Russel pointed me to Andre Pang's blog entry.  Yep, I share this annoyance.  Especially because I recently received an email with a 3 or 4 line disclaimer at the top of the email, and an additional, longer one at the bottom.  Occasionally, I use that one:

The content of this message may or may not reflect the opinion of me, my
employer, my girlfriend, my cat or anybody else, regardless of the fact
whether such an employer, girlfriend, cat, or anybody else exists.  I
(or my employer, girlfriend, cat or whoever) disclaim any legal
obligations resulting from the above message.  You, as the reader of
this message, may or may not have the permission to redistribute this
message as a whole or in parts, verbatim or in modified form, or to
distribute any message at all.

(Daniel Baumann: Please note the spaces I've added in this post, extra for you!)

Mozilla Firefox Locales In 2004, we had for every individual localization a dedicated source package in the Debian archive, such as: mozilla-firefox-locale-ar, mozila-firefox-locale-ca, etc. This is a mess from every point of view. First, it creates much overhead on the archive infrastructure side as well as on the maintainers one, and second, since it often results in localization packages out of sync with the browser, it is a major pain in the ass for the users. Mozilla Firefox Locales All In January 2005, Cesar Martinez Izquierdo introduced the common source package mozilla-firefox-locale-all which included most of the available localizations. That was the inital step to clean up the mess. Later, David Moreno Garza and Luk Claes took the package over and accompanied it through the Mozilla Firefox to Firefox transition. Iceweasel l10n In September 2006, I jumped in as the new maintainer. Since then, the package did continue to evolve:

• rebranding for the Firefox to Iceweasel transition (currently, the foreign locales are fixed, only the en-US locale included in iceweasel is not, patch is at #400721).
• renaming to use the proper l10n naming scheme ($ program -l10n-$ language and not $ program -locale-$ language ).
• with the inclusion of the Catalan and Ukrainian localizations, iceweasel-l10n includes now really all Iceweasel locales which were previously packaged seperately in Debian (Thanks again to Jordi Mallach and Eugeniy Meshcheryakov for their permission for inclusion).

Additionally,

• with the readdition of temporarily removed locales within the Firefox 2.0 release (he for Hebrew and pa-in for Punjabi, taken from 2.0.0.1-rc3),
• with the inclusion of unofficial but complete localizations (fa-ir for Persian and fur-it for Furlan),
• and the half-official localizations (ka for Georgian and ku for Kurdish, taken from 2.0.0.1-rc3),

iceweasel-l10n as of 2.0+debian.1-1 supports 43 languages in total. That is more than any other distribution (yes, including Ubuntu :) contains. Icelizard Currently, the locale packages for iceape and icedove are not unified. This September, I was writing to the some of the maintainers but they seemed not interested to fix it for Etch. I will try it again in 2007, my aim is to have proper unified localization packages for all icelizard applications in Lenny. Update: iceweasel-l10n 2.0.0.1+debian-1 adds Valencian localization, so supporting 44 languages now.

Yesterday the release manager Andreas ‘aba’ Barth announced:

Etch is now frozen! Wheeeeeee!!!

This means, that “all packages now need to be hand-approved in order to go to testing”.
So policyd-weight needs to be hinted, which is already done, but ipplan will never make it into etch, since its out of NEW only 2 days ago. So here needs etch-backports to take place.
I hope etch will be released now soon (mid next month). Good work since here .. go ahead! Anyways … many, many thanks goes to my great sponsor Daniel Baumann. Without his patience and help this list of packages would never happen. Debian, opensource, Packaging, planet

Kernel Modules Almost all drivers for Linux are maintained within the Linux Kernel Project. But some drivers are maintained outside in seperate projects. We distinguish between two kind of drivers.

