What happened in the Reproducible Builds effort between Sunday July 31 and Saturday August 6 2016: Toolchain development and fixes

• dpkg/1.18.10 by Guillem Jover.
  • Generate reproducible source tarballs by using the new GNU tar --clamp-mtime option
  • Enable fixdebugpath build flag feature by default, original patch by Mattia Rizzolo.
• cython/0.24.1-1 by Yaroslav Halchenko.
  • Fix a file ordering issue, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• Chris Lamb and Thomas Schmidt worked on some patches to make reproducible ISO images.
• Johannes Schauer continued the discussion on #763822 regarding dak and buildinfo files.
• Johannes Schauer continued the discussion on #774415 regarding srebuild and debrebuild.

Packages fixed and bugs filed The following 24 packages have become reproducible - in our current test setup - due to changes in their build-dependencies: alglib aspcud boomaga fcl flute haskell-hopenpgp indigo italc kst ktexteditor libgroove libjson-rpc-cpp libqes luminance-hdr openscenegraph palabos petri-foo pgagent sisl srm-ifce vera++ visp x42-plugins zbackup The following packages have become reproducible after being fixed:

• cvs2svn/2.4.0-3 by Laszlo Boszormenyi, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• dapl/2.1.8-2 by 2.1.8-1 by Ana Beatriz Guerrero Lopez, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• fonts-noto/20160116-3 by Vasudev Kamath, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• fortunes-bg/1.3 by Anton Zinoviev, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• fsvs/1.2.7-1 by Reiner Herrmann.
• infernal/1.1.2-1 by Sascha Steinbiss.
• libitpp/4.3.1-7 by Kumar Appaiah, original patch by Eduard Sanou.
• libtar/1.2.20-6 by Magnus Holmgren.
• libterralib/4.3.0+dfsg.2-9 by Alastair McKinstry, original patch by Eduard Sanou.
• mknbi/1.4.4-12 Ralf Treinen, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• node-iscroll/5.2.0+dfsg1-1 by Balint Reczey.
• octave-communications/1.2.1-2 by Rafael Laboissiere.
• python-mkdocs/0.15.3-5 by Brian May, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• remake/4.1+dbg1.1+dfsg-1 by Yaroslav Halchenko, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• sa-exim/4.2.1-16 by Magnus Holmgren.
• seqan/1.4.2+dfsg-1 by Andreas Tille, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• sbuild/0.70.0-1 by Johannes Schauer, #825991 from Aurelien Jarno.
• trscripts/1.18 by Anton Zinoviev, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• ui-auto/1.2.9-1 by Stephan S rken.
• ui-utilcpp/1.8.5-1 by Stephan S rken.
• xfonts-cronyx/2.3.8-8 by Anton Zinoviev, original patch by Chris Lamb.

The following newly-uploaded packages appear to be reproducible now, for reasons we were not able to figure out. (Relevant changelogs did not mention reproducible builds.)

• libitext-java/2.1.7-1 by Emmanuel Bourg.
• lice/1:4.2.5i-2 by Kurt Roeckx.
• pgbackrest/1.04-1 by Adrian Vondendriesch.
• pxlib/0.6.7-1 by Uwe Steinmann.
• runit/2.1.2-5 by Dmitry Bogatov.
• ssvnc/1.0.29-3 by Magnus Holmgren.
• syncthing/0.14.3+dfsg1-3 by Alexandre Viau.
• tachyon/0.99~b6+dsx-5 by Jerome Benoit.
• tor/0.2.8.6-2 by Peter Palfrader.

Some uploads have addressed some reproducibility issues, but not all of them:

• apg/2.2.3.dfsg.1-4 by Marc Haber, original patch by Daniel Shahaf.
• atheme-services/7.2.6-1 by Antoine Beaupr .
• gradle-debian-helper/1.3 by Emmanuel Bourg
• hyperscan/4.2.0-2 by Robert Haist, original patch by Eduard Sanou
• kodi by Balint Reczey, original patch by Lukas Rechberger
• python-dtcwt/0.11.0-2 by Ghislain Antony Vaillant.
• sollya/5.0+ds-3 by Jerome Benoit.
• supercat/0.5.5-4.1 by Craig Sanders, original patch by Maria Valentina Marin, original patch by Chris Lamb.

