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DistributionsNews and Editorials Does Debian need a Social Committee? The idea of a "Social Committee" came up during a private discussion. With about 1,000 active developers the Debian project has grown to a size where a lot of problems are expected to happen. As an international project, Debian people originate from different countries and have different social backgrounds which may contribute to some problems.Josip Rodin proposed to establish a "Social Committee" within the Debian project, a term Andreas Tille coined. Such a committee would try to resolve or mitigate conflicts between various members of the Debian project which are not of a technical matter. For the latter, the "Technical Committee" has developed the Debian policy manual. According to Josip, the mere existence of such a committee would already indicate a major change in the thinking of Debian developers. In fact, many developers have evolved into strong personalities. It's good to have self-confident people maintain important packages and infrastructure, but it is not always helpful when dealing with different opinions or even conflicts. Social conflicts could emerge when two developers get in dispute over a bug report or a discussion and don't seem to accept the other person's opinion. On mailing lists, a participant could demonstrate difficult behavior when communicating with other people. This could be a situation where mitigation is required. When teams inside the Debian project cause non-technical problems with other groups, or with the general developer body, the "Social Committee" could be called for help. Josip outlined how such a committee could work. First, it would have to agree on its own charter, similar to other groups within the Debian project. Once established, the committee would become active only upon request by other developers or mailing list participants, just like the Technical Committee. The social committee would delegate certain tasks such as monitoring mailing lists and teams inside the project. The developers acting as delegates would have a bit more authority to talk about problems than the average member of the groups they're sent to. However, they may need to earn this authority or respect first, by monitoring the discussions and ensuring that all problems are addressed and no complaints go unresolved. Manoj Srivastava, leader of the Technical Committee, questioned this proposal, however. He noted that all social problems are very much subjective. Participants come from a variety of cultures and may recognize interaction with others differently. Often they come with different norms and metrics which could make solving conflicts difficult for a neutral third party. In response, Lars Wirzenius, countered with the suggestion to develop social and cultural norms for the entire project first, based on what all developers could agree to. After all, members of the Debian project all agree on certain aspects, which could be summarized, just like the project's technical policy. Currently, it is not clear which powers such a committee could use to enforce a social policy, due to the nature of the Debian project. Its members are volunteers and not employees on a company's payroll. Hence, adding pressure to people could become an interesting exercise. While the "Social Committee" will become active only upon special request, it can also only exercise selective enforcement which might be interpreted as unfair. The same behavior by other people on the same mailing list may be tolerated. If there is something resembling a discussion culture in the Debian project, it's most probably a very tough one. Some list participants usually put on armored pants when discussing controversial issues on the lists. Debian people are known for raising their voices loudly. This is not limited to Debian developers, though. However, it's surely a detail that drives away interested people when they accidentally find themselves in the middle of a flame war. It happens every now and then that discussions on mailing lists end up as flame wars of one sort or another. One side pretends to know what another participant thinks and their words get interpreted in a way that was not intended. This is often followed by smearing and more smearing, soon the entire discussion becomes totally useless and only eats up bandwidth and disk space. Because of this behavior, a "Social Committee" or at least a mildly enforced charter for Debian lists is due. For several years the Debian code of conduct has asked participants not to use foul language and not to flame. However, the number of discussions that have been turned into flame wars has rather increased recently. The code of conduct for the Ubuntu community covers the behavior of its members in any forum, mailing list, wiki, web site, IRC channel, install-fest, public meeting or private correspondence. The Ubuntu Community Council will arbitrate in any dispute over the conduct of a member of the community. The number of flame wars in this community demonstrates at least that it is possible to limit them to a minimum. Several responses in the discussion on the "Social Committee" for the Debian project indicate a strong interest in this, and a desire to improve the climate. However, some developers are skeptical both on the establishment of such a committee and its potential exercise of power. In the meantime Gustavo Franco started to build an ombudsman team that will improve several social issues.
New Releases Announcing Fedora 7 Test 1 The first test release for the upcoming Fedora 7 distribution is now available; click below for details and download instructions. More information on what's in Fedora 7 can be found on this page.
Ubuntu Herd 3 released The third Feisty Fawn herd CD is available for testing, in Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu flavors.
BLFS 6.2.0-rc1 Released Beyond Linux From Scratch has announced the first release candidate for version 6.2.0.
Distribution News Get Involved! Second openSUSE community meeting The second openSUSE community meeting is scheduled for February 11, 2007 20:00 UTC on irc.freenode.net #opensuse-project "This is the second ever community meeting taking place, and it is run by openSUSE Community members who are not employed by Novell/SUSE."
Ubuntu Feisty feature freeze imminent The feature freeze for Ubuntu's Feisty Fawn main repository is scheduled for February 8, 2007. The feature freeze for Universe starts on February 22, 2007. The first beta is expected March 22, 2007.
