Quando l’open source ti tocca il cuore

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È tutto il giorno che leggo e rileggo un messaggio di Ian Hands, figlio di Adrian Hands, uomo che mi sento di definire un eroe.
Nonostante fosse affetto da sclerosi laterale amiotrofica, Adrian riusciva ad usare il suo computer tramite una tastiera Darci che permette di scrivere tramite codice morse.

 

 

 

La storia…

Padre e figlio amano l’open source, e Adrian con la sue ginocchia scrive una patch che migliora l’accessibilità di eog.

La patch è buona e utile, viene accettata, Adrian è contentissimo e scrive una mail al figlio per manifestargli la sua gioia.

Un mese dopo Adrian non ce la fa, e passa a vita migliore.

Il ringraziamento…

 

Ian, il figlio, scrive un ringraziamento al Gnome Team per aver regalato un gran bel momento con suo padre.

Non traduco in italiano, rischierei di rovinare le belle parole.

 

I would like to extend my thanks to the gnome team/community for a great last
moment with my dad.

Adrian Hands (my father) wrote the patch above to improve the usability of
gnome for himself and others. You see my dad was suffering from ALS and his
hands were so crippled he could no longer use a keyboard. Thus we used a Darci
usb morse code keyboard emulator to help him type. Even the morse code device
was a struggle as the sensitivity adjustment and positioning of the nice two
paddled key would fall out of whack. I rigged up a pvc cage that wrapped around
his knee and fixed remote switches to the cage so that he could use the
remaining strength in his legs to operate the Darci morse code device. He used
this last bit of body movement to write this patch.

Here is a photo of him using it:
https://picasaweb.google.com/HandsAdrian/ShotwellConnect#5549467460761802914

My father passed away yesterday. I went back through my email to find our last
correspondence (he was in India for treatment, and I live in Raleigh). I would
like to share the email with you.
<email>
On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 12:16 PM, Adrian Hands <handsadrian@gmail.com> wrote:
> ACCEPTed
> COMMITed
> RESOLVEd
> BOO-YAH!
>
> commit 0b209b1ff16e863e60a1d86413aa57c5fbde76b0
> Author: Adrian Hands <handsadrian@gmail.com>
> Date:   Fri Dec 31 14:34:58 2010 +0100
>
>    Add Copy Image and Copy Path to clipboard functionality
>
>    Fixes bug 78514.
>
>  data/eog-ui.xml  |    9 +++++++
>  src/eog-window.c |   63 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  2 files changed, 72 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

I have the coolest Dad in the world!
</email>

I am so glad that my last comment to my Dad was something like this.

Adrian Hands loved free software / open source. I do as well.

Thanks so much for the great software, and a new great memory.
-Ian Page Hands

 

 

E questa è la risposta di Claudio Saavedra, eog developer

 

Ian, I am really touched to hear your father's story and at the same time
honored to know that he gave us this wonderful contribution. Please know that
we are more than grateful to your father and that his contribution and memory
will live with this project, forever.

My sympathies,

Claudio (eog maintainer)

 

L’open source ti regala anche questo, persone stupende che credono nella tua stessa filosofia, nei tuoi stessi valori.

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Posted in Linux, Società . Tags: , , . 1 Comment »

How to make a Debian Developer happy

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Hi, Giuseppe.

I would like to just write something that people usually don’t: a “thank
you note” from one satisfied user of your experimental packages.

I have following more or less your development and your packages are
better done that those that the Ubuntu daily build provides: you use
libraries already in Debian and that’s quite welcome.

Thank you for giving us a better product than the competition.

Thanks Rogério! :-)

Popularity: 1% [?]

Posted in Debian . Tags: , . No Comments »

chromium-browser removed from testing

Ok, this happened, chromium-browser was removed from testing and will not be included in Debian squeeze.

Some days ago (before the hard freeze) I contacted the release team and asked about a possible inclusion of Chromium 6 in squeeze. The main reason of this request is that in April there was at least one major refactoring of the SVG code (webkit). The internal webkit copy is too outdated in chromium 5, and backporting any future SVG security patches (and unfortunately the story says they are frequent) is very hard.

I got no answer, and after one week of silence and the hard freeze announcement, I realized that chromium 5 is not supportable and decided to upload chromium 6 in unstable (It was already in experimental). I asked the Release Team to unblock chromium-browser 6.0.472.53~r57914-3 or remove chromium-browser 5.0.375.127~r55887-1 from testing.

Well, after one hour they removed chromium-browser from testing.

I failed, my efforts to get chromium in Squeeze were in vain. Debian failed, a modern and very appreciated web browser will not be included in our next stable release.

 

Update:  The relase team unblocked chromium, squeeze will have chromium!

Popularity: 13% [?]

Why would you prefer chromium-browser in sid over google-chrome

I’ve seen a lot of Debian user asking:  ”What is the difference between chromium-browser in sid and google-chrome (stable)?”, “Does chromium-browser support html5, h264, vp8?”

“Why would I prefer chromium-browser in sid over google-chrome (stable)?”

