Fedora Weekly News Issue 232

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 232^[1] for the week ending June 30, 2010. What follows are some highlights from this issue.

Issue 232 begins with announcements from the Fedora Project, including notice of end of life for Fedora 11, details on the next Fedora Project leader, Jared Smith, and a remainder on the upcoming Fedora 14 feature submission deadline, amongst other news and upcoming events. From the Planet Fedora, details on how to use Adobe Flash on 64-bit systems now that packages have been pulled, analysis of the performance of Cairo with a number of different graphics chipset and driver configurations, and other posts. The Marketing team reports on their work on SWOT analysis, a printable version of the Fedora 13 feature profiles, and a new SOP for doing focus groups. Fedora In the News follows with coverage from the trade press on this past week's announcement of the new Fedora Project leader. In Ambassador news, a Fedora 13 event report from Quebec City, Canada. FWN is also looking for a new writer to take over the Ambassador beat, see below if you are interested! In Quality Assurance news, details on Test Day process improvements, a move to the proven testers instruction page, and updates on new Fedora 14 Trac tickets, amongst other news. In news from the Artwork Team, coverage of the weekly IRC team meeting, and a request for stories from the Design Team. This week's issue wraps up with security-related packages from the past week.

The audio version of FWN - FAWN - is back! You can listen to existing issues^[2] on the Internet Archive. If anyone is interested in helping spread the load of FAWN production, please contact us!

If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page^[3]. We welcome reader feedback: news@lists.fedoraproject.org

FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Adam Williamson

Announcements

In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project, including general announcements^[1], development announcements^[2] and Events^[3].

Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco

Fedora Announcement News

Fedora 11 End of Life

Paul W. Frields, Fedora Project Leader, announced^[1], "This announcement is a reminder that as of 2010-06-25, Fedora 11 has reached its end of life for updates. As planned, last update pushes to Fedora 11 were made in advance^[2] of this date. No further updates, including security updates, will be available for Fedora 11.

Fedora 12 will continue to receive updates until approximately one month after the release of Fedora 14. The maintenance schedule of Fedora releases is documented on the Fedora Project wiki^[3]."

Deadline for T-Shirt Registration FUDCon Zurich 2010

Joerg Simon announced^[1]:

"Dear Fellows,

If you plan to attend the FUDCon EMEA in Zurich September 17 - 19, 2010 - and want to pick up a pretty FUDCon-Shirt - designed by Maria (tatica) Leandro - do not forget to register it^[2]

The Deadline for ordering a FUDCon-Shirt is 2010-June-30 12:00 UTC!!!

After this you can still register yourself for FUDCon but we can not assure you a Shirt matching your Size."

Passing the baton

Paul W. Frields, Fedora Project Leader, announced^[1]:

"A leadership change is always momentous, and the Fedora Project is no exception to this rule. I wanted to share some thoughts about being the Fedora Project Leader, tell the community about the person who will be taking over that role soon, and to let you know what to expect over the next few weeks and months.

* *

I joined the Fedora Project in 2003 so I could give something back to a free software community from whose work I had benefited for a long time. Fedora gave me the chance to bring my skills and experience and use them to help people I'd never get a chance to meet personally. I had no inkling at the time that one day I'd have the opportunity to serve the community beyond helping write some documentation.

When Max Spevack called me in late 2007 to let me know he was considering stepping down, and was interested in having me succeed him as the Fedora Project Leader, I was surprised and humbled. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to both serve the community and to contribute as an employee at Red Hat, where I had already made many friends while working on Fedora -- an opportunity I was happy to take. Over the past two and a half years, through many challenges and changes, not once have I regretted that decision.

* *

One of the hallmarks of Fedora leadership is that it's open to change. The FPL is not a semi-benevolent dictator for life, but rather a position to which new people can regularly bring their passion for making Fedora better. And so, just as previous FPLs announced their readiness to search for the next leader, I did so a few months ago, in the spirit of openness and transparency that's a hallmark of the Fedora community.

