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 * Firmware stuff
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= Firmware in Lenny and how to deal with DFSG violating packages =

Ben Finney [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00368.html wondered] about several release critical
bugs getting the "lenny ignore" tag, specifying, that these bugs are not considered release critical for the upcoming
release of Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny". Release Manager Marc Brockschmidt
[http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00369.html explained]t that "In all of the bugs I recently tagged,
the DFSG violation is usually a formal problem, something that other
distributions and upstream don't consider a problem at all. While fixing
these issues is and should be a goal of Debian, it's hardly something
that can be done in the last few weeks before releasing. The drawbacks
of delaying the release indefinitely for these bugs are much greater
than releasing with these minor DFSG violations."

In the following discussion, Robert Millan [http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2008/10/msg00107.html proposed]
a general resolutions on how to deal with packages violating the
[http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines Debian Free Software Guidelines]. In his proposal, packages having
a bug report open regarding their compliance with the Debian Free Softwar Guidelines for a certain amount of time,
must be moved from the "main" section to the non-free section. In his response to Roberts initial
[http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2008/10/msg00010.html proposal], Release Wizard Steve Langasek
[http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2008/10/msg00128.html argued] that Debian is not "going down a road" as has been
said previous, but follows an approach of incremental improvement. He notes, that all bugs reported regarding non-free
firmware for older releases have been dealt with, while the newly taged bugs are reported relative shortly.

[:DebianWiki/EditorGuide#translation:Translation(s)]: none

(!) ["/Discussion"]



Welcome to this year's 14th issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Some of the topics covered in this issue include:

  • ... and much more.

TODO:

Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 updated

The Debian project is pleased to announce the fifth update of its stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (codename "Etch"). This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustment to serious problems. Those who frequently install updates from security.debian.org won't have to update many packages and most updates from security.debian.org are included in this update. New CD and DVD images containing updated packages and the regular installation media accompanied with the package archive respectively are available at the regular locations.

Upgrading to this revision online is usually done by pointing the aptitude (or apt) package tool (see the sources.list(5) manual page) to one of Debian's many FTP or HTTP mirrors. A comprehensive list of mirrors is available [http://www.debian.org/mirror/list online].

More information is available in the [http://www.debian.org/News/2008/20081023.en.html press release].

First Lenny Bug Sprint finished successfully

To help cleaning up release critical bug reports, especially long standing one, Josselin Mouette [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/10/msg00004.html initiated] the first Bug Sprint. In this competition Debian Developers and other interested people volunteered to try to fix assigned release critical bugs in a five day period. The winners in this competition would get cookies.

Josselin later added, that 27 players [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00636.html joined] the bug sprint and posted a [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00875.html draft of the results]. All in all he was very satisfied with the results. Stefano Zacchiroli [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00887.html proposed] to repeat this kind of events.

Firmware in Lenny and how to deal with DFSG violating packages

Ben Finney [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00368.html wondered] about several release critical bugs getting the "lenny ignore" tag, specifying, that these bugs are not considered release critical for the upcoming release of Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny". Release Manager Marc Brockschmidt [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00369.html explained]t that "In all of the bugs I recently tagged, the DFSG violation is usually a formal problem, something that other distributions and upstream don't consider a problem at all. While fixing these issues is and should be a goal of Debian, it's hardly something that can be done in the last few weeks before releasing. The drawbacks of delaying the release indefinitely for these bugs are much greater than releasing with these minor DFSG violations."

In the following discussion, Robert Millan [http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2008/10/msg00107.html proposed] a general resolutions on how to deal with packages violating the [http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines Debian Free Software Guidelines]. In his proposal, packages having a bug report open regarding their compliance with the Debian Free Softwar Guidelines for a certain amount of time, must be moved from the "main" section to the non-free section. In his response to Roberts initial [http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2008/10/msg00010.html proposal], Release Wizard Steve Langasek [http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2008/10/msg00128.html argued] that Debian is not "going down a road" as has been said previous, but follows an approach of incremental improvement. He notes, that all bugs reported regarding non-free firmware for older releases have been dealt with, while the newly taged bugs are reported relative shortly.

State of NEW queue

Aurelien Jarno [http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2008/10/msg00071.html wondered], whether the NEW queue where uploaded source packages creating new binary package are held back awaiting the check and approval of an ftp master, is currently processed. Joerg Jaspert [http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2008/10/msg00180.html answered] that the NEW queue has indeed been not processed that often recently. He explained furthermore, that changes in the software used to process this queue help packages that only add new binary components compared to packages that add completly new code to the archive.