• out-of-tree These modules are only adding their driver into an existing kernel sub-system, without needing modifications on that very sub-system. Therefore, we can easily build them outside of the kernel with using only the kernel headers, and not requiring to patch anything in the kernel source itself. In Debian, these modules are packaged as $ driver -source packages, containing the sources to build automagically a binary module package $ driver -modules-$ kernel_version with module-assistant. Examples: unionfs, ipw3945, ...
• in-tree These modules are adding their driver into an existing sub-system, but requiring some modifications on that very sub-system, or they are also introducing one or more new sub-systems. Therefore, we can not build them without patch the kernel source and rebuild the whole kernel tree. In Debian, these modules are packaged as kernel-patch-$ driver , containing the patches to be applied against a kernel tree to be built with make-kpkg. Examples: kernel-patch-2.6-reiser4, kernel-patch-openvz, ...

Conglomeration Packages From the user point of view, out-of-tree modules are not ideal. Although it is very easy to build the binary module packages for a driver, they require to have their build dependencies installed. This would be acceptable on a development machine, but not on a client. Therefore, some module maintainers started to build the binary modules for every kernel image available in Debian, so users can just apt-get install those prebuild packages. From the archive point of view, this is a mess. While the distribution is under development, every new kernel release and every kernel ABI bump requires a rebuild of all out-of-tree modules, resulting in new binary packages and hence NEW queue spamming for the ftp-master team. While the distribution is in maintenance after beeing released as stable, point releases suffer from this too, making it a major pain in the ass for the security team. The solution: conglomeration packages. Conglomeration packages are empty packages depending on a given set of $ driver -source packages and only building the binary modules out of them. This way, the NEW queue spamming is limited to one single source package for each new kernel release or kernel ABI bump (actually three of them: linux-modules-extra-2.6 for main, linux-modules-contrib-2.6 for contrib, and linux-modules-nonfree-2.6 for non-free). Status in Etch The conglomeration package for the modules of main is maintained by the kernel team. For contrib and non-free, I needed to take care about them myself. Fortunately, they were accepted two days ago, so there is enough time left to let them properly migrate to testing. Module Maintainers please join I can only speak for contrib and non-free: If you are a module maintainer and the license terms of your module do allow binary redistribution and auto-building, you are heartily invited to join the conglomeration package. Please submit a wishlist bug report against the respective conglomeration package, or, feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions.

As you may know, initial uploads of new packages in Debian need to go through the NEW queue for several reasons. As you may not know, I do store all my own packages I did, do and will do, as well as all the packages I did and do sponsor on my homepage for archive reasons. Currently, there are a few packages of mine waiting in NEW to be reviewed by one of the ftp-master team member. As some of them maybe are of generic interests, I do list them here for your convenience, so you can get them already now while they are waiting in NEW. These are, in alphabetic order:

• botan1.4 - multiplatform crypto library, version 1.4
• botan1.5 - multiplatform crypto library, version 1.5
• ipw2100 - Source for the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 (ipw2100) driver
• ipw2200 - Source for the Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG and 2915ABG (ipw2200) driver
• ipw3945 - Source for the Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG (ipw3945) driver
• kqemu - Source for the QEMU Accelerator module
• netbeans - IDE for Java Development and More
• pxfw - Plextor firmware updater

My father was not a typical family father. While we were children, he did not much of the things from the father stereotype, like playing in the garden every saturday afternoon. Instead, he did show us in an indirect but even more effective way what he considered some of the most important values of live: Constantly aiming for perfection, selflessly offering help to whoever needs it, and being humble. These three key values did determine his acting thoroughly, but they also determine what I am, what I will be and hopefully also what I will have been when I am not anymore. Today, my father decided to leave this world by his own will. I am already missing him, although I never missed him before...

Debian turns 13 today, congratulations to the whole Debian universum and thanks to everyone who has contributed to this longterm success story. Birthdays are always some sort of breakpoints in life, where people making a pause, looking back what they have done in the last year and what they are planning to do in the next year, similar as on New Years' Days. In the past years, I have not done much for Debian except some simple package maintenance. Here are some statistics as of today. debian.org

• First sponsored package
  On Tue, 17 Aug 2004 03:16:50 -0400, Rene 'rene' Engelhard sponsored doodle.
  
  
• Last sponsored package
  On Mon, 03 Jul 2006 01:47:49 -0700, Christoph 'myon' Berg sponsored dcd.
  
