Raul Miller wrote:
Scripsit Raul Miller <moth@debian.org>Or do you just want him to restate his opinion that the new social contract forbids some interpretations which were ok under the old version?On Wed, May 19, 2004 at 07:11:47PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote:If would be nice if he would reveal whether one of the proposed resolutions would *not* result in a situation where he would be comfortable with releasing sarge with non-free firmware blobs in main.The major difference between most of them as to do with expiration ofthat this "not result in a situation" condition.
I think I understand what you are trying to say here, but I cannot parse this sentence at all. I get a little further in parsing it if I assume that "as" should be "has", but I get stuck again later in the sentence.
But is that what people are asking about?As far as a straightforward reading goes, each of the current proposals (except "further discussion") appears to address the trouble that the RM has described, therefore allowing a quick release of sare. However, that is *my* kind of straightforward, which others may or may not share. And the RM's reluctance to confirm that he shares such an interpretation seems to strongly suggest that he doesn't. Is it too much to ask that he explains how his understanding differs from (say) mine, rather than expecting people to telepathically discover which option it is that would not change his view of the situation?Is "a quick release of sarge" the only issue? Do we care about maintenance of sarge? Do we care about release management in the context of future GRs which modify foundation documents? Is "quick release" more or less important than "simple philosophically"? When does this change, and why? It almost sounds like you're expecting AJ to intuit the frame of reference you're asking the questions from. Moreso, since expressing those frames of reference would answer many of the "reasonable sorts of questions" which are being asked. I think he's saying "I'll do what you guys tell me" and he's being asked "what will you do?". There's a fundamental disconnect here, but since he's given a lot of specifics and the people asking have not, I don't think the disconnect is on his side of the fence.
You are probably right that there is such a disconnect. The problem with "I'll do what you tell me to do" is that the existing situation arose in part because there was a significant disagreement among the voting developers as to what they thought they were telling Anthony to do. It appears that many, including Anthony, read the changes in the Social Contract as telling Anthony that Sarge had to be purged of non-Free documentation, images and sound without source code, etc, that prior to the Social Contract change Anthony had tentatively accepted as allowable. Many other people, on the otherhand, did not see, or did not think, that the proposed changes in the Social Contract significantly altered it's instructions ot the Release Manager as to what was acceptable or not in a release.
If the developers instructions were unclear, and interpreted in a reasonable but perhaps disagreeable manner, I don't think it's unreasonable to for the developers to ask how their (proposed) instructions will be interpreted so that there isn't further miscommunication.
It is entirely the case that Anthony's interpretations could lead to another series of changes to the proposals to better reflect the will of the developers. I think it better that that happen now, when the proposals are easy to change, than later, when it takes a 3:1 majority to change the Foundation Documents again.
> In other words, I think the questions being posed are, at best, too > vague. OK, how about:Anthony, assuming Raul is correct in that you are saying "I'll do what you guys tell me", and you are being asked "What will you do?", what do you think the various resolutions instruct the Release Manager to do?
Specifically:1) Which options do you interpret as allowing the RM to release Sarge with substantially the same content and schedule as it would have had if the Social Contract hadn't been modified earlier this year?
2) Which of the options given in your answer to (1) do you interpret as allowing the RM to authorize maintenance (point) releases of Sarge until a new stable release is made?
3) Which options do you interpret as preventing the RM from authorizing maintenace (point) releases of Woody until Sarge is released?
(Not on the list of questions related to this set of resolutions, but for my own interest: Are point releases of pre-Woody releases being made? Or has their support lifetime ended? What is the general policy of the support lifetime of old releases?)
4) Which options do you interpret as allowing the RM to release post-Sarge stable releases with the same sort of contentious material (GFDL'd manuals, source-code-less images and sound, etc) in the same way that such contention material was allowed in Woody?
I'm sure there are other questions which could be asked, but are these quesions sufficnetly non-vague?