This was my sixth month as a Freexian sponsored LTS contributor. I was assigned 4 hours for the month of October and I had 4 unused hours from September for a total of 8. With that time I started working on backporting security fixes for Quassel, but it s turned into a major project. The commit message for one of the commits between what s in squeeze-lts and what I was trying to backport is Reformat ALL the source! . That s never a good sign. I set that aside and focused instead on reviewing the MySQL 5.5 packages that the LTS team is working on. They are getting there, but we need to make sure we have it all right as we don t want to break existing installations. This month I hope to continue the work on both these packages.

Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS. Individual reports In August, 71.50 work hours have been dispatched among 7 paid contributors. Their reports are available:

• Ben Hutchings did 15 hours.
• Guido G nther did 4 hours.
• Mike Gabriel was assigned 8 hours but did not do them. He will catch up in September.
• Rapha l Hertzog did 6.5 hours.
• Santiago Ruano Rinc n did 17 hours.
• Scott Kitterman did 4 hours.
• Thorsten Alteholz did 17 hours.

Evolution of the situation September is stable compared to August (71.50 hours per month) and has not caught up back to the level of July as I hoped. Again it s because 2 sponsors were not able to pay their renewal invoice on time (one of last month paid, but another bigger sponsor failed this month). Those sponsors will continue to support us and I would like to be able to say that things will be back to normal next month, but I can t say it since we have also been informed of the (hopefully temporary) defection of another bronze sponsor that will affect us next month. Fortunately there are also good news, we have 3 new sponsors in the pipe (2 silver, 1 platinum) who shall join the project soon. And Blablacar increased their support from Silver to Gold (from 4h/month to 8h/month). But we still need more support in particular since we would like to commit to support virtualization related packages in Wheezy: that s clearly an objective for us. I recently published the summary of the work session held during DebConf 15 in Heidelberg (video recording). It would be really nice if we could get closer to the goal of funding a full-time position. In terms of security updates waiting to be handled, the situation is close to last month: the dla-needed.txt file lists 18 packages awaiting an update (2 less than last month), the list of open vulnerabilities in Squeeze shows about 30 affected packages in total (8 more than last month). Thanks to our sponsors

• Gold sponsors:
• The Positive Internet (for 15 months already)
• Blablacar (for 14 months already)
• Linode LLC (for 4 months already)
• Silver sponsors:
• David Ayers IntarS Austria (for 15 months already)
• Domeneshop AS (for 14 months already)
• Universit Lille 3 (for 14 months already)
• Trollweb Solutions (for 12 months already)
• Gandi SAS (for 9 months already)
• University of Luxembourg (for 6 months already)
• Rentabiliweb Group (for 4 months already)
• Bronze sponsors:
• Offensive Security (for 15 months already)
• Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 15 months already)
• Evolix (for 14 months already)
• Freeside Internet Service (for 14 months already)
• MyTux (for 14 months already)
• Linuxhotel GmbH (for 12 months already)
• Intevation GmbH (for 11 months already)
• Daevel SARL (for 10 months already)
• FOSSter (for 10 months already)
• Bitfolk LTD (for 9 months already)
• Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 9 months already)
• Gree, Inc. (for 8 months already)
• Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 8 months already)
• NUMLOG (for 8 months already)
• WinGo AG (for 7 months already)
• Ecole Centrale de Nantes LHEEA (for 4 months already)
• Sig-I/O

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This was my fourth month as a Freexian sponsored LTS contributor. I was assigned 4 hours which was enough for me to release a fix for screen and review CVEs for libvpx and determine that they did not apply to squeeze-lts. The screen update is covered under DLA 305-1.

We have enough debate about are things required by policy in Debian that, in my opinion we sometimes lose track of why things are a good idea to begin with. I just had a conversation via GitHub with a potential upstream developer (I m looking into packaging something he developed) that reminded me about some of the reasons some of the non-code we try to ship are a good idea. This is a Python based project. References to MANIFEST.in (manifest) translate to extra files to put in the tarball and references to sdist mean the source tarball. UPSTREAM: Thanks for the pull request. Is there any place where I can find more information about this manifest file, and why it s important to have one? ME: There are two files (LICENSE and CHANGELOG) that it would be good to have in the sdist, each for their own reason:
We want LICENSE because since Debian distributes both source and binary we want a copy of the exact license for the code in our source distribution so the the requirements are clear and self-contained. I think this is a good general practice anyway.
We want CHANGELOG so we can ship it in the package documentation to enable users to see what has changed over time with the package. MANIFEST.in is just a way to add files to the sdist (it s the normal way in distutils). I m not that versed in setuptools myself, but I do know there are other ways to do it. What s important (at least from our point of view) isn t the MANIFEST.in file itself, but the added files it would add to the sdist. If the MANIFEST.in isn t shipped with the sdist, then a downstream distributor that modified the package might get a different result. I believe it s a good general practice to include all the components of a package build system when you ship it. That s probably way more information than you wanted

Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS. Individual reports In July, 79.50 work hours have been dispatched among 7 paid contributors. Their reports are available:

• Ben Hutchings did 14.75 hours.
• Guido G nther did 8 hours.
• Mike Gabriel did 8 hours.
• Rapha l Hertzog did 15 hours.
• Santiago Ruano Rinc n did 14.75 hours.
• Scott Kitterman did 4 hours.
• Thorsten Alteholz did 15 hours.

Evolution of the situation August has seen a small decrease in terms of sponsored hours (71.50 hours per month) because two sponsors did not pay their renewal invoice on time. That said they reconfirmed their willingness to support us and things should be fixed after the summer. And we should be able to reach our first milestone of funding the equivalent of a half-time position, in particular since a new platinum sponsor might join the project. DebConf 15 happened this month and Debian LTS was featured in a talk and in a work session. Have a look at the video recordings:

• Debian Long Term Support: Past Present and Future (slides)
• Preparing for Wheezy LTS

In terms of security updates waiting to be handled, the situation is better than last month: the dla-needed.txt file lists 20 packages awaiting an update (4 less than last month), the list of open vulnerabilities in Squeeze shows about 22 affected packages in total (11 less than last month). The new LTS frontdesk ensures regular triage of CVE reports and the difference between both counts dropped significantly. That s good! Thanks to our sponsors Thanks to Sig-I/O, a new bronze sponsor, which joins our 35 other sponsors.

• Gold sponsors:
• The Positive Internet (for 14 months already)
• Linode LLC (for 3 months already)
• Silver sponsors:
• David Ayers IntarS Austria (for 14 months already)
• Blablacar (for 13 months already)
• Domeneshop AS (for 13 months already)
• Universit Lille 3 (for 13 months already)
• Trollweb Solutions (for 11 months already)
• Gandi SAS (for 8 months already)
• University of Luxembourg (for 5 months already)
• Rentabiliweb Group (for 4 months already)
• Bronze sponsors:
• Evolix (for 14 months already)
• Offensive Security (for 14 months already)
• Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 14 months already)
• Freeside Internet Service (for 13 months already)
• MyTux (for 13 months already)
• Intevation GmbH (for 11 months already)
• Linuxhotel GmbH (for 11 months already)
• Nantes M tropole (for 11 months already)
• Daevel SARL (for 9 months already)
• FOSSter (for 9 months already)
• Bitfolk LTD (for 8 months already)
• Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 8 months already)
• Gree, Inc. (for 7 months already)
• Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 7 months already)
• NUMLOG (for 7 months already)
• WinGo AG (for 7 months already)
• Ecole Centrale de Nantes LHEEA (for 3 months already)
• Sig-I/O

