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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter 11 September 2006
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gentoo Weekly Newsletter
http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/current.xml
This is the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of 11 September 2006.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

==============
1. Gentoo news
==============

New Gentoo Council elected
--------------------------

The Gentoo Council[1] is the elected governing body of Gentoo and decides
on global issues and policies that affect multiple projects in Gentoo. It
also serves as an appeal court for disciplinary decisions. The Council
members are elected for a year and must hold monthly public meetings.

1. http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/

The new council for the coming year has been elected. The polls were open
for a one-month voting period, to allow all developers a chance to vote on
their elected representatives. The winners of this year's council vote are
as follows:

* Diego Pettenò (Flameeyes)
* Mike Doty (KingTaco)
* Danny van Dyk (Kugelfang)
* Bryan Østergaard (kloeri)
* Robin H. Johnson (robbat2)
* Mike Frysinger (vapier)
* Chris Gianelloni (wolf31o2)

Of the new council, only Mike Frysinger is returning for another tour. The
GWN staff wishes to congratulate all of the new council members and wishes
them a productive year.

Donation from Cloanto: Amiga Forever CD
---------------------------------------

This week, Gentoo received a donation of the Amiga Forever CD[2] from
Cloanto. The Amiga[3] is the family of personal computers developed
initially by Amiga Corporation and later by Commodore International. These
computers had great success due to their graphics and sound, which were
far ahead of their time. Therefore, Amiga received its nickname, the
ultimate games machine. These computers are in the past, but fortunately,
the power of modern PC hardware has made it possible to emulate Amiga
software and games. Gentoo provides two Amiga emulators app-emulation/uae
and app-emulation/e-uae. However, to make full use of these programs, one
must have access to an image of the Amiga Kickstart ROM. To properly
maintain these packages, access to the Amiga Kickstart ROM is required for
Gentoo developers.

2. http://amigaforever.com
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga

The Amiga Forever CD is the award-winning Amiga preservation, emulation,
and support package, made by Cloanto, Amiga developers since 1986. Cloanto
has made this CD available to all Gentoo developers to aid in the
maintenance of the Amiga emulation programs.

Gentoo would like to thank Cloanto for this generous donation.

Monolithic X no longer supported
--------------------------------

Developer Donnie Berkholz[4] wrote to the gentoo-dev mailing list about
the discontinuation of support for the monolithic X ebuilds. This means
there will be no more fixes added to the monolithic packages, including no
more security fixes. Package maintainers will begin removing dependencies
for the monolithic ebuilds from their packages. Donnie hopes to move the
monolithic X ebuilds into an overlay soon.

4. dberkholz@gentoo.org

Users still using the old monolithic ebuilds should upgrade to modular X
using the Migrating to Modular X HOWTO[5] instructions.

5. http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/x/x11/modular-x-howto.xml

========================
2. Developer of the week
========================

"Gentoo, it's what all the cool kids are doing." -Joshua Nichols
----------------------------------------------------------------

Figure 2.1: Joshua Nichols, aka nichoj
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20060911_nichoj.jpg

Developer Joshua Nichols, aka nichoj, resides in Boston, MA - known for
their baked beans and tea parties... OK, one in particular. He graduated
last spring from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a dual degree in
Computer Science and Psychology. At 23, Josh shares an apartment with
three friends and one phantom roommate. They have no pets, but Josh
considers himself a dog lover and hopes to have a German Shepard when he
has more time and a bigger place.

Josh works for Banta Corporation, a print and supply chain management
company, not that anyone knows what that means. His office develops web
applications, both internal and external. Josh works with a team
developing modular web applications, primarily with Java and J2EE (like
Eclipse, Tomcat, Spring, JDO, web services, etc).

Nichoj claims some fairly canon interests as far as geekery goes. He
enjoys reading, mostly sci-fi and fantasy, and some occassional technical
reference, for a bit of light reading. He also really enjoys watching
Adult Swim, but don't we all? When Josh manages to get out of the house,
it may be for some rollerblading or hackey sack, but will inadvertently
end up like many Boston festivities... having a few drinks with friends at
one of the many Boston drinking establishments.

Josh started using Gentoo back in his freshmen year at college. He had
been a Linux user for years but found that hand configuring things quickly
became hard to maintain and discovered that using Gentoo helped him
maintain his computer the way he wanted. About a year ago, Josh decided
that he wanted to be more involved with open source software. He started
attending the LUG's, actively reporting bugs, and helping people on IRC.
He was becoming rather proficient with Java, and was quickly recruited by
karltk. Josh's current role with Gentoo is one that he rather enjoys, as
the Java Project Lead.

