Bill Allombert <ballo...@debian.org> writes: > You rightfull object that 'the expectation is that an experienced Unix > person' is subjective in nature and leads to contradictory opinion.
> So maybe we should replace the phrase 'If the expectation is ...' by a > reference to standard that define what UNIX is (POSIX, SUS). > However, as far as I understand, ed is mandated by POSIX and SUSv4. > So I do not see how we can keep "important" to refer to UNIX and at the > same time excluding ed. Well, the current Policy rule is intentionally subjective. The idea is to focus on the user experience, not on a particular standard. Standards always have a problem: once you put something in a standard, it's nearly impossible to take it out again. POSIX is pretty unlikely to ever remove ed, even if no one uses it, since there's no way to know what's using it or what vendor scripts, etc., have built in some assumption that it is available. And, more practically, because it would require a lot of work to achieve consensus on removing it, and people would object just because people always object to this sort of thing in standards bodies, so no one will bother to do the work of getting it removed. I think the question here is whether we want to treat issues like this the same way, or whether we want to use some other standard of general usefulness for things in important. Or, put another way, how much weight do we want to put on standards and on the fact that something has historically been in important? If we were building the important set from scratch based on things that are commonly needed for a minimal system, I doubt we would include ed. I cannot remember the last time I ran into something that actually uses it. But we're not, and the package isn't all that large. Personally, I would tend to lean towards letting the people who work on the installer and the CD sets and similar space-constrained areas of Debian (embedded environments, maybe, as well) be the ones who decide the membership of standard vs. important vs. required rather than having each individual maintainer roll the dice and apply their own personal guesswork. -- 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: https://lists.debian.org/87r3ua4s0r....@hope.eyrie.org