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A few days ago, fellow Qt/KDE team member Lisandro gave an update on the situation with migration to Plasma 5 in Debian Testing (AKA Stretch). It s changed again. All of Plasma 5 is now in Testing. The upgrade probably won t be entirely smooth, which we ll work on that after the gcc5 transition is done, but it will be much better than the half KDE4 SC half Kf5/Plasma 5 situation we ve had for the last several days. The issues with starting kwin should be resolved once users upgrade to Plasma 5. To use the current kwin with KDE SC 4, you will need to add a symlink from /usr/bin/kwin to /usr/bin/kwin_x11. That will be included in the next upload after gcc5. Systemsettings and plasma-nm now work. In my initial testing, I didn t see anything major that was broken. One user reported an issue with sddm starting automatically, but it worked fine for me. During the upgrade you should get a debconf prompt asking if you want to use kdm or sddm. Pick sddm. When I tried to dist-upgrade, apt wanted to remove task-kde-desktop. I let it remove it and some other packages and then in a second step did apt-get install task-kde-desktop. That pulled it back in successfully along with adding and removing a reasonably large stack of packages. Obviously we need to make that work better before Stretch is released, but as long as you don t restart KDE in between those two steps it should be fine. Lastely, I used apt-get autoremove to clear out a lot of no longer needed KDE4 things (when it asks if you want to stop the running kdm, say no). Here are a few notes on terminology and what I understand of the future plans: What used to be called KDE is now three different things (in part because KDE is now the community of people, not the software): KDE Frameworks 5 (Kf5): This is a group of several dozen small libraries that as a group, roughly equate to what used to be kdelibs. Plasma (Workspaces) 5: This is the desktop that we ve just transitioned to. Applications: These are a mix of kdelibs and Kf5 based applications. Currently in Testing there are some of both and this will evolve over time based on upstream development. As an example, the Kf5 based version of konsole is in Unstable and should transition to Testing shortly. Finally, thanks to Maximiliano Curia (maxy on IRC) for doing virtually all of the packaging of Kf5, Plasma 5, and applications. He did the heavy lifting, the rest of us just nibbled around the edges to keep it moving towards testing.

Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS. Individual reports In June, 73.50 work hours have been dispatched among 7 paid contributors. Their reports are available:

• Ben Hutchings did 14.75 hours.
• Guido G nther did 10 hours.
• Mike Gabriel did 8 hours.
• Rapha l Hertzog did 14.5 hours.
• Santiago Ruano Rinc n did 14.75 hours.
• Scott Kitterman did 4 hours.
• Thorsten Alteholz did 14.5 hours.

Evolution of the situation July has seen a nice increase in terms of sponsored hours (79.50 hours per month) but the trend is unlikely to continue for the next month, worse it might be negative. While most sponsors who joined us last year in July will renew their support, there are a few where I have no confirmation yet. Many thanks to those who confirmed early: Universit Lille 3, MyTux. Our first milestone of funding the equivalent of a half-time position is unlikely to be reached before DebConf or even this summer. If you want to prove me wrong, it s time to get in touch with your management and convince your company to contribute a small amount. In terms of security updates waiting to be handled, the situation is similar to last month: the dla-needed.txt file lists 24 packages awaiting an update (5 more than last month), the list of open vulnerabilities in Squeeze shows about 33 affected packages in total (3 less than last month). Thanks to our sponsors There are no new sponsors this month. But I decided to include the number of months that the sponsor has been with us. Since we value long-lasting relations, it seemed quite natural to add this.

• Gold sponsors:
• The Positive Internet (for 13 months already)
• Linode LLC
• Silver sponsors:
• David Ayers IntarS Austria (for 13 months already)
• Blablacar (for 12 months already)
• Domeneshop AS (for 12 months already)
• Universit Lille 3 (for 12 months already)
• Trollweb Solutions (for 10 months already)
• Gandi SAS (for 7 months already)
• University of Luxembourg (for 4 months already)
• Rentabiliweb Group
• Bronze sponsors:
• Offensive Security (for 13 months already)
• Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 13 months already)
• Evolix (for 12 months already)
• Freeside Internet Service (for 12 months already)
• MyTux (for 12 months already)
• Linuxhotel GmbH (for 10 months already)
• Nantes M tropole (for 10 months already)
• Intevation GmbH (for 9 months already)
• Daevel SARL (for 8 months already)
• FOSSter (for 8 months already)
• Bitfolk LTD (for 7 months already)
• Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 7 months already)
• Gree, Inc. (for 6 months already)
• Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 6 months already)
• NUMLOG (for 6 months already)
• WinGo AG (for 5 months already)
• Ecole Centrale de Nantes LHEEA

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This was my second month as a Freexian sponsored LTS contributor. I was assigned 4 hours which was enough for me to update libclamunrar to the latest version we have, 0.98.5. This aligns libclamunrar with last month s clamav update and resolved a potentially concerning double free error. This is consistent with the way clamav and its components are updated for Debian supported releases through proposed-updates. This is covered under DLA 250-1. This update took longer than expected due to time spent wrestling with the git repository for the packaging, but that s resolved now, so if future updates are needed, it should be much easier.

