[maemo-developers] [RFC] Maemo package guidelines: mandatory categories

[From: Marius Vollmer]

"ext Andrew Flegg" <andrew at bleb.org> writes:

> On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 12:33 PM, Marius Vollmer
>
>>  I am sure you notice the conflict here: whatever list you come up with
>>  will be unsuitable for someone.  You want strict policy enforcement,
>>  based on community 'feelings'.  How can that work?
>
> Can it be any worse than the mess we're in now?

(Yes, I actually think it could be worse, but I think we agree on the
important points, so let's not get distracted about this.)

> Having said that, perhaps the MOTU-style proposal of gatekeepers doing
> QA checks could help here. Deviation is permitted, if it gets through
> a gatekeeper:

Yes, I agree.  I was proposing this, in a more fine fashion: in
addition to being able to say who goes in and who doesn't, the
gatekeeper could also say: You go in but I am going to change your
category to something sensible whether you want to or not.  (I.e., the
category of a package can be overwritten by the repository.)

>>  One approach in a situation where consensus is clearly beneficial is to
>>  make a first shot at a concrete policy that everybody is supposed to
>>  follow, but make it possible to deviate from that policy in practice.
>
> That's what we've got now!

Yeah, but you cut the important part:

    At the same time, make it possible for people to improve policy
    compliance by doing concrete work (i.e., enable them to fix
    non-compliant things).

The gatekeepers would be the ones fixing non-compliance (by rejecting
violations, or by correcting them directly).