Re: Is missing SysV-init support a bug?
On Mon, 2016-08-29 at 13:12 +0300, Dmitrii Kashin wrote:
> Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> writes:
[...]
> > Policy is not a tool to beat developers with; it's a method of
> > documenting convention so that we can build a distribution of packages
> > which interact. Like most documentation of convention, it tends to lag
> > behind when convention changes.
>
> These conventions *must* be mentioned in policy specifically *before*
> the changes according them are made. Policy is not only the place to
> document conventions but it's also the way to inform end-users about
> changes in their distribution.
No. Policy is not a user-focused tool, it's the documentation of how
developers / maintainers are expected to build packages. It documents
how things are and the current conventions, not how they will or might
be at some hypothetical point in the future. By extension, where a
change that affects a large number of packages is being made, the
expectation is that the majority of packages are updated first and then
Policy is brought up-to-date; operating in the reverse manner would risk
making much of the distribution instantly non-compliant.
(The majority of changes to Policy have no direct effect on users, and a
significant number of changes in the distribution that affect users will
be related to updated versions of software and therefore not mentioned
in Policy at all.)
> So if end-user disagree he can take part in discussion and try to
> explain his position to developer community. Or he can decide to switch
> to another distribution before his current distro accepts these policy
> changes.
Once the change is documented in Policy it *is* accepted, by definition;
it's part of Policy.
> I mean users must be warned before the changes are applied, certainly
> not after. And therefore Policy is the tool to beat developers with.
Users are warned of changes in the Release Notes of each release, not
through Policy. Policy is a description of conventions, not a means of
keeping people in line.
Regards,
Adam
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