Hi, the e-mail I'm quoting in its entirety below is one month old now and it seems there hasn't been a public reply. A quick browing of the remaining emails doesn't releal a resolution in either direction. From my POV John's questions are valid and important. Martin, care to address them as DPL? Marcelo On Wed, Jul 07, 2004 at 09:26:47AM -0500, John Goerzen wrote: > On Wed, Jul 07, 2004 at 10:01:51AM -0400, Chip Salzenberg wrote: > > According to Martin Michlmayr - Debian Project Leader: > > > - A general port inclusion policy: there are a number of pending ports > > > (s390x, powerp64 and various BSD ports), and therefore it is > > > important to have a clear policy saying which criteria a new port > > > has to fulfil. > > > > AMD64 hardware sales are huge and growing. Its CPUs are made by both > > AMD and Intel. It's the upward-compatible upgrade path for the single > > most popular computer architecture *ever*. > > > > But Debian can't accept the port because we don't have a PORT POLICY. > > > > I think there's only one possible comment: "WTF?!" > > Let's quantify this a bit more calmly :-) > > I think there is something odd here. We have numerous other ports that > have been allowed in prior to having this written policy. I have > personally been involved with several of them. Not allowing something > in because there is no written policy is a policy itself, and it seems > to be arbitrarily enforced. > > It is very annoying to have all these closed-door workings of Debian. > ftpmaster writing policies behind closed doors that impact everyone, for > instance, and the DPL supporting it is troubling to me. I might even go > so far as to say that it violates our "We won't hide problems" promise. > I am at a loss as to why this discussion is not happing on -devel or > -project and instead in private. > > The various informal requirements (which, I should say, sounded quite > reasonable) that have been communicated to me on these lists before seem > to have been met by amd64 quite some time ago. Some of them have not > been met by architectures already in the archive (even *released* > architectures!). I would hope that the port policy would also force the > expulsion of any existing port that cannot meet the requirements for a > new port. > > There seems to be a lot of ill will towards amd64 for a reason I cannot > fathom. Some would be led to believe a conspiracy exists. Because the > powers that be hold their discussions in private, we cannot prove or > disprove this, and I'm not alleging it. > > But we have a situation here where the amd64 port name was arbitrarily > changed in dpkg (without any public discussion first); amd64 is more > mature than even some released architectures; people (the DPL included) > continue to raise the inability of amd64 to run 32-bit apps as a reason > not to accept it (even though this has not been a requirement for any > other 64-bit platform). We have not only working debian-installer but > also working DFS installer. There are also allusions to unnamed > "technical concerns" that ftpmasters have but have not communicated to > us. > > > Can you imagine -- can anyone imagine -- that this POLICY, when it is > > created, won't allow the AMD64 port?! That would be insane! So, just > > That is an excellent point. If ftpmasters see a problem with amd64 > meeting the policy they are drafting, tell us about it already and let > us fix things now rather than making us wait for this vaporous document. > > > accept the fricking port and *then* write the policy! > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-REQUEST@lists.debian.org > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org > >
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