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Moray Allan | 2 Feb 17:28
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Call for volunteers to join DebConf Committee

The DebConf chairs are looking for additional people to join the
DebConf Committee, in time to help break any tie that emerges in the
DebConf13 decision process.

Here's the short-term job description:

Responsibilities: Read through the DebConf13 bids before the decision
meeting, attend the meeting, be ready to voice your opinions to help
reach a decision, and ready if needed to cast a vote to help a final
decision.  (And, in the event that it's impossible to get a decision
during the meeting for some good reason, attend a second meeting.)

Qualifications: It would be helpful if you have attended DebConf
previously, and if you hope to attend DebConf13 in 2013.

Ideal candidates would be willing to stay involved with DebConf13 to
some degree through its cycle.

If you're interested, please speak to one of us directly (on IRC,
moray/h01ger/gwolf) or reply to this message.

--

-- 
Moray
on behalf of the DebConf chairs
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Stefano Zacchiroli | 4 Feb 12:51
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bits from the DPL for January 2012

Dear Developers,
  here is another monthly report of what happened in DPL-land, this time
for January 2012. There's quite a bit to report about --- including an
insane amount of legal-ish stuff --- so please bare with me. Or not.

Legal stuff
===========

- Webmaster heroes have decided to tackle the long standing issues of
  copyright and licensing of the Debian website [1,2]. I've accepted to
  help them out in reaching consensus with license choice and I'm happy
  to report that we've managed to pick a DFSG-free license (BSD-ish) for
  future contributions. Webmasters will soon contact contributors to
  re-license old contributions (or get rid of them), so hopefully will
  have a DFSG-free website RSN. Many thanks go to David Prévot for
  successfully tackling such a can of worms.

  [1] http://bugs.debian.org/238245
  [2] http://bugs.debian.org/388141

- I've sought a second legal advice on the constraints that trademarks
  (might) impose on the work-flow of a distro like Debian. Luckily, it
  is coherent with one I've sought in the past so I'm now in condition
  to wrap up the "trademark vs DFSG" thread on -project [3] with the
  missing legal information. Hopefully, I'll find time to do that
  sometime next week.

  [3] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/10/msg00028.html

- I've restarted discussions with the Debian France association so that
(Continue reading)

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Samuel Thibault | 4 Feb 12:54
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Bits from the Debian GNU/Hurd porters

Greetings,

It is half a year since the last "Bits from Debian GNU/Hurd porters[1]", here is an update on the port[2].

  • Installation CDs

The Debian Installer includes support for a graphical interface, CD
and DVD images are available[3]. For the impatient we also have a
ready-to-go QEMU image[4]. Make sure to read the README file in all
cases!

  • GHM meeting

At the GNU Hackers Meeting in Paris in August 2011, Samuel Thibault
presented "GNU/Hurd, aka. Extensibility from the Ground" with a very
good response from the audience. Slides[5] and a video[6] from that
presentation are available.

  • Wheezy release goal

Since the ftp-master meeting in July 2011, significant improvements
have been made, and a technological preview of GNU/Hurd with Wheezy,
as was made for kFreeBSD did for Squeeze, is still the target. More
information is available in the updated TODO list[7]. With respect to
package porting only a few packages are still being fetched from the
ftp://ftp.debian-ports.org site, and the network installation images now
use the main archive.

  • Archive coverage
(Continue reading)

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Petter Reinholdtsen | 4 Feb 13:05

Third Debian Edu Squeeze based Beta Release, 6.0.4 edu beta3


We are happy to announce "Debian Edu Squeeze 6.0.4 beta3"!

Debian Edu aka Skolelinux is a Linux distribution based on Debian
providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely configured
school network. It contains setup for a school server, PXE booting for
diskless machines, setup for installing stationary workstations and
setup for workstations that can be taken away from the school network.

Those who already tested beta2 will need to install their machines
again to get all the fixes and improvement now provided with beta3.

Complete download and installation instructions are available at
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation

Read the "Getting Started" chapter of the manual to learn how to login
for the first time.
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/GettingStarted

Please file bugs on any issues you find, and (probably somewhat
additionally) also mention those bugs and issues on our status page at
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze

Testing and giving feedback to debian-edu <at> lists.debian.org or
#debian-edu on irc.debian.org is a very good way to start
contributing! Act now :-D

If you can do more, give the manual linked to above some love. It
needs it.
(Continue reading)

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Ondřej Surý | 4 Feb 20:16
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PHP 5.4 transition in unstable


Fellow developers,

this is just a heads up that we will upload php version 5.4 into
unstable very soon.  It is currently in RC phase and we spoke to PHP
upstream and both parties think this is a good idea to iron out more
bugs for upstream and allow us to have more time to transition.

Unfortunatelly PHP 5.4 introduce a couple of incompatible changes,
most notably:
safe_mode and register_globals was finally removed
 (THIS WILL BREAK VARIOUS SOFTWARE)
default charset is now utf-8
magic_quotes are deprecated (with warning)
three new reserved words: callable, insteadof and trait
multibyte support is now default
removed syntax (break $var, continue $var)
sqlite(2) extension was removed (already done in php5.3 in Debian)

For a full list you can check upstream UPGRADING readme:
http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-php/php.git;a=blob;f=UPGRADING

php5-5.4.0~rc7-1 will be uploaded as soon as php5 5.3.10 transitions
to testing to fix the criticil remote vulnerability in php5 5.3.9.
I will then block the transition to testing with a RC bug, so we can
start testing existing software as soon as possible, but keep testing
in relatively stable state. The blocking bug will be removed as soon
we get to 5.4.0 final.

