Usage of Debian Structure Documentation, Social Contract etc

[Peter Cowley]

Hello everyone in Debian-land.   I'm working on helping the community of people who use SME server, a Redhat Linux based server formerly maintained by Mitel Corp.  It used to be called e-smith server before that.  Mitel have recently spun off the free version to the existing user community at contribs.org.   There has been a lot of discussion about how to actually create a community or what form it should take with some advocating total anarchy (goodness knows how these people get on in real life!) but I have been pushing fairly hard for some structure and rules (been on committee's etc where things have gone bad and know about the necessity of rules).   Anyway, to cut a long story short, someone mentioned the structure that the Debian community uses and I would be very keen to be able to use most of your community's structures and rules etc as a base for our own, but don't want to steal it off your web site, instead I'd like to ask your community, if it is OK to use your stuff as a basis for our own organisational structure (with appropriate credits of course).  My feeling is why reinvent the wheel when an almost ideal one already exists, not to mention that fact that your community has been around for a long time and is stable, a feat we wish to emulate but we are a very young community at the moment.   I have emailed your leader, Martin, who did not see a problem with this but asked me to email the wider Debian community to see if there were anyone who had concerns about this.   I welcome your comments.   Kindest regards Peter Cowley