I must be doing something seriously wrong...

[Josh Boyer]

On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 02:20:52PM +0200, Christoph Wickert wrote:
>Josh,
>
>first of all I'd like to thank you for taking the time to answer my
>question. I really appreciate it.

Sure, no problem.

>On Thu, 2009-05-21 at 07:31 -0400, Josh Boyer wrote:
>> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 12:14:03PM +0200, Christoph Wickert wrote:
>> [snipped]
>> >meeting minutes? If 8 out of 21 summaries are missing, IMHO this is a
>> >fact worth mentioning.
>> 
>> They are missing because the minutes are done by FESCo members themselves and
>> we are humans.  That isn't to say that the minutes aren't important, but that
>> people make mistakes and are busy and at times, things get missed.  The IRC
>> logs for almost all the meetings should be available though.
>
>Yes, but without the meeting minutes people might not even know there
>was a FESCo meeting, e. g. if it was an irregular one. FESCo cannot
>expect people to check for new logs every day just to be on the safe
>side.

Agreed.  We're working on getting better about it again after our failed
experiment.

>> Earlier in the year we tried a rotation of minutes takers to alleviate the
>> burden on one person, but that seems to have failed.  If someone wanted to
>> volunteer to be the FESCo secretary, I'm sure we would welcome that.
>
>I don't think FESCo needs a secretary. Being a FESCo member gives you

I didn't say need.  I was simply saying if someone wanted to help, that would
be great.

>privileges, so one should also pull his duties. If not,  IMHO the person
>is not qualified for FESCo, simple as that. (Sorry if this sounds harsh)

It doesn't sound particularly harsh, but I wonder what privileges you think
you get when you are in FESCo?

>> >I'm one of the few maintainers who directly is affected by the policy.
>> >Would somebody - preferably a FESCo member, who voted for the flags
>> >proposal - please be so kind to answer my questions. TIA!
>> 
>> >https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-May/msg01414.html
>> 
>> 1) The rationale was given by spot here:
>> 
>> https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-May/msg01427.html
>> 
>> or was that not what you were looking for?
>
>Not really. Spot just explained the rationale for writing the policy,
>but as I already outlined that the policy does not cover all the cases
>it was designed for. Maybe I should have asked more precisely: What is
>the use of a policy that does not really solve the problems?

I see.  I think that is why a ticket has been opened to revisit this.  Stay
tuned!

>> 2) The advantage for the project was to codify something that has been
>> dealt with silently since the RHL days.  That being said, the guideline itself
>> is going to be revisited.
>
>I agree that codification is a good thing, but I really don't see the
>benefit (see above) and your answer does not solve the apparent
>contradiction between "follow upstream" and "remove flags". We have two
>conflicting guidelines here, so which one is more important?

In general terms, 'follow the Fedora policy' trumps 'follow upstream' (see mp3).
I think we try to make sure the policies don't conflict with upstream where we
can.  The flags issue certainly does though.

>> 3) Your example of keyboard layout selection seems akin to language selection.
>> In my opinion, under the existing guideline, the flags would not be allowed but
>> you could ask FESCo for an exemption.  Note, that is just my opinion and I don't
>> speak for FESCo as a whole.
>
>Ok, then please some FESCo members please speak up.

Honestly, I think it would be best to let the revisit of the guideline happen
first.  If nothing changes as an outcome of that, then we can start soliciting
opinions on specific items (or opening tickets for exemptions).

>> 4) This is a good question.  If you have specific examples of things that are
>> not obviously 'religion' that you would like to have evaluated that might help.
>
>How about Scientology, is it a religion? I don't think so, but I know
>there are people who see this differently, especially in the US. Also
>you only answered my question partly, I asked for a definition of an
>"ethnocultural concept". Even the assumed trivial terms are hard to
>define. What is "country"? Is Tibet one or Taiwan?

This is a good question, and I don't have an answer for you off the top of my
head.

>> 5) I don't know the answer to your question, nor do I find it relevant in a
>> discussion about flags.  It's been pointed out several times that the flags
>> policy opens doors to madness through defining 'acceptable' content, so let's
>> not start yet another massive thread about that at the moment.
>
>I do think it is relevant. The policy deals with religious flags, but it
>does not deal with religions symbols. I could draw a square around
>symbol and call it a flag.

And I could remove a square from the flag and call it a symbol.  Discussing
theoreticals at this point is only going to lead us to more and more absurd
cases.  I don't think we're here to draft policies that cover every possible
situation whether it will ever happen in real life or not.

>
>> 6) How do you make sure users are aware of -docs packages, or -devel packages?
>> I see no difference here.
>
>I do. -devel packages for example show up in comps and can be installed
>with groupinstall, but -flags can't. While developing or building a

Why can't they show up in comps?

>package you will most likely be pointed to a missing -devel package by a
>configure script or a failed make, but what will point you to the
>missing flags?

>Docs don't affect runtime of a program (as per packaging guidelines),
>but flags do. Not necessarily the fundamental functions of a package,
>but they *do* make the program behave differently than intended by it's
>developers. Just take deluge or my xfce4-xkp-plugin as examples.

You asked about how we make sure users are aware of -flags packages.  I stated
that I see no difference from how we make users aware of -docs packages.  Your
reply doesn't address that.  Instead you described the functional difference
between -flags and -docs.

The original question was about advertising to the users.  So how do we
advertise -docs packages to users, and why isn't that sufficient for -flags?

josh