Bug#468765: confusing sentence about pride in security support termination announcements
Package: debian-www
Severity: minor
This report is about the same sentence as the one discussed in #468765. I'm
starting a new report because #468765 was closed (apparently by error) and to
show the summary below prominently (the first report got long). I also
propose an alternative solution.
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Summary
According to http://www.us.debian.org/News/2008/20080229
One year after the release of Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 alias 'etch' and nearly
three years after the release of Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 alias 'sarge' the
security support for the old distribution (3.1 alias 'sarge') is coming to an
end next month. The Debian project is proud to be able to support its old
distribution for such a long time and even for one year after a new version
has been released.
The last sentence is confusing or doubtful.
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Discussions
Frank Lichtenheld requested to discuss the topic on a mailing list. I started
by asking the security team whether it was proud of the duration of
oldstable's security support in
http://lists.debian.org/debian-security/2008/03/msg00009.html
There was no answer from the security team, however Joerg Jaspert in
http://lists.debian.org/debian-security/2008/03/msg00039.html and Don
Armstrong in http://lists.debian.org/debian-www/2008/03/msg00096.html each
indicated more or less clearly that they were proud of it. MJ Ray stated in
http://lists.debian.org/debian-www/2008/03/msg00101.html that he was not
proud of it.
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So it's not clear how proud the project is, but I am not willing to ask
debian-project since just the discussion on debian-security was awfully noisy
and time-consuming. As I wrote at the beginning, I consider that being
useless to users is a good enough reason to remove the sentence. Since the
discussions suggest that it is also wrong/inaccurate, I still recommend to
remove it. However, the discussions also showed that several people like the
sentence, so I'm not sure it will go. Therefore, I now ask to either remove
the sentence or clarify/fix it.
It's hard to make sense of the sentence, but after looking at it for a minute,
the most likely meaning IMO is (splitting the sentence in two):
The Debian project is proud to be able to support its stable distribution. The
Debian project is also proud of being able to support oldstable for one year
after a new version has been released.
If this isn't the real meaning, please clarify. If it is, please fix it (at
least removing the first sentence of my rewrite). The rewrite removes
the "for such a long time". MJ Ray suggested another phrasing which also
removes it:
The Debian project is proud of its security team volunteers' support
of 3.1 for a year after the release of the next version.
This assumes that the pride expressed comes from the volunteer nature of
security support. I agree that this is a likely meaning, considering various
interventions in #468765 and the debian-security thread.
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