Re: First draft of review of policy must usage
Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org> writes:
> The definition of grave is "makes the package in question unusable
> or mostly so". If many people are successfully using the package, then
> it's not unusable, even if a few people cannot use it.
>
> Consider the Debian installer: It's usable by many users to install
> Debian on a wide array of hardware, but there are some sets of users who
> cannot use it -- for some people, it's still too hard to use; some
> hardware (in the past most SATA hardware) won't work; and some setups
> (like network installs over ppp) are not supported. None of these lacks
> mean that the Debian installer has a grave bug that should prevent it
> from being released. A grave bug in the installer is instead one that,
> for example, makes debootstrap fail halfway through.
>
> The number of people affected by a bug does affect its severity --
> for sarge, it was reasonable to not consider lack of support for SATA
> hardware as RC, because the kernel support just wasn't there and clearly
> wouldn't be for a while, and because the majority of drives were not
> SATA. For etch, it makes sense to consider SATA issues as RC, because a
> lot more users will be affected by them.
>
> The "or mostly so" in the definition of grave severity is a hint that
> this severity is not a boolean, but a semi-arbitrary point along a scale.
> This is why there will from time to time be arguements about whether bugs
> are grave.
I agree with you.
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