Thomas Bushnell BSG writes ("Re: Phoning home"):
> On Sun, 2008-02-24 at 13:54 +0000, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > But I was rather surprised to find this situation. It looks like the
> > prospective maintainer was aware of the phoning home but didn't
> > consider it a release-critical bug; they are also reluctant to
> > override upstream's wishes without some clear Debian policy statement
> > to the effect that this is not permissible.
>
> I'm unclear about this "override upstream's wishes" part. I have heard
> this kind of thing a number of times, and I strongly disagree with it.
That was my wording, but the prospective maintainer's sentiment.
I wholeheartedly agree with you.
> It sounds as if the maintainer is saying that upstream gets some kind of
> veto, which can only be overridden if there is a "clear Debian policy
> statement" on the point, and that is a mistaken and buggy approach.
> Upstream doesn't get a veto.
Yes. I have explained this :-).
> There are good social and technical reasons not to deviate from upstream
> without good reasons, but this is a good reason, whether there is a
> "clear policy" or not.
I think what's not clear to everybody is that this is a good reason.
Conventional privacy mores in much of the world at large have greatly
changed. I deplore these changes, and I'm glad to see that Debian
appears to be willing to hold a stronger line.
But to provide clarity, I think it would be a good idea to write
something down in policy - just as in other areas of potential
controversy, we have some explicit statements of our collective view.
Ian.
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