We have a winner (actually three) – Kubuntu Council 2013 elections

The results are in.  The Kubuntu Council is selected from among and by Kubuntu members.  There are six council members.  Each serves a two year term, so we elect half the council each year.  The winners are:

• Philip Muskovac (yofel)
• Rohan Garg (shadeslayer)
• Valorie Zimmerman (valorie)

Congratulations and welcome.  All three are first time council members.

The Kubuntu Council is the governing body of Kubuntu. The Kubuntu Council has three primary roles:

• Approve development plans for future Kubuntu releases
• Approve Kubuntu membership applications
• Resolve disputes within the Kubuntu project

Fortunately, we had our own mini vUDS today so we’ve now got a good idea what we want to have the new council approve.

Polls Closing Soon – Kubuntu Council Elections 2013

As I’ve mentioned before, the 2013 Kubuntu Council elections are underway.  You’ve got just over two days left to vote, so if you’ve been procrastinating, mission accomplished, now go vote.

New ipaddress module in python3.3

Back in 2010 I packaged Google’s ipaddr module because I needed a light weight IP address manipulation library that supported both IPv4 and IPv6 and (at the time) python-subnettree was IPv4 only.  Well, ipaddr is all grown up now and included in python3.3 as the ipaddress manipulation module in the standard library.  You can find details, as well as some description of the differences, in PEP 3144.

I just converted one package that I’m upstream for to use either ipaddr (for python2.6/2.7/3.2) or ipaddress instead of some custom code.  It turned out to be pretty easy to make it work with either.  Other than the name, the only difference I ran into was the removal of the common, generic IPAddress and IPNetwork functions that are replaced by ip_address and ip_network.

…
-import ipaddr
+try:
+    import ipaddress
+except ImportError:
+    import ipaddr as ipaddress
…
-    address = ipaddr.IPAddress(ip)
-    if isinstance(address, ipaddr.IPv4Address):
+    try:
+        address = ipaddress.ip_address(ip)
+    except AttributeError:
+        address = ipaddress.IPAddress(ip)
+    if isinstance(address, ipaddress.IPv4Address):
…

Currently, python3-ipaddr has no reverse-dependencies in the archive (python-ipaddr does).  Once python3.2 is dropped from Jessie, I think I’ll drop the python3-ipaddr binary on the assumption people newly coding for python3.3 should use ipaddress.  The python-ipaddr module will stick around for use with python2.7.

Kubuntu Council Elections 2013 – Nomination Period Has Ended

The nominees I have recorded are:

David Wonderly (Darkwing)
Valorie Zimmerman (valorie)
Philip Muskovac (yofel)
Rohan Garg (shadeslayer)

They are all eligible. If somehow you thought you were nominated and you aren’t on this list, contact me immediately. Since there are four nominees for three seats, there will be an election.

I will start working on ballot preparation tomorrow. In order to be eligible to vote, you must be a current Kubuntu member and receive a ballot via CIVS. In order to receive a ballot, we need an email address. If you have a public email address in your Launchpad profile, you need take no action. I will collect them from there. If you do not have one, you will not get a ballot unless you provide me with an email address. You can contact me directly either via email or IRC.

Assuming no foul-ups in preparation, ballots will go out on Saturday and voting will be open until the end (UTC) of May 20th.

Best of luck to all the candidates and if you have anything more to communicate about your candidacy, now’s the time …

Kubuntu vUDS

Kubuntu held it’s own mid-release cycle virtual meeting today.  The primary technical output was an agreed community position on the latest release management proposal.  Rather than quote the whole thing here, I’ll provide a link to the message I sent on behalf of Kubuntu to the Ubuntu Technical Board.  The bottom line is that this is a pretty good proposal from our point of view.

It’s also worth (I think) mentioning that we did this with Free Software using Mumble (it is, however, possible that some restricted wifi drivers were in use, I’m not sure).  One of the real disadvantages to the online format for UDS is that it removes the incentive for project wide, contemporaneous focus on what comes next.

Kubuntu Council Elections 2013 – Call For Nominations

The Kubuntu Council terms for David Wonderly, Harald Sitter, and Jonathan Thomas expire on 2013-05-20. This is a call for nominations for the Kubuntu Council to elect three members.

The term will be for two years, 2013-05-21 to 2015-05-20.

As in the past, the election will be conducted using CIVS (Condorcet Internet Voting Service). The top three ranking vote recipients will be elected.

Schedule:

Nomination period: Now to 2013-05-01
Ballot Preparation: 2013-05-01 to 2013-05-04
Voting Period: 2013-05-04 to 2013-05-20
End Poll/Results Announced: 2013-05-20
New Term Begins: 2013-05-21

Eligibility:

All Kubuntu Members are eligible to be nominated and to vote. If you have a public email address in launchpad, you need take no further action to receive your voting ballot. If you do not have a public email address, please contact me offlist with the address you’d like your ballot sent to, otherwise you will be unable to vote.

Nominations:

All Kubuntu Members are eligible. The Kubuntu Council is intended to represent all of the Kubuntu community. Applications from involved non-developers are encouraged. If you are nominating someone else, please confirm their willingness to serve before nominating them. Nominations should be done in public via either kubuntu-users or kubuntu-devel mailing lists. If there is some extraordinary reason that precludes that, contact me directly.

Commitment:

The Kubuntu Council is the leadership body of Kubuntu. Members of the council are expected to be active in Kubuntu. The Kubuntu Council has three primary roles:
- Approve development plans for future Kubuntu releases
- Approve Kubuntu membership applications
- Resolve disputes within the Kubuntu project

The time commitment is not large. Meetings are generally only once every several months and conducted via IRC.

Questions:

If there are questions, you can contact me (preferably) via this mailing list or (if really necessary) via direct mail.

Scott K
For the Kubuntu Council

No UDS For You …

Now that UDS will be purely online, it’s also moved from using tools for remote participation based in FOSS (such as IRC, icecast, and etherpad (previously gobby) to one requiring use of Google+.  So if the Google+ privacy policy is not your cup of tea, then no UDS for you.

Correction: As Jono pointed out in the comments, there will be etherpad and IRC, just Google+ replacing icecast. I don’t think that changes the fundamental point though.