The FPL job is a salaried position at Red Hat, and the Fedora Board members as well as many other stakeholders have been informed and involved with the process of selecting a new FPL. The job posting brought in numerous applicants from throughout the community. Through the hiring process we identified a few best qualified candidates. From them the next FPL was selected, based on the qualifications and experience our entire community expects. At every juncture during that process, the panels were focused on the needs of the Fedora Project, to ensure the next FPL would be a good listener, speaker, and writer; thoughtfully consider solutions to difficult problems; and most importantly, lead effectively.

So it's with great pleasure that I announce Jared Smith will be joining Red Hat in a few weeks as the new Fedora Project Leader.

* *

Some of our community already knows Jared, but I want to take a moment to tell everyone a little more about his background. He doesn't like to trumpet his own qualifications, but since he happens to be away on personal business this week, I'll just do that for him. :-)

Jared's been a long-time user of both Red Hat and Fedora, and an active participant in the the Fedora community since 2007. He's primarily spent his time working with the infrastructure and documentation teams. He's helped with the development of Fedora Talk, our community VoIP telephony system. Fedora Talk allows various Fedora developers and contributors to communicate verbally for free across the internet.

Jared has also participated in community events such as various FUDCons and Fedora Activity Days. In addition, he has assisted with toolchain development, release materials, and steering duties as a member of the Fedora Docs team.

Jared also brings a wealth of of both technical and community relations expertise from his prior job history. His previous employer is Digium, the commercial sponsor of the open source Asterisk software. While at Digium, Jared worked as Community Relations Manager, as well as an instructor, lecturer, and training department manager.

Before working for Digium, Jared was a Network Operations Manager for the web analytics company Omniture (since acquired by Adobe Systems), where he managed a network of over 6,500 Linux machines. These experiences as a speaker, evangelist, practitioner, and collaborator make Jared exceptionally well suited for the position of FPL.

On a more personal note, I've come to know Jared well over the past several years. He cares deeply about community and family, not the least part of which is the Fedora community and family. His honesty, integrity, good humor, patience, intelligence, and good old-fashioned common sense will serve him and our growing community well, as we try to take Fedora to the next level.

* *

Although Jared is away on personal travel right now, Max and I have already started including him in some important conversations, and the community can expect additional exciting news shortly. Over the next few months, part of my changing responsibilities in Red Hat will be to ensure a smooth runway for Jared, as he takes over the duties of the FPL job. Max Spevack will also continue to assist, especially where his role as the manager of Red Hat's Community Architecture team brings strategic benefits to the Fedora Project.

Over time, I expect to spend more time on work that's internal to Red Hat, but I will continue to be involved in Fedora to some extent as an individual contributor. That transition will allow Jared to effectively bring his own vision and energy to Fedora, and I look forward to helping him in whatever ways I can.

I hope the entire community will join me in welcoming Jared to Red Hat as the FPL, and that you'll gift him with the support and friendship I've enjoyed and treasured over the past two and a half years."

↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/announce/2010-June/002832.html

FPL travel to LATAM events!

Paul W. Frields, Fedora Project Leader, announced^[1]:

"In just a few weeks, the Fedora community in Latin America will hold a major FUDCon event in Santiago, Chile, from July 15-17, 2010. You can find all the details on our wiki^[2]

Encouraging the growth of Fedora community around the world is important to our project. That's why the responsibilities of the Fedora Project Leader include lowering barriers and advocating for involvement and participation. One of the ways the FPL does this is by travelling to different community events and talking about the way that Fedora works, and our dedication to sustainable community and free software development.

So I'm very pleased and excited to announce that our new Fedora Project Leader Jared Smith's first appearance at a community event will be at the FUDCon in Santiago, Chile. In addition, just a few days afterward Jared will attend the FISL 11 conference in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Both events represent a unique opportunity for the Fedora Project to support our friends and extend our community in Latin America. As always, the FUDCon event in Santiago is free and open to everyone to register and attend. We look forward to seeing the community at these events!

