After spotting an upload of mira, who in turn spotted an upload of abe (the package, not an upload by me aka abe@d.o), mira (mirabilos aka tg@d.o) noticed that there are Debian packages which have same name as some Debian Developers have as login name. Of course I noticed a long time ago that there is a Debian package with my login name abe . Another well-known Debian login and former package name is amaya. But since someone else came up with that thought, too, it was time for finding the definite answer to the question which are the DD login names which also exist as Debian package names. My first try was based on the list of trusted GnuPG keys:

$ apt-cache policy $(gpg --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --list-keys 2>/dev/null   \
                     grep @debian.org   \
        	     awk -F'[<@]' ' print $2 '   \
                     sort -u) 2>/dev/null   \
                   egrep -o '^[^ :]*'
alex
tor
ed
bam
ng

But this was not satisfying as my own name didn t show up and gpg also threw quite a lot of block reading errors (which is also the reason for redirecting STDERR). mira then had the idea of using the Ultimate Debian Database to answer this question more properly:

udd=> SELECT login, name FROM carnivore_login, carnivore_names
      WHERE carnivore_login.id=carnivore_names.id AND login IN
      (SELECT package AS login FROM packages, active_dds
       WHERE packages.package=active_dds.login UNION
       SELECT source AS name FROM sources, active_dds
       WHERE sources.source=active_dds.login)
      ORDER BY login;
 login                   name
-------+---------------------------------------
 abe     Axel Beckert
 alex    Alexander List
 alex    Alexander M. List  4402020774 9332554
 and     Andrea Veri
 ash     Albert Huang
 bam     Brian May
 ed      Ed Boraas
 ed      Ed G. Boraas [RSA Compatibility Key]
 ed      Ed G. Boraas [RSA]
 eric    Eric Dorland
 gq      Alexander GQ Gerasiov
 iml     Ian Maclaine-cross
 lunar   J r my Bobbio
 mako    Benjamin Hill
 mako    Benjamin Mako Hill
 mbr     Markus Braun
 mlt     Marcela Tiznado
 nas     Neil A. Schemenauer
 nas     Neil Schemenauer
 opal    Ola Lundkvist
 opal    Ola Lundqvist
 paco    Francisco Moya
 paul    Paul Slootman
 pino    Pino Toscano
 pyro    Brian Nelson
 stone   Fredrik Steen
(26 rows)

Interestingly tor (Tor Slettnes) is missing in this list, so it s not complete either At least I m quite sure that nobody maintains a package with his own login name as package name. :-) We also have no packages ending in -guest , so there s no chance that a package name matches an Alioth guest account either

I’ve posted all my pictures from my most recent trip to Israel here: http://bignachos.net/~nelson/pictures/29_eilat/index.html

I recently changed my spam filter from spamassassin to dspam and have spent the past couple days training it. It’s been working well until this morning, when I found that it had falsely tagged 3 mails as spam. I found this quite alarming, since false positives are a very bad thing. Even worse, the messages didn’t look spammy at all. When I looked closer, I realized that all 3 had been sent to the NM Front Desk, new-maintainer@debian.org. So I thought to myself, “Why would dspam think any mail sent to new-maintainer@.d.o is spam?” Well, like any other Debian role address, it’s basically a giant spam trap and receives a gazillion spams a day. Since up to that point, not a single mail sent to that address had been valid, so dspam must have decided that all email sent to new-maintainer@d.o was spam. It must have been sorely disappointed to learn that new-maintainer@d.o actually receives a valid mail every once in a great while.

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.

If it rains for 7 more days, Seattle will beat the 1953 record of 33 straight days of rain. I’m not sure which is more depressing–the fact that it’s been raining for 27 straight days, or that it still needs to rain for another week to even break the record.

Dear Pittsburgh Steelers, Please snap one of Peyton Manning’s legs like a twig tomorrow, much like you did to Carson Palmer last week. It’s the only thing that’ll make me feel better after sufferring through the Patriots game, watching the referees and Patriot players alternate giving away touchdowns to the Broncos. Thank you,
Brian Nelson

So, I’m heading back out to Israel for work, and it turns out I have a 12-hour (!) layover in Amsterdam. I’m arriving at 8AM next Tuesday (Dec. 6) and won’t depart until 7:45PM. That gives me a full day to see the city. If any Debian people would like to meet up in Amsterdam that day, please drop me an email.

Do Floridians realize that their tap water smells like it came directly from the local swamp? I don’t know about, *ehem*, “y’all,” but I prefer to not bath myself with swamp water.