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
Thanks for the work! It's great to have that in VCS.
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.
Seems reasonable to me. I doubt it matters much.
For point 2, I personally do not see a real benefit of doing so, so I would
suggest it but not enforce it.
This also seems reasonable.
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!
I think the "gatekeeper" workflow is appropriate. However, packaging the policy and using BTS seems like overkill. It would seem to me that with git, sending patches or merging from somebody's branch would be easy enough. I would think that discussion via the mailing list would get more discussion than using the BTS.
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. ;)