State of developers-reference

Steve Langasek <vorlon.RemoveThis@debian.org> writes:

> I think the devref discussions (incl. bug traffic) need to be moved onto
> debian-policy. We already have any number of bugs getting redirected
> from policy to the devref, so it's not as though there would be a
> massive traffic increase; and it would put the right set of eyeballs on
> the changes to ensure the result actually reflects best practices.

I wouldn't mind, although unfortunately the lack of manpower problem
applies to Policy as well. But maybe there will be some synergy that will
help both teams get more done.

--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>


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On 07/09/09 at 16:01 -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> One thing I didn't say before is that, /in theory/, I'm willing to help with
> maintenance of the devref package if the problem of public-by-default change
> process is addressed. I didn't mention this because I don't want to mislead
> anyone into thinking I'm committing to being active on the package - rather,
> every time I've thought of volunteering to help with the devref (which I
> agree is an important document), the lack of public process has been a
> blocker for me. While the people who've maintained the devref over the
> years are developers whose technical judgement I have a good deal of
> confidence in individually, when it comes to deciding "best practices", it's
> just too small and self-selecting a set and I'm not willing to be seen as
> endorsing this model by putting my own name on it.

OK, let's try to change the way it is maintained by moving to something
similar to policy. Several questions need to be addressed.

- Where should discussions occur? Should we re-use debian-policy@, since
both documents are a bit related? Or use another list? I would
personally prefer to use another list (-policy@ is already quite
busy), but I could be convinced to use -policy@.

- Fresh blood for the dev-ref maintainers (even if the process gets more
public, there will still be a need for people to coordinate
discussions). I think that we need at least one more maintainer for
dev-ref (two would be better). I'm not very motivated by working on
dev-ref, so I might not be involved for too long. Who wants to help?

- Changes process. The policy one
(http://wiki.debian.org/PolicyChangesProcess) is too complex and
inadequate for dev-ref. I'm proposing the following documentation for
the process:
<-----
Developers Reference gathers several kinds of information:

(A) Purely informational documentation of Debian infrastructure and procedures.
This is the easiest kind of content. Once correctness has been verified,
not much debate can happen about the information.

(B) Best practices about Debian packaging
This is harder to handle, but it isn't normative: maintainers are free
to do things differently: besides raising a few eyebrows, nothing will
happen. If something about developers-reference sounds normative, it's
a mistake and should be moved to debian-policy.

(C) Policy-like information about some procedures
This is the hardest part. The developers-reference documents some
processes that are not standardized by Debian policy, because they are
not related to Debian packaging. An example of such processes is the NMU
procedure. Not following those procedures correctly is likely to result in
complaints from other maintainers.

Due to the different kinds of content in developers-reference, it is
difficult to have a single process that would work fine for everything.

For (A) and (B), once a proposal has been made, has been seconded by at
least one DD, and some time (e.g one week) has passed to give others the
chance to voice their concerns, the change can be made.

For (C), non-editorial changes should be discussed more widely (on
-devel@ or -project@), and consensus should be ensured before going
forward.
-------->

Comments?
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| Lucas Nussbaum
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On Tue, 08 Sep 2009, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> - Where should discussions occur? Should we re-use debian-policy@, since
> both documents are a bit related? Or use another list? I would
> personally prefer to use another list (-policy@ is already quite
> busy), but I could be convinced to use -policy@.

Discussions happen in the bugs. I think using -policy is best, because the
set of people who care about reviewing policy in general also care about
reviewing dev-ref (except that they have never gone out of their way to
subscribe to the dev-ref PTS). Quite often we discuss whether material is
for policy or for dev-ref.

> - Changes process. The policy one
> (http://wiki.debian.org/PolicyChangesProcess) is too complex and
> inadequate for dev-ref. I'm proposing the following documentation for
> the process:

I agree on almost everything.

> For (A) and (B), once a proposal has been made, has been seconded by at
> least one DD, and some time (e.g one week) has passed to give others the
> chance to voice their concerns, the change can be made.

Ack.

> For (C), non-editorial changes should be discussed more widely (on
> -devel@ or -project@), and consensus should be ensured before going
> forward.

The point is that -policy is already "wider" than what we have. So -policy
should be enough in general, no need to impose any external forward.
That said anyone can forward a proposal elsewhere if s/he believes that
there's no clear consensus yet.

Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog


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On 09/09/09 at 12:42 +0200, Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt wrote:
> Heya,
>
> As I'm one of the people who have at some point volunteered to help with
> the dev-ref, but mostly failed to actually do work, I guess I could say
> a few words, without any pretense of actually knowing better than all
> the other people who have already commented...
>
> Lucas Nussbaum <lucas.DeleteThis@lucas-nussbaum.net> writes:
> > OK, let's try to change the way it is maintained by moving to something
> > similar to policy. Several questions need to be addressed.
> >
> > - Where should discussions occur? Should we re-use debian-policy@, since
> > both documents are a bit related? Or use another list? I would
> > personally prefer to use another list (-policy@ is already quite
> > busy), but I could be convinced to use -policy@.
>
> I think moving discussions to -policy is a good idea, as these
> discussion sometimes decide whether a specific change is implemented in
> policy or dev-ref.
>
> > Developers Reference gathers several kinds of information:
> >
> > (A) Purely informational documentation of Debian infrastructure and procedures.
> > This is the easiest kind of content. Once correctness has been verified,
> > not much debate can happen about the information.
>
> Should such information actually be part of the developers reference?
> It seems this could easily be moved onto www. or wiki.debian.org.

