Title: Introducing Debian Enhancement Proposals (DEPs)
DEP: 0
State: CANDIDATE
Date: 2009-07-26
Drivers: Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@debian.org>,
 Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org>,
 Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>
URL: http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep0
Source: https://salsa.debian.org/dep-team/deps/-/blob/master/web/deps/dep0.mdwn
License: http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt
Abstract:
 Workflow for managing discussions about improvements to Debian
 and archiving their outcomes.

Introduction

This is a proposal to organize discussions about Debian enhancements, reflect their current status and, in particular, to archive their outcomes, via a new lightweight process based on Debian Enhancement Proposals (DEPs). This idea is loosely based on existing similar systems such as RFCs and Python PEPs. It is also completely opt-in, and does not involve any new committees, powers, or authorities.

Motivation

Currently, when having discussions about improvements to Debian, it is not always clear when consensus has been reached, and people willing to implement it may start too early, leading to wasted efforts, or delay it indefinitely, because there's not clear indication it is time to begin. At the same time, potential adopters of an enhancement may not be able to easily assess whether they should use said implementation or not, because it's difficult to know whether it adjusts to the consensus reached during the discussion period.

Our normative documents rely on wide adoption of a practice before documenting it, and adopters can be reluctant to make use of it before a clear indication that a practice has some consensus behind it. This creates a hard to break loop that this process hopes to alleviate, by providing a mechanism to reflect the status of each proposal, including whether it has reached consensus or not.

Secondly, we lack at the moment a central index in which to list such proposals, which would be useful to see at a glance what open fronts there are at a given moment in Debian, and who is taking care of them and, additionally, to serve as a storage place for successfully completed proposals, documenting the outcome of the discussion and the details of the implementation.

By using this process, people involved in developing any enhancement can help to build such index, with very little overhead required on their part.

Workflow

A "Debian enhancement" can be pretty much any change to Debian, technical or otherwise. Examples of situations when the DEP process might be or might have been used include:

The workflow is very simple, and is intended to be quite lightweight: an enhancement to Debian is suggested, discussed, implemented, and becomes accepted practice (or policy, if applicable), in the normal Debian way. As the discussion progresses, the enhancement is assigned certain states, as explained below. During all the process, a single URL maintained by the proposers can be used to check the status of the proposal.

The result of all this is:

  1. an implementation of the enhancement and
  2. a document that can be referred to later on without having to dig up and read through large discussions.

The actual discussions should happen in the usual forum or forums for the topic of the DEP. This way, DEPs do not act as yet another forum to be followed. For example, a DEP suggesting changes to www.debian.org graphical design should happen on debian-www, as usual.

In the same way, DEPs do not give any extra powers or authority to anyone: they rely on reaching consensus in the traditional Debian way, by engaging in discussions on mailing lists, IRC, or real life meetings as appropriate, and not by consulting an external body for a decision. To be acceptable, this consensus includes agreement from affected parties, including those who would have to implement it or accept an implementation.

The person or people who do the suggestion are the "drivers" of the proposal and have the responsibility of writing the initial draft, and of updating it during the discussions, see below.

Proposal states

DEP state diagram
DEP workflow: state diagram

A given DEP can be in one of the following states:

The ideal progression of states is DRAFT -> CANDIDATE -> ACCEPTED, but reality requires a couple of other states and transitions as well.

DRAFT state: discussion

DRAFT -> CANDIDATE: rough consensus

In order for a DEP to become CANDIDATE, the following condition should be met:

CANDIDATE: implementation + testing

The CANDIDATE state is meant to prove, via a suitable implementation and its testing, that a given DEP is feasible.

CANDIDATE -> ACCEPTED: working implementation

In order for a DEP to become ACCEPTED, the following condition should be met:

ACCEPTED: have fun

Once accepted:

{DRAFT, CANDIDATE} -> REJECTED

A DEP can become REJECTED in the following cases:

ACCEPTED -> OBSOLETE: no longer relevant

A DEP can become OBSOLETE when it is no longer relevant, for example:

{REJECTED, OBSOLETE}

In one of these states, no further actions are needed.

It is recommended that DEPs in one of these states carry a reason describing why they have moved to such a state.

What the drivers should do

The only additional burden of the DEP process falls on the shoulders of its drivers. They have to take care of all the practical work of writing and maintaining the text, so that everyone else can just continue discussing things as before. Driver's burden can be summarized as:

If the drivers go missing in action, other people may step in and courteously take over the driving position.

Note: the drivers can of course participate in the discussion as everybody else, but have no special authority to impose their ideas to others. DEP gives pencils, not hammers.

Format and content

A DEP is basically a free-form plain text file, except that it must start with a paragraph of the following RFC822-style headers:

(Additionally, REJECTED DEPs can carry a "Reason:" field describing why they were rejected.)

The rest of the file is free form. If the DEP is kept in a wiki, using its markup syntax is, of course, a good idea.

Suggested document contents:

License

The DEP must have a license that is DFSG free. You may choose the license freely, but the "Expat" license is recommended. The official URL for it is http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt and the license text is:

Copyright (c) <year>  <your names>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
"Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY
CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT,
TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE
SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

The justification for this recommendation is that this license is one of the most permissive of the well-known licenses. By using this license, it is easy to copy parts of the DEP to other places, such as documentation for Debian development or embedded in individual packages.

Creating a DEP

The procedure to create a DEP is simple: send an e-mail to debian-project@lists.debian.org, stating that you're taking the next available number, and including the first paragraph of the DEP as explained above. It is very important to include the list of drivers, and the URL where the draft will be kept up to date. The next available DEP number can be obtained by consulting http://dep.debian.net.

It is also a very good idea to mention in this mail the place where the discussion is going to take place, with a pointer to the thread in the mailing list archives if it has already started.

Additionally, drivers are welcome to maintain their DEPs, even in the draft state, in a repository inside the dep Alioth project, following the instructions at http://dep.debian.net/depdn-howto. They are free not to do so, and in that case a DEP0 driver or some interested party will update the dep.debian.net index with their DEP, and a pointer to the URL they provided.

Revising an accepted DEP

If the feature, or whatever, of the DEP needs further changing later, the process can start over with the accepted version of the DEP document as the initial draft. The new draft will get a new DEP number. Once the new DEP is accepted, the old one should move to OBSOLETE state.

License

The following copyright statement and license apply to DEP0 (this document).

Copyright (c) 2008-2009 Stefano Zacchiroli, Adeodato Simó, Lars Wirzenius

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Changes