Perhaps the Gentoo achievement Josh is most proud of is his contribution
to the new Java system, which was released a few months ago. While it was
mostly developed by the time Josh joined the team, they did quickly
realize that all of their 400+ Java packages would have to be updated.
Josh is very proud to have contributed to the planning and execution, as
well as working through the inevitable rough edges upon rolling it to the
~arch masses. Of noteworthy mention, Josh received his first 'hate mail'
while working on this project; he must have been doing something right.
;-)

Josh's primary desktop is an AMD64 box, sporting an X2 4400+, 4GB of RAM,
and a 7800GT connected to a 24" LCD. He also has two Dell x86 laptops, an
Athlon XP file server, and a G5 desktop for some PPC goodness. His first
apps launched? Compiz and CGWD of course, shortly followed by GAIM,
Firefox, and Thunderbird.

Josh's parting words were that of wisdom: "It may be obvious, but you
should enjoy what you do. This can be both applied to work within open
source projects or with a job. If you're doing something you can't enjoy,
or even worse, hate, well, that's bad mmmkay. It'll make your hair grey
prematurely, and you might even poke your own eyes out in frustration. I
don't know about you, but I like having both eyes. But seriously, I feel
fortunate to be able to thoroughly enjoy both my work for Gentoo and my day
job."

=========================
3. Heard in the community
=========================

forums
------

A graphical program for creating ebuilds

A suggestion to create a graphical program, an IDE of sorts for the
purpose of creating ebuilds has been proposed on the forums. Those in
favor claim that a program could substantially reduce the effort in
writing ebuilds from scratch, as it will ask the user for the information
required. Those against the idea cite that the complexity of options in
ebuilds would make such a program impossible to create without limiting
the options or providing an ill-thought out interface. Whether you support
the idea or not, this is not the first time such a program has been
proposed. Efforts in the past were made by Pythonhead, a Gentoo developer,
in the now stagnant Abeni package.

* https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-496403.html
* http://abeni.sourceforge.net/

=======================
4. Gentoo International
=======================

Australia: Software Freedom Day, Canberra
-----------------------------------------

Canberra Software Freedom Day[6], on the 9th of September, was an event
talking about software freedom, encouraging people to give Linux a go and
handing out Gentoo, Ubuntu[7], and TheOpenCD[8]. After the event, 48
people have a new Gentoo Linux 2006.1 x86 LiveCD, and 23 have a 2006.1
amd64 LiveCD.

6. http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/
7. http://www.ubuntu.com/
8. http://www.theopencd.org/

Figure 4.1: The Software Freedom Day team
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20060911_sfd.jpg

Note: Left to Right: Rainer Klein, Neill Cox, Daniel Black (dragonheart),
Brian Bishop, Pascal Klein, David Symons, and Evan Leybourn -- Missing:
Steve Walsh, Troy Newell

All participants had a lot of fun meeting interesting people watching the
Elephants Dream[9] production. People were interested in alternatives to
avoid spyware/viruses, making their old PC hardware useful again as
backup/storage servers and making old laptops usable again.

9. http://orange.blender.org/

======================
5. Gentoo in the press
======================

LinuxPlanet (7 Sep)
-------------------

This week, LinuxPlanet covers Sectoo[10], a security-focused distribution
based on Gentoo Linux. Sectoo is a LiveCD-based distribution designed to
aid in penetration testing, and also to be a useful toolbox for network
administrators interested in securing their own networks.

10. http://www.sectoo.org/

* Sectoo--A Live Look at Gentoo[11]
11. http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/6307/1/


=========================
6. Gentoo developer moves
=========================

Moves
-----

The following developers recently left the Gentoo project:

* none this week

Adds
----

The following developers recently joined the Gentoo project:

* Javier Villavicencio (The_Paya) Gentoo/FreeBSD
* Mike Kelly (pioto) creandus/GLEP27/vim
* Vlastimil Babka (Caster) Java

Changes
-------

The following developers recently changed roles within the Gentoo project:

* Krzysiek Pawlik (nelchael) joined PPC/Java
* Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto (jmbsvicetto) joined UserRel

==================
7. Gentoo security
==================

Streamripper: Multiple remote buffer overflows
----------------------------------------------

Streamripper is vulnerable to multiple remote buffer overflows, leading to
the execution of arbitrary code.

For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[12]

12. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200609-01.xml

GTetrinet: Remote code execution
--------------------------------

GTetrinet is vulnerable to a remote buffer overflow, potentially leading
to arbitrary code execution.

For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[13]

13. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200609-02.xml

OpenTTD: Remote Denial of Service
---------------------------------

The OpenTTD server is vulnerable to a remote Denial of Service.