Confirmation of the MOTU Council A council is being formed to oversee Ubuntu's Masters of the Universe. The first council members have been nominated. The council will help find a consensus and have have a final say in conflicts. It will also approve new MOTUs and organize MOTU efforts.
Announcing FUDCon Brussels2007 There will be a FUDCon in Brussels at the Free and Open Source Developers' Meeting (FOSDEM) in Brussels Belgium. If you are at FOSDEM stop by room H2214 for FUDCon.
Unofficial Fedora FAQ Updated for Fedora Core 6! The unofficial Fedora FAQ has been updated for Fedora Core 6. Click below for a quick look at the updates.
Debian announcements It is time once again for Debian Project Leader Elections. Here's the first call for nominations.Testing is underway on the second release candidate of the Debian Installer. Daily images are built using the 2.6.18-4 kernel packages. Here's a status report on the Debian GNU/FreeBSD port. This port consists of two architectures: kfreebsd-i386 and kfreebsd-amd64. "Currently we have reasonable subset of Etch packages, but the number of unmerged patches is still too high. So doing real Etch release looks difficult. Instead, we plan to release snapshot of sid in time of Etch release for both kfreebsd-i386 and kfreebsd-amd64." debian.ch is a non-profit organization formed to represent, hold assets for and further the Debian project in Switzerland and the Principality of Liechtenstein. Anthony Towns has sent out this announcment encouraging more meetings between Debian developers.
Distribution Newsletters Fedora Weekly News Issue 76 The Fedora Weekly News for February 5, 2007 looks at Announcing Fedora 7 Test 1 (6.90), Congratulations and thank you, Smolt: Fedora Hardware Profiler, Fedora Package Database 0.1, Fedora LiveCD 7 Test 1 Preview, First test of Fedora 7 released, Fedora's metrics have ripple effect and several other articles.
Gentoo Weekly Newsletter The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for January 29, 2007 covers Xfce 4.4 released, Second anniversary of Gentoo Forum Netherlands and several other topics.
Ulteo at SCALE5X! +other news The second issue of the Ulteo newsletter covers Ulteo at SCALE 5X, a follow-up on the Connected Desktop which will be demoed at SCALE, plus the latest news from the development team, and more.
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 188 The DistroWatch Weekly for February 5, 2007 is out. "As usual, this week's issue focuses on a variety of distributions and topics. We'll start with a frightening financial analysis of Mandriva Corporation whose most recent financial results were published last week. The news section then looks at the release process of the Fedora Project whose latest -- and incomplete -- test release came, once again, without any release notes or other useful information. Also in the news: Ubuntu has quietly scrapped the idea of including the 3D desktop in Feisty Fawn, openSUSE and Linspire brace for surprise announcements, Red Hat's Matthew Szulik has kind words to say about Linus Torvalds, and Nexenta announces plans to produce more frequent development releases. Finally, we are pleased to announce that the DistroWatch January 2007 donation has been awarded to the GQview and Kaffeine projects."
Package updates Looking for Package updates? The LWN staff has decided that the time spent processing package updates for various distributions could be better spent producing original content. If you feel like you are missing out on these updates here's the mailing list information for them.
Miscellaneous Articles Free Operating System For Blind: Adriane Knoppix (EFYtimes) EFYtimes introduces Adriane Knoppix. "It was my first meeting with the couple -- Klaus and Adriane Knopper -- at LinuxAsia 2007. I had already met Klaus Knopper, the creator of Knoppix, and was pretty much touched by his passion for developing Knoppix. This time he was accompanied by his wife Adriane Knopper who is visually handicapped and helps Klaus in developing Linux for the blind, Adriane Knoppix."
First test of Fedora 7 released (Linux.com) Linux.com looks at Fedora 7. "There are two more test releases scheduled before Fedora 7 is slated for general availability on April 26. Though the team has remained on schedule to this point, there is still plenty of work to be done. Keating says some features of Fedora 7 are well under development while others have yet to get off the ground. The team's goal is to have them all testable by the release of Test 2 later this month with the understanding that whatever is not ready for testing at that point will be removed from the package and shelved for the time being."
Distribution reviews Scientific Linux live CD/DVD previews RH5 (DesktopLinux.com) DesktopLinux.com reviews the Scientific Linux 5 (SL5) alpha live CD/DVD. "A preview of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, which won't be released for about a month, is available via the latest Scientific Linux 5 (SL5) alpha live CD/DVD, released this week. Built from source packages for RHEL 5, SL5 sports a 2.6.18 kernel and either the KDE or GNOME desktops. On the SL5 alpha live DVD, all client/workstation RPMs are installed and GNOME is the default desktop. On the SL5 alpha live CD, KDE is the default desktop."
Foresight Is a Linux Distro to Watch (eWeek) eWeek reviews Foresight Linux. "Foresight is one of the most active projects based on rPath's Conary software management system, which offers administrators a great balance of flexibility and control in deploying and maintaining applications on Linux."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol |
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