Debianizzati.Org

DPN n. 15/2011

xtow — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:40:39 +0000

Pubblicato il quindicesimo numero del Debian Project News,
in questo numero:

* Volunteers needed for publicity team
* Removal of sun-java6 from the archive
* Debian SDL packaging team revival
* Bits from the DPL
* Ubuntu appreciates Debian
* India mini-DebConf, Mangalore edition
* New mirror in El Salvador
* Debexpo maintainers call for contributions
* Bug Squashing Party marathon started
* Call for talks: FOSDEM 2012
* New s390 buildd at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
* Further interviews
* New Debian Contributors
* Release-critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release
* Important Debian Security Advisories
* New and noteworthy packages
* Work-needing packages
* Want to continue reading DPN?

Volunteers needed for publicity team
——————————

——

As you may have noticed, it has been quite some time since the last edition
of Debian Project News. To improve the frequency of DPN and expand its other
activities, the Debian Publicity team is looking for new contributors. Did you
ever want to help Debian, but every piece of software you were interested in
was already packaged? You don’t consider yourself a “technical person”? You
have basic skills in written English? Perfect! Have you considered joining the
Publicity Team [1]? If you are a Debian member, the Press team is also looking
for new contributors.

1 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/11/msg00055.html

Removal of sun-java6 from the archive
————————————-

The release of Java update 29 from Oracle marks not only security updates, but
a change to the licensing, removing Debian’s ability to distribute the non-free
JVM. The clause in the Java license under which we were able to distribute
Java, the DLJ, has been removed. As a result, the sun-java6 package is no
longer suitable for the archive, and has been removed, as documented in Debian
Bug #646524 [2]. Sylvestre Ledru suggests [3] that sun-java6 installs be
migrated to openjdk, the open-source alternative, using the following command:
apt-get –purge remove sun-java6-jre && apt-get install openjdk-7-jre
Kai Wasserbäch has also been pointed out elsewhere [4] that this upgrade path
might not be suitable for all Java programs, and special attention should be
paid to re-testing installed Java applications on OpenJDK.

2 : http://bugs.debian.org/646524
3 : http://sylvestre.ledru.info/blog/sylvestre/2011/10/25/removal_of_sun_java6_from_debian
4 : http://www.carbon-project.org/Removal_of_sun_java6_and_ElsterOnline.html

Debian SDL packaging team revival
———————————

The SDL packaging team [5] has recently been seriously revived [6], with
Dominique Dumont reorganising the team and Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo
joining the effort. Packaging is progressively moving to Git for easier
collaboration, and developers maintaining SDL-related packages not in the
team’s repository have been invited to join, too. A lot of old bugs have
already been fixed and new SDL 1.3 and sdl-perl packages have been uploaded to
experimental. SDL 1.3 brings support for newer OpenGL APIs, input improvements
like multi-touch, gestures and force feedback device support, better Unicode
support and support for multiple windows and displays.

5 : http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebianSdlGroup
6 : http://ddumont.wordpress.com/2011/11/19/sdl-team-revival/

Bits from the DPL
—————–

Stefano Zacchiroli sent his “Bits from the DPL” for October [7] and November [8].
He reminds us that the New Maintainer Process has been renamed as the New
Member Process, and that a list of “easy hacks” is a very effective way of
attracting contributors to teams. He notes that Ubuntu plan to deprecate their
package review platform (REVU) in favour of converging on mentors.debian.net.
This will need some Debexpo changes and also more package sponsorship by Debian
members. Stefano has approved funds for the recent DebConf video team sprint
and also hardware replacements for lists.debian.org and ftp.debian.org, which
have now arrived and are in the process of being set up by DSA. He reports that
Fathi Boudra represented Debian at the Software Freedom Day in Algeria. Stefano
also reported on his trademark-related activities, including a contact point
for inquiries related to the Debian trademark, seeking legal advice on how
trademark law applies to Debian packaging activities, and starting a discussion
on the relationships between the DFSG and trademark restrictions. He is also
working on a statement to make explicit the position of the Debian Project on
software patents. The OSI have invited the Debian Project to their upcoming
affiliation programme. There is also work in progress to have the Debian
Project become a member of the forums for ISC software that we distribute.
Stefano also mentioned his continuing work in creating a discussion forum for
companies that have a strategic interest in Debian.

7 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/11/msg00001.html
8 : https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/12/msg00000.html

Ubuntu appreciates Debian
————————-

As part of Ubuntu’s recent Community Appreciation Day [9], Michael Hall sent
Debian a message of appreciation [10], stating “Without you we wouldn’t be
able to make the contributions we do. Ubuntu is great because Debian is great,
and we appreciate all of the work that goes into making it that way.”
Michael will be joining [11] Canonical’s Community Team, focusing on projects
that are upstream for Ubuntu.

9 : http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UCADay
10 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/11/msg00626.html
11 : http://www.jonobacon.org/2011/11/17/welcoming-our-new-horseman-michael-hall/

India mini-DebConf, Mangalore edition
————————————-

Christian Perrier reported [12] on his participation in the mini-DebConf in
Mangalore, south-west India [13]. The conference was held at Nitte MahaLinga
Adyanthaya Memorial Institute of Technology and organised by Vasudev Kamath and
a team of computer-science students from the college with support from staff,
including the college principal, Dr. S. Y. Kulakarni. Christian gave the
opening talk, introducing Debian, how to contribute, and information about
Debian internationalisation and localisation. Later Jonas Smedegaard presented
a talk about Debian Pure Blends, focusing on how distributions derived from
Debian can work inside Debian instead of outside of it. This was part of his
trip [14] promoting Debian and Debian Pure Blends in Asia. The talks were
followed on the second day with sessions on localisation, packaging, OpenPGP
keys and contributing to Debian. The event was publicised in one of the major
newspapers in India, namely “The Hindu”. Events such as these are vital to
local communities. The participation of “international” contributors in these
events often brings more attention to them and is highly appreciated by the
local community.

12 : http://lists.debian.org/20111105184310.GD4138@mykerinos.kheops.frmug.org
13 : http://wiki.debian.org/DebianIndia/MiniDebConf2011/MangaloreEdition
14 : http://dr.jones.dk/blog/debianasia2011/

New mirror in El Salvador
————————-

The Debian mirrors team is happy to announce the first mirror in El Salvador [15],
sponsored by the Ministry of Health [16], with the help of René Mayorga
and Carlos Juan Martín Pérez. Salvadorian Debian users are invited to update
their /etc/apt/sources.list in order to use ftp.sv.debian.org. To quote Carlos
Juan Martín Pérez ”For us, the Ministry of Health, and as members of the
Salvadorian Community of Free Software, is an honour to belong to the great
Debian family.” For other countries, the full list of mirrors [17] is available
online. There are still many countries lacking good connectivity to a Debian
mirror; sponsors interested in hosting are invited to contact the mirrors team.

15 : http://ftp.sv.debian.org/debian/
16 : http://www.salud.gob.sv/
17 : http://www.debian.org/mirror/list

Debexpo maintainers call for contributions
——————————————

Discussing the potential integration of packaging teams into Debexpo, the
software behind the mentors.debian.net [18] service, Arno Töll issued a call
for contributions [19], since the current team members are busy.

18 : http://mentors.debian.net/
19 : http://lists.debian.org/4ECD5330.40104@toell.net

Debexpo [20] is maintained as an Alioth project [21].

20 : http://wiki.debian.org/Debexpo
21 : https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debexpo/

Bug Squashing Party marathon started
————————————

Similarly to previous releases [22,23,24,25], a marathon of Bug Squashing
Parties (BSPs) has been started with concurrent BSPs being held in
Hildesheim [26], Germany and Portland [27], OR, USA. While the first one
concentrated on fixing Release Critical bugs, the second concentrated on
creating multiarch patches for different libraries.

22 : http://wiki.debian.org/BSPMarathon
23 : http://wiki.debian.org/BSPMarathonEtch
24 : http://wiki.debian.org/BSPMarathonLenny
25 : http://wiki.debian.org/BSPMarathonSqueeze
26 : http://www.debian.org/events/2011/1202-hildesheim-bsp
27 : http://www.debian.org/events/2011/1204-ubulocjam-debbsp

Both BSPs were quite successful. In Hildesheim 60 Release Critical bugs were
addressed [28] and several improvements to the archive software [29]
introduced, while in Portland 14 multiarch patches [30] were created! They also
noted down how to prepare cloud instances [31] in preparation for Bug Squashing
Parties.

28 : http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/events/bsp-hi-2011-3
29 : http://blog.ganneff.de/blog/2011/12/04/bsp-hildesheim.html
30 : http://web.dodds.net/~vorlon/wiki/blog/Making_jam_from_bugs/
31 : http://www.outflux.net/blog/archives/2011/12/05/ec2-instances-in-support-of-a-bsp/

The next Bug Squashing Parties in Mönchengladbach, Germany (January
or February) and Paris, France (17 to 19 February) are already being
organised [32]. The Debian Wiki has more information about organising a
BSP [33], should you consider organising your own.