For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[14]

14. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200609-03.xml

LibXfont: Multiple integer overflows
------------------------------------

A buffer overflow was discovered in the PCF font parser, potentially
resulting in the execution of arbitrary code.

For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[15]

15. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200609-04.xml

OpenSSL, AMD64 x86 emulation base libraries: RSA signature forgery
------------------------------------------------------------------

OpenSSL fails to properly validate PKCS #1 v1.5 signatures.

For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[16]

16. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200609-05.xml

===========
8. Bugzilla
===========

Summary
-------

* Statistics
* Closed bug ranking
* New bug rankings

Statistics
----------

The Gentoo community uses Bugzilla (bugs.gentoo.org[17]) to record and
track bugs, notifications, suggestions and other interactions with the
development team. Between 03 September 2006 and 10 September 2006,
activity on the site has resulted in:

17. http://bugs.gentoo.org

* 929 new bugs during this period
* 565 bugs closed or resolved during this period
* 38 previously closed bugs were reopened this period

Of the 11040 currently open bugs: 38 are labeled 'blocker', 124 are
labeled 'critical', and 530 are labeled 'major'.

Closed bug rankings
-------------------

The developers and teams who have closed the most bugs during this period
are:

* Gentoo's Team for Core System packages[18], with 31 closed bugs[19]
* Gentoo Linux Gnome Desktop Team[20], with 26 closed bugs[21]
* AMD64 Project[22], with 25 closed bugs[23]
* Gentoo Games[24], with 20 closed bugs[25]
* Gentoo Security[26], with 18 closed bugs[27]
* mips team[28], with 18 closed bugs[29]
* Java team[30], with 18 closed bugs[31]
* Gentoo X-windows packagers[32], with 13 closed bugs[33]
18. base-system@gentoo.org
19.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-09-03&chfieldto=2006-09-10&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=base-system@gentoo.org
20. gnome@gentoo.org
21.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-09-03&chfieldto=2006-09-10&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=gnome@gentoo.org
22. amd64@gentoo.org
23.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-09-03&chfieldto=2006-09-10&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=amd64@gentoo.org
24. games@gentoo.org
25.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-09-03&chfieldto=2006-09-10&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=games@gentoo.org
26. security@gentoo.org
27.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-09-03&chfieldto=2006-09-10&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=security@gentoo.org
28. mips@gentoo.org
29.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-09-03&chfieldto=2006-09-10&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=mips@gentoo.org
30. java@gentoo.org
31.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-09-03&chfieldto=2006-09-10&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=java@gentoo.org
32. x11@gentoo.org
33.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-09-03&chfieldto=2006-09-10&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=x11@gentoo.org


New bug rankings
----------------

The developers and teams who have been assigned the most new bugs during
this period are:

* Default Assignee for New Packages[34], with 42 new bugs[35]
* Gentoo Sound Team[36], with 15 new bugs[37]
* AMD64 Project[38], with 15 new bugs[39]
* Default Assignee for Orphaned Packages[40], with 14 new bugs[41]
* Gentoo KDE team[42], with 9 new bugs[43]
* Gentoo net-im Herd[44], with 8 new bugs[45]
* Java team[46], with 8 new bugs[47]
* Robin Johnson[48], with 6 new bugs[49]
34. maintainer-wanted@gentoo.org
35.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-09-03&chfieldto=2006-09-10&assigned_to=maintainer-wanted@gentoo.org
36. sound@gentoo.org
37.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-09-03&chfieldto=2006-09-10&assigned_to=sound@gentoo.org
38. amd64@gentoo.org
39.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-09-03&chfieldto=2006-09-10&assigned_to=amd64@gentoo.org
40. maintainer-needed@gentoo.org
41.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-09-03&chfieldto=2006-09-10&assigned_to=maintainer-needed@gentoo.org
42. kde@gentoo.org
43.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-09-03&chfieldto=2006-09-10&assigned_to=kde@gentoo.org
44. net-im@gentoo.org
45.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-09-03&chfieldto=2006-09-10&assigned_to=net-im@gentoo.org
46. java@gentoo.org
47.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-09-03&chfieldto=2006-09-10&assigned_to=java@gentoo.org
48. robbat2@gentoo.org
49.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-09-03&chfieldto=2006-09-10&assigned_to=robbat2@gentoo.org


===============
9. GWN feedback
===============

Please send us your feedback[50] and help make the GWN better.

50. gwn-feedback@gentoo.org

================================
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===================
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===================

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Ulrich Plate <plate@gentoo.org> - Editor
Mark Kowarsky <mark_alec@gentoo.org> - Author
Daniel Black <dragonheart@gentoo.org> - Author
Peter Volkov <pva@gentoo.org> - Author
Chrissy Fullam <musikc@charter.net> - Author
Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org> - Author



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