Quoth Anthony Towns on 25 Oct, 1999:
[ Disclaimer: I am not a Debian developer yet, due to the new-maintainer
freeze. I have been following the project for a while, however. Please
forgive if this is out of order. ]
> First, proposals without code are pointless. They're fun and all to
> discuss and such, but they don't get results.
There is some code that has been offered for a similar proposal now. And your
yourself offered it. :) Besides, this is such a far-reaching policy decision
(effective changing the entire way Debian is versioned and released), I would
be disturbed to see code put into place without some planning done beforehand.
> Second, this isn't enough information to vote on this. We don't know how
> well we can do all this stuff until we have code, and thus any vote would
> be shockingly underinformed. Major questions include whether any of this
So then propose to table the discussion pending further, specific research.
Once we know what we need to know, discussion can be taken up again. But
don't dismiss things offhand, or table the issue indefinitely, saying "we need
to know more". Nothing will ever get done.
> Third, voting on `this is what these people will spend their time on in
> future' is completely inappropriate. If it's really a better way, they'll
> spend their time on it because they want to. If it's a bit ambiguous,
> you can spend your time on it if you want to.
As I said, I am relatively new to the Debian project, and I'm not yet a
maintainer, but it strikes me that if we follow this line of thinking, there
is no need for any directing body. If everyone did what they wanted to, or
didn't do it at all, there would be absolutely no reason for this discussion,
or developer voting -- the whole point of which is to allow the point of view
which shares most, but not all, of the popular opinion to become the accepted
course of action.
So that I may do something other than criticize, here are my constructive
suggestions:
Step 1) Develop a list of specific information that you need to have available
before calling a vote on this, or even discussing the merits further.
Step 2) Call for a vote on tabling pending further investigation [is there
room for this in the Debian Rules of Order? :) ]
Step 3) Assuming vote passes, do the legwork of feasability researh.
That being said, I do like the proposal. I think perhaps the proposed
modification for an automated promotion might be a nice addition, as would the
maintenance of an experimental branch for stuff that is really and truly
completely nonfunctional. But I think, with some ammendations and
considerations for real-world use, its a very good idea whose time has long
past come.
Sorry if I stepped on anyone's toes here.
--
Robert C. Jones | rjones-at-devzero-dot-org | http://www.devzero.org
Linux junkie | professional sysadmin | raving lunatic
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