32 : http://wiki.debian.org/BSPMarathonWheezy
33 : http://wiki.debian.org/HostingBSP

Debian would like to thank Pengutronix [34] (in Hildesheim) and PuppetsLabs [35]
(in Portland) for their support in organising these two events.

34 : http://pengutronix.com/index_en.html
35 : http://puppetlabs.com/

Call for talks: FOSDEM 2012
—————————

Wouter Verhelst sent a call for talks for the distribution developers room [36]
at the upcoming FOSDEM 2012 [37], the Free and Open Source Software Developers’
European Meeting. The FOSDEM takes place in Brussels, Belgium in early February
2012. Acceptable sessions can be any wide range of things, including talks, BoF
sessions, and round tables. Two cross-distributions devrooms are intended to be
for people from any participating distribution project, and may cover
Debian-specific subjects, or indeed targeted at Debian developers only.

36 : http://lists.debian.org/20111111113115.GZ17352@grep.be
37 : http://www.debian.org/events/2012/0204-fosdem

New s390 buildd at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
—————————————————-

Philipp Kern announced [38] that zemlinsky [39], a new Debian buildd hosted at
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology [40], is now available to support the s390(x)
ports [41]. Thanks to this new host, s390x is progressing pretty quickly [42]:
this new fast builder is one of the reasons why the slope is so steep.

38 : http://debblog.philkern.de/2011/12/new-debian-buildd-at-karlsruhe.html
39 : http://db.debian.org/machines.cgi?host=zemlinsky
40 : http://www.iic.kit.edu/nachrichten/einzelansicht/article/iic-foerdert-debian-fuer-ibm-system-z/
41 : http://www.debian.org/ports/s390/
42 : http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eANKNSQ7zvg/Tt1XNDpjMaI/AAAAAAAAAX8/EwUsFR8LImU/s1600/graph-week-big.pngp

Further interviews
——————

There have been three further “People behind Debian” interviews: with Raphaël
Hertzog [43], dpkg maintainer, book author; with Mark Shuttleworth [44],
Ubuntu’s founder; and with Stefano Zacchiroli [45], Debian Project Leader.

43 : http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2011/11/05#interview-raphael
44 : http://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/11/17/people-behind-debian-mark-shuttleworth-ubuntus-founder/
45 : http://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/11/22/people-behind-debian-stefano-zacchiroli-debian-project-leader/

Stefano Zacchiroli was also interviewed by Karen Sandler on the FaiF
oggcast [46], by Amber Granger during the Ubuntu Developer Summit [47] and by
Lici.it [48] (original in Italian [49]). In addition the NeuroDebian team [50]
were interviewed [51] by FLOSS for Science.

46 : http://faif.us/cast/2011/nov/29/0x1D/
47 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p64OUfcfe5M
48 : http://interview.lici.it/2011/11/15/an-interview-for-linux-to-stefano-zacchiroli/
49 : http://interview.lici.it/it/2011/11/15/an-interview-for-linux-to-stefano-zacchiroli/
50 : http://neuro.debian.net/
51 : http://www.floss4science.com/interview-neurodebian/

New Debian Contributors
———————–

Four applicants have been accepted [52] as Debian Developers, thirteen
applicants [53,54] have been accepted as Debian Maintainer, and twenty-five
people have started to maintain packages [55] since the previous issue of the
Debian Project News. Please welcome Nicholas Breen, Vincent Legout, Antoine
Beaupré, Gergely Nagy, Wolodja Wentland, Vasudev Kamath, Matthias Klumpp,
José Manuel Santamaría Lema, Floris Bruynooghe, Cédric Boutillier,
Christophe Trophime, Tobias Hansen, Nicolas Dandrimont, Simone Rosetto, Jonas
Genannt, Laszlo Kajan, James Page, Mikolaj Izdebski, Félix Arreola Rodríguez,
Henry Velez, Gastón Ramos, Stephen M. Webb, Miguel de Val Borro, Simon Chopin,
Paolo Greppi, B. Clausius, Mateusz Kijowski, José Luis Segura Lucas, Marcin
Kulisz (kuLa), Teus Benschop, Ole Streicher, Paolo Rotolo, Martin Erik Werner,
Raoul Gunnar Borenius, Geoffrey Thomas, Alkis Georgopoulos, Jerome Kieffer,
Christopher Gervais, Håkon Nessjøen, David Stone, Nicolas Bourdaud and
Mathias Ertl into our project!

52 : https://nm.debian.org/nmlist.php#newmaint
53 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/11/msg00012.html
54 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/12/msg00004.html
55 : http://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/new-maintainers.cgi

Release-critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release
———————————————————

According to the Bugs Search interface of the Ultimate Debian Database [56],
the upcoming release, Debian 7.0 “Wheezy”, is currently affected by 1005
release-critical bugs. Ignoring bugs which are easily solved or on the way to
being solved, roughly speaking, about 849 release-critical bugs remain to be
solved for the release to happen.

56 : http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi

There are also more detailed statistics [57] as well as some hints on
how to interpret [58] these numbers.

57 : http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/rc-stats/7.0-wheezy/2011-49
58 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/RC-Stats

Important Debian Security Advisories
————————————

Moritz Muehlenhoff reminded users that security support [59] for Debian
GNU/Linux 5.0 “Lenny” will end on 6 February 2012.

59 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2011/msg00238.html

Debian’s Security Team recently released advisories for these packages
(among others): moodle [60], nss [61], ffmpeg [62], postgresql [63],
iceweasel [64], iceape [65], openssl [66], python-django-piston [67],
icedove [68], proftpd-dfsg [69], bind9 [70], spip [71], freetype [72],
systemtap [73], wireshark [74], puppet [75], ldns [76], cups [77],
clearsilver [78], openjdk-6 [79], evince [80], openjdk-6 [81] (for “Lenny”),
mojarra [82], chasen [83] and acpid [84]. Please read them carefully and
take the proper measures.

Debian’s Backports Team released advisories for these packages:
libvirt [85], libreoffice [86], puppet [87], iceweasel [88],
openssl [89], apache2 [90], libsndfile [91] and nss [92]. Please read
them carefully and take the proper measures.

Debian’s Stable Release Team released an update announcement for the
package: linux-2.6 [93]. Please read it carefully and take the proper measures.

93 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2011/11/msg00001.html

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 [94] (and the separate backports list [95], and stable
updates list [96] or volatile list [97], for ”Lenny” , the oldstable
distribution) for announcements.

94 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
95 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/
96 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/
97 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-volatile-announce/

New and noteworthy packages
—————————

761 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among many
others [98] are:

* 4digits — guess-the-number game, aka Bulls and Cows [99]
* guacamole — HTML5 web application for accessing remote desktops [100]
* knot — authoritative domain name server [101]
* mgen — packet generator for IP network performance tests [102]
* minetest — InfiniMiner/Minecraft-inspired open game world [103]
* musique — simple but sophisticated graphical music player [104]
* pinpoint — hacker-friendly presentation program [105]
* r8168-dkms — dkms source for the r8168 network driver [106]
* redsocks — redirect any TCP connection to a SOCKS or HTTPS proxy server [107]
* uhub — high performance Advanced Direct Connect p2p hub [108]

Work-needing packages
———————

Currently 392 packages are orphaned [109] and 143 packages are up for
adoption [110]: please visit the complete list of packages which need
your help [111].

109 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned
110 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa
111 : 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 [112] to find out how to help. We’re looking forward to
receiving your mail at <debian-publicity@lists.debian.org>.

112 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute

This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Simon Chopin, Sam Hocevar,
Simon Paillard, David Prévot, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl, Alexander Reshetov,
Paul Tagliamonte, Justin B Rye and Paul Wise.

DPN n.15

DPN n. 14/2011

xtow — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 21:14:48 +0000

Pubblicato il quattordicesimo numero del DPN,

le notizie salienti:
Welcome to this year’s fourteenth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the
Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include:

* Updated Debian: 6.0.3 and 5.0.9 released
* DebConf12 official dates
* Debian Installer localisation
* Feedback after DebConf11
* Uses of Emdebian
* Bits from the DPL
* New Member process
* Further interviews
* Other news
* New Debian Contributors
* Important Debian Security Advisories
* New and noteworthy packages
* Work-needing packages
* Want to continue reading DPN?

Updated Debian: 6.0.3 and 5.0.9 released
——————————

———-

The third update for Debian 6.0 (codename [1] “Squeeze”) and the ninth
update for Debian 5.0 (codename [2] “Lenny”) have been released. These
updates mainly add corrections for security problems to the stable and
oldstable releases, along with some adjustments for serious problems.

