Re: policy summary (new packages without man pages)
On Thu, Jan 13, 2000 at 12:01:33AM +0000, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Richard Braakman writes ("Re: policy summary"):
> > On Sun, Jan 09, 2000 at 09:38:17PM +0000, Matthew Vernon wrote:
> > > OTOH, new packages with lintian errors tend to get rejected - it would
> > > be unfair to reject new software simply because it contains no man pages...
> >
> > Frankly, I like the idea. I think packages are being created far too
> > lightly these days. Writing a manpage for the program takes a bit of
> > thought and research, and is useful to boot. If a maintainer isn't
> > prepared to do that much for the package, then I say he has no business
> > packaging it.
>
> Nonsense.
>
> The solution to there being too many packages is not to arbitrarily
> restrict the available packages to ones whose maintainers or authors
> are less busy (and probably less good ...)
The problem is not "too many packages", but "too many packages per
maintainer" (or "too few maintainers for this many packages", if
you like). Expecting a maintainer to actually have time to maintain
the package properly is not arbitrary at all. I'd say that time
and competence are the only reasonable requirements.
You may believe that time and competence are at odds with each other
(that's the only way I can understand your parenthetical comment),
but what I've seen of Debian shows otherwise. Having time for Debian
projects is a matter of priorities, and of enjoying such work.
Competent people tend to be very busy because of the demands placed
on them, but nothing stops them from allocating some of that busyness
to their favourite projects.
What I'm really trying to say is that what we should expect from
a maintainer is _commitment_. If writing a manpage or two is
a major obstacle to creating a new package, then I think that
commitment is lacking, and it would be better not to claim that
package at all. If it's useful, someone else will be along to
package it.
Richard Braakman
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