Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1055539/

Creating fair governance models for open-source projects is not
easy; defining criteria for participants to receive membership and
voting rights is a particularly thorny problem for projects that have
elections for representative bodies. The Fedora
Council, the project’s top-level governance body, is wrestling
with that conundrum now. This was triggered by a Fedora special-interest
group (SIG) granting temporary membership to at least one person for the
sole purpose of allowing them to vote in the most recent Fedora
Engineering Steering Council (FESCo) election. That opened a large can
of worms about what it means to be a contributor and how contributors
can be identified for voting purposes.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1056330/

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (java-1.8.0-openjdk), Debian (openssl), Fedora (assimp, chromium, curl, freerdp, gimp, and harfbuzz), Mageia (glibc, haproxy, iperf, and python-pyasn1), Red Hat (image-builder, openssl, and osbuild-composer), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (avahi, cups, gio-branding-upstream, google-osconfig-agent, java-11-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, java-21-openjdk, kernel-firmware, libmatio-devel, libopenjp2-7, nodejs22, php8, python-python-multipart, python311-urllib3_1, qemu, and xen), and Ubuntu (ffmpeg, jaraco.context, openssl, and openssl, openssl1.0).

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1056159/

The Xfce team has announced that
it will be providing funding to Brian Tarricone to work on xfwl4,
a Wayland compositor for Xfce:

Xfwl4 will not be based on the existing xfwm4 code. Instead, it
will be written from scratch in rust, using smithay building
blocks.

The first attempt at creating an Xfce Wayland compositor involved
modifying the existing xfwm4 code to support both X11 and Wayland in
parallel. However, this approach turned out to be the wrong path
forward for several reasons:

• Xfwm4 is architected in a way that makes it very difficult to put the window management behavior behind generic interfaces that don’t include X11 specifics.
• Refactoring Xfwm4 is risky, since it might introduce new bugs to X11. Having two parallel code bases will allow for rapid development and experimentation with the Wayland compositor, with zero risk to break xfwm4.
• Some X11 window management concepts just aren’t available or supported by Wayland protocols at this time, and dealing with those differences can be difficult in an X11-first code base.
• Using the existing codebase would require us to use C and
  wlroots, even if a better alternative is available.

Work has already commenced on the project, and the project hopes to
share a development release in mid-2026.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1056158/

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (kernel, kernel-rt, python-urllib3, python3.11-urllib3, and python3.12-urllib3), Debian (imagemagick, openjdk-11, openjdk-17, and openjdk-21), Fedora (bind, bind-dyndb-ldap, chromium, ghostscript, glibc, mingw-glib2, mingw-harfbuzz, mingw-libsoup, mingw-openexr, and qownnotes), Mageia (kernel-linus), Red Hat (osbuild-composer), SUSE (go1.24-openssl, go1.25-openssl, govulncheck-vulndb, kernel, nodejs22, openCryptoki, openvswitch3, python-pyasn1, python311, and qemu), and Ubuntu (git-lfs, node-form-data, and screen).

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1055053/

The GNU Privacy Guard (GPG)
project decided to break from the OpenPGP standard for email
encryption in 2023, and instead adopted its own homegrown LibrePGP specification. The GPG 2.4
branch, the last one to adhere to OpenPGP, will be reaching the end of
life in mid-2026. The Fedora project is currently having a discussion
about how that affects the distribution, its users, and what to offer
once 2.4 is no longer receiving updates.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1055996/

Curl creator Daniel Stenberg has written a blog
post explaining why the project is ending its bug-bounty
program, which started in April 2019:

The never-ending slop submissions take a serious mental toll to
manage and sometimes also a long time to debunk. Time and energy that
is completely wasted while also hampering our will to live.

I have also started to get the feeling that a lot of the security
reporters submit reports with a bad faith attitude. These “helpers”
try too hard to twist whatever they find into something horribly bad
and a critical vulnerability, but they rarely actively contribute to
actually improve curl. They can go to extreme efforts to argue and
insist on their specific current finding, but not to write a fix or
work with the team on improving curl long-term etc. I don’t think we
need more of that.

There are these three bad trends combined that makes us take this
step: the mind-numbing AI slop, humans doing worse than ever and the
apparent will to poke holes rather than to help.

Stenberg writes that he still expects “the best and our most
valued security reporters” to continue informing the project when
security vulnerabilities are discovered. The program will officially
end on January 31, 2026.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1055958/

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (gimp, glib2, go-toolset:rhel8, golang, java-17-openjdk, java-21-openjdk, kernel, net-snmp, pcs, and thunderbird), Debian (apache2, imagemagick, incus, inetutils, libuev, openjdk-17, php7.4, python3.9, shapelib, taglib, and zvbi), Fedora (mingw-glib2, mingw-harfbuzz, mingw-libsoup, mingw-openexr, pgadmin4, python3.11, python3.12, python3.9, and wireshark), Gentoo (Asterisk, Commons-BeanUtils, GIMP, inetutils, and Vim, gVim), Mageia (kernel), Oracle (glib2, java-17-openjdk, java-21-openjdk, and libpng), Red Hat (java-17-openjdk, java-21-openjdk, kernel, and kernel-rt), SUSE (azure-cli-core, bind, buildah, chromium, coredns, glib2, harfbuzz, kernel, kernel-firmware, libheif, libvirt, openCryptoki, openvswitch, podman, python, python-urllib3, rabbitmq-server, and vlang), and Ubuntu (cjson).

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1055675/

Version
1.5.0 of the GNU Guix package manager and the Guix System have
been released. Notable improvements include the ability to run the
Guix daemon without root privileges, support for 64-bit RISC-V, and
experimental support for the GNU Hurd kernel.

The release comes with ISO-9660 installation images, virtual
machine images, and with tarballs to install the package manager on
top of your GNU/Linux distro, either from source or from
binaries—check out the download page. Guix users can update by running
guix pull.

It’s been 3 years since the previous release. That’s a lot of time,
reflecting both the fact that, as a rolling release, users
continuously get new features and update by running guix pull; but it
also shows a lack of processes, something that we had to address
before another release could be made.

During that time, Guix received about 71,338 commits by 744 people,
which include many new features.

LWN last looked at Guix in
February 2024.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1055672/

Greg Kroah-Hartman has released the 6.18.7 and 6.12.67 stable kernels. As always, each
contains important fixes throughout the tree. Users are advised to
upgrade.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1055671/

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (kernel), Debian (bind9, chromium, osslsigncode, and python-urllib3), Fedora (freerdp, ghostscript, hcloud, rclone, rust-rkyv0.7, rust-rkyv_derive0.7, and vsftpd), Mageia (avahi and harfbuzz), SUSE (alloy, avahi, busybox, cargo-c, corepack22, corepack24, curl, docker, dpdk, exiv2-0_26, ffmpeg-4, firefox, glib2, go1.24, go1.25, gpg2, haproxy, kernel, kernel-firmware, keylime, libpng16, librsvg, libsodium, libsoup, libsoup2, libtasn1, log4j, net-snmp, open-vm-tools, openldap2_5, ovmf, pgadmin4, php7, podman, python-filelock, python-marshmallow, python-pyasn1, python-tornado, python-urllib3, python-virtualenv, python3, python311-pyasn1, python311-weasyprint, rust1.91, rust1.92, util-linux, webkit2gtk3, and wireshark), and Ubuntu (libxml2 and pyasn1).

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1055485/

ReactOS, an open-source project
to develop an operating system that is compatible with Microsoft
Windows NT applications and drivers, is celebrating 30
years since the first commit to its source tree. In that time
there have been more than 88,000 commits from 301 contributors, for a
total of 14,929,578 lines of code. There is, of course, much left to
do.

It’s been such a long journey that many of our contributors today,
including myself, were not alive during this event. Yet our mission to
deliver “your favorite Windows apps and drivers in an open-source
environment you can trust” continues to bring people together. […]

We’re continuing to move ReactOS forward. Behind the scenes there are
several out-of-tree projects in development. Some of these exciting
projects include a new build environment for developers (RosBE), a new
NTFS driver, a new ATA driver, multi-processor (SMP) support, support
for class 3 UEFI systems, kernel and usermode address space layout
randomization (ASLR), and support for modern GPU drivers built on
WDDM.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1055484/

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (gpsd), Debian (inetutils and modsecurity-crs), Fedora (cpp-httplib, curl, mariadb11.8, mingw-libtasn1, mingw-libxslt, mingw-python3, rclone, and rpki-client), Oracle (gimp, glib2, go-toolset:rhel8, golang, kernel, mariadb-devel:10.3, and thunderbird), Red Hat (buildah, go-toolset:rhel8, golang, grafana, kernel, kernel-rt, multiple packages, openssl, osbuild-composer, podman, and skopeo), Slackware (bind), SUSE (ffmpeg-4, libsodium, libvirt, net-snmp, open-vm-tools, ovmf, postgresql17, postgresql18, python-FontTools, python-weasyprint, and webkit2gtk3), and Ubuntu (glib2.0 and opencc).