1 : http://www.debian.org/News/2011/20111008
2 : http://www.debian.org/News/2011/20111001

DebConf12 official dates
————————

The DebConf team announced the final and official dates for DebConf12
[3]: DebCamp will be held from July 1 to 7 2012, followed by DebConf from
July 8 to 14, in Managua, Nicaragua. DebConf will be preceded by a day
during which the doors are opened to the general public, commonly called
Debian Day. For further information, please visit the DebConf12 web pages
[4].

3 : http://www.debian.org/News/2011/20111102
4 : http://debconf12.debconf.org/

Debian Installer localisation
—————————–

Christian Perrier reported some new progress [5] in Debian Installer
localisation [6]. Nineteen languages are now up to date for D-I’s core
files; eight (Czech, Dutch, French, German, Persian, Portuguese, Russian
and Swedish) are 100% complete for the moment, and many more should reach
this hall of fame pretty soon, thanks to the translators.

5 : http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2011/10/31#di-l10n-update-2011-5
6 : http://d-i.debian.org/l10n-stats/

Feedback after DebConf11
————————

After his “This week in Debian” interview, Adnan Hodzic wrote a summary
of DebConf11 and its consequences [7]. He offers an inside view of
DebConf organisation, sharing some of the stresses and the amazing
experiences he had with other organisers. Among the after-effects: the
Government of Republika Srpska may seriously consider free and open
source software for their own use, and Adnan has taken a vacation to
prepare himself for his next projects.

7 : http://foolcontrol.org/?p=1310

Uses of Emdebian
—————-

Continuing his series on Emdebian [8], Neil Williams posted an article
about the use of Emdebian on special purpose computers [9]. The common
features of special purpose computers include: single task only,
single-user support, single mode input, restricted connectivity,
constrained user data. On this kind of computer Emdebian is very popular
for many reasons, such as the multi-tasking kernel and userspace which
provide a responsive machine, or the mere fact that in Emdebian (unlike
proprietary competitors) the graphical software is trivially separated
from the core software. But the most important reason is that Emdebian
Grip allows better debugging: in fact, ”Emdebian Grip is binary
compatible with the equivalent Debian suite and when a bug appears in the
high level user interface, it is much easier to debug that on the desktop
than on the device”, said Neil.

8 : http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/serendipity/index.php?/archives/217-Documenting-Emdebian-intro.html
9 : http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/serendipity/index.php?/archives/230-Uses-of-Emdebian-special-purpose-computers.html

Bits from the DPL
—————–

Stefano Zacchiroli reminded us that Wheezy is a few months away from its
freeze [10]: everyone can help. He reported about some discussions that
are worth attention [11]; about maintainers’ and porters’
responsibilities [12]; reasons not to use private email aliases [13];
etc. Stefano gave updates about sprints (for coordinating which there is
a new mailing list [14]) and the trademark policy. He also recently
attended the ”Linux Day” in Parma, Italy, and the Ubuntu Developer
Summit in Orlando, Florida.

10 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/06/msg00003.html
11 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/10/msg00001.html
12 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/08/msg00685.html
13 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-www/2011/09/msg00062.html
14 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-sprints/

New Member process
——————

Enrico Zini announced that the”New Maintainer process” has changed its
name, to become the “New Member process [15]“: the procedure is still the
same, and even its initials are unchanged, but its name is no longer
confusing and ambiguous. Thanks to Stefano Zacchiroli for hisproposal
[16]. Jan Hauke Rahm also joined the New Member Front Desk, which can now
be reached at nm@debian.org [17].

15 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/10/msg00004.html
16 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint/2011/10/msg00028.html
17 : mailto:nm@debian.org

Further interviews
——————

Since the last issue of the Debian Project News, two new issues of the
[18] “This week in Debian” podcast have been published: with Jonathan
Nadeau [19], who talks about the Ohio LinuxFest and his internship at the
FSF; and with Adnan Hodzic [20], who talks about DebConf11.

18 : http://wiki.debian.org/ThisWeekInDebian
19 : http://frostbitemedia.libsyn.com/this-week-in-debian-episode-28
20 : http://frostbitemedia.libsyn.com/this-week-in-debian-episode-29-1

Other news
———-

Julien Cristau announced that in the current testing Debian distribution,
the default Python version pointed at by the /usr/bin/python symlink is
now Python 2.7 [21].

21 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/10/msg00000.html

Meike Reichle officially announced the Wheezy Bug Squashing Party
Marathon [22], starting in Hildesheim on December 2, 2011 [23].

22 : http://wiki.debian.org/BSPMarathonWheezy
23 : http://wiki.debian.org/BSP2011/Hildesheim

New Debian Contributors
———————–

Twenty-four people have started to maintain packages [24] since the
previous issue of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Harish
Badrinath, Andrew Harvey, Michael Jumper, Jakub Adam, Tiziano Zito,
Zlatan Todoric, Ivo Maintz, Judit Foglszinger, Daniel Hughes, Mark Owen,
Rico Rommel, Alex Chiang, Daniel Schaal, Alexander Chernyakhovsky, Jerome
Robert, Shell Xu, Sebastian Eichelbaum, Jeroen Nijhof, Michael Milligan,
Emmanuel Thomas-Maurin, Arthur Gautier, Kouhei Maeda, Rodolphe
Pelloux-Prayer and Ahmed Toulan into our project!

24 : 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): linux-2.6 [25], openjdk-6 [26], iceape [27], iceweasel
[28], puppet [29], openoffice.org [30], quagga [31], icedove [32],
cyrus-imapd-2.2 [33], policykit-1 [34], dokuwiki [35], moin [36],
bugzilla [37], radvd [38], wireshark [39], kfreebsd-8 [40], pam [41],
libfcgi-perl [42], freetype [43], torque [44], simplesamlphp [45], tor
[46], python-django [47], phpldapadmin [48], mahara [49], man2html [50]
and xen [51]. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures.

Debian’s Backports Team released advisories for these packages: puppet
[52] (updated announce [53]) and iceweasel [54], Please read them
carefully and take the proper measures.

52 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/2011/10/msg00000.html
53 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/2011/10/msg00003.htm
54 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/2011/10/msg00001.html

Debian’s Stable Release Team released update announcements for the
packages: tzdata [55] (last updated announce [56]) and clamav [57].
Please read them carefully and take the proper measures.

55 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2011/09/msg00000.html
56 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2011/11/msg00000.html
57 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2011/10/msg00003.html

Debian’s Volatile Team released update announcements for the packages:
tzdata [58] (last updated announce [59]) and clamav [60]. Please read
them carefully and take the proper measures.

58 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-volatile-announce/2011/msg00006.html
59 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-volatile-announce/2011/msg00009.html
60 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-volatile-announce/2011/msg00007.html

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 [61] (and the separate backports
list [62], and stable updates list [63] or volatile list [64], for
“Lenny” , the oldstable distribution) for announcements.

61 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
62 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/
63 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/
64 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-volatile-announce/

New and noteworthy packages
—————————

Hundreds of packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently.
Among many others [65] are:

65 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg

* dff — powerful, efficient and modular digital forensic framework [66]
* ebook-speaker — eBook reader that reads aloud in a synthetic voice [67]
* openteacher — learn words in a foreign language [68]
* openxenmanager — full-featured graphical management tool for Xen using XenApi [69]
* ptex2tex — easy generation of (possibly complex) LaTeX environments [70]
* qxw — advanced interactive crossword construction tool [71]
* rbenv — simple per-user Ruby version manager [72]
* shinken — flexible monitoring tool [73]
* unbound-anchor — utility to securely fetch the root DNS trust anchor [74]
* x2 — brand new text editor for the GNOME desktop [75]

Work-needing packages
———————

Currently 400 packages are orphaned [76] and 145 packages are up for
adoption [77]: please visit the complete list of packages which need your
help [78].

76 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned
77 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa
78 : 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 [79] to find out how to help. We’re
looking forward to receiving your mail at
debian-publicity@lists.debian.org [80].

79 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute
80 : mailto:debian-publicity@lists.debian.org

This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Francesca Ciceri, David
Prévot, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl, Alexander Reshetov and Justin B Rye
[81].

81 : mailto:debian-publicity@lists.debian.org

DPN n. 14

Imminenti gli aggiornamenti delle release Debian

xtow — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 06:32:56 +0000

Alexander Reichle-Schmehl ha annunciato un aggiornamento per Debian 5 Lenny e Debian 6 Squeeze, programmato rispettivamente per il 1 ottobre e 8 ottobre. Di seguito l’annucio ufficiale Upcoming point releases and call for test

The Debian Project is pleased to announce that the upcoming point
releases for Debian 5 “Lenny” and Debian 6 “Squeeze” are scheduled for
October 1st and October 8th respectively.