Patches submitted that have not made their way to the archive yet:

• #833070 against wget by Reiner Herrmann.
• #833088 against xine-lib-1.2 by Daniel Shahaf.
• #833162 against qemu by Daniel Shahaf.
• #833176 against trafficserver by Reiner Herrmann.
• #833179 against openldap by Daniel Shahaf.
• #833340 against mini-buildd by Chris Lamb.
• #833379 against hardinfo by Chris Lamb.
• #833380 against roaraudio by Chris Lamb.
• #833395 against emacspeak by Chris Lamb.
• #833399 against wims by Chris Lamb.
• #833408 against amora-server by Chris Lamb.
• #833437 against mp4h by Chris Lamb.
• #833438 against rest2web by Chris Lamb.
• #833439 against forkstat by Chris Lamb.
• #833440 against wmweather+ by Chris Lamb.
• #833441 against rc by Chris Lamb.
• #833443 against vit by Chris Lamb.
• #833444 against openhackware by Chris Lamb.
• #833445 against pd-pdstring by Chris Lamb.
• #833472 against aghermann by Daniel Shahaf.
• #833581 against xshisen by Chris Lamb.
• #833594 against fizmo by Chris Lamb.
• #833610 against ara by Chris Lamb.
• #833611 against fntsample by Chris Lamb.
• #833612 against nsnake by Chris Lamb.

Package reviews and QA These are reviews of reproduciblity issues of Debian packages. 276 package reviews have been added, 172 have been updated and 44 have been removed in this week.

• New issues:
  • unknown_ada_issue
  • timestamps_in_documentation_generated_by_phpdox
• Updated issues:
  • randomness_in_documentation_generated_by_sphinx

7 FTBFS bugs have been reported by Chris Lamb. Reproducibility tools

• diffoscope/56~bpo8+1 uploaded to jessie-backports by Mattia Rizzolo
• strip-nondeterminism/0.022-1~bpo8+1 uploaded to jessie-backports by Mattia Rizzolo

Test infrastructure For testing the impact of allowing variations of the buildpath (which up until now we required to be identical for reproducible rebuilds), Reiner Herrmann contribed a patch which enabled build path variations on testing/i386. This is possible now since dpkg 1.18.10 enables the --fixdebugpath build flag feature by default, which should result in reproducible builds (for C code) even with varying paths. So far we haven't had many results due to disturbances in our build network in the last days, but it seems this would mean roughly between 5-15% additional unreproducible packages - compared to what we see now. We'll keep you updated on the numbers (and problems with compilers and common frameworks) as we find them. lynxis continued work to test LEDE and OpenWrt on two different hosts, to include date variation in the tests. Mattia and Holger worked on the (mass) deployment scripts, so that the - for space reasons - only jenkins.debian.net GIT clone resides in ~jenkins-adm/ and not anymore in Holger's homedir, so that soon Mattia (and possibly others!) will be able to fully maintain this setup, while Holger is doing siesta. Miscellaneous Chris, dkg, h01ger and Ximin attended a Core Infrastricture Initiative summit meeting in New York City, to discuss and promote this Reproducible Builds project. The CII was set up in the wake of the Heartbleed SSL vulnerability to support software projects that are critical to the functioning of the internet. This week's edition was written by Ximin Luo and Holger Levsen and reviewed by a bunch of Reproducible Builds folks on IRC.

What happened in the reproducible builds effort between February 28th and March 5th:

Toolchain fixes

• Antonio Terceiro uploaded gem2deb/0.27 that forces generated gemspecs to use the date from debian/changelog.
• Antonio Terceiro uploaded gem2deb/0.28 that forces generated gemspecs to have their contains file lists sorted.
• Robert Luberda uploaded ispell/3.4.00-5 which make builds of hashes reproducible.
• C dric Boutillier uploaded ruby-ronn/0.7.3-4 which will make the output locale agnostic. Original patch by Chris Lamb.
• Markus Koschany uploaded spring/101.0+dfsg-1. Fixed by Alexandre Detiste.

Ximin Luo resubmitted the patch adding the --clamp-mtime option to Tar on Savannah's bug tracker. Lunar rebased our experimental dpkg on top of the current master branch. Changes in the test infrastructure are required before uploading a new version to our experimental repository. Reiner Herrmann rebased our custom texlive-bin against the latest uploaded version.

