Fedora Weekly News Issue 239

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 239^[1] for the week ending August 18, 2010. What follows are some highlights from this issue.

Our issue kicks off with news from the Fedora Planet, including why private browsing isn't as secure as you may think and how SELinux can help, reflections on software advances since 1995, a report from the Education pre-con at LinuxCon, and an experience of using Fedora on a Droid X. In Marketing team news, work on Fedora 14 Talking Points in advance of FUDCon 2011, calls for the F14 release slogan and discussion around it. Two pieces with Fedora In the News this week, one from interviews with kernel developers at LinuxCon, ncluding Fedora's kernel maintainer, Dave Jones, and coverage of Project Harmony, a multi-vendor effort to streamline Linux contributor agreements. We're very pleased this week to welcome a new beat writer for Ambassadors, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay, who reports on new Ambassadors to the Fedora Project, a great summary of discussion on the Ambassador list, and coverage of July and August FAmSCO meetings. In Translation news, an update on Fedora 14 tasks, work on missing translations for GNOME apps in Fedora 13, and new members to the Fedora Localization Project for Japanese and Low German. In Design team news, a report on the created Fedora balloons, packaging the Cantarell font, and some new contributions for F14 wallpaper. This issue wraps up with details on security advisories issued for F12 - F14 packages over the past week. Enjoy FWN 239!

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

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

Luis Villa wrote^[1]: "Put yourself in 1995. I’m going to tell the you of 1995 that in 2010, there will be a software platform with the following properties". Luis then listed all of characteristics of the Web as a software platform, then continued "At this point, 1995-you says ‘This sounds too good to be true. There must be a catch..."

Josh Bressers explained^[2] why private browsing isn't as secure as you may think. But one possible remedy includes running your web browser in a confined SELinux sandbox.

Máirín Duffy attended^[3] LinuxCon, but more importantly, took copious notes at the Education Mini-Summit that preceded LinuxCon.

Máirín also summarized^[4] the August 13, 2010 Fedora Board meeting.

Paul W. Frields was quite happy^[5] with the experience of using a Droid X with Fedora including the ease of transferring music and other files to the device (which isn't easy for an iPhone to do).

Marketing

In this section, we cover the happenings for Fedora Marketing Project from 2010-08-11 to 2010-08-17.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing

Contributing Writer: Neville A. Cross

Mel Chua^[1] made a twits on the topic of Talking Points to make reference to a "upstream marketing" session on FUDCon Tempe. Kind of how to get marketing-shiny on features in F14.

Robyn Bergeron^[2] continued with calls for action on release slogan. This was followed later for an invitation from Robyn^[3] for picking the release slogan

Paul Frields^[4] invited to the team involved in the microblog feed to spread the slip of F14 Alpha. Jonathan Nalley^[5] took action.

The marketing meeting^[6] discussed what will be our Fedora 14 release slogan.

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/

Project Harmony Takes Aim at Open Source Contribution Agreements (ITManagement)

Rahul Sundaram forwarded^[1] coverage of Project Harmony, a multi-vendor project to streamline and solve the problems associated with contributor agreements, with participation by Red Hat Inc.:

"In a separate session about contributor license agreements, Red Hat attorney Richard Fontana argued that formal contribution agreements are usually bad, suggested that the legal benefits for the project are dubious.

"It also signals a lack of confidence in free software licenses that regular open source licenses aren't good enough," he said.

Fontana added that he is participating in Project Harmony, though he has mixed feeling about the effort."

The full post is available^[2].

LinuxCon: What Is the Future of Linux Development? (LinuxPlanet)

Jonathan Nalley forwarded^[1] an article on the future of the Linux kernel, with interviews of attendees at LinuxCon, including Fedora's kernel maintainer, Dave Jones:

"When we ship Fedora updates the story is more of the same, more drivers and fixes to existing drivers," said Dave Jones, Red Hat's Fedora kernel maintainer. "There are some great features in every release, but it's mostly more of the same from our perspective."

Overall the increasing level of complexity and quality is also making it more difficult for new people to contribute to the kernel. Jones believes that the barrier to entry for kernel developers has been raised in recent years.

"A driver that would have been merged in the early days would now get shot down, with request for re-writes," he said.

Jones noted that there are certain areas where new kernel developers can make more of an impact than others.

"The kernel is big enough and there are whole areas are that are prime areas for people to come and clean up," Jones said.

That said, Jones suggested that new developers not choose to start with what he referred to as janitor patches that help to eliminate needless whitespace.

