In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Marcus Brinkmann writes:
>Hello,
>
....
>A privilege is a "special advantage or immunity or benefit not enjoyed by
>all" (wordnet). You said "the privilege to be trusted to contribute to
>Debian". Many people outside Debian are to be trusted to contribute,
>directly or indirectly. In fact, most contributions to Debian are
>indirectly. Without those, Debian wouldn't exist in the first place, and
>couldn't develop much.
>
>I didn't abstract, my argument was on the point.
>
OK, I see that a little better now. I was saying trusting the Debian
distribution means trusting its maintainers.
>
>Again, a privilege is not something I have to do or follow. What you rightly
>say is that following the Social Contract and DFG and constitution etc is
>an obligation to every Debian developer. That's almost the opposite of a
>privilege.
>
Right, but you're a Developer because you follow them and contribute.
>[I snipped parts of the trust issue, because trust is somewhat orthogonal to
>privileges, and I don't want to dilute the point]
>[However, let me point out that the chain of trust is nowhere complete. I
>doubt that most Debian maintainers audit the source of their packages
>thoroughly before uploading.]
>
Agreed... interested parties should mail AJ and Wichert to talk about a
signature train in conjunction with packaging pools. :)
>> So: no confirmed identity -> no traceability -> less end user trust.
>
>Do you know if Ulrich Drepper exists? Are you going to ask him for a signed ID?
>
No. But I trust Debian because I know it is careful about who is allowed
into the project, and that trust is enough for me to type 'apt-get update
-y' without knowing the history of what came from where/whom.
...
>
>I agree it is too easy. It should be fixed by making the ftp upload
>mechanism more robust and easier revertable. Than less burden of trust can
>be put on the volunteers, and everyone feels a bit better.
>This is not only a matter of trust: Mistakes with a similar effect could
>happen. (Or well meaning NMU uploads, etc)
>
Yup. (go help with package pools! :)
>> As far as being part of Debian being a privilege, yes, for me (and I'm sure
>> for most others) it is. Please note however that this does not mean it
>> should be hard to be accepted: it just means that you have to fit certain
>> criteria in order to join.
>
>However, this very reason (privilege) was raised to argue that the NM
>process can be a bit harder than it needs to be:
>
>"Membership is a privilege, and if you have to take a couple of
>bureaucratic steps, so be it."
>
>So, do you actually agree with my point?
>
That point, definitely.
>I don't understand what you mean with "certain criteria" you mean. The last
>sentence of the paragraph above seems to contradict the second last, and is
>somewhat without meaning (the way I parse it at least).
>
Agreeing with social contract, DFSG, etc. See below for 'privilege'. I
don't see the contradiction. I think be both understand what we mean
though, and basically agree.
...
>
>Actually, I have diffulties to see the relationship to the "privilege"
>issue, but maybe you really didn't mean to talk about privileges, but about
>social foundations etc. Those are entirely seperate, and confusing them
>leads only to misunderstandings. In light of the wordnet definition, I am
>offering you that becoming a Debian member is the privilege to be part of
>Debian and form it, how about that? It is somewhat redundant, because it
>essentially means being a Debian member is a privilege to be a Debian
>member, but anyway, it seems what you mean :)
>
I consider being a developer a privilege. Period. Why? because I'm happy
to have been accepted into this organization whose values I care about and
that the organization considers my contributions valuable. (Does this make
it clearer? :)
Ciao,
Nils.
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