I also plan to provide "official" backports for Debian squeeze when
(Continue reading)

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Moray Allan | 8 Feb 14:20
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New DebConf Committee members

Thank you to everyone who volunteered to help on the DebConf Committee
(both on-list and off-list).  We had a lot of well-qualified
volunteers, and have finally taken five new members onto the Committee.

Continuing members:

Andrew McMillan
Gunnar Wolf
Holger Levsen
Moray Allan

New members:

Ana Beatriz Guerrero López
Ana Carolina Comandulli
Bdale Garbee
Christian Perrier
Guido Trotter

Currently the only formal responsibility of the DebConf Committee is
over deciding venues for future DebConfs (including the DebConf13
venue decision, to be made soon), as set out in
http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/BidProcess

However, I would hope that all Committee members, along with others,
feel a longer-term responsibility for DebConf, both during
preparations for a particular conference in a venue they helped to
select, and in ensuring in the longer term that the conferences
continue to be successful and positive for Debian.
(Continue reading)

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Stefano Zacchiroli | 10 Feb 14:36
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delegation for the summer of code admins

Dear project members,
  Google Summer of Code program (GSoC) 2012 has been announced last
week-end during FOSDEM [1,2]. Debian is going to apply for participation
as we did in the past. I'm glad to inform you that we have again
volunteers as (co-)admins for Debian participation: Ana Guerrero,
Gergely Nagy, and Sukhbir Singh. Many thanks to all of them!

GSoC admins coordinate Debian participation, interact with the students
(often Debian newbies), and indirectly deal with the money who are used
to sponsor the initiative. It is a role of responsibility and involves
representing Debian in various ways. I'm therefore pleased to properly
delegate the role to this year GSoC admins. Formal delegation text can
be found below [3].

I'm confident you will hear from the admins about how to contribute very
soon. In the meantime it won't hurt if you could start thinking at your
Debian project proposals for GSoC 2012.

Cheers.

[1] http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2012
[2] http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2012/02/google-summer-of-code-2012-is-on.html
[3] Sukhbir is not part of the delegation only because he is not yet a
    DD, but he will be helping out Ana and Gergely with the tasks
    described below nonetheless

------------------------------------------------------------------------

GSoC 2012 Delegation
====================
(Continue reading)

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Ana Guerrero | 14 Feb 14:47
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Call for projects and mentors for Google Summer of Code 2012

Hi!

Debian is applying as mentoring organization to the Google Summer of Code
(GSoC) program this year, as we have done previous years [0][1]. In the next
month we should have the full list of possible projects ready in order to get
accepted.

- How does GSoC benefit Debian, and you?

The benefits include (but are not limited to) recruiting helping hands to work
on parts of Debian YOU find interesting and important. Furthermore, in the long
run, this is a way to attract new contributors, and make everyone's life so much
easier: the more hands, the easier it gets!

- How can you help?

If you have an idea, let us know, by filling the full proposal template at [2],
and drop us an email at [4]. It's also a good idea to subscribe to the list,
even if you're not wishing to be a mentor, as the list is the coordination
and discussion mailing list.

Are you a student? That's great, too! Submitting project ideas are not reserved
for Debian Members only, quite the contrary! Everyone, students, Debian Members
and other contributors are all welcome to let their ideas known, and try to find
willing mentors for them!

However, for a successful proposal, we need mentors, not just ideas. Do not be
alarmed, it doesn't take all that much time, and you'll have the chance to
recruit yet another brilliant mind for the project
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Martin Zobel-Helas | 15 Feb 21:43
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Invitation to the BSP in Mönchengladbach (Germany), 02-04 March 2012

Hi,

to help Debian freeze[1], there will be a Bug-Squashing-Party in
Mönchengladbach, Germany on the weekend of 02-04 March, 2012. It
will be held in the office of the German Open-Source-Support-Center
at credativ GmbH[2].

Even if you are not a Debian developer, but are interested in helping
Debian to get all the open release critical bugs fixed, you're welcome
at the BSP.  There will be enough developers around to sponsor your
NMUs. Some more information about BSPs and RC-Bugsquashing can be found
at [3] and [4].

Targets for the BSP are:
* Take care of bugs found by piuparts[5].
* Help the ipv6 release goal by adding ipv6 support to programs which do
  not support it yet. There is a list of bugs to work on, but continue
  to file new ipv6-related bugs if you find them - and fix them!
* Find obsolete and unmaintained packages in testing/unstable and file
  RoQA removal bugs.

Coordination for the BSP is done on the wiki page[6], where you'll also
find transport and accommodation details. Mönchengladbach is located
about 30km west of Düsseldorf and 50km north-west of Cologne.

If you need accommodation please add yourself to the list on the wiki
page as soon as possible.

Hope to see you here,
(Continue reading)

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Stefano Zacchiroli | 18 Feb 10:19
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Project Secretary appointment

Dear Developers,
  it's that time of the year again, Project Secretary appointment has
expired!  But don't panic.

As per Constitution §7.2, me and the current Project Secretary have
agreed in (re-)appointing Kurt Roeckx as Project Secretary for another
term. The term starts today, 20 February 2011, and will last for 1 year.

                                                             Kurt Roeckx
                                                      Stefano Zacchiroli
--

-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Quando anche i santi ti voltano le spalle, |  .  |. I've fans everywhere
ti resta John Fante -- V. Capossela .......| ..: |.......... -- C. Adams
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Gmane