Bug#841294: Overrule maitainer of "global" to package a new upstream version

[Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org>]

>>>>> "Colin" == Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> writes:


    Colin> As a maintainer who has sometimes had cause to do similar
    Colin> things, I'm concerned at the standard being applied here.
    Colin> Could you perhaps review the history around groff 1.18.1.1 ->
    Colin> 1.20 for comparison?  This is a case that's all over and done
    Colin> with seven years ago, so should be free of emotive
    Colin> associations by now, and the history can be read through
    Colin> reasonably quickly.

    Colin> Here are some references: https://bugs.debian.org/196762
    Colin> https://bugs.debian.org/374569
    Colin> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2007-11/msg00011.html

Reading this first reference was enough for me to identify several
differences I believe are key.

First, upgrading to new upstream is presumed good, not always good.
My concern with Ron's position is mostly that  he wants the people
requesting a new upstream to justify that rather than wanting the htags
users to justify not breaking htags.

I think it was fairly obvious to everyone involved in the groff
discussion that the multibyte patch was required for Japanese man pages
among other things.
That is, I think there is evidence of the importance of the groff
multibyte patch in a way there's not evidence of heavy htags CGI use
here.
Put another way, the record presents evidence sufficient to overcome the
presumption that upgrading is good.

Second, you were responsive and pro-active.  You reached out to the
multibyte patch author.
You tried to forward port it yourself.

Third, there was an eventual way forward.  It was clear that groff would
eventually get to UTF-8 support good enough that we could use it.

So for these reasons, I think the groff situation is different in ways
that matter at least to my analysis.