Debian Project News - March 3rd, 2014

[Saxman]

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The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/
Debian Project News debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
March 3rd, 2014 http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2014/04/
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Welcome to this year's fourth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the
Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include:

* Debian Technical Committee chooses systemd
* Debian selected for Google Summer of Code 2014
* DebConf14 organising team needs your help to raise funds
* Barcelona Debian Women mini-DebConf
* Debian France's new contributor game
* Other news
* Upcoming events
* New Debian Contributors
* Important Debian Security Advisories
* New and noteworthy packages
* Work-needing packages
* Want to continue reading DPN?


Debian Technical Committee chooses systemd
------------------------------------------

Don Armstrong announced [1] that the Technical Committee [2], which was
asked in bug #727708 [3] to decide which init system would be the
default init system for Debian, had reached the decision that for Linux
architectures the default in Jessie should be systemd. Additional
discussions regarding the technical policy necessary for implementing
this decision are still ongoing and can be followed on the
debian-ctte [4] mailing list.

1: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-an ... 00005.html
2: http://www.debian.org/devel/tech-ctte
3: http://bugs.debian.org/727708
4: http://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/


Debian selected for Google Summer of Code 2014
----------------------------------------------

Debian has been selected as a mentoring organisation [5] for the Google
Summer of Code (GSoC) 2014 [6], a program that allows post-secondary
students aged 18 and older to earn a stipend writing code for free and
open source software projects during the summer. Nicolas Dandrimont sent
a call [7] for mentors and students to participate in this year's Summer
of Code. Mentors for prospective projects can submit proposals on the
project ideas list [8]. Eligible students can take a look at the list of
projects, engage in discussions with mentors and prepare their
applications. People interested in this program are encouraged to come
and chat with the Debian GSoC team on the #debian-soc IRC channel on
irc.oftc.net, or to send an email to the SoC coordination mailing
list [9].

5: http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org/ ... e/gsoc2014
6: https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/hom ... e/gsoc2014
7: http://bits.debian.org/2014/02/call-for ... -2014.html
8: https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects
9: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/ ... ordination


DebConf14 organising team needs your help to raise funds
--------------------------------------------------------

The DebConf team is well into the planning for DebConf14 [10] which will
take place in Portland, Oregon, USA during 23–31 August 2014. They are
now contacting potential sponsors from all around the globe. If you can
think of interested organisations, please feel free to reach out to
them, and ask, or if you are not comfortable asking directly, to contact
the sponsors-team [11] with any leads.

10: http://debconf14.debconf.org/
11: sponsors@debconf.org


Barcelona Debian Women mini-DebConf
-----------------------------------

Mònica Ramírez Arceda sent a public invitation [12] for the mini-DebConf
in Barcelona on 15–16 March organised by Debian Women [13]. The schedule
of talks [14] is already available. Registration [15] of participants is
recommended. The organisers are still raising funds to cover the costs
of running the conference and to offer travel sponsorship to people who
can't pay for it. Please consider donating any amount you can to our
crowd-funding campaign [16], or contact them [17] if you would like to
become a sponsor. For more information, visit the website of the
event [18].

12: http://bits.debian.org/2014/02/minidebc ... ounce.html
13: http://www.debian.org/women
14: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWomen/Proj ... 2014/Talks
15: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWomen/Proj ... rticipants
16: https://freedomsponsors.org/core/issue/427/
17: debian-miniconf@cpl.upc.edu
18: http://bcn2014.mini.debconf.org


Debian France's new contributor game
------------------------------------

Debian France [19] is organising [20] a small GSoC-like operation to
recruit new Debian contributors. It will be mainly of interest for
French-speaking candidates since the reward is a paperback copy of the
French translation [21] of the Debian Administrator's Handbook [22].
Debian France is now actively looking for potential mentors to propose
projects. The scope of the projects is much smaller than a Google Summer
of Code (from about 16 to 32 hours of work). If you want to mentor such
a project, submit your ideas on the dedicated wiki page [23].

19: http://france.debian.net
20: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-an ... 00009.html
21: http://raphaelhertzog.fr/livre/cahier-admin-debian/
22: http://debian-handbook.info
23: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianFrance/NewContributorGame


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

The ninth update of the oldstable distribution of Debian (codename
"Squeeze") was released on February 15 [24].

24: http://www.debian.org/News/2014/20140215

Christian Perrier indicated on his blog [25] that bug #740000 [26] was
reported on February 24 by Miguel Landaeta, 3 months and 4 days after
bug #730000 [27]. Only time will tell who will win the contest [28] to
guess when bugs #800000 and #1000000 will be reported.

25: http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2014/02/25#740000
26: http://bugs.debian.org/740000
27: http://bugs.debian.org/730000
28: http://wiki.debian.org/800000thBugContest

Christian Svensson announced [29] that he managed to install Debian on
the OpenRISC [30] open-source processor.

29: http://lists.opencores.org/pipermail/op ... 01565.html
30: http://opencores.org/or1k/Main_Page

Martin Zobel-Helas and Enrico Zini started a census [31] in order to
gather information about software services for the Debian community. The
list of known services so far is available on the wiki [32]. If you
maintain or simply know a service that is not yet on the list, please
edit the wiki page to add relevant information.