  
• Sponsored package uploads
  I managed to find sponsors for 322 uploads (151 in 2006, 142 in 2005, 29 in 2004). These were only uploads for my own packages as I did not do any NMU or QA upload while being non developer.
  
  
• First own upload
  On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 07:17:06 -0700, I uploaded gnunet.
  
  
• Own package uploads
  I managed to make 138 uploads for my own packages, 4 QA uploads and 45 to sponsor other peoples packages, that makes 187 in total.
  
  
• Package count
  I maintain here and here 105 (100 main, 2 contrib, 3 non-free) and co-maintain 9 (9 main) source packages. They are producing 308 (303 main, 2 contrib, 3 non-free) and 14 (14 main) binary packages. That makes a total of 114 source packages producing 322 binary packages.
  
  All packages are still maintained by me since my first upload, except one which I orphaned (drsync) and one which was an accidentally hijacked ITA (linuxlogo). Both are not counted above.
  
  

backports.org

• First upload
  On Sun, 18 Dec 2005 17:08 +0100, I uploaded libextractor.
  
  
• Package uploads
  I managed to make 155 uploads for backports of my own packages, 125 uploads for backports of other packages, and 142 to sponsor other peoples backports, that makes 422 in total.
  
  

And now to the future... I don't think that I will change the way how I give a little bit back to Debian in compensation for how much I am taking from it. There is always need for people doing higher level tasks, such as various teams in Debian already do. However, people doing the grunt work of simple packaging are also needed, and that is where I'm happy with (remember: never change a running system :). I have still some packages to introduce on my todo list... Nevertheless, I'm interrested in doing QA work (such as with piuparts), and maybe, if I have the time to further advance my Esperanto, I'm even able to help out with translations. But both things will, as far as I think at the moment, be of less priority to me. For my work at Debian Live and Debian Unofficial, there will be a dedicated report soon.

Debian turns 13 today, congratulations to the whole Debian universum and thanks to everyone who has contributed to this longterm success story. Birthdays are always some sort of breakpoints in life, where people making a pause, looking back what they have done in the last year and what they are planning to do in the next year, similar as on New Years' Days. In the past years, I have not done much for Debian except some simple package maintenance. Here are some statistics as of today. debian.org

• First sponsored package
  On Tue, 17 Aug 2004 03:16:50 -0400, Rene 'rene' Engelhard sponsored doodle.
  
  
• Last sponsored package
  On Mon, 03 Jul 2006 01:47:49 -0700, Christoph 'myon' Berg sponsored dcd.
  
  
• Sponsored package uploads
  I managed to find sponsors for 322 uploads (151 in 2006, 142 in 2005, 29 in 2004). These were only uploads for my own packages as I did not do any NMU or QA upload while being non developer.
  
  
• First own upload
  On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 07:17:06 -0700, I uploaded gnunet.
  
  
• Own package uploads
  I managed to make 137 uploads for my own packages, 4 QA uploads and 44 to sponsor other peoples packages, that makes 185 in total.
  
  
• Package count
  I maintain here and here 105 (100 main, 2 contrib, 3 non-free) and co-maintain 9 (9 main) source packages. They are producing 308 (303 main, 2 contrib, 3 non-free) and 14 (14 main) binary packages. That makes a total of 114 source packages producing 322 binary packages.
  
  All packages are still maintained by me since my first upload, except one which I orphaned (drsync) and one which was an accidentally hijacked ITA (linuxlogo). Both are not counted above.
  
  

backports.org

• First upload
  On Sun, 18 Dec 2005 17:08 +0100, I uploaded libextractor.
  
  
• Package uploads
  I managed to make 155 uploads for backports of my own packages, 125 uploads for backports of other packages, and 140 to sponsor other peoples backports, that makes 420 in total.
  
  

And now to the future... I don't think that I will change my way how I give a little bit back to Debian in compensation for how much I am taking from it. There is always need for people doing higher level tasks, such as various teams in Debian already do. However, people doing the grunt work of simple packaging are also needed, and that is where I'm happy with (remember: never change a running system :). I have still some packages to introduce on my todo list... Nevertheless, I'm interrested in doing QA work (such as with piuparts), and maybe, if I have the time to further advance my Esperanto, I'm even able to help out with translations. But both things will, as far as I think at the moment, be of less priority to me. For my work at Debian Live and Debian Unofficial, there will be a dedicated report soon.