Packages fixed The following 77 packages have become reproducible due to changes in their build dependencies: asciidoctor, atig, fuel-astute, jekyll, libphone-ui-shr, linkchecker, maven-plugin-testing, node-iscroll, origami-pdf, plexus-digest, pry, python-avro, python-odf, rails, ruby-actionpack-xml-parser, ruby-active-model-serializers, ruby-activerecord-session-store, ruby-api-pagination, ruby-babosa, ruby-carrierwave, ruby-classifier-reborn, ruby-compass, ruby-concurrent, ruby-configurate, ruby-crack, ruby-css-parser, ruby-cucumber-rails, ruby-delorean, ruby-encryptor, ruby-fakeweb, ruby-flexmock, ruby-fog-vsphere, ruby-gemojione, ruby-git, ruby-grack, ruby-htmlentities, ruby-jekyll-feed, ruby-json-schema, ruby-listen, ruby-markerb, ruby-mathml, ruby-mini-magick, ruby-net-telnet, ruby-omniauth-azure-oauth2, ruby-omniauth-saml, ruby-org, ruby-origin, ruby-prawn, ruby-pygments.rb, ruby-raemon, ruby-rails-deprecated-sanitizer, ruby-raindrops, ruby-rbpdf, ruby-rbvmomi, ruby-recaptcha, ruby-ref, ruby-responders, ruby-rjb, ruby-rspec-rails, ruby-rspec, ruby-rufus-scheduler, ruby-sass-rails, ruby-sass, ruby-sentry-raven, ruby-sequel-pg, ruby-sequel, ruby-settingslogic, ruby-shoulda-matchers, ruby-slack-notifier, ruby-symboltable, ruby-timers, ruby-zip, ticgit, tmuxinator, vagrant, wagon, yard. The following packages became reproducible after getting fixed:

• air-quality-sensor/0.1.4-1 uploaded by Benedikt Wildenhain, fixed upstream, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• device3dfx/2013.08.08-4 by Guillem Jover.
• fldigi/3.23.08-1 by Kamal Mostafa.
• fltk1.1/1.1.10-22 by Aaron M. Ucko.
• freeimage/3.17.0+ds1-2 by Ghislain Antony Vaillant.
• gimagereader/3.1.2+git368fa8f-2 by Philip Rinn.
• ginkgocadx/3.7.5-1 by Gert Wollny, fixed upstream.
• jadetex/3.13-17 by Norbert Preining.
• opensips/2.1.2-1 by Razvan Crainea.
• ruby-sqlite3/1.3.11-2 uploaded by C dric Boutillier, original patch by Lunar.
• runawk/1.6.0-2 uploaded by Andrew Shadura, patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• systraq/20160303-1 by Joost van Baal-Ili .

Some uploads fixed some reproducibility issues, but not all of them:

• auto-multiple-choice/1.2.1-4 by Georges Khaznadar.
• avfs/1.0.3-1 uploaded by Michael Meskes, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• console-setup/1.138 uploaded by Anton Zinoviev, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• gromacs/5.1.2-1 by Nicholas Breen.
• mrrescue/1.02c-2 by Alexandre Detiste.
• usb-modeswitch-data/20160112-2 by Didier Raboud.

Patches submitted which have not made their way to the archive yet:

• #816209 on elog by Reiner Herrmann: use printf instead of echo which is shell-independent.
• #816214 on python-pip by Reiner Herrmann: removes timestamp from generated Python scripts.
• #816230 on rows by Reiner Herrmann: tell grep to always treat the input as text.
• #816232 on eficas by Reiner Herrmann: use printf instead of echo which is shell-independent.

Florent Daigniere and bancfc reported that linux-grsec was currently built with GRKERNSEC_RANDSTRUCT which will prevent reproducible builds with the current packaging.

tests.reproducible-builds.org pbuilder has been updated to the last version to be able to support Build-Depends-Arch and Build-Conflicts-Arch. (Mattia Rizzolo, h01ger) New package sets have been added for Subgraph OS, which is based on Debian Stretch: packages and build dependencies. (h01ger) Two new armhf build nodes have been added (thanks Vagrant Cascadian) and integrated in our Jenkins setup with 8 new armhf builder jobs. (h01ger)

strip-nondeterminism development strip-nondeterminism version 0.016-1 was released on Sunday 28th. It will now normalize the POT-Creation-Date field in GNU Gettext .mo files. (Reiner Herrmann) Several improvements to the packages metadata have also been made. (h01ger, Ben Finney)

Package reviews 185 reviews have been removed, 91 added and 33 updated in the previous week. New issue: fileorder_in_gemspec_files_list. 43 FTBFS bugs were reported by Chris Lamb, Martin Michlmayr, and gregor herrmann.

