FWN/Beats/Announcements

Announcements

In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project, including general announcements, development announcements and Events.

Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco

Fedora Announcement News

The announcement list is always exclusive for the Fedora Community. Please, visit the past announcements at

Looking for a few great contributors to help out with Fedora Elections!

Robyn Bergeron put out a call for volunteers to assist with the upcoming Fedora elections:

"Are you a Fedora community member or even a free software user who’d like to get more involved but aren’t sure where to start?

The Fedora Project is gearing up for our twice-annual elections process, for an election period in late November. During this election, we’ll be voting on positions in the following groups:

• Fedora Board

• Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo)

• Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee (FAmSCo)

Helping out with this elections process is a great opportunity to get started as a free software contributor, especially if you’re unable or prefer not to write code.

We have a handful positions we need help with. We’ve outlined them below. If any of these sound like things you’d like to help us with, please send an email to the Fedora Board (advisory-board AT lists.fedoraproject.org).

Fedora Election Questionnaire Coordinator

The Fedora Election Questionnaire Coordinator will make sure members of the Fedora Community are able to ask questions of the candidates, and will facilitate sending the questions to the candidates and compiling them into a wiki page that will be distributing during the election period.

Specifically, here’s what you’ll need to do as questionnaire coordinator:

• Create a wiki page to list the candidate questions.

• Use the following link to create the page

• REFERENCE: The questionnaire from the last election is here You may want to look at it for ideas.

• Send an message out to the Fedora community to collect questions for the candidates, allowing community members to email their questions to you directly or optionally adding them to a wiki page. The message should be sent to the following:

• Fedora Advisory Board Mailing List (advisory-board AT lists.fedoraproject.org)

• Community support for Fedora users Mailing List (users AT lists.fedoraproject.org)

• Fedora Announce List Mailing List (announce AT lists.fedoraproject.org)

• Development discussions related to Fedora Mailing List (devel AT lists.fedoraproject.org)

• Planet Fedora (http://planet.fedoraproject.org) – if your blog is not on Planet Fedora, contact Máirín Duffy (duffy AT fedoraproject.org) to post your message to the Planet for you.

• On November 1, gather up all the questions that you collected from the Community, and post them all to the wiki page you created. Make sure the page is neat & orderly.

• On November 1, send the questionnaire page to all candidates and ask them to send their answers to you by November 8.

• For any candidates you haven’t heard from on November 7th, send them a reminder email.

• Copy the candidates’ answers into the wiki page and advertise the answers to the same venues listed above (the mailing lists and Planet Fedora.

• Helpful Tips:

• Consider using your best judgement and selecting 6-8 good questions from the pool for the candidates. 20 questions is probably too much. If some are similar, feel free to merge and restate them.

That’s it. Not too tough, to ask. right?

Fedora Election Town Hall Coordinator

The Fedora Election Town Hall Coordinator will schedule IRC town hall sessions, one for each of the following groups:

• Fedora Board
• Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo)
• Fedora Ambassadors’ Steering Committee (FAmSCo)

Specifically, here’s what you’ll need to do as town hall coordinator:

• Email all of the Fedora Board candidates between Nov. 1 and Nov. 3 and ask them to provide some 1-hour blocks of time they might be available to participate in an IRC town hall session, between November 13 and November 19th. You may wish to use a tool like whenasgood.net to organize this. Ask them to respond by Nov. 10.

• Do the same as above for the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) candidates.

• Do the same as above for the Fedora Ambassadors’ Steering Committee (FAmSCo) candidates.

• Select who the Town Hall moderators were be (see below for that job description).

• On November 10, determine the best date and time for each of the three town halls, and advertise this time & date and the irc channel (probably #fedora-meeting and #fedora-meeting-questions on irc.freenode.net) in the following venues:

• Fedora Advisory Board Mailing List (advisory-board AT lists.fedoraproject.org)

• Community support for Fedora users Mailing List (users AT lists.fedoraproject.org)

• Fedora Announce List Mailing List (announce AT lists.fedoraproject.org)

• Development discussions related to Fedora Mailing List (devel AT lists.fedoraproject.org)

• Planet Fedora (http://planet.fedoraproject.org) – if your blog is not on Planet Fedora, contact Máirín Duffy (duffy AT fedoraproject.org) to post your message to the Planet for you.

• Helpful tips:

• When selecting people for town hall coordinators – remember that things like good IRC skills, even-temperedness, knowledge in the area of the town hall they are moderating, are very helpful.

That’s it. Not too tough, right?

Fedora Election Town Hall Moderator (3 needed!)

The Fedora Election Town Hall Moderators will each run a 1-hour long IRC town hall sessions, one for each of the 3 groups being elected. This task requires some skill with IRC. This is an especially good position for someone who does not have a lot of time to devote as it only takes a little over an hour to do.

The date and time of each of these sessions will be published by the Fedora Election Town Hall Coordinator on November 10.

Specifically, here’s what you’ll need to do as town hall moderator:

• Show up at least 5 minutes early to the town hall, make sure the IRC channel exists.

