#use wml::debian::projectnews::header PUBDATE="2012-02-20" SUMMARY="Goodbye Lenny, GNU/Hurd on the rails, multiarch-ready dpkg"

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<p>Welcome to this year's fourth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the
Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include:</p>
<toc-display/>

<toc-add-entry name="EOLlenny">Goodbye Lenny!</toc-add-entry>

<p>
One year after the release of Debian 6.0 alias <q>Squeeze</q>,
and nearly three years after the release of Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 alias
<q>Lenny</q>, security support for the old <q>Lenny</q> release
<a href="$(HOME)/News/2012/20120209">has been terminated</a>.
The Debian project is proud to have been able to
support its old distribution for such a long time, even continuing for
a full year after the new version was released.
</p>

<toc-add-entry name="hurd">Debian GNU/Hurd on the rails</toc-add-entry>

<p>
Samuel Thibault sent some
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00002.html">bits from Debian GNU/Hurd porters</a>
reporting recent achievements of the team. Among other news items,
Samuel confirmed that Debian GNU/Hurd might be available as a
technological preview for the <q>Wheezy</q> release: the percentage of
packages built for it has passed 70% and the installer is available
with a graphical interface.
</p>
<p>
Samuel wants to thank Richard Braun who provided a new and faster 
Debian porter box, immediately accessible to Debian Developers.
For more information on Debian GNU/Hurd, you can visit the 
<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/Hurd">Debian wiki</a>.
</p>


<toc-add-entry name="DPL">DPL and legal work</toc-add-entry>

<p>
Stefano Zacchiroli sent some
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">bits
from the DPL</a> which, as usual, reported his monthly activities.
During the last month, Stefano has mostly worked on patents and legal
issues, including helping David Prévot and other webmasters in their
effort to relicense the Debian website, writing a draft for a Debian trademark
policy (with the help of Benjamin Mako Hill and the SPI lawyers),
and writing a <a href="$(HOME)/legal/patent">patent policy</a>
for the Debian archive that has
<a href="$(HOME)/News/2012/20120219">just been published</a>.
</p>


<toc-add-entry name="dpkg">Multiarch-ready dpkg</toc-add-entry>

<p>
Cyril Brulebois mentioned on his blog that <q>thanks to the hard work
of dpkg developers and many (generations of) developers</q>,
<a href="http://blog.mraw.org/2012/02/01/dpkg_with_multiarch/">dpkg
with multiarch</a> was uploaded to experimental.
He invites everyone to try and install packages with a foreign architecture.
</p>

<toc-add-entry name="GPL">GPL in Debian: a study</toc-add-entry>

<p>
Sam Varghese wrote an article 
<a href="http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/52838-gpl-use-in-debian-on-the-rise-study">analysing
John Sullivan's study on the use of the GNU General Public Licence (GPL) in the
Debian project</a>.
John, executive director at the Free Software Foundation, said during his
FOSDEM 2012 talk titled <q>Is copyleft being framed?</q> that
93% of Debian <q>Squeeze</q>'s packages are released under licences in
the GPL family (including the GPL, the Affero GPL and LGPL), showing a
constant and significant increase from the previous releases.

The numbers in the talk were calculated using an existing Debian tool, but Russ Allbery
mentioned that it
<a href="http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/journal/2012-02/002.html">wasn't
designed to be used this way</a>, so the current figures are only preliminary.
</p>


<toc-add-entry name="interviews">Interviews</toc-add-entry>

<p>There has also been one further <q>People behind Debian</q> interview: with
<a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/2012/02/10/people-behind-debian-ana-beatriz-guerrero-lopez-member-of-the-debian-kde-team/">Ana
Beatriz Guerrero López</a>, member of the Debian KDE team.
</p>


<toc-add-entry name="other">Other news</toc-add-entry>

<p>
The Debian Project is 
<a href="$(HOME)/News/2012/20120213">calling for
contributors to design graphics for the next release of the Universal
Operating System</a>, called <q>Wheezy</q>.
</p>

<p>
Holger Levsen wrote a 
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/02/msg00023.html">report 
from the DebConf Video Team sprint</a> held last November in Paris,
France. During the meeting the Video Team was able to work on
configurations of software and hardware needed for streaming and 
recording various important events such as DebConf and FOSDEM.
<br />
Holger ended his mail with a thankyou to IRILL who hosted the meeting and
who provide storage for the hardware when not in use.
</p>

<p>
Moray Allan announced 
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00005.html">the
newly appointed members of the DebConf Committee</a>: Ana Beatriz
Guerrero López, Ana Carolina Comandulli, Bdale Garbee, Christian Perrier and
Guido Trotter.
</p>

<p>
Ton Roosendaal, creator of 
<a href="http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/blender">Blender</a>
and the head of the Blender Institute, mentioned in an
<a href="http://letsfollowthewhiterabbit.blogspot.com/2012/02/interviewing-ton-roosendaal-will-it.html">interview</a>
that they use Debian for the render farm nodes.
</p>

<p>
Debian has again been chosen as <q>Server Distribution of the Year</q> by the <a
href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-news-59/2011-linuxquestions-org-members-choice-award-winners-928502/">\
LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards</a> this year.
Debian is also the
<a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/2011mca.php">third
desktop distribution</a>.
</p>

<p>
The hardware behind <q>ftp.debian.org</q> has 
<a href="$(HOME)/News/2012/20120218">recently been replaced</a>, with
the help of <q>Studenten Net Twente (SNT)</q> and HP.
</p>

