We’ve got two updates for you today, as Jane Weideman dutifully brings us the current development report for the Dapper Drake. Twenty-five specifications have been fully completed, as the core team continues to drive towards release in April.

The human status clock, Dennis Kaarsemaker, also brings us the latest status report from the Community Council. The Ubuntu team continues to swells is ranks, as Edward A. Robinson, Grant Galbraith, Naaman Campbell, Licio Fernando, Anthony Mercante, Manu Cornet, Hou Zhengpeng, and Ming Hua come on board as members of the team.

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Daniel Holbach has posted the latest MOTU Report, Issue 11. The MOTUs really put Malone (the new Ubuntu bug tracking system) to the test this past month:

December was packed with merges, but we’re happy to announce that there are only a very few left. Just to visualize the combined efforts of MOTUs, MOTU wannabes and one-time contributors in that respect: we generated around 3300 Malone mails.

Jane Weideman posted the latest Dapper Development Status Update, complete with a nifty color chart to hang on your real fridge. These status updates are a good way to track the progress of Dapper from a safe distance. The next meeting is scheduled for Thursday 12 January 2006 at 08:00 UTC.

The Community Council also had it’s first meeting of the new year. Fabio Nogueira, Lucas Duailibe, Lorenzo Sfarra, Brian Burger, Michael Banck, Raphaël Pinson, and Brian Shumate were recognized for their hard work on Ubuntu and made members. The next meeting will be on Tuesday 24 January at 21:00 UTC.

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Dennis Kaarsemaker once again brings us the latest summary of the Community Council meetings, this one is for the 6th of December. Community volunteers who sign the Code of Conduct are now officially referred to as “Ubunteros” instead of “Ubuntites”. The Council also approved new members Mauricio Hernandez, Jordan Mantha, Chris Peterman, Kevin Cole, and Steve Kowalik.

The Accessibility Team has conducted its second meeting, Daniel Holbach has posted minutes of that meeting.

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Dennis Kaarsemaker has posted the Community Council Summary for the week of November 22nd. The Council, which acts as the the primary community governance body for the Ubuntu project, discussed various topics including a report from the Chilean Local Team and approved 3 new Ubuntu Members; Julius Bloch, Armin Ronacher, and Bhuvaneswaran.

To continue a tradition started last year, members of the Ubuntu Community have created a Holiday Give Away wiki page. The goal of that effort is to try to provide people with Ubuntu CDs in time for the Holidays in December. Other ideas of things that can be shared within the community are personalized CDs with extra packages not usually found on the official CDs, and unwanted hardware looking for a new home.

azz from the forum explains how he started the project:

Last year, I offered to send out Ubuntu CDs to people who had not ordered through shipit early enough to receive them before the holidays. People answered and I sent some out. This year, I would like to do that again.

Visit the page to submit your name and how many CDs you can send to fellow Ubunteros in need.

John Dong has announced that backports for Ubuntu 5.10 (aka Breezy Badger) are now ready. A “backport” is when a software package is built from the development version of Ubuntu and made available for users of the stable version. This allows for users to use newer desktop applications without the risk of using the development version, thus it serves as a nice middle ground for users that want new software, but not so new that it singes their boots.

John has a comprehensive set of instructions to help you get started. There is an entire subforum dedicated to backports, so make sure you check it out while you download the fresh goodness. The backports mailing list is also available for anyone who is interested in contributing to the project.

The Community Council, the primary community governance body for the project, had a meeting yesterday discussing a variety of topics and inducting new Ubuntu Members. Dennis Kaarsemaker has posted a summary of the meeting, which includes the introduction of a new local team in Japan.

Vinicius Franco do Nascimento has announced the launch of Planet Ubuntu Brazil in Portugese. Many groups of Ubuntu users around the world have websites, forums, and IRC channels, so if you’re looking for people local to you to spread the love, make sure you check out the list of teams around the world.

If there’s no team in your area, you can always make your own, and join the ever growing Ubuntu Local Team community.

Daniel Holbach has announced the next Ubuntu Bug Day. This is an event where users and developers gather on IRC and go through the bug tracking system. There they prioritize, assign, and confirm bugs reported by users; this process is called triaging.

If you ever planned to get involved anywhere in the Ubuntu world, bug triage is definitely a good place to start … Now is the best time to get into Ubuntu development as well.

You can get a head start by learning how to help with bugs and then heading over to #ubuntu-bugs on irc.freenode.net. How to report Bugs effectively is also a good place to start if you like to report bugs.

• Location: IRC channel #ubuntu-meeting
• Agenda: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTUMeeting