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: 1.6 $</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>
55 <heading>Archives and Personnel</heading>
57 <heading>The policy maintainers team</heading>
59 The policy document is maintained by a group of people who have
60 access to the CVS repository for the Policy documents;
61 however, this set of people behave more like maintainers
62 rather than authors/editors. This group does not create
63 policy, nor does it exercise editorial control, Policy is
64 decided "upstream". The group that decides on policy should
65 be the group of developers on the debian-policy mailing
66 list, which is how it was always done; so the group of
67 policy maintainers have no real power over policy.
70 Since the policy maintainers have no special powers, there
71 is no restriction of their participattion the discussion. It
72 is preferable to have at least 4-5 people on the job,
73 perhaps closer to 8, so that policy does not languish when
74 any maintainer goes missing (we do need vacations, you know,
75 once in a while), and since little creative power is vested
76 in the maintainers, we do not need a central control. And
77 the BTS can be used as a record of the action decided upon
78 even if all maintainers are away at some time.
82 <heading>The CVS Repository</heading>
84 There is a repository set up on <tt>cvs.debian.org</tt> for
85 this, and the people on the policy maintainer team have
86 write access to it. The Debian policy mailing list gets
87 copies of all the CVS commit notices.
92 <heading>Procedures and Processes</heading>
95 <heading>Initiating discussions</heading>
97 Unlike before, when the policy editor gathered in issues
98 which, in his view, were candidates for inclusion in policy,
99 any one can raise an issue in the mailing list. It is
100 advisable, but by no means mandatory, that the proposer
101 tries an idea out on the mailing list, which can help flesh
102 out details rapidly, and test the sentiment and the
103 collective wisdom of the list. Discussion may be intiated by
104 any member of the list.
107 Once the proposer is satisfied that the proposal has merit
108 (with or without trying the waters on the list), the
109 proposer should file a <em>wishlist</em> bug against the
110 debian-policy package. This stage can be initiated by any
115 <heading>Creating a proposal</heading>
118 Any Debian developer can create a proposal by retitling the
119 wishlist bug in the BTS to have the subject of the form
120 <strong>"[PROPOSED] ..."</strong> or
121 <strong>"[PROPOSAL] ..."</strong>. (Note: The developer may
122 coalesce these steps into one by directly filing a
123 <em>wishlist</em> bug with the proper subject format).
126 This is the pre-discussion period, when the idea is kicked
127 around, and polished. There is no preset time limit, but at
128 some point, if it is stalled, the bug should be closed. A
129 suggested time period is 6 months, since if the
130 proposal has had no action in that period, it is very likely
131 dead. If six months have actually passed, the bug should be
132 retitled <strong>"[OLD PROPOSAL] ..."</strong>, and have the
133 severity set to fixed. The maintainers shall flush out old
134 proposals after a a sufficiently long period of time has
135 elapsed (certainly more than a year or so after the initial
139 Developers may second the issue by emailing a message
140 containing the text "seconded" to the proposal in the
141 BTS. Only registered Debian developers may second proposals.
145 <heading>Creating an Amendment</heading>
147 When a proposal in the BTS has acquired two seconds (apart
148 from the proposer), it becomes a formal amendment. The bug
149 severity is raised to "normal" and the bug is retitled to
150 <strong>"[AMENDMENT DD/MM/YYYY] ..."</strong>.
153 The rationale behind the requirement for seconders is that
157 Encourage people to test the waters on the policy
158 mailing list, and this could help create an proposal
159 with a better chance of success</p>
163 Prevent frivolous or ill conceived proposals from
164 wasting peoples time (if the proposal does not even
165 convince two developers, surely this is not ready for
166 inclusion in Policy?)</p>
171 The whole discussion process is meant to be lightweight; if
172 you wish the proposals to be amended, talk to the proposer,
173 and get the amendment in. Or else, post an alternative, and
174 let the group decide which one is better.
