I'd like to propose a Init Hackfest for Debian when etch is released.

Debian includes several init systems, including sysvinit, runit, minit, initng and upstart. However, only sysvinit is really supported, and others can be used in a compability mode (and most of their benefits are gone then). So there is some work to be done here. Some init scripts probably could also use some cleanup. :-)

Shortly after the release of etch is probably the best moment to work on such key parts such as the init system, since many packages are affected. I suggest to provide patches to the package maintainers and do uploads to 7-day delayed.

If you are interested, maybe you could add your name to the wiki page? I also think the mailing list initscripts-ng-devel at alioth is appropriate for discussion.

I've been added to Planet GNOME (thanks jdub!), and this post is just to say hello!

I havn't been a large GNOME contributor so far (I was the Debian maintainer for Galeon some years ago, thats about it), but I recently started a small DBus related project (for exploring the DBus APIs of programs), dbus-inspector, which is now hosted in the GNOME subversion repository.

Other GNOME-related projects I'm thinking of:

• DBus hook, an application that allows you to easily setup ECA rules (event-condition-action) for DBus signals. E.g. to start your music synchronization tool when you plug in your mp3 player, whatever, in a rather generic way. Mount your network file server when you connect to your home wireless network, etc. - preferrably in an easy to understand way
• MP3val GUI, right now a tiny PyGTK wrapper around the MP3 validation and repair tool mp3val (you can't imagine how many MP3's are broken in one way or another, fortunately most errors are ignored by most players or only affect e.g. seeking) could use some extended functionality.
• Pyroman, a firewall configuration tool with some nice capabilities (rollback on error, debugging, very fast and efficient, Python or XML configuration files) could use an easy to use UI. It doesn't expose you to all the complexity of iptables, but instead lets you work in a "client, server, service" way of configuring the firewall, generating a somewhat sane layout of tables automatically.
• Flow analysis and visualization of iptables rules

I'd like to say thank you for all the great work you did. Having been a Galeon power user, I'm by now quite convinced of the "keep it simple" approach, and I have the impression that not having so many options means that I get more work done (since I don't waste time playing around with infinite options). Thanks for that. And for providing me with a pretty and unobtrusive work environment for the last 8 years or so.