One thing I just don’t understand about the whole GFDL debacle is why it’s so urgently important to purge all GFDL documents from Debian. For those documents with invariant sections, I can kind of see the point. Invariant sections clearly violate DFSG3, and we’re obligated by the social contract to abide by the DFSG. Granted, we’ve been distributing non-modifiable documents since Debian’s inception, so that’s a rather shocking change in policy. Thanks to some “editorial changes” to the social contract, the Debian distribution has to change in fundamental ways. What’s even more suprising is that the changes in policy are going far beyond the requirements in the DFSG. According to the draft position statement, there are two problems in addition to the invariant sections–the “DRM” restriction and transparent and opaque copies. Note that in the GR proposal, the invariant section problem is explained by quoting DFSG3. However, the other two problems are not given any reference to the DFSG, and for good reason–there is no clear DFSG violation in either one. Sure, they’re icky, worded poorly, and no one particularly likes them. But since when is that grounds for removal from Debian? Even worse, overriding the interpretation that these problems are DFSG violations will require a 3:1 super majority thanks to the secretaries opinion on the matter. Apparently, we are being strong-armed into purging all GFDL documents from Debian, which little chance of reversing this decision. So, what does this accomplish?

• Alienation of our users
Users will have their documentation pulled out from under them, which is acerbated by the installer no longer adding the non-free section to the sources.list by default. To most users, this documentation will simply disappear. That includes documentation for all GNU software and all of KDE, which is some of the most crucial documentation for users.
• Alienation of the FSF
Well, this bridge has probably already been burned, but removing all GFDL documentation from Debian will probably make it even less likely the FSF would take steps to improve the GFDL more to Debian’s liking.
• Heavy maintenance burden on Debian’s developers
All packages in Debian containing GFDL documents will have to be permanently forked from upstream–in other words, they’ll have to be repacked with the documentation removed. Then a new source package will have to be created to contain just the documentation to be uploaded to non-free. And that’s if the maintainer even bothers with the non-free stuff. I suspect most will just drop the documentation on the floor, never to be seen again.
• Far greater reliance on the non-free archive

The only positive benefit I can see is that some people get some warm fuzzies for sticking it to the FSF and interpreting our foundation documents as strictly as possible. Is that really worth it? Instead of crippling Debian, why not work gradually to improve the state of documentation? We could work on gradually convincing upstreams to dual-license documentation, which is particularly desirable given the GPL/GFDL incompatibility. We could setup a project to produce “really free” documentation to replace current GFDL documents. We could try to educate a wider audience on the problems of the GFDL–you do realize that most of the outside free software community views us as wacky license nazis, right? Producing a totally free operating system should be a goal, not an absolute requirement. It’s something we should strive for, but realize we’ll never achieve perfection since there will always be license problems in a set of software the size of Debian. But what are we going to do instead? Just remove the stuff that’s currently irritating us while ignoring the big picture. Good bye users, good bye useful operating system. It was nice knowing you.

Sorry about the LiveJournal spam. Apparently they messed up.

I'll move to my own system. Real Soon Now.

Your Inner European is Dutch!

Open minded and tolerant. You're up for just about anything.

Funny thing is I look like that some mornings.

I wish there was a better way to handle conffile renames than the method outlined at dpkg.org. Be nice if there was a way to pressed the checksum, so the conffile handler could just be used naturally, instead of bypassing it with a bit of a hack. Makes me a bit uncomfortable to just accept the users changes without prompting him on upgrade (as would happen with this recipe). If anyone has a better idea, it would really help me with #345112. Reading Jacobo's post makes me wish I had proposed a DebConf talk, BoF, whatnot on Trademarks and Free Software, and maybe promote some better discussion than the last time this was on the mailing lists. ndusart is coming for the weekend! Haven't seen her in two months, so I'm understandably, ridiculously excited. Better lend mricon my earplugs.

Your Social Dysfunction: Paranoid You show pervasive and unwarranted suspiciousness, and mistrust of others. You are overly sensitive and prone to jealousy.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com Please note that we aren't, nor do we claim to be, psychologists. This quiz is for fun and entertainment only. Try not to freak out about your results.

Since sfllaw hasn't blogged about it, we're having a little get together on Saturday at Hurley's at 5:00. In the spirit of "the more, the merrier" (hope that's ok with you Simon), if you're a wannabe Debian developer come buy us drinks. I promise to sign the key of anyone who buys me a pint (how's that for a web-of-trust?).

I love ndusart, but I think she's more messed up than me sometimes.

Well I just got a rejection letter from the JET Programme, so no Japan for me this year. I wish the rejection letter gave some clue as to why I was not a suitable candidate. I can try again next year, maybe get a TESL certificate to improve my odds. At least mricon won't have to look for a new roommate come August.

I was feeling a bit left out of the whole blogging craze, not having a blog myself. I never felt I had to many interesting things to say, but I'd often wanted to respond to someone else blog posting with one of my own (as seems fashionable these days). And my roommate, mricon, seems to have a nice blog, so my competitive spirit has been awakened. I'm hoping this won't be the first and last post.

Don t you love it when it looks simple and then it is actually simple, but you are not up to the task?

I am loving the xlibs-dev transition, really, I mean it! Two of my packages, fkiss and xdigger got bit by this issue, and I immediately fixed the bugs with a little help from a script provided by Moritz Muehlenhoff. really cool.

So I follow instructions in The Debian Wiki, run the script, check with pbuilder, upload and profit! Fun! End of world hunger! Err, almost. So I get all excited and decide to look at the bugs. And I find a nice one: #346347. Not bad, gpsim FTBFS, Luk also took a look at it and didn t really like what he saw, it neede no xlibs-dev or substitute for them and sitll FTBFS.

