Re: Decision on R datasets
Hi Paul, FTP team and everybody,
first, let me underline that if the FTP team wants to disuss and amend its
decision, I will be happy to participate.
I think that the only good solution is to engage with the R community and make
them change their practice of distributing data in binary format in the source
packages. I think unfortunately that it will not work by taking a decision
first, and ask them to follow us. To me the FTP team's attitude (no
discussion, no transition, no plan for the packages currently in the archive)
is blocking a global resolution of the problem. The examples given in the FTP
team's decision email are contrieved and quite off-topic to the core of the
problem, give the impression of a poor understanding of R, and contribute to
the whole email being an obstacle in engaging a productive discussion with the
R community. Of course, I am happy to be proven wrong here.
On top of that, it has been a couple of monthes that I was wondering which
packages I have to stop working on because I do not have time anymore; your
decision and attitude guided my hand for slashing the first 10-20 %. In
deciding whether to announce this in public, I had on one side the
confrontational impression that it gives, and on the other side, my impression
that since I have been doing large quantities of team uploads in the past two R
API transitions, it would be better to make it clear that I am not available
anymore for this. And that it will also not be me who will check the existing
packages: no transition you planned, no help I give.
For the rest of the discussion, please let me try to close it by briefly asking
everybody to 1) judge people on their actions, not on speculations and 2) never
propose somebody's resignation from Debian unless there is actual misbehaviour
and good confidence that an expulsion procedure would be successful. I think
that this is the only way to keep Debian "universal".
Finally, to summarise my standpoint: if we can not speak with one voice to
solve the problem upstream, let's agree that we disagree and move to something
else.
Have a nice Sunday,
--
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
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