Re: Decision on R datasets
Hi Charles (and everyone else),
On Sun, 22 Sep 2013 12:28:11 +0900, Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> wrote:
> 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.
I'm sorry to hear that you will not be working on R packaging for
Debian any more. Unfortunately. there are very few people working on R
packaging in Debian. There is Dirk, of course, but few other names
appear consistently. In particular, there is nothing like a R
packaging team despite R's significant and growing importance in the
larger FOSS community.
I had noticed you doing a lot of work on R packaging, and would like
to express my appreciation. I know much of the time packaging can seem
like hard and thankless work. I hope you will not stop all your work
completely and be around to answer questions. Thanks again.
Regards, Faheem
> 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,
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