"Find something that is interesting and useful but at the same time easy enough to understand so you can get involved with it," Jones said."

The full post is also available^[2].

Ambassadors

This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Ambassadors Project^[1].

Contributing Writer: Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay

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

Welcome New Ambassadors

Edgar Rodolfo joined the Ambassador Project ^[1] from Peru, mentored by Maria Leandro

↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-August/015301.html

Summary of traffic on Ambassadors mailing list

The FAmNA members enthusiastically agreed with the idea of Fedora balloons^[1] For reference purposes, see the link to the beginning of the discussion thread^[2].

Nilesh Vaghela posted a summary^[3] of a Fedora Talk/Seminar at GLS College in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. The link to the photographs have been provided as well^[4]. Fedora 13 features were demonstrated at the workshop.

Zoltan Hoppar requested guidance^[5] in getting the domain hu.fedoraproject.org registered as it is part of the Hungarian community's efforts to become official.

Gerold and Paul Frields had a mail exchange^[6] ^[7] around the need for the Fedora EMEA e.V. NPO to rename and, the way forward on that.

Gerold Kassube posted ^[8] a job offer in Berlin and requested to be contacted privately off-list if anyone was interested in taking it up.

Robyn Bergeron requested help in selecting the Release Slogan for Fedora 14 ^[9]. The themes for the release slogan has a wiki page^[10] The Release Slogan SOP^[11] is recommended reading. The new slogan ideas are to be provided at the specific wiki page^[12] The deadline for submissions is Tuesday, August 17, at 21:00 UTC.

Fabian Affolter posted^[13] a call for an owner for LinuxDay at Dornbirn, Austria which has a wiki page^[14] available.

Gerold added^[15] to Joerg Simon 's call for owner for Software Freedom Day, Berlin^[16] by pointing out that FUDCon Zuerich begins on the same day.

Joe O'Dell wrote^[17] explaining that an upcoming set of study plans would not allow full focus on the duties of an Ambassador.

Gerold reminded^[18] Ambassadors that online registration for FUDCon2010/Switzerland was now open and, provided a link^[19] for those interested in sight-seeing.

Joerg Simon announced that the FAmSCo meeting for 2010-08-16 was cancelled^[20] since most of the members were unable to attend.

Summary of FAmSCo meetings

Susmit Shannigrahi emailed Mustafa ^[1] about copyrighted material being posted on his blog and best practices of an Ambassador

Joerg Simon posted ^[2] the meeting minutes ^[3] for the FAmSCo meeting on Mon Aug 9 19:15:05 2010 UTC The meeting led to creation of action items for developing the Ambassador Conduct content

Joerg Simon announced that the FAmSCo Report for July 2010 was ready for release ^[4]. The report included a section ^[5] about the results of the survey sent out to the mentors

Translation

This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) Project^[1].

Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee

↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N

Fedora 14 Tasks

John Poelstra informed^[1] the list about the upcoming tasks for Fedora 14. As per the schedule translation of software and documents is currently underway. Noriko Mizumoto suggested^[2] changes to the timeline to reflect the 1 week slip in the schedule.

Missing GNOME Translation for Fedora 13

Domingo Becker reported^[1] that translations for various GNOME applications appear with missing translations in Fedora 13, after updates are made.

↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/trans/2010-August/007887.html

New Members in FLP

Casey Jones (Japanese)^[1] joined the Fedora Localization Project recently. Nils-Christoph Fieldler started the Low German Translation Team^[2].

Design

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

Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei

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

Balloons follow-up

After the previous week the team created^[1] a design for balloons, Ben Williams followed^[2] with photos showing the final products.

Cantarell Font Packaged

In the effort of renewing the branding fonts, Luya Tshimbalanga packaged^[1] the last missing piece "Design team have recently chosen Cantarell for body text. I have packaged Cantarell fonts for Fedora" and Dave Crossland, the Cantarell's author Fedora user and existing contributor to the Fonts SIG^[2] used the opportunity^[3] to get involved more in font packaging "I have been saying for probably years now that I want to start packaging fonts for Fedora, and this seems like a great opportunity to actually get stuck in."

F14 Wallpaper Evolution

Federico Cáceres, a new contributor, introduced^[1] himself and a few modification proposals for the Fedora 14 wallpaper evolution "I thought I could mix up the current concept and share my experiments with the community." Máirín Duffy showed^[2] a bit of unrest about the status "Time is definitely getting short as we need to start working on the banners for beta. :)" and wrote a blog post^[3] to increase the feedback.

Security Advisories

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

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