Re: Conflicts between developers and policy

[Buddha Buck <bmbuck@acsu.buffalo.edu>]

The text under discussion, as written by Philip Hands and Buddha Buck, 
and posted in total by Manoj Srivastava is:

_______________________________________________________________________
   Policy should be followed, except where a discussion about the 
clause in
   question is still ongoing, in which case the maintainer may indulge 
in a
   policy violation if they feel it is a technically superior
   approach.

   When policy is being violated in this manner, this fact should/must
   be documented in the bug tracking system, on the appropriate Debian
   mailing lists, and in the changelog of the package violating
   policy, including information on what policy is being violated, and
   why.  Any permanantly accepted policy violations (such as the
   dynamic library managing programs being shipped statically linked)
   should/must be documented in the policy manual, including an
   explanation of why the policy exception was granted.
______________________________________________________________________

Concerning the first paragraph, Raul Miller commented:
> Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@datasync.com> wrote:
> >    Policy should be followed, except where a discussion about the clause in
> >    question is still ongoing, in which case the maintainer may indulge in a
> >    policy violation if they feel it is a technically superior
> >    approach.
> 
> Hmm..  this is actually an important and interesting concept.
> 
> In effect, you've elevated "a technically superior approach" to policy
> status, and delegated all of policy to a mere plan for achieving that.
> 
> What you've left out is what the technically superior concept 
> approaches.
> 
> Could you perhaps suggest what it is that could be used to distinguish
> between worthwhile and non-worthwhile forms for technical genius?

Your objection is to the use of the admittedly subjective criteria "if 
they feel it is a technically superior approach."  Would the (slightly) 
more objective criteria "if they feel that strict adherence to the 
policy would jeopardize system integrity or weaken package usability."?

I don't know if that quite captures what we want, but it is an idea.

Also, when I said "should/must", I meant one or the other, but I wasn't 
sure which would be appropriate.  Upon reflection, I think they should 
be "must"s.





-- 
     Buddha Buck                      bmbuck@acsu.buffalo.edu
"Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our
liberty depends upon the chaos and cacaphony of the unfettered speech
the First Amendment protects."  -- A.L.A. v. U.S. Dept. of Justice


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