Re: Policy about policy
On Sun, Sep 05, 1999 at 03:07:48PM -0400, Raul Miller wrote:
> > In the wake of the 3.0.0.0 release of debian policy, I've been studying
> > the policy process.
On Sun, Sep 05, 1999 at 10:17:27PM +0200, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> Which has worked almost flawlessy for some time before the big FHS bang.
>
> Let's not try to fix things that are not broken. Most of the time the policy
> group on debian-policy (everybody can subscribe) is very productive. We're
> still learning to organize ourself, but that's only natural.
It looks like one of the most problematic aspects of my way of thinking
is the idea that the opinions of developers should be solicited when
policy would impact their packages.
Yet I was under the impression that the policy group had, in the past,
gone out and solicited the opinions of developers. [Emacsen issues
come to mind.]
Now, I agree that this should be a "best effort" sort of thing -- it's
silly to wait around for a developer who hasn't been heard of for quite
some time.
Also, I have about 12 meg of debian-policy archives to digest before I can
say anything definitive about existing practice. I'm under the impression
that asking for developer participation has been a successful action of
the policy group -- but at the moment, that's all it is: an impression.
> I don't see the need for changing the procedure. Especially I don't
> think we should hide behind procedures, formalization and voting.
In the above paragraph, I don't think that you said what you intended
to say. [For example: filing a bug report is an example of following
a procedure. Policy is a formalization. And voting.. well.. I agree
that pure consensus is more optimum than voting.]
> If you feel easier if the work of the policy group is "official
> sanctionized", I suggest that the Debian project leader makes the
> "Debian Policy Group" a delegate whose purpose is to edit and maintain
> the Debian policy manual. Then no change in the constitution is
> needed.
I feel that as the maintainers of debian-policy, the policy group
has nearly carte blanche on what they say in that package. However,
there's other sides to that story -- for example, while the proposal
document states that contentious technical issues should be decided by
the technical committee, no one who was reading the policy list at the
time recognized the fhs transition as contentious.
So, anyways, while I appreciate your comments, I hope you understand
that I'm feeling my way around here -- I'm not ready to propose anything,
and won't be for quite a while.
Mostly, I don't want to operate in the dark: proposing random
constitutional ammendments isn't going to make me feel any easier.
Once again, right now I'm just trying to make sense of things and I
do not want to propose any changes to anything [I believe I mentioned
something of this reluctance to change anything in my previous message].
Thanks,
--
Raul
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