Debian “Squeeze” 6.0.3 will ship updated Linux kernel packages, including
bug fixes from the Linux “longterm” series up to 2.6.32.46, plus updated
drivers supporting new gigabit Ethernet chips from Broadcom, Intel and
Realtek. New packages for 32-bit PC, 64-bit PC and PowerPC are already
available for installation from the “stable-proposed-updates” suite [1].

1: http://wiki.debian.org/StableProposedUpdates

The Debian Project invites interested users to test these packages before
their release, especially on systems that use the updated drivers.

The drivers being updated are:

* e1000e (http://bugs.debian.org/627700

)
* Add support for i82567V-4 and i82579
* Fix support for i82577, i82578 and i82583
* igb, igbvf (http://bugs.debian.org/627702)
* Add support for i82576-ET2, i82580, DH89xxCC, i340 and i350
* r8169 (http://bugs.debian.org/627704)
* Fix support for RTL8102E and RTL8168DP
* Add support for RTL8105E, RTL8168E and another variant of RTL8168DP
* Add support for D-Link DGE-530T rev C1
* tg3, broadcom (http://bugs.debian.org/627705)
* Add support for BCM5717, BCM5719 and BCM57765
* Add support for BCM50610M and BCM5241 PHYs
* Fix support for BCM5755

Any problems found in the course of these tests should be reported to the
Debian bug tracking system [2] using the “reportbug” [3] tool.

2: http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting
3: http://packages.debian.org/source/stable/reportbug

Reports should preferably be sent before September 24, but later reports
of serious issues will still be taken into consideration. In case of
regressions in the updated drivers, please follow up to the bug numbers
listed above.

About Debian
————

The Debian Project is an association of Free Software developers who
volunteer their time and effort in order to produce the completely free
operating system Debian GNU/Linux.

DPN n. 13/2011

xtow — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 06:22:19 +0000

Pubblicato il tredicesimo numero del Debian Project News del 2011.
Le notizie principali:
* 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.

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.GB5944@oxana.chris.lan
52 : http://lists.debian.org/20110906061010.GB3837@glandium.org
53 : http://lists.debian.org/20110905190651.7987c810@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.camel@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]

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-publicity@lists.debian.org [73].

72 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute
73 : mailto:debian-publicity@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-publicity@lists.debian.org

DPN n. 13/2011

18 anni !!! Happy Birthday Debian

xtow — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 16:44:23 +0000

Il progetto debian festeggia il diciottesimo anniversario della sua nascita, da quando, il 16 agosto 1993 Ian Murdoch mise le basi per un sistema operativo libero e collaborativo nello spirito di Linux e GNU……
Di seguito la email celebrativa..

Debian Community celebrates its 18th birthday

The Debian Project is pleased to mark the 18th anniversary of Ian
Murdoch's founding announcement [1].  Quoting from the official project
history [2]:  "The Debian Project was officially founded by Ian Murdock
on August 16th, 1993. At that time, the whole concept of a 'distribution'
of Linux was new. Ian intended Debian to be a distribution which would be
made openly, in the spirit of Linux and GNU."

 1: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.development/msg/a32d4e2ef3bcdcc6
 2: http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/project-history/ch-intro.en.html

A lot has happened to the project and its community in the past eighteen
years.  There have been eleven releases - most recently Debian 6.0
"Squeeze" [3] in February 2011 - and a huge amount of free software
packaged.  The current "unstable" branch consists of more than 35,000
binary packages for the amd64 architecture alone - over 44GB of
Free/Libre Software!  Throughout this history Debian has maintained its
goals of technical excellence, accountability, and above all freedom.

 3: http://www.debian.org/News/2011/20110205a

Of course that wouldn't be possible without the strong community which
has developed around Debian.  Besides more than 1,000 Debian Developers
and Maintainers from all over the globe, there are in excess of 11,000
registered accounts for the Alioth collaboration platform, and that
doesn't even include all those people contributing with translations or
bug reports (and sometimes patches for them) and all those users helping
others via our mailing lists, forums and IRC channels.

 4: http://alioth.debian.org/

As a project, we would also like to take this opportunity to thank all
our users and contributors, and of course also our upstream developers.
All of them help to making Debian a great experience and a great project!

Across the world today, Debian Developers, Maintainers, Contributors and
Users celebrate our birthday [5] with small conferences, with virtual
parties, and even with parties in real life.  This celebration is
organised by the community, and it's not too late to start a party in
your own city!

  5: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDay2011

Users can also use the web platform at http://thank-you.debian.net to
express their thanks, and share pictures of their own Debian birthday
celebrations.  If you post on Twitter or Identi.ca please use the hashtag
#thxdebian.

The Debian Project continues to welcome contributions in all forms,
from everyone, encouraging people to download, use, modify,
and distribute its source code in the hopes that it is useful.

il diciottesimo compleanno

DPN n.12/2011

xtow — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 16:23:44 +0000



Welcome to this year's twelfth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the
Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include:

  * Debian named "Best Linux Distribution of 2011" and "Top Production Server Distro"
  * Bits from the Release Team
  * Recent improvements with Debian GNU/kFreeBSD
  * FreedomBox activities at DebConf11
  * New website for mentors.debian.net
  * Debian s390x port
  * Integrating Emdebian Grip into Debian
  * Further interviews
  * Other news
  * New Debian Contributors
  * Important Debian Security Advisories
  * New and noteworthy packages
  * Work-needing packages
  * Want to continue reading DPN?

Debian named "Best Linux Distribution of 2011" and "Top Production Server Distro"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TuxRadar [1] recently compared the six most popular Linux distributions
[2] in different categories. It's our pleasure to announce that Debian
not only won the categories"Customization", "Community" and
"Performance", but also won the overall prize of "best Linux distro of
2011"! We are especially pleased to have won in the "community"
category, or to cite TuxRadar: "There's more to a Linux community than
just numbers." 

   1 : http://tuxradar.com
   2 : http://www.tuxradar.com/content/best-distro-2011

Similarly, Debian was named the [3] "Top Production Server Distro" by
Carla Schroder at linux.com [4]:  "I've been spoiled by Debian, which
never needs to be reinstalled but can be upgraded forever, [..] Debian
supports more packages than any other distribution, so it's rare to not
find whatever you want just an apt-get install away". Many thanks,
Carla!

   3 : http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/479960:the-six-best-linux-community-server-distributions
   4 : http://linux.com

Bits from the Release Team
--------------------------

Neil McGovern sent some Bits from the Release Team [5]. First of all,
Neil explained that the "release goals" are areas of functionality
which developers would like to see as an aim for the next release and
should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely and not
limited in effects to only one set of packages. In addition, each
release goal must have an advocate for tracking progress. A list of
current goals is available on therelated wiki page [6]. Another
interesting topic discussed in the mail is the development of "CUT"
(Constantly Usable Testing) and of a rolling version of Debian: the
Release Team is skeptical on the creation of a new suite as the most
efficient way to improve the release process. Anyway, certain aspects
of the CUT/Rolling proposal are interesting, so the Release Team
invites people who are interested to run the suite. Neil also talked
about improvements to the "experimental" branch of Debian, in order to
avoid the slowing down of new features in "unstable", as well as
various other interesting topics such as the0-day NMU policy [7],
architecture re-qualification [8] and the packages removal process.
For a general overview of recent Release Team work, you can also watch
the video recording of [9] "Bits from the Release Team", held during
DebConf11.

   5 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/08/msg00000.html
   6 : http://wiki.debian.org/ReleaseGoals/
   7 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/03/msg00016.html
   8 : http://release.debian.org/wheezy/arch_qualify.html
   9 : http://ftp.acc.umu.se/pub/debian-meetings/2011/debconf11/high/708_Bits_from_the_Release_Team.ogv

Recent improvements with Debian GNU/kFreeBSD
--------------------------------------------

Robert Milan blogged about recent improvements [10] in the port of
Debian to the FreeBSD kernel. With the release of Debian 6.0 [11]
"Squeeze" in February it was labeled as a  "technology preview",
suggesting some limitations.  However, a lot of noteworthy improvements
have been made since then, including support forthe graphical installer
[12], FUSE [13], encrypted disk partitions, and wireless networking. It
is also now possible to use Debian GNU/kFreeBSD in a chroot under
FreeBSD [14].

