`debian-ctte@d.o' etc. blackhole
I hereby propose the following resolution:
WE THE DEBIAN TECHNICAL COMMITTEE NOTE THAT
1. The Technical Committee is not merely a mailing list, but a
formal institution in the Debian Project, established by the
Constitution.
2. People sometimes mail debian-ctte@d.o (d.o = debian.org) when
they want to contact the Technical Committee, either by mistake,
or as a reasonable action based on the truth of item 1., above.
3. The current implementation supporting our discussions is the
mailing list debian-ctte@lists.d.o. We have no current plans to
change this arrangement but may wish to do so in the future.
4. Messages to debian-ctte@d.o, tech-ctte@d.o, debian-ctte-chair@d.o
and tech-ctte-chair@d.o are currently filed in an unread mailbox.
5. It is absolutely unacceptable for any reasonable mails intended
for the Technical Committee or its Chairman, and sent to a
plausible (if perhaps guessed) address on Debian systems, to
vanish unread. It is not sufficient to merely to file the
misdirected messages.
THEREFORE OUR REQUIREMENTS ARE AS FOLLOWS
6. We insist that debian-ctte@d.o should be an alias for
debian-ctte@lists.d.o.
7. We insist that tech-ctte@lists.d.o should either bounce or be an
alias for debian-ctte@lists.d.o.
8. We request that the Debian System Administrators make the
relevant configuration changes.
9. If the Debian System Administrators are unable or unwilling to
make the relevant configuration changes, we insist that the
sysadmins should provide our Chairman with the necessary
technical access, authorisations and all necessary information,
so that the Chairman may make the changes.
FURTHERMORE WE NOTE THAT
10. Our Chairman has made informal requests, including mails to
debian-admin@lists.d.o to correct this problem, and engaged in
discussion with the Debian Systems Administrators to answer
queries regarding this issue.
11. The sysadmins are reluctant to make the necessary changes; the
situation remains broken and mail is still being lost.
12. The sysadmins are Delegates of the Debian Project Leader
according to the Constitution s5.1(1), s8. Deciding which
addresses on the Debian mail systems should go where is not
clearly a purely technical matter.
THEREFORE
14. We refrain from attempting to exercise our power to overrule a
Developer (Constitution 6.1(4)) in this case. Nevertheless we
note that if our requirements are not satisfied it will give us
grounds to doubt that we should have confidence in the sysadmins.
15. We warn that we intend to escalate this issue as necessary until
our requirements are met.
FURTHERMORE, WE NOTE THAT
16. Mail for all unknown local parts @d.o is currently accepted.
17. Accepting mail for unknown local parts is usually harmful, and
rejecting it at RCPT TO is beneficial both for the local system
and to assist other systems which do SMTP verification callouts.
THEREFORE
18. We suggest that the Debian mail systems might usefully be
reconfigured so that mail for unknown local parts is rejected at
SMTP RCPT TO.
Ian.
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