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Phexro writes: "According to this story at newsalert, Debian has been awarded the $25,000 IDG/Linus Torvalds Community Award. It will be presented during the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo on Tuesday, Aug. 15. Go Debian!" Congratulations to the Debian crew for this. Non-Debian users benefit from the pressure that Debian puts on other distros -- just by existing -- to mind their P's and Q's when it comes to Free software, and for proving that elegant upgrade systems don't have to be glitzy or labyrinthine.

Here are the answers to the questions we asked Ian Murdock, original Debian instigator and current President/CEO of Progeny Linx Systems.

1) Distributions
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Chalst

What's your second-favourite Linux distribution?

Ian:

I got started with Linux in 1993 using a distribution called SLS. I started Debian later that year, and have been using Debian ever since. So, I guess that makes SLS my second-favorite distribution.

2) Debian stuff
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Uruk

What do you think about the current political problems with KDE in debian, the possible removal of non-free, and any other 'political' issues you care to comment on?

How has debian converged or diverged from what you originally wanted it to be?

If you were Wichert, which direction would you take debian in now?

Ian:

I tend to be more interested in technical rather than political issues, so to be perfectly honest, I don't have too many opinions to share with you. One thing I can say about the non-free removal debate is that many are arguing that changing the social contract would be akin to changing the founding principles of Debian, which isn't entirely true. The social contract came along well into Debian's lifetime. It captures a set of principles that evolved over time, and is really a snapshot of that set of principles taken at the time it was written. Perhaps it's time to evolve further. Perhaps it isn't. I'll leave that question to the Debian folks.

In terms of convergence or divergence, Debian has become so much more than I ever dreamed it would become, so I'm nothing but thrilled with how well it's all come together. Debian is one of the best examples of just how well the open development model can work. I'm immensely proud of all that Debian has accomplished and all that it continues to accomplish, and I'm proud to have been a part of it.

Where would I like to see Debian go from here? I'd really like to see Debian's appeal broadened. For a long time, Debian was the best Linux distribution you'd never heard of, and that's started to change this past year. Debian is a really great system, the best out there in a lot of ways, but a few small things sometimes get in the way. Installation needs to be easier, many things need to be better integrated, releases need to happen more frequently, interfaces need to be designed with a broader range of users in mind. It looks like a lot of this is starting to happen, and I'm very happy about that. And, by the way, I think Wichert is doing an outstanding job.

3) Preview?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by pb

Could you tell us about this "Linux NOW" project you guys are working on now?

Will the filesystem be based on Coda, or are you writing something completely new?

How does the distributed architecture compare with what is currently available?

Will it offer distributed computing, or just centralized administration?

It's great to hear that this will be released back to the community; I'm sure this will be released long before Microsoft makes any real headway on their "Millenium" project. :)

Ian:

Linux NOW makes a network of workstations look like a single integrated system. The basic problem that we're addressing is how to integrate the network, how to make networks easier to manage and use. The basic observation is that many problems become very difficult very quickly as computing environments grow from a single machine to dozens of machines to hundreds to thousands. For example, people have a fairly firm grasp on how to manage a single machine, how to share resources on a single machine, how to provide a good environment for users on a centralized machine. When it comes to dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of machines, however, these issues become much more difficult, and even after twenty years of using networks, people still don't have good ways of approaching them.

Linux NOW makes a network look like a single system to simplify the task of managing the network, sharing resources on the network, making the network secure, providing a consistent environment to users. System administration and security management are much simpler because there is only one system to manage rather than many independent systems. Sharing resources like files and hardware devices is much easier because there is just one set of resources rather than many independent sets distributed around the network in various places. The user's environment is consistent across machines because the system is the network, the network is the system, rather than the network being just a physical medium for connecting systems together. In Linux NOW, the network is more than a mere communications vehicle, a way for systems to talk, it's an integral part of the system, it *is* the system. Linux NOW is about building a good abstraction, about simplifying, about reducing big problems to smaller, more approachable problems.

We are writing a new file system. Many of the features that we need have been implemented in one file system or another, but there is no one file system that does all we need in one package. The file system that we're writing is largely influenced by the Sprite file system (http://HTTP.CS.Berkeley.EDU/Research/Projects/sprite/sprite.html), but we're integrating in various bits and pieces from other file systems where that makes sense. For example, Sprite was written ten years ago, and these days, networks are no longer static things, they contain laptops and mobile devices that come and go, and those mobile devices should be equal members of the network of workstations. So, we're looking very closely at projects like Coda and InterMezzo that provide support for mobile computing and disconnected operation, and borrowing ideas and code from those where that makes sense. We are also looking at cluster file systems, like GFS, and other network operating systems, particularly Plan 9.

In terms of how Linux NOW compares to what is already available, the closest cousin to a NOW is a cluster, like a Beowulf. Both run above a collection of computers, and turn that collection of computers into a larger thing. The main difference is the approach, and the end goal. Most clusters are dedicated collections, tightly-coupled collections, and are specifically designed to do a very specialized task. For example, the task a Beowulf is designed to do is high-performance computing, number crunching and computationally-intensive things. In contrast, Linux NOW is a general-purpose system and infrastructure for large networks. Linux NOW's goal is to simplify system administration, resource sharing, security management, user environments, and so on, general-purpose tasks rather than specialized tasks. And Linux NOW is designed to drive the workstations that sit on people's desks, whereas clusters are usually dedicated things that sit in the machine room. Furthermore, a cluster is usually a tightly-coupled group of machines, whereas a NOW can include laptops, home offices, and those sorts of things. In short, the underlying foundation is very similar, but what we do with that foundation is very different.

In terms of whether we will support distributed computing, we do plan to provide limited support for things like process migration to make resource sharing easier. That being said, Linux NOW is fundamentally a general-purpose system, so we're only interested in such features to the extent that they solve general-purpose, end-user kinds of problems. Process migration can be used to do distributed compiles, for example, or to move running processes off of a workstation that is being rebooted. So, if you're interested in using a collection of machines to do a specialized thing like distributed computation, or load balancing, or failover, then a cluster is probably a better fit. Of course, Linux NOW has its place in clusters as well. After all, clusters have to be managed, and providing shared storage across the cluster is very important, and Linux NOW can provide that.

4) Distro wars
(Score:5, Interesting)
by BgJonson79

What do you think is the best way to put out the distro flame wars and welcome more people into the world of Linux?

Ian:

We're never going to put out the flame wars. The best we can do is hope that people will learn to devote their energies to more productive things, like making the software better, and not let the flame wars get in the way of making progress. Flame wars are an unfortunate byproduct of the passion that people put into free software. When people are willing to spend hours and hours arguing about things, sometimes arcane things, that means they care very much about them. Can you imagine people arguing endlessly about the merits of a particular toaster or microwave oven? People in this community care very much about their software, and that's a big part of the reason why Linux, and free software in general, have come so far in such a short amount of time. People are willing to pour everything they've got into this. Given that kind of passion, it's inevitable that we're going to have flame wars.

5) Hurd/Linux
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Tiro

Why has Debian tied its long-term future to the Hurd's so long before the Hurd is ready for prime time? We all know about the hopes and dreams the GNU project has for its kernel, but why is Debian going along for the ride when the future is so hazy?

Ian:

I don't think Debian has tied its long-term future to the Hurd at all. Debian is a volunteer project, so it's not like Debian is taking away resources from other projects to work on the Hurd, like a company might have to do. Volunteers tend to work on what interests them, and the Hurd interests many Debian volunteers, so that's where they're going to work. Personally, I'm glad to see that Debian is providing the kind of support that is moving the Hurd's development forward. The Hurd has a very interesting design and incorporates some very interesting ideas, and I hope that something eventually comes of it.

6) Debian development
(Score:5, Interesting)
by fremen

Debian has often been accused of having a very slow development cycle. The "stable" distribution is still using two to three year old technology, while frozen is getting more and more out of date each day. Meanwhile, companies like Mandrake are releasing much more bleeding edge distributions. These distributions have more bugs in them, but are also ahead of the game in terms of performance enhancements, newer software, and fixes for older bugs that still plague the older software in Debian. How do you respond to companies like this, and what do you see as Debian's place among these companies?

Ian:

I agree that the slow release cycle is a problem. The Debian folks recognize it as a problem too and are taking steps to address it. Release management is very hard, especially when you're dealing with hundreds and hundreds of people, many of whom have never met and most of whom work on the thing purely as a hobby. It's far easier when you have a company and people are all in the same place and getting paid. So, this is a common problem among free software projects, and Debian is having to deal with it on a scale larger that most projects have had to deal with it. And they're getting there.

7) What would you add to *nix?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by miahrogers

If you could take 2 features from two other operating systems and add them to *nix what would they be?

Ian:

The first feature I would add to Unix is a good distributed file system. Unix has been lacking in this department for a long time. This is really unfortunate, because the file system is such a central abstraction in Unix, arguably *the* central abstraction in Unix. In Unix, if you can get the file system right, solutions to a remarkable number of very difficult problems just fall out, so the lack of a good distributed file system has really been the central thing that has made networks of workstations so hard to manage and use.

The most important thing that a file system does is provide a name space, a high-level view of data storage. In spite of this, this is exactly where most network file systems for Unix fall short. Network file systems for Unix tend to be designed to share private name spaces, rather than to build common, network-oriented, network-wide name spaces. Look at the current state of affairs in Unix. Each machine on the network has its own disk and its own private name space built above it. Unix gives us NFS and AFS and other file systems to share name spaces, but the end result is that all these machines still have their own disks and their own name spaces built above them. Resources are scattered all over the network, and you end up with this crazy quilt of name spaces stitched together in haphazard ways. Some of the name spaces are shared, some aren't, and some parts of the private name spaces need to be shared but can't be shared easily. So, you end up with all sorts of problems, like how do you keep configuration consistent, how do you provide a consistent environment to users, how do you keep software up to date, and things get very complicated in a hurry.

In terms of what other operating systems have done with file systems, Sprite got the name space issue right. Sprite provided a single system image across a cluster of machines, including a single file system image; so, although there may be many computers and thus many disks in the network, there is one file system shared by all of them. Unix needs a file system that builds a network-wide name space, and provides high performance, high availability, good security, support for mobile computing, and other things too.

