Re: Replacing ‘may not’ and ‘shall not’ by ‘must not‘ ?

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> writes:

> being a non-native speaker, I sometimes make the error of
> understanding “may not” as “it is allowed to (one may) not do”, while
> it rather means “must not”. Like for instance in the recent discussion
> about dashes in version numbers on debian-mentors.

There is a difference in nuance between “may not” versus “must not”.

The former is simply the negation of “may”, and I think on that basis
it's the correct form to use.

That way, it makes a clear triplet of “may not” (not permitted), “may”
(permitted), and “must” (mandatory).

> Would you welcome a patch to the Policy replacing “may not” and “shall
> not” (one occurrence) by “must not”, skipping of course false
> positives like “dependencies may not be available” ?

I agree the “shall not” isn't usefully different from “may not”. I'd
like to standardise on “may not” for that.

-- 
 \       “But Marge, what if we chose the wrong religion? Each week we |
  `\          just make God madder and madder.” —Homer, _The Simpsons_ |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney