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

[Sune Vuorela <sune@debian.org>]

On Thursday 27 August 2015 18:11:56 Ian Jackson wrote:
> So the real dispute is: should the existing application metadata
> database (currently represented by the Debian trad menu files in
> existing packages):
> 
>  (a) continue to be maintained in its existing file format
> 
>  (b) be translated to a new and more modern file format
>      (perhaps only for some packages)
> 
>  (c) be destroyed.
> 
> Given that there are people who want to maintain it, I think (c) is
> unacceptable.[1]

Unfortunately, the people who wants to maintain it are not the same people who 
has to carry the maintenance work (shipping, checking, fixing and managing the 
menu files across the packages of the distribution, which is why a) is 
unacceptable.
I haven't seen anyone interested in working on tooling[1] to accomplish b) 
which leaves just c) as a possibility.

Personally, I'd rather throw away work made by people in the past, than having 
people in the current and in the future keep wasting time.

/Sune

[1] Except the desktop2menu tool that I wrote eons ago that creates a good 
starting point for creating a menu file, but needs quite some work to be used 
on a automatic archive wide scale. I'd also suggest people to start off from 
Arch's xdg-menu that has been linked multiple times as a starting ground to 
build a menu for the window managers targetting advanced users.

-- 
I didn’t stop pretending when I became an adult, it’s just that when I was a 
kid I was pretending that I fit into the rules and structures of this world. 
And now that I’m an adult, I pretend that those rules and structures exist.
   - zefrank