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1055327/

Version
3.0.0 of the pandas data
analysis and manipulation library for Python has been
released. Notable changes include a dedicated
string type (str), new “copy-on-write” behavior, and much more. This release also removes
a number of features that were deprecated in prior versions of pandas;
developers are advised to upgrade to pandas 2.3 and ensure code is
working without warnings before moving to 3.0. See the release
notes for the full changelog.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1054220/

At the 39th
Chaos Communication Congress (39C3) in December, researchers Lexi
Groves (“49016”) and Liam Wachter said that they had discovered a
number of flaws in popular implementations of OpenPGP email-encryption standard. They also released an
accompanying web site, gpg.fail, with
descriptions of the discoveries. Most of those
presented were found in GNU Privacy
Guard (GPG), though the pair also discussed problems in age,
Minisign, Sequoia, and the OpenPGP
standard (RFC 9580) itself. The discoveries have spurred some interesting
discussions and as well as responses from GPG and Sequoia
developers.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1055322/

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (brotli and container-tools:rhel8), Debian (python-keystonemiddleware and python3.9), Fedora (cef, freerdp, golang-github-tetratelabs-wazero, and libpcap), Oracle (brotli, gpsd, kernel, and transfig), Red Hat (freerdp, golang, java-11-openjdk with Extended Lifecycle Support, libpng, libssh, mingw-libpng, and runc), SUSE (abseil-cpp, alloy, apache2, bind, cpp-httplib, curl, erlang, firefox, gpg2, grafana, haproxy, hauler, hawk2, libblkid-devel, libpng16, libraylib550, python-keystonemiddleware-doc, python-uv, python-weasyprint, squid, and tomcat), and Ubuntu (crawl and iperf3).

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1055191/

Mozilla has announced
a repository with Firefox
Nightly channel packages for RPM-based Linux distributions such as CentOS
Stream, Fedora, and openSUSE. Mozilla has provided a Debian repository
since 2023.

Note that this repository only includes the nightly builds of The
firefox-nightly package. Mozilla is not providing stable
builds as RPMs at this time. However, the package will not conflict
with a distribution’s regular firefox package; both packages
can be installed at the same time for those who wish to test the
nightly builds. See the blog post for instructions on setting up the
repository.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1055152/

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (gpsd-minimal, jmc, kernel, kernel-rt, and net-snmp), Debian (apache-log4j2 and dcmtk), Fedora (exim, gpsd, mysql8.0, mysql8.4, python-biopython, and rust-lru), Mageia (firefox, nss and thunderbird), Oracle (container-tools:rhel8, gpsd-minimal, jmc, kernel, net-snmp, and uek-kernel), Red Hat (net-snmp), SUSE (chromium, go, harfbuzz-devel, kernel, libsoup, rust1.91, rust1.92, and thunderbird), and Ubuntu (apache2, avahi, and python-urllib3).

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1055033/

PostgreSQL contributor Robert Haas has published
a blog post that breaks down code contributions to PostgreSQL in
2025.

I calculate that, in 2025, there were 266 people who were the
principal author of at least one PostgreSQL commit. 66% of the new
lines of code where contributed by one of 26 people, and 90% of the
lines of new code were contributed by one of 67 people.

Contributions to the project seem to be on the upswing; in his analysis
of development in 2024, there were 229 people who were the primary
authors of a commit, and 66% of new lines of code were contributed by
one of 18 people. The raw
data is also available.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1055001/

Version
11.0 of the Wine Windows compatibility layer is out. “This
release represents a year of development effort, around 6,300
individual changes, and more than 600 bug fixes.” The most notable
changes in this release are support for the NTSync Linux kernel module
(when available), and the completion of the Windows 32-bit on Windows 64-bit (WoW64) architecture that was announced as experimental in Wine 9.0.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1054993/

Greg Kroah-Hartman has released the 5.15.198, and 5.10.248 stable kernels. As usual, each
contains important fixes throughout the tree; users are advised to
upgrade.