Last weekend was quite productive. First, Joerg Jaspert updated the dak installation on backports.org, which means we can also use ~ in version numbers. What does it mean? We no longer need to lower the Debian revision of the version number, 1.2.3-4 becomes 1.2.3-4~foo instead 1.2.3-3foo. Martin F. Krafft suggested to use 1.2.3-4~bpo.1 instead 1.2.3-4~bpo1, and I like the idea, it looks indeed better. Daniel Baumann already modified the contribute page on our website. Speaking about the website... it's now based on a wiki, thanks to Sebastian Harl, who implemented the old website design into the new Dokuwiki installation. If you want an account to edit something, just drop me a mail.

Today (one day before my birthday), I got accepted as a Debian Developer. I would like to thank the following persons (in order of appearance) which supported me in the one or other way within the NM process over the last two years. Sponsors

• Rene 'rene' Engelhard
• Gerfried 'alfie' Fuchs aka Rhonda
• Christoph 'myon' Berg
• Luk 'luk' Claes

Advocate

• Gerfried 'alfie' Fuchs aka Rhonda

Application Manager

• Rene 'rene' Engelhard

New Maintainers Front Desk

• Marc 'he' Brockschmidt aka HE
• Christoph 'myon' Berg

Debian Account Managers

• Jörg 'joerg' Jaspert aka Ganneff
• James 'elmo' Troup

For the sake of completeness: This is my old and my new QA packages overview, my NM status page, my NM application report, and my account name is 'daniel' (although my nickname is 'panthera').

Three weeks ago, I left Oaxtepec and didn't have the time to blog about it so far. To make it short: DebConf 6 was my first DebConf and it was really great! Actually, I don't know what to tell about it, now that it's over. Just one thing... I went to Mexico with the idea in mind having to work for two weeks full-time on Debian, basically of two reasons: First, because I like to work on Debian and second, because I got a full sponsorship which is kind of an honor to me. If Debian (or Debians sponsors, doesn't matter) are paying money to bring me to Mexico, then I should be worth the money and give something back in the form of good work, to value and acknowledge their investment (some people may say, that this is a typically Swiss attitude - I will not disagree on that :). However, while the first week, there was only hardly internet access, so I couldn't really work on the things I had on my todo list, as they all required quite large downloads or checkouts. Luk knew that I was oviously a bit disappointed about hat and, as the very wise guy he apparently is, told me then, that DebConf isn't (only) for working, but for socializing with the other people (he's the master of it). Of course, I do not blame anyone for anything... I did enjoy the two weeks, certainly more than I would have when having good Internet connection all the time. Thank you all for comming, and a special thanks goes to the DebConf-team and the sponsors who made this great event possible. I'm eagerly looking forward to next years DebConf... :) ...and for those who don't read Planet Debian frequently: This is the group foto and that's me :) Update: I'm so sorry, I almost forgot... Marga and Maxy, we all love you for your excellent pancakes!

Well, I've finally got back from DebConf6 and am quite nackered, especially considering I've just done a full day at work.

I could amuse you with the usual 'lists-of-memorable-dc6-events', or a 'review-of-each-day', or even a 'bits-from-the-orga-team', but there's pleanty of other posts on planet.d.o about that, so instead, I'll recount my experiences of the return trip, starting in Oaxtepec.

I'm also putting up all my photos, but it'll take a while. They'll be appearing over the next few days at my Fotopic site.

I wake up fairly early-ish (10am. It's early for me, ok? I'm not German :P) and pack my suitcase. I take the padlock keys out of the case and lock it. Except I got the wrong keys. So, the keys are now inside the locked case. Fortunately, I'd already taken everything out of the case I'd needed and put it in my rucksack.