31: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-an ... 00006.html
32: http://wiki.debian.org/Services

Stefano Zacchiroli blogged [33] about recent improvements of
sources.debian.net [34], a service allowing anyone to search easily
through the source code present in Debian's archive.

33: http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2014 ... ebian.net/
34: http://sources.debian.net

Martin Pitt sent some bits from the autopkgtest team [35]. The project
has been evolving a lot recently, and now has new documentation, new
virtualisation servers and new test declarations. To round it off he
announced ci.debian.net [36], a new service that continuously runs
package tests declared in the DEP-8 format [37], using autopkgtest.

35: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-an ... 00010.html
36: http://ci.debian.net
37: http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep8/

Bernd Zeimetz announced [38] that a Debian Bug Squashing Party is being
organised for 25–27 April in the offices of conova communications
GmbH [39] in Salzburg, Austria. Information and a registration form are
available on the wiki [40].

38: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-an ... 00008.html
39: http://www.conova.com/de/kontakt/anfahrtsplan-salzburg/
40: http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2014/04/at/Salzburg


Upcoming events
---------------

There are several upcoming Debian-related events:

* 15–16 March, Barcelona, Spain — Debian Women Mini-DebConf [41]
* 15–16 March, Chemnitz, Germany — Debian booth at the Chemnitz Linux Days [42]

41: http://bcn2014.mini.debconf.org/
42: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEvents/de/ ... rLinuxTage

You can find more information about Debian-related events and talks on
the events section [43] of the Debian web site, or subscribe to one of
our events mailing lists for different regions: Europe [44],
Netherlands [45], Hispanic America [46], North America [47].

43: http://www.debian.org/events
44: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu
45: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-nl
46: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-ha
47: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-na

Do you want to organise a Debian booth or a Debian install party? Are
you aware of other upcoming Debian-related events? Have you delivered a
Debian talk that you want to link on our talks page [48]? Send an email
to the Debian Events Team [49].

48: http://www.debian.org/events/talks
49: events@debian.org


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

15 people have started to maintain packages [50] since the previous
issue of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Jerome Charaoui, Arturo
Borrero Gonzalez, Antonio Ospite, Facundo Guerrero, Micheal Waltz, Ian
Haywood, François-Régis Vuillemin, Jesse Rhodes, Andrew Kelley, Michael
Hall, Andriy Grytsenko, Leo Singer, Scott Talbert, Matus Valo, and
Tomasz Nitecki into our project!

50: 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): libcommons-fileupload-java [51], libspring-java [52],
iceweasel [53], pidgin [54], parcimonie [55], file [56],
chromium-browser [57], libtar [58], postgresql-8.4 [59],
postgresql-9.1 [60], gnutls26 [61], and otrs2 [62]. Please read them
carefully and take the proper measures.

51: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2856
52: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2857
53: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2858
54: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2859
55: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2860
56: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2861
57: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2862
58: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2863
59: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2864
60: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2865
61: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2866
62: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2867

Debian's Backports Team released advisories for these packages:
nss [63], and pidgin [64], Please read them carefully and take the
proper measures.

63: http://lists.debian.org/debian-backport ... 00000.html
64: http://lists.debian.org/debian-backport ... 00001.html

Debian's Stable Release Team released an update announcement for the
package: certificatepatrol [65]. Please read it carefully and take the
proper measures.

65: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-a ... 00002.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 [66] (and the separate backports
list [67], and stable updates list [68]) for announcements.

66: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
67: http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/
68: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/


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

352 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among
many others [69] are:

* cura-engine — commandline slicer program for 3-D printers [70]
* dh-php5 — debhelper add-on to handle PHP PECL extensions [71]
* fdroidserver — F-Droid build server and repository tools for Android [72]
* gnome-maps — map application for GNOME [73]
* gnuhealth — electronic medical record and hospital information system [74]
* sa-compile — tools for compiling SpamAssassin rules into C [75]
* simple-tpm-pk11 — simple library for using the TPM chip to secure SSH keys [76]
* tmperamental — LD_PRELOADable library to detect rogue writes to /tmp/ [77]
* vim-fugitive — Vim plugin to work with Git [78]
* xinput-calibrator — generic touchscreen calibration program for X.Org [79]
* zfsnap — automatic snapshot creation and removal for ZFS [80]

69: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg
70: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/cura-engine
71: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/dh-php5
72: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/fdroidserver
73: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-maps
74: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnuhealth
75: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sa-compile
76: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mai ... e-tpm-pk11
77: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/tmperamental
78: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/vim-fugitive
79: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mai ... calibrator
80: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/zfsnap


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

Currently [81] 559 packages are orphaned [82] and 140 packages are up
for adoption [83]: please visit the complete list of packages which need
your help [84].

81: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/20 ... 01173.html
82: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned
83: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa
84: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested


Want to continue reading DPN?
-----------------------------

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


This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Cédric Boutillier and
Justin B Rye.