Nota: Este art culo, en espa ol, aqu . I m not a gamer, although probably I ve played with machines/computers more than most of the girls of my age. My path has been: handheld machine, Pong and tenis in my uncle s console, MSX (with that one, in addition to playing, I learnt what was an algorithm and a program, and I started to write small programs in Basic, and I copied and ran the source code of small games and programs to make graphics, which I found in MSX magazines). My parents considered that arcade machines in bars were like slot machines so they were banned for us (even pinball, only table soccer was saved from them, and only if my father was playing with us). In the MSX I played Magical Tree, Galaxians, Arkanoid, Konami s Sports Games, Spanish games from Dinamic, and some arcades like Golden Axe, Xenon, and maybe some more. The next computers (PC AT, later a 286) were not so for gaming; let s say that we played more with the printer (Harvard Graphics, Bannermania ). Later, I was interested in other things more than in computer games, and later there were highschool homework, dBase III, and later the University and programming again and more, and it was the end of gaming, computer was for office and Uni homework.
Later, it came the internet and since then, reading and writing and communicating was more interesting for me than playing. I was not good at playing, and if you are not good, you play less, and you don t get better, so you begin to find other ways to loose your time, or to win it :) The new generation My son is 6 years old now, and I m living with him a second adventure about games. Games have changed a lot, and the family computing try to stay in the libre software side whenever I am the one that can decide, so sometimes some challenges arise. Android (phone and tablet) The kid has played games in the phone and tablet with Android since he was a baby. We tried some of the last years popular games. I am not so keen of banning things, but I don t feel comfortable with the popular games for Android (advertisements, nonfree software, addictive elements, massive data recollection and possible surveillance ), so I try to control without being Cruella de Vil . Some techniques I use:

• We agree in the amount of time for using the table, setting a tomato to control the time (thanks Pomodoro in F-Droid)
• I set the airplane mode and shut down internet everytime that I can. I never register account or login to play (if it s mandatory to login in Google or create an account, sorry but we cannot play, or we create a new empty profile).
• I put barriers to installing games (for example, I say that he should uninstall 2 or 3 games first if he wants a new one, or he should explain well why he wants that game and why the ones that were installed became boring suddenly).
• I ve never bought games for Android, and I m not thinking about buying them in the future. I prefer to donate for some libre game project.
• I try to divert attention to other games (not computer games, usually).
• If the equivalent non-computer game exists, we play that one (tic-tac-toe, hungman, battleship )
• I seldom play in the phone/tablet, unless we play together.

