Debian Weekly News - July 26th, 2000

Welcome to Debian Weekly News, a newsletter for the Debian community.

Test Cycle 3 has begun. Anthony Towns writes that "it is hoped and expected that we will not need to make any further changes to packages between this test cycle and declaring potato stable." "This test cycle will end in two weeks, roughly the 9th of August. At that point, any additional problems will be added to the release notes, and potato will be declared stable. The official announcement of this, and the first non-virtual release party, is expected to take place at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo." Everyone seems confident we'll pull it off this time.

Ben Collins announced that Debian 2.2 will be dedicated to developer Joel 'Espy' Klecker, who died unexpectedly at age 21. Almost 200 Debian developers have signed the dedication. Among other important tasks, Joel maintained the C library for Debian. We'll miss you, Joel.

Progeny, the Debian-based company founded by Ian Murdock, is in the process of hiring several Debian developers. A quick look at their staff page turns up some familiar names, including John Goerzen and Branden Robinson. Debian Weekly News has learned that other developers may be joining them soon. Progeny's jobs page states that they are "seeking Debian developers to work on Debian GNU/Linux and help develop a solid foundation for Linux NOW and our other products and services.". The opportunity to work on Debian full-time is a marvelous thing that benefits Debian as a whole, and it looks like more and more developers will be in that position.

Constitutional, Parliamentary Issues. A proposal is in the works to alter the Debian constitution so that the Social Contract and DFSG are designated "Foundation Documents" that may only be changed by a 3:1 majority vote. Manoj Srivastava's original draft has received several seconds, and a modified version has received 5 more. There should be a vote eventually ... on the other hand, we have still not voted on the non-free issue.

Debian security. An article analyzing the performance of various distributions with respect to security fixes unfortunately left Debian out of their distribution lineup, stating we released too infrequently to be included. Joey Hess (the editor of DWN) posted a rebuttal, in which he pointed out that with tools like apt, the security of a distribution is not closely tied to release frequency, and also showed that Debian releases new minor versions (such as 2.1r5) more frequently than Red Hat. Read them both, and draw your own conclusions. By the way, no security fixes have been announced for Debian in the past week.

Packages newly added to unstable this week include the following and 11 more:


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This issue of Debian Weekly News was edited by Joey Hess.