The second feature I would add to Unix are the per-process name spaces of Plan 9. That is just an incredibly good idea. Although they are different in many ways, Plan 9 is like Sprite in that it builds a single system image across a network of machines, and there is one file system providing access to a global set of resources, just as there is in Sprite. The difference is that, in Plan 9, machines, users, and even processes can build their own local view of this global name space, rather than sharing one common view. This is a very powerful mechanism because you don't always want to see the same name space. For example, how do you deal with heterogeneity in a network of workstations? How do you deal with different classes of machines or users with varying access rights to the network's resources? Plan 9's per-process name spaces address these kinds of issues in a very elegant way.

8) Mobile Linux and Other Debian-based distros
(Score:5, Interesting)
by zeevon

Despite promises from Lineo and Blue Cat to be the embedded Linux specialists, Transmeta is using Debian as a base for its Mobile Linux. In addition, Corel uses Debian for its own distro.

Do you see Debian becoming a base upon which other distributions are built instead of "just another Linux distribution[1]." Given the amount of ports Debian has expanded to (x86, 68k, Sparc, Alpha, ARM, i-opener, etc), do you see it becoming the uber-distro for embedded (and unorthodox) systems?

Ian:

Sure. Debian is a great foundation for building systems, embedded or otherwise. It's the foundation for Linux NOW. It allows people to concentrate on doing what they do best, to concentrate on building value, rather than on reinventing the wheel.

The nice thing about Debian in this respect is that it's modular. The package concept lends itself very well to modularity. That was the whole reason behind basing Debian on packages. I wanted others to be able to contribute to Debian, to participate in the development process, and breaking the system into modular packages seemed the best way to enable that.

Other distributions have almost universally adopted the package concept by now too, but most of them still tend to be arranged as complete, take-it-or-leave-it systems. Debian is more of a collection of packages that can form a complete system, custom-tailored just the way you want it. So, because of the package concept, the resulting modularity, and the "collection of packages" approach to constructing the system, it's very easy for someone to take just those parts of Debian that he needs and build value above them. And that's why Debian is a better system for this purpose than any other.

Several Debian Developers have submitted this, and I'm sorry for the delay. I just didn't want to rush something like this: Joel Klecker has passed on. I never knew his real name, but as Espy, he answered lots of dumb questions for me on IRC over the years. The Internet makes connections between people from around the world, but from opposite sides of a dozen routers, many things... like Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy aren't readily apparent. I've attached a more complete comment about this from SquadBoy if you follow through. The Debian 2.2 release will be dedicated to Espy. The dedication also is attached.

This is the first public announcement of this intention. Some may notice two new files in our archive (or on mirrors) and on the new Test Cycle 3 CD's. This is a dedication of this release to a recently daparted member of our Project, Joel Klecker, who died unexpectedly at age 21. Here is the dedication (which also appears below)

You will also find a file with it called dedication-2.2.sigs.tar.gz, which contains close to 200 PGP signatures from our developers for the dedication.txt.

Joel's death was the result of a life long battle with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Information for donations to the Muscular Dystrophy Association can be found here and will be greatly appreciated (please make donations in Joel's name, if you so desire):

Sincerely,
Ben Collins

The contents of the dedication follows

Dedicated to Joel 'Espy' Klecker

On July 11, 2000, the Debian Project, and the Free Software Community as a whole, lost a very dear friend and developer. For most of Joel's life he had been fighting a disease known as Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Since July of 1997, Joel has been a Debian developer, and for most of that time was bed-ridden because of this disease. Joel was 21 when he died, far from the ripe age we imagine most people in our field will reach. His great dedication to the project is an inspiration to us all, and will never be forgotten.

He was known by most of us as "Espy", his IRC nickname, and also as the outspoken voice we heard on the mailing lists, never afraid to speak his mind in a way that only Joel could do, with humor and directness. He maintained a level of excellence in many important packages for Debian. His expertise and knowledge was never questioned. Those of us who have the honor of carrying on the work that he has done for us, will try to maintain it to his degree of technical perfection.

Most of us had no idea the trials that Joel endured every day of his life. Not until near the end did any of us know he even had this disease. Only now are we realizing his dedication, and the friendship that he bestowed upon us. So as a show of our appreciation, and in memory of his inspirational life, this release of Debian is for him.

* The "Joel 'Espy' Klecker" release

-- The Debian Developers

Fawking DSL writes "``NetBSD can be intimidating from a Linux user's perspective. However, as the Linux user base grows, more people are finding their needs aren't being met by traditional Linux distributions. NetBSD is ready to step up to fill this niche. While Linux and NetBSD share many characteristics, there are some key differences.'' Check out this article at BSD Today."

mobiux wrote in about the resurrection of Packard Bell PC's. michael.creasy told us about Darth Vader's MBE. An anonymous coward wrote in to tell us about the GameSpy interview of Martin Feldhausen, inventor of the 'extra life.' Thanks for helping me get through all those games! mcryptic shared the link to an online gallery of mousepad art. payneinthe told us that Randal Schwartz uploaded pictures from the Perl Whirl. Another anonymous coward told us about someone's visual response to the loss of Paul Steed at id. HerrNewton noted the symphony written primarily for dot matrix printers, and rasterbator told us about a web site for the distribution of free GNU and Open Source related artwork. Ant sent in the link to Star Wars Origins, and illumina mentioned RSA en/decryption in JavaScript. Have a good weekend, everyone!

Thanks to all of the fine folks who contributed these updates, you are in for another illuminating, invigorating, inspiring round of fruity nuggets picked from the tree of wisdom, irradiated, waxed, polished, chilled, packaged and shipped (metaphorically) to your browser. Swallow two of these a week, call if symptoms recur.

Who needs an atmosphere? Xibalba writes "As a follow up story to the orbiting Web server, NASA already has an ftp server installed on UoSat-12 and has been sucessfully transferring images for the past week." Soon there should be no shortage of IP-addressable tin cans floating around space.

World domination, increment 00000003707391: xaniamud writes "NVidia have released version 0.93 of their OpenGL XFree86 drivers, check it out." Hopefully, nVidia is interested enough in selling video cards to the faithful to wipe it's nose clean of GPL violations, too.

This time, let's help DivX succeed ... Mike Hicks writes "An update to a previous story. FlashingYellow has combined with OpenCodex, and they now have a $10,000 prize along with an iMac DV for the first individual or group to produce an open source DivX ;-) plugin for Quicktime." Added to which, I will supply the second individual or group with a letterboxed DVD of Carlito's Way, Heat or The Godfather.

You may already be a winner! You may recall that Dr. Günter Bechly recently offered a $3000 incentive to the developers of KDE if the license under which KDE is released were amended such that it could be distributed with Debian's main (free) distribution.

Dr. Bechly has now withdrawn the offer, for the reasons he outlines below. He writes:

"Hello, I just wanted to let everybody know that KDE did not bother to send an official answer to my offer of a donation of $3000 in case that they fix their licence problems that currently prohibits an inclusion of KDE in Debian GNU/Linux. Just two people of the KDE camp answered at all, and both basically said that the licence change is impossible to do since there is too much code of third parties (including those who sent patches) involved who can hardly be traced. This is quite interesting, since in the past most KDE representatives claimed that the licence issue is moot since the requested exception clause in the licence is implicitly given due to the fact that the KDE programmers coded KDE-software for the QT-toolkit. Now they admit that they use a lot of GPL'ed code of non-KDE programmers which have never given such an implicit permission to link their GPL'ed code to QPL'ed libraries.

Just as a reminder: The issue is not how to use KDE with Debian (e.g. by adding the link site to apt-sources), but how to legally include KDE as free software in Debian main. The issue is also neither that KDE is indeed free software nor that QT is indeed free software, but the issue is that the two involved free licences (GPL versus QPL) are mutually incompatible, which makes any distribution of binaries of GPL'ed software that is linked to QT simply illegal! The KDE project obviously does not care at all that it violates the GPL licence of other peoples code. This is not only rude behaviour but simply unacceptable. I hoped that my offer would help to solve the problem, but the reaction or rather the non-reaction of KDE shows that this attempt failed, just like any other attempts to solve this issue before. Apparently KDE and the distributions that include KDE are relying on the mean consideration that private authors of free software will not take the finacial risk to sue them for their licence violation. Maybe the only hope for the final solution of the problem could be that one of these authors proves this consideration to be ill-founded!

Allegations that Debian is just using the licence issue as camouflage for their general dislike of KDE are absolutely unwarranted, since I got only very positive responses from the Debian camp including the Debian leadership. There is no doubt that Debian would happily include KDE as soon as the licence problems are solved. Anyway, it does not look like that is ever going to happen. KDE unfortunately has a long tradition in violating the free software spirit:

1.) It was founded by Matthias Ettrich who developed the very fine program Lyx, but then used the non-free toolkit xforms for its GUI, instead of e.g. using a free alternative like TCL/TK.

2.) When the KDE project was started, it was built on a non-free toolkit, too, since QT1.x was not under QPL or any other free (open source) licence. KDE attempted from the very beginning to become the standard desktop of Linux by using a non-free toolkit. They could not know that QT would later be forced by the outcry in free software community and the attempt to develop a free replacement (Harmony) to release QT2.x under an open source licence (which unfortunately is still not compatabile with GPL).

3.) When the free QT replacement Harmony was still in development (it achieved a rather advanced state!) the KDE project refused to agree to switch to this toolkit in the future and they even announced that they will incorporate any useful new features of future versions of QT, which made it impossible for Harmony to ever reach compatability.

4.) KDE had no problems in the change of the licence of kisdn, which was developed under GPL, and as soon as it was accomplished was transformed into shareware. I am quite certain that they did not ask all people who sent patches for their permission for this licence change!

