Bug#216104: Please clarify Section 2.5. required <-> essential

[Adrian Bunk <bunk@fs.tum.de>]

Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.6.1.0
Severity: wishlist

Section 2.5. of your policy says:

<--  snip  -->

...
     `required'
          Packages which are necessary for the proper functioning of the
          system.  You must not remove these packages or your system may
          become totally broken and you may not even be able to use `dpkg'
          to put things back.  Systems with only the `required' packages
          are probably unusable, but they do have enough functionality to
          allow the sysadmin to boot and install more software.
...

<--  snip  -->


Packages you must not remove should be Essential (and tools like
apt-get don't contain any special handling for "required" packages).

It's often no problem to remove a "required" package, an example:
I've removed the "required" package "mawk" from my system years ago
and I never had any problems ("gawk" is installed instead).

I'd suggest to simply drop the following sentence:
  You must not remove these packages or your system may become totally
  broken and you may not even be able to use `dpkg' to put things back.