Re: Distributing software written by hostile upstream developers
On Thu, Sep 17 2009, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 09:47:10AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>>On Thu, Sep 10 2009, Steve McIntyre wrote:
>>>
>>> Well, what happens if somebody wants to maintain software where there
>>> is a strong set of opinion that we don't want it? In this case, I'd
>>> like to delegate the power to the ftpmasters to say so and reject from
>>> NEW etc. If we have a clear consensus that that would be OK then fine;
>>> otherwise I'd like to run this through the GR process to make sure the
>>> project as a whole agrees.
>>
>>> It could be controversial, which is why I'm bringing this up now
>>> rather than via an argument after-the-fact...
>>
>> I would like to see more on how the ftpmasters (a small group of
>> overworked people already tasked with too much) will be able to
>> determine that there is a strong set of opinions that we do not want it
>> (as opposed to a small vocal minority that vehemently opposes
>> something -- we have had people violently opposed to things like HAL
>> and udev)?
>>
>> Before we chose to override a DD's decision about their own
>> package, there ought to be an objective criteria for that override, in
>> my opinion.
>
> Sure, that sounds reasonable. What would you suggest as objective
> criteria?
Well, given that this is all about personal opinions, the only
objective criteria I can come up with is a measure of the popularity of
sentiment against the package. We could attempt to measuer both, by a
devotee straw-poll, for example.
- [ ] I advocate the package
- [ ] Dislike the package, but not enough to prevent it in Debian
- [ ] Dislike the package, encourage the developer not to package it
- [ ] Dislike the package, prevent it from entering the archive
And then set up a criteria that the number of people opposing -
+ 0.25 * number of people deprecating it number of people advocating it >
some threshold in terms of Q.
By setting up the criteria for the strength of opposition
upfront, we preclude arguments about bias against a specific individual
from clouding the issue.
However, I am not part of the group you have evidently discussed
this with, and am no aware of the rationale and motivation that might
have surfaced in those discussions, so there might be aspects of
desirable criteria I might have missed; feel free to expand on this.
manoj
--
Do not worry about which side your bread is buttered on: you eat BOTH
sides.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/>
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