On Sat, Aug 17, 2002 at 08:28:01PM +0200, Josip Rodin wrote:
> > Aside from the fact that OFTC are not currently sending fundraising
> > messages to their users, I can see no appreciable differences in their
> > constitution.
>
> OPN doesn't have a constitution, though.
<shrug> OPN has a series of documents describing what it is trying to
do, they're on the appropriate website.
> > [Side note: be wary of the OFTC web pages. There's plenty more
> > bullshit on them, read them with the scepticism that everything on the
> > web deserves.]
>
> Be explicit, snide comments are boring and pointless.
I didn't particularly want to go into this, it's not very relevant,
but figured the warning was deserved. But, since you ask, I'll run
quickly over the front page:
OFTC was founded at the end of 2001 by a group of experienced members
of the Open Source and Free Software communities ...
Interesting, but I can't find any people who meet that description on
the list of staff - mostly a bunch of people whose "experience" is
merely being OPN staff at some point or another, plus several people
who created some god-awful messes on OPN that it took me far too much
time to clean up [No, I'm not going to give names. They should know
who they are. And I don't appreciate having to clean up somebody
else's mess]. Certainly not the sort of people I'd expect from reading
that paragraph.
We are pleased to announce that Software in the Public Interest (SPI)
has agreed to be our parent organisation. This will mean that OFTC
will no longer be controllable by any single individual, and that the
network's basic foundation, the constitution, can be fully enforced.
This is just bullshitting; SPI provides no such guarantees. Power is
held by those with power, as always. They may or may not decide to
obey the constitution as it suits them.
Plenty more where those came from, but fairly easy to spot if you read
the content with usual scepticism.
> > In my opinion, DalNet or WebChat would be better suited to hosting Debian
> > than OFTC; they have established complaints procedures and have
> > demonstrated in the past that they are capable of running large networks
> > in a reasonably stable manner. They are maintained by people with years of
> > experience in these matters; WebChat runs the ConferenceRoom server (the
> > only commercial ircd) which, I'm not afraid to say, is hugely better than
> > the current free versions.
>
> This is an open discussion, so this is definitely an option to consider if
> they really are as good as you suggest. Do you have a contact at any of
> these, where we could ask if we can point irc.d.o there?
I don't have any contacts with their admin teams; I've only used them,
and studied how they work while trying to figure out how to design
stuff for OPN. These two stood out amoung the top 10 or so networks
(by usercount) as providing pretty reliable service and procedures for
dealing with complaints (things which many of the top 10 do not do).
> > That said, OPN does not host *any* "official" Debian stuff. #debian is
> > run by the network itself; several other channels are run and
> > frequented by developers, but so what? The Debian project itself does
> > not run any channels there.
>
> No, irc.debian.org points to OPN and #debian on irc.debian.org is the
> officially recommended Debian support channel. OPN has always been
> acknowledged as our endorsed IRC network and is listed at our partners
> web page because of this.
>
> Debian doesn't run any channels -- for crying out loud, that is why OPN is
> there!
None of that is in conflict with what I said. OPN is endorsed as a
network, but the project does not have any actual resources or
channels hosted there.
> > So, what should criteria should we have for such DNS names?
>
> The one that we've had so far.
I see no documented criteria.
> > Should we reserve *.debian.org for official Debian services?
>
> It is already reserved.
Except that it isn't. irc.debian.org exists, which is not an official
Debian service at all - it's an independant service that Debian
endorses.
So, again, why is it there? Once we know what criteria should be used
to determine what to point names under that domain at, then (and only
then) can we decide what to point them at. If anything. It's quite
possible that this CNAME should not exist at all.
> > Should we add dozens of aliases for everybody that runs a Debian service?
> > [How about {planet,portal}.debian.org CNAME debianplanet.org?]
> > Should we pick some services based on technical or political merits?
> > Should we pick services based on the number of Debian members which can be
> > found there? [This may include your local pub. It's about as relevant to
> > the project as any other services.]
>
> These questions have very little to do with the explicit issue at hand.
The wooshing sound is the point flying over your head.
The project does not appear to have any firm criteria as to what the
debian.org domain should be used for. The above are a few suggestions
to get people thinking along the right lines.
--
.''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
: :' : http://www.debian.org/ | Dept. of Computing,
`. `' | Imperial College,
`- -><- | London, UK
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