Official policy process (was: 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"):
>> I tend to disagree.  A sub-policy should only be part of the
>> debian-policy package, and installed in /usr/share/doc/debian-policy, if
>> it is accepted and has been established through the official policy
>> process.
>
> There is no `official policy process'.  Manoj has (very wisely IMO)
> abolished the previous bureaucracy and returned to editing the manual
> according to his own judgement - taking into account of course the
> advice and information of others including probably the rough
> consensus of this mailing list.

Is this really true?  Then why hasn't the policy-process document been
deleted from the binary package?  And why did we see people sending
"Seconded" messages to this list and counting seconds, without anybody
calling "Hey guys, this is useless"?

> So there is no difference in the authoritativeness of the policy in
> debian-policy versus that in any other package.  These policies are
> all authoritative 

As one of the primary authors of the TeX sub-policy, I have definitely
*not* regarded it as equally authoritative when it was still under
development, but already installed in the tex-common package.  I have no
idea who else but the authors of the document could "upgrade" the
authoritativeness, so your statement seems to be wrong.

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