Policy mailing lists
Dale writes:
> My point is that this situation tends to ignore the effected maintainer
> who has too much to do to get involved in "all" policy decissions.
>
> It has come clear to me that I _must_ subscribe to debian-policy if I can
> ever hope to keep up with the flow of things. This completely defeats the
> primary reason for splitting the lists. I'm not so sure that I "need" to
> be involved in crafting policy. I am pretty sure that I need a better way
> to keep track of the ebb and flow of said policy.
Are you complaining that
(a) you didn't know about the imminent nature of this policy and would
have wanted to add your input during its formation ? In this case I'd
say that it's reasonable to ask you to subscribe to debian-policy.
(b) you didn't know about the policy when it was made and added to the
policy manual ? It seems to me that this might well be a justified
complaint.
I don't think it's reasonable to ask maintainers to read the weekly
policy `digest' messages on debian-devel closely for them to find new
policy.
Surely this is what we have debian-devel-announce and/or the bug
system for ?
Can I suggest that in future a nontrivial change in policy should be
announced
* in debian-devel-announce if it affects more than just a few
developers
or
* via <package>@packages.debian.org or the bug system if it affects
only a few
so that maintainers don't so easily miss these things.
Such messages should contain a postscript saying that the policy has
now been decided on and that if you wish the rationale explained you
should go and read the mailing list archives; only objections and
considerations not covered in that debate, or changes of
circumstances, should usually cause a debate to be reopened.
Ian.
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