The rapid pace of DragonFly progress makes print media impractical as a means of following the latest developments. Electronic resources are the best, if not often the only, way stay informed of the latest advances. Since DragonFly is a volunteer effort, the user community itself also generally serves as a ``technical support department'' of sorts, with electronic mail and USENET news being the most effective way of reaching that community.
The most important points of contact with the DragonFly user community are outlined below. If you are aware of other resources not mentioned here, please send them to the DragonFly Documentation project mailing list so that they may also be included.
Though many of the DragonFly development members read USENET, we cannot always guarantee that we will get to your questions in a timely fashion (or at all) if you post them only to one of the comp.unix.bsd.* groups. By addressing your questions to the appropriate mailing list you will reach both us and a concentrated DragonFly audience, invariably assuring a better (or at least faster) response.
The charters for the various lists are given at the bottom of this document. Please read the charter before joining or sending mail to any list. Most of our list subscribers now receive many hundreds of DragonFly related messages every day, and by setting down charters and rules for proper use we are striving to keep the signal-to-noise ratio of the lists high. To do less would see the mailing lists ultimately fail as an effective communications medium for the project.
Archives are kept for all of the mailing lists and can be searched using the mail archives. The keyword searchable archive offers an excellent way of finding answers to frequently asked questions and should be consulted before posting a question.
General lists: The following are general lists which anyone is free (and encouraged) to join:
| List | Purpose |
|---|---|
| bugs | Bug reports |
| commits | Messages generated by code changes to DragonFly source, documentation, or the website. |
| docs | Discussion of DragonFly documentation |
| kernel | Ostensibly for discussion of kernel work, though this list also serves as a catch-all for any topic pertaining to DragonFly. |
| submit | Submission and discussion of new code or ideas for DragonFly. |
| Test | For testing your newsreader or mail software. |
| users | User related discussion about DragonFly. |
To subscribe to a list, click on the list name above or send an email to <listname[email protected]> and put 'subscribe' in the body of the message.
To actually post to a given list you simply send mail to <listname@dragonflybsd.org>. It will then be redistributed to mailing list members world-wide.
To unsubscribe yourself from a list, email <listname[email protected]> and put 'unsubscribe' in the body of the message.
All DragonFly mailing lists have certain basic rules which must be adhered to by anyone using them. Failure to comply with these guidelines may result in from all DragonFly mailing lists and filtered from further posting to them. We regret that such rules and measures are necessary at all, but today's Internet is a pretty harsh environment, it would seem, and many fail to appreciate just how fragile some of its mechanisms are.
Rules of the road:
The topic of any posting should adhere to the basic charter of the list it is posted to, e.g. if the list is about technical issues then your posting should contain technical discussion. Ongoing irrelevant chatter or flaming only detracts from the value of the mailing list for everyone on it and will not be tolerated.
No posting should be made to more than two mailing lists, and only to two when a clear and obvious need to post to both lists exists. For most lists, there is already a great deal of subscriber overlap. If a message is sent to you in such a way that multiple mailing lists appear on the Cc line then the Cc line should also be trimmed before sending it out again. You are still responsible for your own cross-postings, no matter who the originator might have been.
Personal attacks and profanity (in the context of an argument) are not allowed, and that includes users and developers alike. Gross breaches of netiquette, like excerpting or reposting private mail when permission to do so was not and would not be forthcoming, are frowned upon but not specifically enforced. However, there are also very few cases where such content would fit within the charter of a list and it would therefore probably rate a warning (or ban) on that basis alone.
Advertising of non-DragonFly related products or services is strictly prohibited and will result in an immediate ban if it is clear that the offender is advertising by spam.
The DragonFly mailing lists are filtered in multiple ways to avoid the distribution of spam, viruses, and other unwanted emails. The filtering actions described in this section do not include all those used to protect the mailing lists.
Only certain types of attachments are allowed on the mailing lists. All attachments with a MIME content type not found in the list below will be stripped before an email is distributed on the mailing lists.
application/octet-stream
application/pdf
application/pgp-signature
application/x-pkcs7-signature
message/rfc822
multipart/alternative
multipart/related
multipart/signed
text/html
text/plain
text/x-diff
text/x-patch
Note: Some of the mailing lists might allow attachments of other MIME content types, but the above list should be applicable for most of the mailing lists.
If an email contains both an HTML and a plain text version, the HTML version will be removed. If an email contains only an HTML version, it will be converted to plain text.
Contact the Documentation mailing list for comments, suggestions and questions about this document.