• Start the meeting using the meeting bot command ‘#startmeeting’

• Learn the IRC nicks of the candidates for your town hall. You can look them up on Fedora Community or you can ask via email.

• During the town hall, allow only candidates to have voice in #fedora-meeting.

• During the town hall, take questions from Fedora Community members in #fedora-meeting-questions, and maintain a question queue. Ask the questions in order in #fedora-meeting, giving each candidate a chance to provide an answer to the question.

• Once the session is over, end the meeting with the meeting bot command ‘#endmeeting’

• At the end of the meeting, the meeting bot will spit out a bunch of links to the minutes. Take these links and post them to the following venues as soon as possible:

• Fedora Advisory Board Mailing List (advisory-board AT lists.fedoraproject.org)

• Community support for Fedora users Mailing List (users AT lists.fedoraproject.org)

• Fedora Announce List Mailing List (announce AT lists.fedoraproject.org)

• Development discussions related to Fedora Mailing List (devel AT lists.fedoraproject.org)

• Planet Fedora – if your blog is not on Planet Fedora, contact Máirín Duffy (duffy AT fedoraproject.org) to post your message to the Planet for you.

• Helpful tips:

• Have great IRC and meetbot skills. This will help you out a lot!
• Don’t be afraid to poke people in the public channel for questions if things get slow. And bring a question or two of your own, just in case things get *really* slow!
• Keep an eye on the clock and the question queue.
• Town halls are held in #fedora-townhall and #fedora-townhall public

That’s it!

Like I said – if you’re interested in any of the above positions – please send a mail to the Fedora Board (advisory-board AT lists.fedoraproject.org) to let them know you are willing and available.

Let election season begin! Don't forget to nominate yourself if you are interested, and don't forget to vote when voting time rolls around.

Cheers,

-Robyn"

Fedora 15 release name voting information

Jared Smith announced:

"The time has come to vote for the release name for Fedora 15. The Fedora community has submitted quite a few suggestions for the Fedora 15 release name, and that list has been narrowed down to the final five candidates. Now you can vote on these names and assist in the final selection for the successor of Fedora 14 "Laughlin".

This vote begins 26 October 2010 and runs until 1 November 2010 at 23:59:59 UTC. Other important facts:

• We are using the Range Voting method

• Ballots may be cast on the Fedora Elections System

• If this is the first time you've used the voting system, you might want to read the Fedora Elections Guide, currently located at

• To vote, you must have a valid Fedora Contributors License Agreement (CLA) and be a member of at least one non-CLA group

To vote, visit

Thank you to everyone who helped by contributing names for consideration, and reviewing the names for the final ballot.

-- Jared Smith Fedora Project Leader"

2011 Fedora Scholarship open to applications

Ian Weller announced:

"The Fedora Scholarship program recognizes one high school senior per year for contributions to the Fedora Project and free software/content in general. The scholarship is a $2,000 USD reward per year over each of the four years the recipient is in college, which is funded by Red Hat's Community Architecture team, as well as travel and lodging to the nearest FUDCon for each year of the scholarship.

If you are a student who will be entering college in Fall 2011, you are eligible to apply! The application is extremely simple, and is described in length. Please be sure to read the terms and conditions before applying.

The application deadline for this scholarship is February 25, 2011. (Remember -- don't procrastinate just because the deadline is in four months!)

-- Ian Weller <ian at ianweller.org>"

Fedora Development News

The fedora development news list is intended to be a low traffic announce-only list for Fedora development.

• Acceptable Types of Announcements

- Policy or process changes that affect developers. - Infrastructure changes that affect developers. - Tools changes that affect developers. - Schedule changes - Freeze reminders

• Unacceptable Types of Announcements

- Periodic automated reports (violates the INFREQUENT rule) - Discussion - Anything else not mentioned above

Fedora 14 Beta Declared GOLD

John Poelstra on Wed Sep 22 22:31:39 UTC 2010 announced,

"At the Fedora 14 Beta Go/No-Go meeting today, the Fedora 14 Beta was declared GOLD and ready for release on September 28, 2010.

Thank you to everyone who made this on-time release possible!

#fedora-meeting: Fedora 14 Beta Go/No-Go Meeting Minutes and Logs

Meeting started by poelcat at 21:01:35 UTC. The full logs are available at .

