On Mon, Dec 03, 2001 at 10:56:29PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > I'm not really sure why you felt the need to quote that Because people keep asking me the same questions over and over with different window dressing, masquerading them as distinct objections. > although I know you have a narcissitic crush on your phrasing. Ad hominem. > Some fairly simple questions which, no doubt, you'll find some excuse to > not bother answering: > > Does a package with 20kB of invariant text (and no other concerns) > clearly pass the DFSG under your interpretive guidelines? 20kB < 32kB It would thus not "trip" my interpretive "test". > Does a package with 40kB of invariant text (and no other concerns) > clearly fail the DFSG under your interpretive guidelines? 40kB > 32kB It would thus "trip" my interpretive "test". I must confess I'm not sure why you're asking me this, since you're just as capable of doing elementary integral comparisons as I am. > Now, certainly, exceptions can be made in either case, since all these > things are just guidelines Certainly. Thomas Bushnell, for instance, might want to make an exclusive (i.e., "don't let it into main") exception for a package that contains 20kB of _Mein Kampf_, and the Project might agree generally because of problems this would pose in Germany. Similarly, he might also want to make an inclusive exception for the GNU Emacs Manual if it (hypothetically) has 40kB of invariant text, because this manual is too important to be in non-free. > but it's the rule I'm interested in here, not the exceptions. Okay. > ] > However, if you have to GNU manuals, licensed under the FDL, with 20kB > ] > of invariant sections each, you can't combine them into a single package, > ] > even if that might be more convenient for you and for your users. > ] Who says you can't? Are you forgetting the "guideline" part again? > > Based on this, your answers to the above questions are "yes, usually" > and "the guidelines aren't really helpful in this case and independent > judgement is required and encouraged". In which case, why bother with > the 32kB limit at all? That depends on how common such scenarios actually are. Does there exist at present any packages that possess this property? Is it reasonable to expect many such packages in the future? In the near term, even, before we'd have an opportunity to amend the interpretive guideline? It's always possible to come up with extreme hypotheticals. > > Is it your assertion that the ftpmasters decisions should not be subject > > to review, > > I have no idea why your knee likes to jerk from "good judgement is > expected from <foo>" to "<foo> must never be question", but it's no > longer particularly surprising. I'm afraid I don't fully understand this complaint. Perhaps you'd care to spell it out in small words for me. > Sometime in the next few years you might like to consider if there's a > more effective way to build consensus than your modus operandi. Yes, certainly posting a proposal to a public forum which presumably would be comprised of interested individuals with an interest in the outcome, and asking for commentary and support may not be the optimal method. Democratic procedures are seldom the most efficient. -- G. Branden Robinson | I had thought very carefully about Debian GNU/Linux | comitting hara-kiri over this, but branden@debian.org | I overslept this morning. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Toshio Yamaguchi
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