Starting the derivative conversation
First off, apologies to the list for wandering from its charter. If you
object to discussion of external derivations in this list, please speak
up; such objection is likely to boost the priority of finding an
alternative venue.
At DebConf, several of the external derivative Debian distro vendors, as
well as several CDD representatives, got together and talked about ways
in which we could better cooperate with Debian proper. Lots of good
ideas were thrown around, but two strike me as being proper starting
points here.
The first involves having some form of communication between the various
derivatives, as well as between them and Debian. Some of us felt that a
new mailing list might be needed, but others thought that adding yet
another mailing list would be counterproductive. As a temporary
measure, we agreed to use the debian-custom list for the initial
discussions; it would be a good idea to decide if we need to find a new
place for this, or if there are better ideas for achieving this.
The second involves a place for derivers to communicate to Debian what
they are doing with Debian, and to report problems they're having that
might not be appropriate for the BTS. (Example: Ubuntu and the gcc 4.0
transition before sarge released.) It is my sense that there are two
features Debian seems to want: bug lists and patches, both on a
per-source-package basis, and that we should make it as easy as possible
for derivers to provide this information. Am I missing anything?
There may be other important ideas that I may be neglecting in this
summary; corrections would be appreciated.
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