Conflicts between developers and policy

[Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

According to the proposed constitution, the policy documents do not of
themselves have any power to override a developer's decisions.  I
think that to allow this would be to hand far too much power to the
policy editor(s), so I think this situation should be preserved.

If Christian or anyone else disagrees they should take the matter up
on debian-devel, where the proposed constitution is being discussed.

The question then arises: what does it mean when something is policy ?
Answer: policy is a set of technical specifications and procedures
which developers are expected to use to make decisions, which people
reporting bugs can refer to as authoritative, and which bodies like
the Technical Committee will refer to (though not unquestioningly)
when asked to adjudicate.

So what power does a policy document have, in and of itself ?
Answer: just the power to declare what is and is not policy.

Within that the policy documents should probably use MUST and SHOULD
to mean the following:
  MUST   - Violation of a MUST means that the practice in question is
           definitely a violation of policy.
  SHOULD - Violation of a SHOULD means that the practice in question
           is usually a violation of policy, but that the policy group
           recognise that some packages need to do something
           different.  Exceptions should be discussed by the policy
           group.
  SHOULD USUALLY - in most packages, obey this, but do differently if
           there is reason to.  No approval/discussion is required.

Ian.


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