Debian Project News - April 1st, 2013

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The Debian Project                                http://www.debian.org/
Debian Project News                    [email protected]
April 1st, 2013               http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/07/
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Welcome to this year's seventh issue of DPN, the newsletter for the
Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include:

  * Bits from the Release Team
  * Bits from the DSA team
  * DebConf13 matching fund
  * New Maintainer process
  * Editorial changes to the constitution
  * Interviews
  * Other news
  * 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?


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

Julien Cristau sent an update on Release Team activities=C2=A0[1], announci=
ng
the start of the final stage of the freeze. This basically means that
=66rom now on, there will be an even stricter policy on the changes that
can be uploaded (only fixes for release critical bugs will be accepted)
and that the Release Team will start to apply a specific usertag
(wheezy-will-remove=C2=A0[2]) to mark packages that will be removed from the
upcoming stable release if their RC bugs aren't fixed. In addition,
Julien gave a reminder that help is needed to finalise the Release
Notes: all users and contributors are invited to check the work in
progress=C2=A0[3] and help with the current issues=C2=A0[4].

    1: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/03/msg00009.html
    2: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=3Drelease.debian.=
[email protected];tag=3Dwheezy-can-defer;tag=3Dwheezy-will-remove;tag=
=3Dwheezy-is-blocker;ordering=3Dwheezy-sort
    3: http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes
    4: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=3Drelease-notes;tag=
=3Dwheezy


Bits from the DSA team
----------------------

Martin Zobel-Helas sent some bits from the Debian Systems Administration
team (DSA)=C2=A0[5] in which he reported on the recent activities of the
team. In recent months, they have focused on the virtualisation of a
number of physical machines, creating some ganeti clusters to manage the
various virtual machines. In addition to that, the team has begun a
rewrite of its account management code base using the Django framework.
The mail ends with the thanks of the DSA team to all the donors and
hosting partners (and especially Eaton=C2=A0[6] and Brainfood=C2=A0[7]) as =
well as
the ganeti package maintainers, Iustin Pop and Guido Trotter.

    5: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/03/msg00010.html
    6: http://www.eaton.com
    7: http://www.brainfood.com


DebConf13 matching fund
-----------------------

Didier Raboud announced matching funding for donations to DebConf13=C2=A0[8=
].
"As part of the DebConf13 fundraising effort, a generous sponsor,
Brandorr Group=C2=A0[9], has proposed to match USD donations to DebConf13
until 30 April" explained Didier. Through this mechanism, for each
dollar donated by an individual to DebConf13, Brandorr Group will donate
another dollar. Individual donations will be matched only up to 100 USD
each; only donations in USD will be matched, and Brandorr Group will
match the donated funds up to a maximum total of 5,000 USD.
This initiative will continue until Tuesday 30 April; spread the word!
For further details, you can check the donations webpage=C2=A0[10].

    8: http://blog.debconf.org/blog/debconf13/dr_dc13_matching_fund.dc
    9: http://www.brandorr.com/
   10: http://debconf13.debconf.org/monetary-support


New Maintainer process
----------------------

Enrico Zini blogged about the gender imbalance in the New Maintainer
process=C2=A0[11]. Enrico noted that we still have very few women
applicants=C2=A0[12], despite previous efforts to encourage them to apply,
including by the Debian Women=C2=A0[13] project. He therefore proposed that
we adopt an affirmative action approach, and only allow one male
candidate to apply for every female one. "Since the goal is to have an
equal gender perception in Debian, we can just decide to only approve
one obviously-male-named DD for every obviously-female-named one," said
Enrico. "That's right: no new obviously-male-named DD unless an
obviously-female-named DD has just been approved."

   11: http://www.enricozini.org/2013/debian/on-gender-imbalance/
   12: https://nm.debian.org/public/processes
   13: http://www.debian.org/women/


Editorial changes to the constitution
-------------------------------------

Francesca Ciceri proposed a constitutional amendment about changing our
election system=C2=A0[14]. She pointed out the large amount of time wasted =
in
election discussions each year, and the problems in tricking other
project members into running. The proposed amendment would cancel the
current election process, and instead make Stefano Zacchiroli DPL for
life. "Democratic processes are one of Debian distinguishing traits, but
over the years we have learned not to abuse them, in particular when
they risk getting in the way of decision efficiency," commented Stefano
Zacchiroli, current Debian Project Leader. "I'm flattered of being
proposed as "DPL for life" and, if the resolution will pass, I'll do my
best to always listen to suggestions from Debian project members in
spite of the lack of elections."

   14: http://blog.zouish.org/posts/gr


Interviews
----------

The newly launched official Debian blog=C2=A0[15] has interviewed the three
candidates for this year's DPL election: Moray Allan=C2=A0[16], Gergely
Nagy=C2=A0[17] and Lucas Nussbaum=C2=A0[18].

