Debian Weekly News - March 14th, 2000

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

Another Bug Horizon has been set for March 27th. 115 packages are in danger of being removed and once again some very important packages are among them. Richard Braakman also mentioned that he hopes to start the first test cycle "right after that date", and only important bugfixes are now allowed into frozen. Debian 2.1 has been out for a year as of this week.

The new-maintainer process is beginning to reopen. Dale Scheetz posted a call for sponsors of prospective new maintainers to submit them to the application process. This will be used to test the identification process.

Deja vu: Important new releases of X, the kernel, and apache are out or looming on the horizon, and Debian is in the middle of a freeze. What to do? Mainly discuss the same issues we did last time: package pools, changing release frequency, updates to stable, etc.

Debian GNU/Linux For Dummies is due in May, according to this web page. With 7 Debian books already in print, in 3 languages, it's clear we've reached the point where another Debian book is no big deal. It's more interesting to consider how a "Dummies" book with Debian on the cover may change our userbase..

Debian Project Leader elections close on the 16th. Note that DWN incorrectly reported they would close last week; the date on the ballots was wrong. If you still haven't voted, a few days remain.

A security fix for mtr is available.

New packages in Debian this week include the following and 6 more:


To receive this newsletter weekly in your mailbox, subscribe to the debian-news mailing list.

Back issues of this newsletter are available.

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