On the other side, in my phone there is no Google Play, so we have been able to discover the section Games of F-Droid. We have tried (all of them available in F-Droid, emphasis in the ones that he liked best): 2048, AndroFish, Bomber, Coloring for Kids, Core, Dodge, Falling Blocks, Free Fall, Frozen Bubble, HeriSwap (this one in the tablet), Hex, HyperRogue, Meerkat Challenge, Memory, Pixel Dungeon, Robotfindskitten, Slow it!, Tux Memory, Tux Rider, Vector Pinball. Playing in my phone with CyanogenMod and having downloaded the games from F-Droid provides a relief similar to the one when playing a non-computer game. At least with the games that I have listed above. Maybe it is because they are simpler games, or they make me remember the ones that I played time ago. But it s also because of the peace of mind of knowing that they are libre software, that have been audited by the F-Droid community, that they don t abuse the user. The same happens with Debian, what takes me to the next part of this blogpost. Computer games: Debian The kid has learnt to play with the tablet and the phone before than with the computer, because our computers have no joysticks nor touchscreens. He learnt to use the touchpad before than the mouse, because it s easier and we have no mouse at home. He learnt to use the mouse at school, where they work with educative games via CD or via web, using Flash :( So Flash player appears and dissapears from my Debian setup depending on his willness to play with the school games . Until few time ago, in the computer we played with GCompris, ChildsPlay, and TuxPaint.
When he learnt to use the arrow keys, I installed Hannah and he liked a lot, specially when we learnt to do hannah -l 900 :) Later, in ClanTV there were advertisements about some online computer games about their favorite series, resulting in that they need Flash or a framework called Unity3D (no, it s not Ubuntu s Unity), and after digging a bit I decided that I was not going to install that #@%! in my Debian, so when he insisted in play those games, I booted the Windows 7 partition in his father s laptop and I installed it there. Windows is slow and sad in the computer, and those web games with that framework are not very light, so luckily they have not become very interesting. We have not played in the computer much more, maybe some incursion in Minetest, what takes me to the next section. (Not without stating my eternal thanks to the Games Team in Debian. I think they do a very important work and I think that next year I ll try to get involved in some way, because I know that the future of our family computer games is tied to libre games in Debian). PlayStation 3 and Minecraft Some time ago my husband bought a PlayStation 3 for home. The shop had discounts prices and so. He would play together with the kid an so.
The machine came home with some games for free (included in the price), but most of them were classified for +13 or so, so the only two left were Pro Evolution Soccer, and Minecraft.
I decided not to connect the machine to the network. Maybe we are loosing cool things, but I feel safer like that. So, no ethernet cable plugged, no registration in the Sony shop (or whatever its name is). The controllers are quite complex for the three of us. They are DualShock don t-know-what, and I think there is something (software) that makes the game adaptative to the person playing, because my husband is worse player after the son plays, if they play in turns and use the same controller. The kid liked Minecraft. I didn t know anything about that game (well, I knew that there was a libre clone called Minetest), so, for learning the basics I had a look at the wiki and searched videos about how to and we began learning. Now, the kid can read a bit so he needs less help, and he has watched a lot of videos about Minecraft, so he is interested in exploring and building. I had a look at Minetest, and I installed it in Debian. Having to use the keyboard is a disadvantage, and we didn t know how to dig, so it was not much attractive at first sight. I have looked a bit about how to use the PS3 controller in the computer, via USB, and it seems to work, but I suppose I need to write something to match each controller button with the corresponding key and subsequent action in Minetest. This is work, and I am lazy, and the boy seems not very interested in playing with the computer. Watching the videos we have infered that it s possible to download saved games and worlds to upload them in the videogame console. We have done some tests. I wanted to upload a saved game about an amusement park, but the file was in a folder of name NPEB01899* and even when the PS3 saw it to copy it from USB to the console, later it didn t appear in the list of saved games (our sved games were in folders named BLES01976). And renaming the folder didn t work, of course. I understood that we had met Sony s restrictions, so I searched for more info. The games are saved using an encryption key and you are not able to use saved games from consoles in other world zone or using a media different than ours (the game can be played using a disc or purchasing it in the digital shop, it seems). Very ugly all of this! I read somewhere that there is certain software (libre software, BTW) that allows to break the encryption and re-encrypt the saved game with the zone and type of media of your console, but it seems the program only works for Windows, and it needs a console ID that we have not, because we didn t register the console in the PlayStation network. All these things look shaky grounds for me, unpleasant stuff, I don t want to spend time on this, maybe I should learn a bit more about Minetest and make it work and interesting and tell Sony go fly a kite. Finally, I found a saved game in the same format as ours (BLES01976), it s not an amusement park but it is a world with interesting places to explore and many things already built, so I ve tried to import it and it worked, so my son will be happy for some time, I suppose. We have tried Minetest in the tablet too, but the touchscreen is not comfortable for this kind of games. I feel quite frustrated and angry about this issue of Sony s restrictions on saved games. So I suppose that in the next months I ll try to learn more about Minetest in Debian, game controllers in Debian, and games in Debian in general. So I hope to be able to offer cool stuff to my son, and he becomes more interested in playing in a safe environment which does not abuse the user. And with this, I finish Libre games in GNU/Linux, Debian, and info about games in internet When we have searched info about games in internet, I found that many times you need to go out from the secure environment: webpages with links to downloads that who knows if they contain what they say they contain, advertisements, videoblogs with a language not adequate for kids (or any person that loves their mother language) That s why I believe the path is to go into detail about libre games provided by the distro you use (Debian in my case). Here I bookmark a list of website with info that surely will be useful for me, to read in depth:

• Minetest website http://www.minetest.net/ and fora
• This thread about controllers http://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1vf770/help_i_know_gnulinux_nothing_about_gaming_and/
• The Debian wiki, about Minetest: https://wiki.debian.org/Games/Minetest
• The Debian Games Team: https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Games
• Videos about Minetest (in Youtube).

