Bug#473439: pick consistent terminology for category/component/area

[Adeodato Simó <dato@net.com.org.es>]

* Russ Allbery [Sun, 25 Jan 2009 15:37:37 -0800]:

> > I think Policy should not attempt to make up its own terminology here,
> > so I'd like to change it to match either dak or the Social Contract.
> > After thinking about it for a bit, I favor going to the terminology of
> > the Social Contract with a minor modification (distribution areas
> > instead of just areas) in part because of Ian's point and in part
> > because I think it's meaningful to suppose that component refers to a
> > technical capability of dak whereas distribution area refers to a
> > concept within Debian as a project.

> The above was written in July of last year.  The only reaction that I got
> to this proposal is a comment from Giacomo that didn't object but
> suggested standardizing more of the terminology while we're at it.  But I
> don't think there's been much progress on that front.

> As mentioned, I'm not sure we need to match the terminology in dak as long
> as we're not confusing about it.  dak is referring to technical
> capabilities which are used to implement certain features.  I still think
> distribution area is a good name for this, better than categories.

> However, there doesn't appear to be any consensus on this right now.  So
> this is a ping to see if we do have consensus and people just haven't
> said, or if we don't.  If we don't have consensus, my inclination is to
> close this bug and continue using categories, since I don't think anything
> else uses category in a confusing way.  I don't want to just leave the bug
> open; it doesn't seem likely that anything fundamental is going to change
> about this bug report in the future.

Although I slightly favour "component" over "area", I think your
reasoning above is sound, and I'll happily take "distribution area"
over "category", particularly if the term "component" is mentioned
in a footnote, as your patch does.

Thanks,

-- 
Adeodato Simó                                     dato at net.com.org.es
Debian Developer                                  adeodato at debian.org
 
                                  Listening to: Pablo Milanés - Libertad