On Mon, Sep 15, 2003 at 05:59:35AM +0000, benfoley wrote: > > I do not, in fact, object to efforts to improve the quality of > > descriptions in the distribution. Indeed, I believe that improving > > package descriptions is a valuable activity *in its own right*, > > regardless of what Policy says on the question; which, given how weak > > Policy's standard actually is, is effectively the *only* incentive for > > fixing most of the bugs that are part of this mass-filing. > could you perhaps extrapolate somewhat on *in its own right,* As Manoj himself is fond of saying, we don't need Policy to tell us to do common sense things. Better package descriptions are always, well, better. That doesn't mean they're the most important thing that needs to be worked on in Debian. >> Given that the basis for these bugs does not lie with Policy, therefore, >> the 'important' severity with which they were filed is overinflated. > but policy, 5.7.1, clearly states: > The description field needs to makes sense to anyone, even people who have no > idea about any of the things the package deals with. Not the current version of Policy. If people think Policy needs to be amended back to its previous state on this point, that's one thing; taking maintainers to task for things that are suboptimal but NOT Policy violations is quite another. > > And anyone who thinks the only reason their pet minor bug would be > > allowed to languish in the BTS is a "lazy or incompetent maintainer" > > needs a reality check. > sorry, you're wrong. the complaint is entirely valid. The complaint that maintainers are lazy and incompetent? Hardly. > why is colin putting his packages up for adoption? Well, you seem to be in the know; why don't you tell us? His message to debian-devel mentioned only a lack of hacking time due to real life, which is hardly an earth-shattering occurrence. > why is the next release struggling its way to fruition? Um. Because releasing an operating system is hard work? (Assuming you meant "why is it a struggle" rather than "why are people bothering", since the only possible answer to the last question is "because we care", which wouldn't seem to support your current line of argumentation.) > >The rhetoric expended on this thread in > > upbraiding maintainers for the poor job they're doing of package > > maintenance could have been much better spent on providing patches (or > > at least suggestions) in some of those bugs that had been filed -- since > > clearly everyone involved in this thread has English fluency to spare, > > which can not be said of DDs as a whole. > here's a suggestion. either open up the packaging system to allow non-novice > users to review package description, or accept the bug reportage of late. ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/sid/main/binary-i386/Packages.gz Put up or shut up. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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