Re: wishing minimal doc criteria for debian packages

[<c.buhtz@posteo.jp>]

Dear Joost,

I am sorry for the "tone". It wasn't against "Debian". It is only
because of Upstream. And I think this is a problem with my
none-native-english, too.

> please do submit a bug for that package.

I did for all the points.

> > > A nice to have (for me a must have) would be that upstream have to
> > > provide a manpage.  
> 
> Yup, we agree.  "Each program, utility, and function should have an
> associated manual page included in the same package."
> https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-docs.html#s12.1 .  If a
> manpage is lacking, please report that as a bug.

This doesn't point out who should provide the documentation. And that
is the point I want to bring up here. But of course I know this won't
change in the near feature. I just want to discuss about it and learn
from the Debian-oids. :)

e.g. The manpage of "libnotify" was written by debian-people. It is
debian-specific. In the upstream (gnome) source there is no manpage.
In my opinion, some people didn't checked very well while the
contribution process:
 1. Someone contributed libnotify code to gnome. Someone accepted that
    code but didn't take care about that there was no documentation.
 2. Someone accepted libnotify as a debian package. She/he found out
    that there is no manpage, wrote one and did work upstream should
    have made.

to 1. I would never accept code without documentation in a project.
Here I don't have to explain how much workload undocumented code
produce while the lifetime of a software project. This is not about
saying "No" to the contributing person. It is about taking she/him by
her/his hand and explain and show how to provide well documented code.

to 2. It shouldn't not be up to debian to make the "dirty" work for
other projects. I am not sure how other devs think about that but for
me it would be kind of an accolade to see my own software accepted in
debian. I would treat "my" debian maintainer and her/his resources with
respect and write the documentation by myself. ;)

> > > It should be up to the Debian staff to do the
> > > documentation for upstream!   
> 
> Did you forget a "not" here?

Yes, of course. ;)

> One of the reasons I didn't reply earlier is the tone of your
> message.  You write "Debian should do this and that",

This is about my English. ;)
IMO Debian is big and important enough that it could have an attitude
like: "We only accept your package if you document it."
It means Debian could set a quality standard for packages.