach the 100% mark before the release of
Lenny), while a fourth one just crossed the 80% mark.</p>

<p>Ana Guerrero
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/04/msg00010.html">\
summarized</a>
the meetings different teams had during the last year in the Region
Extremadura in Spain. The regional goverment is a heavy user of Debian and
sponsored teams to meet in person and work together. Amongst those teams were
the Debian Edu team, the Quality Assurance team, the VoIP team, the Zope team,
the Qt/KDE team and the i18n team.</p>

<p><strong>Want to continue reading DPN?</strong> 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 our
<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute"><q>HOWTO
contribute</q> page</a> to find out how to help. We're looking forward
to receiving your mail at
<a href="mailto:debian-publicity@lists.debian.org">debian-publicity@lists.debian.org</a>.</p>

#use wml::debian::projectnews::footer editor="Andre Felipe Machado, Adrian von Bidder, Luca Bruno, Jeff Richards, Julian Andres Klode, Martin F- Krafft, Alexander Schmehl"