Next, it comes to time to check out. I find out that we need out room checking to ensure that we haven't stolen a wall or ceiling or something. One of the cleaners has a look around and spots a missing lampshade. We (me + Fil Hands) try to explain in broken Spanish that it was missing when we arrived in the room, but she doesn't seem to be having any of it. Mind you, there is the vague possibility that "Si","Fruta","Cafe" and "Hola" isn't quite enough knowledge to explain the situation. Feh.
So, we manage to accost the lovely Amaya to do some translation for us. The cleaner lady calls her boss, who tells us it'll cost 860 pesos (£43). We politely decline. So, she then calls her boss. This all takes some time. Eventually, she opens a huge book, looks inside and sees that the shade was taken away by maintainance. Why this wasn't done before, I don't know.

Anyway, our bus was leaving at 2:00pm, so we had to rush to the reception. The journey was quite pleasent, and we eventually arrived at the airport at 4:20pm. There was a small altercation with the Taxi driver over the tip, as it was already included in the fair, and he said it wasn't. We then pointed out that tolls were also included in the fair, and the driver didn't take a toll road. At this point, he seemed to dissapear quite satified.

I approached the Air France desk, and was told I coudn't check in until 7:30pm (my flight dind't leave until 11:30pm). Bugger. So after waiting around quite a while, and getting something to eat, I went to check in. There was a huge queue, but it didn't really matter, as I was flying under a Flying Blue - Silver level card, so I could use the express queue. They did, however, want to check my luggage. Broken Spanish did work this time, as I wildly gestated towards my suitcase, making key symbols.

So, after another long wait, we (me and Daniel Baumann, we're on the same flight, and indeed sitting next to each other by some freak coincidence) wander off through to the gate. I manage to find some free wireless (ESSID: co_admeralty_club) and surf for a bit. Flight ends up being delayed for 30 mins, but it didn't matter too much.

Then, I hear an annoucement over the intercom, that a group of passengers should contact the gate staff, and my name is mentioned. A little worried, I approach.
"Hello, I'm Mr McGovern. My name was called on the intercom."
"Can I have your boarding pass please?"
"Sure..." *worry*
"Thank you.... ok, we'd like to invite you to fly business class with us today sir."
"Thank you very much"
I then proceed to whistle the 'Kill Bill' tune, as for some reason, it's following me everywhere I go in the airport, be it a cleaner, or another passenger. I think it's like some sort of virus, infecting one person and moving on to the next host.

We still had a little while, so we popped back to the waiting area to, well, wait. We saw some of the Brixen gang, and one of them had his laptop stolen : That's the second laptop down then. The first was run over by a car in Oaxtepec.

So, I board the plane, and am immediately offered lots of alcohol and other free things^tm. Which was nice. Unfortunately, the plane was further delayed. This means that on arriving in CDG, my connecting flight was already boarding. It was at this point that I had dounts about my luggage arriving in MAN at the same time as me.

So, I board the plane in Paris, and it's a straightforward flight. But lo and behold, at the other end, no baggage. No suprises there then.

Today, my luggage arrived at 8:00pm, just after I've got home from work. I'd also got a nice letter from the Inland Revenue, with a £215.67 tax rebate \o/

As my subject: S^HWings and Roundabouts.

Phillip, my blog has no comments feature for similar reasons as madduck has pointed out. As you may have read, I wrote "[Debian Live will be] first [an] unofficial [project], then trying to bring it into Debian and become an official subproject". As you may have read too, Joey wrote "Debian Live [...] is an official sub-project of Debian". I just created those resources on my own webserver for beeing quicker and more flexible in the beginning, I would be happy to move everything to debian.org. However, this would need a large amount of time for bureaucracy (especially for a poor little NM like me). Time, which I don't have and neither want to invest nor want to waste at the moment. If you volunteer for that job, feel free to be my guest (to avoid misunderstandings: alioth isn't an option, hosting several ISO images isn't possible on haydn due to lack of bandwith and space). And yes, I agree... I'm unworthy to run something officially because I'm not a DD. I'm patiently stuck in the queue since nearly a year, currently waiting on my AM who has the major PITA to check 75 packages... (my earnest and deepest sympathy to you, rene).

I just created the website, mailinglist, IRC channel, and the wiki. Feel free to join me.

