Hi, One of the issues that the o.g.o project has brought to a head is the definition of what is "official" and what is not "official" when it comes to Gentoo. The term is already being thrown about in the Project Sunrise thread; I'm sure it'll come up again in future.
It's an issue I think we should discuss and find an agreement on. Personally, I think what makes something official or not is 100% down to who does it. I think something is official if it is done by the project (where a project matches the definition in the metastructure project) responsible for whatever we're applying the label "official" to, then that's all that matters. So (picking something entirely at random for an example), if the Java project had an overlay somewhere (say, on gentooexperimental.org), because it's their overlay, the overlay is "official". Doesn't matter where it is hosted - all that matters is that it is run by the Java project. Equally (because it is the hot topic of the moment), Project Sunrise's overlay would be "official" because they're a Gentoo project. The way to stop them being "official" is simply to have the Council pass a resolution to shut down the project. I think the other side of the term "official" is clarifying the scope of how far something can be "official". Using the Java project as an example again (sorry guys :), the Java team can put in place "official" policies and procedures for what their team does, but that doesn't make them mandatory for the whole Gentoo project. Other developers remain free to form competitive projects, and put their own "official" policies and procedures in place if they wish. (I hope I explained that last bit properly. What I'm trying to do is keep in mind the terms of the metastructure document, which explicitly allow for two or more teams to be competing with each other). What are the alternatives? If a project's activities are not automatically "official", then who gets to decide, and how is that decision made? How can that decision be made fairly, without contradicting the metastructure, and without giving rise to any accusations of 'cabals'? Best regards, Stu -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
