1 <!doctype debiandoc public "-//DebianDoc//DTD DebianDoc//EN">
5 <title>A mechanism for updating Debian Policy documents</title>
7 <name>Manoj Srivastava</name>
8 <email>srivasta@debian.org</email>
10 <version>$Revision: 1.5 $</version>
12 <copyrightsummary>Copyright © 2000 by Manoj Srivastava.
15 You are given permission to redistribute this document
16 and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
17 License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
18 version 2, or (at your option) any later version.</p>
20 On Debian GNU/Linux systems, the complete text of the GNU
21 General Public License can be found in
22 <tt>/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL</tt>. </p>
27 <heading>Introduction, and Administrivia</heading>
29 This document documents the current practice followed in updating
30 Debian Policy documents. This mechanism has been designed for
31 dealing with policy changes that are light
32 weight and can be decided upon within the policy group, by
33 near consensus. In most day-to-day cases, the Policy group
34 should and must be able to conduct Policy discussions and
35 amendments without the intervention of the Technical Committee
36 or other Constitutional issues. Only in cases of extreme
37 dispute (formal objections) should the intervention of
38 Constitutional bodies come into play. In any other situation,
39 the Policy group should be able to conduct business
40 unfettered. A consequence of this goal is that formal
41 objections should not be used lightly, else this mechanism
45 It should be noted that the team responsible for the task of
46 updating policy does not act as author or editor of Policy
47 itself, that is the task of the Debian Policy mailing list.
50 <em>In the following, the term developer refers to registered
51 Debian developers.</em>
53 <p>A copy of this document should also be found at <url
54 id="http://master.debian.org/~srivasta/policy/"></p>
57 <heading>Archives and Personnel</heading>
59 <heading>The policy maintainers team</heading>
61 The policy document is maintained by a group of people who have
62 access to the CVS repository for the Policy documents;
63 however, this set of people behave more like maintainers
64 rather than authors/editors. This group does not create
65 policy, nor does it exercise editorial control, Policy is
66 decided "upstream". The group that decides on policy should
67 be the group of developers on the debian-policy mailing
68 list, which is how it was always done; so the group of
69 policy maintainers have no real power over policy.
72 Since the policy maintainers have no special powers, there
73 is no restriction of their participattion the discussion. It
74 is preferable to have at least 4-5 people on the job,
75 perhaps closer to 8, so that policy does not languish when
76 any maintainer goes missing (we do need vacations, you know,
77 once in a while), and since little creative power is vested
78 in the maintainers, we do not need a central control. And
79 the BTS can be used as a record of the action decided upon
80 even if all maintainers are away at some time.
84 <heading>The CVS Repository</heading>
86 There is a repository set up on <tt>cvs.debian.org</tt> for
87 this, and the people on the policy maintainer team have
88 write access to it. The Debian policy mailing list gets
89 copies of all the CVS commit notices.
94 <heading>Procedures and Processes</heading>
97 <heading>Initiating discussions</heading>
99 Unlike before, when the policy editor gathered in issues
100 which, in his view, were candidates for inclusion in policy,
101 any one can raise an issue in the mailing list. It is
102 advisable, but by no means mandatory, that the proposer
103 tries an idea out on the mailing list, which can help flesh
104 out details rapidly, and test the sentiment and the
105 collective wisdom of the list. Discussion may be intiated by
106 any member of the list.
109 Once the proposer is satisfied that the proposal has merit
110 (with or without trying the waters on the list), the
111 proposer should file a <em>wishlist</em> bug against the
112 debian-policy package. This stage can be initiated by any
117 <heading>Creating a proposal</heading>
120 Any Debian developer can create a proposal by retitling the
121 wishlist bug in the BTS to have the subject of the form
122 <strong>"[PROPOSED] ..."</strong> or
123 <strong>"[PROPOSAL] ..."</strong>. (Note: The developer may
124 coalesce these steps into one by directly filing a
125 <em>wishlist</em> bug with the proper subject format).
128 This is the pre-discussion period, when the idea is kicked
129 around, and polished. There is no preset time limit, but at
130 some point, if it is stalled, the bug should be closed. A
131 suggested time period is 6 months, since if the
132 proposal has had no action in that period, it is very likely
133 dead. If six months have actually passed, the bug should be
134 retitled <strong>"[OLD PROPOSAL] ..."</strong>, and have the
135 severity set to fixed. The maintainers shall flush out old
136 proposals after a a sufficiently long period of time has
137 elapsed (certainly more than a year or so after the initial
141 Developers may second the issue by emailing a message
142 containing the text "seconded" to the proposal in the
143 BTS. Only registered Debian developers may second proposals.
147 <heading>Creating an Amendment</heading>
149 When a proposal in the BTS has acquired two seconds (apart
150 from the proposer), it becomes a formal amendment. The bug
151 severity is raised to "normal" and the bug is retitled to
152 <strong>"[AMENDMENT DD/MM/YYYY] ..."</strong>.
