Welcome to the LWN.net Weekly Edition for August 17, 2017
This edition contains the following feature content:
- Debian debates software for proprietary services: should the distribution ship a library whose job is mainly to interface with a proprietary network service?
- A canary for timer-expiration functions: hardening the kernel against timer-overwrite attacks.
- Scaling the kernel's MAINTAINERS file: as the kernel community grows, even the MAINTAINERS file needs maintenance — and perhaps a process change as well.
- Another attempt at speculative page-fault handling: a memory-management scalability technique that has been eight years in the making.
- Reducing Python's startup time: it takes too long to start a Python program; developers are looking at one way of making things better.
This week's edition also includes these inner pages:
- Brief items: Brief news items from throughout the community.
- Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.
Please enjoy this week's edition, and, as always, thank you for
supporting LWN.net.