5.) Finally, KDE is blatantly ignoring their constant violation of the GPL of other peoples software that is used in KDE (e.g. in kflopppy). To sum up: There is no other volunteer project in the Linux world that has shown so much disrespect and ignorance of the free software movement than KDE (just for the record: this is said by someone who used KDE since beta4 and once in a flamewar with Bruce Perens even strongly defended the KDE-project; sorry Bruce, I did you wrong!). Therefore, even though KDE is very nice and usable software, I will say goodbye to all KDE stuff and will now only use Gnome which is rapidly evolving into a comparably mature desktop environment (current Helix-Gnome is certainly as good as KDE 1.1, and forthcoming Gnome 2.0 with Nautilus will be on a level with KDE2 and konqueror). Even koffice will soon be made superflous by The Gimp, Sketch, Sodipodi, Gnumeric, Abiword, gcalender, etc. I hope that many will follow this migration from KDE to Gnome.

My offer of 3000,- $ will not be lost for free software and will now be given to Debian for an improvement of the Debian installer. Further details will be discussed with the Debian project.

With kind regards,
Dr. Günter Bechly

Dontcha love it when life imitates pundits? styopa writes "It seems that TurboLinux and Compaq Computing have announced an Alliance. Compaq will support TurboLinux on all of their platforms. Could this be the beginning of the end of TRU64?" Of course, this was carefully arranged to follow the recent story on Linux mergers, which now seems a bit more relevant. Of course, ZDNet had Compaq pegged for a date with Mandrake, but close enough.

drnomad writes "Finally after months of waiting, the Norwegian company Opera has announced their 4th technology preview of Opera for linux available for download. " They've got a good list of what's going on - as well as a Deb of the preview.

An anonymous reader writes "A Debian General Resolution for removing the non-free section from Debian archives is being discussed by Debian Folks and the debate is turning into a flamefest. The proposal is aimed to clarify the position of Debian toward Free Software and the fact that non-free is not (and has never been) a part of the Debian System. But this would exclude packages such as Netscape, the JDK or pine of the Debian archives and opponents argue that the proposal breaks the section 5 of the Debian Social Contract. Here's where it started." Since I'm not a Debian Maintainer (hey, but a few of my old apps are in there, can I vote? ;) I've only got an opinion. I think Debian users should be able to install things like Netscape and Pine too, but I think they should be told the implications. The reality tho, is that if it gets yanked from non-free, other servers will pick it up. Maybe that is the hint that the non-free section is different from Debian's goal. Some people use Debian because it's better, not because it's the most free.

An anonymous reader writes "A Debian General Resolution for removing the non-free section from Debian archives is being discussed by Debian Folks and the debate is turning into a flamefest. The proposal is aimed to clarify the position of Debian toward Free Software and the fact that non-free is not (and has never been) a part of the Debian System. But this would exclude packages such as Netscape, the JDK or pine of the Debian archives and opponents argue that the proposal breaks the section 5 of the Debian Social Contract. Here's where it started." Since I'm not a Debian Maintainer (hey, but a few of my old apps are in there, can I vote? ;) I've only got an opinion. I think Debian users should be able to install things like Netscape and Pine too, but I think they should be told the implications. The reality tho, is that if it gets yanked from non-free, other servers will pick it up. Maybe that is the hint that the non-free section is different from Debian's goal. Some people use Debian because it's better, not because it's the most free.

An anonymous reader writes "A Debian General Resolution for removing the non-free section from Debian archives is being discussed by Debian Folks and the debate is turning into a flamefest. The proposal is aimed to clarify the position of Debian toward Free Software and the fact that non-free is not (and has never been) a part of the Debian System. But this would exclude packages such as Netscape, the JDK or pine of the Debian archives and opponents argue that the proposal breaks the section 5 of the Debian Social Contract. Here's where it started." Since I'm not a Debian Maintainer (hey, but a few of my old apps are in there, can I vote? ;) I've only got an opinion. I think Debian users should be able to install things like Netscape and Pine too, but I think they should be told the implications. The reality tho, is that if it gets yanked from non-free, other servers will pick it up. Maybe that is the hint that the non-free section is different from Debian's goal. Some people use Debian because it's better, not because it's the most free.

Manoj writes "Rob Pike of Bell Labs (Yes, that [Rob Pike]) says that systems software research is irrelevant. At a time when computing is almost the definition of innovation, research in both software and hardware at universities and much of industry is becoming insular, ossified, and irrelevant. Where is innovation? At Microsoft, mostly. Exercise: compare MS software in 1990 vs MS software today. He states that Microsoft has been working hard, and that on many (not all) dimensions, their products are superior technically. Linux is the hot new thing, but it is merely a copy of the same old stuff. And anyway, the exciting thing about Linux is the development model, and researchers contributed little to that. He states that the excitement, the art, of systems research is gone. "

Günter Bechly sent in an interesting open letter to the KDE project regarding KDE, and its current exclusion from Debian (this is of course due to the licensing issues over which wars have been waged, lives lost, and kittens strangled). The letter is attached... he offers a $3k "Bonus" or "Reward" or "Bribe" depending on how you look at it, if KDE will be included with future versions of the distribution. Its an interesting one because the license issues are fuzzy to begin with, but it also shows that there is a strong demand for the software. Then again, I wonder if just hosting the debs and a line for a sources.list might suffice ... or just inclusion in non-free? The following was written by Slashdot Reader Günter Bechly OPEN LETTER TO THE KDE PROJECT Dear KDE team,

in the recent edition of Linux Weekly News of 1st June 2000 the old debate of the potential inclusion of KDE2 to the Debian GNU/Linux distribution is discussed again. Even though KDE2 and QT2 are free software according to all standards (incl. DFSG), KDE2 is not planned to be included in the forthcoming Debian releases 2.2 (aka Potato) and 2.3 (aka Woody), because the QPL licence of QT2 is not compatible with the GPL licence of most of the KDE2 code. An elaboration of Debian's stance on KDE and QT licencing can be found here and here Debian does have a very strict position on such licensing issues, and even if some people may think that their position is somewhat nittygritty, it is a clear point of view that distinguishes Debian from commercial distributions (e.g. Redhat or SuSE).

The sad thing is that many people who like KDE very much, also prefer the Debian distribution because of their very commitment to the free software spirit, because of their high quality standards, because of their superior package management system, and because of their vast number of available packages (about 4500 in Potato). Therefore, it would be highly desirable for KDE AND Debian to solve the mentioned licence problems with the release of KDE2. Many discussions in the past have lead to nothing but frustration on both sides, because none of the involved parties was able to agree on a compromise.

It is possible that the licence issue could be partly resolved by Debian by the simple assumption that all KDE authors who have released their code under GPL have implicitly agreed to link their GPLed code to the QPLed Qt toolkit. However, Debian will not make this assumption, since it would weaken their stance on licence issues, and since it would also not resolve the conflict with third party GPLed code that was used by the KDE project.

Thus, there is only one realistic solution to the problem: All GPLed code in KDE2 has to include a licence that amends the GPL with the following exception clause: "This program is distributed under the GNU GPL v2, with the additional permission that it may be linked against all versions of Troll Tech's Qt library that are distributed under the QPL, and is distributed without the GPL applying to Qt". Of course changing all licences accordingly and contacting all referring authors of the code involves a lot of boring work that is not very attractive for dedicated coders, which might be the reason that the KDE project did not perform this rather simple solution yet. Therefore, I would like to stipulate the appropriate actions by offering a private donation of 3.000,- US-$ to the KDE project, in case (and only in case) that the licence of the official release of KDE2 (all official packages incl. koffice) will be modified in the mentioned way, so that KDE2 can be included in Debian-Woody at last.

The Debian project has already stated in the past that they would of course include KDE as soon as the licence conflicts are resolved. Since the Debian maintainer Ivan E. Moore II has already made inofficial Debian packages of KDE1.x and KDE2beta for the KDE Packaging Project he could likely become the maintainer of the future official packages.

I hope that my offer could contribute to a prospering common future of KDE and Debian for the benefit of the Linux community. It would be nice if I could receive something like an "official" answer by the KDE project concerning my offer. If KDE should agree, I will send a signed contract that guarantees that my donation will be immediately made as soon as KDE2 is released with the Debian compatible licence changes. It is up to the KDE project how my donation would be used; it could be used for any purpose of the KDE project, or even as a personal reward ("salary") for the referring KDE persons that will make the work of the licence changes.

With kind regards,
Guenter Bechly

P.S. Please note that I only speak on behalf of myself and that I am not representing any involved party. I am just an dedicated Linux user who happens to like Debian and KDE (and Gnome too btw ;-). Copies of this letter have been posted to Mosfet, KDE.com, TDYC, Debian, LWN, LinuxToday, and Slashdot.

--
Dr. Guenter Bechly
Staatliches Museum fuer Naturkunde Stuttgart
Abt. Palaeontologie - Sekt. Bernstein
Email (office): bechly@gmx.de Email (private): GBechly@gmx.de

Günter Bechly sent in an interesting open letter to the KDE project regarding KDE, and its current exclusion from Debian (this is of course due to the licensing issues over which wars have been waged, lives lost, and kittens strangled). The letter is attached... he offers a $3k "Bonus" or "Reward" or "Bribe" depending on how you look at it, if KDE will be included with future versions of the distribution. Its an interesting one because the license issues are fuzzy to begin with, but it also shows that there is a strong demand for the software. Then again, I wonder if just hosting the debs and a line for a sources.list might suffice ... or just inclusion in non-free? The following was written by Slashdot Reader Günter Bechly OPEN LETTER TO THE KDE PROJECT Dear KDE team,

in the recent edition of Linux Weekly News of 1st June 2000 the old debate of the potential inclusion of KDE2 to the Debian GNU/Linux distribution is discussed again. Even though KDE2 and QT2 are free software according to all standards (incl. DFSG), KDE2 is not planned to be included in the forthcoming Debian releases 2.2 (aka Potato) and 2.3 (aka Woody), because the QPL licence of QT2 is not compatible with the GPL licence of most of the KDE2 code. An elaboration of Debian's stance on KDE and QT licencing can be found here and here Debian does have a very strict position on such licensing issues, and even if some people may think that their position is somewhat nittygritty, it is a clear point of view that distinguishes Debian from commercial distributions (e.g. Redhat or SuSE).

The sad thing is that many people who like KDE very much, also prefer the Debian distribution because of their very commitment to the free software spirit, because of their high quality standards, because of their superior package management system, and because of their vast number of available packages (about 4500 in Potato). Therefore, it would be highly desirable for KDE AND Debian to solve the mentioned licence problems with the release of KDE2. Many discussions in the past have lead to nothing but frustration on both sides, because none of the involved parties was able to agree on a compromise.