Changes in archive.debian.org

Joerg Jaspert [http://blog.ganneff.de/blog/2008/10/26/archiving-sarge-aka-oldstable.html announced] several changes for archive.debian.org. The most important one being that Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 "Sarge" has been moved from the regular mirrors to archive.debian.org. To [http://lists.debian.org/debian-mirrors-announce/2008/11/msg00000.html avoid problems for our mirror network], the deletion of sarge from the mirrors is done in several chunks, avoiding problems with mirrors refusing to delete too many files at once. He later [http://blog.ganneff.de/blog/2008/11/02/archivedebianorg-old-bugs-and.html highlighted] that the unofficial port of Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 "Sarge" to the AMD64 architecture has been moved there, too.

Other changes are the availability of binary packages for Debian GNU/Linux 1.2 "rex", 1.1 "buzz" and 0.93R6. A packages archive for packages from [http://www.debian.org/volatile/ volatile.debian.org], [http://www.debian.org/security/ security.debian.org] and [http://www.backports.org www.backports.org] is now also available at archive.debian.org.

While working on this, old mail archives from 1995, which had been lost, where found again as well as old bug reports ranging from Bug number 350 to 1750. They will soon be added back to their respective archives.

BTS link in need of new maintainer

Pierre Habouzit [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/10/msg00006.html announced], that he won't be able to maintain and run the BTS link service any more. This service is used to track changes of bug reports in the bug tracking system of the original author and update the corresponding bur report in Debians bug tracking system in a semi automatic way. Currently this service needs to be run manually. Don Armstrong, one of the maintainers of Debians bug tracking system [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00860.html highlighted] the importance of that service, but won't be able to maintain it himself. Christoph Berg [http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2008/10/msg00066.html offered] maintainership under the hood of Debians quality assurance group if someone volunteers to act as main responsible maintainer.

Porting debian-installer to the DNS-323

Matt Palmer [http://www.hezmatt.org/~mpalmer/blog/general/porting_d-i_to_the_dns_323.html blogged] about his experience when porting the debian-installer to the DNS-323 system. The DNS-323 system is network storage solution. While porting the installer to this device, he took notes and wrote down detailed instructions on how to port the debian-installer to new architectures.

Other news

Stefano Zacchiroli started to [http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2008/11/debian_developer_portfolio/ collect] the different web services offering information about a specific Debian Maintainer (e.g. [http://bugs.debian.org/zack@debian.org open Bugs], [http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=zack@debian.org Information about his packages] or [http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/todo.html?maint=zack@debian.org ?DebTag information]) on a special [http://wiki.debian.org/DDPortfolio Wiki Page]. He asks maintainers of similar web services to add their pages to the wiki.

Michael Banck wrote a [http://www.advogato.org/person/mbanck/diary.html?start=38 report] about this years booth at Systems, the second largest computer related exhibition and conference in Germany.

Sandro Tosi [http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2008/10/msg00042.html created] a script to group orphaned packages to ease the adoption of people or groups interested in specific sets of packages.

New Developers

Since the previous issue of the Debian Project News, 2 applicants have been accepted as Debian Maintainers.

Please welcome Mehdi Dogguy and Olly Betts to our project!

Important Debian Security Advisories

Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages (among others): [http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1655 linux-2.6.24], [http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1656 cupsys], [http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1657 qemu], [http://www.debian.org/security/2008/das-1658 dbus], [http://www.debian.org/security/2008/das-1660 clamav] and [http://www.debian.org/security/2008/das-1661 OpenOffice.org]. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures.

Please note that these are a selection of the more important security advisories of the last two weeks. If you need to be kept up to date about security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please subscribe to the [http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/ security mailing list] for announcements.

New and noteworthy packages

The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently ([http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg among others]):

# Note: The list of packages is created by a separate script and added later

Debian Package of the Day featured the packages [http://debaday.debian.net/2008/11/02/synfig-the-free-software-alternative-for-2d-animation/ Synfig] (free software alternative for 2D animation) and [http://debaday.debian.net/2008/10/26/rdiff-backup-easy-incremental-backups-from-the-command-line/ rdiff-backup] (easy incremental backups from the command line).

Work-needing packages

Currently 498 packages are orphaned and 118 packages are up for adoption. Please take a look at the [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00609.html recent] [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00869.html reports] to see if there are packages you are interested in or view the complete list of [http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested packages which need your help].

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 [http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute contributing page] to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at debian-publicity@lists.debian.org.

X, Y and Z contributed to this issue of the Debian Project News.


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