IRC comme canal de communication pour Debian
Déposant
Raphaël Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org>
Calendrier
Soumission de la proposition : 31 octobre 2001
Période de discussion : du 1er novembre 2001 au 14 novembre 2001
Période de scrutin : du 15 novembre 2001 au 29 novembre 2001
Parrains
- Guillaume Morin <gemorin@debian.org>
- Michael D. Ivey <ivey@debian.org>
- Stephen Stafford <stephen@clothcat.demon.co.uk>
- Gergely Nagy <algernon@debian.org>
- Jérôme Marant <jerome@marant.org>
Texte
PROPOSED GENERAL RESOLUTION IRC AS A DEBIAN COMMUNICATION CHANNEL 1. Context A #debian-devel operator regularly kicks (sometimes bans) people from the channel if they are not Debian developers. He does so even if they have been introduced by developers as valuable Debian contributors and behave correctly in the channel. The invoked reason is historic. #debian-devel used to be for developers only and from time to time issues discussed on debian-private@lists.debian.org are discussed on #debian-devel. Even the channel founders argued about the policy that should be applied to #debian-devel. Other facts : - #debian-private exists and is key protected (the key should be known by debian developers only), although it is not really used - #debian-devel is useful for many people and is useful for Debian contributors (not yet developers) : * the topic regularly ask for testers of prerelease of some packages * the topic usually warns about the worst problems of unstable * future developers can learn many things by following the discussions - #debian-devel is used for day to day work related to Debian's development 2. Problems * The IRC channels #debian-* are not officially recognized as part of Debian's communication channels. * Debian can't treat valuable contributors like it's done actually on IRC. Kicking a person who naturally has its place within the developer's community (because of his interest and his work) is not reasonable. (Personal note: this kind of behavior gives Debian its bad image of a closed community preaching openness) * Debian's philosophy concerning the development has always been to open the communication channels. There's a mismatch here. 3. Proposed changes We should ackowledge the fact the IRC channels are used to communicate within Debian. They are only an alternate way to discuss things. They are not the main communication channels (the mailing lists are). This should be documented in Debian Developers Reference and wherever it's applicable. By acknowledging their existence, we also have to apply the usual Debian policies : - all #debian-* channels on OpenProjects should be open to everyone except #debian-private which is for registered debian developers only (the actual "key protection" may be replaced by a better identification mechanism at any time) - the "netiquette" (RFC 1855, section 4.1.2) applies, channels' subjects should be respected Nevertheless, some specific IRC rules apply : - the channels should not be publicly archived without notice - public quotations may not be accepted by everyone 4. Item proposed to vote (after the discussion period) [ ] I accept the ratification of IRC channels as a communication medium and as such they have to follow the usual Debian policies (adapted for IRC habits)