Misc. After merging the patch from Dhiru Kholia adding support for SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH in rpm, Florian Festi opened a discussion on the rpm-ecosystem mailing list about reproducible builds. On March 4th, Lunar gave an overview of the general reproducible builds effort at the Internet Freedom Festival in Valencia.

What happened in the reproducible builds effort this week: Toolchain fixes

• Emmanuel Bourg uploaded maven-archiver/2.6-3 which fixed parsing DEB_CHANGELOG_DATETIME with non English locales.
• Emmanuel Bourg uploaded maven-repo-helper/1.8.12 which always use the same system independent encoding when transforming the pom files.
• Piotr O arowski uploaded dh-python/2.20150719 which makes the order of the generated maintainer scripts deterministic. Original patch by Chris Lamb.

akira uploaded a new version of doxygen in the experimental reproducible repository incorporating upstream patch for SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH, and now producing timezone independent timestamps. Dhole updated Peter De Wachter's patch on ghostscript to use SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH and use UTC as a timezone. A modified package is now being experimented. Packages fixed The following 14 packages became reproducible due to changes in their build dependencies: bino, cfengine2, fwknop, gnome-software, jnr-constants, libextractor, libgtop2, maven-compiler-plugin, mk-configure, nanoc, octave-splines, octave-symbolic, riece, vdr-plugin-infosatepg. The following packages became reproducible after getting fixed:

• cpl-plugin-fors/5.0.11+dfsg-4 uploaded by Ole Streicher, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• cpl-plugin-hawki/1.8.18+dfsg-4 uploaded by Ole Streicher, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• cpl-plugin-kmos/1.3.12+dfsg-4 uploaded by Ole Streicher, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• cpl-plugin-visir/3.5.1+dfsg-3 uploaded by Ole Streicher, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• docbook-dsssl/1.79-8 uploaded by Peter Eisentraut, original patch by Chris Lamb.
• git-annex/5.20150617 by Joey Hess, initial report by Daniel Kahn Gillmor.
• links2/2.10-1 by Axel Beckert.
• linuxlogo/5.11-8 uploaded by Dariusz Dwornikowski, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• maradns/2.0.11-1 uploaded by Dariusz Dwornikowski, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• pkgconf/0.9.12-1 uploaded by Andrew Shadura, original patch by Juan Picca.
• python-odf/1.3.1+dfsg-1 uploaded by W. Martin Borgert, original patch by akira.
• qsapecng/2.0.0-6 uploaded by Simone Rossetto, original patch by akira.
• ruby-liquid/3.0.4-1 uploaded by C dric Boutillier, report by Dylan Thacker-Smith.
• ruby-standalone/0.5.1 uploaded by Antonio Terceiro, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• sahara/2015.1.0-6 uploaded by Thomas Goirand, original patch by Juan Picca.
• squid3/3.5.6-1 uploaded by Luigi Gangitano, fixed upstream.
• tabble/0.43-3 uploaded by gregor herrmann, original patch by Reiner Herrmann.
• twine/1.5.0-1 by Zygmunt Krynicki.
• visp/2.10.0-4 uploaded by Fabien Spindler, original patch by akira.

Some uploads fixed some reproducibility issues but not all of them:

• dpatch/2.0.36 by Gergely Nagy, with a patch from akira.
• fldigi/3.22.13-1 by Kamal Mostafa.
• fortunes-bg/1.2 uploaded by Anton Zinoviev, original patch by akira.
• openjfx/8u40-b25-3 by Emmanuel Bourg.
• zoneminder/1.28.1-7 by Dmitry Smirnov.
• zookeeper/3.4.6-5 by Emmanuel Bourg.