You can find more information about Jared^[3]"

Fedora Development News

Bodhi 0.7.5 release

Luke Macken announced^[1]:

"I just pushed a version 0.7.5 of bodhi into production. This release contains the following notable changes:

proventesters & strict critical path update handling

For critical path^[2] updates to be approved for pushing to the stable repository, they now require a minimum karma of 2, consisting of a +1 from a single proventester^[3], and a +1 from another authenticated user.

You can get a list of critical path updates using the bodhi web interface^[4]

You can optionally pass in a specific 'release' or an 'untested' flag, which will return a list of critical path updates that have yet to be approved. I have not added these links to the main interface yet, because at the moment they are fairly expensive calls. This will be addressed in an upcoming release.

The latest command-line client also supports these options as well:

    $ bodhi --critpath --untested --release F13

Auto-obsoletion re-enabled

I re-enabled the auto-obsoletion code in bodhi. This means that new updates will automatically obsolete older testing updates containing the same packages. The new update will also inherit all of the old updates bugs and notes. This code had been disabled for a while now, due to some nasty edge cases, but those have since been resolved.

If you experience any problems, please file tickets here^[5]"

Fedora 14 Feature Submission Deadline in Two Weeks

John Poelstra reminded^[1] the community of the upcoming Fedora 14 feature submission deadline:

"Another friendly and brief reminder that the deadline for new features for Fedora 14 is July 13, 2010.

A list of features accepted so far^[2]

Wiki pages explaining the feature process^[3]

Please send any other questions about the feature process or this deadline by replying to this message on the list."

Fedora Events

Fedora events are the exclusive and source of marketing, learning and meeting all the fellow community people around you. So, please mark your agenda with the following events to consider attending or volunteering near you!

Upcoming Events (June 2010 - August 2010)

North America (NA)^[1]
Central & South America (LATAM) ^[2]
Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)^[3]
India, Asia, Australia (India/APJ)^[4]

Past Events

Archive of Past Fedora Events^[1]

↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents/PastEvents

Additional information

Reimbursements -- reimbursement guidelines.
Budget -- budget for the current quarter (as distributed by FAMSCo).
Sponsorship -- how decisions are made to subsidize travel by community members.
Organization -- event organization, budget information, and regional responsibility.
Event reports -- guidelines and suggestions.
LinuxEvents -- a collection of calendars of Linux events.

Planet Fedora

In this section, we cover the highlights of Planet Fedora^[1] - an aggregation of blogs from Fedora contributors worldwide.

Contributing Writer: Adam Batkin

↑ http://planet.fedoraproject.org

General

Jonathan Dieter mentioned^[1] that deltarpms should be working again now for Fedora 13.

Benjamin Otte analyzed^[2] the performance of Cairo with a number of different graphics chipset and driver configurations. The results may surprise you.

Máirín Duffy found^[3] a bunch of amusing geeky comic strips. But more seriously, Máirín identified^[4] the first "Fedora Design Bounty Ninja". "Jef responded to our first Fedora Design Bi-Weekly Bounty just a couple of hours after it was posted, and he did an amazing job putting together a 6-page layout for the Fedora 13 feature profiles, carefully adhering to all of the Fedora branding guidelines and providing all of his source work!"

Adam Williamson reminded^[5] Flash users running 64-bit systems how they can use Flash Player, now that the 64-bit downloads have been pulled.

Andrew Vermilya Jamison outled^[6] a few of the exciting new features of Fedora 13.

Lennart Poettering suggested^[7] a number of sources of data that could be used under Linux to help generate unique identifiers. "When programming software that cooperates with software running on behalf of other users, other sessions or other computers it is often necessary to work with unique identifiers. These can be bound to various hardware and software objects as well as lifetimes. Often, when people look for such an ID to use they pick the wrong one because semantics and lifetime or the IDs are not clear."

Lennart also wrote^[8] a^[9] pair of articles on handling locking under Linux (and the sad state of locking under Linux in general).

Luis Villa dissected^[10] the US Supreme Court Bilski ruling. "I'm afraid that at the end of this brief train ride, my only firm conclusion can be that the real winners here are patent lawyers - this decision creates no new certainties, only uncertainties, which will encourage patenters to spend more money patenting things, and the rest of us to waste time and energy worrying about the problem - time and energy that should have been spent on innovating..."