   10 : http://robertmh.wordpress.com/2011/08/03/recent-improvements-with-debian-gnukfreebsd/
   11 : http://www.debian.org/News/2011/20110205a
   12 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-bsd/2011/06/msg00187.html
   13 : http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=fuse4bsd
   14 : http://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD_FAQ#Q._Can_I_run_Debian_GNU.2BAC8-kFreeBSD_in_a_chroot_under_FreeBSD.3F

In related news, Robert also called for testers of the installation
system's reworked ZFS support. [15]

   15 : http://lists.debian.org/CAOfDtXOZwya6io6LicZ17TAezuToz2bXWMPbRXFYU9BsnHuotw@mail.gmail.com

FreedomBox activities at DebConf11
----------------------------------

Bdale Garbee blogged about some recent progress in the FreedomBox
project [16].  During DebConf11 in Banja Luka, some FreedomBox
developers worked together, fixing various problems: Bdale developed
"freedom-maker", a lightweight toolset to build FreedomBox software
images, which is now available on thegit repository of the project
[17]. Jonas Smedegaard continued to work on an alternate packaging
toolset,  [18] "boxer". Thanks to Marvell, who provided the source
code, Bdale packaged two userspace programs necessary for configuring
and monitoring firmware provided for the uAP wireless chip used in the
DreamPlug: they are now available in Debian as uaputl [19] and uapevent
[20]. Still on the topic of DreamPlug, Clint Adams and Jason Cooper
worked on adding support for the DreamPlug to upstream u-boot while
Héctor Orón and Nick Bane analyzed the current state of patches from
Marvell and Globalscale used to support the DreamPlug against both
upstream and current Debian kernel sources.  Mirsal Ennaime worked on
the technology for package configuration (using debconf and
Config::Model) and there were interesting discussions about identity
and trust management, summarized on the related wiki page [21]. For
more information about the FreedomBox project, please visit the
official website [22] or watch the recording of Bdale's	[23]
"FreedomBox Progress Report", delivered at DebConf11.

   16 : http://www.gag.com/bdale/blog/posts/FreedomBox_in_Banja_Luka.html
   17 : http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=freedombox/freedom-maker.git;a=summary
   18 : http://git.emdebian.org/?p=upstream/boxer.git;a=summary
   19 : http://packages.debian.org/uaputl
   20 : http://packages.debian.org/uapevent
   21 : http://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/IdentityManagement
   22 : http://freedomboxfoundation.org/
   23 : http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2011/debconf11/low/704_FreedomBox_progress_report.ogv

New website for mentors.debian.net
----------------------------------

Asheesh Laroia announced that the new version of mentors.debian.net is
finally available [24]. The new site [25] provides a lot of interesting
features such as the ability to see package quality on the package
page, and support for comments and mail notifications. The site runs
with a more maintainable codebase than the old one, and is also
characterized by a new layout, which is the same as the main Debian
website. Asheesh wants to thank all the people who have worked during
the last year to achieve this result: Jan Dittberner, Christoph Haas,
Johnny Lamb, David Paleino, Andrey Rahmatullin, Kalle Söderman,
Christine Spang, Arno Töll, Wolodja Wentland, Paul Wise and Serafeim
Zanikolas.

   24 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/08/msg00214.html
   25 : http://mentors.debian.net/

Debian s390x port
-----------------

Aurelien Jarno blogged about the birth of a new Debian port: [26]
"s390x", the 64-bit version of the  [27] "s390" port.  "The s390 port
is actually 31-bit from the address point of view (one bit is reserved
for address space extension from 24 to 31 bits), so each process is
limited to 2 GB only", explains Aurelien. But, as nowadays there are
applications which need more than 2 GB (especially on mainframes), the
new "s390x" can be really useful. Aurelien had already done the
bootstrap of the architecture, so now an autobuilder has been started
and more than [28] "65%" of all packages have been built. The main
issues are currently packages which fail to build from source due to
linker [29], gcc-4.6 [30] and curl [31] changes. For more information
you can take a look at the list of bugs blocking the s390x port [32].

   26 : http://blog.aurel32.net/?p=59
   27 : http://www.debian.org/ports/s390/
   28 : http://buildd.debian-ports.org/stats/graph-week-big.png
   29 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/02/msg00011.html
   30 : http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gcc-4.6/news/20110627T163333Z.html
   31 : http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=636457
   32 : http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=s390x;users=debian-s390@lists.debian.org

Integrating Emdebian Grip into Debian
-------------------------------------

Neil Williams sent an interesting mail regarding the possible
integration of Emdebian Grip into Debian [33]. Emdebian [34] is an
official sub-project of Debian for running Debian on embedded devices;
the aim of the project is to provide minimized Debian packages with the
same sort of consistency that Debian itself offers, to be installed on
various types of devices. One of the Embedian flavours is Emdebian Grip
[35], which can be described as a smaller Debian-compatible distro with
optimized packages. During DebConf11, discussions took place in order
to integrate Emdebian Grip directly into the main Debian archive and
release process. The integration would involve parallel suites
(unstable-grip, testing-grip, stable-grip, etc) with a restricted (and
binary only) package set. There's also an interesting mail about
Emdebian Grip policy [36]. For more information, please visit the
detailed summary [37] of the discussion.

   33 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/08/msg00154.html
   34 : http://www.emdebian.org/about/
   35 : http://www.emdebian.org/grip/
   36 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/08/msg00153.html
   37 : http://wiki.debian.org/EmdebianIntegration

Further interviews
------------------

There has been one  "People behind Debian" interview: withMargarita
Manterola, Debian Women member [38].

   38 : http://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/08/07/people-behind-debian-margarita-manterola/

Other news
----------

Kenshi Muto announced an update of the backported debian-installer for
Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 "Squeeze" [39]. Updated images are available on
his images archive page [40]. These images contain kernel version
2.6.39 (bpo.2), updates disk controller drivers such as hpsa (by
updating kernel-wedge) and updates firmware packages (such as bnx2x).
Images are available both for  "i386" and "amd64" architectures. Please
note that these are unofficial images and you should use them only if
you really need this.

   39 : http://kmuto.jp/b.cgi/debian/d-i-2639-squeeze.htm
   40 : http://kmuto.jp/debian/d-i/

Dominique Dumont announced that Perl 6 (AKA [41] "rakudo") is now
available in Debian unstable (and meanwhile has also been accepted in
"testing").  Dominique started the effort of packagingPerl 6 for
Debian [42] after listening to an inspiring talk delivered by Gabor
Szabo at FOSDEM, titled [43] "Using Perl 6 today".

   41 : http://ddumont.wordpress.com/2011/07/24/perl6-aka-rakudo-is-available-on-debian/
   42 : http://packages.debian.org/rakudo
   43 : http://www.fosdem.org/2011/schedule/event/perl6_today

Alexander Wirt announced that the following new mailing lists are now
available:

  * debian-user-slovenian [44]
    "debian-user" in Slovenian;
  * debian-sprints [45]
    Discussion and coordination for sprints;
  * debian-dug-by [46]
    Discussion list for the Belarusian Debian Community;
  * debian-experimental-changes [47]
    Notices about uploaded packages for the experimental distribution,
    from developers, buildds and "dak" (the Debian Archive Kit).

The results of SPI [48] elections have been declared: Jimmy Kaplowitz,
Clint Adams and Robert Brockway were elected to the SPI board. SPI
(Software in the Public Interest) is a non-profit organization founded
to help organizations develop and distribute open hardware and
software; for more information on what SPI is and what it does, you can
watch the SPI BoF [49], held during the last DebConf.

   44 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-user-slovenian/
   45 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-sprints/
   46 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-dug-by/
   47 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-experimental-changes/
   48 : http://www.spi-inc.org/
   49 : http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2011/debconf11/high/703_SPI_BOF.ogv

Ansgar Burchardt announced that the Debian archive now supports xz
compression [50] for both source and binary packages. However, packages
in the base system (i.e packages with "Priority: required") and their
dependencies must use gzip as otherwise debootstrap will be unable to
install a system.

   50 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/08/msg00001.html

Jaldhar Harshad Vyas sent an update on the status of the Debian
GNU/Minix port [51]. The main news is that dpkg has been successfully
ported, while the initial bootstrapping is quite difficult due to
circular dependencies; nonetheless Jaldhar said that a pre-alpha
version will be distributed in a month.

   51 : http://www.braincells.com/debian/index.cgi/search/item=271

Aigars Mahinovs published an interesting picture [52], taken in Banja
Luka at DebConf11, with people wearing official DebConf t-shirts from
DebConf3 up to DebConf11.

   52 : http://www.aigarius.com/blog/2011/08/08/debconf-t-shirts/

Thom Holwerda blogged about AmigaOne X1000 being shipped to beta
testers [53], which will be delivered with a "Nemo" motherboard
assembled by Varisys, a UK company. The good news for Debian users is
that Varisys has Debian 6.0 "Squeeze" running on the "Nemo" board.

