Re: Policy wrt Important (was Re: dc and bc in Important?)

[Bill Mitchell <mitchell@mozcom.com>]

On 25 Jun 1997, John Goerzen wrote:

> By the current definition of Important:
>[...]
>    sendmail
>  * dpkg-dev should not be there since no experienced user of another
>    Unix would expect it
>  * lilo should not be there because lilo is not part of UNIX

I read it differently:

  ``Important programs, including those which one would expect to find
  on any Unix-like system. If the expectation is that an experienced
  Unix person who found it missing would go `What the F*!@<+ is going
  on, where is foo', it should be in important. [...]

I read an implication of "including, but not limited to, ..."
into that.

However, I could buy some of your arguments that other
packages (providing cc, lpr, etc.) not currently considered
Important should be considered Important by this rule because
they pass the Unix person expectation test.

I think this Unix person expectation test is too subjective,
and too prone to be evaluated differently by different package
maintainers.  Perhaps it would be better to explicitly list
programs which the debian policer-setters consider Important,
and the rule would better be that one package providing those
listed programs should be prioritized as Important.



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