155 The rationale behind the requirement for seconders is that
159 Encourage people to test the waters on the policy
160 mailing list, and this could help create an proposal
161 with a better chance of success</p>
165 Prevent frivolous or ill conceived proposals from
166 wasting peoples time (if the proposal does not even
167 convince two developers, surely this is not ready for
168 inclusion in Policy?)</p>
173 The whole discussion process is meant to be lightweight; if
174 you wish the proposals to be amended, talk to the proposer,
175 and get the amendment in. Or else, post an alternative, and
176 let the group decide which one is better.
179 If the process gets very contentious, and needs something
180 like votes on amendments and withdrawal of proposal, then
181 this is not the correct forum for this, and the procedures
182 outlined in the constitution should be followed. Note that
183 only non-technical issues can be resolved using the general
184 resolution protocol; technical issues would hopefully be
185 resolved in the group itself, or the technical committee can
186 be called upon to render a decision.
189 This document is not supposed to supplant the processes
190 outlined in the constitution, nor is it intended to run
196 <heading>Final disposition of the proposal</heading>
198 <heading>An accepted amendment</heading>
200 If the amendment is accepted, the bug is marked
201 forwarded and retitled
202 <strong>"[ACCEPTED DD/MM/YYYY] ..."</strong>.
206 <heading>An amendment that stalls or is rejected</heading>
208 If the amendment is stalls, or otherwise fails to pass, it
209 is retitled as <strong>"[REJECTED DD/MM/YYYY] ..."</strong>
210 and has its severity set to <tt>fixed</tt>.
217 <heading>Deadlines for Tabling Discussions</heading>
219 It has been observed in the past that discussions on the
220 mailing list tend to devolve into endless arguments. In
221 order to get away from the debating society aspect, at the
222 time of the formal proposal, a deadline can be set (probably
223 by the proposer, since they are likely to have an idea how
224 contentious the discussion is likely to be) for ending
225 discussion on the issue, which should rarely be less than 10
226 days, and typically two weeks or so. I hope that a hard
227 minimum period need not be set, and that the proposers would
228 be reasonable, and not set too short or too long a time for
232 If a consensus is reached by the policy group, then the
233 maintainers shall enter the amendment into the Policy
234 document, announce the inclusion in the periodic report, and
235 release a new version.</p>
237 <heading>Extensions to Deadlines?</heading>
239 If a deadline is approaching, and the discussion is almost
240 concluded (in other words, it has not reached an impasse),
241 and the consensus on the policy group is that an extension
242 of a week would resolve the issues better, a one-time
243 extension could be granted. Care should be taken in
244 exercising this option, since abusing this would merely
245 postpone closures. Anything that is still not resolved is
246 too contentious not to be sent to the full set of
247 developers in a general resolution proposal.
252 <heading>Deadlock resolution</heading>
254 Formerly, arriving at a consensus was the only way to amend
255 Policy. That worked well when the Project was small,
256 however, we have apparently grown out of that phase, and even
257 the policy mailing list has grown more fractious than in the
258 days of yore. We now need a formal process of deadlock
259 resolution, and we need to recognize that on non-technical
260 issues a small minority should not always hold up deployment
263 If a consensus is not reached, (or if someone submits a
264 formal objection to the proposal) and the end of the
265 discussion period is near, then one is faced with a dilemma.
268 <heading>Impasse on Technical Issues</heading>
270 On technical issues, popularity is a bad way of arriving
271 at conclusions. Hopefully, the policy group would arrive
272 at a consensus on their own. If that fails to happen, or
273 if there is a formal objection raised on the issue, and
274 the issue is a technical one, then the technical committee
275 may be consulted. This should be a rare occurrence. </p>
278 <heading>Non Technical and Subjective Disagreements</heading>
280 However, if the issue is non-technical and subjective,
281 then a vote of the developers may be taken (USENET voting
282 software should be available all over the place, right?),
283 and a super-majority of 75% is needed to carry the
284 amendment through. Failing the super-majority, the issue
285 should be shelved. It may be re-submitted as a a fresh
286 proposal after a suitable cooling off period (which should
287 be no less than a month, typically three months being
288 desirable, unless there are significant new
289 developments). (Demote bug, if the BTS is being used)</p>
291 If the issue raised is especially contentious, or is
292 deemed to be suitable for review by the full set of
293 developers, then four or more developers can call for a
294 hold on the proposal, and move to send the proposal to the
295 larger developer body as a General
296 Resolution. <strong>Note:</strong> The constitution may
297 have additional requirements for submitting a General
298 Resolution, for example, a minimum number of seconders,