Re: On the preparation for the ML-Policy merger
Hello Mo,
On Wed 24 Jul 2019 at 09:44pm -07, Mo Zhou wrote:
> Parallel with another thread on -devel asking for
> more cases to study. Here I'm following Policy
> section 1.3.3 to ask for suggestion on how should
> I prepare for the merger of a new policy section.
>
> The current draft could be found here, in PDF format
> https://salsa.debian.org/lumin/ml-policy/blob/master/ML-Policy.pdf
> The RestructuredText source could be found in the
> same git repository.
I've looked at your PDF. I think that this document is going to be very
useful for the Debian community to have in circulation, but I do not
think that it can be added to Policy.
The normative part of your document is an interpretation of how the DFSG
would apply to a certain class of package. However, the Policy Manual
does not do any DFSG interpretation, because that is the domain of the
ftpteam. We just say that work has to satisfy DFSG to be included in
main, but there is nothing at all in Policy about how to interpret
DFSG. We have a link to the REJECT-FAQ in a footnote, and footnotes
aren't even normative.
In short, the Policy Changes Process cannot be used to interpret the
DFSG because the Policy Editors do not have the power to interpret
DFSG. The ftpteam does.
If you want to solicit wordsmithing help on the debian-policy mailing
list I think that would be fine, but I don't think there is any point in
opening a bug against debian-policy about this, because so far as I can
see it's simply out of scope.
--
Sean Whitton
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