Why move this, and not the other parts of dev-ref? I think that
instead, moving documentation from www.debian.org or wiki.debian.org to
dev-ref would be more interesting to promote best practices. Looking at
wiki.debian.org or some team's websites, it is easy to find different
recommendations for the same thing.

> > (B) Best practices about Debian packaging
> > This is harder to handle, but it isn't normative: maintainers are free
> > to do things differently: besides raising a few eyebrows, nothing will
> > happen. If something about developers-reference sounds normative, it's
> > a mistake and should be moved to debian-policy.
> >
> > (C) Policy-like information about some procedures
> > This is the hardest part. The developers-reference documents some
> > processes that are not standardized by Debian policy, because they are
> > not related to Debian packaging. An example of such processes is the NMU
> > procedure. Not following those procedures correctly is likely to result in
> > complaints from other maintainers.
>
> I've checked the current dev-ref and had quite a few problems to decide
> to which of the two categories the current content belongs.

Well, it's easy:
If it's about packaging, then it's a recommended practice, and it's not
normative, because if it were normative, it would be in policy.

But it's true that some procedural stuff could be moved into a seperate
chapter.
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| Lucas Nussbaum
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On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 8:41 PM, Holger Levsen <holger.RemoveThis@layer-acht.org> wrote:
> On Mittwoch, 9. September 2009, Jon Dowland wrote:
>> If this was a popular choice (which it doesn't appear to
>> be); it would be blocked on sorting out the wiki.d.o
>> content licensing.
>
> No. http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Lenny has a very fine and
> sosorted licence situation. All GPL-2+

Recent info about the wiki license situation and plans:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-www/2009/06/msg00083.html

--
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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On 09/09/09 at 21:43 +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 8:41 PM, Holger Levsen <holger DeleteThis @layer-acht.org> wrote:
> > On Mittwoch, 9. September 2009, Jon Dowland wrote:
> >> If this was a popular choice (which it doesn't appear to
> >> be); it would be blocked on sorting out the wiki.d.o
> >> content licensing.
> >
> > No. http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Lenny has a very fine and
> > sosorted licence situation. All GPL-2+
>
> Recent info about the wiki license situation and plans:
>
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-www/2009/06/msg00083.html

Choosing CC BY-SA would nicely conflict with our existing documentation,
like the Debian new maintainer guide (GPL2+) or developers-reference
(GPL2+). Wouldn't it be possible to use CC BY-SA with an additional
clause allowing to switch to GPL2+?

The french CeCILL license has such a clause (see 5.3.4 in
http://www.cecill.info/licences/Licence_CeCILL_V2-en.txt).
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On 09/09/09 at 16:18 +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 09, 2009 at 04:04:16PM +0200, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> > Choosing CC BY-SA would nicely conflict with our existing documentation,
> > like the Debian new maintainer guide (GPL2+) or developers-reference
> > (GPL2+). Wouldn't it be possible to use CC BY-SA with an additional
> > clause allowing to switch to GPL2+?
> >
> > The french CeCILL license has such a clause (see 5.3.4 in
> > http://www.cecill.info/licences/Licence_CeCILL_V2-en.txt).
>
> Why are we discussing this, given that from early feedback it was more
> or less clear that we do not want to go the wiki way for devref?

That would apply to moving content from the wiki to dev-ref. If the wiki
is CC BY-SA, and dev-ref is GPL2+, we have a problem.
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| Lucas Nussbaum
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On Wed, Sep 09, 2009 at 04:52:30PM +0200, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> On 09/09/09 at 16:18 +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 09, 2009 at 04:04:16PM +0200, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> > > Choosing CC BY-SA would nicely conflict with our existing documentation,
> > > like the Debian new maintainer guide (GPL2+) or developers-reference
> > > (GPL2+). Wouldn't it be possible to use CC BY-SA with an additional
> > > clause allowing to switch to GPL2+?
> > >
> > > The french CeCILL license has such a clause (see 5.3.4 in
> > > http://www.cecill.info/licences/Licence_CeCILL_V2-en.txt).
> >
> > Why are we discussing this, given that from early feedback it was more
> > or less clear that we do not want to go the wiki way for devref?
>
> That would apply to moving content from the wiki to dev-ref. If the wiki
> is CC BY-SA, and dev-ref is GPL2+, we have a problem.

Since we still are discussing wiki licensing, we should ask wiki people
to dual license its contents with GPL2+ and CeCILL.

Whatever reorganization of documentation we do, we will inherit some
GPL2+ contents. So having compatible license for wiki posted contents
are quite important.

FYI: I posted this request to debian-www.DeleteThis@lists.debian.org.



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