Bug#741573: On menu systems.

[Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org>]

Package: tech-ctte
Severity: normal

Dear technical comittee,

I am asking for your arbitration on an unresolvable conflict on the subject of
Desktop menu systems, between a broad number of developers including on one
hand maintainers of the Debian packages for the GNOME and KDE desktop systems
and the mime-support package (myself), and on the other hand Bill Alombert on
his quality of Policy Editor (DPL delegate).

Over almost one year of work and discussion, including a call for comments on
the debian-devel mailing list, we have shaped a modification to the Debian
Policy that 1) incorporates the description of the FreeDesktop menu system and
its use in Debian for listing program in desktop menus and associating them
with media types, and 2) softens the wording on the Debian Menu system to
reflect that in Jessie it will be neither displayed nor installed by default on
standard Debian installations.

The proposal reached consensus through the Policy Changes process, was seconded
by me, Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer, Cyril Brulebois and Russ Allbery,
who is also Policy Editor and assessed that the consensus was obtained.
Apparently without coordination with the other Policy Editors, Bill then
canceled the change and has been avoiding any concrete discussion the change.

You can find the proposal at the following URL.

    http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=dbnpolicy/policy.git;a=commitdiff;h=ba679bff76f5b9152f43d5bc901b9b3aad257479;hp=f6997b3ba793c9a9e463cca9f7e7b138add8b788

The whole discussion is at https://bugs.debian.org/707851.

I will not describe Bill's behaviour in further details unless you ask me to do
so, but the end result is that me and others are stongly dissatisfied by his
obstructive attitude and unilateral veto, to the point that we do not think
that discussion is possible and we need a decision from a third party.  I am
asking you to overrule Bill and let me or the Policy Editors upload an updated
version of the Policy containing our changes.

I will inform Bill and the debian-policy mailing list in the thread for #707851
once I have a bug number for this appeal.

Please let me know if there is further information you need.

Cheers, and many thanks for your work.

-- 
Charles Plessy
Maintainer of the 'mime-support' package
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan