On Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 04:09:58PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: >Okay, incorporating Manoj's proposed changes, and some other ideas: > >On Tue, Nov 15, 2005 at 12:08:15PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: >>One of the issues Debian often stands for is transparency and openness >>-- indeed, the openness of our bug tracking system is codified in the >>Social Contract's statement "We will not hide problems". However, one >>particular area of significance within the project is not open at all: >>the debian-private mailing list. >> >>This list has hosted a number of significant discussions over the years, >>including most of the discussion inspiring the original statement >>of Debian's Social Contract and the Debian Free Software Guidelines, >>the reinvetion of the new-maintainer process, debate on the qmail to >>exim/postfix transition for Debian mail servers and more. This trend >>continues today, with the six months just past have averaged around 190 >>posts per month. >> >>Especially given Debian is the focus of academic work (such as Biella >>Coleman's paper), and has inspired other groups to emulate our commitment >>to free software and our community (GenToo, Wikipedia, the Open Directory >>Project and OpenSolaris), we should make our discussions on issues like >>these and the reasoning behind the solutions we adopt accessible to the >>rest of humanity. >> >>I think the easiest way to do that is to adopt an approach similar to that >>of governments that deal with classified documents; that is by setting a >>specific time after which -private posts will be required to be considered >>for declassification (ie, publication) and redacting only those posts (or >>portions of posts) for which there's still a good reason to keep private. > >Thus, I propose that the Debian project resolve that: > >--- >In accordance with principles of openness and transparency, Debian will >seek to declassify and publish posts of historical or ongoing significance >made to the Debian Private Mailing List. > >This process will be undertaken under the following constraints: > > * The Debian Project Leader will delegate one or more volunteers > to form the "debian-private declassification team". > > * The team will automatically declassify and publish posts made to > that list that are three or more years old, with the following > exceptions: > > - the author and other individuals quoted in messages being reviewed > will be contacted, and allowed between four and eight weeks > to comment; > > - posts that reveal financial information about individuals or > organisations other than Debian, will have that information > removed; > > - requests by the author of a post for that post not to be published > will be honoured; > > - posts of no historical or other relevance, such as vacation > announcements, or posts that have no content after personal > information is removed, will not be published, unless the author > requests they be published; > > - comments by others who would be affected by the publication of > the post will also be taken into account by the declassification > team; > > - the list of posts to be declassified will be made available to > developers two weeks before publication, so that the decisions > of the team may be overruled by the developer body by General > Resolution, if necessary -- in the event such a resolution is > introduced (ie, proposed and sponsored), the declassification > and publication of messages specified by the resolution will be > deferred until the resolution has been voted on. >--- > >>According to the interweb, classified US government documents relating >>to national security have to be released after at most ten years (unless >>there're particular reasons to extend that); the oldest mail in the >>-private archives turns ten on January 21st next year. I don't want to >>see Debian be more secretive than the US military industrial complex :) >> >>And beyond that, there really are a lot of good ideas stuck in the >>-private archives that it'd be nice to be able to refer to properly. > >The changes since the original: > > - authors have a veto over publication (Manoj's changes) > - people quoted in messages rather than other recipients should be > contacted > - security problems don't get special treatment; they can be vetoed > by the post's author though > - specific details for overriding the team's decisions by the > developers > >Seconds so far: > > Don Armstrong (original or Manoj's changes) > Joey Hess (original only, no comment on Manoj's changes) > Wouter Verhelst (Manoj's changes, no comment on original) > Bas Zoetekouw (Manoj's changes, no comment on original) > Daniel Ruoso (original preferred over Manoj's changes) > >Five's enough to second a proposal, but only if they all second the same >one :) > >>Comments, suggestions and seconds appreciated. I second this proposal, "GR Proposal 2: Declassification of -private". >Cheers, >aj Aníbal Monsalve Salazar -- .''`. Debian GNU/Linux : :' : Free Operating System `. `' http://debian.org/ `- http://v7w.com/anibal
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