LWN Weekly Edition
Front pageSecurity
Kernel development
Distributions
Development
Linux in the news
Announcements
->One big page
This page
Previous weekFollowing week
| |||||||||||||
DevelopmentUnmaintained free softwareOne of the great advantages of free software is that, should a program's maintainer get bored and cease working on it, somebody else can always step in and keep things going. But what if nobody else steps in? Sometimes unmaintained software will languish because nobody has any interest in it anymore; in such cases, it should be allowed to fade away. But, at other times, the problem is just a lack of information. The people who might be interested in taking over a project simply do not know that the need exists.One effort which is trying to help in this regard is the unmaintained free software wiki. This site lists free software which is currently in need of a maintainer, helpfully categorized and with a search engine to help those searching for a project to help out. As of this writing, there are 73 projects listed, the most recently added being Fontutils, a2ps, and rpm. Unfortunately, this project itself looks like it could benefit from a bit of maintenance. Only seven projects have been added since the beginning of the year, and only two (Gnome Commander and khtml2png) are listed as having been adopted. Perhaps the problem is simply one of awareness; If relatively few people even know that this site exists, few are unlikely to make use of it. If that is the case, then, hopefully, this article will help a bit. Certainly it seems like there should be a place for a facility like this. Projects do go unmaintained over time, and there is not always somebody standing by ready to take over. There are also developers who are in search of ways to contribute to the community, but who are unclear on where their efforts might best be put. Connecting the two can only be a good thing to do. The infrastructure is there to do a good job of joining projects in need with developers; we just need people to make more use of it.
System Applications Database Software MySQL Community Server 5.0.27 and MySQL Enterprise Server 5.0.28Version 5.0.27 of the MySQL Community Server dbms and version 5.0.28 of MySQL Enterprise Server (commercial) have been announced. "MySQL 5.0.27 is an important bugfix release for the 5.0.26 release, which introduced an ABI incompatibility with earlier releases in the MySQL 5.0 production family".
Time to Test PostgreSQL 8.2 Beta 2Version 8.2 of the PostgreSQL dbms is available for testing. "Thanks to all the testing, feedback and bug reports you've put into the first beta of version 8.2, we now have a second beta out. Please download and re-test to make sure that the issues you raised are fixed."
PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe October 29, 2006 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL dbms information and resources.
Embedded Systems BusyBox 1.2.2 releasedStable version 1.2.2 of BusyBox, a collection of command line utilities for embedded systems, is out with a long list of bug fixes: "This release has dozens of fixes backported from the ongoing development branch. There are a couple of bugfixes to sed, two fixes to documentation generation (BusyBox.html shouldn't have USE() macros in it anymore), fix umount to report the right errno on failure and to umount block devices by name with newer kernels, fix mount to handle symlinks properly, make mdev delete device nodes when called for hotplug remove,...".
Libraries libassuan 1.0.0 releasedVersion 1.0.0 of libassuan is available. "To prepare the GnuPG 2.0 release, Libassuan 1.0.0 has been released today. Libassuan is the IPC library used by GnuPG 1.9 and a couple of other packages. It used to be included with the these packages but we decided to make your life not too easy and separated it out to a stand alone library."
Networking Tools OpenBGPD 4.0 releasedVersion 4.0 of OpenBGPD is out with lots of new features and bug fixes. "OpenBGPD is a fairly complete implementation of the Border Gateway Protocol, Version 4, as described in RFC 1771. BGP is a protocol used by routers to exchange routing information, and is one of the core protocols of the Internet."
Security Sussen 0.32 releasedVersion 0.32 of Sussen, a vulnerabilities and configuration checker, is available with new capabilities and bug fixes.
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Ardour 2.0 beta 6.2 releasedVersion 2.0 beta 6.2 of Ardour, a multi-track digital audio workstation application, is out with this note: "A frustrating error required the release of beta6.2 in order to fix a crashing bug inadvertently introduced in beta6.1."
Audacity 1.3.2 and 1.2.5 ReleasedTwo new versions of the Audacity audio editor have been released. "The Audacity developers have been busy with many new features over the past year. We're pleased to announce Audacity 1.3.2 (beta), which contains dozens of new features and capabilities. Because it is a work in progress and does not yet come with complete documentation or translations into foreign languages, it is recommended for more advanced users. For all users, Audacity 1.2.5 is a minor bug-fix update that addresses some problems with Audacity 1.2.4, but does not add any significant new features. It is complete and fully documented."
Vmwaredspjack 1.3, Snd-ls 0.9.7.6 and Jack_capture V0.3.8A triple release of the audio applications Vmwaredspjack 1.3, Snd-ls 0.9.7.6 and Jack_capture 0.3.8 has been announced. Vmwaredspjack makes vmware work with esd or arts, Snd-ls is a distribution of the SND sound editor and jack_capture allows JACK audio streams to be sent to a file.
Desktop Environments GNOME Software AnnouncementsThe following new GNOME software has been announced this week:
KDE Software AnnouncementsThe following new KDE software has been announced this week:
KDE Commit-Digest (KDE.News)The October 29, 2006 edition of the KDE Commit-Digest has been announced. The content summary says: "In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Work on Decibel and the KDE-based NEPOMUK components accelerates. The Unity web rendering engine experiment is removed from KDE SVN, due to a change in the circumstances that prompted its creation. KTabEdit, a guitar tablature editor is imported into the KDE SVN playground. A branch of kde-pim for improvements in future 3.5 releases shows promise with the introduction of several new features. QMA, an experimental email client, continues to mature and is renamed Mailody. Usability and file format support refinements in Amarok. Speed optimisations in KViewShell and KFTPGrabber. More improvements in the state of games in KDE 4."
