The Debian Community Guidelines Or, how to be able to plan total world domination with a public discussion in debian-devel. Introduction to free software using my experience Give an idea of what is free software beyond the software itself. Give an idea of how free software is developed beyond the coding itself. May 16, 2006 16 slides Enrico Zini (enrico@debian.org)

What are the DCG The Debian Community Guidelines are: A collection of what people normally do that works well. A list of suggestions for working online more efficiently. The Debian Community Guidelines are not: A policy. A way to point fingers at people. Perfect. Pia is trying out an enhanced reality project, where a camera records what's in front of her, and the computer overlays the image with computer generated graphics. The demo system used the Doom engine and a doom world created with the map of the campus.

Goals and contents of the talk I want you to: know what's in the guidelines. tell people about the guidelines. watch out for potential additions to the guidelines. So I will: run through what is in the guidelines tell my plans for the guidelines ask you for ideas on what more can be done with them

Editorial dogmas Collect suggestions, not blames Suggestions must be useful for all the parties involved in the communication No more than 6/7 points per section

Contents of the DCG Main guidelines Communication-specific guidelines Debian-specific guidelines LinuxTag is the main Linux event in Germany. It tries to host both commercial and noncommercial realities. At LinuxTag 2003 I realised that I didn't care too much on the exibition itself, but rather on hacking together with other people I used to know from online work.

Main guidelines Strive for quality. Work with others. Principles do not change, the rest changes with work. Support the reasonable, rather than attacking the arrogant. LinuxTag 2003 was also my first keysigning party, and the big number of people in it made it nicely coreographical as well. Keysigning parties are used to build a network of cryptographic trust between people, without needing to trust a third party like a private company or a government.

Communication guidelines Improving the content: Ensure you are adding useful information. Share the help you receive. Do some research before posting. Know what you want and make sure people know what they want Debconf3 was fun. It was the first time that a Debcamp was organised before the Debconf, to give space for people to purely and freely work together, and it turned out to be a big success. You also realise that the world is small when you find out another person with the same kind of t-shirt and the same kind of disappointment for what happens in his country.

Communication guidelines Improving the presentation: Put the main point at the beginning, and the long details later. Talk with code or patches. Point to existing resources. Use a plain and simple style. Pro-digi is a small italian non profit organisation of people addressing digital divide issues. In August 2003, we undertook a little adventure to help starting a computer lab in the oasis village of Kirchaou, in the southern tunisian region of Tataouine, and in a student center in the city of Gabès. We shipped second hand computers to Tunisia, and traveled there for help with setting the computers up and training.

Communication guidelines Ensuring sustainability Read messages smartly. Be positive before being negative. Give credit where credit is due. Be respectful and polite. Help the public knowledge evolve. Setting up the lab was done together with the 4 people who will then work as technicians for the labs. The computer would run an old RedHat 6, which was found to be the best desktop that could run on that hardware.

Communication mini-HOWTOs Bringing long threads to a conclusion. Discuss controversial points off-list with the people you disagree with Take a leadership role Make summaries Start a new thread when the discussion drifts away Teaching was done dividing the people in two groups: teachers and mediators, according to their role. People who would already work in schools would be trained in teaching how to use a computer, while others would be trained in making the best use of a computer, and in putting their skills at the service of other people. We also managed to put the people from the remote regions in the south in contact with Linux activists in the capital city Tunis.

Communication mini-HOWTOs Coping with flamewars Send a private mail to your friends if they're being unconstructive or flameish (this section could use more suggestions)

Debian-specific guidelines Package management Suggestions on how to work with comaintainers (pkg-* group on Alioth, collab-maint...). Suggestions on how to publish bzr or darcs trees. Link to the low-threshold NMU list

Debian-specific guidelines Handling bug reports Take bugs positively. Interface with upstream. Be open minded.

What now? Add to NM documentation. Package in Debian and respond to bug reports. Publish on the Debian website. Link from wherever it could be useful. Work out the relationship with the Developer's Reference. Keep a watchful eye for useful things to add.

Goals of the talk Beginning from now, I want you to: know what's in the guidelines. tell people about the guidelines. watch out for potential additions to the guidelines.

bzr pull http://people.debian.org/~enrico/dcg