On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 10:30:01AM +0000, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 06:01:26PM -0700, Joel Aelwyn wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 12:06:06AM +0000, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> > > On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 10:52:48AM -0700, Joel Aelwyn wrote:
> > > > [1] Which is a separate rant, and frankly, I think Debian needs to be
> > > > clear about what we really mean by "We won't hide probles" in our Social
> > > > Contract
> > >
> > > It's a literal statement. We won't hide them. As always with the
> > > social contract, do not attempt to assume the inverse is true. Just
> > > because we won't hide them does not mean we're committed to going out
> > > of our way to make them well-known and easy to understand. It is not a
> > > commitment to some higher notion of transparency, but rather merely to
> > > avoid *obstructing* transparency.
> > >
> > > Complaining that you didn't know what the issues with the NM process
> > > were is precisely equivalent to complaining that you didn't know about
> > > some random bug which nobody had filed. Nobody was hiding anything,
> > > it's just that nobody bothered to document the problem; they're very
> > > different things.
> >
> > I notice that you conveniently trimmed the portion of my statement that
> > went into detail about what I consider the core issue to be: what is meant
> > by "problems".
>
> It's irrelevant.
That's funny. I like that. I really do. You should do stand-up.
Or maybe a mind-reading show, since you seem to know, better than I do,
what the topic of my message was.
> > One could argue that failing to acknowledge, or do anything about, an
> > utter lack of transparency in our basic processes is, in fact, hiding
> > problems, by tacit acceptance and omission rather than deliberate
> > obfuscation.
>
> One could, but it would be stupid pointless word games. You might as
> well make similar complaints about tagging bugs as wontfix and closing
> them. I already told you once that this is *not* what it means.
In fact, the parts you have chosen to keep, and respond to, are the far
*less* relevant portions of what I wrote. They existed as a demonstration
only of one reason I consider it important for people to have some
agreement on what the usage of "problems" means in our Social Contract - so
that it can be decided whether those are *relevant* topics at all. Nothing
more.
Let's try this one more time:
1) I have seen people assert that "We won't hide problems" means "Our bug
database will be open", *and nothing more* - that the following phrase is a
delineation of exactly what that means, rather than an example of a minimum
expectation.
2) I have also seen people assert that this same phrase means we won't
hide any problems, real or perceived, that do not have an immediate and
overwhelming reason to be *temporarily* non-public (such as security
announcements where we would simply be cut off from any future announcement
if we publicized it too early).
(There have also been views that it should demand no hiding of security
issues either, but I find that an impractical and fairly useless suggestion
given the reality of security fixes today.)
These statements are plain facts. *I have seen both things asserted*.
Some set of other questions, which I will not repeat here because you'll
probably just trim the rest of the message again and argue about them
pointlessly if I do, depend on answering which of these two assertions is,
in fact, a correct summation of the project's stance on the topic. They are
mutually exclusive; it is not possible for both to be correct statements
of a single entity's stance simultaneously (it is possible that neither
of them is correct, in which case someone should propose an alternative
interpretation).
Perhaps fundamental and significant disagreements over what an entire
clause of our Social Contract means aren't important to you; for my part,
*I* would like to know what people believe they are agreeing with when they
agree to abide by the SC.
--
Joel Aelwyn <fenton@debian.org> ,''`.
: :' :
`. `'
`-
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