It is possible that the licence issue could be partly resolved by Debian by the simple assumption that all KDE authors who have released their code under GPL have implicitly agreed to link their GPLed code to the QPLed Qt toolkit. However, Debian will not make this assumption, since it would weaken their stance on licence issues, and since it would also not resolve the conflict with third party GPLed code that was used by the KDE project.

Thus, there is only one realistic solution to the problem: All GPLed code in KDE2 has to include a licence that amends the GPL with the following exception clause: "This program is distributed under the GNU GPL v2, with the additional permission that it may be linked against all versions of Troll Tech's Qt library that are distributed under the QPL, and is distributed without the GPL applying to Qt". Of course changing all licences accordingly and contacting all referring authors of the code involves a lot of boring work that is not very attractive for dedicated coders, which might be the reason that the KDE project did not perform this rather simple solution yet. Therefore, I would like to stipulate the appropriate actions by offering a private donation of 3.000,- US-$ to the KDE project, in case (and only in case) that the licence of the official release of KDE2 (all official packages incl. koffice) will be modified in the mentioned way, so that KDE2 can be included in Debian-Woody at last.

The Debian project has already stated in the past that they would of course include KDE as soon as the licence conflicts are resolved. Since the Debian maintainer Ivan E. Moore II has already made inofficial Debian packages of KDE1.x and KDE2beta for the KDE Packaging Project he could likely become the maintainer of the future official packages.

I hope that my offer could contribute to a prospering common future of KDE and Debian for the benefit of the Linux community. It would be nice if I could receive something like an "official" answer by the KDE project concerning my offer. If KDE should agree, I will send a signed contract that guarantees that my donation will be immediately made as soon as KDE2 is released with the Debian compatible licence changes. It is up to the KDE project how my donation would be used; it could be used for any purpose of the KDE project, or even as a personal reward ("salary") for the referring KDE persons that will make the work of the licence changes.

With kind regards,
Guenter Bechly

P.S. Please note that I only speak on behalf of myself and that I am not representing any involved party. I am just an dedicated Linux user who happens to like Debian and KDE (and Gnome too btw ;-). Copies of this letter have been posted to Mosfet, KDE.com, TDYC, Debian, LWN, LinuxToday, and Slashdot.

--
Dr. Guenter Bechly
Staatliches Museum fuer Naturkunde Stuttgart
Abt. Palaeontologie - Sekt. Bernstein
Email (office): bechly@gmx.de Email (private): GBechly@gmx.de

Mike Hicks asks: "Whenever I experience interesting weather, I'm moved to look around the Internet for reliable and up-to-date weather information. While some towns in southern Minnesota were succumbing to flash floods last night, I came across some interesting information. There is apparently an existing network called EMWIN that sends weather data out over radio and satellite at 1200 bps and 9600 bps, respectively. There's also a Debian package for decoding some of this stuff. On that page, there is a "Modest Proposal" that the Debian project should be the prime contractor for EMWIN's replacement. I know that I would love to be able to get reliable weather reports whenever I wanted (regardless of whether my local TV/radio stations want to break into programming or not..) Do you guys have any opinions? "

Lionfire writes "Recently, Microsoft aquired a patent for a "Method and system for installing and updating program module components"." Read the description and replace a few key words, and you have a very nice description of *cough* Debian's apt. Neat!

So I'm at Linux Expo Australia, enjoying the conference. You can hit the link below to read assorted random relevant (and irrelevant) notes from the show floor. No, I haven't seen a kangaroo.

After more than 24 hours of airport/airplane limbo and uncountable time-zone changes, we arrived in Sydney. After 20 hours of sleep, I was almost ready to face the world outside of my hotel room.

The Australian LinuxExpo is held in Darling Harbor in Sydney, which is apparently the epicenter of all Australian tourist activity. The exchange rate is nice tho, so if I wanted to to buy boomerangs or didgeridoos or something, it'd be easy. You can't walk 20 feet without stumbling into a tourist-trap store.

The show itself is fairly typical for a Linux conference. Of course, without a Slashdot booth to hide out in, I'm spending time at either the Debian Booth (hooray! Debian is international!) or at the LinuxCare booth: this sucker is two stories. The ground floor is a little stage where Tridge and others preach their word, and upstairs is a PC graveyard with boxes ranging from iBooks, G4s and Ultra 5s to various laptops, all plugged in to the Net. This is of course where I write this.

Many of the usual suspects are here: SGI, Red Hat, Corel, LinuxCare, Pick, Debian. Absent are VA and Andover (both are represented, although in much smaller numbers than other shows and without the overhead of a booth).

The advantage of not having a booth is that I'm not obligated to spend the whole show trapped in a 20x20 square answering FAQs all day ... instead I get to see talks. Raster did his usual show on Enlightenment, and Rusty did a great job on Netfilter (including revealing that I could use perl to write my own packet filters if I was either clinically insane, or just bored).

I also sat on a panel along with several other much more interesting folks (Tridge, Raster, Terpestra, and hosted by Chris DiBona) on 'Preserving the Linux Community.' Spent a lot of time discussing who is the Linux community (answers ranging from "Anyone who boots Linux" to "Anyone who cares about their operating system and runs Linux.") Eventually the discussion turned to the future of Linux, DeCSS, the MPAA, and what the new corporate influences can do to help. Not a bad panel, although not exactly the busiest of auditoriums.

Maddog gave a good speech last night on his predictions for Linux. Lots of good stuff there, too ... he had some interesting comments about Linux's growth and third world countries. People who are waiting for "Permission" that obviously will never arrive to extend Linux to do what they want it and need it to do. Not so sure about all his talk of "Linux Camps." The average hacker don't look so hot in Swim Trunks ;)

So with the conference portion of the show wrapping up, Raster, Hormes, Rusty and other Aussies are gonna take us to an "Authentic Australian Pub" this evening. I suspect that I won't have a solid memory of the evening: if there is one thing I know for sure it's that these Australians like their lager in great quantities ... I'm not sure if my liver can keep up.

I'll be back in the States next week, after what amounts to my first real vacation since starting Slashdot 2.5 years ago. See ya then.

Chris Frost writes "The Debian Project began the freeze of its next distribution release, 2.2, today." Hit the "Read More..." link to read the full press release. This has been a long time coming, and it's good to see another stable release in the future. I've been running potato for some time now, and I'm eagerly anticipating woody, the next unstable release.

------------------------------
The Debian Project
press@debian.org
http://www.debian.org
Martin Schulze
January 16, 2000
------------------------------
The Code Freeze for Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 has begun

"The code freeze for the next Debian release, code named "potato", has begun", says Richard Braakman, current Debian Release Manager. He expects the freeze process to take about two months. Until the new version is released, there will be three distributions available on our servers: `stable', `frozen', and the new `unstable'. "The new `unstable' distribution, code named woody[1], was created today", continues Richard. The `frozen' and `unstable' distributions start out with the same set of packages. While `unstable' will be updated rapidly, `frozen' will have only bugfixes applied in preparation for its release. [1] Debian releases are code-named after characters from the movie Toy Story. Woody is the main character, the cowboy action figure. >> About Debian The Debian project is an organization of many users who volunteer their time and effort. Its tasks include maintaining and updating Debian GNU/Linux which is a free distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system, and the development of the Debian GNU/Hurd operating system. >> Contact Information For further information, please send email to the Debian Press Team, press@debian.org, or visit the Debian homepage at http://www.debian.org/"

Chris Frost writes "The Debian Project began the freeze of its next distribution release, 2.2, today." Hit the "Read More..." link to read the full press release. This has been a long time coming, and it's good to see another stable release in the future. I've been running potato for some time now, and I'm eagerly anticipating woody, the next unstable release.

------------------------------
The Debian Project
press@debian.org
http://www.debian.org
Martin Schulze
January 16, 2000
------------------------------
The Code Freeze for Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 has begun

"The code freeze for the next Debian release, code named "potato", has begun", says Richard Braakman, current Debian Release Manager. He expects the freeze process to take about two months. Until the new version is released, there will be three distributions available on our servers: `stable', `frozen', and the new `unstable'. "The new `unstable' distribution, code named woody[1], was created today", continues Richard. The `frozen' and `unstable' distributions start out with the same set of packages. While `unstable' will be updated rapidly, `frozen' will have only bugfixes applied in preparation for its release. [1] Debian releases are code-named after characters from the movie Toy Story. Woody is the main character, the cowboy action figure. >> About Debian The Debian project is an organization of many users who volunteer their time and effort. Its tasks include maintaining and updating Debian GNU/Linux which is a free distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system, and the development of the Debian GNU/Hurd operating system. >> Contact Information For further information, please send email to the Debian Press Team, press@debian.org, or visit the Debian homepage at http://www.debian.org/"

Chris Frost writes "The Debian Project began the freeze of its next distribution release, 2.2, today." Hit the "Read More..." link to read the full press release. This has been a long time coming, and it's good to see another stable release in the future. I've been running potato for some time now, and I'm eagerly anticipating woody, the next unstable release.

------------------------------
The Debian Project
press@debian.org
http://www.debian.org
Martin Schulze
January 16, 2000
------------------------------
The Code Freeze for Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 has begun

"The code freeze for the next Debian release, code named "potato", has begun", says Richard Braakman, current Debian Release Manager. He expects the freeze process to take about two months. Until the new version is released, there will be three distributions available on our servers: `stable', `frozen', and the new `unstable'. "The new `unstable' distribution, code named woody[1], was created today", continues Richard. The `frozen' and `unstable' distributions start out with the same set of packages. While `unstable' will be updated rapidly, `frozen' will have only bugfixes applied in preparation for its release. [1] Debian releases are code-named after characters from the movie Toy Story. Woody is the main character, the cowboy action figure. >> About Debian The Debian project is an organization of many users who volunteer their time and effort. Its tasks include maintaining and updating Debian GNU/Linux which is a free distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system, and the development of the Debian GNU/Hurd operating system. >> Contact Information For further information, please send email to the Debian Press Team, press@debian.org, or visit the Debian homepage at http://www.debian.org/"

Chris Frost writes "The Debian Project began the freeze of its next distribution release, 2.2, today." Hit the "Read More..." link to read the full press release. This has been a long time coming, and it's good to see another stable release in the future. I've been running potato for some time now, and I'm eagerly anticipating woody, the next unstable release.

