On 20 Apr 1998, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> The policy is the only standard we have for the distribution;
> and standards not followed are sometimes worse than no standards at
> all. (This is one of my pet peeves with miscrosoft).
>
While I could disagree with the other "personal opinions" you have
expressed, they were expressed as your personal opinions, and I am willing
to leave it at that, but the above statement is simply and completely
false.
Policy is not in my opinion a standard. We DO have important standards
that we follow with varying degrees of success, and it is these standards
and our attempts to follow them that have made Debian the useful, well
integrated, system that it has been for much longer than Policy has
existed.
Policy was developed as a tool to aid new developers in understanding the
many details of package building and system integration as practiced by
the Debian development group. This came about to deal with the large
influx of developers that the group has experienced in the last several
years. Since that time every attempt has been made to elevate policy to
some super godhood of unquestioned excellence. This is an attitude I don't
agree with.
Even the Policy Tzar agrees that Policy is a Guideline, he just takes the
word to have a stiffer meaning than most reasonable folks.
Look! We aren't talking about whether or not it is appropriate to violate
update-alternatives, or some other technical integration issue. My
complaint comes from having to spend valuable time fending off arguments
over whether ChangeLog is equivalent to changelog as specified in the
Policy manual, or other issues that are of a strictly typographical
nature. For me dual maintainer packages falls under the later and, as has
been pointed out already, this is not the first package to violate this
"broken" policy
All I have ever suggested is that policy statements can not be absolute in
all cases, and this fact has not yet been recognized by those who dictate
policy to the rest of us. Civil disobedience is the only option I have the
time or energy for.
I will continue to object to the dictatorial nature with which these
edicts of the Policy group are being implimented.
Waiting is,
Dwarf
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