Policy updating?
Well, there was a lot of noise about Ian's proposals about policy
management, but we now seem to be stuck. It appears from an email he
sent that Manoj is unwilling to modify policy for the time being until
we have a concensus or dictate of some sort on this matter, and I sort
of agree. At the moment, a policy version 4.0.0.0 is sitting in the
CVS tree and on (one of) Manoj's web pages (can't remember which), but
it would be nice to put in some more recent agreements and actually
release the thing. (There was some disagreement about the version
number; it's probably safe to downgrade the version number if we want
to with an appropriate announcement to this list, as only those on
this list know about 4.0.0.0.)
I generally think the policy process we currently have is pretty
good. We fouled up badly with the FHS transition, but I think we have
all learnt from that, and we should not make such a mistake again.
So the main sticking point now is "non-sexy" proposals which are
obviously correct and obviously need implementing, but can't arouse
enough interest to get seconds, or those which are obviously wrong and
should be dropped, but nobody bothers to object to.
I suggest that we have a couple of policy caretakers (DPL delegates?)
who are able to announce to the -policy list (via the BTS) about such
proposals: "This proposal has had no seconds and no objections. If no
objections/seconds are received within 2 weeks, the proposal will be
considered accepted/rejected."
Note that this is not a power of veto or similar (so no czars), just a
way to ensure that the Right Thing gets done.
I think that the rest of the process itself is working quite
smoothly. I do agree, though, that it would be nice to have a better
way of tracking proposals, but that's a lot of work, and who has the
time for that? But there are rarely that many going at once.
I would initially volunteer Manoj (assuming he's willing) and myself
for this (not particularly exciting) task.
Do people find this an acceptable compromise for the time being?
Julian
--
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Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk
Debian GNU/Linux Developer, see http://www.debian.org/~jdg
Donate free food to the world's hungry: see http://www.thehungersite.com/
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