The DFSG, Licensing & New Packages Team

The DFSG, Licensing & New Packages Team (in short DFSG team) is responsible for processing the NEW queue to review packages which are proposed for acceptance into Debian and providing feedback to their uploaders.

The DFSG Team (also referred to as the New Packages Team) may define different roles to reflect varying levels of experience and responsibility, for example to distinguish between newcomers and seasoned reviewers.

Interacting with the team

Review happens transparently via Dashboard

https://dfsg-new-queue.debian.org/dashboard

Task description

Accepting and rejecting packages

The DFSG Team's primary responsibility is to review packages in the NEW queue and confirm that they fully comply with the Debian Free Software Guidelines.

Packages that are moved into NEW are added to a queue. The contents of the queue are provided to the DFSG Team members, along with information about the packages.

It is not the team's responsibility to ensure that the package is free of release critical bugs - it's expected that the maintainer has done so.

Manual NEW checking is required in order to ensure that uploaded packages meet Debian's standards. In the absence of the NEW check, it would be much easier for packages with legal issues or those with gross packaging defects to enter the main Debian archive.

Any package potentially leaving Debian liable to lawsuits is unlikely to be accepted.

Once a decision has been made about the package, the DFSG Team will either reject (in the case of an obvious fault with the package) or accept the package. Four times a day (see count-down), the archive is updated to reflect the newly accepted packages.

Summary

Overall, the DFSG Team accept responsibility for allowing new packages to enter Debian.

Get involved

Coming soon...

Delegation

The core of the DFSG Team are DPL delegates (as per Debian Constitution ยง8). The actual delegation text is available.

News