February 2009 Team Reports

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Full Circle Magazine

• Issue #21 was released on time, and has been downloaded nearly 20,000 times.
• Translations uploaded: #19 Italian. #20 Hungarian, Chinese and Turkish. #21 Russian.
• All book and badge prizes up to #21 sent off, finally. Sorry for the delay folks!
• FCM#22 nearly complete, just need to add a couple of space filler ads, some news, and it'll be ready for release this coming Friday, 27th February.

Ubuntu Technical Board

Meeting 2009-02-10

• Members present: Colin Watson (acting chair), Mark Shuttleworth, Matt Zimmerman, Scott James Remnant
• Patent policy
  • Assigned to Jono, but no progress to report yet. Still on the radar because it blocks another TB ruling (ffmpeg).
• Policy for per-package upload permissions
  • Emmet Hikory sent a proposal to the Technical Board mailing list, which was discussed and largely agreed with a few generalisations (remove language making it specific to small sets of packages and small numbers of developers, and remove text about the lack of an existing maintenance team). The Board will deal with final polishing and ratify the proposal out of band.
• cdrtools
  • Mark gave an update on the cdrtools inclusion situation. Joerg Schilling has declined to grant a specific permission on his CDDL code, and in the absence of that (or in the absence of a broader discussion between CDDL and GPL stakeholders to resolve the licence incompatibility), Eben Moglen of SFLC informs us that we cannot ship cdrtools. For the time being, the matter is closed.
• Kernel firmware licensing
  • The Technical Board was approached with concerns about unclear licensing on specific firmware components shipped in Ubuntu. The kernel team has investigated this and has cleared everything except the DVB firmware, which is still a work in progress. This is on track for 9.04. In future, Pete Graner will review licences on all new firmware. This does not represent a change in firmware licensing policy, but rather simply ensuring that Ubuntu has the legal right to redistribute each item of firmware.
• Kernel team upload privileges
  • Pete Graner asked the Technical Board to consider restricted upload privileges to kernel packages for Stefan Bader, who is responsible for kernel maintenance in stable releases. The Board approved Stefan's application and welcomed him to the development team.

Ubuntu Development Teams

Mobile Team

Spent some time reviewing the specs. In summary these are:

• The open source components of Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) will be fully integrated into the Jaunty release. An installation image will be created by the distro team using the standard distro tools (ubiquity)and this will include a modified seed and a modified set of applications. These are:
  • netbook-config # a default UNR configuration (gconf settings, etc..)
  • netbook-launcher # the UNR launcher
  • desktop-switcher # a switcher between UNR desktop and gnome
  • human-netbook-theme # the default UNR theme
  • maximus # a window maximizer daemon
  • window-picker-applet # a window picker panel applet
  • go-home-applet # a go home panel applet
  • webfav # a firefox extension to save bookmarks to UNR launcher

    The source for most of these packages is available at https://code.edge.launchpad.net/unr The image will also include standard Ubuntu packages that were modified by the OEM Services Group most notably to make the UI fit in 576 vertical pixels. Also a modified kernel is available here http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git?p=mid-team/hardy-netbook.git;a=summary

• For the Mobile images a mobile setup wizard allows user-customisation post-install to better support OEM rollouts. The setup questions asked were reviewed
• The seeds for the Mobile flavours reflect the concepts inherent midway through the intrepid development cycle, and management thereof has not been adjusted to reflect changes in 8.10 final, those expected as part of jaunty, or those expected in preparation for the archive reorganisation. The Mobile seeds shall be adjusted to match a model expected to be stable for the next few cycles. This is not an end user visible specification
• Provide a softboot loader for ARM to address outstanding issues with the wide variety of methods used to boot ARM devices. One of the major problems with the ARM architecture is that there is no standardized boot framework like EFI/BIOS on a PC, or Open Firmware on a Mac, which makes supporting Ubuntu on ARM a rather difficult process since not only the kernel must be tweaked, but we also must add support to d-i for each boot configuration we want to support. The basis of the soft boot loader is to get a system to a point where it can load the main operating system. It makes more sense to use the Linux kernel to load all the necessary devices (IDE,USB etc), load the main kernel image, and then boot into it
• With the armel architecture (Ubuntu supports the ARMv7 architecture) appearing in ubuntu it needs to be identified which selection of images should be built. ARM uses very specific boot methods for hardware that can vary from board to board, the currently vfat/syslinux or iso9660/isolinux image setup used for other architectures will not boot right away, ARM will need special treatment and we need to identify a bootloader process that works for the majority of the devices.
• Reviewing the lpia v i386 issue. The lpia architecture is a maintenance burden for Ubuntu; we need to make sure it's useful enough or dropped: either by asserting that it is useful enough, or by changing it into something more useful. The lpia architecture also creates problems of its own (incompatibility with third party .debs)
• David also cleaned up mobile related specs in Launchpad

MOTU

MOTU Council

• Jonathan Thomas (JontheEchnida) became a MOTU.

• Feb 4th:
  • Attendees: dholbach, geser, nixternal, persia, soren.
  • Open applications: quadrispro motu, ncommander core-dev, nellery uuc.

  • Nominees for upcoming MC elections. Following CommunityCouncil/Delegation.

