Position statements short of a GR - DPL statements

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

There are often topics about where it would be useful to have a
statement of position, or some recommendations for project
participants (or for users or citizens).  I'm speaking here primarily
of nontechnical matters.

Often these are in the remit of individual maintainers or
maintainership teams.  So for example, the boundaries of what counts
as a release-critical bug, or decisions about licence acceptability.

But there are also topics which aren't covered by an existing team or
delegation.  There are a couple of these that are on the DPL's plate
right now:

  - Dealing with "inbound" trademarks.  Ie, how best to deal with
    possible trademark risks in the software we deal with;

  - A requests from Debian as a whole to its downstreams including
    particularly a specific request to eg Ubuntu;

Up to this point in the project we have normally published only:

  - GRs

  - Formal policy documents issued by teams (of which the Dev Ref is
    an example);

  - Press releases

  - Informal statements by individuals 

I think it would be useful to add a new category to this list:

  - Formal policy document from the DPL

Of course like any other DPL decision these would be published by the
DPL after discussion and consensus-seeking.  And if the matter turns
out to be too controversial, or the DPL wants to make sure the
document has a good mandate, the GR process is available (either via
the route of a DPL-initiated GR, or an overruling GR).

But I think on many topics it ought to be possible to get consensus
within the project on a position which clearly reflects the views of
most of the DDs.  (And implicitly where those who disagree with the
DPL's statement can feel that their views have been taken into account
but can also see that ultimately those views are not widely shared.)

Do we think it would be proper, for example, to write up as a
DPL-issued document the best practice for dealing with inbound
trademarks ?

The alternative for this issue would seem to be to run it as a GR.  I
think that's too heavyweight a process; we should be using it where
important matters of principle are at stake, or where we haven't been
able to see where consensus lies or indeed get a good enough rough
consensus on a particular approach.

Another example of a possible document of this kind would have been
the diversity statement.  I think it would have been proper, if there
had been enough agreement, for the DPL to issue that statement
themselves.  But as it turned out, the level of consensus wasn't
sufficient particularly given that the diversity statement needed a
solid mandate - so a GR was required.

Ian.