Andrew, I beg to differ. I think, we have at least one general consens in Debian: deviding the archive into a free (main/contrib) and a non-free part is good thing. It's a reasonable mechanism to guarantie our users, that they can actively use their freedom defined in the DFSG for every single part in the free sections. Something which not all of us may agree is, that we ask for the very same basic freedom for documentation as we ask them for software. This means, basically:

• The freedom to modify it.
• The freedom to redistribute it.
• The freedom to redistribute the modification.

If the license of a document does not at least permit this very basic freedom, it's declared non-free. What do we gain if we would allow non-free documents to accompany free software within the same package?
Assumed that the documents are worthwhile to be distributed, we save a separate upload of the documentation to non-free and some administrative overhead for the package maintenance. What do we lose if we would allow non-free documents to accompany free software within the same package?
We loose the integrity and consistency of our archive, the good reputation and trust the users put into Debian. Would this little bit of more comfort for the package maintainer justify that? I don't think so. IMHO, "convenience" can never be an argument to give up freedom. BTW: I don't think that distributing RFCs in numerous packages makes sense at all (sometimes, even the very same RFCs are added again and again). I'm adopting doc-rfc which will be nicely html'ed soon. If you have a RFC in your package (even if the package is in non-free), replace it with a pointer to rfc-editor.org or to doc-rfc. This way, it's made sure that the RFC is always at the lastest revision. Isn't that convenient? ;)

Eiffel Software has finally relicensed EiffelStudio. The binary-only pain is over. Some weeks ago, roumors had it that Eiffel Software will only release the sources under a non-free license (non-commercial use only). The ceremony, where Bertrand Meyer pushed the magical red button to import the sources into the repository was held today. Unfortunately, I was not informed about the particular date and time, so I did not have a chance to attend it... too bad. However, EiffelStudio is now dual-licensed, under their previous non-free EULA and under the GNU General Public License. It have the impression that Eiffel Software does not understand the GPL, they're claiming that one is not allowed to create commercial applications with the GPL version of Eiffel Studio: "Users who write commercial proprietary software must purchase the corresponding licenses and may freely choose how to distribute their software. Users who donate their source code to the Open Source community can use the Open Source version and must distribute their software under the same license." Remember: The GPL does not restrict the act of running a program at all and the Eiffel standard library is licensed under the DFSG-compliant Eiffel Forum License (a BSD License derivative). There is no possiblity to enforce such a non-commercial use only of EiffelStudio with these two very licenses. Thanks Eiffel Software and Bertrand Meyer for finally doing the right thing, and to Eiffel Team at the ETH Zurich for constantly bitching them about the issue while the last years. Of course, I'll prepare packages for Debian based on my non-free unofficial packages.

Flying from Switzerland to Mexico is very expensive, I can't afford it myself. As I didn't get a ticket while the first sponsor round, I was quite sure that I will not get a ticket to DebConf6. Yesterday, on 23:53:04 +0100, things changed. I got an e-mail telling me, that I will get a ticket payed by an extra sponsor. So I'm able to attend from 6th to 22nd may, jippie! :) Thanks a lot to all who have made this possible. I do very, very appreciate it.

Phillip, my blog has no comments feature for similar reasons as madduck has pointed out. As you may have read, I wrote "[Debian Live will be] first [an] unofficial [project], then trying to bring it into Debian and become an official subproject". As you may have read too, Joey wrote "Debian Live [...] is an official sub-project of Debian". I just created those ressources on my own webserver for beeing quicker and more flexible in the beginning, I would be happy to move everything to debian.org. However, this would need a large amount of time for bureaucracy (especially for a poor little NM like me). Time, which I don't have and neither want to invest nor want to waste at the moment. If you volunteer for that job, feel free to be my guest (to avoid misunderstandings: alioth isn't an option, hosting several ISO images isn't possible on haydn due to lack of bandwith and space). And yes, I agree... I'm unworthy to run something officially because I'm not a DD. I'm patiently stuck in the queue since nearly a year, currently waiting on my AM who has the major PITA to check 75 packages... (my earnest and deepest sympathy to you, rene).

I just created the website, mailinglist, IRC channel, and the wiki. Feel free to join me.