Re: ddtp: new notifications mails, opt-in or opt-out?
On Sat, 6 Oct 2001, Christian Kurz wrote:
> > Consensus is not an exact thing, otherwise it would be a vote. If
> > people don't raise their voice or don't vote there is not much we
> > can do about that. Unfortunately that holds for a large number of
> We can, by not talking about a consensus then, but about the majority of
> people participating in that special threat on debian-devel. With having
> just about 10-20 people taking active part in such a lengthy discussion
> and having more then 800 developers, I'm against calling an informal
> agreement made on debian-devel a consensus.
More important is the fact that we do *not* have a clear consensus in favor of
an opt-out solution for the DDTS. Do you agree that it's inappropriate for
the DDTS to send email to all developers without the approval of Debian as a
whole? If so, then in the absence of consensus, it would be necessary to look
for other forms of approval before proceeding with an opt-out solution: i.e.,
a general resolution.
If a resolution in support of an opt-out based DDTS mail notification system
passes, then the lack of consensus is no longer an issue. If such a
resolution does *not* pass, then those in favor of DDTS notifications are in a
clear minority and an opt-out solution no longer makes sense anyway.
I believe that a general resolution in favor of an opt-out system would pass
at this time, in spite of objections that the notifications are currently
'useless' because maintainers can't do anything with the information. I also
understand that it's a lot easier to get people involved in the process if
they don't have to actively seek out things to be involved in.
Of course there will be some developers who will want nothing to do with it
either way; and that's their prerogative, and that's why no one has proposed
*mandatory* notifications. My concern is for the many developers who would
not actively seek out these translations, but who don't mind receiving them if
someone else is going to the trouble of sending them. I believe there are
advantages to keeping these maintainers in the loop, even if only
superficially.
And maybe I'm wrong, and a GR in favor of an opt-out solution would fail
today. And maybe, once progress is made on support for internationalized
descriptions in dpkg/apt, revisiting the issue would bring a different result.
What is certain is that there is not consensus in favor of an opt-out
solution, and that any effort to resume an opt-out notification system should
be preceded by explicit approval from the Debian project.
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer
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