Bug#1077764: Call for votes: don't issue any ruling

On Wed, 7 Aug 2024 at 16:57, Christoph Berg <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Re: Luca Boccassi
> > > BEGIN BALLOT
> > >
> > > The Technical Committee declines to overrule the maintainer of
> > > base-files, or issue any advice on issues concerning /etc/os-release.
> > >
> > > We do not think there is a clear proposal on the table for us to assess,
> > > and we do not think it is appropriate to issue any general statements on
> > > the issues concerning /etc/os-release.
> >
> > Seriously? In https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1077764#368
> > you say that you could rule on the general statement rather than a
> > specific implementation, then I answer "I'd prefer that if it was
> > possible", and this is how you respond? I've asked multiple times
> > exactly what it is that you need in order to make a decision, and all
> > I get in response are first cryptic and contradicting statements, and
> > then this abrupt dismissal. This seriously feels like something out of
> > Kafka novel.
>
> I vote A > N.
>
> Luca: people would be much more likely to act positively on your
> requests if you wouldn't call them Kafkaesque.

I described the experience of this process as kafkaesque as a response
to the dismissal, not before it, so unless it went through a mail
relay in Winden that seems unlikely, among other things because of the
principle of causality. And I think describing as kafkaesque the
experience of being told "Yeah we can do X" ---> "You will now be
punished for asking to do X" seems quite charitable to me as a
description. Ironically, telling me the dismissal is because of this
even though it happened before makes it feel even _more_ kafkaesque. I
still haven't got the faintest clue what exactly is that you need in a
proposal to consider it. I even thought about providing references and
documentation for how other distributions with similar bodies provide
a much more well defined engineering process for such proposals, so
that even mere mortals like myself can actually understand it and use
it productively, as a possible source of inspiration for constructive
feedback, but what's the point? It's just going to go into /dev/null
anyway. My takeway from this whole thing is that it's a waste of time
to reach out to the TC, and it's best to just ignore it. Live and
learn, I suppose.