   53 : http://www.osnews.com/story/25041/AmigaOne_X1000_To_Ship_to_Beta_Testers_Next_Week

New Debian Contributors
-----------------------

2 applicants have been accepted [54] as Debian Developers, 7 applicants
have been accepted [55] as Debian Maintainer, and 34 people have
started to maintain packages [56] since the previous issue of the
Debian Project News. Please welcome Timo Lindfors, Cristian Greco,
Sébastien Villemot, Ruben Molina, Philipp Kaluza, Steve Conklin,
Allison Randal, Miguel Landaeta, John Paul Adrian Glaubit, Mario
Limonciello, Thadeu Lima de Souza Cascardo, Jérôme Sonrier, Sebastian
Krzyszkowiak, Dave Walker, Sebastian Tennant, Julien Vaubourg, Laszlo
Kajan, Peter Bennett, Karol M. Langner, Zhi Li, Nick Bane, Stefan
Denker, Matthias Klumpp, Olaf Dietsche, Wolodja Wentland, Andy Spencer,
Intri Geri, Arno Onken, Harlan Lieberman-Berg, Florian Reitmeir, Ben
Webb, George Gesslein II, Melvin Winstrøm-Møller, Pirmin Kalberer,
Muneeb Shaikh, Godfrey Chung, Olivier Girondel, Martin Ueding, Werner
Jaeger, Julia Palandri, Karolina Kalic, Enas Giovanni, and Michael Wild
into our project!

   54 : https://nm.debian.org/nmlist.php#newmaint
   55 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/08/msg00017.html
   56 : 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): qemu-kvm [57], krb5-appl [58], opensaml2 [59],
mapserver [60], phpmyadmin [61], libpng [62], libsndfile [63],
typo3-src [64], samba [65], squirrelmail [66], isc-dhcp [67], libxfont
[68], and freetype [69].  Please read them carefully and take the
proper measures.

   57 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2282
   58 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2283
   59 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2284
   60 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2285
   61 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2286
   62 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2287
   63 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2288
   64 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2289
   65 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2290
   66 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2291
   67 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2292
   68 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2293
   69 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2294

Debian's Backports Team released advisories for these packages:
libapache2-mod-authnz-external [70], xml-security-c [71], opensaml2
[72].  Please read them carefully and take the proper measures.

   70 : http://lists.debian.org/20110718091230.GQ28896@aenima
   71 : http://lists.debian.org/87vcubyx97.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu
   72 : http://lists.debian.org/87mxfnyx0l.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu

Debian's Stable Release Team released an update announcement for the
packages: clamav [73], clive [74].  Please read it carefully and take
the proper measures.

   73 : http://lists.debian.org/1312145877.2999.136.camel@hathi.jungle.funky-badger.org
   74 : http://lists.debian.org/1312839064.26351.212.camel@hathi.jungle.funky-badger.org

Debian's Volatile Team released an update announcement for the package:
clamav [75].  Please read it carefully and take the proper measures.

   75 : http://lists.debian.org/1312145785.2999.133.camel@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 [76] (and the separate backports
list [77], and stable updates list [78] or volatile list [79], for
"Lenny", the oldstable distribution) for announcements.

   76 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
   77 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/
   78 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/
   79 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-volatile-announce/

New and noteworthy packages
---------------------------

780 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among
many others [80] are:

   80 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg

  * alice -- Web browser (WebKit or Gecko) based IRC client [81]
  * collectl -- Utility to collect Linux performance data [82]
  * getdata -- management of external databases [83]
  * gnome-split -- GNOME Split - File splitter for GNOME desktop [84]
  * grml-rescueboot -- Integrates ISO-booting into grub [85]
  * gtimer -- GTK-based X11 task timer [86]
  * jscribble -- graphical notepad for use with a pen tablet [87]
  * kindleclip --User interface for managing Amazon Kindle's "My Clippings" file [88]
  * lame -- MP3 encoding library (frontend) [89]
  * landell -- audio and video streams manager [90]
  * lightdm -- simple display manager [91]
  * spacezero -- Real Time Strategy 2D space combat, multiplayer net game. [92]
  * thunar-vcs-plugin -- VCS plugin for Thunar file manager [93]
  * tty-clock -- simple terminal clock [94]
  * wizznic -- Implementation of the arcade classic Puzznic [95]
  * xul-ext-autofill-forms -- Iceweasel/Firefox add-on that enables you to fill out web forms faster [96]

   81 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/alice
   82 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/collectl
   83 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/getdata
   84 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-split
   85 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/grml-rescueboot
   86 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gtimer
   87 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/jscribble
   88 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/kindleclip
   89 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/lame
   90 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/landell
   91 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/lightdm
   92 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/spacezero
   93 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/thunar-vcs-plugin
   94 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/tty-clock
   95 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/wizznic
   96 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xul-ext-autofill-forms

Work-needing packages
---------------------

Currently 261 packages are orphaned [97] and 132 packages are up for
adoption [98]: please visit the complete list of packages which need
your help [99].

   97 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned
   98 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa
   99 : 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 [100] to find out how to help.
We're looking forward to receiving your mail at
debian-publicity@lists.debian.org [101].

   100 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute
   101 : mailto:debian-publicity@lists.debian.org

This issue of Debian Project News was edited by  Francesca Ciceri,
Jeremiah C. Foster, David Prévot, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl, Alexander
Reshetov and Justin B Rye [102].

   102 : mailto:debian-publicity@lists.debian.org

DPN n.12/2011

xtow — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 08:53:52 +0000

Iniziata ieri 24 luglio l’undicesima DebConf a Banja Luka, Serbia.
Per tutti coloro che non possono essere presenti all’evento, il team Debian, offre la possibilità di seguire i lavori in streaming. Le coordinate le fornisce Alexander Reichle-Schmehl nella seguente comunicazione:

Hi!

Sorry for the late notification about the video streams. We've been
rather busy down here. People are arriving, while DebianDay, the Day
open for the public has started quite successfully.

The Video Setup is finished, too. The easiest way to watch the streams
and to participate via irc is by using the "Web 2.0  thingy" at
http://debconf11.debconf.org/watch.xhtml.

You can also point your preferred video player at
http://video.debconf.org:8000/Roundroom.ogv for the smaller round room,
or http://video.debconf.org:8000/Auditorium.ogv for the larger
auditorium, where DebianDay will take place.  To participate remotely to
ask questions and comment please join the irc channels
#debconf-auditorium or #debconf-roundroom on irc.debian.org.

The full schedule for the entire conference is available at
http://penta.debconf.org/dc11_schedule/index.en.html. Please note that
adhoc sessions are added constantly. As usual we'll make the videos
available for download later.

Best regards,
  Alexander, on behalf of a quite busy h01ger

Stallman al ConfSL 2011 per discutere di Libertà e Free-Software

risca — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:34:45 +0000

Milano 23-24 Giugno 2011
Politecnico di Milano, Campus Leonardo

Fortuna volle che quel venerdì 24 Giugno avessi il pomeriggio interamente libero. Guarda caso proprio dalle 14.00, orario perfetto per partecipare al discorso conclusivo del ConfSL 2011 (Conferenza Software Libero) affidato a Richard Stallman. Inoltre quale migliore occasione per avere modo di incontrarlo?

Icona del progetto GNU
Immagine tratta da wikipedia

Ovviamente R. Stallman non ha bisogno di alcuna presentazione per chi sia un Debianizzato o comunque un utente del Free-Software. Spesso sui forum spesso è noto con l’acronimo RMS, ed è a volte ricordato per essere stato lo sviluppatore di Emacs. Ma soprattutto Richard Stallman è il Presidente della Free Software Foundation nonché il fondatore del progetto GNU (eh sì, Debian è proprio un sistema GNU/Linux, al pari di molti altri). Progetti che si fondano entrambi sul concetto di Software Libero, principi di cui lo stesso Stallman è stato pioniere e massimo sostenitore.

L’aula ovviamente era gremita siccome si trattava del discorso conclusivo della due giorni del ConfSL, o forse proprio perché stava proprio per parlare un personaggio del calibro di R. Stallman. Ho preso posto a sedere senza sapere bene cosa aspettarmi, siccome anche programma della giornata era vago in merito. E poi è arrivato lui.

Il discorso, durato circa due ore, è volato in un attimo. È stato un monologo incentrato principalmente sulle questioni relative ai diritti ed alle libertà delle persone, all’etica ed ai possibili rischi correlati alle nuove tecnologie. Di sicuro sarebbe stato piacevolissimo da seguire anche ad un estraneo del mondo informatico.

Una lezione a dir poco fantastica!

A conclusione è stato dedicato del tempo per proporre libere domande. Quindi sono stati ovviamente regalati adesivi dello GNU e del sito web windows7sin, ed infine è stato battuto all’asta un pupazzetto di uno GNU (un pinguino senza uno GNU si sente solo, RMS dixit) aggiudicato per € 100 .

