Bug#741573: Proposed draft of ballot to resolve menu/desktop question

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

Sam Hartman writes ("Re: Bug#741573: Proposed draft of ballot to resolve menu/desktop question"):
> Ian, I'd like to encourage you to use less loaded words than
> "destroy."

I can see why you are objecting but I'm afraid I cannot see these
proposals any other way.  Perhaps as you suggest it would be more
politic (more effective) to object in weaker terms.

But frankly, I am absolutely livid.  It's quite an effort to write as
calmly as I am now doing.


> I think I may be following what Ian's saying.

I agree with what you say in this summary except that I would go
further:

> If we adopt Keith's proposal without updating policy 9.6--we retainIs
> the SHOULD have menu entries for all command line apps, but move the
> metadata format to .desktop, we have a number of problems.  We have no
> way to express the category information and some of the other metadata
> from the trad menu that's kind of important for its expanded scope.
> 
> So, it's not clear what should happen.

The dominant interpretation of this proposal is that that this
information should simply be removed from Debian.

> In effect by adopting Keith's proposal with an update to 9.6, we're
> saying that as a matter of technical policy decided by the TC, there are
> some menu entries on the trad menu that do not belong on any menu at
> all.

Worse than that, the TC would be saying that
 - the trad menu metadata database
 - currently in Debian [1]
 - which people have been working on for many years
 - and want to keep working on
should be deleted.

"Deleted" may be "emotionally loaded" too but it is of course 100%
technically accurate, because the TC would be saying that all records
in the trad menu database, which are reified as files in source
packages in our archive, should be deleted.  The files should be
deleted from the source packages and the information that was formerly
in those files would no longer appear in Debian.

I can't see a way in which that is anything but deletion, abolition,
destruction.

You may say that "destruction" has additional connotations of force,
violence, or disruption.  Well, see above: the people who maintain
this database want to keep it, and as you observe it will cause
disruption.

Ian.

[1] (if only partially present, perhaps in part because of vigorous
     campaigning saying it is obsolete and should be got rid of)