Hello Debian Science, a first draft of the Debian Science Policy is now available in the Debian Science repository and can be checked out with: git clone git://git.debian.org/git/debian-science/policy.git For easier reading, you should transform the document into XHTML. You can simply run "make" to do so. (You do need to install the "xmlto" package, if you don't have already.) The result is in the html/ sub-directory. Sylvestre Ledru and I worked on that during the last days. This document is a *draft* and we would like to hear your feedback on it! We were not sure if everything is reasonable while writing it but tried to write down what appeared to be best practices and/or "common sense". Of course, all points are open for discussion and can be changed if we find a consensus. We hope that especially those familiar with Git would comment on the VCS section. I tried to write down what I found reasonable and git-buildpackage (mostly) does. To those not yet familiar with Git: The HowTo will of course be written, so you can follow it and learn Git. (It's not hard.) But it was important to us to get a (mostly) complete draft out soon. (The HowTo will match the Policy, of course.) Besides the points mentioned in the document, the following points have to be addressed: 1. What license should we use for the document? 2. Git usage: Should tags be signed? 3. How will the document be maintained? For point 1, I personally propose the GPL v3 (or later). But I do not have strong feelings about that. For point 2, I personally do not see a real benefit of doing so, so I would suggest it but not enforce it. For point 3, Sylvestre and I have strong interest in maintaining the document and would welcome anyone with a serious interested in it to help us. Writing documents is usually not much fun and as you can see, a lot of it still needs to be written. If you are interested, please email us! For changes of this document Sylvestre and I think that a workflow similar to the Debian Policy is reasonable, since most developers are already familiar with it. We would act as a "gatekeeper" and lead discussions on critial sections, summarize the result and propose a wording that should be seconded by people involved in Debian Science. After that, we would include the change into the document. One way to organize that is to package the policy as Debian package and use the BTS for proposals. Your feedback on that is welcome! We hope that you have no trouble reading and understanding the document. Both of us are not native speakers and some parts of the document were written in the night-time. We also did not want to sound bossy, and every "should", "must" and "has to" is negotiable. It's a draft, after all. ;) One last point: We think that discussions about packaging topics should go to the d-s-maintainers@l.a.d.o mailing list. But because not very much people are subscribed there yet, we sent the announcement here. We encourage you to subscribe to the maintainer mailing list. (And if the discussion gets to noisy here, we probably should take it there.) Best regards, Manuel
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