The Red Hat Press Office announced^[11] that Jared Smith will become the new Fedora Project Leader. Paul W. Frields posted^[12] a few words about passing on the baton to Jared.

Marketing

In this section, we cover the happenings for Fedora Marketing Project from 2010-06-23 to 2010-06-29.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing

Contributing Writer: Neville A. Cross

Nelson Marques^[1] continues his effort to complete a SWOT analysis.

Jef van Schendel^[2] started to work stetical details of the Fedora's Twitter account. Gerard Braad^[3] proposed to extend this to identi.ca account

Jef van Schendel^[4] shared the printable version of the feature profiles

Robyn Bergeron^[5] is trying to make a list of interview topics that we can tackle to have content flowing in between releases.

Nelson Marques^[6] contribute with a useful SOP (Standar Operational Procedure) for doing focus group, which can be handy for anyone in the project. He also picked up on having a slide deck^[7] which ultimately ended in a ticket for desing team for creating a full template with official fonts, background and predefined colors

Finally we have MMM – Marketing Meeting Minutes^[8].

Fedora In the News

In this section, we cover news from the trade press and elsewhere that is re-posted to the Fedora Marketing list^[1]

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing

Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco

↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/

This past week's press focused on the appointment of Jared Smith as the new Fedora Project leader. Several postings follow.

New Fedora Project Leader appointed (The H Online)

Kara Schlitz forwarded^[1] a brief posting about Jared Smith's appointment:

"Jared Smith will be the new Project Leader of the Fedora Project. This is the second non-Red Hat employee Red Hat has hired and appointed as Fedora Project Leader, after previous Project Leader Paul W. Frields."

The full post is available^[2].

New project leader wears the Fedora (The Register UK)

Kara Schlitz forwarded^[1] a posting covering Fedora 13 from a blog from 2010-06-16:

"Paul Frields, who has been getting his paycheck from Red Hat to run the Fedora development Linux variant since 2008, is moving back inside the company to work on Enterprise Linux, and an outsider named Jared Smith is being brought in as the new Fedora Project Leader.

Frields joined Red Hat in February 2008, replacing Max Spevack, another Red Hat employee who ran the open source Linux development product from February 2006 until Frields took over. Smith will take over the FPL position (which is a full-time job with a Red Hat paycheck) to steer the development of Fedora 14, something that Frields already got the ball rolling on."

The full post is available^[2]

Red Hat names new Fedora Project Leader (Internetnews.com)

Kara Schlitz forwarded^[1] a posting from Internetnews.com:

"I'm a huge fan of the work and the leadership that current Fedora Project Leader Paul Frields has done since 2008. Frields has always been one of the most articulate, honest and insightful Linux community leaders that I have ever had the pleasure of working with.

. . .

The process of how Fedora's leadership is chosen is different than other distributions. It's not a totally democratic process like the one that Debian has. On the other hand it's not totally autocratic like Ubuntu. In a mailing list posting announcing the transition, Frields explained the process. "One of the hallmarks of Fedora leadership is that it's open to change," Frields wrote. "The FPL is not a semi-benevolent dictator for life, but rather a position to which new people can regularly bring their passion for making Fedora better...The FPL job is a salaried position at Red Hat, and the Fedora Board members as well as many other stakeholders have been informed and involved with the process of selecting a new FPL."

The full post is available^[2]

Ambassadors

In this section, we cover Fedora Ambassadors Project^[1].

Contributing Writer: Larry Cafiero

↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors

Fedora Release Party in Quebec

Rene Purcell reports that Fedora Ambassadors in Quebec held a Fedora 13 release party in Québec city earlier this month. Many people attended to learn new features and discuss about the new release.

Jean-Francois Saucier and Rene gave a presentation about new features in Goddard, and attendees were offered live media, as well as setting up a usb stick station where we offered to create live usb sticks.

A report on the event can be found here.

Let us know about your Fedora 13 activities

Fedora 13 has now launched and Ambassadors are encouraged to hold release events. If you are planning to hold an event, let Fedora Weekly News know. Drop a line to lcafiero=at=fedoraproject-dot-org with the details and we'll get it in FWN.