Patches submitted which have not made their way to the archive yet:

• #792943 on argus-client by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792945 on authbind by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792947 on cvs-mailcommit by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792949 on chimera2 by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792950 on ccze by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792951 on dbview by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792952 on dhcpdump by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792953 on dhcping by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792955 on dput by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792958 on dtaus by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792959 on elida by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792961 on enemies-of-carlotta by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792963 on erc by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792965 on fastforward by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792967 on fgetty by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792969 on flowscan by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792971 on junior-doc by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792972 on libjama by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792973 on liblip by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792974 on liblockfile by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792975 on libmsv by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792976 on logapp by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792977 on luakit by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792978 on nec by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792979 on runit by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792980 on tworld by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792981 on wmweather by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792982 on ftpcopy by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792983 on gerstensaft by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792984 on integrit by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792985 on ipsvd by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792986 on uruk by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792987 on jargon by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792988 on xbs by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792989 on freecdb by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792990 on skalibs by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792991 on gpsmanshp by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792993 on cgoban by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792994 on angband-doc by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792995 on abook by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792996 on bcron by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792998 on chiark-utils by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #792999 on console-cyrillic by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #793000 on beav by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #793001 on blosxom by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #793002 on cgilib by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #793003 on daemontools by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #793004 on debdelta by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #793005 on checkpw by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #793006 on dropbear by akira: set the mtimes of all files which are modified during builds to the latest debian/changelog entry.
• #793126 on torbutton by Dhole: set TZ=UTC when calling zip.
• #793127 on pdf.js by Dhole: set TZ=UTC when calling zip.
• #793300 on deejayd by Dhole: set TZ=UTC when calling zip.

reproducible.debian.net Packages identified as failing to build from source with no bugs filed and older than 10 days are scheduled more often now (except in experimental). (h01ger) Package reviews 178 obsolete reviews have been removed, 59 added and 122 updated this week. New issue identified this week: random_order_in_ruby_rdoc_indices. 18 new bugs for packages failing to build from sources have been reported by Chris West (Faux), and h01ger.

Thanks to Anton Zinoviev, http://planet.debian.org/ is subscribed to my feed for months already, but I ve never gotten around to actually post something. So let s start in accordance with tradition! My name is Michael Schutte and I m yet another Debianist from Innsbruck, Austria. I have been around since about February, and I currently maintain kbd, python-odtwriter, and libgit-ruby. Then, I participate in the Debian/Ruby Extras team. I also contribute some QA work when time allows I even managed to fix an ugly security bug in an orphaned package once. I ll try to write down things here every once in a while (without breaking Planet too often).

Marc, from my experience, there is no 'secret' in the console-tools/kbd migration work. Just low involvment of all parties. I have watched the work on console handling stuff in Debian for a few years now, and my conclusion is just that nearly nobody cares about it now. I do maintain console-data that provides console fonts and keymaps. I took it over slowly from Alastair McKinstry (the console-tools maintainer mentioned in Marc's blog entry) because that involved maintaining localization of keymap names....that are used and visible in the installer. Ideas to switch the installer to console-setup and related tools are floating around. Just not achieved...because of lack of motivated manpower. Progress was made because of Anton Zinoviev and Colin Watson's work, but the project is currently hosed on a quite critical choice:

• either ask about keymap layout during install, but that requires internationalization of the model/layout names...that are in an XML file. Nobody worked on this and this is therefore a blocker.
• or use the Ubuntu way to set the keymap (by asking users to type keys and guess the right keymap from that). Colin already said to the D-I team that this is basically a big hack...but, well, it works.

About console-tools being installed by default: this is the consequence of it being Important while kbd is Extra. I think it should be up to kbd maintainers to push the change up. But this brings us back to the initial remark: indeed, now nobody cares about console handling, particularly when it comes at handling non-English environments. Those who still use the console in Linux environments apparently all do it with US keyboards and an English locale. For sure, kbd is more maintained than console-tools so, at least, we should switch to it. Funnily, our installer (even the graphical version) *still* relies on console keymaps during the installation process and, therefore, we rely on mostly unmaintained stuff here (people who think that I maintain console-data are plain wrong: I just keep it surviving...:-))

