Re: Bug#375502: debian-policy must clarify how sub-policies should be managed

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Ian Jackson <ian@davenant.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

> Frank Küster writes ("Re: Bug#375502: debian-policy must clarify how sub-policies should be managed"):
>> For a document called "Debian-Foo-Policy" to be part of The Debian
>> Policy it must be included in 1.4.  If it is not included there, it is
>> not mandatory policy.  How is that unclear?  
>
> The list in 1.4 isn't necessarily complete.

I think this would be a bug, see below.

> If you write the Debian TeX policy then it's just as normative as the
> debian-policy manual.  
[...]
> Note the following principle: a document is normative if and only if
> the official decisionmaking processes apply to it.

If with "the official decisionmaking processes" you mean the procedure
described in /usr/share/doc/debian-policy/policy-process.*, then I fully
agree. 

But this decisionmaking process does not apply to the (current) Debian
TeX policy.  It was just written by a small couple of people, without
any formalism.

I think any patch that, following the described decisionmaking process, is
submitted as a bug against the debian-policy package is incomplete if it
does not include a hunk that patches section 1.4.  Therefore it's a bug
if a new sub-policy gets accepted without mentioning it in 1.4.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)