Meeting summary

• attendees rbergeron jsmith fenris02 SMParrish stickster jlaska adamw brunowolff (poelcat, 21:03:17)
• http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Engineering_Readiness_Meetings (poelcat, 21:03:42)

• review of release criteria and open bugs (poelcat, 21:05:24)
• adamw and jlaska here for qa (poelcat, 21:07:18)
• SMParrish here for devel/FESCo (poelcat, 21:07:28)
• dgilmore representing releng (poelcat, 21:07:38)
• brunowolff is here for Spins SIG (brunowolff, 21:08:00)
• LINK:

    <--- install test matrix  (adamw, 21:08:11)

• LINK:

    <--- desktop test matrix  (adamw, 21:08:25)

• LINK:

    <--- beta blocker list  (adamw, 21:08:49)

• AGREED: 627789 is not a beta blocker (adamw, 21:12:54)
• IDEA: create release criteria asserting some level of functionality of livecd-tools (jlaska, 21:13:03)
• AGREED: move https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=627789 to f14blocker (poelcat, 21:15:00)
• LINK:(adamw, 21:19:50)
• AGREED: publishing a documented updates.img with a fix for 635887 is an acceptable workaround, move 635887 to be a final blocker (adamw, 21:25:48)
• AGREED: 542255 is not a regression, is of minor impact, and the question of non-default-spin bugs blocking releases requires further discussion and clarification, so we will not block the beta for this bug (adamw, 21:45:26)
• ACTION: there being no unresolved blocking issues or unmet release criteria, Fedora 14 Beta is declared GOLD (poelcat, 21:55:34)
• open discussion (poelcat, 21:55:37)

Meeting ended at 21:58:31 UTC.

Action Items

• there being no unresolved blocking issues or unmet release criteria,Fedora 14 Beta is declared GOLD

Action Items, by person

• **UNASSIGNED**
• there being no unresolved blocking issues or unmet release criteria, Fedora 14 Beta is declared GOLD

People Present (lines said)

• adamw (106)
• poelcat (51)
• jlaska (45)
• dgilmore (27)
• jsmith (22)
• brunowolff (9)
• fenris02 (9)
• maxamillion (8)
• stickster (7)
• bcl (6)
• mjg59 (5)
• SMParrish (4)
• zodbot (4)
• rbergeron (4)
• kalev (3)
• mmcgrath (2)
• skvidal (1)

Generated by MeetBot_ 0.1.4"

libedataserverui soname bump in Fedora 14

Milan Crha on Fri Sep 24 08:57:41 UTC 2010 announced,

"I'm so sorry for a late notice, but there was a soname bump of libedataserverui library from evolution-data-server package in time for 2.31.91 update, but I didn't notice this change, and because this update didn't get it to the testing repo, then I realized just now, when I finished an update to 2.31.92 and pushed it to updates-testing.

Affected packages seems to be these:

• almanah
• anjal
• gnome-panel

It should be enough to just rebuild these against evolution-data-server-2.31.92, which is still marked for a build system.

The update request url is here:"

poppler update to 0.15.0 (0.16 alpha)

Marek Kasik on Mon Sep 27 08:07:02 UTC 2010 announced,

"I plan to update update poppler in rawhide (Fedora 15) to new development version 0.15 next week (at Monday, October 4th). Changes against 0.14.x are:

core:

• Remove exception support
• Improve creation of Annotations
• Fix failure to parse PDF with damaged internal structure.(Bugs #29189 #3870)
• Add a way to access the raw text of a page
• Speed improvements when reading multiple characters from a given Stream
• Speed improvements in the Splash backend
• Speed improvement in gray color space calculations
• Speed improvement in ICC color space calculations
• Speed improvement when reading some fonts
• Make GBool a bool instead of an int

glib:

• Add GObject introspection support
• Improve creation of Annotations
• Add a way to get the coordinates of each character of a page
• Add a way to get the page label
• Documentation improvements
• Support password protected documents in the demo
• Support for selection in the demo
• Support for adding annotationss in the demo
• Misc improvements in the internals

qt4:

• Add a way to access the raw text of a page
• Recognize "Print" as named action
• Documentation improvements

build system:

• Add option for autogen.sh to skip configure
• Nicer autogen.sh output
• Improvements when build the glib frontend with CMake

utils:

• pdftohtml: Use splash instead of external gs invocation to render the background
• pdftohtml: Let the user specify the resolution of the background. (Bug #29551)

cpp:

• Add a way to access the raw text of a page

+ 2 soname bumps in libpoppler.so.* and libpoppler.glib.so.*. Please check whether your package builds against this new version of poppler correctly if you maintain a package which requires it. The new version has been pushed to git already but not built yet."

Fedora Updates Policy

Kevin Fenzi on Tue Sep 28 23:07:43 UTC 2010 announced,

"At today's FESCo meeting (2010-09-28) we approved an Updates Policy: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Updates_Policy

This policy is based on the Fedora Board's Stable Updates release vision(see ) and expanded to cover other branches of Fedora. It's a superset of the existing .

All package maintainers and other interested parties are urged to read and follow the Policy.

When in doubt about some portion of the policy, Or when seeking an exception for an update or an adjustment to the policy, please open a discussion on the devel list or with FESCo directly (see ).

I would like to personally thank all the folks that helped work on or provide input to this document. I hope we can improve, clarify and adjust it as we go, leading to a better Fedora for our entire community."

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 (Sept 2010 - November 2010)

• North America (NA)
• Central & South America (LATAM)
• Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)
• India, Asia, Australia (India/APJ)

Past Events

Archive of Past Fedora Events

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.