177 If the process gets very contentious, and needs something
178 like votes on amendments and withdrawal of proposal, then
179 this is not the correct forum for this, and the procedures
180 outlined in the constitution should be followed. Note that
181 only non-technical issues can be resolved using the general
182 resolution protocol; technical issues would hopefully be
183 resolved in the group itself, or the technical committee can
184 be called upon to render a decision.
187 This document is not supposed to supplant the processes
188 outlined in the constitution, nor is it intended to run
194 <heading>Final disposition of the proposal</heading>
196 <heading>An accepted amendment</heading>
198 If the amendment is accepted, the bug is marked
199 forwarded and retitled
200 <strong>"[ACCEPTED DD/MM/YYYY] ..."</strong>.
204 <heading>An amendment that stalls or is rejected</heading>
206 If the amendment is stalls, or otherwise fails to pass, it
207 is retitled as <strong>"[REJECTED DD/MM/YYYY] ..."</strong>
208 and has its severity set to <tt>fixed</tt>.
215 <heading>Deadlines for Tabling Discussions</heading>
217 It has been observed in the past that discussions on the
218 mailing list tend to devolve into endless arguments. In
219 order to get away from the debating society aspect, at the
220 time of the formal proposal, a deadline can be set (probably
221 by the proposer, since they are likely to have an idea how
222 contentious the discussion is likely to be) for ending
223 discussion on the issue, which should rarely be less than 10
224 days, and typically two weeks or so. I hope that a hard
225 minimum period need not be set, and that the proposers would
226 be reasonable, and not set too short or too long a time for
230 If a consensus is reached by the policy group, then the
231 maintainers shall enter the amendment into the Policy
232 document, announce the inclusion in the periodic report, and
233 release a new version.</p>
235 <heading>Extensions to Deadlines?</heading>
237 If a deadline is approaching, and the discussion is almost
238 concluded (in other words, it has not reached an impasse),
239 and the consensus on the policy group is that an extension
240 of a week would resolve the issues better, a one-time
241 extension could be granted. Care should be taken in
242 exercising this option, since abusing this would merely
243 postpone closures. Anything that is still not resolved is
244 too contentious not to be sent to the full set of
245 developers in a general resolution proposal.
250 <heading>Deadlock resolution</heading>
252 Formerly, arriving at a consensus was the only way to amend
253 Policy. That worked well when the Project was small,
254 however, we have apparently grown out of that phase, and even
255 the policy mailing list has grown more fractious than in the
256 days of yore. We now need a formal process of deadlock
257 resolution, and we need to recognize that on non-technical
258 issues a small minority should not always hold up deployment
261 If a consensus is not reached, (or if someone submits a
262 formal objection to the proposal) and the end of the
263 discussion period is near, then one is faced with a dilemma.
266 <heading>Impasse on Technical Issues</heading>
268 On technical issues, popularity is a bad way of arriving
269 at conclusions. Hopefully, the policy group would arrive
270 at a consensus on their own. If that fails to happen, or
271 if there is a formal objection raised on the issue, and
272 the issue is a technical one, then the technical committee
273 may be consulted. This should be a rare occurrence. </p>
276 <heading>Non Technical and Subjective Disagreements</heading>
278 However, if the issue is non-technical and subjective,
279 then a vote of the developers may be taken (USENET voting
280 software should be available all over the place, right?),
281 and a super-majority of 75% is needed to carry the
282 amendment through. Failing the super-majority, the issue
283 should be shelved. It may be re-submitted as a a fresh
284 proposal after a suitable cooling off period (which should
285 be no less than a month, typically three months being
286 desirable, unless there are significant new
287 developments). (Demote bug, if the BTS is being used)</p>
289 If the issue raised is especially contentious, or is
290 deemed to be suitable for review by the full set of
291 developers, then four or more developers can call for a
292 hold on the proposal, and move to send the proposal to the
293 larger developer body as a General
294 Resolution. <strong>Note:</strong> The constitution may
295 have additional requirements for submitting a General
296 Resolution, for example, a minimum number of seconders,