Stallman abbraccia lo GNU appena battuto all’asta
Immagine prodotta da www.poul.org

Ho approfittato della tavola rotonda per chiedere a RMS di spiegarmi la propria posizione in merito a Debian. Infatti, se ben mi ricordo, la nostra benamata distro fu inizialmente sponsorizzata proprio dalla FSF per subire in seguito un divorzio dalla stessa a causa di alcune divergenze. In proposito Stallman mi ha risposto che i problemi principali erano sostanzialmente due. Il primo, ormai già risolto con l’avvento di Squeeze, è la rimozione dal kernel dei driver e firmware proprietari. Il secondo aspetto, tuttora non soddisfatto, è il fatto che secondo RMS la presenza dei repository non-free e contrib incentiva l’utente (in special modo quello principiate) a ricorrere, anche inavvertitamente al software proprietario. Quest’ultimo punto è senz’altro rilevante e richiederebbe a mio avviso una profonda riflessione. Quanti di voi si sono fatti tentare ad esempio dalla facile installazione di Adobe Flash?
È interessante notare il seguito della risposta di RMS alla mia domanda, ossia che, qualora siano aboliti all’interno dell’organizzazione di Debian sia i repository non-free che contrib, Debian sarebbe a tutti gli effetti una distribuzione dal suo punto di vista accettabile e promuovibile dalla Free Software Foundation.

Purtroppo, non avendo avuto modo di registrare per voi la conferenza stessa, vi proporrò in ordine sparso (e senza filo logico) alcuni degli argomenti dibattuti che maggiormente ho apprezzato:

l’attenzione posta al termine GNU/Linux in contrapposizione al solo Linux;
l’analisi della contrapposizione tra i termini Free-Software/proprietary-software ed il rifiuto ad accettare – che sinonimi non sono affatto – la dicotomia Software Open Source Vs Closed Source;
il rifiuto del termine cloud (secondo RMS troppo “nebulous “) per focalizzarsi sui più semplici e concreti concetti di esecuzione locale ed esecuzione remota;
i rischi legati al software in remoto per eventuali abusi (dalla privacy alla censura ed alterazione di dati);
il rischio per le democrazie occidentali in seguito alla manipolazione, anche sul web, dell’informazione;
i pericoli e le spinte verso la censura tutt’ora in atto nei più disparati paesi, anche occidentali;
il rischio (in gran parte legato ai socialnetwork) che le informazioni centralizzate possano favorire manipolazioni, mistificazioni, e controllo;
l’attuale sistema di copyright ed iniquità dello stesso, dove gli artisti emergenti non sono né incoraggiati né adeguatamente supportati a beneficio di pochi;
il fatto che le musica ed i libri non siano un “bene di consumo” ma abbiano anche un importante valore sociale di fruizione e circolazione delle idee e del sapere;
il pericolo del DRM e del software proprietario nel limitare i diritti degli utenti, inoltre di come i libri in formato digitale (Amazon) stiano cambiando le abitudini dei consumatori soprattutto nella situazione in cui prima, con i libri cartacei, era naturale passare o rivendere i libri letti/usati agli amici e terzi mentre oggi sui libri digitali, grazie al DRM, non è più assolutamente possibile;
i pericoli di abusi da parte di governi e società, ad esempio sul caso Wikileaks in riferimento a Amazon (cancellati dati del sito web) e Mastercard/paypal (blocco delle offerte dirette al sito);
sull’importanza di avere driver e firmware liberi, nonché hardware libero;
tantissimo altro su cui ancora parlare ma che purtroppo, chi non presente alla CONFSL, per questa volta si è perso.

Oltre alla magnifica esperienza dell’incontro e dal vulcano di idee affrontate, nonché al piacere di conoscere finalmente di persona RMS e di scoprire che è davvero una magnifica persona, sono andato via con l’idea che c’è ancora tantissimo da fare per la causa del Free-Software. A dire il vero è già stata fatta un’infinità di passi avanti, ma ve ne saranno ancor di più da compiere in futuro. Ancor di più perché nella visione di Stallman non si discute di sole licenze e solo software ma della società stessa, delle libertà di espressione dei suoi individui e dei rapporti di forza tra gli stessi, di diritti e obblighi.

In merito alla strada da intraprendere RMS è stato davvero categorico. Infatti ha nel corso del suo discorso più volte ribadito il fatto che non ci sia spazio compromessi e che l’unico traguardo accettabile da raggiungere è il seguire le linee guida del Free-Software.

Per questa ragione RMS critica l’uso di Android che, libero nel kernel di derivazione Linux, non lo è in molte altre componenti essenziali. Inoltre sempre per questo aspetto ritiene completamente sbagliato suggerire o proporre distribuzioni GNU/Linux non libere quali – esempio sul quale ha parecchio insistito – Ubuntu. Su quest’ultima è stato estremamente negativo evidenziando che Ubuntu stessa promuova un negozio di applicazioni di software proprietario che permette di acquistare applicazioni non libere quali ad esempio Nero (come se in questo caso non vi fossero valide alternative Free) ed il fatto che detta distribuzione non pone in alcuna evidenza né la distinzione tra Free e Proprietary software né l’importanza dei valori relativi al Free-Software.
Però la critica va oltre. Secondo RMS la pecca maggiore è di offrire, tramite l’installazione di Ubuntu, un falso traguardo per l’utilizzatore siccome l’errato messaggio che viene veicolato tramite Ubuntu è che il Free-Software sia Linux ed Ubuntu. Quindi all’utente finale sembra che sia sufficiente utilizzare quest’ultimi per essere in regola, in regola seppure puoi si masterizza con Nero, si guardano i video con Flash e si utilizzano quotidianamente formati che implementano i DRM.
La mia riflessione in merito è che Ubuntu sia stata una rivoluzione specialmente nell’ambito utonti per le semplificazioni sulle quali abbia insistito, però sono concorde nel riconoscere – come dalle stesse parole di Stallman – che il Free-Software è ben altro dall’utilizzare una distribuzione marrone.

Dopo tutto questo parlare di diritti e libertà, ad una domanda in merito alla tutela delle opere d’autore RMS mi ha risposto che nel mondo purtroppo esistono legge ingiuste e che, in tali casi, è diritto morale del cittadino disubbidire alle medesime. Infatti, secondo RMS, se una legge è iniqua è giusto che la medesima non sia rispettata. Pertanto ragazzi da stasera protestiamo tutti assieme con utorrente, amule e derivati!

Concludo il resoconto con l’impressione che mi è rimasta in seguito al discorso di RMS, ossia l’idea che non viviamo nel miglior mondo possibile e si possa, anzi si debba, lottare per migliorarlo e renderlo più giusto per tutti.

E voi cosa ne pensate?

Per ulteriori informazioni:

Squeeze aggiornata alla versione 6.0.2

xtow — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 09:21:25 +0000

Secondo aggiornamento per Squeeze, Debian 6.0.2. Come di consueto non è un nuovo rilascio Debian, la prossima Debian 7.0 aka Wheeze e ancora molto lontana. Questo aggiornamento corregge alcuni seri problemi riscontrati riguardo la sicurezza. Chi ha sempre fatto gli aggiornamenti non deve fare altro, altrimenti basta semplicemente aggiornare come di solito. A breve sarà disponibile una immagine contenente solo gli aggiornamenti, utile per coloro che non hanno una linea veloce.
L’annuncio ufficiale

DPN n.10/2011

xtow — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 09:29:20 +0000

Welcome to this year's tenth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian
community. Topics covered in this issue include:

  * Upcoming Debian GNU/Linux update
  * Spreading the world
  * New IRC Training Sessions
  * Report from the Debian Edu developer meeting
  * Meet Planet Debian Derivatives!
  * "Squeeze" debian-installer with Linux 2.6.38
  * DebConf11: Call for keys for keysigning
  * Graphical installer for Debian GNU/kFreeBSD
  * Iceweasel 5.0 in "experimental"
  * Further interviews
  * New Debian Contributors
  * Important Debian Security Advisories
  * New and noteworthy packages
  * Work-needing packages
  * Want to continue reading DPN?


Upcoming Debian GNU/Linux update
--------------------------------

Philip Kern announced the upcoming release of Debian GNU/Linux 6.0.2 [1].
This update, scheduled for Saturday, June 25th, will mainly add
corrections for security problems to stable release, along with some
adjustments for serious problems.

   1 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2011/06/msg00000.html

Spreading the world
-------------------

Christian Perrier published his annual report about the number of
developers per country [2]. Among these numbers, we can noticed that
Debian developers are present [3] in fifty-seven countries. Twenty-three
more active Debian developers have been counted this year, along with two
more countries.

   2 : http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2011/06/12#devel-countries-201106-3
   3 : http://www.debian.org/devel/developers.loc

New IRC Training Sessions
-------------------------

The Debian Project started a new round of IRC Training Sessions [4],
which will be held on IRC by experienced community members. This time,
there will be two different series: non-technical, called  "Ask the ..."
and more technical "One day with ..." . Additional information and
scheduled sessions are always available on the relatedwiki page [5].

