Steve Langasek <vor...@debian.org> writes: > I question the whole notion of DPL delegation of policy powers to the > policy editors. The power to decide the contents of the debian-policy > package follows from their status as package maintainers; package > maintenance is not something that I believe it's in the purview of the > DPL to delegate.
This came up in the discussion over the delegation text. I disagree with this characterization of the Policy Editor role, and I think the other Policy Editors also disagree. I don't think we are just package maintainers in the normal sense. The debian-policy package is an artifact of the process and a means for documenting its results, not the only purpose of the group. If debian-policy were merely a package like any other, then anyone else who introduced a similar package into the archive would have the same role within the project as the debian-policy package maintainers. I don't think this is how the project actually looks at the matter. The Lintian maintainers, the release team, the ftp-masters, and many other teams in Debian take formal notice of the acts of the Policy Editors in a way that wouldn't equally apply to some other package that people introduced into the archive, and would continue to do so even if the results weren't published as a Debian package. > I'm not arguing that I don't think the policy editors are doing a good > job - I'm grateful to them for the work they do. I'm definitely *not* doing a good job as a Policy Editor at the moment, but that's neither here nor there. :) > But constitutionally, I think the DPL doesn't have any authority to > delegate the power to decide technical policy (which is a power reserved > to the TC in the absence of consensus), only the power to act as > recognized facilitators for policy discussions (i.e., the previous > delegation that was in place). This was basically the approach that I took in the delegation discussion, and I still think it's basically correct. The job of that role is to try to document and coordinate discussions about the technical policy of the project. Formal decision-making in the event of a conflict rests with the TC; the Policy Editor role is to try to dispose of the vast majority of issues which do not require a formal discussion process or a vote. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-policy-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87iospkwsd....@windlord.stanford.edu
