On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 10:17:52AM -0600, Ean Schuessler wrote:
> ----- "Robert Millan" wrote:
> > The majority of developers voted to make an exception for firmware in
> > Lenny. They did NOT vote to empower the Release Team to make exceptions
> > as they see fit. Results of GR 2008/003 are crystal clear about this.
>
> Unfortunately, nothing can be crystal clear about GR 2008/003 because there
> is simply nothing crystal clear about it.
It's clear what the vote says. What the voters were thinking, I can't
tell. Usually one would assume they were thinking the same thing they
voted. At least, when I voted, I did.
If we have reasons to believe this is not so, I think the vote should be
invalidated. Playing with a flawed vote is very dangerous bussiness.
> Ironically, Bdale *is* warping the results of the vote and applying an
> editorial voice to the interpretation of the results. I say "ironically"
> because Bdale's actions go far beyond anything Manoj did with regard to
> imposing his desires or thoughts on the construction or result of a vote.
> Amusingly, those who called for Manoj's head have now fallen quite silent.
Agreed. Then again, even if Manoj was rightfully appliing super-majority
requirements (which I think he was), it has become clear that, in general,
such requirements are not politicaly sustainable. And in practice they
don't exist anymore, anyway. I think this would be a good time to propose
that they are removed from the Constitution.
> There are some things that are clear to me:
>
> * I have a very high level of trust in Bdale, even when he starts doing
> peculiar things.
I don't know him that well, so I can only judge him by his recent actions,
which are quite questionable. I acknowledge that it may be unfair that I
can't also recognize his merits, but this is how it is.
OTOH, writing in a harsh tone is something that sometimes happens to me when
I find something outrageous. Then again, at least I'm capable of rectifiing,
which not everyone in this thread is.
> * We should not delay Lenny for further political discussion because people's
> operations depend on our release.
I tend to agree with this, but I don't think this is the matter at hand. My
concerns are:
- Some maintainers are simply refusing to fix DFSG violations that would
otherwise NOT delay Lenny, as a consequence of the RT's rather low
requirements for appliing a "lenny-ignore" tag. A good example of that
is #459705, in which the maintainer simply said "I'd rather not remove
this file". I think this creates a VERY dangerous precedent, which is
precisely what I'm trying to stop.
Yeah, it is really. It's not like one day I woke up and thought "hey, it
would be cool if we could delay Lenny".
- Even if there's a general perception that everyone agrees not to delay
Lenny at all costs, this should definitely be voted on and sanctioned.
Not doing so creates a very bad precedent.
> * Discussion of these issues in the shadow of Lenny warps people's minds and
> makes sane discourse impossible.
Spot on. And point taken.
> * We have already made several such releases in the past and do not have a
> soberly constructed framework for solving the problem permanently.
What is wrong with the framework we've used for Sarge and Etch?
> With that in mind, I am inclined to go along with Bdale's "release Lenny by
> all means possible" reading of 2008/003.
> However, if anyone views this as a victory then they are smoking extremely
> powerful crack. I would rosily call this
> a "convenient failure of democratic discipline" on Debian's part. It would be
> VERY, VERY UNFORTUNATE if it continutes
> to be a permanent pattern. I think the very survival of our organization
> depends on us coming to a well defined
> solution by the next release.
If we're going to go that route, at the very least I think the project should
issue a position statement explaining something like:
- We just screwed up. Sorry about that.
- It's too late in the Lenny release process to do something about this
without causing unacceptable delays. We will release Lenny ASAP out of
responsibility.
- We will try to find a solution.
Would you be likely to support such thing?
> So I'm sorry Robert, your heart is absolutely in the right place but I agree
> that we should release Lenny.
You say you're sorry? You almost read my mind!
But I don't agree that doing nothing is going to solve our problem.
--
Robert Millan
The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."
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