Bug#612610: lintian: should suggest switching to 3.0 (quilt)
On Mon, 22 Apr 2013 08:51:26 +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> The devil is in your quotes here :) The point here, I think, is that in
> a project as large as Debian you will always find "somebody" that
> disagrees with a specific "new" practice. Unfortunately that practice
> might be beneficial for everyone else. In fact, this is the classical
> reason why we generally insist on "rough consensus" as opposed to
> "unanimity".
Speaking of devils in quotes, here's a devil of a quote on the topic of
"rough consensus", a practice long been honed by the IETF, which seems
equally relevant here, and captures the core essence of it succinctly:
As Dave Crocker[1] is fond of pointing out, it is possible to have 99
people in support of a position and one standing against, and still fail
to meet the IETF's standard for "rough consensus." All it takes is the
failure of those 99 people to engage the arguments put forth by the one
outlier. Correspondingly, you can have 50 people on one side of an
issue, 50 on the other, and still have a clear consensus if one side is
merely stating a position, while the other is offering up unanswered
arguments.
[1] For those of you unfamiliar with Dave Crocker's tenure in the IETF,
I call your attention to the date and attendee list on the following
proceedings: http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/04.pdf
Since there were strong arguments against this in the past, from more
than one person, and since nothing has changed since, including members
of the release team from time to time still voicing their dissatisfaction
with the 3.0 quilt format and intent to continue not using it, it doesn't
seem like simply "having the same debate all over again" is going to be
very productive unless "hope the people who objected last time can't be
bothered repeating themselves" is considered "productive".
Maybe it would be better if the people who want to push this actually go
and review the objections from last time, and come up with a new format,
or with changes to this one that actually ameliorate the objections that
were already made.
That might achieve beneficial progress in a way that simply having the
same argument every few years (with no change to address the previous
objections) is unlikely to.
Saying "lots of people now use ipods" doesn't do anything to change the
measurable fact that their earbuds are both technically and audibly
lousy, and are ridiculed by more discerning users. Handwaving away the
concerns of those people as them being "in the minority" isn't going to
improve things like actually addressing the problems they noted would.
The same (lack of) proof by critical mass applies here too.
I'd much rather see a better format emerge from this disagreement than
people continually lobbying for change for change sake, without ever
changing the actual problems over which there is disagreement.
Ron
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