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RFC - Changing current policy of debian.net entries



Hi,

The current practice for debian.net entries is that they are directly
entered in the debian.net zone as 3rd-level records. I am seeking
comments on a proposal to alter this practice.

While the current practice is useful for the introduction of unofficial
project services, it may involve certain risks. One risk is that
outsiders can not and will not distinguish between debian.net and
debian.org entries. Another risk is that those unofficial services will
stall if the maintainer who 'owns' those entries leaves the project. We
are also observing domain-squatting in the debian.net zone.

Therefore, I would like to propose the following change in the
debian.net entry policy:

* Going forward, new user-associated debian.net entries will be added as
  4th-level (or 5th-level, see last section) records in the debian.net
  zone in the form of $entry.$uid.debian.net, where $uid is your debian
  login name. For example, if I desired to introduce a 'foobar' entry,
  then it would be added to the debian.net zone as
  foobar.zobel.debian.net. The insertion of $uid would be automatic: you
  would not need to add it in the mail you submit to ud-mailgate.

* Existing user-associated 3rd-level entries will remain for a
  transitional period of, let's say, one year.  Corresponding 4th-level
  entries will be reserved to allow for transition.  During the
  transition period, you may modify your 3rd-level entries, transition
  them to 4th-level entries, transition them to a role (see next
  section), or delete them. At the end of the transitional period, any
  remaining user-associated 3rd-level entries and corresponding
  4th-level reservations would be removed.

* New 3rd-level debian.net entries can still can be added, but would
  need to be role-associated (eg. qa, release-team, etc.) rather than
  user-associated. For this, I propose that we use this RFC to define
  some criteria which would need to be satisfied in order to have a
  role-associated 3rd-level entry be created.

* An 'unofficial' role-associated 3rd-level debian.net service can
  become an 'official' 3rd-level debian.org service. Again, I propose
  that we use this RFC to define some criteria which would need to be
  satisfied.

* Alternately, we may wish to put unofficial services under
  $entry.beta.debian.net and user-associated entries under
  $entry.$uid.user.debian.net so that 3rd-level entries in debian.net
  and debian.org point only to offical services. This would remove all
  ambiguity and matches what other organizations have done when dealing
  with official entries in their .com, .net, and .org zones.

There is nothing carved into stone yet! I just want to hear your
comments on this. The key point is that lay users will not understand
the difference between debian.net and debian.org, and we should not
require that they do. The purpose of this RFC is to seek comment on how
to address this concern and the above proposal is perhaps one such way.

Finally, please note that this is not specifically due to the recent
http.debian.net conversation, although it did remind me that I needed to
write up my thoughts. The concerns regarding debian.net vs debian.org
had been expressed at DebConf 2011 and at DSA Sprint 2012; these
concerns are not new and the above proposal should not be interpreted as
a reaction to the introduction of http.debian.net. I want to
simultaneously support the ingenuity of our community while avoiding
confusion amongst our lay users.

Thanks for your time,

Martin
-- 
 Martin Zobel-Helas <zobel@debian.org>  | Debian System Administrator
 Debian & GNU/Linux Developer           |           Debian Listmaster
 GPG key http://go.debian.net/B11B627B  | 
 GPG Fingerprint:  6B18 5642 8E41 EC89 3D5D  BDBB 53B1 AC6D B11B 627B 

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