Scheduling project-wide post-lenny discussions?

[Adeodato Simó <dato@net.com.org.es>]

Hm.

It seems we have a number of projet-wide discussions that we've more or
less agreed to postpone until lenny is out. I have a moderate fear that
once that happens, they are going to explode (the discussions) all over
the lists.

I suggested the creation of the DiscussionsAfterLenny wiki page a while
ago, but that page is at the moment a bit of a mess. In particular, it's
a dump of items without mentioning who's interested in having the
discussion, and volunteering to starting and driving it.

So, I'm interested in knowing if people would be fine with making a list
of these "big issues" we have to discuss, and trying to give them
"slots", as in putting them in some order that makes sense. Also, IMHO,
having one or two (per-topic) people "responsible" for starting them,
and trying to/ensuring they get somewhere, by appropriately fostering
and summarizing the progress of the discussion, would be very good too.

Off the top of my head, these are some candidates for scheduling:

    * membership in Debian (see below about this one).

    * changes to the Constitution (I've read at least Steve Langasek and
      Matthew Johnson express interest in this).

    * changes to the Social Contract (I'm not sure if this one is going
      to happen?).

    * code of conduct (Miriam Ruiz and Ben Armstrong would know about
      this).

    * release management, freezes, RC bugs and the whole lot (I'd
      appreciate if nobody beats the release team to this one).

    * more...? (if this scheduling goes forward, now would be a good
      time to speak).

Thoughts?

---

Regarding the "Membership in Debian" discussion, this has always been my
idea of what could work well:

    * designing a person or very small group of people as the "drivers"
      of the discussion; these people would have their opinion, of
      course, but not an agenda, and should be trusted by the project,
      and particularly by the people who feel vocal about this
      discussion. .oO(good luck...)

    * these drivers receive, in private, well-written "platforms" of
      solutions that (many) interested people would give to the problem;
      they read and dissect them, and work with the senders to present
      to -project a fair summary of them, highlighting the points
      where there's consensus, and the points where there is not.

    * discussion happens in -project, and the drivers regularly distil
      it into summaries, trying to come up with the axis of a small and
      coherent handful of options in a possible future vote, and
      receiving feedback on these.

    * once the axis of each option are set, the main proponents of that
      option work out a text.

(I realize this is not very polished, but I thought I'd try, because I'm
tired of inefficient and endless discussions. I also have a couple names
in mind of possible good drivers for this matter, but I haven't talked
to them, and anyway it's leader@ who should, I believe. Bcc'ed.)

-- 
Adeodato Simó                                     dato at net.com.org.es
Debian Developer                                  adeodato at debian.org
 
Will you just stand still?
                -- Luke Danes