Re: (was Standards not Policy?) QA not Standards?
* Chris Tillman <tillman@azstarnet.com> [011229 17:06]:
> The Online help question i asked and the debconf thread from a couple
> of weeks ago seem to point in the same direction.
>
> That is, we have nearly 1000 people working towards a hopefully common
> goal. They're all volunteers, and everybody understands that. Nobody
> (well, very few people) want to force things down others' throats.
>
> OTOH, we want a quality product in the end, and the nature of the
> beast is that we have many many threads flowing into one big rope, and
> we'd like the rope to be strong and usable.
>
> I think most developers want the same goal, and would like to have a
> reference to give them ideas about how to make their code as usable as
> possible in the Debian environment. Checklists of things that
> interfere, and things that promote that goal.
> [...]
I agree with you Chris, more clearly documented policy standards would
be a great step in the right direction.
I would like to add that formal QA processes are another logical path to
similar goals of improved quality. I think clearer policy is extremely
helpful and minimizes the need for formal QA but this does not eliminate
the need. With opaquely written specifications, these processes are
even more important.
There was a proposal written by Adrian Bunk about better organizing the
QA group. It attempts to move us forward toward the goals of better QA
processes and higher distribution quality. It's still on the table and
may be worth looking at.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2001/debian-qa-200111/msg00244.html
There was also some discussion following the proposal indicating that
the intent was to have responsible/contact people assigned to the
various QA areas but this does not preclude work being done by
volunteers in any QA area.
--
-- Grant Bowman <grantbow@svpal.org>
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