<p>
Christian Perrier noted that <a
href="http://bugs.debian.org/660000">Debian bug #660000</a> was reported
by Beatrice Torracca.
Beatrice is a long-time Italian translator in Debian (and other
Free Software projects such as the Italian Linux Documentation Project and
Translation Project) and she's now particularly active in the translation
of installation messages for Debian packages (aka debconf templates).
Well done Beatrice!
</p>

<toc-add-entry name="events">Upcoming events</toc-add-entry>
<p>There are several upcoming Debian-related events:</p>
<ul>
 <li>March 2-4, Cambridge, UK &mdash; <a href="$(HOME)/events/0302-cambridge-bsp">Bug Squashing Party in Cambridge</a></li>
 <li>March 2-4, Mönchengladbach, Germany &mdash; <a href="$(HOME)/events/0302-moenchengladbach-bsp">Bug Squashing Party in Mönchengladbach</a></li>
 <li>March 10-11, Perth, Australia &mdash; <a href="$(HOME)/events/0310-perth-bsp">Bug Squashing Party in Perth</a></li>
</ul>
<p>
You can find more information about Debian-related events and talks
on the <a href="$(HOME)/events">events section</a> of the Debian web site,
or subscribe to one of our events mailing lists for different regions:
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu">Europe</a>, 
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-nl">Netherlands</a>, 
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-ha">Hispanic America</a>, 
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-na">North America</a>.
</p>

<p>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
<a href="$(HOME)/events/talks">talks page</a>? 
Send an email to the <a href="mailto:events@debian.org">Debian Events Team</a>.
</p>

<toc-add-entry name="newcontributors">New Debian Contributors</toc-add-entry>

	<p>
Fourteen people have <a href="http://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/new-maintainers.cgi">started
        to maintain packages</a> since the previous issue of the Debian
	Project News. Please welcome
Peter Drysdale,
Dominique Lasserre,
Antono Vasiljev,
Bastiaan Franciscus van den Dikkenberg,
Tomasz Buchert,
Michael van der Kolff,
Daniel Hartwig,
Nick Moffitt,
Carlos Borroto,
Yauhen Kharuzhy,
Romain Bignon,
Peter Michael Green,
Carlos Vicente,
and
Daniel Jared Dominguez
	into our project!</p>


<toc-add-entry name="rcstats">Release-Critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release</toc-add-entry>
# in total 1412
# affecting wheezy 727
# wheezy only 114
# remain to be fixed in wheezy 613
# ignoring all the above 410 bugs need to be fixed by Debian Contributors
# to get Debian 7.0 released.
# in the view of the release managers 637 need to be dealt with for the
# release to happen.

	<p>According to the <a href="http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi">Bugs Search
        interface of the Ultimate Debian Database</a>, the upcoming release,
	Debian 7.0 <q>Wheezy</q>, is currently affected by
613 Release-Critical bugs. Ignoring bugs which are easily solved
	or on the way to being solved, roughly speaking, about
410 Release-Critical bugs remain to be solved for the
	release to happen.</p>

	<p>There are also some <a
	href="http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/RC-Stats">hints on how to
	interpret</a> these numbers.</p>


<toc-add-entry name="dsa">Important Debian Security Advisories</toc-add-entry>

	<p>Debian's Security Team recently released
	advisories for these packages (among others):
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2012/dsa-2405">apache2</a>,
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2012/dsa-2406">icedove</a>,
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2012/dsa-2407">cvs</a>,
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2012/dsa-2408">php5</a>,
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2012/dsa-2409">devscripts</a> and
<a href="$(HOME)/security/2012/dsa-2410">libpng</a>.
	Please read them carefully and take the proper measures.</p>

        <p>Debian's Stable Release Team released an update announcement for the package:
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">eglibc</a>.
        Please read it carefully and take the proper measures.</p>


<p>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 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/">security mailing
list</a> (and the separate <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/">backports
list</a>, and <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/">stable updates
list</a>) for announcements.
</p>


<toc-add-entry name="nnwp">New and noteworthy packages</toc-add-entry>

<p>
572 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive
recently. <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg">Among
many others</a> are:</p>

<ul>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/burp">burp &mdash; simple network backup and restore program</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/fake-hwclock">fake-hwclock &mdash; save and restore system clock on machines without working realtime clock</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-shell-extensions">gnome-shell-extensions &mdash; extend functionality of GNOME Shell</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ical2html">ical2html &mdash; create an HTML table from icalendar data</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/pchar">pchar &mdash; characterize the bandwidth, latency and loss on network links</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/smartdimmer">smartdimmer &mdash; change LCD brightness on GeForce cards</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/weboob">weboob &mdash; CLI applications to interact with websites</a></li>

</ul>


<toc-add-entry name="wnpp">Work-needing packages</toc-add-entry>

<p><a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/02/msg00710.html">Currently</a> <a href="$(DEVEL)/wnpp/orphaned">\
409 packages are orphaned</a> and <a href="$(DEVEL)/wnpp/rfa">\
142 packages are up for adoption</a>: please visit the complete 
	list of <a href="$(DEVEL)/wnpp/help_requested">packages
	which need your help</a>.</p>


<toc-add-entry name="continuedpn">Want to continue reading DPN?</toc-add-entry>

<p>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
<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute">contributing
page</a> to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail
at <a href="mailto:debian-publicity@lists.debian.org">debian-publicity@lists.debian.org</a>.</p>


#use wml::debian::projectnews::footer editor="Francesca Ciceri, David Prévot, Justin B Rye"
# Translators may also add a translator="foo, bar, baz" to the previous line