Today was a strange day. We are preparing our holiday trip to Sicily but had a full day at home, meant for packing and the like. Indeed, packing was done in a few hours this morning and I ended up....hacking on D-I. For whatever reason, I came back on the plans we have, among the D-I team, to switch to console-setup for console handling. Something already done in Ubuntu and which brings, for instance and if I'm correct, the benefit of having the same keyboard maps for X and the console. So, first, I summarized the floating ideas in a wiki page. Then I worked on a few possible modifications to "localechooser", the D-I component that allows users to choose their language/country/locale and which needs modifications for console-setup. That lead me to produce an experimental image of D-I netboot for i386 and asked translators for some testing. MJ Ray noticed the call for testing and asked Esperanto translators for some testing, which Serge Leblanc did...and reported a nasty bug, later confirmed by Damyan Ivanov, then investigated by Anton Zinoviev, then digged a little more by me again, then advised by Rapha l Hertzog and Julien Cristau on #debian-devel-fr...and lead to an RC bug reported against....perl base. All this, of course, was completely unplanned as of this morning. This is probably one of the reasons that make me enjoy free software development.

One of the things that has kept Debian in heated discussion over the last few years is the question whether the GFDL, or the GNU Free Documentation License, is free according to Debian's own DFSG. We've had three votes on the subject, with the final one decisively saying it's conditionally free. Or so I thought. Yesterday, Josselin Mouette proposed another GR on the subject, since he believes there's a conflict between GR 2006 001 and the current text of the DFSG. Sigh. At least he isn't trying to reverse the effect GR 2006 001. But still; no, the GR does not conflict the text of the DFSG. I used to think otherwise, but got swayed by the discussions on -vote that occurred prior to GR 2006 001, especially (strangely) the one that happened as a result of Anton Zinoviev's amendment, which ended up as choice #3 on the ballot. At the the time, I was supportive of the original proposal to throw out all GFDL-licensed documents, even though I disliked doing so (for obvious reasons); but I felt that the arguments about the DRM clause did hold. This was wrong, and it took me an insult to see it. Quoting Anton, myself, and Craig Sanders:

This clause disallows the distribution or storage of copies on DRM-protected media only if a result of that action will be that the reading or further copying of the copies is obstructed or controlled. It is not supposed to refer [to] the use of encryption or file access control on your own copy.

No; however, as written it can be interpreted as such.

only by nutcases with an agenda. normal people (including lawyers and judges) wouldn't have such an insane and insupportable interpretation. that's because normal people rely on facts. and evidence. they don't just make up whatever crap they need to suit their argument.

Craig's way of saying things did not immediately have the intended effect; and had I not grown tired of the discussion, I probably would've missed it. But the fact that I stopped following the discussion gave me some time to think about it, and as such, Craig's argument had a chance to sink in. When I was finally swayed, I failed to attribute it to Craig, however, instead thinking it was an argument by Anton that did it. The point is this: the mere fact that you're able to construct an interpretation of a license which is logically sound and complies with everything, does not mean that it is a sane interpretation. Lawyers and judges, strange people though they might be according to some jokes, are still people; human beings. If you come up with an interpretation that nobody in court came up with on the first reading of a given text, then chances are rather high nobody will follow you. That's what really matters: whether something you claim will hold in court. Not whether something you claim holds up to your own argumentation. And yes, claiming that doing chmod -r, or storing something on an encrypted filesystem is somehow restricting distribution, seems a little far-fetched. After all, when I'm storing something on my own hard disk, or even in the privacy of my home-directory on a large shared fileserver, I'm not engaging in a distribution of any kind.

From WordNet (r) 2.0 (August 2003) [wn]:
  distribution
      n 1: (statistics) an arrangement of values of a variable showing
           their observed or theoretical frequency of occurrence
           [syn:  statistical distribution ]
      2: the spatial property of being scattered about over an area
         or volume [syn:  dispersion ] [ant:  concentration ]
      3: the act of distributing or spreading or apportioning
      4: the commercial activity of transporting and selling goods
         from a producer to a consumer

Definition 3 and 4 seem to require an active action by the originating person; when someone copies a file from your $HOME, you didn't distribute the file to them; they took it from you. In our culture of sharing is good, you should share!, I missed it; but a court would probably see copying without asking for permission more as stealing, rather than distributing. After all that, the arguments about the DRM clause being too broad seemed a bit weak to me; and given that the FSF had already agreed on it being a bug which needed to be fixed, as they had for the other arguments against the GFDL (apart from the Invariant sections, which are not being discussed here), made me decide that the big giant insane problems with the GFDL are not so much of a problem as most people seem to claim.