On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 06:24:24PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > Similarly, Steve: can you comment on the criticism of "voting" on
> > packages, why don't you see it as a problem?
[…]
> *I am not proposing a new process*. This was the process that was
> used for *years* via debian-qa. But, evidently because this process
> was never adequately codified in the developer's reference
Hi Steve, thanks for your detailed reply. I'm in agreement with
basically [1] all you wrote.
In fact, I've remained subscribed to -qa all those years, after my
active hacking on the QA infrastructure, because I wanted to follow
orphaning and similar discussions there. Unfortunately, if my memory
serves me well, the "mail -qa" process has grown more and more underused
in recent years. Also, some recent "high profile" cases have often
debated on -devel, partly increasing the "drama" around 3rd party
orphaning. That, combined with the fact that the process you remember
was "written" only in folklore, has probably made it unknown to most and
hardly discoverable by new developers.
No matter the actual letter of the process, we could all probably learn
from this experience that there is a lot of value in documenting
processes, even when they're supposed to be known in folklore. In Debian
we are not particularly good at doing that and we often end up paying
the price of it.
Cheers.
[1] I think at this point our judgement differs only on the matter of
the minimum number of "ACKs", if any. My motive is that I like sane
defaults where responsible individuals _alone_ are empowered to act.
I'm fine with safeguards when the action is potentially risky, but
I'm weary of safeguards that block individuals to act forever if
everyone else in the world happen to be busy.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . zack@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
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