   15: http://bits.debian.org
   16: http://bits.debian.org/2013/03/dpl-interview-2013-moray.html
   17: http://bits.debian.org/2013/03/dpl-interview-2013-algernon.html
   18: http://bits.debian.org/2013/03/dpl-interview-2013-lucas.html


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

Stefano Zacchiroli published his monthly report of DPL activities=C2=A0[19].

   19: http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2013/03/bits_from_the_DPL_for_Feb=
ruary_2013_and_a_half/

Jan Wagner published a detailed report on the Debian presence at
Chemnitzer Linuxtage 2013=C2=A0[20].

   20: http://blog.waja.info/2013/03/20/chemnitzer-linux-tage-2013/

Following the recent announcement encouraging use of Debian's
trademarks=C2=A0[21], some of the first new merchandising products featuring
Debian branding have been announced. These range from a new version of
the famous Debian umbrellas designed for pets and plush toys of your
favourite Debian developers to Debian-branded bug squashing spray (fully
approved for use with organic crops) and Debian Flame-Away=E2=84=A2 calming
drugs.

   21: http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130301

Masayuki Hatta wrote some tips on how to package Haskell software=C2=A0[22].

   22: http://www.mhatta.org/blog/2013/03/21/recipe-for-debian-haskell-pack=
aging/

Rhonda announced the integration of the backport services into the main
archive=C2=A0[23].

   23: http://rhonda.deb.at/blog/debian/backports-integrated-into-the-main-=
archive.html


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

9 applicants have been accepted=C2=A0[24] as Debian Developers, and 2 people
have started to maintain packages=C2=A0[25] since the previous issue of the
Debian Project News. Please welcome Dmitry Smirnov, J=C3=A9r=C3=A9my Lal, M=
atthias
Klumpp, Stephen Kitt, Ivo De Decker, Mike Gabriel, Manuel A. Fernandez
Montecelo, Andrew Shadura, Florian Schlichting, Vamsee Kanakala, and
Sebastian Geiger into our project!

   24: https://nm.debian.org/public/nmlist#done
   25: 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=C2=A0[26], the upcoming release, Debian "Wheezy", is currently
affected by 50 Release-Critical bugs. Ignoring bugs which are easily
solved or on the way to being solved, roughly speaking, about 24
Release-Critical bugs remain to be solved for the release to happen.

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

There are also more detailed statistics=C2=A0[27] as well as some hints on
how to interpret=C2=A0[28] these numbers.

   27: http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2013/03/29-Debian_Release_Criti=
cal_Bug_report_for_Week_13/
   28: http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/RC-Stats


Important Debian Security Advisories
------------------------------------

Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages
(among others): smokeping=C2=A0[29], libxml2=C2=A0[30], icinga=C2=A0[31], r=
ails=C2=A0[32]
and bind9=C2=A0[33]. Please read them carefully and take the proper measure=
s.

   29: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2651
   30: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2652
   31: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2653
   32: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2655
   33: http://www.debian.org/security/2013/dsa-2656

Debian's Stable Release Team released an update announcement for the
package: clamav=C2=A0[34]. Please read it carefully and take the proper
measures.

   34: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2013/03/msg00000.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=C2=A0[35] (and the separate backports
list=C2=A0[36], and stable updates list=C2=A0[37]) for announcements.

   35: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
   36: http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/
   37: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/


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

129 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among
many others=C2=A0[38] are:

  * gnome-shell-extension-weather =E2=80=94 weather extension for GNOME She=
ll=C2=A0[39]
  * i18nspector =E2=80=94 checking tool for gettext POT, PO and MO files=C2=
=A0[40]
  * license-reconcile =E2=80=94 tool to reconcile copyright file and source=
=C2=A0[41]
  * silan =E2=80=94 commandline tool to detect silence in audio-files=C2=A0=
[42]
  * ultracopier =E2=80=94 advanced graphical file copy system=C2=A0[43]

   38: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg
   39: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-shell-extension-weath=
er
   40: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/i18nspector
   41: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/license-reconcile
   42: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/silan
   43: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ultracopier


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

Currently=C2=A0[44] 491 packages are orphaned=C2=A0[45] and 145 packages ar=
e up
for adoption=C2=A0[46]: please visit the complete list of packages which ne=
ed
your help=C2=A0[47].

   44: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/03/msg00516.html
   45: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned
   46: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa
   47: 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=C2=A0[48] to find out how to help. We're
looking forward to receiving your mail at
<[email protected]>.

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


This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Moray Allan, C=C3=A9dric
Boutillier, Francesca Ciceri, Victor Ni=C8=9Bu, Rhonda, Justin B Rye and
Thomas Vincent.


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