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Re: Questions for DPL candidates: Support channels



Hi Ritesh,

On 30/03/2017 16:04, Ritesh Raj Sarraf wrote:
> Hello DPL Candidates,
> 
> Thank you for standing for the DPL position.
> 
> Debian as a project is different than others. Most other similar projects, have
> a commercial backing and interest. This puts the onus on them (other Linux
> distributions) to ensure their support infrastructure is simple, intuitive and
> supportable.
> 
> Debian, on the other hand, is limited by community support. Community Support
> being, "Best Effort from the Community". Also, many of the Debian Community
> Support channels are fragmented (IRC, ML, Ask, Forum, Web)
> 
> Do you think the current support model/system in place, is good enough ?

Compared to other FLOSS projects, it is quite good. I have recently attended
a meetup (not about Debian) and we ended up discussing about community support
and comparing between a few projects. It turns out that people find our support
channels to be welcoming and helpful. So kudos to those who try to help users
everyday!

> Do we need (or have room for) a different approach ?
> 

(The discussion turned more on certification programs. So I'd focus on that
aspect in my reply).

From a user and corporate perspectives, it is always nice to check if some
hardware is well supported in Debian (accross releases). As noted in this
thread, the lack of a certification program is indeed a blocker for some
vendors. It would help everyone to have a compatibility list. I'd support
such initiative, of course, if there are volunteers for this. I have to
admit I am not particularly familiar with how similar program usually
work but I am happy to trust DDs motivated to work on this.

If we have a clear plan, and like for every certification lab, it would be
very easy to convince manufacturers to give us some hardware in order to check
its compatibility and report useful bugs when something is missing or
ill-working.

Finally, I do not imagine any DPL (or even DD) to block such initiatives. So
a better way to start this could be to:
1) Write down a description of the certification program you want for Debian
2) Potentially, work a list of actions to implement it
3) (Collectively) think about how the project can make an official statement
   about the certification program
4) Discuss #1, #2 and #3 on a public mailing-list to gather input from other
   project members.

Regards,

-- 
Mehdi

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