We ll see how it goes. Comments? You can comment in this Pump.io thread.
Filed under: My experiences and opinion Tagged: Debian, English, F-Droid, Free culture, Free Software, Games, libre software, Moving into free software

This was my first month as a Freexian sponsored LTS contributor. I was assigned 4 hours which was enough for me to update clamav to the current upstream version, 0.98.7. This resolves a stack of CVEs and enables LTS users to take advantage of the latest anti-virus signatures and features clamav offers. This is consistent with the way clamav is updated for Debian supported releases through proposed-updates. This is covered under DLA 233-1.

Spending yesterday mostly away from the computer screen, I was shocked this morning when I read about the Ubuntu Community Council s request for Jonathan Ridell to step down from the Kubuntu Council. I knew that things have been rough lately and honestly there were some situations that Jonathan could have handled better, but I didn t expect anything as drastic and sudden as this without seeing any warning signs. Looking at the mails that Scott Kitterman posted sent by the Kubuntu Council, it seems like it s been a surprise to KC as well. I m disappointed in the way the Ubuntu Community Council has handled this and I think the way they treated Jonathan is appalling, even taking into account that he could ve communicated his grievances better. I m also unconvinced that the Ubuntu Community Council is as beneficial to the Ubuntu community in its current form as it could be. The way it is structured and reports to the SABDFL makes that it will always favour Canonical when there s a conflict of interest. I brought this up with two different CC members last year who both provided shruggy answers in the vein of Sorry, but we have a framework that s set up on how we can work in here and there s just so much we can do about it. they seem to fear the leadership too much to question it, and it s a pity, because everyone makes mistakes. This request to step down is probably going to sour the Ubuntu project s relationship with Jonathan Ridell even more, which is especially sad because he s one of the really good community guys left that keeps both the CoC and the original Ubuntu manifesto ethos in high regard while striving for technical excellence. On top of that, it seems like it may result in at least another such person leaving. I hope that the CC also takes this opportunity to take a step back and re-avaluate it s structure and purpose, instead of just shrugging it off with a corporate-sounding statement. I d also urge them to retract their statement to Jonathan Ridell and attempt to find a more amicable solution.

If you are using DNSSEC you can now use it to verify DKIM keys with opendkim. This does require a bit of configuration. Opendkim uses unbound for DNSSEC support. You have to:

• Install the unbound package (not just the library, which is already pulled in as an opendkim dependency)
• Configure the DNSSEC trust anchor for unbound ( either in /etc/unbound/unbound.conf or by adding a configuration snippet to /etc/unbound/unbound.conf.d the latter makes it much less likely you ll have to resolve conflicts in the configuration file if the default file is changed on later package upgrades)
• Update /etc/opendkim.conf and add:

ResolverConfiguration /etc/unbound/unbound.conf Once that s done, restart opendkim and your DKIM key queries are DNSSEC protected (you can verify this in your mail logs since opendkim annotates unprotected keys when it logs). Note: This should also apply to Ubuntu 14.04, 14.10, and 15.04. Update: In Wheezy (and Squeeze, at least the version in backports, I didn t check the release version) and Ubuntu 10.04 (similarly with backports) this was possible too. The opendkim.conf parameter was called UnboundConfigFile. You may have to update your local configuration to use the new name when you upgrade.

There has been a lot of discussion recently where there is strong disagreement, even about how to discuss the disagreement. Here s a few thoughts on the matter. The thing I personally find the most annoying is when someone thinks what someone else says is inappropriate and says so, it seems like the inevitable response is to scream censorship. When people do that, I m pretty sure they don t know what the word censorship actually means. Debian/Ubuntu/Insert Project Name Here resources are not public spaces and no government is telling people what they can and can t say. When you engage in speech and people respond to that speech, even if you don t feel all warm and fuzzy after reading the response, it s not censorship. It s called discussion. When someone calls out speech that they think is inappropriate, the proper response is not to blame a Code of Conduct or some other set of rules. Projects that have a code, also have a process for dealing with claims the code has been violated. Unless someone invokes that process (which almost never happens), the code is irrelevant. What s relevant is that someone is having a problem with what or how you are saying something and are in some way hurt by it. Let s focus on that. The rules are irrelevant, what matters is working together in a collegial way. I really don t think project members actively want other project members to feel bad/unsafe, but it s hard to get outside ones own defensive reaction to being called out. So please pay less attention to how you re feeling about things and try to see things from the other side. If we can all do a bit more of that, then things can be better for all of us. Final note: If you ve gotten this far and thought Oh, that other person is doing this to me , I have news for you it s not just them.