  • chromium-browser is free software, google-chrome isn’t
  • chromium-browser uses (when it is possible) system libs.
  • chromium-browser supports, like google-chrome, the h264 codec (and chromium official builds don’t support it)
  • chromium-browser in sid follows the stable tree, but it contains some important (features and bugfix) backports, as for example VP8/WebM codecs (the stable google-chrome version doesn’t support it),  or the  support for “Ambiance/Radiance and Dust themes button”
  • chromium-browser uses a very recent and high-performance libv8 version, google-chrome (stable) uses an ancient version

BTW, the next step is to get chromium-browser into testing and upload a dev version (6.x) in experimental.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Seminario Sicurezza Linux & Open Source – Università di Catania

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Ho messo online le slide del seminario di Sicurezza tenutoso lo scorso lunedì. Potete scaricarle da qui.

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Chromium ready for unstable

I’m currently testing the new chromium version for unstable.

I tried to remove embedded code copies, and I’m pleased with the result.

Ubuntu i386 binary:

-rwxr-xr-x root/root 35804728 2010-05-05 12:01 ./usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser

Debian i386 binary:

-rwxr-xr-x root/root 20693336 2010-05-09 21:33 ./usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser

The latest blocker for an upload in unstable is a minor bug in libv8, but Antonio Radici should upload a fixed version this evening :)

Popularity: 7% [?]

New member in the security team

Even though I’m late, I would like to thank everybody  involved in my NM process and those who permitted me to join the Sec Team, and in particular:

Enrico Zini, a special thanks! Sponsor, advocate, but most of  all an exquisite person. It was he, that on holiday in 2008,  infront of a great pizza at Cortile Alessi, said to me, “So,  when will you NM?”

Steffen Joeris and Mortiz Muehlenhoff, my reference points  within the Security Team :)

Felipe Augusto Van de Wiel, my AM!

Christoph Berg, it was he who approved my NM!

Max Cetra, Trusted tester for security updates!

I hope that I haven’t forgotten too many people :)

Popularity: 2% [?]

Posted in Debian . 2 Comments »

I’m thinking to ask for removal of atmailopen in Debian

From December 2008, I maintain the atmailopen Debian package. This is a nice webmail in PHP and Ajax , it aim to provide an elegant Ajax webmail client for existing IMAP mailservers, with less bloat and a focus on an intuitive, simple user interface.

I was very happy when it was accepted in Debian, but I was wrong:

On 19/04/2009 I noticed a Secunia advisory about @Mail (SA34704) ,and the same day I mailed upstream and asked if atmailopen is affected by the same security vulnerability. No answer as of today, 2009-05-22 …

While checking about SA34704, I discovered that atmailopen is using the vulnerable version of html2text, which could lead to code execution attacks, the same of CVE-2008-5619 in roundcube.

On 26/04/2009 I mailed upstream to inform about this issue, but as usual, nothing… no answer as of today, 2009-05-22 …

Is clearly evident, upstream doesn’t take care about security in his atmail open source version, and doesn’t provide security support.

This is not acceptable for a software in Debian, I will request a removal.

P.S. If you aren’t using the debian package, I really suggest you to patch your atmailopen version, or better, switch to another webmail.

UPDATE: atmailopen was removed from Debian

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Posted in Debian, Linux . Tags: , . 2 Comments »

Add Debian maintainer Giuseppe Iuculano

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debian-maintainers (1.48) unstable; urgency=medium

   * keycheck: grep the first '^gpg: key' from jetring-apply's output.
     Closes: #505775
   * Update Jon Dowland's public key. Closes: #476804
   * Update Daniel Leidert's public key. Closes: #498805
   * Add Debian maintainer Giuseppe Iuculano. Closes: #502088
   * Add Debian maintainer Thorsten Glaser. Closes: #503726
   * Add Debian maintainer Franck Joncourt. Closes: #505232

– Anibal Monsalve Salazar <anibal@debian.org>  Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:44:42 +1100

:D

Tante grazie ad Enrico per l’ “avvocatura” ;)

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Posted in Debian . Tags: , . No Comments »

Smbind – Tool in php per la gestione di un DNS

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Smbind è un tool in PHP che permette di amministrare un DNS (bind).

Tramite l’interfaccia web è possibile creare, modificare, gestire le zone. Ecco alcuni screenshots:

Zona

Opzioni

Creare zona

In attesa di uno Sponsor per chi usa debian o ubuntu ecco come installarlo:

(debian) Aggiungete al vostro sources.list:

deb     http://debian.iuculano.it/apt  etch main contrib non-free
deb-src http://debian.iuculano.it/apt  etch main contrib non-free

Mentre per Ubuntu:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/giuseppe-iuculano/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/giuseppe-iuculano/ubuntu hardy main

Poi da terminale:

apt-get update && apt-get install smbind

Una volta terminata l’installazione:

usermod -G bind www-data

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

echo ‘include “/etc/smbind/smbind.conf”;’ >> /etc/bind/named.conf.local

/etc/init.d/bind9 restart

Adesso potete aprire il browser ed andare su http://localhost/smbind/ .

Login e password di defualt sono entrambe ‘admin’, ma naturalmente dovete cambiare la password immediatamente :-)

Popularity: 2% [?]

Posted in Debian, Linux, Ubuntu . Tags: , , , , , . 2 Comments »