Re: Q: NEW process licence requirements
Adrian Bunk <bunk@debian.org> writes:
> The ftp team has repeatedly stated that it is working as a team and
> that decisions are not arbitrary decisions by individual team members.
> This implies that for tasks like NEW handling there exist guidelines
> in some form, that might need some polishing before publication.
People often assume there's some sort of "real" documentation for what is
and isn't acceptable, but it's being kept secret from the rest of the
project, and point to the above as a justification for that belief.
However, I think it's worth realizing this isn't necessarily true. A
group can share a consensus opinion without having written documentation
in the case where training is via mentorship and apprenticeship rather
than through written instruction. And I believe that's exactly the case
for FTP master. The team arrives at the same practices because they are
taught the same practices through apprenticeship, IRC discussions, and
corrected practice, not because there's some secret reference manual.
So yes, in some sense there are some guidelines, but they could well be
entirely unwritten tribal knowledge that has been communicated through
innumerable fragmentary IRC conversations and in-person chats. Which
means that turning them into something that can be given to the rest of
the project as reference is still extremely difficult.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of this ongoing discussion, there's also
now a ton of *pressure* around the first release of that document. It
would be met with a ton of scrutiny and discussion, which makes it even
harder to be the one to put oneself on the line and try to write down
unwritten tribal knowledge, possibly incorrectly or incompletely.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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