------------------------------
The Debian Project
press@debian.org
http://www.debian.org
Martin Schulze
January 16, 2000
------------------------------
The Code Freeze for Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 has begun

"The code freeze for the next Debian release, code named "potato", has begun", says Richard Braakman, current Debian Release Manager. He expects the freeze process to take about two months. Until the new version is released, there will be three distributions available on our servers: `stable', `frozen', and the new `unstable'. "The new `unstable' distribution, code named woody[1], was created today", continues Richard. The `frozen' and `unstable' distributions start out with the same set of packages. While `unstable' will be updated rapidly, `frozen' will have only bugfixes applied in preparation for its release. [1] Debian releases are code-named after characters from the movie Toy Story. Woody is the main character, the cowboy action figure. >> About Debian The Debian project is an organization of many users who volunteer their time and effort. Its tasks include maintaining and updating Debian GNU/Linux which is a free distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system, and the development of the Debian GNU/Hurd operating system. >> Contact Information For further information, please send email to the Debian Press Team, press@debian.org, or visit the Debian homepage at http://www.debian.org/"

Anonymous Coward writes "Space-Time Systems in Malvern, England, is now offering computers with GNU/Hurd pre-installed in parallell with the Debian GNU/Linux system. Please see this page for more information." Warning: the Space-Time Systems site loaded slowly when I checked it this morning. You may want to use the (slightly out-of-date) Google cached version for the moment.

marshall writes "I was reading the Debian Weekly News and was happy to see that Jan 2 will be the no new packages freeze for potato and Jan 15-16 will be the final freeze date with any new packages going into a new dist called woody. Then after some test cycles it looks like they are planning for a release at the end of Feb. The e-mail is here "

marshall writes "I was reading the Debian Weekly News and was happy to see that Jan 2 will be the no new packages freeze for potato and Jan 15-16 will be the final freeze date with any new packages going into a new dist called woody. Then after some test cycles it looks like they are planning for a release at the end of Feb. The e-mail is here "

There are over 500 Debian maintainers today, up from 100 only a few years ago. Wichert Akkerman has been Project Leader for this brilliant, sometimes unruly (but always interesting) gang since February. Monday you posted questions for Wichert. Today you get answers. (Lots more below)

Packaging Front End
by Christopher B. Brown
Considerable improvements have gone into the "back end," apt-get; while there has been some experimentation with gnome-apt and console-apt, there doesn't seem to yet be anything that unambiguously improves on dselect in terms of functionality.

With the things that have been learned from those attempts, is there likely to be some sort of dselect-ng?

Wichert:
I really hope so. The reason that we don't have a super-glitchy-totally-awesome apt frontend at the moment is that we have nobody who is willing and able to invest the time and effort into making it. Unlike a commercial distribution, we can't just say `oh, this would be cool. You there! Write this for us and we'll give you some money.' Somebody has to decide for himself that it is an interesting project and make it. We can only encourage people to do something and be very thankful when they do. At this moment the only interactive frontends (that I know off) are dselect, gnome-apt, console-apt, Corel Update (formerly/also called get_it) and aptitude. I would like to ab^H^Huse this opportunity to invite people to write a good frontend or finish console-apt. The apt library is really powerful and does everything you want it to do, the only thing missing is the frontend...

2) When will KDE be included in Debian?
by grrussel
Now that Qt 2 is free software, under the QPL, will Debian include KDE 2 when it is released, based on Qt 2?

Wichert:
Short answer: yes. Long answer: we will include it when we're sure that all license issues have been resolved. The QPL is a major step forward over the previous license and allows you to use it in Free Software projects. There is still a slight problem though: it is not compatible with the GPL. This doesn't mean that it's not free, but it does mean that if you want to use code that has been licensed with the GPL and use it with something that is licensed under the QPL (like Qt) you have a problem. There are two ways to fix that: change the license for the GPL'ed part to add a special clause stating it is okay to do this, or replace the GPL'ed part with something under a different license. KDE has stated that they are indeed going to make or request the necessary license changes so all these problems should be fixed for KDE

Once that has been done there is nothing to stop us from including KDE in Debian. Right now we are mostly waiting for the KDE team to release the first beta of KDE 2 so we actually have something to study and package.

More from grrussel
Also, do you feel it is better to keep Linux entirely DSFG free software only, or to include software in some way restricted, such as Pine, Qt 1.x and Netscape?

Wichert:
I'm not so worried about having non-free applications for Linux. What does worry me is the explosion of different licenses. Everything used to be relatively simple when almost everything was either GPL, LGPL, BSD or MIT-licensed. But now we have the MPL, QPL, SCSL, APSL, Artistic, Wine and other licenses as well. It seems that every time someone starts a big project they want to have their own license. The result is more licenses that conflict with each other in various subtle ways. A lot of the licenses are based on the same principles, which suggests that it would be possible to replace them with a common one. I would love to see an effort in which people from various backgrounds would try to design a couple of good licenses which are acceptable by both the existing Free Software community and the commercial world.

3) Choose HURD over Linux?
by sanderb
Since you are working on both Linux (established) and the HURD (experimental), could you please tell what the advantages of using the HURD over Linux would be, once the HURD would near completion?

Wichert:
The HURD is a very different thing from Linux, and we will have to see what the advantages will be. Unlike Linux, the HURD is a micro-kernel based system. (Remember the flamewars between Linus Torvalds and Andre Tanenbaum?) This means that unlike Linux you don't have one big kernel, but a lot of very small objects working together. This gives you a very flexible system where various parts are easily replaced. Right now most of the effort is being put into stabilizing the systems and building the set of objects that will offer you a Linux-like interface to the system. Once that has been done we will probably see more interesting developments where non-Unix-like elements are being combined with the other interfaces to produce.

4) RPM vs. dpkg
by Tet
What are your feelings on RPM vs. dpkg? Would it be better for Debian to add any missing functionality to RPM, and then switch to that?

Wichert:
That's not really possible. The differences between rpm and dpkg are bigger then just the format in which packages are stored; the interesting differences are in the way relations between packages are declared and how the details of package installation and removal are done. For example, rpm allows you to have multiple versions of a single package installed. dpkg does not allow you to do that; it demands that you change the name of the package.

This might seem unlogical, but the result is that we can always be sure exactly what is installed and not have to worry about exactly which versions of a package are installed, and it allows us to upgrade and maintain multiple versions of a library in parallel. Another really big differences is the way package installation is done: with Debian packages there are separate scripts that are run before and after package installation and removal. Using those we can do all kinds of special-case upgrades, handle error-recovery in failed and aborted upgrades, etc.

More from Tet
In what way might Debian users benefit from sticking with dpkg over a modified RPM with equivalent functionality?

Wichert:
It's indeed possible to modify rpm, dpkg or create a new tool to handle both formats. Once that has been done the reason to stick to one single tool will mostly depend on what you are used to, which one is the most stable, etc.

More from Tet
From personal experience, the thing that really stood out in Debian was dselect, but that could sit on top of RPM just as well as it does on dpkg. Presumably the same applies to apt (although I haven't looked at Debian recently enough to know about apt).

Wichert:
Apt was actually designed to be reasonably independent of package format. It's indeed possible to modify it to use rpm-packages. One problem with rpm-packages is that it is harder to satisfy dependency due to the concept of file-dependencies. Instead of being able to say `I need package b to be able to use package a' it can become `I need file /usr/lib/libfoo.so.3.14 to be able to use package a' and then you'll have to find some way to scan all packages to see which ones include that file, and then you're not even sure if they have the right version of that file..

5) Slow release cycle
by Stephen
To my mind, the main problem that Debian has to sort out is its release cycle. It's one thing to have a well-tested distribution by the time it's released, but it's going too far to have packages a year or more out of date still in the current release. What steps are being taken to address this? Or is there an expectation that everyone is happy to use unstable?

Wichert:
The slow release cycle is indeed something we don't like and would like to change. There have been plenty of discussions on possible new approaches, and good proposals have been made. Unfortunately, changing the release process is difficult.

The most popular idea is a new approach we call package pools. Instead of dividing all available packages into distributions like we do now, we put them in a single big pool. Then we create a database with information about all available packages and use that for distributions.

A distribution will then be nothing more then a Packages-file which lists the packages in the distribution. This means that we don't need to do things like move packages physically from one distribution to another or maintain a forest of symlinks; all that is necessary is to create a new Packages-file. This makes it possible to create more distributions and play with new release systems.

The only thing we would need to do is determine how the list of packages for a distribution is selected. We could use it to keep stable and unstable distributions like we have now, but we can also create new distributions such as a reasonably-stable or even things like stable-with-new-X or stable-with-new-kernel, etc. Basically it gives us a lot of possiblities to create and manage distributions, which should result in shorter and more regular release cycles.

Implementing this will take time, and we want to do something for the near future as well. What we plan to do for potato once it is released is create update-packs on a regular basis. An update-pack is a set of packages that you can install on top of stable and extend or upgrade it in some way. Examples could be a Y2K pack, a GNOME pack or a KDE pack.

6) Debian GNU/FreeBSD
by ajs
I was looking over the info on the attempt to integrate FreeBSD's kernel, and was shocked to find that the people doing it were using BSD libc! Since glibc was designed with a certain amount of portability in mind, why not port glibc to FreeBSD's kernel? This would seem to be to make the overall port MUCH easier, as the rest of the Debian code should be far simpler to port to a different kernel platform, but the same libc...

Wichert:
The current idea seems to be to build a small system with the FreeBSD kernel and system utilities, and use the Linux compatibility support to run the already existing Linux userland. With this approach you don't have to work on most of the packages at all, which makes things a lot simpler. The effort is still in the beginning stages though, so things might change at some point.

7) Debian bureaucracy
by Big Dave Diode
I've been using Debian for a long time now, and I'd like to contribute back to the project. However, I've been put off by what looks to me like excessive bureaucracy and some infighting among Debian developers. Are there any plans to streamline the process to become a developer/maintainer, and the developer contribution process itself? What about fostering a more civil peer review process?

