On Sat, Apr 20, 2002 at 09:57:12PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote: > So the issue now boils down to a standard dispute between the > submitter and the maintainer on the severity or validity of a bug; > and we have no formal resolution protocols beyond submission to the > tech ctte and letting the committee decide. I'm willing to recognize the decision of the Technical Committee as binding if Anthony is. Is a vote in the works? > The maintainer always has the recourse to the tag wontfix. Er, I disagree in the general case (and in this specific one). The "wontfix" tag has a meaning, and that meaning is not "I agree that this is a bug, I disagree about the severity". Thus I think it would inappropriate for me (or anyone else) to tag this bug "wontfix". Instead, I tagged the bug "pending", not "wontfix". I've stated several times that I intend to fix it, but I am not going to prioritize it as a release-critical issue, and as far as I can tell Anthony isn't telling me to. > Branden> Anthony has offered no basis for his latest manipulation of > Branden> my bug list aside from the derisive remark in the Subject:. > > I would think that violation of a must directive in policy is > adequate to label this a serious bug. This issue to my mind is what degree of discretion a package maintainer is permitted to exercise over the bugs assigned to his package. In the past, the amount of discretion afforded the package maintainer was greater. I have been in disputes over bug severity with package maintainers before -- as the submitter -- and in the past the package maintainer's discretion has been regarded as sacrosanct, or nearly so. If that is not true -- or no longer true -- then we need a body whose determinations of bug severities are binding, since this authority does not lie with the package maintainer. We should also establish whether the rules that apply to proper packages in the BTS also apply to pseudo-packages in the BTS; "www.debian.org", "wnpp", "ftp.debian.org", and so forth. > The package maintainer does not really have discretion over > bugs filed in the BTS. Secondly, any one can file reports, with the > severity they wish. We have not imposed any restrictions about > tagging, setting severity, opening and reopening bugs. Indeed, I > would consider it a duty for any well wisher of Debian to ensure that > the severities of bug reports are correct. One would hope that a > modicum of restraint and judgement is exercised in these cases. As a technical measure, I think we should design in anticipation of a future scenario where one of the parties disputing a bug severity refuses to abide by the Technical Committee's ruling; as may very well be the case when the overruled party isn't even a member of Project, and thus not subject to any internal disciplinary or social repercussions. Such work is outside the scope of the Technical Committee's mandate (Constitution 6.3.5), but I am interested in hearing the personal opinions of committee members on this subject. > In any case, no one can force the package maintainer to act on > any bug report, regardless of severity. That statement is not really applicable to this case, unless someone feels that I'm lying when I say I'll fix the bug. Thanks for your prompt attention. -- G. Branden Robinson | Convictions are more dangerous Debian GNU/Linux | enemies of truth than lies. branden@debian.org | -- Friedrich Nietzsche http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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