But wait! Just by looking at gpsim s bugs page, I find out that there s a New Upstream Version(tm) (#248931) available since 1 year and 241 day ago. Also, NMUs that have not been acknowledged for as long as almost two years... Not nice. And there s even a patch (#345215) for building it on, GNU/kFreeBSD... how sexy!

So I get all obsessive about it. But newer upstream needs a newer libgtkextra-dev version (#347397), which of course was not packaged (don't we all love Murphy?) and that s where I am stuck at. I loathe libraries. But still I gave it a try. And failed. Several times.

Fun? Yes! Profit? Nope! Do you want to take a look at it? Easy. It s all here.

Amaya also FTBFS. And I want to NMU amaya. Badly. Since I first heard about amaya, and realized that I am named after a web browser (sucky as it might be) and after getting many IRC highlights (every time that amaya FTBFS is mentioned on IRC), I have been wanting to use/adopt/NMU it. Amaya NMUs amaya, how recursive can it get?

I will go to bed now, and try not to keep thinking about it, not because I want to become an early riser, Gunnar, no need to worry! But reading about it I thought it would be healthier for me to wake up everyday at the same hour, so that s all I am aiming for. If you know me, you might be rolling on the floor laughing as you read this. So am I! But, if you know me, keep in mind that I have been drinking coffee with no sugar since August... Hey! You are not laughing anymore?

Vi and Emacs are doing fine. Emacs was not pregnant after all, or so the vet told me. It was hard to see her slowly become herself after surgery. Vi was perfectly OK all along, but she looked terrible. Anyway, she felt better by 6am the next day and came to bed, perfectly groomed, and purring like nothing had happened. A week has passed and she has started doing the gory part today... she s biting away the scar tissue, and it bleeds a bit. Oh my Spaghetti Monster!

Ask me stupid black-or-white questions, and then tell I am normal. Heh!

Your Social Dysfunction: Normal Being average in terms of how social you are, as well as the amount of self-esteem you have, you re pretty much normal. Good on you.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com Please note that we aren t, nor do we claim to be, psychologists. This quiz is for fun and entertainment only. Try not to freak out about your results.

Yours freak-outedly...

I just came back from the vet. I left Vi and Emacs there and will pick them up after work, as today they will be spayed and neutered (450 EUR total). I am all shaky inside.
My little cats! (Well, not so little, as Emacs started acting like if she was in heat only a few hours before I had to take a plane for my Holidays, so I guess she is not so little anymore, nor is Vi, who seemed completely fascinated by her new behavior. Anyway, my vet knew this would happen one month in advance, when we were arranging an appointment for the surgery that will be performed today).

Good luck, my babies!

Note to sheba_finesse and self: Clean fish tanks weekly! They somehow manage to get really dirty if you don't.

I should also actually add pH neutraliser and water conditioner to the tank after doing a water change. I have managed to lose 3 guppies, 2 platties and a Clown Loach in the last 3 days. Expensive lesson. However, now I get to pick new fish, so I bought 5 Black Skirt Tetras.

Now that's over with, I can move onto other stuff.

Jean and I have bought a new bed, a new washing machine, a new dryer and a new fridge. Now we just need to wait for Radio Rentals to pick up the old stuff, and I'll be happier.

Techy stuff:
I finally gave in to Jordi and agreed to move Debian ALSA stuff into SVN. I'm seeing if subversion can act like less of a bitch than the last time I used it, in which case, I may actually re-evaluate my opion of it.

My Sparc has been deciding to run out of of memory. Then I discovered that spamassassin 3.0 is a dirty memory whore, and was chewing up 90Mb of RAM. I have moved spamd to a machine to more memory (the Sparc has an extremly small swap partition due to stupidity on my part), and not installed 3.0, and purged my Bayes database, so spamd should be quick and not suck ~ 100Mb of memory. As an aside, does anyone know how to stop spamassassin doing Bayes?

I'm blogging right in the middle of the G-I meeting in Extremadura.
We got the storks, the people, the food and the nice weather: what else could we
ask for?

Why does Oracle complete an import with... "Import terminated successfully with warnings." when what it actually means is... "I ran out of table space mid import, but I'm only going to tell you that in an obscure way in the log, and otherwise make you think that it was alllll OK"? Surely in this day and age it could just say "Import terminated unsuccessfully: ran the hell out of table space", wouldn't that be nice?

Today I was running out the door chasing the dog. The dog saw a person walking on the street and ran up to see her. I managed to get a hold on the dog and bring her home, but on the way back, theres this mini slope. Of course I'm bringing dog back inside and didn't think of this and get my sneakers covered in mud as there is a big ditch at the bottom. :(

So here's my instructions on washing shoes:

- First toss them in the washing machine on a low water level setting. Add in a bit of laundry detergent to help get the stink and mud out.
- Next take them out and stuff them with newspaper. Don't let the chunks of newspaper be too thick or it will not absorb as well. Leave newspaper in both shoes for 30-45 minutes.
- Now its time to let them air dry. The best approach is to put a fan in front of them. The more power the faster they dry. Right where I live right now, its the middle of a heat wave. So I realized the big air conditioning fan and motor outside is going around 24/7 and with huge amounts of hot air. If you take the latter approach, the shoes are usually dry with 1.5-2 hours, especially since it runs at least 10000 rpm. Otherwise the in house approach may take 4-6 hours. Also note that the air blown out from under your refrigerator is also good.

So in under 3 hours you can have your shoes squeaky clean with a nice smell, and be dry.

Want to help fix bugs and make GNOME better? GNOME Women is hosting a bug day on Saturday, January 28th. Come one, come all! (Yes, that’s guys too.) Now, to defend that Saturday from all other possible engagements with my life…