Wichert:
I won't argue that Debian has no problems at all. We have rapidly grown (100 people in 1995, 200 in 1997, and 500 now) from a small group of people to a big project. That growth has indeed forced us to establish some rules and set some guidelines. Where Debian started out with a single mailing list we now have over 50 mailing lists, a couple of teams with dedicated functions, a constitution, and policy guidelines.

This may sound excessive, but it's not as bad as it sounds. 99% of all decisions are announced and discussed on lists such as Debian-devel and Debian-project, and everybody is free to contribute to the discussion. Since all lists are public, you will also see people arguing a lot, and emotions can get heated at times, but I wouldn't call that infighting.

The new-maintainer process will indeed be revised. We have a proposal for a new process that will hopefully reduce the load for the new-maintainer team and also help new maintainers. I hope that we'll start using that soon. When we do, we will announce it on the Debian-announce list.

A lot of this is a learning process for everyone involved. How do you handle growing from a small group where everbody knows each other to a large group where you only know a couple of people? How do you assure that everybody is working together and no conflicts arise? How do you handle managing the necessary resources? How do you handle relations with companies? All very real issues, and we are learning at every of the road. A very interesting road, I might add.

8) Debian and Pentiums
by MoNsTeR
Is the Debian project planning, at any point, to create a Pentium-optimized release?

Wichert:
No. Some people have stated an interest in recompiling Debian with Pentium optimization (there are even some scripts to automate that). However we feel it doesn't make much sense for a couple of reasons:

• if you compile something with Pentium-optimization it will be faster on an Intel Pentium, and (possibly much) slower all other chips (ie AMD chips, other versions of Pentiums, etc) or simply not work at all (on 486s for example). This means that only a small group of people will benefit.
• it doesn't really help you: if you look at benchmarks you will see that only a relatively small number of programs benefit from this. So you do a whole lot of extra work and gain very little.
• If you are that crazy for speed you probably want to look for either a faster system or a different architecture. Debian has been released for the alpha,for example, which gives you a fast 64-bit architecture. Or you can try powerpc or ultrasparc.

9) Debian lite
(also by MoNsTeR)
Is the Debian project planning, at any point, to create something like a Debian-lite, that includes only a core of packages such as commonly used libraries, X, popular user agents such as mutt, lftp, and lynx, essential and popular server daemons like sendmail, yp[stuff], nfs, and apache...? Basically, a distro of similar size to the more popular distros that fit easily onto one CD.

Wichert:
Yes. This closely ties in with the archive changes I mentioned earlier: with the current system it is hard to create a subset of the distribution since you will essentialy have to create a tree of symlinks into the full distribution, and managing all those symlinks is a difficult problem. Using the package pools all we would need to do is create a set of guidelines for what should be in Debian-lite and the system will build it automatically.

10) Core
by Anonymous Coward
What do you feel about Corel Linux, Stormix, and other Debian-based distributions? Do you think Debian may eventually form a common core or base OS that others build distributions on top of?

Wichert:
I'm quite happy with all the Debian-based distributions. For both sides it is an unusual situation: the people basing their system on Debian can start off with a complete distribution and they don't have to worry about maintaining that, and can focus and their specific goals. Most of the derivates also release all their changes, which means we get a lot of bugfixes and new things such as graphical installers, management tools, etc. We can use those to improve Debian again, and the cycle is round.

You could call Debian the common core on which Corel Linux, Stormix and others are based in much the same way Red Hat is the common core of Mandrake and others. Some people have mentioned it might be a good idea to use the Debian base-system as a common core for the LSB. Since Debian is a community effort this does make some sense since it means nobody will have complete control of it. If that is the best approach, or if others (or even the LSB) will accept such a situation is something I'm not sure of. We will have to see what happens.

----------

Next week's interview: Curtis Chong, Director of Technology for the National Federation of the Blind, discusses computer and Internet disability issues.

Wichert Akkerman, our interview guest this week, describes himself: "I'm a simple MSc Computer Science student who likes to work on Linux projects. I have been the Debian Project leader since February and that has taken most of my time. Debian is a project to produce a completely free operating system and as such we currently have a GNU/Linux distribution and are working on GNU/HURD as well." So ask away. One question per post, please. Moderators & assorted others will select the 10 - 15 questions we forward to Wichert Tuesday afternoon. His answers will appear Friday.

This week Bruce Perens ^[?] learned the hard way that Open Source development has become a popular spectator sport. Or, as I described it a few days earlier, a performing art. Like it or not, things are changing with Open Source development, with the Internet, with the way online news is gathered and spread, and with Slashdot. More ->

If you didn't read (or don't feel like going to) the story linked to above about Bruce's little foot-in-mouth moment, I'll summarize it for you: After getting (IMO justifiably) frustrated over some terms in the license for Corel's new Debian-based Linux distribution and Corel's refusal to change them, Bruce posted a little note on the debian-legal discussion list that said, in part, "It's time for us to bring suit against Corel for this 'can't download unless you're 18' stuff. That's not in our license and they know it."

Almost immediately, a Slashdot reader submitted Bruce's comment to us, and Hemos ran it as a story as soon as he checked to make sure that yes, Bruce had really written that comment. The Slashdot story got over 300 remarks added to it within two hours of its initial appearance, many of which said that Bruce had over-reacted to Corel's licensing intransigence, and many more which lambasted Slashdot generally, and Hemos personally, for having posted a "private" message on Slashdot without getting Bruce's permission in advance.

Bruce was an active participant in the Slashdot discussion that followed Hemos's post and, in the end, backed down his original "we oughta sue" statement. Hemos apologized for the post. And the comments kept on coming, because that's the nature of Slashdot.

There was also some e-mail exchanged between Bruce, CmdrTaco, Hemos, and myself. It was not vituperative. We all like and respect each other. Bruce has my home phone number, and I have his (somewhere). But that e-mail exchange led to this article, because this entire incident, and the way it got blown out of proportion, is a prime example of changes in the nature of online discussion, Open Source development, and Slashdot's role in it all.

Coincidentally - it had been scheduled to run for over a week - yesterday we had an Ask Slashdot piece about the demise of old-fashioned, local dialup Bulletin Boards. There was a lot of nostalgia expressed for the days when your "online community" was 20 or 30 people who all lived near you, and you could all get together now and then for a soda or a beer or whatever. There were no Anonymous Cowards in that kind of environment. Sure, people used screen names like "BBBopper," but if you were a member of the community, you knew that BBBopper's real name was "Bernard," where he lived, and where he worked.

I miss those days, and I'm sure Bruce does too. You could say damn near anything on your freewheeling local BBS, and if you *really* put your foot in your mouth you could either delete your comment or ask your friendly sysop to delete it for you. But it didn't really matter. The chances of a vituperative neighbor or a reporter for the local newspaper reading your post were virtually nil, and even if they were reading, so what? Back then, hardly anyone paid attention to the few weirdos who spent their nights dialing into each others computers.

Fast-forward to now: there are days when Slashdot does well over one million pageviews. Reporters from The Wall Street Journal (Hi Lee!), CNN (Hi, Ian!) and even Al Gore campaign staffers (Hi, Ben!), read Slashdot regularly. Stories that break here are often picked up by general-interest media or serve as inspiration (we say politely) for their own reporting. And Slashdot readers obviously subscribe to discussions like debian-legal, so the distance between a hasty mailing list post and the front page of a national newspaper can be as little as two clicks.

Calling your favorite mailing list "private" or "obscure" does not make it so. If any idiot who has a valid e-mail address can subscribe to it, it is not private. As for obscurity, that depends on the poster. An offhand comment made by Al Average is unlikely to make it into either Slashdot or the Wall Street Journal no matter where it originally appears. A comment by Bruce Perens or Richard M. Stallman or Steve Ballmer or Linus Torvalds or Larry Ellison or anyone else perceived to have "weight" in software development matters is another story. These people are celebrities, at least to Slashdot readers, so their words are going to be taken seriously, analyzed, and quoted, requoted, and even possibly misquoted as heavily as news of Cher's latest love affair will be discussed in the movie gossip tabloids.

In this "celebrity" context, there are two main differences between Bruce Perens and Cher:

• 1 - At least one billion people have heard of Cher, while only a few million (at most) have ever heard of Bruce Perens.
• 2 - Bruce Perens is more important than Cher, especially to Slashdot readers.

Despite her greater popularity, in the overall scheme of things Cher's "boy toy" adventures are inconsequential. But when Bruce advocates a lawsuit against Corel for violating the GPL, even if he rapidly recants, he's effectively putting any investment Corel has in Linux at risk. Just the thought of a threat of a suit can make investors leery of putting money into Linux-based ventures, because all this GPL and Open Source stuff is still alien territory to most "mainstream" stock market and other investment players. Whether or not a suit is justified or even possible, the idea that one could be brought is sure to be discussed by bigwigs at IBM, Red Hat, Oracle, Sun, and many other companies that have staked all or part of their future on Linux.

A better comparison than Bruce:Cher is Bruce:Alan Greenspan. If Alan Greenspan goes out to eat and tips a waiter 20% and makes a lame (but overheard) joke about waiters demanding higher tips because of the booming economy, two dozen financial pundits will immediately try to figure out if Greenspan is planning to raise interest rates, and the stock market is sure to blip one way or another in response to the "news" of Greenspan's "statement."

Like it or not, if Alan Greenspan makes his remark in a public place it is fair media game. As long as he is quoted accurately, there is nothing he can do about the appearance of his offhand sentence in newspapers and as discussion fodder on talking-head TV shows. Bruce Perens is nowhere near as influential as Alan Greenspan, but within the confines of the Open Source/free software community, his words may have more impact on investment behavior and are, therefore, more important to Slashdot readers who hold shares in Red Hat and other companies that live and die by Open Source software.