Games Pengupop 2.1.9 releasedStable version 2.1.9 of Pengupop has been announced. "Pengupop is an online multiplayer clone of Frozen-Bubble/Bust a Move. The purpose of the game is to shoot colored balls so they form groups and thus fall down. Any balls that fall down will reappear on your opponent's playfield as a side-effect."
PyChess 0.4 released (GnomeDesktop)The second stable edition (version 0.4) of PyChess has been announced, it adds a new game storage format, hints and tips, game evaluation, support for CECP engines and more.
WorldForge meeting notesThe meeting notes from the October 28, 2006 WorldForge game project are online with the latest WorldForge game progress.
GUI Packages wxPython 2.7.1.3 announcedVersion 2.7.1.3 of wxPython, a GUI toolkit for the Python programming language, has been announced. "This release is a yet another quick-turnaround bugfix release designed to solve some problems, plust some minor enhancements. This will likely be the last 2.7.1.x release."
Imaging Applications Free Image Manipulator 0.2.2 releasedVersion 0.2.2 of Free Image Manipulator has been announced, it adds new drag and drop capabilities as well as some bug fixes. "With FIM you can easily manipulate whole set of images at once. You are able to resize all images from the set to the same size and convert between the most popular file types like png, jpeg, gif. You can also add text with background to them with given opacity level and color or even paste your logo. "
Krita Team Seeking Artwork for User Gallery (KDE.News)KDE.News has announced an effort to collect artwork for Krita, a painting and image editing application for KOffice. "With Krita's recent 1.6 release enhancing its usability for professional artwork, the Krita team is looking into creating a gallery where Krita users can contribute their art made with it. Any decent gallery needs to be seeded with some initial artwork. So we are asking any Krita user who might want to show his painting skills, to consider making us a pretty painting."
Instant Messaging Concluding the KDE PIM Bug Triage (KDE.News)KDE.News covers the recent KDE PIM Bug Triage. "Last weekend, a second bout of KDE bug triage took place in the #kde-bugs IRC channel on Freenode. This round was dedicated to the KDE PIM module, with key applications Kontact, KMail and KOrganizer. All these applications have seen a drop in bug count, thanks to many people who joined the bug squad. During the weekend more than 180 bugs were confirmed, closed, some even fixed right away. That's a huge amount of bugs less to worry about for the KDE PIM developers. But there's still plenty to be done! Read on to learn how."
Interoperability Wine 0.9.24 releasedVersion 0.9.24 of Wine has been announced. Changes include: support for multiple monitors using Xinerama, various MSI fixes and improvements, a ton of memory leaks fixed, many common controls fixes, and lots of bug fixes.
Office Suites OpenOffice.org NewsletterThe October, 2006 edition of the OpenOffice.org Newsletter is out with the latest OO.o office suite articles and events.
Science GRASS 6.2.0 releasedVersion 6.2.0 of the GRASS geographical information system has been released. "This new release improves the integration and functionality of the raster and vector engines, and greatly enhances 3D raster volume (voxel) support. Additionally, this release debuts a new graphical GIS manager and menu system, while an improved version of the old GUI display manager has been retained for legacy support. The NVIZ visualization tool has been enhanced to display 3D vector data and voxel volumes, and now supports the creation of on-the-fly MPEG animations."
Languages and Tools C The GlobalGCC project launchesAn announcement has gone out proclaiming the launch of the "Global gcc" project. This is a European-funded effort to improve gcc through the addition of whole-program compilation and static analysis capabilities. "As a result of that, it is expected that GGCC be more resource consuming (e.g., it could run 10 times slower than the GCC4 compiler). In return for that speed loss, more program bugs are expected to be pinpointed, and programmers will be able to state properties to be met in their code."
Haskell Haskell Weekly NewsThe October 31, 2006 edition of the Haskell Weekly News is online. This week we see a number of community documentation and maintenance efforts, and the appearance of indexed data types in GHC.
HTML Vilistextum 2.6.9 releasedStable version 2.6.9 of Vilistextum is available. "Vilistextum is a small, fast HTML to text converter. It is quite fault-tolerant and deals well with badly-formed or otherwise quirky HTML. It has full support for different character sets (e.g. Unicode). It can optimize for ebook reading, collapse multiple blank lines, and create footnotes out of links. A GUI frontend using 'kaptain' is included."
Perl Weekly Perl 6 mailing list summary (O'Reilly)The October 22-28, 2006 edition of the Weekly Perl 6 mailing list summary has been published. Take a look for the latest Perl 6 discussions.
PHP JanRain PHP OpenID 1.2.0 releasedVersion 1.2.0 of the JanRain PHP OpenID library is available. "This release comes with lots of fixes, most of which are related to Windows testing and compatibility. This release includes a critical bug fix, so please upgrade."
Python Python 2.3.6 releasedPython version 2.3.6 has been released. "Python 2.3.6 is a security bug-fix release. While Python 2.5 is the latest version of Python, we're making this release for people who are still running Python 2.3. Unlike the recently released 2.4.4, this release only contains a small handful of security-related bugfixes."
Tcl/Tk Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!The October 25, 2006 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.
Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!The October 31, 2006 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.
IDEs SPE 0.8.3.c Python IDE editor announcedVersion 0.8.3.c of SPE, a Python IDE, has been announced. "This is a maintenance release (mostly bug fixing) to prove that SPE is alive and well! In case you are using wxPython2.7 you'll need to upgrade to this release. Submitted patches will be reviewed and included if approved for next release."
Test Suites STAF V3.2.0 is now available (SourceForge)Version 3.2.0 of STAF, the Software Testing Automation Framework, has been announced. There are some Windows platform improvements and: "There are also many bug fixes in this version. In particular, note that the libstdc++ and libgcc libraries are no longer packaged in the Linux and Solaris STAF installers."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
|||||||||||||