Re: GOP-PROP 6: private mailing lists

[Graham Percival]

On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 08:20:04PM +0200, Valentin Villenave wrote:
> Once again, you make some excellent points.However if said list has to
> be limited to *five* people, I do question the need for a mailing list
> at all, rather than merely CCing whomever needs to be CCed.

For clarity: assuming that there were 5 (or even 3) people, you
would feel better if we just used private CCing rather than a
private mailing list?

To my mind, the only difference between a private mailing list and
CCing is a trivial question of technical implementation -- but I
don't need to understand something to accommodate it.  If it makes
a difference to you, then that's IMO a point towards the status
quo (i.e. me CCing people).

> Therefore I have been suggesting that archives could be "declassified"
> after a given amount of time (five or seven years seem quite enough
> for any sensitive debate to cool off and lose any potential
> disruptiveness).

The experience of debian-private with "declassifying" has not been
terribly positive.

> No matter how, a key issue, as you pointed out, is that the list of
> people in charge, as well as the general topics they discuss, should
> be made public.

I think the gnu savannah page is clear: the project administrators
are Han-Wen, Jan, and me.  At the moment I don't think it's worth
discussing additions to that list; there's a lot of other GOP
questions that will have a much more immediate effect on
development and releases.

> And first off, obviously, it should be officially
> acknowledged that such non-public discussions exist.

That will be handled, one way or another, with this proposal.  If
we end up with the "private CCing" option, then how about adding
my email on the website "contacts" page as "private administrative
issues" ?  Would that be enough of an official acknowledgement?

I'll reiterate that I don't think this is a great long-term
solution -- I view the "private CCing" idea as a temporary
compromise for the next 12-18 months.  Once we've gotten into the
habit of regular releases, a more firm set of development
proposals+guidelines, and GLISS done, we should look at having an
official "steering committee" or "board of directors" or something
like that.

Cheers,
- Graham