Austin Acton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > 1. They have documents clearly outlining their goals and standards. > http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines > http://www.debian.org/social_contract
You will also be interested in the Constitution, which discusses Debian's internal structure: http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution Here's another important thing -- a legal entity to handle things like servers, receiving donations, etc. Debian developers created Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (www.spi-inc.org) to do this. I would suspect that even if Mandrake developers are not interested in any sort of integration with Debian, a SPI-Mandrake alliance could still be helpful. SPI has acted as an umbrella organization for various other communities -- OFTC, Gnome, Berlin, etc. > There is a cool website for new joiners: > http://www.debian.org/devel/join/newmaint Cool website, yes, but still one single human point of failure. Something we are working to fix. > And their developer's reference is a bit more complete than our > RPM-how-to: > http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/developers-reference/ You should also check out the Debian Policy Manual: http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ This may be closer to what you're looking for, and describes "best current practices" for all sorts of things, from package naming to file locations. > While debian still sucks in many ways (hehe), I think we could learn a My position is that all operating systems suck. (Hard to argue with that.) It's our job to make them suck a little less. -- John