This hit my Washington Post Top Stories feed tonight: The case against software patents Maybe the word is getting out

I'm pleased to say that I have joined the Debian FTPTeam as of the Friday before last. See Joerg Jaspert's announcement on debian-devel-announce.

The FTPTeam is responsible for maintaining the Debian software archive, and ensures that new software in Debian is high-quality and compliant with our policies.

As an "ftpassistant", I (along with Paul, Scott, Gergely, and others) will be helping to process the NEW queue, which is currently at a whopping 297 packages. Here's hoping we'll be able to get that number down over the coming weeks!

Back in 2010 I packaged Google s ipaddr module because I needed a light weight IP address manipulation library that supported both IPv4 and IPv6 and (at the time) python-subnettree was IPv4 only. Well, ipaddr is all grown up now and included in python3.3 as the ipaddress manipulation module in the standard library. You can find details, as well as some description of the differences, in PEP 3144. I just converted one package that I m upstream for to use either ipaddr (for python2.6/2.7/3.2) or ipaddress instead of some custom code. It turned out to be pretty easy to make it work with either. Other than the name, the only difference I ran into was the removal of the common, generic IPAddress and IPNetwork functions that are replaced by ip_address and ip_network.
-import ipaddr
+try:
+ import ipaddress
+except ImportError:
+ import ipaddr as ipaddress

- address = ipaddr.IPAddress(ip)
- if isinstance(address, ipaddr.IPv4Address):
+ try:
+ address = ipaddress.ip_address(ip)
+ except AttributeError:
+ address = ipaddress.IPAddress(ip)
+ if isinstance(address, ipaddress.IPv4Address):
Currently, python3-ipaddr has no reverse-dependencies in the archive (python-ipaddr does). Once python3.2 is dropped from Jessie, I think I ll drop the python3-ipaddr binary on the assumption people newly coding for python3.3 should use ipaddress. The python-ipaddr module will stick around for use with python2.7.

I am led to believe that splunkd (some agent for feeding log entries into the Grand Log Analysis Tool Of Our Age ) has no capability for running itself in the foreground. This is stupid. Do not make these sorts of assumptions about how the user will want to run your software. Some people use sane service-management systems that are capable of handling the daemonisation for you and automatically restart the managed process on crash. These systems are typically much easier to configure and debug, and they don t need bloody PID files and the arguments about where to put them (tmpfs, inside or outside chroots oh my) and who should update them and how to reliably detect that they re out of date when they crash without causing race conditions and whether non-root-running processes should place their PID files in the same place and how do you deal with the permissions issues and bugger that for a game of skittles. In short, if you provide a service daemon and do not provide some well-documented means of saying don t background , I will hurt you. This goes double if your shitware is not open source.

I ve been meaning to post this picture for a while. A few months ago I was at a local pottery/ceramics shop with my family. They were all decorating things and either my wife or one of my children suggested I do one too. Art it not my thing. I thought about it and finally an idea I ll make a Debian coffee mug. I used the browser on my phone to go to debian.org and then I blew the logo up to the full size of the screen and traced it onto paper. I used that as a template to paint it onto the largest coffee mug I could find. Here s the result. I hope you enjoy the picture (note the actual coffee stain for authenticity).

A LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 recently arrived at our house. Of course it only comes with proprietary support for Windows/Mac, so I set out to see what FOSS support for the hardware I could find. I found nxt-python. It wasn t packaged, so I packaged it up and uploaded to Debian (from whence it came to Ubuntu). It s now in for the next release of both distributions (Wheezy/Precise). This is a bit different than the provided software (which compiles code, downloads it to the NXT, and then runs it untethered). For nxt-python the nxt needs to be connected to your computer via USB or bluetooth. It s a lot of fun and it s given me a chance to introduced our youngest child to the idea that there s more to computers than point and click. Currently user level access to the device doesn t work, it has to be accessed by root. Fixing that is on my TODO. I hope someone else out there has an NXT and enjoys this too. UPDATE: Added a udev rule and uploaded again, so anyone in plugdev can access the NXT brick.

python 2.7.2-7 wheezy all
python 2.7.2-7 sid all This took a lot of work from a lot of people. Thank you everyone. Fortunately there won t be a python2.8, so we don t have to do this again.