• Nick Ellery (nellery) became a Contributing Developer.
• Feb 11th:
  • Attendees: dholbach, geser, persia, soren.
  • Open applications: quadrispro motu.
  • Preparation of MC Meetings. First one Friday 7:00 UTC.
• Feb 13th, MC Meeting:
  • Didier Roche (didrocks) joined the MOTU team.
  • Christophe Sauthier (huats) joined the MOTU team.
  • Iain Lane (Laney) joined the MOTU team.
• The last 'old-style' developer application was closed: Alessio Treglia (quadrispro) is a MOTU now.

Xubuntu Team

Server Team

Ubuntu LoCo Teams

Colombian Team

• Begin of the project of training to the members of the community on IRC Classrooms

• We made a Pre Ubuntu Global Bug Jam, where AndresMujica teach us how to work in the BugSquad and in the GBJ Photo gallery

• Whe participate in the Ubuntu Global Bug Jam info Photo gallery

Cypriot Team

• 2009-02-26: Held two presentations:
  • St. Neophytos high school (Limassol)
  • Ministry of Education (Cyprus Government)
• 2009-02-03: Meeting with Alexandros Kofteros (Apoplous.org, Mathisis.org)
• 2009-02-10: Ministry of Education requested/accepted a presentation
• 2009-01-30: General Inspector of the Ministry of Education replied to "Why Vista?".
• 2008-05-23 (ongoing): Ubuntu-cy reacts to laptop funding pre-installed with Vista for high school students.

• Source: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CypriotTeam/TeamReports/200902

• Full report: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CypriotTeam/TeamReports/200902?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=ubuntu-cy_report.pdf

German Team

Berlin

• Feb, 2nd, workshop "Screen and Irssi" #1: workshop with book author Sven Guckes about Screen and Irssi part one
• Feb, 3rd, workshop "Screen and Irssi" #2: workshop with book author Sven Guckes about Screen and Irssi part two
• Feb, 4th, monthly Jour Fix
  • this time with round about 30 Canonical Ubuntu developers and Mark Shuttlerworth visiting Ubuntu Berlin at c-base
  • guided tours through c-base
  • cosy tech talks and interviews

  • for a longer report see: http://www.screenage.de/blog/2009/02/06/ubuntu-developers-visiting-ubuntu-berlin-and-c-base-with-interview-with-mark-shuttleworth/

• Feb, 7th, free gaming party
  • first try of lan party for open source network games, preferably from Ubuntu repositories

  • checked games like Battle for Wesnoth, OpenArena, Sauerbraten, Tetrinet

  • discussed about events like this in closer future
• Feb, 10th, Berlin Jam Team
  • debugged two laptops
  • looked at a few bugs together

  • took a look at resolved-upstream bugs in Harvest

  • played with new gparted from Debian experimental and attempted a merge
  • lots of fun, lots of questions, lots of new things learned
• Feb, 11th, workshop "Screen and Irssi" #3: workshop with book author Sven Guckes about Screen and Irssi part three

• Feb, 12th, LoCoDocsDay: some members attended on LoCoDocsDay extending existing documents with hands on experience

• Feb 21st, GlobalBugJam: The Berlin Jam team participated with 6-7 members and we were able to touch 62 bugs during the event. Some members worked on some packaging bits.

• Feb 25th, workshop "Introduction to IPv6" with Jens Link

Irish Team

• Hosted Ubuntu Global Bug Jam
  • Blog posts:

    • http://meanmachine.wordpress.com/2009/02/22/ubuntu-ie-global-bug-jam-story/

  • Pictures:

    • Hard at work: http://twitpic.com/1ltp4

    • Showing how it's done http://twitpic.com/1lw2q

    • mdanielski's (flickr)

Jordan Team

• Jad has resigned from Ubuntu Jordan. Khamis and Faisal taking care of the team now

Romanian Team

• New design for the Planet Ubuntu-ro page. Theme can be found in bzr (https://code.edge.launchpad.net/~alexeftimie/ubuntu-ro/planet). The page look like this: http://planet.ubuntu.ro/

• Committed our http://forum.ubuntu.ro theme and hacks we use with FluxBB: https://code.edge.launchpad.net/~sushkov/ubuntu-ro/forum

US Teams

Arizona Team

• Received two new servers, rack space, and Internet connnection(all donated): Servers

• New Team Website: New Team Website

• Four IRC Meetings: Meeting Archives

• Three Team Newletters: Newsletter Archives

• One Installfest(Tucson): Tucson Installfest

Florida Team

Illinois Team

Chicago

• Planned for the Ubuntu global Bug Jam, securing office space & reaching out to members of the Free Software community who aren't regular participants in Ubuntu-specific events.

• Actually participated in the Ubuntu Global Bug Jam, including about 25 on-site participants over two days!
• Discussed possibility of updating the Ubuntu-Chicago website using the drupal loco-team template.

Pennsylvania Team

• Planned and promoted Feb 21, 2009 BugJam

• Hosted Bug Jam!

  • Photos

  • Blog post

Ubuntu Arabic

• Jad is about to resign, still need to find a new team lead/contact.

Tamil Team

• IT Centre at Theerthamalai, TamilNadu together with Makkal Vaazhvurimai Arakkattalai and District Administration.

Tunisian Team

• ISETS Event 9.02 :