Re: Intent to package: debian-keyring
On 20 Apr 1998, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>
> Hmm. I agree about the exceptions, if any. The severity idea
> sounds interesting, though I think it should be evaluated more
> thoroughly. It may require the Policy document to be totally
> re-evaluated; I would tend to think that policy should be most MUST
> directives, with a very few SHOULDs thrown in.
The problem is that the SHOULDs and MUSTs are currently subject to
interpretation, and aren't clearly spelled out. Getting them clear is the
only way for the information to be valuable and useful.
>
> >> People have been recently railing at the policy manager for taking
> >> unilateral decisions; but any package manager flouting the policy
> >> is doing exactly the same. No one is infallible. I would much
> >> rather have any exception discussed and added to the Policy manual,
> >> rather than undermine the Policy document by condoning violations.
> >>
> Dale> You speak of "flouting" policy with reguard to maintainers who
> Dale> are simply trying to "do the right thing" in the face of an
> Dale> intractible policy statement. Why is there advantage in
> Dale> depicting your fellow maintainers as potentially spoiled and
> Dale> flippant brats?
>
> You are the one putting value judgements on our fellow
> developers. I can not control how you interpret messages. In absence
> of a more explicit attack on my part, I think this is your problem.
>
We clearly see things differently here...
> If policy is indeed broken, we should e fixing this. Have you
> put in a word asking for policy to be changed vis a vis the stripping
> issue? No, you chose to defy policy rather than ask for an exception
> to be inserted.
>
Here the interpretation you present is, as you say, your problem.
I did not choose to defy policy. I saw implicit in the policy statement
that the requirement was only applicable if it didn't break something. The
desire is to create a distribution that installs in the smallest disk
space possible. I saw that requirement as being a smaller one than the
functionality requirement, and thus "violated" the letter of the policy,
while being certain that I was supporting the best product I could build.
> Why do you say that the policy is intractable? Policy did
> change wrt the ldconfig issue. It could have been faster, but the
> whole debate was clouded by statements and counter statements for the
> longest time.
>
Exactly. During that whole debate period we had maintainers who "flouted"
policy by making their packages functional? I don't see it that way.
> I think policy is intractable to a large extnet because people
> tend to ``fix'' policy locally for their packages rather than getting
> it fixed generally. My impression may not eb shared by other people.
>
We are again seeing this from very differnt perspectives. I see the
intractibility as coming from statements that insist that what is writen
in the Policy Statement can not be deviated from in the smallest degree.
> >> By the way, I do not think I am alone in regarding the Policy as a
> >> standards document; a quick (informal) poll on IRC showed a wider
> >> accord (for what it counts for).
> >>
> Dale> Folks with time on their hands tend to support measures that
> Dale> control the group for the betterment of all without reguard to
> Dale> the desirablility of such controls by those who have it imposed
> Dale> upon them. (sorry for the tangled sentance)
>
> So anyone who disagrees with your point of vierw has too much
> time on their hands, and is busy poking their noses into other
> peoples affairs while they atand martyrted by? This is hilarious.
>
Well, actually I was suggesting that folks that have the time to hang out
on IRC have more time for idle chit chat than I do, and I'm jealous!
My real point was that folks who make the rules often don't consider those
who will be forced to live under them. I probably should make it clear
that I have no evidence that this is the case here. I was making a
generalization.
Luck,
Dwarf
--
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