Frequently Asked Question

1. Introduction

As is FAQs, this document aims to cover the most frequently asked questions concerning the hamara mailing lists (and of course answer them!). The idea is reduce bandwidth and avoid the same old questions being asked over and over again which reduce the quality of the list as well as leads to participants not participating enough. This is to be used alongwith http://wiki.hamaralinux.org/wiki/index.php/FAQs which is geared more towards usage of the distribution and questions along with it.

This document attempts to represent a community consensus, and as such it is not intended to be authoritative but simply a set of guidelines which attempts to help you in finding your way across hamara and being also a good netizen while you are here.

As the FAQ is in the form of a wiki, you are encouraged to participate by signing up, logging in and then rectifying any errors you find in this evolving space.

What is the purpose of the various Hamara mailing lists ?

A mailing list serves two distinct and important functions for the community :-

a. First and foremost, it gives a record both for the community at large as to how certain decisions were arrived at and the reasons for doing so. So, while past decisions can't be questioned, they can be used as a template to understand and make arguments to fine-tune and improve the quality of both the discussions and the product itself.

b. The technical skill-set needed to join and participate is much lesser than say IRC and is not bound by any time-frame.

Who is the audience for the various Hamara mailing lists?

That depends on the scope of each specific list. While some lists would be oriented towards developers, others will be more towards the hamara community. You can find a current listing here for the various lists which make up the hamara community.

== Are the hamara mailing lists open for anyone to participate?

Before posting to any list, it is advisable to see the charter of the list. The charter is nothing but the informational page on the mailing list which tells you what the list is about. See for e.g. the charter of hamara-devel and specifically see the About hamara-devel which tries to explain how that individual list operates.

Also, a mailing list is a best-at-effort kind of service so you should not expect that people will respond to your every question or query.