Re: ideas underlying policy
Hi,
Actually, when Debian was formed it had only one developer,
and no one could contribute packages, since that would have diluted
the distributions tight integration. This bazaar thing has evolved.
"If you find yourself having to do something which seems to
conflict with policy -- where it seems like you should do
things differently,
Please take a moment and reflect on the issue. The policy document
has not been thrown together trivially, it has been the concerted
effort of a number of people, who may well have spent weeks
discussion each little point. If after careful review you still think
that Policy happens to be flawed in some way, then please
include a comment to that effect in your package's change log,
and please file a bug report against policy.
I like the rationale. I would add: Policy is the distilled
wisdome and and experience of a number of people who have worked
together to create the policy documents, and is meant to be something
that one may depend on to have been thought through, for the most
part (since the people who created this are only human, policy is not
flawless).
There are issues for which there are several equally valid
technocal solutions, but a coherent distribution has to make a
decision between competeing solutions -- conventions (like the
location of the http server document root) that help different
packages in the distribution cooperate and depend on each other. The
policy documents are also a compendia of such conventions critical
for a cohesive OS.
manoj
--
"Here at the Phone Company, we serve all kinds of people; from
President's and Kings to the scum of the earth..." Lily Tomlin
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@acm.org> <http://www.datasync.com/%7Esrivasta/>
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