Hi, The current practice for debian.net entries is that they are directly entered in the debian.net zone as 3rd-level records. I am seeking comments on a proposal to alter this practice.
While the current practice is useful for the introduction of unofficial project services, it may involve certain risks. One risk is that outsiders can not and will not distinguish between debian.net and debian.org entries. Another risk is that those unofficial services will stall if the maintainer who 'owns' those entries leaves the project. We are also observing domain-squatting in the debian.net zone. Therefore, I would like to propose the following change in the debian.net entry policy: * Going forward, new user-associated debian.net entries will be added as 4th-level (or 5th-level, see last section) records in the debian.net zone in the form of $entry.$uid.debian.net, where $uid is your debian login name. For example, if I desired to introduce a 'foobar' entry, then it would be added to the debian.net zone as foobar.zobel.debian.net. The insertion of $uid would be automatic: you would not need to add it in the mail you submit to ud-mailgate. * Existing user-associated 3rd-level entries will remain for a transitional period of, let's say, one year. Corresponding 4th-level entries will be reserved to allow for transition. During the transition period, you may modify your 3rd-level entries, transition them to 4th-level entries, transition them to a role (see next section), or delete them. At the end of the transitional period, any remaining user-associated 3rd-level entries and corresponding 4th-level reservations would be removed. * New 3rd-level debian.net entries can still can be added, but would need to be role-associated (eg. qa, release-team, etc.) rather than user-associated. For this, I propose that we use this RFC to define some criteria which would need to be satisfied in order to have a role-associated 3rd-level entry be created. * An 'unofficial' role-associated 3rd-level debian.net service can become an 'official' 3rd-level debian.org service. Again, I propose that we use this RFC to define some criteria which would need to be satisfied. * Alternately, we may wish to put unofficial services under $entry.beta.debian.net and user-associated entries under $entry.$uid.user.debian.net so that 3rd-level entries in debian.net and debian.org point only to offical services. This would remove all ambiguity and matches what other organizations have done when dealing with official entries in their .com, .net, and .org zones. There is nothing carved into stone yet! I just want to hear your comments on this. The key point is that lay users will not understand the difference between debian.net and debian.org, and we should not require that they do. The purpose of this RFC is to seek comment on how to address this concern and the above proposal is perhaps one such way. Finally, please note that this is not specifically due to the recent http.debian.net conversation, although it did remind me that I needed to write up my thoughts. The concerns regarding debian.net vs debian.org had been expressed at DebConf 2011 and at DSA Sprint 2012; these concerns are not new and the above proposal should not be interpreted as a reaction to the introduction of http.debian.net. I want to simultaneously support the ingenuity of our community while avoiding confusion amongst our lay users. Thanks for your time, Martin -- Martin Zobel-Helas <zo...@debian.org> | Debian System Administrator Debian & GNU/Linux Developer | Debian Listmaster GPG key http://go.debian.net/B11B627B | GPG Fingerprint: 6B18 5642 8E41 EC89 3D5D BDBB 53B1 AC6D B11B 627B
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