Re: what is policy about?

[Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org>]

>>>>> "Branden" == Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org> writes:

    Branden> Then we need to get rid of the "serious" severity in the
    Branden> BTS, or redefine it to omit any mention of Debian Policy.

    Branden> As long as that severity exists in its current form,
    Branden> Policy *will* continue to be used as a stick.  A fairly
    Branden> large one, at that.

And depending on how the stick is used, this is not completely wrong.
It seems reasonable for the debian-policy folks to decide that some
issues are the really important ones and that we'lll ask people to
focus on those issues as a higher priority.


I don't mind RC bugs being used somewhat as a stick (even when it is
my packages they are filed against) provided that people are being
reasonable.  But a major reason I don't mind the community telling me
that's an important issue to fix is that I have respect for the
community.  In many cases (fails to build from source), it is
completely obvious that the community is right.  In other cases, it's
obvious that having some global focus allows our users to be able to
depend on certain things more of the time, and while I might not agree
with the particular focus, I can understand that Debian will be better
if I let the community influence my prioritization.

I think RC bugs being used as a stick becomes a problem when
developers cannot see why a particular issue is RC, when too many
packages suddenly have RC bugs, or when people submitting bugs are not
reasonable in how they approach things.

--Sam