Debian

Raphaël Hertzog published a "People behind Debian" interview with Jörg Jaspert (FTPmaster, Debian Account Manager, and more), while Petter Reinholdtsen interviewed John Ingleby for his "Debian Edu interviews" series.

The year was 2006. The place: Oaxtepec, Mexico. The event: DebConf6. This is how the Publicity team was born, during a BoF titled "Representing Debian". And among others there were two Debian contributors (who later became Debian Developers) ... [More] , Alexander Schmehl and Meike Reichle. If you are a regular reader of Debian Project News, or a contributor to the Publicity Team, you'll surely recognize their names: they worked every day for the last six years to bring us news about the Debian world and to announce important changes inside the project. Alexander and Meike have now decided to step down from the Press and Publicity team and start another, different adventure. The Publicity Team would like to thank them for their tireless effort, their creativity and their inspiring work. So long, and thanks for all the news! [Less]

Peter Jansen, a cognitive science researcher, brought to life Spock's tricorder from the popular Star Trek television series. Peter, in fact, developed a handheld device able — thanks to its embedded sensors — to measure various environmental ... [More] parameters (link temperature, humidity, magnetic fields, etc.). The device runs Debian GNU/Linux on an ARM920T-based Atmel microcontroller: the hardware specifications and schematics, and the software are licensed respectively under TAPR non-commercial and GPL 3 and are available on the project website. [Less]

Luca Filipozzi wrote a report from the Debian System Administrators ("DSA") team's sprint held over the weekend of 16-18 March in Oslo, Norway. During the meeting the team discussed a long-term plan for Debian's infrastructure, reviewing the ... [More] machines currently administrated, and formulating procedures regarding account and group management. One of the main points discussed at the meeting was the necessity to renew the set of machines — which are now old and long out of warranty — and how to do it. While in the past Debian's hardware requirements were met by donations of new and used hardware from individuals and organizations, this is no longer true. The team elaborated a "Five Year Plan" for a hardware refresh cycle to avoid to having machines more than five years old. "A clear outcome of our work on the Five Year Plan is an understanding that hardware has now become one of the biggest expense categories for Debian", said Luca. Various machines are also needed in order to support the whole set of architectures for which Debian is shipped. For more information on how to donate equipment to the Debian Project, please contact the hardware donations team. The DSA sprint was made possible by donations to Debian and by Varnish Software who hosted it and provided food and drink. Thank you! [Less]

The Debian project announced that it is joining the "Open Source Initiative (OSI)" as an affiliate. The OSI was founded in 1998 with the aim of explaining, advocating, and protecting the term "open source". For many years now, the OSI has helped the "Open Source" trademark gain recognition, particularly in the corporate world.

Andreas Tille sent some bits from the Debian Med team, where he talked about recent initiatives of the team including the "Debian Med Bug Squashing Advent Calendar 2011" and the "Mentoring of the Month" (MoM) project. Andreas also reminded us that ... [More] in January the Debian Med project reached 10: in ten years, Debian Med has grown from a one man project to a "strong team maintaining a set of over 200 highly specialised packages with a high quality standard", as Andreas said in a related blogpost. The Debian Med project not only provides and maintains specialised packages for biology and medicine, but is — like other Debian Blends — "a nice entry point for people to join Debian because newcomers can identify themselves with a known topic (the scope of the Blend — in this case medicine and bioinformatics) first and learn Debian rules in a team with common interest", added Andreas in the mail. This idea was confirmed by the results of a survey focused on why Debian Med team members became Debian Developers. [Less]

The Debian Project is pleased to announce that it is joining the Open Source Initiative (OSI) as an affiliate. The OSI was founded in 1998 by Eric S. Raymond and Bruce Perens, with the aim of explaining, advocating, and protecting the term open ... [More] source. Debian shares the OSI's desire to encourage Free Software. Debian's Social Contract commits it to producing a system which is 100% free. [Less]

Stefano Zacchiroli sent his monthly report on DPL activities.

Enrico Zini announced the new website for the New Members process. The new site is the result of a major re-design of the backend database carried out at a recent meeting.

Raphaël Hertzog published a "People behind Debian" interview with Gregor Herrmann (member of the Perl team).