Re: Request for Ideas - Astronomy working group
Hi,
On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 11:18:57AM +0100, Thibaut Paumard wrote:
> I agree, I was about to set it up after this e-mail, but Ole is the
> right person (probably the most active project contributor in the field).
While Ole is obviosly the driver behind this idea I guess he might not
be offendet if somebody else saves him some admininstrative work.
(Historically I was the driver behind Debian Med but I was really happy
that somebody else cared for the Alioth stuff in the beginning.)
> For the bike-shedding: I propose to use one of
>
> debian-astro
+1
> debian-astronomy
+1
> pkg-astro
-1
The reason why I'm against pkg-<some_user_topic> is that you also should
maintain some pure user contacts in your team and if your users assume
it is just about packaging they might stay away. And yes, I know on
alioth the actual packaging is happening - but the other two options are
way better in my opinion.
> This is my order of preference,
OK, for this preference order - so the last one can easily be dropped. :-)
> although many people will associate the
> short name "astro" with astrology rather than astronomy. Yet "astro" is
> shorter than astronomy and is also a short-hand for astrophysics.
+1 for the shorter word and the option to easily occupy the astrophysics
field. I actually would warmly welcome people from astrophysics just to
get some critical mass into the project specifically since it is
possible hard to draw a sharp borderline in the available software
space.
Regarding astrology it should become quite clear on the web page that
you are not dealing with astrology.
But hmmmm, just let me try some provocation (after I have confirmed that
I have most probably the very same negative attitude about this way to
fool stupid people): Debian is about Free Software and technical
perfectness. We have some packages dealing with bible and quran and
bible and we even have some astrological software maitreya. *If* there
is some high quality software packaged by a gifted Debian Maintainer I
wonder what might be the best way to get a strong Debian Astro team and
whether we should follow an exclusive or an inclusive strategy. (End of
provocation)
> > One point here is the Wiki. As you point out, there is no use for
> > listing packages there. What else could be its content? I have collected
> > some ideas for the debian-astronomy blend which I could put there;
> > however the Wiki is designed for users and not developers, so I doubt
> > that this is the right place. However, were should I put this? Mailing
> > list is not optimal, since I'd like to have an evolving document.
>
> IMHO, a wiki is a good place to document:
> 1- who we are, the domains of expertise, the contacts that we have with
> upstream, the software project in which we are involved upstream;
+1
> 2- the software that we personally use for certain tasks, make perhaps
> some publicity on the packages in Debian and what they can be used for;
I'm not sure whether I agree here. I'd like to insist on the tasks
concept and this could open another door for unmaintained package lists.
> 3- our TODO list and timeline, things that I don't think can be
> efficiently represented in the blend file (Andrea, please correct me if
> I'm wrong here. IIRC, the blend can be used to document prospective
> packages, but not in generic terms).
I'd recommend sneaking on the Wiki pages of other Blends and see what
they do in their Wiki. If it comes to an example Blend I usually tend
to look into the way how Debian Med has solved something. For instance
I'd recommend the Debian Med team policy (also linked from the Wiki
page) - Debian GIS has done a great and probably better since up to date
adaptation (also linked from Debian GIS Wiki). I really recommend such
a policy document.
I do not think that DebianMed Wiki could serve as a specifically good
example. It is more an entry page for other more structured information
- in other words an assembly of unstructured information serving as an
entry page to better places. It is less maintained than I would wish.
We also have the "official homepage" of Debian Med (which is what you
get when you do a web search for "Debian Med" as first link (usually).
It is also very badly maintained and nothing we are really proud of.
The problem with these pages is that they are not really the first item
on anybodies todo list.
> A developer mailing-list such as debian-astro-devel@alioth would be very
> nice so we can all be in copy when each of us discuss something with
> upstream, for instance.
We are using the alioth list more for internal discussion. For upstream
contact I'd recommend debian-astro.*@lists.debian.org - this is a
similar usage like you know from Debian Science.
Kind regards
Andreas.
--
http://fam-tille.de
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