   4 : http://www.debian.org/News/2011/20110617
   5 : http://wiki.debian.org/IRC/debian-meeting

The first session, held on June 22th and featuring Stefano Zacchiroli,
current Debian Project Leader, was followed by more than 70 attendees who
asked Stefano various interesting questions; it is also available the log
of the session [6].  In the next one, scheduled for July 1st at 19:00
UTC, Gregor Herrmann will tell us about the day-to-day work of the Debian
Perl Team and how join it. Don't miss it!

   6 : http://meetbot.debian.net/debian-meeting/2011/debian-meeting.2011-06-22-19.01.log.html

Report from the Debian Edu developer meeting
--------------------------------------------

Holger Levsen sent a report from the Debian Edu developer gathering in
Hamburg, Germany. [7] The main goal of the sprint was preparing the
release of Debian Edu "Squeeze". Debian Edu developers discussed and
worked on various things like documentation, Samba integration, and
testing of "Squeeze" installation images. More than 200 commits were
pushed to the Debian Edu's Subversion repository and 18 bugs fixed (and a
bunch of bugs filed againstbugs.skolelinux.org). Participants also had a
long discussion with two persons from "Chaos macht Schule", which is a
CCC subproject. In the end of his mail Holger thanks CCC Hamburg,
Opensides.be, the OLPC.de association and the Debian sprints program for
their financially supporting the event.

   7 : http://lists.debian.org/201106141624.46478.holger@layer-acht.org

Meet Planet Debian Derivatives!
-------------------------------

Paul Wise blogged about creation [8] of [9] "Planet Debian Derivatives"
which aggregates the blogs and planets of all the distributions
represented in the derivatives census. As say Paul it's first concrete
outcome from the Debian derivatives census [10]. He also shared his plans
about integration of information about derivatives with Debian
infrastructure and thanks Jörg Jaspert "for doing the necessary setup
procedures".

   8 : http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2011/06/16/planet-debian-derivatives/
   9 : http://planet.debian.org/deriv/
   10 : http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census

"Squeeze" debian-installer with Linux 2.6.38
--------------------------------------------

Kenshi Muto announced the release of backported amd64 debian-installer
for Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 [11] "Squeeze", which is available onhis images
archive page [12]. This image is based on Debian 6.0.1 and contain
firmwares. Also Kenshi added in the image a new DHCP client which fixes
an interacting problem with some DHCP servers. Please note that this is
an unofficial image and you should use it only if you really need this.

   11 : http://kmuto.jp/b.cgi/debian/d-i-2638-squeeze.htm
   12 : http://kmuto.jp/debian/d-i/

DebConf11: Call for keys for keysigning
---------------------------------------

Anibal Monsalve Salazar sent an announcement about organization of
keysigning at DebConf11 [13] which will be held at Banja Luka, Republika
Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina. All who intend to participate in the
keysigning should send their ASCII armored public key no later than 23:59
UTC on Sunday 10 July 2011.  All needed information can be found on
corresponding page [14].

   13 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/06/msg00001.html
   14 : http://people.debian.org/~anibal/ksp-dc11/ksp-dc11.html

Graphical installer for Debian GNU/kFreeBSD
-------------------------------------------

Robert Millan announced that a graphical installer is now available for
Debian GNU/kFreeBSD [15]: with it is now possible to install "Wheezy" in
a more comfortable way. You can find it on thedaily images page [16].

   15 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-bsd/2011/06/msg00187.html
   16 : http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/kfreebsd-amd64/daily/netboot/gtk/

Iceweasel 5.0 in "experimental"
-------------------------------

Mike Hommey blogged about adding Iceweasel 5.0 to [17] "experimental".
Mike also noticed that he discontinued the Iceweasel 4.0 backport for
"Squeeze", but he will still backports patches to 3.5 in "Squeeze" and
3.0 in "Lenny". At the end of the post he added: "In the coming weeks,
there will also be some additional changes to themozilla.debian.net [18]
repository, but I'll give more details when that happens".

   17 : http://glandium.org/blog/?p=2108
   18 : http://mozilla.debian.net/

Further interviews
------------------

There has been two further "People behind Debian" interviews: withPhilipp
Kern [19], Stable Release Manager and member of the wanna-build team; and
with Sam Hartman [20], Kerberos package maintainer explains how he uses
Debian despite his blindness.

   19 : http://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/06/10/people-behind-debian-philipp-kern/
   20 : http://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/06/24/people-behin-debian-sam-hartman-kerberos-package-maintainer/

Christian Perrier noticed that the bug #630000 [21] has been reported
Friday, 10 Jun 2011.

   21 : http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2011/06/10#630000

Daniel Barlow blogged about how to clone a Debian system [22] installing
on it identical packages and versions.

   22 : http://www.debian-administration.org/article/669/Cloning_a_Debian_system_-_identical_packages_and_versions

Martin Zobel-Helas wrote an interesting article on how start contributing
to Debian [23]. He listed various ways to help Debian: from reporting
bugs and try to reproduce them, to write documentation or translate the
existing one, to organize events or deliver talk on Debian-related
topics. And, if you haven't time to actively work with Debian, you could
always help it donating money or hardware. As Martin said:  "Find your
own area to work on within Debian, and don't think you can't help. Even
graphic designers, lawyers or clerks can help Debian!" .

   23 : http://blog.zobel.ftbfs.de/2011/06/how-you-can-help-debian-1.html

New Debian Contributors
-----------------------

14 people have started to maintain packages [24] since the previous issue
of the Debian Project News. Please welcome John T. Nogatch, Matthias
Kämmerer, Jonathan Riddell, Alexey S Kravchenko, Cleto Martan, Petr
Hlozek, Nikolaus Rath, Maxime Chatelle, Gergely Nagy, Leonid Borisenko,
Julien Dutheil, Manish Sinha, Bastian Blywis, and Wences Arana into our
project!

   24 : 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): tiff [25], vlc [26], kolab-cyrus-imapd [27], fex [28],
rails [29], redmine [30], moodle [31], movabletype-opensource [32],
linux-2.6 [33], perl [34], Please read them carefully and take the proper
measures.

   25 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2256
   26 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2257
   27 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2258
   28 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2259
   29 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2260
   30 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2261
   31 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2262
   32 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2263
   33 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2264
   34 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2265

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 [38] (and the separate backports
list [39], and stable updates list [40] or volatile list [41], for
"Lenny" , the oldstable distribution) for announcements.

   38 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
   39 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/
   40 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/
   41 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-volatile-announce/

New and noteworthy packages
---------------------------

263 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among
many others [42] are:

   42 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg

  * apt-clone -- Script to create state bundles [43]
  * brltty-espeak -- Access software for a blind person - espeak driver [44]
  * c2esp -- Driver for Kodak ESP 5xxx AiO color inkjet printers [45]
  * cardstories -- multiplayer online card guessing game [46]
  * clementine -- modern music player and library organizer [47]
  * espeakup-udeb -- Configure the speech synthesizer voice [48]
  * extundelete -- utility to recover deleted files from ext3/ext4 partition [49]
  * hunspell-ml -- Malayalam dictionary for hunspell [50]
  * jack-stdio -- program to pipe audio-data from and to JACK [51]
  * letodms -- open source document management system based on PHP and MySQL [52]
  * linux-headers-2.6.39-2-486 -- Header files for Linux 2.6.39-2-486 [53]
  * linux-image-2.6.39-2-686-pae -- Linux 2.6.39 for modern PCs [54]
  * m2300w -- Driver for the Minolta magicolor 2300W/24000W color laser printers [55]
  * preprocess -- portable multi-language file preprocessor [56]
  * rhash -- utility for computing hash sums and magnet links [57]
  * xul-ext-linky -- iceweasel extension to handle web and image links [58]

   43 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/apt-clone
   44 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/brltty-espeak
   45 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/c2esp
   46 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/cardstories
   47 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/clementine
   48 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/espeakup-udeb
   49 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/extundelete
   50 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/hunspell-ml
   51 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/jack-stdio
   52 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/letodms
   53 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/linux-headers-2.6.39-2-486
   54 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/linux-image-2.6.39-2-686-pae
   55 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/m2300w
   56 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/preprocess
   57 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rhash
   58 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xul-ext-linky

Work-needing packages
---------------------

Currently 306 packages are orphaned [59] and 142 packages are up for
adoption [60]: please visit the complete list of packages which need your
help [61].

   59 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned
   60 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa
   61 : 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 [62] to find out how to help. We're
looking forward to receiving your mail at
debian-publicity@lists.debian.org [63].

   62 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute
   63 : mailto:debian-publicity@lists.debian.org

This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Francesca Ciceri,
Jeremiah C.  Foster, David Prévot, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl, Alexander
Reshetov and Justin B Rye [64].

   64 : mailto:debian-publicity@lists.debian.org

DPN n.10/2011