Re: Conflicts between developers and policy

[Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>]

Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@datasync.com> wrote:
> Philip> [Oxford English Dictionary] policy[1]: noun. prudent conduct,
> Philip> sagacity; course or general plan of action (to be) adopted by
> Philip> government, party, person etc.
>
>	Raul Miller <rdm@test.legislate.com> also quoted things
>  similar. So, we have officially accepted and ratified the Policy
>  documents, I take it, and I just missed the party?
>
>	If the project has indeed ``adopted'' the Policy documents, I
>  have nothing further to say. I just wish you guys had brought this up
>  when people were fighting the Policy tooth and nail. 
>
> 	If we have not adopted policy, then quoting the lexicon is a
>  meaningless play on words; and even though they be named policy, they
>  are evidently not.
> 
> 	Which is it? (can't have it both ways, folks).

Are you suggesting that we should interpret the meaning of the policy
differently depending upon whether it has been adopted by the project ?

If that is the case, we can never adopt it, since the act of adoption 
would (according to you) change it's meaning, and therefore it would no longer 
be the document we decided to adopt.

I would say that it is self evident that a policy document should accurately
reflect one's intent, and that people should generally abide by it.

I would also say that there is no need to adopt it in any formal way, since
the constructive thing to do is to follow it where appropriate, and fix it
otherwise --- what other use would we have for a policy document ?

Regardless of any adoption of policy, I will still reserve the right to apply
my judgement to the way I construct packages, and I would hope you would too.
 
Are you suggesting that you would do something destructive if it were allowed 
by policy ?   Do we really have to close all loopholes, or can we rely on one 
another to be reasonable and constructive, without needing a watertight policy 
with which to cudgel one another ?

People that are going to be destructive:

  a) wouldn't join Debian in the first place,
  b) wouldn't care about policy even if it were ratified, and
  c) could just be expelled from the project if they don't mend their ways

so why start writing rules with a sub-text of ``you developers are a bunch of 
untrustworthy skumbags'', when we can rely on one another to be reasonable 
instead ?

If you treat people like children, they will tend to act like them.  Let's 
decide to be adult about this instead.

Cheers, Phil.



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