I growled a little at Hemos for later adding a "Maybe I shouldn't have posted it" apology to his piece about Bruce's comment. It was an amicable growl; we work together as a tight team around here, and we all accept the fact that each Slashdot author and editor is an individual with his own point of view. But I don't (personally) believe we should ever apologize for running legitimate news, including speculations made in public forums by Open Source celebrities. And Bruce Perens is not only a legitimate public figure in the Open Source context, but is one largely because of his own actions. Bruce is not a reticent person. He has requested Slashdot coverage of his pet projects many times, and often as not he's gotten it. This time, he got coverage when he neither requested nor desired it, and was unhappy at the kind of attention focused on him.

I called this little essay "The Spotlight is a Harsh Mistress" because (RAH reference aside) this statement sums up my main point here: that once you open a press floodgate everything passes through it, not just what you want. And the piece I wrote earlier this week about Open Source and free software developers becoming more like stage performers than reclusive poets was as much of a cautionary tale as anything else. Yes, there are adoring Open Source fans out there, but those fans are as fickle -- and demanding -- as any other kind of fans, and when you have the combination of celebrities and devout fans, paparazzi lurking in the bushes are almost inevitable.

Slashdot is not exactly in the paparazzi category (I like to think) but we are certainly a prime source not only of Open Source and free software development news, but also of community gossip. What "we" post officially is far less than 10% of the site's total content. The rest is uncensored remarks by readers. While you can choose to only read posts other readers (moderators) decide are worthwhile, you always have the option of reading Slashdot in all of its fierce, chaotic glory simply by setting your threshold to -1. (Our boss, CmdrTaco, absolutely insists on this "no censorship ever" policy and we all back him up fiercely on this one!)

Even if you are not logged in as a registered member, you can set the moderation threshold on each individual article as you read it. My personal Slashdot reading preference is a setting of -1, with comments nested instead of threaded. And, believe it or not, I read almost every comment attached to almost every Slashdot article almost every day. There are suprising gems (and some great humor) buried in the mass if you take the trouble to look for them.

Is Slashdot going downhill? Probably, in some ways. It's not the cozy little Web site I discovered several years ago, when it was new and crude and 30 comments on an article was big-time. But by that same standard both the Internet and Usenet have been going downhill almost since day one. First the original Unix heavies grumbled about letting the non-CS (but still research) people in. Then all the researchers grumbled about letting the students in, and how they polluted discussion groups with trivial conversation and dirty jokes and filled up mail servers with stupid chain letters. Then the unwashed mass of Prodigy people hit, over one million strong, and irritated everyone who was already on the Internet, and then they complained about all the "clueless AOLers" who followed them.

But newbies don't stay newbies forever, either on the Internet in general or here on Slashdot. Two or three years from now, I assure you, some of the same AC kiddies who are now going "Whoo! First Post!" will become settled members of "the community" and will grumble about the next Slashdot newbie generation's silly games, whatever they turn out to be.

And two or three years from now Bruce Perens will be a dignified Elder Statesman of the burgeoning, ever-growing Open Source and free software community, and he will be aghast at some of the things that less media-worn people say in forums they considered private but really weren't, and the whole circle will continue to grow, with new, fresh faces always coming on board -- and some of the old ones departing for one reason or another.

Perhaps, too, we'll see the advent of more "members only" forums with strict privacy restrictions, somewhat like the old private BBS operations, and those will be where "online celebrities" hang out and let down their hair with one another, just as some film celebs only feel comfortable at private parties guarded by thuglike doormen who keep out anyone who isn't on a tightly-controlled guest list.

But I would personally rather see total openness, here on Slashdot and in as many other places as possible. Sure, mistakes will be made. You'll make some, Bruce Perens will make some, and I'm sure I'll make (more than) my fair share as well. To me, this is the point of Slashdot; to level the playing field and treat all comers exactly the same, on both their good days and their bad days; to provide a well-lit, well-known "space" where both silly and serious debates can take place, opinions can be aired and debunked, and even (once in a while) a mind or two can be changed.

ac writes "It seems that Corel has made one mistake too many. Bruce Perens ^[?] is calling for a lawsuit against Corel on the behalf of Debian. The text of his message follows and should appear here soon. " Wow - check out the recent story regarding the 18 and older EULA. Update by RM: Bruce later backed off on the lawsuit threat. He reads Slashdot comments and takes them seriously, and he's a good dude at heart, okay?Update: 11/26 08:53 by H :And for all the people e-mailing me, mea culpa. Shoulda checked.

To: debian-legal@lists.debian.org
Subject: Corel Lawsuit
Date: Fri, 26 Nov 1999 10:09:00 -0800 (PST)
From: bruce@perens.com (Bruce Perens)
Message-Id:

It's time for us to bring suit against Corel for this "can't download unless you're 18" stuff. That's not in our license and they know it. I've tried to help them several times, and they continue to be 100% clueless. I think at this point they are not representing Debian well, and should not distribute it. I'm not going to help them any longer.

Bruce Perens

antigen fiend wrote in to note that Debian Weekly News has a bit about a recent debate about a Debian port to the FreeBSD Kernel. There are several comments relating to licensing, ease of porting, and other relevant topics. Its definitely an interesting project, with a lot of political and technical snags. Any thoughts?

An anonymous reader wrote in to alert us to that fact that Debian is scheduled to Freeze this weekend. Soon there shall be spuds for everyone. This of course means that I will continue to recklessly apt-get upgrade on my laptop with reckless disregard for the safety of anyone within a 20 yard radius of my sofa.

Anonymous Coward writes "According to this News.com article. VA Linux Systems, O'Reilly and Associates, and SGI. Will be co-sponsoring a retail box version of Debian GNU/Linux. In addition VA will be helping to setup toll free technical support for Debian."

terrified writes "According to the Debian Weekly News, Debian evangelist Bruce Perens has talked to Corel and they said it would be fixed. Here's the relevant text: "Corel has started a closed beta test of their Corel Linux distribution. Unfortunatly, they did so under a very restrictive license, that violates the GPL in several respects. The good news is that Bruce Perens has already contected Corel and we're promised that this will be fixed." I'm not sure about how they plan to "fix" it - isn't that a relatively easy thing to do, in light of the GPL nature of the code? The Debian Weekly News is available here. The text of the message Bruce sent to the Debian-User group is here. "

terrified writes "According to the Debian Weekly News, Debian evangelist Bruce Perens has talked to Corel and they said it would be fixed. Here's the relevant text: "Corel has started a closed beta test of their Corel Linux distribution. Unfortunatly, they did so under a very restrictive license, that violates the GPL in several respects. The good news is that Bruce Perens has already contected Corel and we're promised that this will be fixed." I'm not sure about how they plan to "fix" it - isn't that a relatively easy thing to do, in light of the GPL nature of the code? The Debian Weekly News is available here. The text of the message Bruce sent to the Debian-User group is here. "

This week's interview victim ... er, guest ... is Havoc Pennington of Debian and Gnome fame. He's one of the world's most stalwart open source developers, and has recently written a book called GTK+/Gnome Application Development. Please post your questions below. Assorted Slashdot moderators, editors, and hangers-on will select 10 - 15 questions and forward them to Havoc via e-mail Tuesday. Per usual, the complete Q&A session will appear Friday.

Bun writes "It looks like one of the foundations of the Internet may no longer be truly "Open Source". Apparently, the license restrictions on BIND 8.2 do not meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG). Check out the Linux Weekly News for details. "

Having finally flown back home, recovered from the gain/loss of sleep, time zones, and of course, the obligatory luggage being lost, we're trying to wrap-up the latest installment of LinuxWorld. If you are interested in some commentary and stories coming out of LWCE, click below. The big issue of LWCE was something that didn't occur even in the same state as the show. The Red Hat IPO, complete with lotsa confusion and news went up, and showed that, yes, Wall Street is interested in Linux.

One of the more interesting commentaries brought up the newest Linux Spokesperson-Casper Weinberger. Yes, the former Secretary of Defense is an Open Source guy. Strange. It also brings up the living penguins that were on the show floor. I dunno-it still seems to me that live animals on a show floor has to be tantamount of animal abuse, under some sort of law.

A number of good interviews came out of the show - one with RMS where he talks about the whole GNU/Linux thing, Communism. The interview is done in the inimitable Stallman style, so...be warned. *grin* In a parellel vein, ESR talked with ZD, foretelling amongst other things, the downfall of Microsoft and FUD issues. MSNBC did a nice story on Gnome, giving it some of the props needed. The KDE folks were also at the shows, with some nice displays at their screen in the booth.

We spent almost every waking moment in the .Org pavilion, a scary sort of place with furniture with no back support, and lots of people wandering through. Included amongst these people was no less then three documentary film crews. I think two+ is a sign that a movement has reached commericial mainstream. So, uh, congrats to....someone.

Some great picture shots came in - thanks, as always, to Marc Merlins' wrap-up complete with some good shots. Marc's, as always, is incredible comprehensive. Read it. If you want some shots of .Org pavilion, the Slashdot party (Woo-hoo! Good beer! *grin* ), check out Joey Hess' page. HUGE # of pictures, and still more going up.

The show was fun. Lotsa people who we don't get to see, except at the conventions. The commericial element was stronger then at the last show, but I think it was evident that the companies attending understood that they at least needed to give a nod to the feelings of the Community. This being the 2nd round of a show this size, I think the initial glamour of "Woo! Big Show!" is wearing off, and people are getting to work at these. It makes things a little less glamourous, but what the attendees/exhibitors of the show did see is that Linux is something to be taken seriously. Every major media outlet had people there, warndering the floor, and media like CNN ran pieces about it during the show. With the first IPO under its' belt, the establishment of several major shows, and major vendors established on the scene, I think Linux continued success looks good.

El Jefe writes "Just saw on the Debian news site that a new debian book is coming out, including a CD. The whole thing will be GPL'd, btw. "

I'm sure a lot of you knew it was coming. The steady stream of emails asking "When is Slashdot gonna IPO" and messages from VCs pretty well proves that you guys knew it as well as I did. Well the cost and overhead of running Slashdot independently finally began to overwhelm us. After much deliberation and careful analysis, we're excited to announce that we've been acquired by Andover.net. Read more to learn what this means. Why did you do this?