QualityAssurance

In this section, we cover the activities of the QA team^[1]. For more information on the work of the QA team and how you can get involved, see the Joining page^[2].

Contributing Writer: Adam Williamson

Test Day process improvements

A message^[1] from James Laska prompted a wide discussion of possible improvements to the Test Day process to improve participation. James asked^[2] if the group was trying to run too many events and not dedicating sufficient time to each, but Adam Williamson did not think so^[3].

Jóhann Guðmundsson suggested^[4] extending the test period to a week and broadening the coverage of each event. Adam felt the concurrency aspect of a single day to bring testers and developers together in real-time was valuable, but thought Jóhann had a valuable point in that the group could do a better job of making it clear to potential testers that testing performed outside of the Test Day is still valuable. Jeff Raber made some concrete suggestions^[5] as to how this could be achieved, and Adam implemented them^[6].

Jeff also suggested changing the name of the events, though Adam mentioned in his reply that he had not been able to think of anything that improved on 'Test Day'. Eric Blake suggsted^[7] 'Test Blitz', James contributed^[8] 'Bug Day' and Jóhann favored^[9]'Test Sprint'. Adam jokingly proposed a poll^[10], and added some wider-ranging thoughts about how the process could be re-organized to provide greater opportunities for participation and publicity while not losing the aspect of concurrency.

Proven testers

After several more revisions following the work mentioned in last week's issue, Aaron Farnes announced^[1] that the proven testers instruction page had been moved to the main wiki space^[2]. Several people replied to congratulate Aaron on the clarity of the page.

New desktop release criteria

Adam Williamson proposed^[1] several new release criteria, as a result of his discussions with the various desktop SIGs. These would cover session management tasks, update notification, and keyring functionality.

↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2010-June/091702.html

Fedora 14 recommendations

James Laska announced^[1] that he had filed a group of trac tickets covering the recommendations for the Fedora 14 cycle which had derived from the Fedora 13 retrospective discussed in previous issues.

↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2010-June/091663.html

Artwork

In this section, we cover the Fedora Design Team^[1].

Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei

↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork

Weekly Design Team IRC Meeting

A new weekly Design Team IRC Meeting happened, the notes^[1] are available, and it covered Fedora 14 Artwork Schedule, the Trac tickets queue, the Design Team Bi-Weekly Bounty, the fedora official font and marketing the design team.

↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2010-June/002692.html

The Design Team Story

Robyn Bergeron from the Marketing team asked^[1] for stories from the Design Team "it would be super cool to do a piece on what the Design team is up to - particularly since we're really at the start of the cycle here, and it's a great time for people to get involved and come up to speed without it being crunch time. :)", the topic was discussed at the weekly IRC meeting where Robyn was invited, and Máirín Duffy summed^[2] the conclusions, as 6 possible interviews with members of the team on various projects they are working on.

Security Advisories

In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce.

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce

Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco

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FWN/Issue232

Contents

Fedora Weekly News Issue 232

Announcements

Fedora Announcement News

Fedora 11 End of Life

Deadline for T-Shirt Registration FUDCon Zurich 2010

Passing the baton

FPL travel to LATAM events!

Fedora Development News

Bodhi 0.7.5 release

Fedora 14 Feature Submission Deadline in Two Weeks

Fedora Events

Upcoming Events (June 2010 - August 2010)

Past Events

Additional information

Planet Fedora

General

Marketing

Fedora In the News

New Fedora Project Leader appointed (The H Online)

New project leader wears the Fedora (The Register UK)

Red Hat names new Fedora Project Leader (Internetnews.com)

Ambassadors

Fedora Release Party in Quebec

Let us know about your Fedora 13 activities

QualityAssurance

Test Day process improvements

Proven testers

New desktop release criteria

Fedora 14 recommendations

Artwork

Weekly Design Team IRC Meeting

The Design Team Story

Security Advisories

Fedora 13 Security Advisories

Fedora 12 Security Advisories

Fedora 11 Security Advisories