Slashdot keeps growing. The overhead and costs associated with running this beast has become astronomical. Hemos and I work marathon weeks, and there still isn't enough time to get everything done. There are always banner ads needing selling, stories needing posting, perl needing hacking, and readers with questions needing answering. Besides that, our single channel ISDN connection is awfully saturated, and the "Business" work of running this website is beginning to be nearly as much work as the "Website" part of the site.

We had 2 options: get cash from some investors and hire a staff, or or find a company that we felt understood what we wanted to accomplish here, and use their money to hire help.

Hiring our own staff would mean hiring suits and marketing people. We decided that simply being acquried would allow someone else to worry about the suits and marketroids- we would simply benefit from their existing business infrastructure, and we could concentrate on what we already know how to do: Run a website.

What do we intend to do? Well for starters we'll be able to pay several of the guys who have been volunteering their time for so long. Plus, we'll be able to hire people to help sell banner ads, and the administer the servers, and maybe to debug code. Basically, a support staff so that Hemos and I can simplify our lives, and Slashdot won't have to depend on us 24/7. And we have new things that we want to do on Slashdot, so offloading tasks from me will us to focus on other things that we want to do around here.

We'll start doing things like content mirroring. We'll have more servers, and hopefully soon servers will pop up on each coast. And we'll be able to have experts help pull it all together. The end result will be a faster, more stable Slashdot.

Why Andover?

We talked to several companies: Some that you've heard of, and some that you haven't. We were looking for a company that would guarantee us complete and total creative control, but provide us the financial resources necessary to expand Slashdot in the way we consider best "right". And whoever became involved, they had to be "Outside" the linux/open source world to a certain degree: we didn't want anyone to think that a company might buy us simply to gain an advantage in the story select.

Andover is good for that- they aren't a "Linux" company - they run Linux, and they read Slashdot, but they don't sell a distribution, or Linux boxes, or anything related to Linux . In fact, we've only mentioned them on Slashdot a couple of times in the past.

Best of all- they're smart guys. They understand what Slashdot is, and they respect that they can't change it without destroying what it is. So they are happy to guarantee (it's even in the contract!) that Hemos and I would retain full control of the site, while taking advantage of their business resources to take care of that icky part of running this monster. To guarantee that, I've also been appointed to the Andover.Net board. (I'm still not sure if I'm supposed to wear a tie)

What is Andover

A Media Company. An internet company. They run websites. Sorta like Earthweb or Internet.com. All of their existing sites are done essentially in-house. They have several sharp hacks over there and I'm looking forward to working with them. They also have top notch guys-with-ties, and a real keen grasp of where things are going in this business.

Conclusion I couldn't be more excited about this. I finally will have the ability to expand Slashdot the way I want to. I'll have the ability to pay people that have been volunteering hundreds of hours of time to help. And I have complete control over Slashdot's future, without the financial burden that has been growing over the last year. This couldn't be better for Slashdot, and I hope I haven't offended anywone to bad. We fundamentally will not change anything, we'll just have a better infrastructure to do what we've always done.

The final cool part of this is that I get to say thanks to you guys. Most of what we're getting is a piece of Andover.Net. And after I pay off my student loans and Hemos pays off his credit cards, we want to make sizable donations to some causes that we think are important. This seems like the best way for us to give back to the community that made us successful.

• The Free Software Foundation - How can we not give back to them for making so much cool stuff possible.
• Debian - I love Debian. I just want to make sure that they keep going strong. Debian's success is critical to the future of Linux. Besides, I wanna make sure that my apt-get command gets the newest version of everything cool.
• Project Gutenberg - Keeping books online and making them available to the world is important.
• The Macatawa Area Community Network - They give free network access to our hometown. They were the original home of Slashdot- and they let us keep it there for several months even when we were saturating their T1 every afternoon.
• Hope College - We both graduated and we want to set up a scholarship or something there. I want it to be for a "Hot Chick Going into CompSci" but we'll have to see if they'll let me do that...
• Foresight Institute - So hemos is obsessed with nanotech. He wants to give them money in exchange for a campbell's soup can of nanites He's wierd, but hey.

We're happy about this, but I know not all of you will be. To those of you who think I'm wrong, I'm sorry. I really believe that this will allow me to make Slashdot into something even better then it is today, without sacrificing what it already is. Its been a crazy ride so far, and now its only going to get crazier.

If you want to contact jeff or I, you can email malda@slashdot.org or hemos@slashdot.org. We'll try to respond, but I suspect we're going to get flooded, so be patient.

Update: 06/29 02:12 by CT : Just FWIW, this has no effect on the Slash source code release. It will still be released whenever I have time to work on it. In fact, hopefully now since I'll have some help around here with the sysadmin stuff, I'll be able to focus on it some more...

After many months of discussion and flaming, Debian has chosen a new logo. The new "swirl" graphic can be seen here, and the results of the vote are here.

After many months of discussion and flaming, Debian has chosen a new logo. The new "swirl" graphic can be seen here, and the results of the vote are here.

Bryan Andersen asks: "I'm looking for information on securing web servers against hacking. In particular, I'm interested in securing Apache on Debian Linux and OpenBSD, but discussion on other server/OS combinations are welcome. Links to sites with good information would be greatly appreciated."

Rather than spending all week posting lots of little bits about Linux Expo, I've saved them up for now: Russ Nelson sent us a collection of pictures, Brian Smith sent us his, and our own Justin sent us his collection and a mirror, and nicedream sent us a collection of pictures from the Debian boys. (featuring many light saber battles and nerf wars from the Slashdot booth) Marc Merlin sent us linkage to a scan of the linuxcare poster that Red Hat got so cranky about. He has a full report on the show. An anonymous reader sent us a TechSitings Story, Jonas Öberg wrote in to send us Telsa (Alan Cox's wife) take on the show for something a bit lighter.

Martin Bialasinski wrote in to send us a press release from Corel which says that future their Linux upcoming Distribution will be based on Debian (Yay!) and KDE.

weink writes "Debian is in the process of getting their logo in order. The vote will take place in about a week. After the logo contest at GIMP, here are the options. " I am so happy that I have my Debian box running again. apt is so good for lazy sysadmins. Oh, and I vote for Raul's design. Super smooth.

Helmholtz writes "I just got done reading a very interesting article about Debian and Clueless Users that appeared on the Debian Weekly News site. I think this article would be a very good thing for users of all distributions to read, as it touches upon what might become a very real problem. Now that the word "Linux" has been splashed around by such 'heavyweights' as CNN and NPR, everyone who want to be seen as a 'cool computer guy' is trying to get Linux up. This of course is done without any heed to the absolute requirement that some Documentation-reading. And then these same people get angry when they try to install Linux and it doesn't 'just run'. I'm not try to harass anyone new to Linux, but I really think that it isn't emphasized enough that Linux is great because it requires some learning to occur. This is a concept that the Debian article holds at its core, I believe. "

Helmholtz writes "I just got done reading a very interesting article about Debian and Clueless Users that appeared on the Debian Weekly News site. I think this article would be a very good thing for users of all distributions to read, as it touches upon what might become a very real problem. Now that the word "Linux" has been splashed around by such 'heavyweights' as CNN and NPR, everyone who want to be seen as a 'cool computer guy' is trying to get Linux up. This of course is done without any heed to the absolute requirement that some Documentation-reading. And then these same people get angry when they try to install Linux and it doesn't 'just run'. I'm not try to harass anyone new to Linux, but I really think that it isn't emphasized enough that Linux is great because it requires some learning to occur. This is a concept that the Debian article holds at its core, I believe. "

Fernando Perez writes "A new Linux distribution called BeroLinux is out. It's RedHat 5.2 based and seems to have been put together by a single guy." It notably includes kernel 2.2, GNOME, KDE, and Pentium+K6 optimized binary. Secondly, fellow Debian developer Adam Heath (doogie) wrote in with something I'm surprised hasn't been posted yet: Matrox has released G200 specs. Next off, Alan Cox throws us a hat trick. Staring with ac1: For those of you who remember the Echelon articles from awhile back, you can take a "UK ballon trip of a lifetime" over the NSA's listening post in Menwith Hill. ac2: A linux-kernel post where you can read about HP working on a port of Linux to the Merced. ac3: Before Alan worked with Linus, he worked with a man who wrote an entire Unix clone for himself. He's released the source at the website, and has named it, appropriatley enough, OMU (One Man Unix). Finally, for those of you in the DC Metro Area, NOVALUG will be meeting tomorrow morning at 10AM in the Lee Center (check the website for more information).

Anonymous Coward writes "Slink's release has been delayed one week due to a problem with dpkg. Dpkg can fail when the locale is set to a non-default setting. Here's the news release. " Those nice guys over at Debian are actually right next to us in Boothland. Anyway, they're saying that they just want to be sure about upgrading, and working with folks with laptops. Alright, all of you who keep e-mailing me-I know this was annouced before. But I figured we'd do something for the Debian guys, and assure everyone it's not a big deal, and the reasons.

At 00:00:00AM UTC, (7PM EST, and 4PM PST for you lucky bastards at LWCE) Debian will release Debian 2.1, codenamed "Slink". Slink has been frozen for four months, and was almost skipped. Right now, we are celebrating the release on irc.openprojects.net, #debian. Last time we had over 300 people in one channel, and had an incredible amount of fun. Order CDs and check out the party HQ at netgod.net. Be there or be square! Update: 03/02 06:47 by J : Looks as though the release has been delayed another week. An announcement should be on the web site soon.

At 00:00:00AM UTC, (7PM EST, and 4PM PST for you lucky bastards at LWCE) Debian will release Debian 2.1, codenamed "Slink". Slink has been frozen for four months, and was almost skipped. Right now, we are celebrating the release on irc.openprojects.net, #debian. Last time we had over 300 people in one channel, and had an incredible amount of fun. Order CDs and check out the party HQ at netgod.net. Be there or be square! Update: 03/02 06:47 by J : Looks as though the release has been delayed another week. An announcement should be on the web site soon.

Fellow Debian Developer, Jonathan Walther (aka SirDibos) asked me to post this. He has set up a document which explains the proper method for getting your PGP key signed. With Taco, Hemos, and others at LWCE, this is a great place to get your key signed. Read the document here. After the trojan scare awhile ago, people need to be aware of proper security techniques. DCLUG and NOVALUG will begin signing keys shortly, as well.